simply to be explained by a complete absence of native talent; but the
mere inspection of English children's and students' work suffices to
dispose of this too convenient hypothesis. In no country, perhaps,
except France, is there more of that raw material from which good art is
made. More plausible is the theory that the vast and towering greatness
of English literature overhangs and starves all other forms of
expression. In such a land as this it seems natural that any sense of
art or power of creation should drift towards literature, and almost
inevitable that the painters themselves should be half poets at heart,
hardly convinced of the intrinsic value of their own medium, tending
ever to substitute literary for plastic significance. Every critic is on
the watch for a literary symbol and the chance of an allegorical
interpretation, every cultivated amateur is eager to spy out an adroitly
placed anecdote or shaft of pictorial satire; only with great pains is
any one induced to regard a picture as an independent creation of form.
In so literary a society it seems paradoxical almost to believe in pure
painting; and, in despair, we cry out that no country can be expected to
excel, at one time, in two arts. We forget Athens and Tuscany; we also
forget France. For more than two hundred years France has led the visual
art of Europe; and if English painting were ever to become one-tenth
part as good as French literature I, for my part, should be as pleased
as surprised. Of music I say nothing; yet in that art too France was
beginning, just before the war, to challenge, not very formidably
perhaps, the pre-eminence of Germany and to stand as the fair rival of
Russia.
What hampers English artists most is, unless I mistake, the atmosphere
in which they work. In France--in Germany too, they say--there is a
fairly large, authoritative, and intensely serious public composed of
artists, critics, and competent amateurs. This public knows so well what
it is about that no painter, be he never so grandly independent, can
make himself impervious to its judgments. It is an unofficial areopagus
which imposes its decisions, unintentionally but none the less
effectively, on the rich floating _snobisme_ of Paris and of continental
Europe. Those who go to the _Salon_ for their art or invest in Henners
and Bougereaus are reckoned hopelessly bourgeois even by the cultivated
pressmen. It is a fastidious public, intelligent, learned, and extremely
severe: painting it regards as an end in itself, not as a branch of
journalism or a superior amenity; and no artist can begin to abuse his
talent or play tricks with the currency without getting from this
formidable body the sort of frown that makes even a successful
portrait-painter wince. Indeed, many popular continental
likeness-catchers, some of whom enjoy the highest honours in this
country, having come under its ban, are now ruled out of contemporary
civilization.[21] In England, on the other hand, the artist's public
consists of that fringe of the fashionable world which dabbles in
culture and can afford to pay long prices; from it the press
obsequiously takes the cue; and any honest burgher who may wish to
interest himself in the fine arts goes, I presume, for instruction to
the place from which instruction comes--I mean the ha'penny papers.
Patronage of the arts in England is an expensive pleasure. In France the
prices of the most promising young men range from one hundred to one
thousand francs, and many an amateur with a first-rate collection of
modern work has never paid more than five hundred francs for a picture.
The Englishman who would possess the works of native geniuses must be
able to put down from L50 to L2000. Thus it comes about that a few of
the richer people in the more or less cultivated class form in England
the artist's public. To them he must look for criticism, sympathy,
understanding, and orders; and most of them, unluckily, have no use
either for art or for good painting. What they want is furniture and a
background--pretty things for the boudoir, handsome ones for the hall,
and something jolly for the smoking-room. They want, not art, but
amenity; whether they get it is another matter. What is certain is that
their enthusiasms and disappointments, likes and dislikes, fancies and
prejudices, have nothing whatever to do with art.
Behind the patrons and their decorators there is, of course, that odd
little world sometimes called Bohemia, about which very little need be
said. Every master, be he academician, New Englisher, or comic
illustrator, is followed by a tail of lads and lasses whose business it
is to sing the great man's praises and keep up, in the face of
disheartening indifference, the pathetic tradition of British
immorality. They give tips to the critics sometimes, but no one else
marks them.
Such being the public, not unnaturally the more serious and independent
painters endeavour to set up small coteries of their own as far from
Mayfair and the Chelsea embankment as possible. Thus arose the Camden
Town group under Mr. Sickert, thus arose the Friday Club and the London
group. And here we may pause in our miserable and comminatory progress
to admit gladly that in such societies are to be found plenty of talent
and of what is much rarer, sincerity. Here are men who take art
seriously; here are men who have no prospective sitter, no rich patron,
no terrible drawing-master in mind; here are men to whom painting is the
most important thing in the world. Unfortunately, in their isolation
they are apt, like the rest, to come on the parish. Theirs is no vulgar
provincialism; but in its lack of receptivity, its too willing
aloofness from foreign influences, its tendency to concentrate on a
mediocre and rather middle-class ideal of honesty, it is, I suspect,
typically British. There is nothing Tennysonian about these men, nothing
Kiplingesque; their art is neither meretricious nor conceited; but it
reminds one oddly of perpendicular architecture.
These are the men that might profit by good criticism, for they are
intelligent and fair-minded. Alas! English criticism is more woefully
out of it than painting even. The ignorance of our critics is
appalling.[22] Seven years ago there was brought over to London a
collection of pictures by Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Every man and
woman on the Continent who claimed acquaintance with modern art had
already come to some conclusion about these painters whose works were in
the public collections of Germany and the North and in the private
collections of directors of French galleries. Some thought that they
took rank amongst the very great painters of the world; others that
there was a general disposition to overrate them; no one denied that
they were considerable men or that Cezanne was a master. In London no
one had heard of them, so it was decided out of hand that they were
immoral aliens fit only to be thrown on the nearest bonfire. Cezanne was
a butcher, Gauguin a _farceur_, Van Gogh a particularly disagreeable
lunatic: that is what the critics said, and the public said "Hee-haw."
They reminded one of a pack of Victorian curates to whom the theory of
natural selection had been too suddenly broken. Two years later Roger
Fry and I collected and arranged at the Grafton Galleries an exhibition
of contemporary French art--Matisse, Picasso, Maillol, etc. Every one
abroad had recognized these men as interesting artists of varying merit;
no one doubted that the movement they represented was significant and of
promise. Only the English critics had learnt nothing. They never do;
they only teach. Here was something going on under their noses that
might well turn out to be as important as the early fifteenth-century
movement in Tuscany, and they went on directing the attention of their
pupils to the work of Alfred Stevens. Here was the art of the East--of
China, Persia, and Turkestan--being revealed to us by European scholars,
and they went on messing about with English choir-stalls and
sanctuary-rings.
Our critics and teachers provided, and continue to provide, an artistic
education comparable with the historical education provided by our
board-schools. People who have been brought up to believe that the
history of England is the history of Europe--that it is a tale of
unbroken victory, leadership, and power--feel, when they hear of the
ascendancy of France or of the House of Austria or of the comparative
insignificance of England till the dawn of the eighteenth century, angry
first and then incredulous. So they give themselves the least possible
chance of hearing such unpalatable nonsense by living snugly in the
slums and suburbs, where, persuaded that they have nothing to learn from
damned foreigners, they continue to entertain each other with scraps of
local and personal gossip. That is what our art criticism sounds like to
cultivated people from abroad.
A few months ago an extraordinarily fine Renoir, a recognized
masterpiece of modern art, was hung in the National Gallery. Any young
painter who may have seen and profited by it need not thank those
directors of public taste, the critics. It was passed by in silence or
with a nod by the bulk of our paid experts, who were much more pleased
by a particularly poor but very large Puvis, which possibly reminded
them in some obscure way of a pre-Raphaelite picture.[23] But when
there was question of selling a block of unimportant water-colours by
our national Turner and buying with the proceeds two or three great
masterpieces of Italian art the hubbub of these patriot-geese rose for a
moment above the noise of battle. Such is the atmosphere in which young
British artists are expected to mature.
One wonders what is going to happen to them--these young or youngish
Englishmen of talent. There are at least half a dozen on whom a
discerning critic would keep a hopeful eye--Mr. Duncan Grant, Mr. Lewis,
Mr. Stanley Spenser, Mr. Gertler, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Bomberg, Mrs. Bell,
and Mr. Epstein--for it would be absurd to omit from this list an artist
possessed of such skill, scholarship, and surprising powers of
improvisation and development as the last-named. Of these some already
have been touched by that breath of life which, blowing from Paris, has
revolutionized painting without much discomposing the placid shallows of
British culture. Standing in the broad light of European art, these can
hardly detect that sacred taper which the New English Art Club is said
to shield from the reactionary puffings of the Royal Academy. And,
although it is a dangerous thing in the suburbs to ignore nice points of
precedence and venerable feuds, such magnanimity makes for progress. Mr.
Grant, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Epstein, and Mrs. Bell, at any rate, are all cut
by Tooting, for they have seen the sun rise and warmed themselves in its
rays; it is particularly to be regretted, therefore, that Mr. Lewis
should have lent his great powers to the canalizing (for the old
metaphor was the better) of the new spirit in a little backwater called
English vorticism, which already gives signs of becoming as insipid as
any other puddle of provincialism. Can no one persuade him to be warned
by the fate of Mr. Eric Gill, who, some ten years ago, under the
influence presumably of Malliol, gave arresting expression to his very
genuine feelings, until, ridden by those twin hags insularity and wilful
ignorance, he drifted along the line of least resistance and, by an
earnest study of English ecclesiastical ornament, reduced his art to
something a little lower than English alabasters? The danger is there
always; and unless our able young men make a grand struggle, they too
will find themselves sucked into the backwater, impotent, insignificant,
and prosperous.
It is not treasonable, I think, to hope that the war will some day be
over. And let no one imagine that when the war is over it will be found
that the new movement in France is dead or dying. In little periodicals,
photographs, brochures, letters, and stray works that from time to time
cross the Channel there is plenty of evidence that it is as vital as
ever. Even a European war cannot kill a thing of that sort. The question
is whether, after the war, young English artists will realize that they
too, by reason of their vocation, of the truth that is in them, belong
to a communion wider and far more significant than the conventicle to
which they were bred. England, we hear, is to wake up after the war and
take her place in a league of nations. May we hope that young English
artists will venture to take theirs in an international league of youth?
That league existed before the war; but English painters appear to have
preferred being pigmies amongst cranes to being artists amongst artists.
_Aurons-nous change tout ca? Qui vivra verra._ The league exists; its
permanent headquarters are in Paris; and from London to Paris is two
hundred and fifty miles--a journey of seven and a half hours in times of
peace.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Since these words were written the British Press, or the Government
maybe, has had the bright idea of interning one of them. To be sure he
was a very bad painter; but the punishment seems rather severe for an
offence which usually incurs nothing worse than a knighthood.
[22] There are, of course, exceptions. The critics of the _Times_, the
_Westminster Gazette_, and the _Evening Standard_, for instance, are
neither ignorant nor stupid; but they are all, one fancies, hampered by
nervous and ill-educated editors.
[23] I have referred already to Mr. Roger Fry's article in the
_Burlington Magazine_, and would draw attention also to his article in
the _Nation_.
ART AND WAR[24]
An acquaintance of mine, a French artist, who used to live in England
and paint pictures for which I care nothing but on which the cultured
dote, started early in August to join his regiment, leaving behind him
his wife and five children. So miserable was the prospect before these
that a benevolent lady wrote to such of her rich friends as happened to
be amateurs of painting praying them to buy a picture or two and so help
the family of their unfortunate favourite. One and all refused, severely
giving the lady to understand that this was no time to think about art.
Of charity they said nothing; but they were generous, I dare say, in
some more patriotic and conspicuous fashion.
Charity, however, is beside my point. What interests me in this little
story is the unanimity with which the cultivated people agree that this
is no time for art. It interests me because I have lately been taken to
task for saying that the cultured regard art as no more than an elegant
amenity. The war has put my opinion to the proof and I am shocked to
discover how much I was in the right. From every quarter comes the same
cry--"This is no time for art!" Those galleries and exhibitions which
are not closed are visited chiefly by homeless refugees; if literary
taste goes beyond the newspapers it is only to salute the verse of Mr.
Begbie and the prose of Mr. H. G. Wells; even at concerts our ears are
exasperated by national platitudes and the banalities of our Allies.
This is no time for art. Good taste is unpatriotic; the man who
continues to care for painting, poetry, or music is little better than a
Hun.
That people who in times of peace treat art as an amenity should feel
that this is no time for art is, I suppose, natural. That they should
expect those who feel that art is the most important thing in the world
to do the same seems to me unreasonable. To those who care seriously for
art, to those for whom it is a constant source of passionate emotion,
the notion that this is no time for art seems as ludicrous as to a
Christian mystic of the ninth century would have seemed the notion that
that tortured age was no time for religious ecstasy. People who are
capable of ecstasy, be it religious or aesthetic, are apt to distinguish
between ends and means. They know that empires and dominations,
political systems and material prosperity and life itself are valuable
only as means to those states of mind which alone are good as ends. Thus
it comes about that the things which to the majority are of primary
importance, because to the majority they seem to be ends, are to a
handful of mystics and artists of secondary importance because to them
they are no more than means. They cannot forget about art and think
exclusively about war, because if they forgot about art the world and
its ways would seem unworthy of thought. Public activities and
operations they feel are of consequence only in so far as they affect
the things that matter--the raptures of art and religion, that is to
say, and abstract thought and personal relations.
It is not reasonable to expect us to turn our backs on absolute good and
consider exclusively what may be a means to good. Besides, we could not
do so if we would. The artist must think more about art, the philosopher
more about truth, the mystic more about God, the aesthete more about
beauty, and the lover, they tell me, more about the beloved, than about
anything else. The fact is, we are not practical people; we cannot
adjust ourselves to circumstances, so we must be content to appear
imprudent and unpatriotic. We are not masters of our fate; not only
have we got hold of what we believe to be the greatest thing in the
world, the greatest thing in the world has got hold of us.
A crisis has divided the sheep from the goats--I care not on which hand
I am marshalled--and now we know who are the people that love art
because they must and who love it because they think they ought to. I am
making no moral judgment; I am pointing out merely that those who say
"This is no time to think about art" admit that for them thinking or not
thinking about art is a matter of choice. I have always supposed that it
was perfectly well with one who had lost himself in an ecstasy of
creation or contemplation. How can he be better off who has already
attained beatitude? To invite such a one to relinquish the best and
bestir himself about what may be a means to good seems to me absurd.
That has always been my opinion and I cannot conceive the circumstances
that would compel me to change it. Those who reject it, those who deny
that certain states of mind, amongst which is the state of aesthetic
contemplation, are alone good as ends, will find themselves in an
intellectual position which appears to me untenable: I shall not quarrel
with them, however, so long as they leave us alone and refrain from
cant. According to them there are better things than Beauty or Truth or
the contemplation of either. I simply disagree: it is only when I catch
them wringing their hands over the ruins of Reims that I protest.
Take not the name of art in vain: at least be ashamed to use it for
political purposes. Any stick may be good enough to beat Germans with.
Beat them if you can: I shall have no tears for them and their strong
military government. It is not people like me who will weep for Prussia.
But, though any stick may be good enough, some are too good. Besides,
however much we love France and the French, let us have the justice to
remember that if, as seems possible, French soldiers were using the
cathedral as a post of observation, the Germans, according to what are
called the rules of war, were in the right. In that case it was the
French themselves who first transgressed that law which, they now tell
us, makes neutral and inviolate works of art. For my own part, I utterly
deny that it can ever, in any circumstances, be right to destroy or put
in jeopardy beautiful things. But for any of those governments which
took a hand in the deliberate ruin of the summer palace at Pekin to
prate of vandalism and pose as defenders of art is not only disingenuous
but silly. The spectacle of European soldiers and statesmen who, to
admonish such evil Chinamen as might persist in defending their liberty
and their religion, destroyed without demur the masterpieces of Oriental
art, the spectacle, I say, of these people whimpering over the late
Gothic of Louvain or the early Gothic of Reims, strikes me as being what
the French, if their sense of humour had not suffered more than their
monuments, would call _un peu trop fort_.
Reims is, or was--I am not sure whether we are more conscious of what
existed before the bombardment or of what we imagine remains--Reims is
or was a typical thirteenth-century building; and, like most
thirteenth-century buildings, is or was, to my feeling, of no great
artistic significance. That it is a venerable focus of sentiment no one
denies; so, I suppose, is the monstrosity of Cologne and the Albert
Memorial. I am not concerned with sentiment, but with art. Therefore, I
must note that of such artistic value as the cathedral ever possessed
the greater part was not destroyed by the German bombardment: it was
destroyed when, some years ago, the upper part of the church was made as
good as new by the Ministry of Fine Arts. Only the glass, and the
sculpture over the little door in the north transept, and a few
twelfth-or very early thirteenth-century figures which had escaped
restoration will be a great loss to the world; and, for our comfort, we
may remember that the glass was not comparable with the glass at
Chartres or Bourges, while finer sculpture is to be seen in scores of
Romanesque churches. I can listen with admirable patience to tales of
damage done to Reims cathedral; but should the abbey church of St. Remi
have been injured it would be less easy to pardon the responsible party.
St. Remi is a masterpiece of the eleventh century, and was still, when
last I saw it, a work of splendour and significance in spite of having
suffered at the hands of French architects worse things than it is
likely to have suffered from German gunners.
It is a mistake for the English upper classes to assure the world that
they prize a work of art above a victory; the world knows better. Are
not these the people who were telling us just now that this was no time
for art? Is it seemly in them, is it prudent even, to revile their own
class in Germany for caring as little about art as themselves? When the
Germans sacked Louvain and shelled Reims our politicians and press
discovered suddenly that art is a sacred thing and that people who
disrespect it are brutes. Agreed: and how have the moneyed classes in
England respected art? What sacrifices, material, moral or military,
have they made? Here, in the richest country in the world, with what
difficulty do we raise a few thousand pounds to buy a masterpiece. What
institution do we starve so abjectly as we starve the National Gallery?
Has any one met a rich man who denied himself a motorcar to keep a
genius? How dare the people who fill our streets and public places with
monuments that make us the laughing-stock of Europe, the people who
cannot spare a few guineas to save a picture, who cheerfully improve
away respectable architecture, who allow artists to perish and put up
the Admiralty Arch--how dare such people pose as the champions of
culture and expose their wounded feelings in the penny and halfpenny
papers. In times of peace they used art as a hobby and a means of
self-advertisement, in wartime they would brandish it as a stick against
their foes. The old abuse was vulgar, the new one is worse.
We can measure the sensibility of these politic amateurs when we
overhear their chatter about patriotic art and catch them, as we caught
them lately, attempting to ban German music. "Give us patriotic art,"
they cry. As if art could be patriotic or unpatriotic! One might as well
cry for patriotic mathematics. The essence of art is that it provokes a
peculiar emotion, called aesthetic, which, like religious emotion or the
passion for truth, transcends nationality. Art's supreme importance lies
precisely in this: its glory is to share with truth and religion the
power of appealing to that part of us which is unconditioned by time or
place or public or personal interests. A work of art satisfies us
aesthetically, just as a true proposition satisfies us intellectually,
whether it was made in Germany or elsewhere: by whom it was created,
when it was created, and where it was created are matters of no
consequence to any one but an archaeologist.