PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART.
§ I.
General Law for the Production of the Work of Art--First Formula--Two
sorts of Proof, one of Experience, and the other of Reasoning 95
§ II.
General Exposition of the Action of Social Mediums--The Development
of the Plant compared with the Development of Human Activity--Natural
Selection 97
§ III.
The Action of a Moral Temperature--The Influence of Melancholy and
Cheerful States of Mind--The Artist is saddened by his personal share
of misfortune--By the melancholy ideas of his contemporaries--By his
aptitude for defining the salient character of objects, which here is
sadness--He finds suggestions and enlightenment only in melancholy
subjects--The Public comprehends only melancholy subjects.
An inverse case, state of prosperity and general joy--Intermediate
cases 105
§ IV.
Real and Historical cases--Four Epochs, and four leading Arts 117
§ V.
Greek Civilization and Antique Sculpture--Comparison of Greek manners
with those of contemporaries--The City--The Citizen--Taste for War--The
Athlete-Spartan Education--The Gymnasium in other parts of Greece.
Conformity of Customs with Ideas--Nudity--Olympic Games--The Gods
perfect Human Figures.
Birth of Sculpture; Statues of Athletes and of Gods--Why Statuary
sufficed for the Artist's Conceptions--Immense Number of Statues 119
§ VI.
The Civilization of the Middle Ages, and Gothic Architecture.
Decline of Antique Society--Invasions of Barbarians--Feudal
Excesses--Universal Misery.
Distaste for Life--Exalted Sensibility--The Passion of Love--Power of
the Christian Religion..
Birth of Gothic Architecture--The Cathedral--Universality of Gothic
Architecture 138
§ VII.
French Civilization in the Seventeenth Century, and Classic Tragedy.
The Courtier--Ruling Taste--Tragedy--The Aristocratic Sentiments of
Society--Importation of French Tragedy into other European Countries 154
§ VIII.
Contemporary Civilization and Music--The French Revolution--Effect of
Civil Equality, Machinery, and the Comforts of Existence--Decay of
Traditional Authority.
The Representative Man--Development of Music--Its Origin in Germany and
Italy; and its Dependence on Modern Sentiments.
Universality of Music 168
§ IX.
The Law of the Production of Works of Art--The Four Terms of the
Series--Practical Application of the Law to a Study of all the Arts and
of every Literature. 180
§ X.
Application of the Law to the Present--The Social Medium renewing
itself constantly, Art renews itself--Hopes for the Future 186
ON THE NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART.
GENTLEMEN:
In commencing this course of lectures I wish to ask you two things
of which I stand in great need: in the first place, your attention;
afterwards, and especially, your kind indulgence. The warmth of
your reception persuades me that you will favor me with both. Let
me sincerely and earnestly thank you beforehand. The subject with
which I intend to entertain you this year is the history of art, and,
principally, the history of painting in Italy. Before entering on the
subject itself, I desire to indicate to you its spirit and method.
I.
The principal point of this method consists in recognizing that a
work of art is not isolated, and, consequently, that it is necessary
to study the conditions out of which it proceeds and by which it is
explained.
The first step is not difficult. At first, and evidently, a work of
art--a picture, a tragedy, a statue--belongs to a certain whole, that
is to say, to the entire work of the artist producing it. This is
elementary. It is well known that the different works of an artist
bear a family likeness, like the children of one parent; that is to
say, they bear a certain resemblance to each other. We know that every
artist has his own style, a style recognized in all his productions.
If he is a painter, he has his own coloring, rich or impoverished;
his favorite types, noble or ignoble; his attitudes, his mode of
composition, even his processes of execution; his favorite pigments,
tints, models, and manner of working. If he is a writer, he has his
own characters, calm or passionate; his own plots, simple or complex;
his own dénouements, comic or tragic, his peculiarities of style, his
pet periods, and even his special vocabulary. This is so true, that a
connoisseur, if you place before him a work not signed by any prominent
master, is able to recognize, to almost a certainty, to what artist
this work belongs, and, if sufficiently experienced and delicate in his
perceptions, the period of the artist's life, and the particular stage
of his development.
This is the first whole to which we must refer a work of art. And here
is the second. The artist himself, considered in connection with his
productions, is not isolated; he also belongs to a whole, one greater
than himself, comprising the school or family of artists of the time
and country to which he belongs. For example, around Shakespeare,
who, at the first glance, seems to be a marvellous celestial gift
coming like an aerolite from heaven, we find several dramatists of a
high order--Webster, Ford, Massinger, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Beaumont
and Fletcher--all of whom wrote in the same style and in the same
spirit as he did. There are the same characters in their dramas as
in Shakespeare's, the same violent and terrible characters, the same
murderous and unforeseen occurrences, the same sudden and frenzied
passions, the same irregular, capricious, turgid, magnificent style,
the same exquisite poetic feeling for rural life and landscape, and
the same delicate, tender, affectionate ideals of woman.
In a similar way Rubens is to be judged. Rubens apparently stands
alone, without either predecessor or successor. On going to Belgium,
however, and visiting the churches of Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, or
Antwerp, you find a group of painters with genius resembling his.
First, there is Crayer, in his day considered a rival; Seghers, Van
Oost, Everdingen, Van Thulden, Quellin, Hondthorst, and others, with
whom you are familiar, Jordaens, Van Dyck--all conceiving painting in
the same spirit, and with many distinctive features, all preserving a
family likeness. Like Rubens, these artists delighted in painting ruddy
and healthy flesh, the rich and quivering palpitation of life, the
fresh and sensuous pulp which is diffused so richly over the surface of
the living being, the real, and often brutal types, the transport and
abandonment of unfettered action, the splendid lustrous and embroidered
draperies, the varying hues of silk and purple, and the display of
shifting and waving folds. At the present day they seem to be obscured
by the glory of their great contemporary; but it is not the less true
that to comprehend him it is necessary to study him amidst this cluster
of brilliants of which he is the brightest gem--this family of artists,
of which he is the most illustrious representative.
This being the second step, there now remains the third. This family
of artists is itself comprehended in another whole more vast, which
is the world surrounding it, and whose taste is similar. The social
and intellectual condition is the same for the public as for artists;
they are not isolated men; it is their voice alone that we hear at
this moment, through the space of centuries, but, beneath this living
voice which comes vibrating to us, we distinguish a murmur, and, as it
were, a vast, low sound, the great infinite and varied voice of the
people, chanting in unison with them. They have been great through this
harmony, and it is very necessary that it should ever be so. Phidias
and Ictinus, the constructors of the Parthenon and of the Olympian
Jupiter, were, like other Athenians, pagans and free citizens, brought
up in the _palæstra,_ exercising and wrestling naked, and accustomed
to deliberate and vote in the public assemblies; possessing the same
habits, the same interests, the same ideas, the same faith; men of
the same race, the same education, the same language; so that in all
the important acts of their life they are found in harmony with their
spectators.
This harmony becomes still more apparent if we consider an age nearer
our own. For example, take the great Spanish epoch of the sixteenth
and a part of the seventeenth centuries, in which lived the great
painters, Velasquez, Murillo, Zurbaran, Francisco de Herrera, Alonzo
Cano, and Morales; and the great poets, Lope de Vega, Calderon,
Cervantes, Tirso de Molina, Don Luis de Leon, Guilhem de Castro,
and so many others. You know that at this time Spain was entirely
monarchical and Catholic; that she had over-come the Turks at Lepanto;
that she planted her foot in Africa and maintained herself there; that
she combated the Protestants in Germany, pursued them in France and
attacked them in England; that she subdued and converted the idolaters
of the new world, and chased away Jews and Moors from her own soil;
that she purged her own faith with autodafés and persecutions: that
she lavished fleets and armies, and the gold and silver of her American
possessions, along with her most precious children, the vital blood of
her own heart, upon multiplied and boundless crusades, so obstinately
and so fanatically, that at the end of a century and a half she fell
prostrate at the feet of Europe, but with such enthusiasm, such a
burst of glory, such national fervor, that her subjects, enamored of
the monarchy in which their power was concentrated, and with the cause
to which they devoted their lives, felt no other desire than that of
elevating religion and royalty by their obedience, and of forming
around the Church and the Throne a choir of faithful, militant, and
adoring supporters. In this monarchy of crusaders and inquisitors,
preserving the chivalric sentiments and sombre passions, the ferocity,
intolerance, and mysticism of the middle ages, the greatest artists
are the very men who possessed in the highest degree the faculties,
sentiments, and passions of the public that surrounded them. The most
celebrated poets--Lope de Vega and Calderon--were military adventurers,
volunteers in the Armada, duellists and lovers, as exalted and as
mystic in love as the poets and Don Quixotes of feudal times; they were
passionate Catholics and so ardent that, at the end of their lives,
one became a familiar of the Inquisition, others became priests, and
the most illustrious among them--the great Lope de Vega--fainted on
saying Mass, at the thought of the sacrifice and martyrdom of Jesus.
Everywhere may be found similar examples of the alliance, the intimate
harmony existing between an artist and his contemporaries; and we may
rest assured that if we desire to comprehend the taste or the genius
of an artist, the reasons leading him to choose a particular style of
painting or drama, to prefer this or that character or coloring, and to
represent particular sentiments, we must seek for them in the social
and intellectual conditions of the community in the midst of which he
lived.
We have therefore to lay down this rule: that, in order to comprehend
a work of art, an artist or a group of artists, we must clearly
comprehend the general social and intellectual condition of the times
to which they belong. Herein is to be found the final explanation;
herein resides the primitive cause determining all that follows it.
This truth, gentlemen, is confirmed by experience. In short, if we pass
in review the principal epochs of the history of art, we find that
the arts appear and disappear along with certain accompanying social
and intellectual conditions. For example, the Greek tragedy--that
of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides--appears at the time when the
Greeks were victorious over the Persians; at the heroic era of small
republican cities, at the moment of the great struggle by which
they acquired their independence and established their ascendency
in the civilized world; and we see it disappearing along with this
independence and this vigor when a degeneracy of character and the
Macedonian conquest delivered Greece over to strangers. It is the
same with Gothic architecture, developing along with the definitive
establishment of feudalism in the semi-renaissance of the eleventh
century at the period when society, delivered from brigands and
Normans, began to consolidate, and disappearing at the period when
the military system of petty independent barons, with the manners and
customs growing out of it vanished near the end of the fifteenth
century, on the advent of modern monarchies. It is the same with
Dutch painting, which flourished at the glorious period when,
through firmness and courage, Holland succeeded in freeing herself
from Spanish rule, combated England with equal power, and became
the richest, freest, most industrious, and most prosperous state in
Europe: and we see it declining at the commencement of the eighteenth
century, when Holland, fallen into a secondary rank, leaves the first
to England, reducing itself to a well-ordered, safely administered,
quiet, commercial banking-house, in which man, an honest _bourgeois,_
could live at ease, exempt from every great ambition and every grand
emotion. It is the same, finally, with French tragedy appearing at
the period when a noble and well-regulated monarchy, under Louis
XIV., established the empire of decorum, the life of the court, "the
pomp and circumstance" of society, and the elegant domestic phases
of aristocracy; disappearing when the social rule of nobles and the
manners of the antechamber were abolished by the Revolution.
I would like to make you more sensible by a comparison of this effect
of the social and intellectual state on the Fine Arts. Suppose you
are leaving the land of the south for that of the north; you perceive
on entering a certain zone a particular mode of cultivation and a
particular species of plant: first come the aloe and the orange; a
little later, the vine and the olive; after these, the oak and the
chestnut; a little further on, oats and the pine, and finally, mosses
and lichens. Each zone has its own mode of cultivation and peculiar
vegetation; both begin at the commencement, and both finish at the
end of the zone; both are attached to it. The zone is the condition
of their existence; by its presence or its absence is determined
what shall appear and what shall disappear. Now, what is this zone
but a certain temperature; in other words, a certain degree of heat
and moisture; in short, a certain number of governing circumstances
analogous in its germ to that which we called a moment ago the social
and intellectual state?
Just as there is a physical temperature, which by its variations
determines the appearance of this or that species of plant, so is
there a moral temperature, which by its variations determines the
appearance of this or that species of art. And as we study the physical
temperature in order to comprehend the advent of this or that species
of plants, whether maize or oats, the orange or the pine, so is it
necessary to study the moral temperature in order to comprehend the
advent of various phases of art, whether pagan sculpture or realistic
painting, mystic architecture or classic literature, voluptuous music
or ideal poetry. The productions of the human mind, like those of
animated nature, can only be explained by their _milieu._
Hence the study I intend to offer you this season, of the history of
painting in Italy. I shall attempt to lay before your eyes the mystic
_milieu,_ in which appeared Giotto and Beato Angelico, and to this end
I shall read passages from the poets and legendary writers, containing
the ideas entertained by the men of those days concerning happiness,
misery, love, faith, paradise, hell, and all the great interests of
humanity. We shall find documentary evidence in the poetry of Dante,
of Guido Cavalcanti, of the Franciscans, in the Golden Legend, in the
Imitation of Jesus Christ, in the Fioretti of St. Francis, in the
works of historians like Dino Campagni, and in that vast collection
of chroniclers by Muratori, which so naively portray the jealousies
and disturbances of the small Italian republics. After this I shall
attempt to place before you in the same manner the pagan _milieu_
which a century and a half later produced Leonardo da Vinci, Michael
Angelo, Raphael and Titian, and to this end I shall read, either from
the memoirs of contemporaries--Benvenuto Cellini for instance--or from
the diverse chronicles kept daily in Rome and in the principal Italian
cities, or from the despatches of ambassadors, or, finally, from the
descriptions of fêtes, masquerades, and civic receptions, which are
remarkable fragments, displaying the brutality, sensuality, and vigor
of society, as well as the lively poetic sentiment, the love of the
picturesque, the great literary sentiment, the decorative instincts,
and the passion for external splendor which at that time are seen as
well among the people and the ignorant crowd as among the great and the
lettered.
Suppose now, gentlemen, we should succeed in this undertaking, and
that we should be able to mark clearly and precisely the various
intellectual conditions which have led to the birth of Italian
painting--its development, its bloom, its varieties and decline.
Suppose the same undertaking successful with other countries, and other
ages, and with the different branches of art, architecture, sculpture,
painting, poetry, and music. Suppose, that through the effect of all
these discoveries, we succeed in defining the nature, and in marking
the conditions of existence of each art, we shall then have a complete
explanation of the Fine Arts, and of all in general; that is to say, a
philosophy of the Fine Arts--what is called an _æsthetic_ system. This
is what we aim at, gentlemen, and nothing else. Ours is modern, and
differs from the ancient, inasmuch as it is historic, and not dogmatic;
that is to say, it imposes no precepts, but ascertains and verifies
laws. Ancient Æsthetics gave, at first, a definition of beauty, and
declared, for instance, that the beautiful is the expression of the
moral ideal, or rather is the expression of the invisible, or, rather
still, is the expression of the human passions; then starting hence,
as from an article of a code, they absolved, condemned, admonished,
and directed. It is my good fortune not to have such a formidable
task to meet. I do not wish to guide you--it would embarrass me too
much. Besides, I say with all humility, that, as to precepts, we have
as yet found but two: the first is to be born a genius, an affair of
your parents, and not mine; and the second, which implies much labor
in order to master art, which likewise does not depend on me, but
on yourselves. My sole duty is to offer you facts, and show you how
these facts are produced. The modern method, which I strive to pursue,
and which is beginning to be introduced in all the moral sciences,
consists in considering human productions, and particularly works of
art, as facts and productions of which it is essential to mark the
characteristics and seek the causes, and nothing more. Thus understood,
science neither pardons nor proscribes; it verifies and explains. It
does not say to you, despise Dutch art because it is vulgar, and prize
only Italian art; nor does it say to you despise Gothic art because
it is morbid, and prize only Greek art. It leaves every one free to
follow their own predilections, to prefer that which is germane to
one's temperament, and to study with the greatest care that which
best corresponds to the development of one's own mind. Science has
sympathies for all the forms of art, and for all schools, even for
those the most opposed to each other. It accepts them as so many
manifestations of the human mind, judging that the more numerous they
are, and the more antithetical, the more they show the human mind in
its innumerable and novel phases. It is analogous to botany, which
studies the orange, the laurel, the pine, and the birch, with equal
interest; it is itself a species of botany, applied not to plants, but
to the works of man. By virtue of this it keeps pace with the general
movement of the day, which now affiliates the moral sciences with
the natural sciences, and which, giving to the first the principles,
precautions, and directions of the second, gives to them the same
stability, and assures them the same progress.
II.
I wish to apply at once this method to the first and principal
question by which a course of æsthetics is opened out, and which
is a definition of art. What is art, and in what does its nature
consist? Instead of establishing a formula, I wish to familiarize you
with facts, for facts exist here as elsewhere--positive facts open to
observation; I mean _works_ of _art_ arranged by families in galleries
and libraries, like plants in an herbarium, and animals in a museum.
Analysis may be applied to the one as to the others; a work of art
may be investigated generally, as we investigate a plant or an animal
generally. There is no more need of discarding experience in the first
case than in the second; the entire process consists in discovering,
by numerous comparisons and progressive eliminations, traits common
to all works of art, and, at the same time, the distinctive traits by
which works of art are separated from other productions of the human
intellect.
To this end we will, among the five great arts of poetry, sculpture,
painting, architecture, and music, set aside the last two, of which
the explanation is more difficult, and to which we will return
afterwards; we shall at present consider only the three first. All, as
you are aware, possess a common character, that of being more or less
_imitative_ arts.
At the first glance, it seems that this is their principal character,
and their object is imitation as exact as possible. For it is plain
that a statue is meant to imitate accurately a really living man; that
a picture is intended to portray real persons in real attitudes, the
interior of a house and a landscape, such as nature presents. It is no
less evident that a drama, a romance, attempts to represent faithfully
characters, actions, and actual speech, and to give as precise and as
accurate a picture of them as is possible. When, accordingly, the image
is inadequate or inexact, we say to the sculptor, "This breast or this
limb is not well executed;" and to the painter, "The figures of your
background are too large--the coloring of your trees is faulty;" and we
say to the author, "Never did man feel or think as you have imagined
him."
But there are other proofs, still stronger, and first, every-day
experience. When we behold what takes place in the life of an artist,
we perceive that it is generally divided into two sections. During
the first, in the youth and maturity of his talent, he sees things as
they are, and studies them minutely and earnestly; he fixes his eyes
on them; he labors and worries to express them, and he expresses them
with more than scrupulous fidelity. Arriving at a certain moment of
life, he thinks he understands them thoroughly and discovers no more
novelty in them; he casts aside the living model, and with certain
prescribed rules which he has picked up in the course of his experience
he forms a drama or a romance, a picture or a statue. The first epoch
is that of natural feeling; the second that of mannerism and decline.
If we penetrate the lives of the greatest men, we rarely fail to
discover both. In the life of Michael Angelo, the first period lasted
a long time, a little less than sixty years; all the works belonging
to it disclose the sentiment of force and heroic grandeur. The artist
is imbued with it; he has no other thought. His numerous dissections,
his countless drawings, the unremitted analysis of his own heart, his
study of the tragic passions and of their physical expression, are
for him but the means of manifesting outwardly the militant energy
with which he is carried away. This idea descends upon you from every
corner of the great vault of the Sistine chapel. Enter the Pauline
chapel alongside of it, and contemplate the works of his old age--the
Conversion of St. Paul, the Crucifixion of St. Peter; consider even
the Last Judgment, which he painted in his seventy-seventh year.
Connoisseurs, and those who are not, recognize at once that the two
frescoes are executed according to prescribed rules; that the artist
possessed a certain number of forms, which he used conventionally;
that he multiplied extraordinary attitudes, and ingeniously contrived
foreshortenings; that the lively invention, naturalness, the great
transport of the heart, the perfect truth peculiar to his first works,
have, at least in part, disappeared from the abuse of technique and
the force of routine; and that if he is still superior to others, he is
greatly inferior to himself.
The same comment may be made on another life--that of our French
Michael Angelo, Corneille. In the first years of his life, Corneille
was likewise struck by the feeling of force, and of moral heroism.
He found it around him in the vigorous passions bequeathed by the
religious wars to the new monarchy; in the daring acts of duellists;
in the proud feeling of honor which still carried away the devotees
of feudalism; in the bloody tragedies which the plots of princes and
the executions of Richelieu furnished as spectacles for the court; and
he created personages like _Chimène_ and the _Cid._ like _Polyeucte_
and _Pauline,_ like _Cornélie, Sertorius, Émilie,_ and _les Horaces._
Afterwards he produced _Pertharite, Attila,_ and other feeble works, in
which the situations merge into the horrible, and generous emotions
lose themselves in extravagance. In this period the living models he
once contemplated no longer had a social setting; at least he no longer
sought them, he failed to renew his inspiration. He was governed by
prescribed rules due to the memory of processes which he had formerly
found in the heat of enthusiasm, literary theories, dissertations and
distinctions on theatrical catastrophes and dramatic licenses. He
copied and exaggerated himself; learning, calculation and routine shut
out from him the direct and personal contemplation of powerful emotions
and of noble actions; he no longer created, but manufactured.
It is not alone the history of this or that great man which proves to
us the necessity of imitating the living model, and of keeping the eye
fixed on nature, but rather the history of every great school of art.
Every school (I believe without exception) degenerates and falls,
simply through its neglect of exact imitation, and its abandonment
of the living model. You see it in painting, in the fabricators of
muscles and exaggerated attitudes who succeeded Michael Angelo; in
the sciolists of theatrical decorations and in the brawny rotundities
which have followed the great Venetians; and in the boudoir and alcove
painters which closed the French school of art of the eighteenth
century. The same thing occurs in literature, with the versifiers and
rhetoricians of the Latin decadence; with the sensual and declamatory
playwrights closing the bright period of the English drama, and
with the manufacturers of sonnets, puns, witticisms, and bombast of
the Italian decline. Among these I will cite two striking examples.
The first is the decline of sculpture and painting in antiquity,
of which you obtain a vivid impression by visiting Pompeii, and
afterwards Ravenna. At Pompeii the painting and sculpture belong to
the first century of the present era; at Ravenna the mosaics are of
the sixth century, about the times of the Emperor Justinian. In this
interval of five centuries art becomes irremediably corrupt, and its
degeneracy is wholly due to the neglect of the living model. In the
first century the pagan manners and tastes of the _palestra_ still
existed. Men wore their vestments loose and cast them off easily,
frequented the baths, exercised in a state of nudity, witnessed
the combats of the circus, ever contemplating sympathetically and
intelligently the active movements of the living body. Their sculptors
and painters, surrounded by nude and half-nude forms, were capable of
reproducing them. Accordingly, you will see on the walls of Pompeii,
in the little oratories and in the inner courts, beautiful dancing
females, spirited, supple young heroes, with manly chests, agile
feet, every posture and form of the body rendered with an ease and
accuracy to which the most elaborate study of the present day cannot
attain. During the following five hundred years everything gradually
changes. Pagan manners, the use of the _palestra,_ and the love of
the nude, disappear. The body is no longer exposed, but concealed
under complicated drapery, and under a display of lace, purple, and
oriental magnificence. People no longer esteem the wrestler and the
youthful gymnast,[1] but the eunuch, the scribe, the monk, and the woman.
Asceticism gains ground, and with it a love for listless reverie,
hollow disputation, scribbling and wrangling. The worn-out babblers
of the Lower Empire replace the valiant Greek athletes and the hardy
combatants of Rome. By degrees the knowledge and study of the living
model are interdicted. People have discarded it. Their eyes rest only
on the works of ancient masters, and they copy these. Soon copies
are only made of copies, and again copies of these, so that each
generation recedes a step from the original type. The artist ceases to
have his own idea and his own feeling, and becomes a copying machine.
The Fathers declare that he must invent nothing, but must adhere to
lineaments prescribed by tradition and sanctioned by authority. This
separation of the artist from the living model brings art to the
condition in which you see it at Ravenna. At the end of five centuries,
artists can only represent man in two ways--seated and standing; other
attitudes are too difficult, and are beyond their capacity. Hands and
feet appear rigid as if fractured, the folds of drapery are wooden,
figures seem to be mannikins, and heads are invaded by the eyes. Art is
like an invalid sinking under a mortal consumption; it is languishing,
and about to expire.
In a different branch of art amongst ourselves, and in a neighboring
century, we find again a similar decline, and brought about by
similar causes. In the age of Louis XIV., literature attained to a
perfect style, to a purity, to a precision, to a sobriety of which
we have no example; dramatic art, especially, created a language and
a style of versification deemed by all Europe a masterpiece of the
human intellect. This is due to the fact of writers finding their
models around them and constantly observing them. The language of
Louis XIV. was perfect, displaying a dignity, eloquence, and gravity
truly royal. We know by the letters, despatches, and memoirs of the
court personages of that time, that an aristocratic tone, sustained
elegance, propriety of terms, dignified manners, and the art of correct
speaking, were as common to courtiers as to monarch; so that the writer
frequenting their society, had but to draw on his memory and experience
in order to obtain the very best materials of his art.
[Footnote 1: ἔφηβος.]
III.
Is this true in every particular, and must we conclude that absolutely
exact imitation is the end of art?
If this were so, gentlemen, absolutely exact imitation would produce
the finest works. But, in fact, it is not so. In sculpture, for
instance, casting is the process by which a faithful and minute
impression of a model is obtained, and certainly a good cast is not
equal to a good statue. Again, and in another domain, photography
is the art which completely reproduces with lines and tints on a
flat surface, without possible mistake, the forms and modelling of
the object imitated. Photography is undoubtedly a useful auxiliary
to painting, and is sometimes tastefully employed by cultivated and
intelligent men; but after all, no one thinks of comparing it with
painting. And finally, as a last illustration, if it were true that
exact imitation is the supreme aim of art, let me ask what would be the
best tragedy? the best comedy? the best drama? A stenographic report
of a criminal trial, every word of which is faithfully recorded. It
is clear, however, that if we sometimes encounter in it flashes of
nature and occasional outbursts of sentiment, these are but veins of
pure metal in a mass of worthless dross; it may furnish a writer with
materials for his art, but it does not constitute a work of art.
Some may possibly say, that photography, casting, and stenography are
mechanical processes, and that we ought to leave mechanism out of the
question, and accordingly limit our comparisons to man's work. Let us,
therefore, select works by artists conspicuous for minute fidelity.
There is a canvas in the Louvre by Denner. This artist worked
microscopically, taking four years to finish a portrait. Nothing in his
heads is overlooked--the finest lines and wrinkles, the faintly mottled
surface of the cheeks, the black specks scattered over the nose, the
bluish flush of imperceptible veins meandering under the skin, nor the
reflection of objects in the vicinity on the eye. We are struck with
astonishment. This head is a perfect illusion; it seems to project
out of the frame. Such success and such patience are unparalleled.
Substantially, however, a broad sketch by Van Dyck is a hundredfold
more powerful. Beside, neither in painting nor in any other art are
prizes awarded to deceptions.
A second and stronger proof, that exact imitation is not the end of
art, is to be found in this fact, that certain arts are purposely
inexact. There is sculpture, for instance. A statue is generally
of one color, either of bronze or of marble; and again, the eyes
are without eyeballs. It is just this uniformity of tint, and this
modification of moral expression, which completes its beauty. Examine
corresponding works, in which imitation is pushed to extremity. The
churches of Naples and Spain contain draped statues, colored; saints in
actual monastic garb, with yellow earthy skins, suitable to ascetics,
and bleeding hands and wounded sides characteristic of the martyred.
Alongside of these appear madonnas, in royal robes, in festive dresses,
and in bright silks, crowned with diadems, wearing precious necklaces,
brilliant ribbons, and magnificent laces, and with rosy complexions,
glittering eyes, and eyeballs formed of carbuncles. By this excess
of literal imitation, the artist gives no pleasure, but repugnance,
often disgust, and sometimes horror.
It is the same in literature. The best half of dramatic poetry, every
classic Greek and French drama, and the greater part of Spanish and
English dramas, far from literally copying ordinary conversation,
intentionally modify human speech. Each of these dramatic poets makes
his characters speak in verse, casting their dialogue in rhythm, and
often in rhyme. Is this modification prejudicial to the work? Far from
it. One of the great works of the age, the "Iphigenia" of Goethe, which
was at first written in prose and afterwards re-written in verse,
affords abundant evidence of this. It is beautiful in prose, but in
verse what a difference! The modification of ordinary language, in the
introduction of rhythm and metre, evidently gives to this work its
incomparable accent, that calm sublimity, that broad, sustained tragic
tone, which elevates the spirit above the low level of common life, and
brings before the eye the heroes of ancient days--that lost race of
primitive souls--and, among them, the august virgin, interpreter of the
gods, custodian of the laws, and the benefactress of mankind, in whom
is concentrated whatever is noble and good in human nature, in order to
glorify our species and renew the inspiration of our hearts.
IV.
It is essential, then, to closely imitate something in an object;
but not everything. We have now to discover what imitation should
be applied to. Anticipating an answer to this, I reply, "To the
relationships and mutual dependence of parts." Excuse this abstract
definition--I will make my meaning clearer to you.
Imagine yourselves before a living model, man or woman, with a pencil,
and a piece of paper twice the dimensions of your hand, on which to
copy it. Certainly, you cannot be expected to reproduce the magnitude
of the limbs, for your paper is too small; nor can you be expected to
reproduce their color, for you have only black and white to work with.
What you have to do is to reproduce their _relationships,_ and first
the proportions, that is to say, the relationships of magnitude. If
the head is of a certain length, the body must be so many times longer
than the head, the arm of a length equally dependent on that, and
the leg the same; and so on with the other members. Again, you are
required to reproduce forms, or the relationships of position: this or
that curve, oval, angle, or sinuosity in the model must be repeated
in the copy by a line of the same nature. In short, your object is to
reproduce the aggregate of relationships, by which the parts are linked
together, and nothing else; it is not the simple corporeal appearance
that you have to give, but the _logic_ of the whole body.
Suppose, in like manner, you are contemplating some actual character,
some scene in real life, high or low, and you are asked to furnish
a description of it. To do this you have your eyes, your ears, your
memory, and, perhaps, a pencil, to dot down five or six notes--no
great means, but ample for your purpose. What is expected of you is,
not to record every word and motion, all the actions of the personage,
or of the fifteen or twenty persons that are figured before you,
but, as before, to note proportions, connections, and relationships;
you are expected, in the first place, to keep exactly the proportion
of the actions of the personage, in other words, to give prominence
to ambitious acts, if he is ambitious, to avaricious acts, if he is
avaricious, and to violent acts, if he is violent; after this, to
observe the reciprocal connection of these same acts; that is to
say, to provoke one reply by another, to originate a resolution, a
sentiment, an idea by an idea, a sentiment, a preceding resolution,
and moreover by the actual condition of the personage; in addition to
that, still by the general character bestowed on him. In short, in
the literary effort, as in the pictorial effort, it is important to
transcribe, not the visible outlines of persons and events, but the
aggregate of their relationships and interdependencies, that is to say,
their logic.
As a general rule, therefore, whatever interests us in a real
personage, and which we entreat the artist to extract and render, is
his outward or inward logic; in other terms, his structure, composition
and action.
We have here, as you perceive, corrected the first definition given;
it is not cancelled, but purified. We have discovered a more elevated
character for art, which thus becomes intellectual, and not mechanical.
V.
Does this suffice us? Do we find works of art simply confined to a
reproduction of the relationships of parts? By no means, for the
greatest schools are justly those in which actual relationships are
most modified. Consider, for example, the Italian school in its
greatest artist, Michael Angelo, and, in order to give precision to
our ideas, let us recall his principal work, the four marble statues
surmounting the tomb of the Medicis at Florence. Those of you who
have not seen the originals, are at least familiar with copies of
them. In the figures of these men, and especially in the reclining
females, sleeping or waking, the proportions of the parts are certainly
not the same as in real personages. Similar figures exist nowhere,
even in Italy. You will see there young, handsome, well-dressed men,
peasants with bright eyes and a fierce expression, academy models
with firm muscles and a proud bearing; but neither in a village nor at
festivities, nor in the studios of Italy or elsewhere, at the present
time or in the sixteenth century, does any real man or woman resemble
the indignant heroes and the colossal despairing virgins which this
great artist has placed before us in this funereal chapel. Michael
Angelo found these types in his own genius and in his own heart. In
order to create them it was necessary to have the soul of a recluse,
of a meditative man, of a lover of justice; the soul of an impassioned
and generous nature bewildered in the midst of enervated and corrupt
beings, amidst treachery and oppression, before the inevitable
triumph of tyranny and injustice, under the ruins of liberty and of
nationality, himself threatened with death, feeling that if he lived
it was only by favor, and perhaps only by a short respite, incapable
of sycophancy and of submission, taking refuge entirely in that
art by which, in the silence of servitude, his great heart and his
great despair still spoke. He wrote on the pedestal of his sleeping
statue--"Sleep is sweet, and yet more sweet is it to be of stone, while
shame and misery last. Fortunate am I not to see--not to feel. Forbear
to arouse me! Ah! speak low!"
This is the sentiment which revealed to him such forms. To express
it, he has changed the ordinary proportions; he has lengthened the
trunk and the limbs, twisted the torso upon the hips, hollowed out the
sockets of the eyes, furrowed the forehead with wrinkles similar to
the lion's frowning brow, raised mountains of muscles on the shoulder,
ridged the spine with tendons, and so fastened the vertebras that it
resembles the links of an iron chain strained to their utmost tension
and about to break.
Let us consider, in like manner, the Flemish school; and in this
school the great Fleming, Rubens, and one of the most striking of
his works, the "Kermesse." In this work, no more than in those of
Michael Angelo, will you find an imitation of ordinary proportions.
Visit Flanders, and observe the types of mankind about you, even
at feastings and revellings, such as the fêtes of Gayant, Antwerp,
and other places. You will see comfortable-looking people eating
much and drinking more; serenely smoking, cool, phlegmatic bodies;
dull-looking, and with massive, irregular features, strongly resembling
the figures of Teniers. As to the splendid brutes of the "Kermesse,"
you meet nothing like them! Rubens certainly found them elsewhere.
After the horrible religious wars, this rich country of Flanders,
so long devastated, finally attained peace and civil security. The
soil is so good, and the people so prudent, comfort and prosperity
returned almost at once. Everybody enjoyed this new prosperity and
abundance; the contrast between the past and the present led to the
indulgence of rude and carnal instincts let loose like horses and
cattle after long privation in fresh, green fields, abounding in the
richest pasture. Rubens himself was sensible of them; and the poetry
of gross, sumptuous living, of satisfied and redundant flesh, of
brutal, inordinate merry-making, found a ready outlet in the shameless
sensualities and voluptuous ruddiness, in the whiteness and freshness
of the nudities of which he was so prodigal. In order to express all
this in the "Kermesse" he has expanded the trunk, enlarged the thighs,
twisted the loins, deepened the redness of the cheeks, dishevelled
the hair, kindled in the eyes a flame of savage, unbridled desire,
unloosed the demons of disorder in the shape of shattered glasses,
overturned tables, holdings and kissings, a perfect orgie, and the
most extraordinary culmination of human bestiality ever portrayed upon
canvas.
These two examples show you that the artist, in modifying the
relationships of parts, modifies them understandingly, purposely, in
such a way as to make apparent the _essential character_ of the object,
and consequently its leading idea according to his conception of it.
This phrase, gentlemen, requires attention; this _essential character_
is what philosophers call the _essence_ of things; and because of this
they say that it is the aim of art to manifest the _essence_ of things.
We will not retain this term essence, which is technical, but simply
state that it is the aim of art to manifest a predominant character,
some salient principal quality, some important point of view, some
essential condition of being in the object.
We here approach the true definition of art, and accordingly need to
be perfectly clear. We must insist on and precisely define essential
character. I would premise at once that it is _a quality from which
all others, or at least most other qualities, are derived according to
definite affinities._ Grant me again this abstract definition: a few
illustrations will make it plain to you.
The essential character of a lion, giving him his rank in the
classifications of natural history, is that of a great flesh-eater;
nearly all his traits, whether physical or moral, as I am about to
prove to you, are derived from this trait as their fountain-head.
First, there are physical traits: his teeth move like shears; he has
a jaw constructed to tear and to crush; and necessarily, for, being
carnivorous, he has to nourish himself with, and prey upon, living
game; in order to manoeuvre this formidable instrument he requires
enormous muscles, and for their insertion, temporal sockets of
proportionate size. Add to the feet other instruments, the terrible
contractile claws, the quick step on the extremity of the toes, a
terrible elasticity of the thighs acting like a powerful spring, and
eyes that see best at night, because night is the best hunting-time. A
naturalist, pointing to a lion's skeleton, once said to me, "There is a
jaw mounted on four paws."
The moral points of the lion are likewise in harmony. At first,
there is the sanguinary instinct--the craving for fresh flesh, and a
repugnance for every other food; next, the strength and the nervous
excitement through which the lion concentrates an enormous amount of
force at the instant of attack and defence; and on the other hand, his
somniferous habits, the grave, sombre inertia of moments of repose,
and the long yawnings after the excitement of the chase. All these
traits are derived from his carnivorous character, and on this account
we call it his essential character.
Let us now consider a more difficult case, that of an entire country,
with its innumerable details of structure, aspect, and cultivation;
its plants, animals, inhabitants, and towns; as, for example, the Low
Countries. The essential character of this region is its _alluvial_
formation; that, is to say, a formation due to vast quantifies of
earth brought down by streams and deposited about their mouths. From
this single term spring an infinity of peculiarities, summing up the
entire nature of the country, not only its physical outlines, what it
is in itself, but again the intellectual, moral, and physical qualities
of its inhabitants, and of their works. At first, in the inanimate
world, come its moist and fertile plains, the necessary consequence
of numerous broad rivers and vast deposits of productive soil. These
plains are always green, because broad, tranquil, and sluggish streams,
and the innumerable canals so easily constructed in soft, flat ground,
maintain perennial verdure. You can readily imagine, and on purely
rational principles, the aspect of such a country--a dull, rainy sky,
constantly streaked with showers, and even on fine days veiled as if
by gauze with light vapory clouds rising from the wet surface, forming
a transparent dome, an airy tissue of delicate, snowy fleeces, over
the broad verdant expanse stretching out of sight and rounded to the
distant horizon. In the animated kingdom these numerous luxuriant
pastures attract countless herds of cattle, who recline tranquilly on
the grass, or ruminate over their cud, and dot the flat green sward
with innumerable spots of white, yellow, and black. Hence the rich
stores of milk and meat, which, added to the grains and vegetables
raised on this prolific soil, furnish its inhabitants with cheap and
abundant supplies of food. It might well be said that in this country
water makes grass, grass makes cattle, cattle make cheese, butter,
and meat; and all these, with beer, make the inhabitant. Indeed, out
of this fat living, and out of this physical organization saturated
with moisture, spring the phlegmatic temperament, the regular habits,
the tranquil mind and nerves, the capacity to take life easily
and prudently, unbroken contentment and love of well-being, and,
consequently, the reign of cleanliness and the perfection of comfort.
These consequences extend so far as even to affect the aspect of towns.
In an alluvial country there is no stone; building material consists
of terra-cotta bricks, and tiles. Rains being frequent and heavy,
roofs are very sloping, and as dampness lasts a long time, their fronts
are painted and varnished. A Flemish town, therefore, is a net-work
of brown or red edifices always neat, occasionally glittering and
with pointed gables; here and there rises an old church constructed
of shingle or of rubble; streets in the best of order run between two
scrupulously clean lines of sidewalk. In Holland the sidewalks are laid
in brick, frequently intermingled with coarse porcelain: domestics may
be seen at an early hour in the morning on their knees cleaning them
off with cloths. Cast your eyes through the dazzling window-panes;
enter a club-room decked with green branches, with its floor powdered
with sand constantly renewed; visit the taverns, brightly painted,
where rows of casks display their brown rotund sides, and where the
rich yellow beer foams up out of glasses covered with quaint devices.
In all these details of common life, in all these signs of inward
contentment and enduring prosperity, you detect the effects of the
great underlying characteristic which is stamped upon the climate and
the soil, upon the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom, upon man
and his works, upon society and the individual.
Through these innumerable effects, you judge of the importance of this
essential character. It is this which art must bring forward into
proper light, and if this task devolves upon art, it is because nature
fails to accomplish it. In nature, this essential character is simply
dominant; it is the aim of art to render it predominant. It moulds
real objects, but it does not mould them completely: its action is
restricted, impeded by the intervention of other causes; its impression
on objects bearing its stamp is not sufficiently strong to be clearly
visible. Man is sensible of this deficiency, and to remove it he has
invented art.
Let us again take up Rubens' "Kermesse." These blooming merry wives,
these roystering drunkards, these busts and visages of burly unbridled
brutes, probably found counterparts in the carousals of the day.
Over-nourished and exuberant nature aimed at producing such gross forms
and such coarse manners, but she only half accomplished her task; other
causes intervened to stay this excess of a carnal jovial energy. There
is, at first, poverty. In the best of times, and in the best countries,
many people have not enough to eat, and fasting, at least partial
abstinence, misery, and bad air, all the accompaniments of indigence,
diminish the development and boisterousness of native brutality. A
suffering man is not so strong, and more sober. Religion, law, police
regulations, and habits due to steady labor, operate in the same
direction; education does its part. Out of a hundred subjects who,
under favorable conditions, might have furnished Rubens with models,
only five or six, perhaps, could be of any service to him. Suppose now
that these five or six figures in the actual festivities which he might
have seen were lost in a crowd of people more or less indifferent and
common; consider again, that at the moment they came under his eye
they exhibited neither the attitude, the expression, the gestures,
the abandonment, the costume, or the disorder requisite to make this
teeming excitement apparent. Through all these draw-backs nature called
art to its aid; she could not clearly distinguish the character; it was
necessary that the artist should supplement her.
Thus is it with every superior work of art. While Raphael was painting
his "Galatea," he wrote that, beautiful women being scarce, he was
following a conception of his own. This means that, looking at human
nature from a certain point of view, its repose, its felicity, its
gracious and dignified sweetness, he found no living model to express
it satisfactorily. The peasant or laboring girl who posed for him,
had hands deformed by work, feet spoiled by their covering, and eyes
disordered by shame, or demoralized by her calling. His "Fornarina" has
drooping shoulders, a meagre arm above the elbow, a hard and contracted
expression.[1] If he painted her in the Farnesini Palace, he completely
transformed her, developing a character in his painted figure of which
the real figure only contributed parts and suggestions.
Thus the province of a work of art is to render the essential
character, or, at least, some capital quality, the predominance of
which must be made as perceptible as possible. In order to accomplish
this the artist must suppress whatever conceals it, select whatever
manifests it, correct every detail by which it is enfeebled, and recast
those in which it is neutralized.
Let us no longer consider works but artists, that is to say, the way in
which artists feel, invent, and produce: you will find it consistent
with the foregoing conception of the work of art. There is one gift
indispensable to all artists; no study, no degree of patience, supplies
its place; if it is wanting in them they are nothing but copyists and
mechanics. In confronting objects the artist must experience _original
sensation_; the character of an object strikes him, and the effect
of this sensation is a strong, peculiar impression. In other words,
when a man is born with talent his perceptions--or at least a certain
class of perceptions--are delicate and quick; he naturally seizes and
distinguishes, with a sure and watchful tact, relationships and shades;
at one time the plaintive or heroic sense in a sequence of sounds, at
another the listlessness or stateliness of an attitude, and again the
richness or sobriety of two complimentary or contiguous colors. Through
this faculty he penetrates to the very heart of things, and seems to be
more clear-sighted than other men. This sensation, moreover, so keen
and so personal, is not inactive--by a counter-stroke the whole nervous
and thinking machinery is affected by it. Man involuntarily expresses
his emotions; the body makes signs, its attitude becomes mimetic;
he is obliged to figure externally his conception of an object;
the voice seeks imitative inflections, the tongue finds pictorial
terms, unforeseen forms, a figurative, inventive, exaggerated style.
Under the force of the original impulse the active brain recasts
and transforms the object, now to illumine and ennoble it, now to
distort and grotesquely pervert it; in the free sketch, as in the
violent caricature, you readily detect, with poetic temperaments, the
ascendency of involuntary impressions. Familiarize yourselves with the
great artists and great authors of your century; study the sketches,
designs, diaries, and correspondence of the old masters, and you will
again everywhere find the same inward process. We may adorn it with
beautiful names; we may call it genius or inspiration, which is right
and proper; but if you wish to define it precisely you must always
verify therein the vivid spontaneous sensation which groups together
the train of accessory ideas, master, fashion, metamorphose and employ
them in order to become manifest.
We have now arrived at a definition of a work of art. Let us, for a
moment, cast our eyes backward, and review the road we have passed
over. We have, by degrees, arrived at a conception of art more and more
elevated, and consequently more and more exact. At first we thought
that the object of art was to _imitate sensible appearances._ Then
separating material from intellectual imitation, we found that what
it desired to reproduce in sensible appearances is the _relationships
of parts. _ Finally, remarking that relationships are, and ought to
be, modified in order to obtain the highest results of art, we proved
that if we study the relationships of parts it is _to make predominant
an essential character._ No one of these definitions destroys its
antecedent, but each corrects and defines it. We are consequently
able now to combine them, and by subordinating the inferior to the
superior, thus to sum up the result of our labor:--"The end of a work
of art is to manifest some essential or salient character, consequently
some important idea, clearer and more completely than is attainable
from real objects. Art accomplishes this end by employing a group of
connected parts, the relationships of which it systematically modifies.
In the three imitative arts of sculpture, painting, and poetry, these
groups correspond to real objects."
[Footnote 1: See the two portraits of the "Fornarina," in the Sciarra
and the Borghese palaces.]
VI.
That established, gentlemen, we see, on examining the different
parts of this definition, that the first is essential and the second
accessory. An aggregate of connected parts is necessary in all art
which the artist may modify so as to portray character; but in every
art it is not necessary that this aggregate should correspond with
real objects; it is sufficient that it exists. If we therefore meet
with aggregates of connected parts which are not imitations of real
objects, there will be arts which will not have imitation for their
point of view. This is the case, and it is thus that architecture and
music are born. In short, besides connections, proportions, moral and
organic dependencies, which the three imitative arts copy, there are
mathematical relationships which the two others, imitating nothing,
combine.
Let us, at first, consider the mathematical relationships perceived by
the sense of sight. Magnitudes sensible to the eye may form amongst
each other aggregates of parts connected by mathematical laws. For
instance, a piece of wood or stone may have geometrical form, that of
a cube, a cone, a cylinder, or a sphere, which establishes regular
relationships of distance between the different points of its outline.
Furthermore, its dimensions may be quantities mutually related in
simple proportions which the eye can seize readily; height, may be
two, three, or four times greater than thickness or breadth: this
constitutes a second series of mathematical relationships. Finally,
many of these pieces of wood or stone may be placed symmetrically
on the top or by the side of each other, according to distances and
angles mathematically combined. Architecture is established on this
aggregate of connected parts. An architect conceiving some dominant
character, either serenity, simplicity, strength, or elegance, as
formerly in Greece or Rome, or the strange, the varied, the infinite,
the fantastic, as in Gothic times, may select and combine connections,
proportions, dimensions, forms, and positions--in short, the
relationships of materials, that is to say, certain visible magnitudes
in such a way as to display the character aimed at.
By the side of magnitudes perceived by sight there are magnitudes
perceived by the hearing,--I mean the velocities of sonorous
vibrations; and these vibrations being magnitudes may also form
aggregates of parts connected by mathematical laws. In the first place,
as you are aware, a musical sound is composed of continuous vibrations
of equal velocity, and this equality already places between them
a mathematical relationship; in the second place, two sounds being
given, the second may be composed of vibrations, two, three, or four
times the rapidity of the first; accordingly, there is between these
two sounds a mathematical relationship, which is figured by placing
them at an equal distance from each other on the musical stave. If,
consequently, instead of taking two, we take a number of sounds, and
place them at equal distances,--we form a scale, which scale is the
gamut, all the sounds being thus bound together according to their
relative position on the gamut. You can now establish these connections
either between successive or simultaneous sounds, the first order of
sounds constituting melody, and the second harmony. This is music: it
has two essential parts, based, like architecture, on mathematical
relationships, which the artist is free to combine and modify.
Music, however, possesses a second property, and this new element gives
it a peculiar quality and no ordinary scope. Besides its mathematical
qualities, sound is analogous to the cry, and by this title it directly
expresses with unrivalled precision, delicacy and force, suffering,
joy, rage, indignation--all the agitations and emotions of an animated
sensitive being, even to the most secret and most subtle gradations.
From this point of view it is similar to poetic declamation, furnishing
a specific type of music, called the music of expression, like that of
Gluck and the Germans, in opposition to the music of melody, that of
Rossini and the Italians. Let the composer's point of view be what it
may, the two styles of music are nevertheless related to each other,
sounds always forming aggregates of parts linked together at once by
their mathematical relationship and by the correspondence which they
have with the passions and the various internal states of the moral
being. The musician, therefore, who conceives a certain salient,
important feature of things, let it be sadness or joy, tender love or
passionate rage, any idea or sentiment whatever, may freely select and
combine in such a way in these mathematical and moral relationships as
to manifest the character which he has conceived.
All the arts are thus included in the definition above presented. In
architecture and music, as in sculpture, painting, and poetry, it is
the object of a work of art to manifest some essential character, and
to employ as means of expression an aggregate of connected parts, the
relationship of which the artist combines and modifies.
VII.
Now that we know the nature of art, we can comprehend its importance.
Previously we were only sensible of its effect; it was a matter of
instinct, and not of reason: we were conscious of respecting and
esteeming art, but were not qualified to account for our respect and
esteem. Our admiration for art can now be justified, and we can mark
its place in the order of life.
Man, in many respects, is an animal endeavoring to protect himself
against nature and against other men. He is obliged to provide himself
with food, clothing, and shelter, and to defend himself against
climate, want, and disease. To do this he tills the ground, navigates
the sea, and devotes himself to different industrial and commercial
pursuits. Furthermore, he must perpetuate his species, and secure
himself against the violence of his fellow-men; to this end, he forms
families and states, and establishes magistracies, functionaries,
constitutions, laws, and armies. After so many inventions and such
labor, he is not yet emancipated from his original condition; he is
still an animal, better fed and better protected than other animals;
he still thinks only of himself, and of his kindred. At this moment
a superior life dawns on him--that of contemplation, by which he
is led to interest himself in the creative and permanent causes on
which his own being and that of his fellows depend, in the leading
and essential characters which rule each aggregate, and impress their
marks on the minutest details. Two ways are open to him for this
purpose. The first is Science, by which, analyzing these causes and
these fundamental laws, he expresses them in abstract terms and precise
formula; the second is Art, by which he manifests these causes and
these fundamental laws no longer through arid definitions, inaccessible
to the multitude, and only intelligible to a favored few, but in a
sensible way, appealing not alone to reason, but also to the heart and
senses of the humblest individual. Art has this peculiarity, that it is
at once _noble_ and _popular,_ manifesting whatever is most exalted,
and manifesting it to all.