ART IN AMERICA
It is seldom that I have been complimented in America, but a lady has
told me that she envied our "art sense." She said the Chinese are
essentially artistic, that the cheapest thing, the most ordinary
article, is artistic or beautiful. I wished that I could return the
compliment, but a strict observance of the truth compels me to say that
the reverse is true in America. If one go into a Chinese shop and ask
for any ordinary article, it will be found artistic. If one go into an
American shop, say a hardware "store," there will not be found an
article that would be considered decorative, while everything in a
Chinese shop of like character would fall under this head. The
conclusion is that the Chinese are artistic, while the Americans are
not.
The reason lies in the fact that the Chinese are homogeneous, while the
Americans are a mixed race, that is injured by the continual
introduction of baser elements. If immigration could be stopped for
fifty years, and the people have a chance to acquire "oneness," they
might become artistic. The middle class, however, is, from an artistic
standpoint, a horror; they have absolutely no art sense, and the
_nouveaux riches_ are often as bad. The latter sometimes place their
money in the hands of an agent, who buys for them; but all at once a man
may break out and insist upon buying something himself, so that in a
splendid collection of European names will appear some artistic horror
to stamp the owner as a parvenu.
The Americans have not produced a great painter. By this I mean a
really great artist, nor have they a great sculptor, one who is or has
been an inspiration. But they have thousands of artists, and many poor
ones thrive in selling their wares. You may see a man with an income of
thirty thousand dollars having paintings on his walls that give one the
vertigo. The poor artist has taken him in, or "pulled his leg," to use
the latest American slang. There are some fine paintings in America. I
have visited the great collections in Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
Washington, Chicago, and those in many private galleries, but the best
of the pictures are always from England, France, Germany, and other
European countries. Old masters are particularly revered. Americans pay
enormous sums for them, but sometimes are deceived.
They have art schools by the hundred, where they study from the nude
and from models of all kinds. There are splendid museums of art,
especially in Boston and New York. The art interests are particularly
active, but not the people; there are a few art lovers only, the people
in the mass being hopeless. Cheap prints, chromos, and other deadly
things are ground out by the million and sold, to clog still deeper the
art sense of an inartistic people. They laugh at our conventional
Chinese art, but the extreme of conventionality is certainly better than
some of the daubs I have seen in American homes. Americans have peculiar
fancies in art. One is called Impressionist Art. As near as I can
understand it, painters claim that while you are looking at an object
you do not really see it all, you merely gain an impression; so they
paint only the impression. In a museum of art I was shown several rooms
full of daubs, having absolutely nothing to commend them, weird colors
being thrown together in the strangest manner, without rhyme or reason,
but over which people went mad. The great masters of Europe appeal to me
strongly. In America, marine painters attract me the most, for example,
Edward Moran, who is a splendid delineator of the sea. Bierstadt is a
noble painter, and so is Thomas Moran. There are half a hundred men who
are fine painters, but half a thousand men and women who think they are
artistic but who are not.
Americans have developed no individual architecture. You see
semipagoda-like effects in the East, and old English houses in the
South. They steal the latter and call them Colonial. They steal the
architecture of the Moors and call it Mexican. They borrow Roman and
Grecian effects for great public buildings. At one time they went mad
over the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere have I seen purely American
architecture. The race is not possessed of sufficient unity. So all
their art is from abroad, and notably is French and English. They make
broad effects, and give them an American name; but they are copied from
the Dutch or Germans. All the furniture designers in America are
Europeans. You will find a splendid house with a Chinese room, having
teak inlaid with ivory, etc.; a Japanese room, a Moorish room, and an
Italian room, all splendidly decorated; but the family lives in an
"American room," that is commonplace and subversive of all art digestion
and assimilation. The average middle-class American knows absolutely
nothing about art; the lower classes so little that their homes are
hopeless. Knowing this, they are preyed upon by thousands of foreign
swindlers. There are hundreds of articles manufactured in Europe to sell
to the American tourist. I have seen Napoleonic furniture enough to load
a fleet. I can only compare it to the pieces of the true cross and the
holy relics of the Catholics, of which there are enough to fill the
original ark which the Bible tells the Americans landed on Mount Ararat
in a great flood.
The houses of the best people I have told you about are as far removed
from the commonplace as the equator from the poles. They are rich in
conception, sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way, and filled with
the art gems of the world. But these people have descended from refined
people for several generations. They are the true Americans, but make up
a small number compared to the inartistic whole. I believe America
recognizes this, and with her stupendous energy is doing everything to
educate the masses in art. They are building splendid museums; rich men
give away millions. There are hundreds of art schools, free to all, and
art is taught in all the schools. Fine monuments are placed in public
squares and parks, and beautiful fountains and memorials in these and
other public places. Their buildings, though foreign in design, are
beautiful. In Boston one may see marvelous work in frescoes, etc., and
in the Government buildings at Washington. The Capitol, while not
American in design, is a pile worthy of the great people who erected it.