ON ART
AND ARTISTS
BY
MAX NORDAU
AUTHOR OF “DEGENERATION”
TRANSLATED BY W. F. HARVEY, M.A.
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
ADELPHI TERRACE
MCMVII
[_All rights reserved._]
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Social Mission of Art 1
II. Socialistic Art—Constantin Meunier 30
III. The Question of Style 44
IV. The Old French Masters 56
V. A Century of French Art 70
VI. The School of 1830 96
VII. The Triumph of a Revolution—
The Realists 107
Alfred Sisley 123
Camille Pissarro 133
Whistler’s Psychology 145
VIII. Gustave Moreau 155
IX. Eugène Carrière 166
X. Puvis de Chavannes 185
XI. Bright and Dark Painting—Charles Cottet 201
XII. Physiognomies in Painting 217
XIII. Auguste Rodin 275
XIV. Resurrection—Bartholomé 294
XV. Jean Carriès 308
XVI. Works of Art and Art Criticisms 320
XVII. My Own Opinion 336
Index 349
ON ART AND ARTISTS
ON ART AND ARTISTS
I
THE SOCIAL MISSION OF ART
There exists a school of æstheticism which laughs contemptuously at
the mere sight of this superscription. Art having a mission! What
utter nonsense. A person must be a rank Philistine to connect with the
idea of art the conception of a non-artistic mission, be it social or
otherwise. Has a work of art any other mission than to give pleasure by
beauty? It strives to attain no goal that lies outside of itself. It
is its own object, and whoever assigns to it another, sins against the
sanctity of art.
This is, in short, the theory of art for art’s sake: _l’art pour
l’art_. I deem this theory false and a hallmark of crass ignorance, for
psychology and the history of civilisation and art, the history of all
arts, prove irrefutably the vanity and worthlessness of the concept
that denies to art any other task and mission than that of being
beautiful.
Certainly art is, in the main, a purely subjective activity, in
which the artist wishes solely to satisfy himself, without thinking
of any person or thing external to himself. The psychological roots
of all artistic creation are, in fact, an exceptional sensitiveness
and feeling on the part of the artist. We know that every moderately
strong impression which man—and, moreover, not only man, but also every
living creature, however low in the scale—receives from the external
world, excites in him processes, which, in the case of man and the
higher animals, attain consciousness as emotion or passion. The emotion
imperiously urges in towards liberation through movements, that is
to say, muscular activity, which, in many cases, is accompanied by
glandular activity, _e.g._ tears, secretion of saliva, perspiration,
etc. To men of the average type the usual forms of manifesting their
emotion suffice. If they have wept in sorrow, laughed for joy, cursed
or clenched their fist in anger, they are pacified. Their emotion has
spent itself and become exhausted, and their physical life once more
flows in its accustomed channels.
However, if, instead of the average man, we have before us a creature
of exceptional sensitiveness and emotionality, the psychical processes
assume another shape. This creature feels all phenomena more acutely;
they arouse in him more violent passions; his emotions are deeper
and more lasting. Their normal forms of expression do not suffice to
lull them. They take possession of his soul, organise themselves,
show a tendency to become compelling ideas, and oppress it with
psycho-motorial incitements or impulses until it has freed itself from
them by acts which stand in proper ratio to the number or violence of
the emotions. A being whose excessive emotionality is of an angry,
malicious nature attains relief only through deeds of destruction.
Such is the case with most sub-species of born criminals. Should the
exceptionally strong emotions not be of a destructive nature, they find
their outlet otherwise by artistic creations, which, therefore, are a
liberation and solution of emotion that has become overmastering.
But this simple, as it were, normal case, in which the work of art
actually fulfils a purely subjective mission, and aims at no other
object than to relieve the artist’s nervous system and to unburden his
mind of a compelling idea—this case is actually met with only in the
earliest ages of mankind. Art for art’s sake—the art which is practised
purely for the relief and satisfaction of the artist—is that of the
cave-man of the quaternary period. The artist who adorned the walls
of the Caves of Mouthe[1] with figures of animals; who scratched
the famous mammoth on the tusk of La Madeleine in the Dordogne;
the draughtsman of Bruniquel, of Schaffhausen; the author of the
rock-pictures in Sweden, probably did not trouble himself as to whether
he was producing any effect on others. In all likelihood he did not
work for society. His psychology is disclosed to us by the subjects he
treated. He was an enthusiastic hunter, endowed with a particularly
lively intuition and manual dexterity. On the days when he could not go
hunting, either because bad weather prevented him doing so, or external
compulsion—perhaps an accident met with in the chase—confined him to
his cave, he thought longingly of his favourite occupation. The beasts
that composed his usual booty lived in his imagination. His grotto
was peopled with the monsters of the forest and plain of primitive
times. He saw the mammoth with its stiff mane, the grisly cave-bear,
the aurochs and giant-elk, the shaggy, thick-set horse of Solutré; he
pursued, fought, slew them. He felt all the keen joys of these mighty
deeds, and became so strongly excited that he could not refrain from
realising the lively pictures of his fancy, by drawing them on bones,
tusks, or rocks, or carving them on stags’ horns and elephants’ teeth.
It would not gainsay this psychology of primitive human art, if the
artists in remote ages (as the latest pre-historic investigations seem
to attest) connected superstitious ideas with the imitation of their
animals of the chase, perhaps believed by such means they cast a spell
on the animals portrayed, and facilitated their capture. A superstition
like this would, in its turn, become a source of fresh emotions which
also seek outward expression.
Besides the hunter there was also the warrior, who liked to portray his
conquered enemies, and the sensualist, who sought delight in carving
female busts, the types of which, to our taste, seem very ugly, but may
have appeared alluring to him.
These savage forefathers who adorned the caves of the early stone age
with works of art not invariably crude; who woke the echo of the forest
valleys with plaintive or yearning melodies; who excited themselves
by sensuous dances in the moonlight nights of spring; who formed, in
symbolic and allegorical songs, their mystic impressions of the great
phenomena of the weather and sky;—these savage forefathers were the
first, but at the same time last, purely subjective artists, the only
real believers in the dogma of “art for art’s sake.”
In order to find them once more in our own times, we must seek them in
the nursery or the Board School class-room. The artist of primitive
times survives by atavism in the child. But he substitutes for the
rock-wall of the cave and the mammoth’s tooth his slate, copy-book,
school-books, often enough his desk and form, which he adorns with
drawings that, if not particularly finished, are, nevertheless,
always full of expression, and recognisable. The child does not give
way to his artistic wantonness in order to please others. He hides
it, moreover, mostly for obvious reasons, from the eyes of strangers;
he only draws to portray symbolically that which has made a strong
impression on him. He always notes down the important, distinguishing
features which have struck him in the phenomenon. This fierce
mustache, the circle drawn across which represents the head, is for
the little draughtsman the characteristic of manly dignity; this
right-angled broken stroke, which bristles up over a row of men, is
the formidable bayonet that marks the soldier; this disproportionately
big stick in another man’s hand is the dreaded badge that embodies the
schoolmaster’s power. The young artist has obeyed genuine impulses. His
art forms really spring out of the deep grounds of his emotion.
With advancing civilisation, however, this state of things quickly
changes. The artist soon notices that he is differently conditioned
to the rest, the average men; that his feelings are keener, their
manifestation more expressive than with the latter. He becomes
conscious of his superiority, fancies himself something in regard
to it, and cultivates it. Other men find æsthetic pleasure in his
creations, and encourage him by flattering applause which easily
rises to admiration. That calls forth an energetic metamorphosis
in the inmost processes of his work, in its causes and aims. What
was once organic necessity now becomes craftsmanship; uncontrollable
inspiration is replaced by custom and by style. The artist becomes his
own imitator. In years of cool, methodical, routine work, he simply
calls to mind the moment when the feverish workings of his brain
powerfully drove him into the paths of art. He observes all rites of
the creator by impulse, but they are now only an attitude which he has
learnt. In theory he is still inspired by impulse; practically, he is
a professional craftsman who performs the day’s work imposed on him by
intelligent volition. He is still always in search of self-satisfaction
whilst engaged on works of art, but it is of another nature than that
of the unsophisticated artist. The unconscious aim of his efforts is
not to find relief from an emotional tension: he strives after the
voluptuous feeling of flattered _amour propre_; he grows ambitious,
very often, indeed, only vain. He thinks of his public. He anticipates
his success. The thought of approbation takes the place of the effort
to deliver himself from a painfully obsessing conception.
This also is always the psychology of the born artist, who is one
because his organisation forces him to it. Beside him, however, swarms
the innumerable crowd of imitation artists, of average, and very
average men, who would never of themselves have thought of becoming
artists—men who would never have discovered art of themselves, if they
had not had before their eyes the example of the original artists,
their successes, their recognition by civilised society. These
individuals pursue art, not to deliver themselves from an obsessing
conception, but as a means of attaining privileges, gold, and honours.
For them art is an avocation like any other, a trade learnt, which is
to bring them, not to subjective psychological, but to practical and
social ends. They try by a sort of mimicry to become like the original
artists, but they belong to another species. Nevertheless, it is not
permissible to neglect them in this consideration, for, for one thing,
they constitute the vast majority of artists, from the moment when
the pursuit of art has become a differentiated activity, the habitual
and exclusive occupation of a separate class of society; and then the
productions of these imitators are always modelled after works done
through organic necessity. They are, to a certain extent, the small
change of originally great values; they would like to be changed for
them, and everything which is to be said of any particular problem of
art, necessarily finds its application to the imitations as well as to
the original pictures.
These are then the origins and stages of development of art. At the
outset, it is actually what the school of “art for art’s sake” asserts
of it: a subjective purpose, a satisfaction of an organic need on
the part of the artist. Soon, however, the artist ceases to confine
himself to satisfying himself in relieving himself; he also seeks to
please others. In the most secret and mysterious moments of creation,
the thought of other men is present in his mind; considerations as to
effect and success are mixed with his productive emotions. Substitute
mere craftsmanship for inspiration, then these considerations become
more and more dominant, and when art has once become a regular ordinary
business, and the imitators, the mere echoes and reflections, have
once become the majority among those who practise it, then the artist
has his eyes continually fixed on his tribunal, viz., society. In the
moment his work of art is germinating, it is strongly influenced by
consideration of the known or the supposed taste of the society whose
applause the artist courts, and the work undergoes a development more
or less remote from the form it would have acquired under the pure
influence of emotion, its primary source.
Society naturally sees what place it occupies in the artist’s mind,
what share it has in his creations, and how important to him its
verdict is. It promptly perceives its advantage. It takes possession of
the artist, forces its tastes on him, and insists on his working, not
for himself, but for it. Henceforward it has in him a paid servant; he
has to conform his special energy to the general plan of the society
organism of which he is a part, and, in this way, a manifestation
which was originally a purely subjective performance becomes a social
performance.
Art, engendered by individual emotion and transfigured into a social
work, shares this lot which we have no right to call a degradation,
with innumerable other main instincts, strivings, desires. It is the
peculiarity of civilisation that it subdues to itself human emotions,
and applies them as motive powers for the purpose of creating results
which are not always, which are not even frequently, the natural
purpose of these emotions. The whole existence of society, every
organisation, every civilisation, rests on the application of this
method; in fact, every attitude and action of man is affected by an
emotion at its base. Without emotion, man is a sluggish mass, with
which nothing can be done. In order to get anything from him, he must
first have his mind excited, and after that we must be able to direct
this excitement. All usages and regulations are merely a collection
of channels dug in order to act as conduits to the emotions, and to
utilise their force in regular employment. By the help of the emotions
of love, society has been enabled to create marriage, which does not
serve for the satisfaction of the instinct, but should guarantee
economic security for the wife and children. With the emotion of
sympathy—this preliminary condition of every social structure—with
this fount of pity, altruism, and solidarity, mankind has created the
political order, the State, with all its burdensome tyranny, which
seems no longer to have anything at all in common with sympathy, which
is, nevertheless, its emotional root. With the emotion of mysticism
and superstition, society has produced practical morality and all its
constraint; with self-love and vanity, patriotism and its caricature,
Chauvinism; with the wicked impulses to destruction and murder, the
professional qualities of the soldier, still indispensable for the
security of the political organism. In short, the whole work of
civilisation consists in making itself master of individual emotions,
diverting them from their natural goals, applying them to the good of
the whole body. The State society is a machine that is moved only by
the emotions of individuals. Social life is simply the product of a
very complex and skilfully conducted work of primitive emotions. If,
therefore, any one exclaims slightingly at the mention of the social
productions of art: “That’s common, rank utilitarianism!” we are
justified in shrugging our shoulders. Utilitarianism? Why, certainly.
Utility is the primary law of every society, of every living organism.
The lowest living creature of one cell could not support itself for
a single instant, unless all its parts were continually working with
the object of promoting its existence, of serving the demands of its
life—in short, making themselves useful to the whole.
When men came to observe that they possessed among them beings who
had stronger emotions than the rest, and made these emotions evident
by creations which were calculated to make a deep impression on other
men, they, according to the standing rule—I might say, according to
the biological rule—of society, made haste to place these exceptional
natures, these artists, in the service of the great interests of
society.
Whoever can still entertain a doubt that art has always performed a
task which was by no means æsthetic, even if fulfilled by æsthetic
means, let him cast a glance at the history of the arts.
Let him read the poems of antiquity, gaze on the sculptures and
paintings of the Egyptians or Assyrians or Greeks. Let him listen to
the far-off, and doubtless sadly distorted echo of ancient music in
the Hymn to Apollo, restored by over-daring scholarship. Where will
he find a work—a single work—which corresponds with the psychological
scheme of the origin of artistic creation and with the definitions of
the party of “Art for art’s sake”? Where is the work that has been
achieved purely for self-satisfaction, for the relief of the artist’s
nerves? Where is the work that is only to serve beauty? I cannot see
it; but what I do see is that all known works serve some purpose of
society. They glorify the gods, the kings, the commonwealth. They
extol the dignity of belief, of government, of the mother-country.
Homer shows the heroes of the Hellenic race in the bloody apotheosis
of their exploits. Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides unfold on the
stage the myths and sagas of their ancestors. On the Acropolis, in
the Parthenon, gleam the gods of the mother-country, the guardians of
the commonwealth, shaped by the magic chisel of Phidias. The Stoa,
the Poikile, the Stadium, are peopled with the monuments of athletes,
warriors, archons, legislators, of all great men who are the people’s
pride, and are to serve them as models. Tyrtæus chants his sublime
marches to excite the warriors to fight for their country. The singer
of the Hymn to Apollo composes his cantatas to make the temple service
more impressive. I am well aware that, besides these monuments, there
are the little lyric poems of the Anthology, the charming little
Tanagra figures, that is to say, very individual revelations, which
sing the joys and sorrows of a single soul, which seize the graceful
movements and gait of young women who had enraptured a single kneader
of the clay. But these pretty little things, although _chef d’œuvres_
of their kind, are not, however, to be compared with the triumphant
creations prompted by religious belief and patriotism, whose superhuman
splendour fills the centuries.
If we go from pagan antiquity to the Christian Middle Ages and the
free-thinking or the openly atheistic Renaissance, the _rôle_ of art
remains unchanged. For whom does the artist work? Only for the Church
and the palace. The pope, the bishop, the abbot demand of him the
decoration of the cathedral and monastery. The priest under the vaulted
arch, the monk in his refectory—these must have before their eyes
images to remind them of the doctrines of which they are preachers and
servants. The people, when they enter God’s house, must be caught hold
of by the representations of suffering and martyrdoms, of beneficent
and comforting miracles, of the horrors of hell and the bliss of
paradise, and be strengthened in their faith, seeing with their eyes
and touching with their hands what religion teaches. The king’s castle,
the palace of the great vassals, plume themselves on the works of arts
that are consecrated to the glory of their ancestors, of their rank,
or, simply, of the dominant system. Here the stately tombs of kings or
knights, here the statues showing the ancestor as hero or demi-god.
Here the pictures of battles and sieges, of butcheries and victories.
Here the painted memorials of great state ceremonies, triumphal
entries, receptions of ambassadors, conclusions of advantageous
treaties, famous meetings of mighty lords. The object of all this art
is always to flatter the vanity of the great, to impose on the populace
a high notion of their wealth and power, to make it feel, by all
possible means of expression, the superiority of its leaders. We must
go down to the Italian Renaissance in order to discover, by the side of
religious, dynastic, aristocratic, and political art—for historical art
was always designed to serve a political idea or arrangement—in order
to discover, I say, by the side of this prescriptive art, the beginning
of a purely æsthetic art. When Mantegna paints the “Muses on Olympus,”
or Leonardo the “Mona Lisa,” they are no longer desirous of kindling
faith or strengthening subjects in obedience, but they want to enrich
and brighten existence. But whose existence? That of a wealthy and
distinguished patron, of him who has placed the order with them. It is
not before the Renaissance that we see the artist gradually emancipate
himself from the rule that sternly dictates to him the choice of his
theme, and even, up to a certain point, the method of his treatment.
He then acquired to some degree the freedom to follow his own power of
imagination, and could hope to get a return for his creations, even
if he did not serve a dogma or a policy, even if he did not glorify a
saint, a king, or a nobleman; if he simply tried to move a man’s soul
by revealing the secret movements of a human soul.
We see then that, through long centuries, art had the sole task to
serve the great institutions of society: religion, monarchy, or one’s
native country under another form of government, the dominant castes.
The mechanism by which art was held in bondage was the simplest and
most naïve: the artist had no other customer for his works except the
powers that be. These bound him by his necessity to eat daily, or
nearly so. The Church, the king, the republic, the city, the ruler,
gave the artist commissions, and paid him. If he found no patron in
the castle or palace, he had no gold or honour to hope for from any
other quarter. Now neither the Church, nor the Government, nor the
privileged classes were in the habit of throwing their money out of
the window. The money they expended had to bring them profit. They
wanted the artist in their pay to become a champion for their cause,
in exactly the same way as the cross-bowmen of their body-guard, their
judge, their herald, steward, aye, their jailer and executioner. Art,
in those days, preached the fear of God and his servants, submission to
the king and the State, respect for nobles and officials. The ruling
powers made the artist suggest to the people all that was favourable
to them. Art was the school of the good subject, the artist the main
prop of priestly and monarchical-aristocratic society. The common herd,
the million, found none of their human emotions satisfied in art; the
voices that rang out of these works only cried to them: “Pray, obey,
tremble.”
The Netherlanders, a free people, were the first to know an art
other than the traditional one. In Flanders and Holland, writers,
and especially painters, began to speak no longer exclusively of God
and the saints, the king and the great, but of the humble, obscure,
and nameless multitude. _Genre_ painting revived for the first time
since ancient days. It told the everyday life of the middle and
lower classes, their somewhat gross joys, their somewhat commonplace
sorrows; it showed the ale-house and the mill, the sitting-room and
the retail shop. This was not edifying, it is true. The philosophy of
this art is low; it hardly widens the spiritual horizon, and is of
poor comfort amid the narrowness and bitterness of real life. And yet
this art was a forerunner. It denoted a turning-point, the beginning
of great and important things. One great king, Lewis XIV., was not
deceived about it. With the sharpened keen feeling of the mighty for
everything that can encroach on their superhuman dignity, he perceived
at once that this new art offended against his kingly majesty. How?
There are painters who dare to treat of plebeian subjects! What should
that mean? Does art perhaps even fancy that it can be other than a
continual homage to the greatness and omnipotence of kings? And, with
an annihilating wave of his hand, he banished from his august presence
these daring little pictures, these democratic works of Teniers,
Ostade, Dirk Hals, and Gerard Dow, whilst uttering the historic words:
“_Enlevez-moi ces grotesques._”
But time stands not still; development is achieved. Modern democracy
appears, and transposes all the conditions of existence of society and
its members. Art cannot escape the general revolution. It experiences
its influence spiritually and economically; changes its judgment hall
and its mart. We do not realise the tremendous meaning of this change.
The court that decided as to the worth of the artist and his work was
formerly the small circle of possible patrons—princes of the Church,
the great, the courtiers. To-day this court is criticism, professional
criticism. In earlier times it was enough for the artist to please a
few people, perhaps only one individual, if the latter happened to be a
magnate. He had not to trouble himself about the crowd; moreover, the
crowd followed docilely the lead from above. When Dante said:
“Credete Cimabue nella pintura
Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
Si che la fama di colui oscura;”—
What did _grido_ mean? What was _fama_? It was the opinion of a court,
that of Rome or Pisa, perhaps of Ravenna. We must go to Aretino to
discover a specimen of an art critic who was neither a Mæcenas like
Leo X. or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or even a painter like Vasari,
but merely an audacious spirit who arrogated to himself the right of
dealing out praise and blame, and conferring glory in the name of
something absolutely novel, in the name of public opinion.
From that time it is professional criticism which suggests to the
multitude, and imposes on the mighty, its judgment on the artist.
But the criticism is disinterested, or at least can be so. It does
not expect of the work of art a direct personal advantage, its own
glorification, the vindication of its spiritual and material influence.
Its measure, therefore, grows larger and broader. It brings to its
office philosophical and æsthetic considerations, which the popes and
kings could not know when they gave commissions to the artists, their
_protégés_. In order to secure success, the artist must now please
the critic—many critics—and the latter pass a verdict on him with
perceptions, with taste and spiritual prepossessions that very seldom
are those of the bishops and great men.
And as the artist has got another tribunal, he also comes before the
public under other material and spiritual conditions, and seeks in
other ways a market for his work.
In feudal times, as we have seen, the church and palace were the places
for works of art. They were seen there under circumstances little
favourable for a purely æsthetic appreciation. In the cathedral people
were intimidated by the significance of the vast space, the acts of
faith, and the perfume of incense; in the castle, by the magnificent
garments of the officials, and the weapons of the guard. It was in
1673 that a “Salon,” _i.e._, a regular art-exhibition, was opened in
Paris; and besides the “Salon” public museums were opened everywhere,
to which every one had access without invitation or introduction.
The artist was now quite independent; he could work without waiting
for orders. He no more needed, in order to become known, to crave
humbly a visit to his possibly poverty-stricken studio. Here was
a definite place where he could exhibit his work to thousands of
spectators—connoisseurs, judges, possible buyers. From that time he
worked with an eye to the great public which was sure not to be lacking
at his regular rendezvous. If the professional critic became his judge,
the mass of people became his Mæcenas. Universal suffrage has dethroned
Church and royalty, and remains the artist’s only patron.
I say expressly—the only. It still happens that the State, _i.e._, a
high official, perhaps a monarch, orders works, assigns to the artist
the task of adorning churches and palaces, perhaps even public places
and walks, or even creating a monument of political import. But who
receives these commissions? The artist pointed out by public opinion,
_i.e._, the democratic crowd acting under the suggestion of the
critics, who also belong to the crowd. The artist who has gained the
advantage of an officially favoured position otherwise than by popular
acclamation, who owes it to the whim of a ruler, the mere favouritism
of a bishop or some other great personage, is nowadays not esteemed,
but despised. He may receive some alms in the shape of money; he may
collect ridiculous titles and wretched tags of coloured ribbons, but he
will be branded with the name of court-artist, and this name excludes
him irredeemably from fame.
The literary man in earlier times lived by the favour of a protector,
whom alone he had to trouble about pleasing. Nowadays he lives,
through newspapers and books, by the public at large. The dramatic
poet had, for his productions, only the subsidised theatre, the
theatre royal, which imposed on him its regulations. To-day this
theatre is insignificant as compared with the free and independent
stage, and the poet need know no other care and consideration than
that of getting a good grip on his public. Then the artist had
nothing to hope for, unless he served religion, the monarchy, or the
aristocracy. Now subjects from these spheres have actually become
laughing-stocks—_pompiers_, as they are termed with an expression of
contempt; and the artist, if he would become rich and famous, must
fish for his subjects in other streams of thought. This is so true
that there are rulers who, from feeling that art is making itself
independent of them, and will no longer serve as the herald of their
thoughts, try even to produce works of art, and would impress their
works on the admiration of the multitude, which, nevertheless, does not
admire.
The great revolution is consequently accomplished; art now works only
for the masses. It is still always the State that commissions; it is
still always the few rich who buy; but it is really universal suffrage
that imposes on them its own inclinations. But we do not believe that
that new Mæcenas, the people at large, has other habits of mind or ways
of acting than had the Mæcenas of the past. The people too, exactly
like the priests and kings of old, demands that art should please and
flatter it. But it further demands something else, something more than
pleasure and obsequiousness—viz., a high satisfaction, a corrective
of an evil of which it is perhaps not clearly conscious, but which,
nevertheless, it feels strongly. And I will now try to point out this
evil.
One of the most striking phenomena of modern life is specialisation
applied to all departments. Every one tills merely a very little bit
of field or rather he ploughs only one and the same furrow. This is
true of mental craftsmen. It is still more true of handicraftsmen.
What existence does such a man lead nowadays? There is no longer one
who fabricates an entire chair. One always makes the arms, another the
legs, a third the back, a fourth the cane-work. A knife goes through a
dozen hands, a needle, I believe, through thirty. In order to attain
that extreme skill which competition demands of him and which he must
supply, if he would earn his bread, the workman continually repeats
the movement, becomes a machine, less than a machine, a tiny part of
a machine, a single wheel, a single screw. His being shrivels up, his
soul suffers. All development is denied him; all his faculties, except
the one he is always employing, become crippled, and disappear. The man
gradually sinks almost to the low level of a polypus, which is only an
organ of a hydramedusa.
Whence comes the strange fascination that the foremost men of the
Italian Renaissance exercise on us? The reason is that they were
complete men. All their faculties were fully developed—all that
offered a possibility in them was developed to the utmost. Nothing
human was alien to them. With marvellous freedom they circumscribed
the whole circle of human knowledge and faculties. Then the learned
man was an universal scholar; his knowledge was encyclopædic. The
poets were at the same time men of action. Men of rank were artists
and writers, and the artists were all they wished to be. Michael
Angelo painted, modelled, built the cupola of St Peter’s, and wrote
charming verses. Benvenuto Cellini handled the spatula as well as the
mallet, the crayon as well as the pen, and the sword as well as all
these tools. Macchiavelli governed as wonderfully as he wrote, and
Leonardo painted the “Last Supper” between a musical composition, a
treatise on mechanics, a plan of a fortification, the model of a
triumphal car, and the plan of a canal for the purpose of irrigation.
Count Castiglione’s “Cortegiano” shows us the ideal of the man at
the time of the Renaissance. He was probably the fairest flower ever
produced by the human plant. The modern man may envy him; he can never
be his peer, but must shrivel up in his narrow corner. Hypertrophy of
a single, often subordinate faculty, atrophy of all the rest—such is
the lot to which he is ruthlessly condemned. And there is no change
possible in respect of it; no herb grown can prove an antidote to that
bane. Division of labour gives to the whole advantages too great to be
dispensed with out of consideration for the individual. Division of
labour is the true condition of all progress, though in this case, as
in so many others, progress exacts a heavy, very heavy, price for its
services.
Every one is painfully aware of this reverse side of progress; many
consciously take themselves to task for it. Why has the madhouse
philosophy which extols the superman been able to subjugate
spirited youth? Because it meets the longing for a fuller life of
the personality. And anarchism? What is the secret that makes it
attractive to true consciences and loving hearts? Nothing except that
anarchy seems to promise unchecked development of the individuality.
In all these nonsensical, wild, and criminal movements there is
some little revolt against the pinching and tightening in of the
personality entailed by the modern conditions of labour, and this is
the ingredient that recruits adherents among those unaccustomed to
rigorous examination of their thoughts. And when the workmen demand an
eight-hours’ day, what do they want? To find time to go and drink at
the public house, to be able to idle, as the ill-wishers who calumniate
them assert? No; they want to have a few hours in which to cease to be
mechanical tools, in which they may again be men, and participate in
the great life of the community.
But by what means can we give back to men what division of labour
and specialisation—these irrefragable consequences of contemporary
progress—have taken from them? By what means can we remake beings
developed from them harmonic? Perhaps in a very distant future science
will effect this necessary, demanded, and longed for miracle. Perhaps
mankind will once more see these workers who earn their bread during a
part of the day by handicraft, and during the rest of the time linger
on the highest summits of human thought and knowledge; a Socrates, who
is a stonemason; a Spinoza, who polishes spectacle glasses. But, as I
have said before, that will be feasible only in a very remote future,
for science is not easily accessible; the way leading to it is long and
rough, and the full life through science is possible only to men of a
higher spiritual development than the average people nowadays.
But if science is no longer the usual companion of the man of the
masses, and, unfortunately, will not be so for a long time, art, on the
other hand, admits him to familiar intercourse. No tedious initiation
is requisite for it, nor any hard labours which the majority cannot
perform. It is sufficient to have eyes and ears, and a human heart
in one’s breast. After an apprenticeship, which may be very short;
after some habituation which one easily acquires by intercourse with
beautiful works, almost every one arrives so far that, even if he
cannot appreciate the technical and philosophical merits of a work of
art with consciousness, yet he can feel its charm and be susceptible of
emotions from it.
Art it is, then, which can give to modern humanity what it most
needs—the means of attaining the full life. Here lies, unless I am
deceived, the greatness, the lofty mission of art in a democratic
society which rests on a civilisation, the marks of which, the real
condition of which, are severe specialisation and division of labour
carried to an extreme.
Art raises man out of industrialism and introduces him to a higher
world. In this artist-created world the man who is bundled together
stretches himself straight; the shrivelled broadens out; the fraction
of a man becomes complete. Here he who belongs to his machine or
observation-instrument becomes once more a free man and citizen of the
world—a man participating in the life of the community, and enjoying
with the rest all the beauties of heaven and earth, all the greatness
of heart and soul of the pick of men. Through art a person imprisoned
in his daily avocation comes into communion with all civilisation.
Here is the paradise to which the astronomer descends from his
constellations, to which the miner ascends from his pit, in order to
participate in the same joys and raptures, to bring to flower whatever
potentialities they possess. The mission of art in society present and
future is, in short, to liberate the prisoner of subdivided labour,
to restore the dignity of manhood to the being degraded into a little
wheel of a machine.
But art, which is to fulfil this new and lofty mission, cannot,
manifestly, be conventional art. On this theocracy, monarchy, and
aristocracy have stamped the character that suited them. The multitude
at the present day find no sort of joy in works which depict to
them the bliss of paradise and the torments of hell, which extol
some paste-board king with crown and sceptre, which offer for their
admiration the greatness of blue-blooded privileged beings. Like the
patrons of earlier times, the people, who now represent Mæcenas of
old, are interested in art only for themselves. The sources of their
emotions in art are the emotions of their own lives. In the work of
art that is to attract them, they must find themselves again, but, as
formerly the priest and king did, magnified and ennobled. The work of
art must show him his own likeness, but a beautiful one; it must raise
the people in their own eyes, and teach them to respect themselves.
This the common realism has not comprehended, which broke in on art
with a din, and dared to call upon the democracy. The genuine people
has never had a mind to realism of this sort, but has always dismissed
it roughly. The rough proof of a hateful and tedious reality, such as
the pictures of Courbet or Bastien Lepage, has never attracted any but
the superfine, and this only, by the well-known psychological law of
contrast, whereby an impression that is the exact opposite of the usual
impression can impart a pleasurable feeling for a short time. The rich
and luxurious like to see works of ugliness and misery; the poor and
afflicted do not like them. It is the same in regard to literature.
Reluctant protests have frequently become loud, in these socialistic
days, against the realism which a party organ offers its readers.
The working class do not wish to know anything about this realism
which professes to be modern and democratic, yet is, in reality, only
wretched and repulsive. It coops them up in the narrowness of their
everyday existence, but their wish is to get out of it.
Pictures such as Millet’s, sculptures such as Constantin
Meunier’s—works which seek to show the dignity and beauty of the
occupations of the masses, which constitute a hallowing of work, an
apotheosis of the tragedies and idylls, of all the sweet and bitter
emotions of the people’s life—these works, to my thinking, exhibit the
type of future art.
Some great genius will, perhaps, find another formula. What one may,
however, say for certain is this, that the art of the future will
not be realistic in the narrow sense of the word. But it will not be
mystical and æsthetic either. The people will never interest themselves
in half-tone angels of boundless length, in violet-hued Virgins
with lilies in their hands in a conventional bush, in enigmatical,
mysterious verses. And esoteric art will never give the people what
they need, viz., the liberating ideal. The art of the cultivator of the
Ego, the _dilletante_, of the snobs of a Talmi-aristocracy, presumes
to demand the future for itself. Is that to be an art of the future,
an art of progress? One can only laugh at the notion. The art of the
future will be no “little chapel,” but a mighty cathedral, wide enough
to admit the whole of mankind. And that will be exactly its vocation:
to be the hallowed place wherein mankind will rise again to the
childship of God for which religion has educated them in past stages of
evolution.
II
SOCIALISTIC ART
CONSTANTIN MEUNIER
Is there a socialistic art? Can such a thing exist? So far as Socialism
is an economic and political philosophy it is hardly comprehensible
with the means of expression of art. If the plastic arts are to
be instructive, they do not amount to more than chill symbols and
halting allegories. On the other hand, they are not prevented from
digging down to the psychical roots of Socialism, and presenting the
fundamental feelings and ultimate intuitions from which it springs. One
of these fundamental feelings is pity for the disinherited. One of the
ultimate intuitions is that of the dignity of all work done with moral
earnestness and entire devotion.
The artist can show us the destitute, to whose presence amidst our
civilisation applies more sharply, what the Psalmist[2] asserts of the
life of man in general: “And if it has been splendid, it has been toil
and labour”—toil and labour without a ray of happiness; severe physical
exertion rendered more wretched by sorrow and distress. Such a picture
grips our hearts, and urges on us painful questions: is this misery
inevitable? Is it cruelly ordained by nature herself or a consequence
of faulty institutions, capable of improvement on the part of man?
Cannot we introduce into the lot of this ill-used brother something of
joy?
And the artist can also show us the worker, not in want and suffering,
like the beast of burden, humiliated into the slave of matter, but
rather as creating eagerly, proud of displaying his strength, joyful
in the conviction of success, regarding his skill as his honour. This
aspect fills us with respect, perhaps with admiration. It opens to us
the comprehension of the import of the workman, and the lofty reality
of his achievement.
In both cases the artist fashions fully from life; he need not
exaggerate, he need add nothing; he can confine himself to the plain
facts of life. He need not betray any prejudice or any extra-artistic
aim. He will, nevertheless, so contrive that one will be able to speak
without falsification of his art as of a socialistic one. For his work
will put the spectator in the mood in which he will be inclined to hail
as progress every transformation which can improve the earthly lot of
the worker, and increase his value in the community.
The school of æsthetes, which maintains the principle of art for art’s
sake, will, I grant, admit works of this sort as a form of Socialism,
indeed, but not as a form of art. I do not belong to this school. I
oppose it at all times and everywhere as strongly as I am able. I am
convinced that art has a social mission which reaches far beyond mere
gratification, that it must necessarily be moral, and, in the highest
sense of the word, useful; not useful in the simple way of painted or
chiselled aids to intelligence, not moral in the vulgar way of tracts;
but moral through stimulating what is most human and noble in our
spirit and soul, and useful through educating us to deeper and wider
conceptions of phenomena. In one point, however, I agree with the
heralds of _l’art pour l’art_—I demand beauty in a work of art; not
beauty alone, but beauty in the first place.
In order, then, that we can speak of a Socialistic art, the works
that would deserve this designation must not only excite sympathy
with the disinherited, and respect for the workman, but they must
also arouse æsthetic feeling, they must be beautiful. This claim, of
course, excludes no kind of beauty. The tragic is absolutely beautiful.
Purification is one of the most powerful æsthetic influences. Truth
can be beautiful if essential and expressive. The socialist who would
prove himself an artist must possess the lucky gift to see and exhibit
beauty in the figures and actions of the class of society for which his
heart beats.
All these conditions no contemporary artist known to me fulfils in
the same degree as Constantin Meunier, the Belgian sculptor, painter,
and draughtsman. Meunier died an old man in 1905. He was born in the
‘thirties’ of the last century. The world was slow to recognise him,
not because he did not deserve recognition, but because he did not seek
it. He was big and unassuming. He lived quietly in a little Belgian
town as a teacher in an art school, and modestly avoided the roar of
fame’s mart. He had even refused to allow the reproduction of one of
his noble bronzes, for business purposes, by a first-rate Paris house
which was prepared to pay a munificent price for the right of sale. He
was loth that his piece should become a factory-cast and a shop-window
article. He belongs to the narrowest circle of the blessed, of the
chosen. He is one of the Prometheus-like artists; he informs and
inspires life. He feels like a Samaritan, he thinks like an apostle of
the submerged, who utters a great cry of wrath over the harshness and
unrighteousness of the social scheme, and he compels the bronze, like
a Benvenuto Cellini, translated from what was aristocratic and classic
into that which is modern and democratic.
In Meunier’s work there is a unity from which he seldom digresses. He
lived in a Belgian district of coal-pits and smelting furnaces, in the
very midst of rough labourers who passed their lives in the galleries
of mines, or in the fiery glow of furnace mouths. He found his models
among these figures. There the Labour movement in Belgium arose—one of
the most rapid in Europe; there Meunier’s art grew up—one of the most
intensive at the present time. The miner and the iron-smelter are his
heroes; he admires their strength, and from the bottom of his heart
he bewails their pains. And if he is unfaithful to his Cyclopses, it
is only, touched and enraptured, to look after his other darlings—the
country folk working in the fields, a subject which instils in him as
much reverence as the burrowing of the coal-miners underground, and the
powerful hammer-strokes of the iron-smiths.
One of his greatest creations, perhaps his greatest is a bronze a
span high, representing an old woman, the wife or, as I would rather
assume from the stormy intensity of her emotion, the mother of a miner,
who, after a driving storm, has gone to the mouth of the shaft of a
coal-pit, to which the corpse of some one belonging to her has been
brought.