THE LIVING ART
A Japanese authority has boasted that the only living art of to-day is
the art of Japan; and the remark is not so much exaggerated as it may
appear at first sight to the European. Art in Japan is living as art in
Greece was living. It forms part and parcel of the very life of the
people; every Jap is an artist at heart in the sense that he loves and
can understand the beautiful. If one of us could be as fortunate as the
man in the story, who came in his voyages upon an island where an
Hellenic race preserved all the traditions and all the genius of their
Attic ancestors, he would understand what living art really signifies.
What would be true of that imaginary Greek island is absolutely true of
Japan to-day. Art is in Europe cultivated in the houses of the few, and
those few scarcely know either the beauties or the value of the plant
they are cultivating. That is the privilege of a class rather than the
rightful inheritance of the many. The world is too much divided into the
artist on the one hand and the Philistine on the other. But it is not so
in Japan, as it was not so in ancient Greece. In Japan the feeling for
art is an essential condition of life. This is why I expect so much from
the interest in Japan which is now awakening in England.
The report of the Japanese Commission sent to Europe to investigate the
conditions of Western art, some years ago, startled Western minds
considerably. The Commissioners gave it as their opinion that Japanese
art was the only real living art. This surprised, perplexed, and
irritated many people, as home truths generally do. Without adopting in
integrity every word of the Commission's report, I must confess that I
found in it a great deal of truth.
The great characteristic of Japanese art is its intense and
extraordinary vitality, in the sense that it is no mere exotic
cultivation of the skilful, no mere graceful luxury of the rich, but a
part of the daily lives of the people themselves. It is all very well to
draw gloomy deductions about the decay of Japanese art from the
manufacture and the importation of curios destined for the European
market. That there is such an importation there can be no doubt, any
more than that this condition of things will continue while people fancy
that they are giving proof of their artistic taste by sticking up all
over their walls anything and everything, good, bad, and indifferent,
which professes to come from Japan or to be made on Japanese models.
[Illustration: SUN AND LANTERNS]
What an educated Jap would think of some of our so-called "Japanese
rooms" I shudder to imagine. But let me ask--and this is much more to
the purpose--what would an uneducated Jap think? And let me give my
own answer. He would be as much surprised by any bad taste or bad art as
his educated superior would be. This is the burden of my argument--that
art in Japan is universal and instructive, and therefore living; not an
artificial production of a special class, and therefore not living. Art
was certainly a living thing in the best days of Athens; art has been,
in some measure, a living thing elsewhere and in later days. For we must
remember that art does not merely consist in the production of a certain
number of works of art, or even of masterpieces. A country may produce a
great many works of art, and yet as a country be entirely lacking in
living artistic feeling. France is a land of works of art; but the works
do not appeal to the voyou--still less do they appeal to the ouvrier, to
the bourgeois, to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker. Now,
what I claim for Japan is that in its most real and most important sense
it is a living artistic country. The artistic sense is shared by the
peasant and the prince, as well as by the carpenter, the fan-maker, the
lacquer-worker, and the stateliest daimio whose line dates back to the
creation of things.
But do not run away with my contention. I do not mean to say that every
Jap is a born artist. There are Philistines in Japan, as elsewhere. What
I do maintain is that the artistic instinct is more widely diffused, is
more common to all classes of the community in Japan, than in any of our
European countries. This is no small thing to say of a country. It is
full of deep significance to all students of art. Although we are doing
our best, with our love for gimcrackeries, to cheapen and degrade the
artistic capacity of Japan, our evil influence has been but partially
felt, and so but partially successful. Having done all the harm we can
do unwittingly, let us pause, if possible, and reflect before we
wittingly do further mischief.
The problem to the lovers of art is simply this: shall we learn all we
can learn--and that is a great deal--from the living art instincts of
Japan, or shall we continue to blunt and deaden the productive power of
Japan by encouraging the barbarous demand for worthless baubles to make
ludicrous the home of the so-called aesthete? If those who are most
proud of the Japanese toys and trinkets they have amassed, which, with
semi-savage stupidity, they have nailed upon their walls and stuck upon
their shelves and tables, could but see what an artistic house in Japan
is like, they would learn some startling truths as to the real facts and
principles of Japanese decoration and the Japanese ideal of art. If they
could only know the contempt with which the truly artistic Jap looks
upon the demand for "curios," and upon the kind of "curios" which are
turned out wholesale to meet that demand, they would not feel so proud
of themselves, and of the rooms which they display to delighted friends
as "quite Japanese, you know." The artistic Jap shows nothing in a
room--absolutely nothing, except a lovely flower and a screen, and
perhaps a beautiful verse or some clever sentence indited in freehand
writing, placed beautifully in the room in just relation to its
surroundings.
There is a curious fact to be noticed in connection with such
inscriptions. In conversation a friend might happen to give forth some
brilliant and very epigrammatic utterance. The hearers are so delighted
that they get him to write down this _mot_ in large characters, and it
is mounted and placed in the room. Such a caligraphic maxim, written by
the hand of the speaker, they consider a fitting portion of the
permanent decoration of a room.
You would never know from the rooms of a Jap that he was a great
picture-collector. The wealthy collector keeps all his treasures stowed
away in what is called a "go-down"--his storehouse--and his pictures are
brought up one at a time if any visitor is present or expected.
Generally a single picture will be brought in and hung up. You enjoy
that beautiful picture by itself. It is very much like bringing a bottle
of wine from the cellar--no one would want the whole bin at a time.
The Japs have an artistic temperament altogether and the simplest
craftsman is an artist in his own way. I was especially struck with this
once when I was in want of some frames, and I employed a Jap to make
them for me. He could talk English perfectly well, and it was remarkable
to watch the development of the frames and the enthusiastic temperament
discovered by the carpenter as he proceeded. I myself designed a certain
frame, and I would by slight drawings encourage him and his fellows to
go on with the work. They all took the greatest possible interest in the
refinement of the object--they would place it down and then go off and
look at it, and talk to those friends who were looking on about the
beauties they saw in it and in its proportions; and the intelligence and
pleasure they showed were not only extraordinary but also delightful.
This frame-making was quite novel to them, as they do not frame any of
their objects; but they were interested in the design of the frame and
the placing of the picture within it. Although the matter was not in
itself of any remarkable importance, I hold that it fairly proves the
artistic temperament of a chance selection of people. Think of a common
carpenter making a simple thing and taking a just pride in doing it! The
result was that I got one of the most beautiful frames you can conceive,
and that I was encouraged in my own work by the sympathy of these
workmen.
[Illustration: THE SCARLET UMBRELLA]
Of course, in Japan there are painters who paint for the market--people
who have been destroyed by the British merchant and the American trader.
They spend their time in painting pictures of flowers and birds in vivid
colourings that appeal to our tastes, solely for exportation to England
and America. _Apropos_ of this I must mention a conversation I had with
a painter about screens, which struck me as being very curious. I wanted
to buy a gold screen, and he took me to a shop where I saw a vast number
of screens, nearly all with black grounds and golden birds and fish
on them. I told him I did not like them; and he answered, "Neither do
we. Here in Japan we would not have them in our houses; but they are
what the English and American markets demand. We ourselves never buy
them; we nearly always choose screens with light grounds, beautifully
painted"--in fact, splendid pieces of decoration. A screen painted by a
first-class artist is valued very highly, while the fact of one from the
hand of an old Japanese master being for disposal is known all over the
country at once, and everybody is prepared to bid for it as one would
bid for a Sir Joshua here. A really good screen fetches an enormous
price, for it takes the place there of pictures and frescoes with us,
and every man of taste requires one or two fine specimens in his house
beautiful. One I saw at the house of the Minister for Foreign Affairs
was painted with a blue wave--an arrangement, in fact, in blue and gold.
I never saw such a gorgeous screen, nor, I verily believe, anything more
beautiful as an arrangement of colour--the huge wave, one sweep of blue,
and the piece of gold at the top. It was, I was told, by an old master
of Japan, and worth an enormous sum. The Japanese perfectly appreciate
the value of things like that, and they very rarely let them leave the
country, so that it has become very difficult to get hold of anything
really fine.
An experience which gave me a close insight into Japanese feeling was a
meeting of some of the painters of Japan. It was arranged by a Japanese
gentleman who, though not an artist himself, is deeply interested in
art, and keenly alive to everything touching it. Knowing me personally,
he was anxious that I should come in contact with these men whose
practice he so much revered, and so he invited several of these artists
of different kinds--designers of metal work and designers for
manufactures--to his house to meet me. I talked to them with his
interpreting help, just a little about art and its principles and so
forth, in the hope that the others would be brought to speak freely, and
I expressed my readiness to give them what information I could of
European art and its practice. They asked me remarkable questions. Most
of them, it appeared, were discouraged because "the European required
such ugly things." If they made what the Europeans really enjoyed, their
productions were looked upon as unsaleable. It appeared to me that it
must be extremely difficult for the Japs to hold fast to their artistic
instincts, and in the end I expressed my conviction that it would pay
them better to adhere to their principles rather than to pander to the
foolish demands of the dull American or British merchant who had neither
idea nor concern as to the beauty of the work he buys.
[Illustration: LEADING TO THE TEMPLE]
Unfortunately, to a great extent these traders are lowering the standard
of painting in Japan. Not a few of these sixty men who came to meet me
would do work they did not care about, not being men of such
individuality and independence of character as Kiyosai. With them, as
with us, the prize of money-reward is a bait too tempting to be
resisted. Two days afterwards some of these friends were good enough
to write a long discourse in one of the Japanese papers on my address,
saying how much pleased they were to find an artist from England with my
ideas of Japanese art--one who condemned the notion so common among them
that it was necessary to pander to the tastes of a foreign market. They
were especially glad that I had condemned that, and many of the
painters, more or less on the strength of my conversation, decided to do
thenceforth what they felt to be true to their principles--to go to
nature and themselves, to choose their lovely harmony of colour, instead
of designing stereotyped screens with gold birds on black backgrounds.
Many were determined to give up that kind of art altogether, and one in
particular (whose studio I called at the day after) pointed out that he
had already quite altered his style. He was an artist by nature, and he
told me he felt that having to do this horrible work was going against
him, and he had made up his mind that in future he would insist upon
doing what he felt to be beautiful, and would be ruled by the merchant
no more. I visited the studios of a great many of the artists to whom I
had delivered my lecture, and saw their sketch-books and their method of
work. In nearly every case their method coincided with the principles
laid down by Kiyosai--each having, of course, his own method, but each
working in the same broad way of "impression picture."
Japan might be said to be as artistic as England is inartistic. In Japan
art is not a cause, but a result--the result of the naturalness of the
people--and is closely allied with all aspects of their daily life. In
the houses, the streets, the gardens, the places of public
resort--everywhere is to be found the all-pervading element of art and
beauty. A rainy day in Japan is not, as it is in London, a day of gloom
and horror, but a day of absolute fascination. What a joy is the
spectacle of all those lovely yellow paper umbrellas unfurling
themselves beneath a shower like flowers before the sun, so different
from the dark shiny respectability of our ghastly gamps at home! John
Bunyan has written and talked of the house beautiful; but the Japanese
have given to the nation not only the house beautiful, but also (what is
even more important to the community at large) the street beautiful, and
that is where Japan differs so widely from Europe. As I walk through the
London streets at night, how prosaic is the flicker of each gas-jet,
within its sombre panes of glass, in some "long unlovely street," and
how different from the softened rays that shine from out the dainty
ricksha lanterns illuminating the streets in Japan! There a poem meets
your eye with each step you take; and how pretty is every street corner,
with its little shop, its mellow light and dainty arrangements, with the
smiling face of some little child peeping out from the dim shadow
beyond! It is a terrible thing to live in a country where art is the
luxury of the few, and where the people know as little of what
constitutes the beauty of life as a Hindoo knows of skating. What would
a Japanese gentleman say, I wonder, if he passed into a room in the
depths of winter and saw a quantity of those pretty fans, which in his
country help to modify the heat of the golden summer days, viciously
nailed, without rhyme or reason, upon a bright red wall, or those
fairy-like umbrellas, upon which he has seen the rain-drops glisten so
brightly, stuck within the gloomy recess of some lead-black hideous
grate, or (with still less sense of the fitness of things or regard for
the uses for which it was made) glued to a white-washed ceiling?
[Illustration: BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN]
We sometimes talk of the deteriorating influence of European ideas upon
Japanese art; but we have failed to perceive the ghastly
inappropriateness of applying the Japs' delicate flights of fancy to our
homes of discomfort. That usefulness is the basis of all righteousness
is the moral code by which a man's position is gauged in Japan, and by
which things are made. It does not matter how beautiful an article may
be, or how trivial--whether it is a penholder, a snuff-box, or a
pipe--if it is not useful it is considered inartistic, and will not be
accepted by the Japanese public. The form of a vase or a cup, or the
shape of a handle, must all be designed with a view to its usefulness;
and every little work of art that is made, every cabinet and curio
(apart from being decorative), is designed to convey some maxim-like
idea, a lesson that will be useful and helpful in one way or another to
the beholder.
On entering a Japanese tea-house you will see a kakemono hanging on the
wall that strikes you at the first glance as being a perfect picture,
with the bold but simple Chinese characters on the white silk and the
tiny slip of vermilion which is the signature of the artist. It is
placed well in the room, and is altogether a thing of beauty; but when,
on closer inspection, you read the decorative letters, you will find
that they give you some dainty piece of advice to help you through the
day, or some pretty idea on which your eye and mind can rest.
Then, again, the games that the children play in the streets with sand
or pebbles--they are teaching them arithmetic, construction, patience,
and innumerable valuable lessons.
Usefulness is the basis of the ancient caste system of Japan, which
system exists at the present day, and upon which the relative usefulness
of a man depends. Take the Samurai. They occupy the premier position as
Japanese aristocracy, because, although they wear silk, they give up
their lives for their country--and no man can be more useful than that.
The agriculturalist ranks next in dignity; for none can do without food,
and therefore his usefulness is indisputable. Then come the workmen, and
last of all the merchants, who are considered as "no class" in Japan and
are greatly looked down upon--producing nothing, they merely turn over
articles made by other hands for a profit.
[Illustration: "NEWS"]
The most beautiful article we possess (one that is entirely our own) is
the hansom cab. It is perhaps one of the greatest triumphs that the West
has produced in the shape of a conveyance, and simply because it has
been designed with a view to its usefulness. Would that we were always
ruled by this splendid quality! Unfortunately, we are not. We are ruled
by our own tastes, which, I feel bound to admit, are not artistic. Think
of the sombre, happy-go-lucky arrangements of our London theatres. How
is it that in the best-managed of them an actress will so far forget
herself as to lie dying in the middle of a snowy street in the dead of
night, pale-faced and wretched-looking, with ten thousand pounds' worth
of jewellery on her fingers? Such a scene would drive the artistic and
consistent Japanese manager into the nearest lunatic asylum. At the same
time he would be unutterably shocked at seeing a red moon (red, let us
trust, with the blush of shame at its creator's folly) rising hurriedly
behind some stage bank of roses, swiftly and unnaturally hurrying across
a purple sky, and shamefacedly setting in the East, in the West, in the
North, in the South, within the brief hour of an English stage, as if
glad to escape the rapturous applause of an inartistic public.
But perhaps nowhere is the difference between European and Japanese art
so sharply accentuated as it is in the teaching of it in the great
schools of the West and of the East. Let us take the art schools of
Paris, which is considered by a vast portion of the artistic world to be
the very paradise of art. You enter the crowded studio of some
well-known master, and you see before you a large white statue, the
first and predominant impression of which is its exceeding whiteness;
and to your mingled amusement and amazement you discover that the
unfortunate pupils are engaged in a futile endeavour to render an
impression of exceeding whiteness by the aid of thick black chalk or
charcoal. As to how this is to be done with any degree of verisimilitude
you are no less at fault than they are, poor dears, themselves; and
therefore you will not be surprised that, dazed and wearied as they must
be from the steady contemplation of this never-ending pose, their work
at the close of a day resembles the figure from which they have been
drawing as closely as the work of Michael Angelo, or any of the great
Japanese masters.
[Illustration: A SUNNY TEMPLE]
From the antique you pass to the life room. Here another shock awaits
you. In the middle of the room stands a young girl, strapped up in the
attitude of Atalanta of classic fable running her immortal race. These
pupils are taught first of all to sketch the figure in the pose of
running as a skeleton. When the hideous skeleton has been carefully and
laboriously committed to paper, it is with equal care imbued with nerves
and muscles and flesh. When all this is done, a light Grecian drapery is
flung on her, regardless of the folds and movement that would eventually
have resulted from the fluttering of the breeze, and, mind you, she is
strapped up all the time. Then, when all is completed, the poor dear
lady is expected to run her immortal race. Of course, by this time there
is no action in the figure at all. Atalanta appears glued to the spot,
and my only wonder is that she does not indignantly chase her
unfortunate creators from the studio. On looking at these pictures the
spectator would say that he never saw anything so absolutely
unsuggestive of the breathless vigour and energy of a healthy young girl
engaged in a rapid race as is indicated by the pitiful weariness of that
poor strapped-up creature in front of them. Would it not be far better
that these students should go out into the street, after the method of
the Japs, and watch some girl as she runs and jumps in the bright
sunshine, with a soft wind blowing her hair about her head and her gown
about her limbs, and then come back, and, with a memory of the beautiful
inspiriting scene still fresh in their minds, commit their impressions
"hot and hot" upon the canvas before them?
[Illustration: ON THE GREAT CANAL, OSAKA]
Still, England has not always been so hopelessly inartistic. None would
think of denying the perfect taste of the architects who designed such
buildings as the Winchester and Durham Cathedrals, and Arundel Castle;
but those are buildings wrought in dead days by men a long time dead,
and England's days of artistic appreciation are, I fear, as dead as they
are. Commerce and so-called civilisation have ruined us, I fear, for
ever. Japan is as artistic to-day as we were five hundred years ago, and
I rejoice to think that at present there appears to be little fear of so
ghastly a fate as has overtaken us. As a nation the Japanese remain
faithful to art in all its details, and as individuals they are still a
nation of artists. Where else but in Japan would an aged gentleman
dream of rising ere the day has well begun, merely that he might bring
into harmony with all its surroundings, and present in the best light
possible, a little flower placed in a pot--bending it this way and that
way, that its attitude might conform with the cabinet in one corner of
the room, or a screen in the other? Who but a Japanese chamber-boy would
be so impressed with the artistic value of contrast merely that he would
feel constrained thereby to place the can of hot water in a different
attitude every time he brought it into the room, and thoughtfully step
aside to regard its consonance with its immediate surroundings? Art
begins, as charity begins, at home; and where the home of the individual
is absolutely artistic, it cannot fail that the whole nation should be a
nation of artists. I give way to none in my loyalty to my country and my
love for that country--I must say that I do not think that there is a
country better in the whole world;--but perfection on this earth is not
only impossible, but to my idea also absolutely undesirable--a perfect
nation would be to the full as dreadful as a perfect man. We are saved
from perfection by an almost entire lack of the artistic faculty, and,
however great we are in other respects, I am sad to say we are
thoroughly inartistic. To whom but the Englishman would the golden
dragons that play so recklessly about on black screens with their
scarlet drooping tongues, that are sold in the Japanese curio shops,
possibly appeal? Who but English-speaking people would crave for
those cherry-blossoms embroidered on white silk grounds, which they so
gleefully carry away with them? Who but my inartistic countrymen would
insist on their cabinets being smothered with endless and miscellaneous
carvings? The Japanese are too artistic to admit these things into their
own homes; but why are their dealers so inartistic as (blinded by the
desire of filthy pelf) to put forth these embroideries for the English
and American market? Such things now and then make me tremble for the
future of art in Japan. It may be (though I trust not) the thin end of
the wedge; it may be "the little rift within the lute that by and by
will make the music mute, and, ever widening, slowly silence all." What
a tragedy it would be that the music of this most perfect art should
ever be silenced in that lovely land, the resting-place and home of the
highest and only living art!
PAINTERS AND THEIR METHODS