materials can be practised with and understood, and even if invention
in design can never be taught, on the negative side there are certain
guides and finger-posts that may at least prevent lapses of taste, and
loss of time.
The designer may learn what different means are at his disposal for
the expression of line and form; for the colour and beauty of nature,
recreated in the translucent glass or precious enamel, or speaking
through the graphic printed line or colour of the wood-block--eloquent
in a thousand ways by means of following the laws of certain materials
in as many different arts.
What are the qualities demanded of a designer in such arts? quickness
of invention and hand, power of direct definition of form. The
expressive use of firm lines; sensitive appreciation of the value
of silhouetted form, and the relief and effect of colours one upon
another; perception of life and movement; knowledge of the growth
and structure of plants; sense of the relation of the human form to
geometric spaces, and power over its abstract treatment, as well as
over the forms of the fowls of the air and beasts of the field.
[Illustration: Royal College of Art: Modelling School under Prof.
Lanteri
Panel by Vincent Hill]
This is a glimpse of the vista of the possibilities of teaching methods
opened up by the arts of design, and in so far as those arts are
understood and practised and sought after as important and necessary to
the completion of a harmonious and refined life, so will our methods of
art instruction have to adapt themselves to meet those new old demands.
NOTE ON TOLSTOI’S “WHAT IS ART?”
Count Tolstoi’s book is, for the most part, a very fierce and trenchant
attack upon modern, as well as some ancient art, from the point of view
of a social reformer and an ascetic and iconoclastic zealot. In a true
Christian spirit he denounces nearly everybody and everything, and
indeed, metaphorically speaking, and to his own satisfaction at least,
first sacks and burns the houses of the aesthetic philosophers from
Baumgarten to Grant Allen, flinging their various definitions of beauty
to the winds; and he proceeds to make a bonfire of the most eminent
names and works, both ancient and modern, and including Sophocles,
Euripides, Æschylus, Aristophanes, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare;
Raphael, Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgement,” parts of Bach and
Beethoven; Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Puvis de Chavannes,
Klinger, Böcklin, Stück, Schneider, Wagner, Liszt, Berlioz, Brahms,
and Richard Strauss;--no English need apply, I was about to say, but
he includes Burne-Jones. And then, waving his torch, he points to the
regeneration of art in the re-organization of Society, tempered by the
opinion of the plain man and--leaves the question still burning.
Of an ideal of beauty in art he will have none. Beauty appears to his
ascetic mind (or mood) as something synonymous with pleasure, and
therefore more or less sinful and to be avoided: yet, realist as he
appears to be at times, he is quite as vague and idealistic as the
idealists he scorns when he speaks of a “Christian art” which is to
take the place of modern corruptions. Tolstoi’s view of art, too, is
practically limited to literature, the drama, music, painting, and
sculpture. (I am afraid he did not know of the Art Workers’ Guild when
he wrote his book, and seems ignorant of William Morris and the English
movement.)
Only towards the end of the work (p. 171) does he mention “ornamental”
art, or rather he speaks of “ornaments” (including “China dolls”)
and remarks that such as these “for instance, ornaments of all kinds
are either not considered to be art, or considered to be art of a
low quality. In reality” (however, he says), “all such objects, if
only they transmit a true feeling experienced by the artist and
comprehensible to everyone (however insignificant it may seem to us to
be) are works of real good Christian art.”
He then becomes aware, recalling his denial of “the conception
of beauty” as supplying “a standard for works of art” that he is
in an inconsistent position, and turns round and says that “the
subject-matter of all” kinds of ornamentation consists not in the
beauty, but in the feeling (of admiration of, and delight in, the
combination of lines and colours) which the artist has experienced
and with which he infects the spectator. This seems to be a cumbrous
and roundabout way of saying that the thing is admired because it is
beautiful.
Tolstoi, however, seems to have a rooted idea that there is something
essentially selfish and narrow about the conception and ideal of
Beauty and that it must be something necessarily exclusive, appealing
only to a privileged or cultured class. He condemns the beauty which
only appeals to a few, but admits that which appeals to many, though
not because of its beauty, but because it unites so many in a common
feeling of admiration.
The horrible word “infection” is constantly used. I do not know how far
this may be the fault of the translation, and whether it is the exact
equivalent for the Russian phrase, but somehow it has not a pleasant
association as applied to the reception of ideas of art. Tolstoi says:
“Art remains what it was and what it must be--nothing but the infection
by one man of another, or of others, with the feelings experienced by
the infector.”
This is his main point throughout--the communicable power of art, and
he values it, apparently, solely for this power.
But this power of infection, as he calls it, is not the exclusive
possession or distinctive characteristic of art. A man with a
disease may “infect” another, but you don’t call it art. A fire may
communicate some of its warmth to those who are cold, but we don’t call
it art. An angry man may punch you and infect you with his anger, so
that you punch him in return, but we don’t call it art--unless the art
of self-defence is allowed to be an art.
It is true one is aware of the sort of physical test of good
poetry--that it causes a shiver down the spinal column; and it is
generally a true one, but whether it represents the shiver felt by the
poet in writing one is not quite certain.
Besides, surely a work of art may communicate or suggest something more
than was actually in the mind or emotions of the artist at the time,
as by the power of association it may awaken different thoughts and
feelings in many different minds.
To limit fine art only to those forms which are capable of appealing to
everybody, and which communicate feelings and ideas which can be shared
by humanity at large, must necessarily limit it to few and simple forms
and types. No doubt Tolstoi fully realizes this, and he even recognizes
that the art of the most universal appeal at the present day is apt
to be rather trivial in form, such as “a song, or an amusing jest,
intelligible to every one, or a touching story, or a drawing, or a
little doll” (p. 165), and he elsewhere says that the producer of such
things is doing far more good than the elaboration of a work to be
appreciated only by a few.
Historic, romantic, or poetic art seems to have no attractions for
Tolstoi. In fact, he jumps upon what he terms poetic art with immense
vigour, and reserves his greatest vials of scorn for some of its modern
exponents. He seems to have little perception of the law of evolution
either in life or in art, which accounts for its very varied forms,
and different spirit in different ages, and among different races and
social conditions. Nor does he seem to recognize that every age demands
a fresh interpretation of life in art. Form, spirit, and methods in art
all change with the different temper of the times.
Tolstoi plays havoc with the critics, and his exposure of the shams,
imitations, and pretentiousness in many forms of modern art is
unsparing and often too true; and one feels in hearty sympathy with
his desire for spontaneity and sincerity in art, as well as for a
social state, a true co-operative commonwealth in which again might be
realized that unity of purpose and sentiment upon which all forms of
art depend for their widest appeal.
Tolstoi’s ideal of a state in which all contribute to the useful labour
of the community is a fine one, and, of course, this would condemn none
to a life of monotonous toil or drudgery; but would afford leisure for
thought and cultivation of the arts by those who had the real capacity
in them; no one being attracted by commercial advantage or material
profits, since, under these conditions, arts would be the spontaneous
outcome of life, and freely offered for the good of the community in
the joy of producing it.
Tolstoi’s real strength lies in his zeal for and advocacy of such a
simple communal life, and this gives the real force to his arguments
for a corresponding simple and universal art; and, indeed, one feels
that it is this conception and his religious views that are always
dominant in his mind, and existing forms of art are frankly condemned
or approved so far as their influence is unfavourable or favourable to
such views of life.
In a remarkable footnote on p. 170, however, he allows that he is
“insufficiently informed” in all branches of art, and that he belongs
to the class of people whose taste is “perverted,” that “old inured
habits” may cause him to “err,” and he goes on to consign certain works
of his own to the category of “bad art.”
His deeply rooted idea that all good art must convey a definite message
which can be universally understood gives the impression that he only
values art in so far as this definite message can be read in it; and,
by his denial of the validity of beauty as an ideal and object in art,
he removes himself, curiously enough, from where his sympathies lie
really, from the acknowledgment and appreciation of the far-reaching
influence of beauty in the commonest things of daily life--things of
use which the touch of art makes vocal--things without which even the
Tolstoian ideal of simple useful life would be impossible, to which the
spontaneous and traditional handicraft art of the peasant in primitive
countries has so largely contributed, and which reveal more definitely
the character and artistic capacity and feeling of a people than whole
galleries of self-conscious painting and sculpture.
OF THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ON THE SENSE
OF BEAUTY
That modern conditions of life are destructive to the sense of
beauty I do not doubt, yet I am by no means sure that sensitiveness
to beauty--or to its absence--in our daily surroundings is so very
common (or even that there is a common understanding as to the idea of
beauty), that such a proposition would obtain general assent without
further explanation, and, as I have undertaken to open the case for the
prosecution, if I may so term it, I will try to make clear my reasons
and conclusions on the matter.
My first witness shall be London, as London is typical and focuses most
of the effects of modern, social, and economic conditions. Now we hear
a great deal of the beauty of London, but probably those who talk of
her beauty are really only thinking of certain beauty-spots. Vast as
London is, most of us really live for the most part in a comparatively
small London. Outside our usual haunts lies a vast unknown region, of
which, indeed, we obtain occasional glimpses on being obliged to travel
across or through the multi-county city.
Those whose London is bounded on the west by Kensington Gardens and
on the east by Mayfair, do not figure to themselves Clerkenwell
or Ratcliff Highway, Bethnal Green or Bow, and would not care to
embrace the vast new suburbs spreading over the green fields in every
direction, or even the comparatively select slums in the shadow of
Belgravian mansions.
Supposing we approached our metropolis by any one of the great railway
lines--there is nothing to indicate we are entering the greatest
and wealthiest city in the world. We pass rows and rows of mean
dwellings--yellow brick boxes with blue slate lids--crowded close
to the railway in many places, with squalid little backyards. We
fly over narrow streets, and complex webs and net-works of railway
lines, telegraph and telephone wires, myriad smoking chimney-pots,
steaming, throbbing works of all kinds, sky-signs and the wonders of
the parti-coloured poster-hoardings, which pursue one into the station
itself, flaring on the reluctant and jaded sight with ever-increasing
importunity and iteration, until one recalls the philosopher who
remarked: “Strange that the world needs so much pressing to accept such
apparently obvious--and sometimes startlingly obvious--advantages.”
All sense of architectural proportion inside the station, however
large, is lost by the strident labels of all sorts and sizes; and
images of all sorts of scales and colours, stick, like huge postage
stamps, wherever likely to catch the eye.
The same thing meets us in the streets; in the busier commercial
quarters, too, it is a common device to hang the name of the firm
in gigantic gilt letters all over the windows and the upper stories
of the shops; while the shops themselves become huge warehouses of
goods, protected by walls of plate-glass, upon the edges of which
apparently rest vast superstructures of flats and offices, playfully
pinned together by telegraph poles, and hung with a black spider’s web
of wires as if to catch any soaring ideas of better things that might
escape the _mêlée_ of the streets.
In the streets themselves a vast crowd of all sorts, sizes, and
conditions is perpetually hurrying to and fro, presenting the sharpest
contrasts in their appearance and bearing. Here the spruce and
prosperous business man, there the ragged cadger, the club idler and
the out-o’-work. Here the lady in her luxurious carriage in purple and
fine linen, and there the wretched seller of matches. Modern street
traffic, too, is of the most mixed and bewildering kind, and the
already perilous London streets have been made much more so by the
motor in its various forms of van and bus, business or private car.
The aspect of a London street during one of the frequent blocks is
certainly extraordinary, so variously sorted and sized are the vehicles
wedged in an apparently inextricable jumble; while the railways and
tubes burrowed underground only add fresh streams of humanity to
the traffic instead of relieving it. Yet it has been principally to
relieve the congested traffic of London that the great changes have
been made which have practically transformed the town, sweeping away
many historic buildings and relics of the past, and giving a general
impression of rapid scene-shifting to our streets.
[Illustration: Wentworth Street, Whitechapel
From a Photograph by F. Frith and Co.]
The most costly and tempting wares are displayed in the shops in
clothing, food, and all the necessities of life, as well as fantastic
luxuries and superfluities in the greatest profusion--“things that
nobody wants made to give to people who have no use for them”--yet,
necessities or not, removed only by the thickness of the plate glass
from the famished eyes of penury and want.
The shops, too, are not work-shops. The goods appear in the windows
as if by magic. Their producers are hidden away in distant factories,
working like parts of a machine upon parts of wholes which perhaps they
never see complete.
Turning to the residential quarters we see ostentation and luxury on
the one hand and cheap imitation, pretentiousness, or meanness and
squalor on the other. We see the aforesaid brick boxes which have
ruined the aspect of most of our towns; we have the pretentious villa
with its visitors’ and servants’ bells; we have the stucco-porticoed
town “mansion,” with its squeezy hall and umbrella stand; or we have
the desirable flat, nearer to heaven, like the cell of a cliff-dweller,
where the modern citizen seeks seclusion in populous caravansaries
which throw every street out of scale where they rear their Babel-like
structures.
I have not spoken of the gloom of older-fashioned residential quarters,
frigid in their respectability, which, whatever centres of light and
leading they may conceal, seem outwardly to turn the cold shoulder to
ordinary humanity, or peep distrustfully at a wicked world through
their fanlights.
Many of the features I have described are found also in most modern
cities in different degrees, and are still more evident in the
United States, where there is nothing ancient to stem the tide of
modern--shall we say progress? In justice to New York, however, one
must note that there is an important movement there among artists and
architects and people interested in municipal affairs in the direction
of checking the excesses of commercialism and in favour of dignity and
beauty in the streets and public places. Such publications as “The
Municipal Journal” bear witness to this, so that there is hope for the
future. So may it be here.
Turning from the aspects of houses to humans--take modern dress--in
our search for the beautiful! Well National if not distinctive
costume--except of the working and sporting sort, court dress,
collegiate robes and uniforms--has practically disappeared, and, apart
from working dress in working hours, one type of ceremonial, or full
dress, is common to the people at large, and that of the plainest kind,
with whatever differences of cut and taste in detail. I mean for men,
of course. Among the undisputed rights of woman the liberty to dress as
she pleases, even under recognized types for set occasions, and with
constant variety and change of style, is not a little important, and
one that has very striking effects upon the aspects of modern life we
are considering. It is true this liberty may be checked by the decrees
of eminent modistes and limited by the opinion of Mrs. Grundy, or the
frank criticism of the boy-in-the-street; and it is more than probable
that the exigencies of trade have something to do with it also.
It is, however, too important an element in the ensemble of life to be
ignored or under-valued in any way, as women’s dress affords one of the
few opportunities of indulging in the joy of colour.
Men suffer the tyranny of the tall hat, as the outward and visible sign
of respectability--surely far more so than Carlyle’s gig. Instead of
“gigmanity,” it has become tophatmanity. The “stove-pipe” is the crown
of the modern king, the financier--the business man--he who must be
obeyed. (I understand it is as much as a city clerk’s place is worth
for him to appear in any other head gear.) Ladies, too, encourage
it--with the black frock coat and the rest of the funereally festive
attire of modern correct man. I suppose the garb is considered to
act as an effective foil to the feast of colour indulged in by the
ladies--as black frames to fair pictures--black commas, semi-colons, or
full-stops agreeably punctuating passages of delicate colour!
The worst of it is that the beauty of women’s dress when it happens
to be beautiful in modern times--as at present--seems to be a matter
of accident and entirely at the mercy of fashion (or commerce!)
here to-day and gone to-morrow, and, alas--tell it not among the
pioneers!--lovely woman, our only hope for variety in colour and form
in modern life, in her determination to descend into the industrial and
professional arena and commercially compete with men, not unfrequently
shows a tendency to take a leaf out of his tailor’s pattern-book, and
to adopt or adapt more or less of the features of modern man’s prosaic,
possibly convenient and durable, but certainly summary and unromantic
attire.
Well, I think, on the whole, the pictures which modern life in London,
or any great capital displays, may be striking in their contrasts,
weird in their suggestions, dramatic in their aspects--anything or
everything in fact, except _beautiful_.
The essential qualities of beauty being harmony, proportion, balance,
simplicity, charm of form and colour, can we expect to find much of it
under conditions which make life a mere scramble for existence for the
greater part of mankind?
Bellamy, in his “Looking Backward,” gives a striking and succinct
image of modern, social, and economic conditions in his illustration
of a coach and horses. The coach is capitalism; it carries a minority;
but even these struggle for a seat and to maintain their position,
frequently falling off, when they either go under, or must help to
pull the coach with the majority, toiling in the traces of commercial
competition.
However these conditions may, among individuals, be softened by human
kindness, or some of its aspects modified by artistic effort, it does
not change the cruelty and injustice of the system or its brutal and
ugly aspects in the main. But, if modern civilization is only tolerable
in proportion to the number and facility of the means of escape from
it, we may find, at least, the beauty of the country, and of wild
nature unimpaired?
Do we? We may escape the town by train, or motor--running the risk, in
either case, of a smash--but we cannot escape commercial enterprise.
The very trees and houses sprout with business-cards, and the landscape
along some of our principal railways seems owned by vendors of drugs.
Turning away our eyes from such annoyances, commercial competition
again has us, in alluring us by all sorts and sizes in papers and
magazines, which, like paper kites, can only maintain their position
by an extensive tail. The tail--that is, the advertisements--keeps
the kites flying, and the serial tale keeps the advertisements going
perhaps, and the reader is obliged to take his news and views, social
or political, sandwiched or flavoured with very various and unsought
and unwanted condiments, pictorial or otherwise, which certainly ruin
artistic effect. Thus public attention is diverted and--nobody minds!
But it is in these ways that the materials of life--whereof the sense
of beauty and its gratification is no unimportant part--are destroyed,
as it were, in getting our living--well, perhaps it would be truer to
say, in some cases, a substantial percentage on our investments.
In obedience to the rule of the great God Trade, too, whole districts
of our fair country are blighted and blackened, and whole populations
are condemned to mechanical and monotonous toil to support the
international race for the precarious world-market.
Under the same desperate compulsion of commercial competition,
agriculture declines and the country-side is deserted. The old country
life with its festivals and picturesque customs has disappeared. Old
houses, churches, and cottages have tumbled into ruin, or have suffered
worse destruction by a process of smartening-up called “restoration.”
The people have crowded into the overcrowded towns, increasing the
competition for employment, the chances of which are lessened by the
very industry of the working-classes themselves, and so our great
cities become blindly huger, dangerous, and generally unlovely, losing,
too, by degrees, the relics of historic interest and romance they once
possessed.
Even in the arts and among the very cultivators of beauty we detect
the canker of commercialism. The compulsion of the market rules supply
and demand. The idea of the shop dominates picture shows, and painters
become as specialized as men of science, and genius requires as much
puffing as a patent medicine. Every one must have his trade label, and
woe to the artist who experiments, or discovers capacities for other
things than his label covers.
Every new and promising movement in art has been in direct protest and
conflict with the prevailing conditions, and has measured its success
by its degree of success in counteracting them, and, in some sense,
producing new conditions. The remarkable revival of the handicrafts
of late years may be quoted as an instance. But it is a world within
a world; a minority producing for a minority, although it has done
valuable work even as a protest, and has raised the banner of handwork
and its beauty in an age of machine industry.