ART AND NEWS.
The production of pictures for the million will be practically the
highest achievement of the graphic art in the twentieth century. Many
eminent painters do not at all relish the prospect, being strongly of
opinion that when every branch of art becomes popular it will be
vulgarised. This notion arises from a fallacy which has affected ideas
during the nineteenth century in many matters besides art, the mistake
of supposing that vulgar people all belong to one grade of society.
Yet every one who knows modern England, for instance, is perfectly
aware that the highest standard of taste is only to be found in the
elect of all classes of society. After the experience of the
eighteenth century, surely it ought to have been recognised that the
"upper ten thousand," when left to develop vulgarity in its true
essence, can attain to a degree of perfection hardly possible in any
other social grade. Is there in the whole range of pictorial art
anything more irredeemably vulgar than a "State Portrait" by Sir
Thomas Lawrence or one of his imitators?
It was under the prompting of a dread of the process of popularising
art that so many eminent painters of the nineteenth century protested
against the fashion set by Sir J. E. Millais when he sold such
pictures as "Cherry Ripe" and "Bubbles," knowing they were intended
for reproduction in very large numbers by mechanical means. From a
somewhat similar motive a few of the leading artists of the nineteenth
century for a time stood aloof from the movement for familiarising the
people with at least the form, if not the colouring, of each notable
picture of the year. From small and very unpretentious beginnings, the
published pictorial notes of the Royal Academy and other exhibitions
of the year have risen to most imposing proportions; and already there
is some talk of attempting a few of the best from each year's
production in colours.
Half-tone zinco and similar processes have brought down the expenses
entailed by reproductions in colour-work, so as to render an
undertaking of this kind much more feasible than it was in the middle
of the last half-century. "Cherry Ripe" cost five thousand pounds to
reproduce, by the laborious processes of printing not only each
colour, but almost every different shade of each colour from a
different surface.
In the "three-colour-zinco" process of reproduction only three
printings are required, each colour with all its delicate gradations
of shade being fully provided for by a single engraved block. When
machines of great precision have been finally perfected for admitting
of the successive blocks being printed from on paper run from the reel
without any handling, a revolution will be brought about not only in
artistic printing, but even in the conditions of studio work upon
which the artist depends for success.
First, the pictorial notes of the year will be brought out in colour;
and as competition for the right of reproduction increases, the
artists who have painted the most suitable and most popular pictures
will find that they can get more remuneration for copyright than they
can for the pictures themselves. This has already been the case in
regard to a very limited number of pictures; but the exception of the
past will be the rule of the future, at least as regards those
pictures which possess any special merits at all.
More thought will therefore be required as the motive or basis of each
subject; and historical pictures will come more into favour, the
affected simplicity and mental emptiness of the _plein air_ school
being discarded in favour of a style which shall speak more directly
to the people, and stir more deeply both their mental and their
emotional natures.
The artist and the printer must then confer. They can no longer afford
to work in the future with such disregard of each other's ideas and
methods as they have done in the past. It was at one time the custom
among painters almost to despise the "black-and-white man" who drew
for the Press in any shape or form; but that piece of affectation has
nearly been destroyed by the general ridicule with which it is now
received, and by the knowledge that there are already, at the end of
the nineteenth century, just as many men of talent working by methods
suitable for reproduction, as there are painters who confine their
attention to palette, canvas and brush.
The printer will now advance a step further, and will invoke the
services of the painter himself, even prescribing certain methods by
which the Press may be enabled to reproduce the work of the artist
more faithfully than would otherwise be possible.
Transparency painting will no doubt be one of these methods. The
artist will paint on a set of sheets of transparent celluloid or
glass, mounted in frames of wood and hinged so that they can, for
purposes of observation, be put aside and yet brought back to their
original positions quite accurately. Each different transparent sheet
will be intended for one pure colour, the only pigments used being of
the most transparent description obtainable.
The picture may thus be built up by successive additions and
alterations, not all put upon one surface, but constituting a number
of "monochromes," superimposed one upon the other. When finished, each
of these one-colour transparencies can then be reproduced by
photo-mechanical means for multi-colour printing in the press.
By what are known as the photographic "interruption" processes, a kind
of converse method has achieved a certain degree of success. A
landscape or a picture is photographed several times from exactly the
same position, but on each occasion it is taken through a screen of a
different coloured glass, which is intended for the purpose of
intercepting all the rays of light, except those of one particular
tint. Coloured prints in transparent gelatine or other suitable medium
are then made from the various negatives, each in its appropriate
tint; and when all are placed together and viewed through transmitted
light, the effect of the picture, with all its colours combined, is
fairly well produced. More serviceable from the artistic point of view
will be the method according to which the artist makes his picture by
transmitted light, but the finished printed product is seen on paper,
because this latter lends itself to the finest work of the artistic
printer.
The principal branch of the work of the photographer must continue to
be portraiture. He cannot greatly reduce the cost of getting a really
good negative, because so much hand-labour is required for the task of
"retouching"; but he can give, perhaps, a hundred prints for the price
which he now charges for a dozen, and make money by the enterprise. It
has already been proved that there is no necessity for using expensive
salts of gold, silver or platinum in order to secure the most artistic
prints; and, as a matter of fact, some of the finest art work in the
photography of the past quarter of a century has been accomplished
with the cheapest of materials, such as gelatine, glue and lampblack.
Pigmented gelatine is, without doubt, the coming medium for
photographic prints, and the methods of making them must approximate
more and more closely to those of the typographic printer. By
producing a "photo-relief" in gelatine--sensitised with bichromate of
potash, and afterwards exposed first to the sun and then to the action
of water--an impression in plastic material can be secured, from
which, with the use of warm, thin, pigmented gelatine, a hundred
copies or more can be printed off in a few minutes.
The very general introduction of such a process has naturally been
delayed owing to the extra trouble involved in the first methods which
were suggested for applying it, and also, no doubt, on account of the
recent fashion for platinotype and bromide of silver prints. But as
soon as more convenient details for the making of pigmented gelatine
prints have been elaborated, the cheapness of the material and the
wonderful variety of the art shades and tints in which photographs can
be executed will give the gelatine processes an advantage in the
competition which it will be hopeless for other methods to challenge.
The daily newspapers of a few years hence will be vividly illustrated
with photographic pictures of the personages and the events of the
day. The gelatine photo-relief, already alluded to, will no doubt
afford the basis of the principal processes by which this will be
effected. Hitherto the chief drawback has been the difficulty of
imparting a suitable grain to the printing blocks made from these
reliefs; but this has been practically overcome by the use of sheets
of metallic foil previously impressed with the form of a
finely-engraved tint-block. The actual printing surface, of course,
consists of an electrotype or stereotype taken from this
metallic-grained photographic face.
For "high-art" printing on fine paper with the more expensive kinds of
ink, the half-tone zinco processes will doubtless maintain their
supremacy and gradually diminish the area within which lithographic
printing is required. In the case of newspaper work, however, where
haste in getting ready for the press is necessarily the prime
consideration, the flat and very slightly-indented surface of the
zinco block is found to be unsuited to the requirements. Flat blocks,
which require careful "overlaying" on the machine, waste too much time
for daily news work. Without going into technical details it may be
surmised in general terms that in the near future almost every
newspaper will contain, each day, one or more photo-illustrations of
events of the previous day or of the news which has come to hand from
a distance.
Type-setting by hand is, for newspaper purposes, being so rapidly
superseded, that only in the smaller towns and villages can it remain
for even a few years longer. But in the machines by which this
revolution has been effected, finality has been by no means reached.
Every line of matter which appears in any modern daily newspaper has
to pass through two processes of stereotyping before it makes a
beginning to effect its final work of printing upon paper.
First, there is the stereotyping or casting of the line in its
position in the type-setting machine after the matrices have been
ranged in position by the application of the fingers to the various
keys; and, secondly, when all the lines have been placed together to
make a page, it is necessary to take an impression of them upon
_papier mache_, or what is technically called "flong," and then to dry
it and make the full cast from it curved and ready for placing on the
cylinder of the printing machine. The delay occasioned by the need for
drying the wet flong is such a serious matter--particularly to evening
newspapers requiring many editions during the afternoon--that several
dry methods have been tried with greater or less success.
But there is really no need for more than one casting process. In the
twentieth century machine the matrices will be replaced by permanent
type from which, when ranged in the line, an impression will be made
by hard pressure on a small bar of soft metal or plastic material. All
the impressed bars having been set together in a casting box having
the necessary curvature, the final stereo plate for printing from will
be taken at once by pouring melted metal on the combined bars.
An appreciable saving, both in time and in money, will also be
effected by applying the principle of the perforated strip of paper or
cardboard to the purpose of operating the machine by which the
necessary letters are caused to range themselves in the required
order. Machines similar to typewriters will be employed for
perforating the strips of paper and for printing, at the same time, in
ordinary letters the matter just as if it were being typewritten.
The corrections can then be made by cutting off those pieces of the
strips which are wrong and inserting corrected pieces in their places.
No initial "justification" to the space required to make a line is
needed in this system. The strips, however, are put through the
setting machine, and, as they make the reading matter by the
impression of bars as already described, they are divided into lines
automatically.
Large numbers of newspapers will in future be sold from
"penny-in-the-slot" machines. The system to be adopted for this
particular purpose will doubtless differ in some important respects
from that which has been successful in the vending of small articles
such as sweetmeats and cigarettes. The newspapers may be hung on light
bars within the machine, these being supported at the end by a
carefully-adjusted cross piece, which, on the insertion of a penny in
the slot, moves just sufficiently to permit the end of one bar with
its newspaper to drop, and to precipitate the latter on to a table
forming the front of the machine. When the full complement of
newspapers has been exhausted the slot is automatically closed.
Some of the newspapers of the twentieth century will be given away
gratis, and will be, for the most part, owned by the principal
advertisers. This is the direction in which journalistic property is
now tending, and at any juncture steps might be taken, in one or other
of the great centres of newspaper enterprise, which would precipitate
the ultimate movement. Hardly any one who buys a half-penny paper
to-day imagines for a moment that there is any actual profit on the
article.
It is understood on all hands that the advertisers keep the newspapers
going and that the arrangement is mutually beneficial. Not that
either party can dictate to the other in matters outside of its own
province. The effect is simply to permit the great public to purchase
its news practically for the price of the paper and ink on which it is
conveyed; the condition being that the said public will permit its
eyes to be greeted with certain announcements placed in juxtaposition
to the news and comments.
Sooner or later, therefore, the idea will occur to some of the leading
advertisers to form a syndicate and give to the people a small
broadsheet containing briefly the daily narrative. The ponderous
newspapers of the latter end of the nineteenth century--filled full of
enough of linotype matter to occupy more than the whole day of the
subscriber in their perusal--will be to a large extent dispensed with;
and the new art of journalism will consist in saying things as
briefly--not as lengthily--as possible.