will probably be very different from those which herald its advent.
The consideration of such a large subject involves much speculation,
but from the analogy of the inspiring influence of the ancient
religions which have held sway over mankind, and which, controlling
the whole of human life, focussed the most beautiful art upon its
mysteries and beatitudes, and drew both the senses and the intellect
of man into their service, we cannot but believe that the feeling
of the solidarity of humanity, and all that it implies, which would
dominate all social thought and conduct in a collective socialized
community, would become a religion, when its full significance and its
bearing on every department of life was fully realized; but a religion
free from the shadow of degrading superstitions, and from the taint of
asceticism, and under which there would be no shirking of either the
work or the enjoyment of the earth--a religion whose highest sanction
would be human happiness, and in which its votaries would discover
not only a sound rule of conduct for every-day life, but an inspiring
ideal to lead the spirit ever onwards.
Human history would acquire a new significance in the mind of the poet
and the artist, as they beheld, in the long course of evolution, the
race in a vast procession emerging from the mists of primaeval time;
from its early struggles with wild nature; from the gens and the
tribal state, finding safety in primitive communism, and in that state
beholding the invention of the essential fundamental necessities and
appliances, such as the spade, the plough, and the wheel, the spinning
and weaving of cloth, pottery, and the birth of song and art.
From the tragic vicissitudes of history, of race-conflict, of conquest
and domination of warlike tribes and the institution of slavery, the
foundation and influence of the great ancient states and empires,
and their inevitable decay and fall, and the new order springing from
their ruins; the tragic tale of wars and pestilence and famine, of
flood and of fire and of earthquake, and yet onward still through all
these perils and disasters we may see humanity marching beneath the
banner of social justice to fulfil its destiny; the hero spirits still
passing the torch of enlightenment and freedom from hand to hand, and
as one sinks into the silence another advances towards the full flush
of the new morning.
Transfigured in that new light may we not see a recreated earth, and
her children set free from the bondage of gold whether of spirit or
of body--the race of man entering into its inheritance at last, having
triumphed over the worst and most insidious of all the despotisms that
have ever dominated the earth--Capitalism.
Then under the collective control of the means of existence, when
none shall be crippled or stunted by want, or degraded by forced or
unhealthy labour, what a different thing life will mean to the people.
The cloud of care and anxiety to secure a bare subsistence which
now darkens the spirit of millions shall be lifted, as well as its
inverted reflection in the parsimonious spirit of some who have never
known want, and all the sordid ingenuity, toil, scheming, craft, and
trouble to win a lucky throw in the commercial speculative gamble will
pass away, and we may begin to live.
The whole noxious and squalid brood of vices and crimes connected with
the individual possession of riches, or the desire for them, or
the want of them, being swept away, we may begin to understand the
possibilities of life upon this earth, in so far as they may be in the
collective power of man. With all the resources of science, and the
potential glories of art in our hands, with unprecedented control
over the forces of nature, and in full knowledge of the essentials
of health, these being all dedicated to the service of the whole
community, who would thus be in possession of the elements and
materials for a full and happy human life, surely we shall find new
and abundant inspiration for art, and constant social use and demand
for its powers.
In depicting the story of man, and the drama of life; in great public
monuments; in commemoration of the past, in the education of the
present; in the adorning of domestic and public buildings and
places; in the accompaniments of great festivals, processions, and
celebrations--in such directions, surely, we shall find the
widest possible field for the exercise of all the capacities of
art--architecture, painting, sculpture and the arts of design and
handicraft, with music and poesy, as in the fullness of communal
life we shall possess the materials for building and maintaining fair
cities, and dwelling places surpassing in beauty anything that the
history of the world has yet recorded, since their foundations will
rest upon the welfare of the whole people.
ON THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF ART
ON THE STUDY AND PRACTICE OF ART
Various views of an artist's life, and motives for following art are
apt to present themselves to those on the threshold of the vast field
of its study, but these after all may mostly be summed up in one of
the two governing reasons, which may be expressed as follows:
1. The pure love of art.
2. The sake of a livelihood.
(A third, _for pastime_, sometimes comes in, but may be dismissed as
art cannot be studied to any purpose except in a serious spirit.)
In practice it generally comes about that these first two have to be
reconciled in some way, and it becomes a pressing question sooner or
later as to _how_ to do so, though it is always well to remember that
there is no _natural_ connection between love and money in the arts
and, indeed, it would be better if all work could be inspired by and
done for love. At the same time, under present economic arrangements,
the labourer is at least worthy of his hire; and it might also be
said that when poverty comes in at the door art--if not love--is
apt (though not always) to fly out of the window. The same sequence
sometimes happens also with the sudden advent of riches, which also
has a way of throwing domestic arrangements out of harmony, so that
here, as in other cases, extremes meet, and _too much_ may be as bad
as _not enough_ in its effects upon art.
To paint great masterpieces and make fame and fortune is an ambition
given to few to realize. The masterpiece at all events must be a
labour of love, whether fame or fortune follow or not, and in the
history of art it has happened over and over again that masterpieces
have not been instantly recognized, and the master usually has had to
wait for recognition and reward--if that can be said in any real sense
to lie outside the accomplishment of his work. Good art, like virtue,
is its own reward. Yet, as a financial character remarks, in a play of
Mr. George Moore's, "Man cannot live by virtue alone." Virtue itself
indeed requires appropriate conditions for its development and
sustenance, just as the artist requires support and sympathy.
The warm breath of appreciation will draw up the sap of creative
impulse and it will put forth bud and leaf, blossom and fruit.
This potentiality for art, exists in a rudimentary way though in very
varying degrees in perhaps all individuals, but as a general rule
skill and facility are only acquired at the price of constant
devotion, a devotion spontaneous and sincere. Even great gifts and
natural or inherited adaptability require to be strengthened and made
supple by study and constant practice and observation. I have alluded
to the importance of a sympathetic atmosphere, and it sometimes
happens that the germ of artistic impulse has to struggle with adverse
circumstances, and it becomes a question of its strength and endurance
whether it will survive till more favourable opportunities for its
development arrive.
Where from the earliest the student has been surrounded by the tools
and implements of art, when he has seen it progressing before his
eyes, the gain is enormous over those who take up their studies late,
and to whom the world of art is comparatively mysterious and strange.
The mere imitative impulse, which appears to be possessed in common
by all mankind in a certain degree, will in the first instance gain a
certain ease and facility of hand in dealing with tools--say pencil,
brush and colour, which itself is a very great advantage to begin
with. In fact, the first consideration in studying art is _facility
of hand_. Without it, really nothing can be done since the power of
expression is so much dependent upon it.
In this connection I was much struck, while in America, with a method
adopted by a teacher (Mr. Liberty Tadd)[5] in Philadelphia, a city in
which very great attention was being paid to all forms of technical
instruction. Well, this teacher did not profess to train artists at
all. His object was to give _facility of hand_. He took children of
various ages--quite young to begin with--from the ordinary primary
schools, and set them to draw on the black board with a piece of
chalk in each hand certain figures. Circles to begin with, and certain
symmetric forms of ornament as shown in the diagram. The facility
they acquired was extraordinary. He then set them to what he called
"memorize" these forms and combine them in design as they best could,
and to model such designs in clay, and to carve them in wood.
Well, it struck me this might be capable of development. At any rate,
clearly, facility of hand could be developed by exercise, just as
muscular strength can be.
[Illustration: PROGRESSIVE BLACKBOARD PRACTICE IN BI-MANUAL TRAINING.
(From "New Methods in Education," by Liberty Tadd).]
From such simple exercises a student might advance, and those who
developed more faculty or taste in certain directions rather than
others--say in modelling rather than drawing, or in carving--might
pursue further those particular branches, making them main studies to
which other side studies would contribute. The use of colour, and
the habit of working directly on the paper with the brush, like the
Japanese, would again give enormous facility and precision of touch,
of great value both to the designer of patterns and also to the
pictorial artist. The direct brush method has been, since this was
first written, practised in our schools, often with surprising results
indicating considerable design faculty in young children. Method is
so much a question of habit, and in so many departments of
design precision of touch and directness of execution are of such
importance--in the preparation of working designs for cotton printing
for instance. The india-rubber, I am inclined to think, sometimes is
the root (or the sap) of all evil.
It is for this quality of precision and technical adaptability to
the conditions of manufacture which has, I believe, induced many
manufacturers to seek their designs and working drawings on the
continent. From the specimens I have seen however, I cannot say I am
impressed with the originality or fertility of the designs, and when,
too--though I am by no means of the Jingo persuasion--it came to
getting your British lion designed abroad, unicorn and all the rest of
the national heraldry, it seemed rather a _reductio ad absurdum_. Yet
after all, of course, we must concede morally our French or German
brother has as much right to life as we. Competitive commerce
certainly is no respecter of nationality. We must all take our chance
in the world market nowadays. We are all chained to the conqueror's
car. We want a new Petrarch to write the triumph of commercialism, and
a new designer to picture it, as the old triumphs are depicted with
every splendour of inventive accessory, and magnificence of decorative
effect in those Burgundian tapestries at Hampton Court and South
Kensington. Well, I am afraid the modern triumph, such as it is, is
pictured for us in the rampant poster, which pursues us in and out of
stations, up and down streets, and even along the railway lines, which
last vantage ground hitherto has been the prerogative of our American
cousins. I do not say the poster has no place in art, and many very
able artists have designed posters, and, on the whole, our free
popular exhibitions on the hoardings have gained both in interest
and printing skill, and decorative effect of late years. Under
considerable restraint and chastening it might be possible to make
the announcement of useful wares and theatrical events at least
inoffensive, perhaps, and it may be that the mere working of
competition will produce a demand for more refined productions, since
when all shout together no one voice is likely to be heard, and the
accepted theory of a poster is that it _must_ shout--but let us keep
it out of our scenery. Any way the subject is important since our
hoardings are evidently the most obviously public education in
pictorial and typographical design. It is, after all, what meets our
eyes every day that influences us. It is the surrounding--the set
scene of every-day life that affects our artistic sense more than
anything. While a visit to a museum or art gallery is only an
occasional matter, except for students, the mass of mankind must take
their impressions of colour and form from what they see around them.
It is, we know, the persistence and aggregation of small causes that
have played the chief part in the modelling of the earth as we see
it, and which are continually changing its aspect. In like manner the
general sense or sensitiveness to beauty is acted upon unconsciously,
I have no doubt, by the aspects of every-day life, by the colours
and forms of the street and the market as well as by the pictures and
furniture of our domestic interiors. If this theory is correct, it
follows that anything which impairs that sensitiveness must injure the
faculty of its appreciation and production.
We have been too careless in this matter, and constant toleration
and familiarity with hideous surroundings brutalizes and blunts
the perceptions, and seeing how largely ugliness of form and colour
prevails in at least the externals of modern life, especially of our
manufacturing centres, it is perhaps not surprising that a certain
cult, a certain worship of the ugly should have obtained a footing
even in art.
I do not deny there are certain tragic aspects of industrialism, a
certain weird fascination in drifting clouds of smoke, and beauty in
the forms of escaping steam, and that graphic representations of the
various restless aspects of modern life, have, in proportion to their
sincerity, historic value. It is at all events _our_ life and must
be recorded, though it leads to the art of the newspaper--but a great
deal of clever art can be put into a newspaper. Our newspapers are
perhaps getting the better of us; like Chronos the press devours its
own children, and no one knows how many geniuses are yearly swallowed
up, or how many lives and talents consumed in order that the
comfortable world shall have its dish of news and views at the
breakfast table, as well as in successive relays, served up like
muffins, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the electric
light. Well, Art, like literature, may be said to be divided into
prose, poetry, and penny-a-lining, or, to find equivalents we might
say, the creative, the pictorial, and the pot-boiling kinds. The first
two are governed by their own laws and the individual preferences of
the artist, the third depends upon fashion, the state of the markets,
averages and the laws of supply and demand.
Now it seems quite possible in an artistic life, while preserving
an ideal of beauty of design and workmanship in whatever direction
without sacrifice of principle, to remain in touch with the ordinary
wants of humanity--to realize that that art is not necessarily the
highest which is always in the clouds, but, indeed, that all kinds
of art gain in character and beauty in proportion as the ideas they
express are incarnate as it were--inseparable from the particular
materials in which they are embodied. Their peculiar conditions and
limitations openly and frankly acknowledged, and so far from being
felt in the nature of a bondage, really are aids to distinct and
beautiful decoration, as is the case in all the arts and crafts of
design, showing that sincerity is the fundamental condition of good
design and workmanship, which never pride themselves on imitating
qualities which properly belong to other forms of art and other
materials.
There are two systems, or methods, or principles of education in art.
i. The Academic or absolute.
ii. The Experimental, or relative, and adaptive.
The one teaching art or design in the abstract on certain
cut-and-dried principles and methods, and fixed canons and standards,
passing every mind through the same mill, without special reference to
any particular conditions of craftsmanship or individual preference.
The other teaching design in concrete forms and in direct relation
to tools, methods and materials, with the object of calling out the
individual feeling and setting it free to express itself under the
natural limitations of art in its own way.
The latter is the method of our new technical and Arts and Crafts
schools, so that a student may really acquire a practical working
knowledge of the peculiar requirements of design to be reproduced in
any process of manufacture, instead of being launched on the world
with vague general ideas of drawing and painting, but ignorant of how
to apply them.
It of course remains to be proved how far technical schools can really
efficiently take the place of the old workshop training under the
apprenticeship system, which led to good results in the past, but
while one must of course recognize that changed times require new
methods, we ought also clearly to realize that efficiency in the use
of tools and materials, and adaptability to materials, with the view
of bearing on the prosperity of trade and supplying manufacturers with
more highly skilled designers and workmen, with increased competition,
go to form _one_ aim and ultimate object. Quite another is the like
efficiency, governed by the fresh creative impulse of artists and
craftsman taking keen pleasure in their work, with leisure for
reflection and enjoyment, and the gathering of fresh ideas from
no poor, mean or stinted life, and not deprived of the stimulating
influences of natural or architectural beauty, or the touch of
refinement, and with the stimulating emulation and co-operation of
fellowship instead of cut-throat competition.
These are two ideals somewhat distinct. It remains to be seen which
goal we shall ultimately reach, but much depends upon which we
each individually work for, since individual impulse and action are
precipitated in the collective force which finally moves the world.
At present the requirements of artistic ideals are not always
identical with the demands of commerce, and sometimes not so in any
sense at all. There must be always I should think some particular
individual reserve in the artist which must bide its time and the
fitting medium and opportunity for its expression. The world is slow
to apprehend new manifestations of original talent and will not
accept immature masterpieces. It becomes a question therefore for the
individual artist how far he can, without casting away or losing sight
of his higher ideals and aspirations, associate himself with work of a
less ambitious, more immediately serviceable, but not necessarily less
artistic kind. It is here that technical knowledge will come in to
help him, and there is room for the very best talents and invention
in design in the work of the loom, and the printing press, iron,
wood, stone, metal, glass, in a thousand materials and forms which
contribute to build up the life of ordinary civilized man. When the
design and construction of our furniture, and the various patterns and
accessories which minister to the daily wants of humanity fall into
purely mechanical hands, and artistic craftsmen no longer concern
themselves with the unity of use and beauty, the sense of beauty and
pleasure in life which comes of the exercise of the artistic
faculty and of its appreciation, both are in a fair way to perish of
inanition.
It cannot too often be insisted on that the vital springs which
nourish the growth of the tree of art to its topmost branches must be
looked for in the harmonious character of all things connected with
life itself, and since human happiness is bound up with harmonious
social arrangements in all ways, the importance of such considerations
cannot well be exaggerated.
As in the pursuit of art we advance in the possession and
interpretation of beauty and in the power of conferring higher
pleasure to the cultivated senses and intellect, so are the forms of
art apt to be placed higher in the scale: but High Art can only mean
the art which embodies the highest beauty and conveys the most lasting
and ennobling pleasure. It is its _quality_ more than its particular
_form_ which settles this. Sharp lines of demarcation are often drawn
between fine art and decorative, or industrial, art, for instance,
which have proved very misleading. A good design is far and away
better than a bad picture any day, but the arts are really an equal
brotherhood. Excellence in any one branch probably requires as fine
capacities as excellence in another. Beauty is of different kinds, but
perfect beauty of design and workmanship must be acknowledged to be
so, after its kind, whenever we meet with it, and who shall hold the
scales between one kind of beauty and another.
If an exquisite work of the loom--say such a Persian carpet as may be
seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, satisfies the eye with lovely
and subtle harmonies of colour, with delicate and beautiful and
inventive design, and even suggestions of romance and poetry: can
the finest work of the painter give us more? Are threads and dyes
necessarily inferior to pigments and palettes, or the loom less a work
of ingenious joinery than the easel?
Whatever may be the official and scientific classification of the arts
agreed on, there is but one spirit in which to study and practice
in any or all of them--sincerity and the love of beauty. "Strive to
attain excellence in the things which are themselves excellent"
sounds a good dictum but it is thoroughly Academic. Certain things are
assumed to be excellent, and then excellence is to be striven for in
them and in them alone. But how often in life--in the history of art
and humanity has it been that some great artist and inventor has taken
some poor despised thing and made it excellent. Think of the wealth of
beauty and invention which makes alive the smallest fragment of
Gothic carving, and invests every cup and bowl, every bench end and
knife-handle of the middle ages with beauty and romance. The commonest
weed may contain a fine motive in design, just as, in another way,
the whole spirit of Japanese art in its weird, half-supernatural
naturalism and magic delicacy of touch, may haunt a tiny ivory button,
or be wrought into a sword hilt.
It does not follow that everything should be ornamented. Artistic
feeling is shown often as much in the judgement which restrains
or forbids ornament as in the fertility of invention from which it
springs.
Organic consistency, adaptation to purpose, harmony and relation to
surroundings. These are qualities at least as important as ornament.
Yet it seems often to be thought that decorative art means ornamenting
something: but the very word decoration must mean something
appropriate--fitting, perfectly adapted.
The engineer who borrows cast-iron Roman capitals and mouldings
to adorn the iron railing and supports of his gasometer is not
necessarily making it more artistic. A wrought-iron screen veiling the
cylinder altogether, full of fancy and grace of treatment, might be
more artistic--though it might raise the price of gas.
The skeleton has a beauty of its own, "Thou art nor modelled, glazed,
or framed," says Tennyson, to his "rough sketch of man." Yet we should
not like to live in a world of skeletons, however valuable a knowledge
of the bones and mechanism of the joints is to students of the human
form.