WHISTLER'S ICONOCLASM
It would be difficult to find in the whole history of art writing
another case of a pamphleteer who became as famous with a few
manuscripts as Whistler. Both the "Gentle Art of Making Enemies," edited
by Sheridan Ford, and published in 1890 by William Heineman, London;
Frederick Stokes & Co., New York; and Delabrosse & Co., all in the same
year, and "The Ten O'clock," delivered in London, February, 1885; in
Cambridge, March 24th; and Oxford, April 30th of the following year, and
published in 1888, created a sensation. They scarcely embrace five
thousand words of reading matter.
Whistler's diction was exceedingly terse and poignant and he managed to
say, or at least to suggest to intelligent minds, in a few words a
phrase or maxim, which would exact from more sluggish pens page after
page of argument. Of course, his letters and replies to critics were
written largely for effect. A well turned phrase was to him the ideal of
diction and no doubt he rewrote every sentence a dozen times before he
allowed it to go out to the public. It was to him a part--and a most
serious part--of his profession. And whenever he did not deal with
personalities and approached the technical principle on which his
practice as artist was based, as in his "propositions," his observations
and theories became lucid and convincing. Read his reply to the
criticism which was caused by the withdrawal of two members from the
Society of the British Artists, who left voluntarily knowing that
changes of policy were inevitable under the presidency of Whistler. The
attack in the London Daily News ended as follows:
"It will be for the patrons of the Suffolk-street Gallery to decide
whether the more than half-uncovered walls which will be offered to
their view next week are more interesting than the work of many
artists of more than average merit which will be conspicuous by its
absence, owing to the selfish policy inaugurated.
(Signed) A BRITISH ARTIST."
[Illustration: _Owned by Howard Mansfield_ ARCHWAY, VENICE (PASTEL).]
Whistler answered:
"Far from me to propose to penetrate the motives of such
withdrawal, but what I do deny was that it could possibly be
caused--as its strangely late announcement seemed sweetly to
insinuate--by the strong determination to tolerate no longer the
mediocre work that had hitherto habitually swarmed the walls of the
Suffolk-street.
"This is a plain question of date, and I pointed out that these two
gentlemen left the Society six months ago--long before the
supervising committee were called upon to act at all, or make any
demonstration whatever. Your correspondent regrets that I do not
'go further,' and straightway goes further himself, and scarcely
fares better, when, with a quaintness of _naiveté_ rare at this
moment, he proposes that 'it will be for the patrons of the gallery
to decide whether the more than half-covered walls are more
interesting than the works of many artists of more than the average
merit.' Now it will be for the patrons to decide absolutely
nothing. It is, and will always be, for the gentlemen of the
hanging committee alone, duly chosen, to decide whether empty space
be preferable to poor pictures--whether, in short, it be their duty
to cover walls, merely that walls may be covered--no matter with
what quality of work.
"Indeed the period of the patron has utterly passed away, and the
painter takes his place--to point out what he knows to be
consistent with the demands of his art--without deference to
patrons or prejudice to party. Beyond this, whether the 'policy of
Mr. Whistler and his following' be 'selfish or no,' matters but
little; but if the policy of your correspondent's 'following' find
itself among the ruthlessly rejected, his letter is more readily
explained."
This is some logic and delicious sarcasm. It is to the point and there
is nothing unpleasant in the entire argument. His art challenges and
explanations always impress us in that manner.
That is why his art lecture, if it may be passed as such--it is
exceedingly short as art lectures go--is so much more valuable as a
literary document than his collected letters, though the latter are more
amusing, and give perhaps a better insight into the author's
personality. It is a concise _résumé_ of modern art, not only the
exploitation of one man's ideas, but rather a set of theories which
reflect the thoughts of most of the younger and modern painters. It is
written in a subjective way but the impression derived therefrom is
objective. Whistler was one of the few great representatives of modern
art, and if such a man has the gift to express his idea in a clear
manner, a gift which most painters lack, he will necessarily reflect the
aspirations of his contemporaries. As a piece of literature aside from
the idea conveyed in it, I would compare it to Fromentin's "Le Desert,"
a charming treatise on colour and atmosphere, but as soon as it treats
the more serious problems of art it becomes of deeper significance, and
I, for my part, would not hesitate to mention it in the same breath with
Lessing's "Laokoon." It has neither the dignity nor logical sequence of
the Hamburgh philosopher, but the statements in it are more important,
or at least, more significant to us than any theories of the German
critic. I do not know of any book which is more reflective of modern art
than Whistler's "Ten O'Clock." It filled a big gap, and its influence on
the reasoning power (which, true enough, is small in many instances) of
the modern painter has been far-reaching.
[Illustration: _Owned by Howard Mansfield_
THE JAPANESE DRESS (PASTEL).]
Whistler's literary activity began about 1863, when he lived in Linsey
Row, London. His pictures had been rejected from several leading London
and Paris exhibitions, and, finally, when he succeeded in exhibiting his
"Woman in White" at the Berner Street Galleries, during the spring
months of 1862 (before sending it to Paris), it called forth a storm
of derision and ridicule. His answer to a most silly criticism in the
"Athenæum," that the face of his "Woman in White" was well done, but
that it was not that of Mr. Wilkie Collins' heroine was his first
attempt at repudiation. It was as follows:
"May I beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be
confirmed by a paragraph in your last number? The Berner Street
Galleries have, without my sanction, called my picture the 'Woman
in White.' I had no intentions whatsoever of illustrating Mr.
Wilkie Collins' novel; it so happens, indeed, that I have never
read it. My painting simply represents a girl in white standing in
front of a white curtain. I am,
JAMES WHISTLER."
The reply, in my mind, is rather commonplace. It has, as yet, nothing of
Whistler's fine sarcasm and finished style. Almost anybody could have
written it. The attitude of a critic to accept something as a starting
point, and then to criticize a picture from that point, is such a
commonplace occurrence that it was hardly worth answering.
Also his second literary attempt, more than ten years later, when he
objected to having one of his pictures called "The Yacht Race: A
symphony in B sharp," had little merit except that of indignation.
Whistler was an iconoclast, as fanatic as any, when problems of art were
in question, but his image-breaking was always indirect, "inverted" as
it were; he defended his position by asserting his own beliefs. He, no
doubt, was prompted by his own deep-rooted convictions, but the
stimulant of his literary activity was never based on didacticism: to
bring out an idea because it was a great truth and ought to be brought
out. The stimulant for his utterances was always personal anger,
irritation and wrath. He fought for himself and his art, but not for
others. He was one of the greatest egotists that ever lived. Whenever he
felt hurt at some injustice and stupidity he had to set it aright, no
matter at what cost, to his own satisfaction.
It was not before he was forty-four that he took up letter writing
seriously. In one of his earliest answers he is seen at his best; it was
written as early as 1867 but never published until 1887, when it
appeared in the "Art Journal." Somebody had found fault with him calling
one of his pictures "A Symphony in White," because one of the girls had
reddish hair; and a yellow dress, a blue ribbon and a blue fan had been
introduced into a white tonality. He replied in his vigorous fashion:
"Can anything be more amazing than the stultified prattle of this
poor person? Not precisely a symphony in white ... for there is a
yellowish dress ... brown hair ... and of course there is the flesh
colour of the complexions. Bon Dieu! Did this creature expect white
hair and chalked faces? And does he then in his astounding wisdom
believe that a symphony in F contains no other note, but a
continued repetition of F, F, F, F, F?... Fool!
JAMES WHISTLER."
In this letter he took the right attitude, that of the fighter, who,
with a few penstrokes, annihilated the foolishness of his opponents. If
all his feuds had been of this character, no objection would have been
raised to them. Alas, he did things, frequently, merely to pose as a
wit, to say something that would make London society laugh, caring
little in how malicious and vituperative a manner he would couch his
words. Even when he was wrong and knew that he was wrong he would fight,
as in the _Café Orientale_ incident. A correspondent of the "World"
attacked the title, stating that it had an _e_ too many for French, and
an _f_ too few for Italian. Whistler does not attempt to justify his
orthographical error, but, by telling an anecdote, endeavours to
ridicule all criticism which pretends to such accuracy. It is cleverly
told, but after all it is silly.
Nearly all his friends, sooner or later, were forced into crossing
swords with him. The list is a long one and embraces many well-known
names. He fought with his brother-in-law, F. Seymour Haden, because he
had admired Frank Duveneck's etchings and mistaken them for Whistler's.
He advised Harry Quilter, an art writer, "his bitterest enemy," to
employ his sense of smell in preference to his eyesight; he calls the
art critic P. G. Hamerton, "a certain Mr. Hamerton." He wrangled with
Sir William Eden and even his friend Leyland about the price for ordered
pictures, in each case making the whole transaction public; he attacked
Tom Taylor and F. Wedmore for misquotations in their writings (he who
had been guilty of the same thing himself), he quarrelled with the
Academy when they repainted an old sign of his, "the famous Lion and
Butterfly wrangle;" and wrote most insulting letters to Wyke Bayliss,
who has succeeded him in the presidency. He withdrew all his pictures
from the Paris Exposition, because the American colonel, C. R. Hawkins,
had refused a few of his etchings in a rather impolite manner. The real
reason was lack of space, and one could hardly expect from an American
colonel the manners of a Chesterfield. Surely, Whistler did not possess
them himself. He, at all times, practised more "manner" than manners,
his language had at times an irritating touch of rudeness and
coarseness. The feuds were endless. He continually baited his fellow
artists. He called the pre-Raphaelites "What a damn crew." Legros, Val
Prinsep, W. P. Frith, Sir Frederick Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
were at one time or another recipients. Everybody who came in contact
with him, William M. Chase, "the masher of the Avenues," Theodore Child,
who had to bear the brunt of a pun on his name, etc., all have some
queer experiences to tell about him.
George Moore, who had stood so gallantly by Whistler's side, was thrown
over without much ado as soon as he remained neutral, and did not join
the front ranks of the fighting host in the Sir William Eden episode.
Swinburne did not fare better; nor his friend Stott of Oldham, on whom
he had passed such exaggerated eulogies in the beginning of his career.
Even his oldest friend and supporter, Kennedy, the picture dealer, was
finally bespattered with the mud of Whistler's invectives. His _bon
mots_ and repartee in ordinary life were as significant as those in his
pamphlets, letters and catalogues. We all remember his "Why drag in
Velasquez!" his "Goodness gracious! you don't fancy a man owns a picture
because he bought it," or "Indeed! it is not every man in England I
paint for." Then again talking about Leighton, "Yes, and he paints too."
In meeting Du Maurier and Wilde at one of the exhibitions Whistler burst
forth: "I say, which one of you invented the other, eh!" The famous
repartee, Whistler:--"Nature's creeping up." Oscar Wilde: "Heavens, I
wish I had said that!" "You will," dryly replied Whistler.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York_
MR. KENNEDY: PORTRAIT STUDY.]
Most of his adversaries were smaller men or, at any rate, lacked the
faculty of repartee, and for a witty man it was easy enough to mock them
out of existence. Only Oscar Wilde, who himself made a profession of
scattering corrosive epigrams, occasionally got the best of him. His
sarcastic remark, "With our James, vulgarity begins at home; would that
it might stop there," was one of the sentences that made Whistler lay
aside his pen for a while and ponder on reciprocity. The famous
Whistler _v_. Ruskin libel suit was gotten up, I believe, largely for
effect. It happened naturally enough, but Whistler made the most of it.
And, from the press agent's point of view, it was the opportunity of a
life time.
In 1877 Sir Coutts Lindsey had organized an independent gallery in
opposition to the London Royal Academy. Among the exhibitors were
Burne-Jones, Millais, Leighton and Whistler. The works of the
pre-Raphaelites were praised but Whistler's nocturnes were ignored or
sneered at. He perhaps would have taken no notice of the ordinary
criticisms, but when John Ruskin, who then was in the prime of his fame,
wrote in his "Fors Clavigera," an art publication, a short and most
obtrusive paragraph about the pictures, he put on his paint and feathers
once more and went on the war path. It is incredible how a man like
Ruskin could have ever been so bitter and pedantic, to write the
following paragraph:
"Lastly the mannerisms and errors of these pictures (by
Burne-Jones), whatever may be their extent, are never affected or
indolent. Their work is natural to the painter, however strange to
us; and it is wrought with utmost conscience of care, however far,
to his own or our desire, the result may be yet incomplete.
Scarcely so much can be said for any other pictures of the modern
school; their eccentricities are most always in some degree forced,
and their imperfections gratuitously, if not impertinently
indulged. For Mr. Whistler's sake, no less than for the protection
of the purchasers, Sir Coutts Lindsey ought not to have admitted
works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the
artist so nearly approached the aspect of the wilful imposture. I
have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but
never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for
flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.
JOHN RUSKIN."
The suit went to trial before Judge Huddleston and a special jury,
November 25th, 1878, and Whistler won the case, although one farthing
damages were allowed him. He published a small brown covered paper
pamphlet: "Whistler _v._ Ruskin--Art and Art Critics," the same year.
Not satisfied with his scant victory, he endeavoured to strike back at
his still powerful adversary by publishing a hodge-podge _résumé_ of
Ruskin's writings and deliberately stringing together a number of well
known sentences in such a way that they have no connection whatever.
All this is amusing but smacks of the mountebank.
The Mortimer Menpes incident shows a different side of his nature. It
was a controversy as to who was "the father of the decorative
revolution," Menpes or Whistler. Intensely sympathetic with the work of
Japan's great painters and craftsmen, Menpes' impressions of her cities,
temples, shrines, theatres, gardens, and museums, received during a few
months' stay in that land of delight, are worthy of consideration, but
he had no claim to the decorative innovation, not even to the pink hue
of his house, as Whistler had mixed the colour himself one summer
afternoon, when Menpes was still his pupil. When a dispute was of real
importance Whistler was apt to ignore it entirely, and let others fight
it out for him. It was too serious a matter for exchange of witty
remarks. This shows that Whistler, at times, realized the value of
silence.
Even as there were friends and acquaintances and associates with whom he
never quarrelled, he liked Carlo Pelligrini to the very end. He never
picked a quarrel with Sarasate, nor with the Comte Montesquieu, though
most people did. Charles Keene, the caricaturist, never writhed under
Whistler's "strong arm." Even Sheridan Ford came out unscathed,
although they were never on terms of "commonplace" amity and
acquiescence. Nor did ever his American acquaintances advance to "warm
personal friends." H. W. Singer says in his little monograph that
"Perhaps Whistler's human soul was occupied by a double portion of
malice, invidiousness and pettiness, so that his artistic spirit might
be entirely free and unfettered in its greatness." As good an
explanation as many others.
He wrote down those records he thought important as did Casanova his
amours and Cellini his assassinations and, collected into a book, they
form a sort of autobiography to those who can read between the lines. He
had a way, as Pennell tells us, half-laughing, half-serious, of calling
it his Bible. "Well, you know, you have only to look, and there it all
is in the Bible," or "I am afraid you do not know the Bible as you
should," he would reply to some question about his work or his
experiences as an artist.
As remarked previously, his attacks were remarkably free from all
personal and domestic references, they referred solely to art
transactions related to the profession. Whistler was an artist, and
naturally over-sensitive. He could not help being impatient of
criticisms that utterly failed to see the aim of his work, sometimes
praising him for qualities a painter would blush to possess and again
heaping unmerited blame on admirable achievements. Things really
irritated him and he worked himself into a white fury, often over
nothing. Later on his love for notoriety and his pose made him
exaggerate the importance of events. As in the case of every master,
there were, of course, followers and disciples. To these, the master
held forth, now instilling a principle of art, now relating an encounter
with this or that critic. Mr. Menpes speaks quite truthfully when he
says: "All the same, he was one of the true fearless champions that art
ever had, he fought with the dignity of the artist, demanded
consideration and courteous treatment, and upheld dignity of
workmanship, never tired of exposing and exploiting the ignorance of the
average press critic."
The real Whistler, then, as his closest friends saw him, was an
impulsive, quixotic, erratic, if you like, but, above and beyond
everything else, an artist of indisputable genius who fought a losing
battle for a quarter of a century; jested through it all, and finally
triumphed magnificently. His minor accomplishments were illumined by the
flare of newspaper polemics; his greater and nobler qualities were too
often obscured by the lack of comprehension. Yet there were times when
Whistler gave of his best simply and sincerely to all who had the
perception to receive his gift. Such an occasion was that on which he
delivered for the first time his immortal lecture on art, "Ten O'Clock."
He chose this title because he did not want the people to rush to him
from the dinner table, as to the theatre. Ten o'clock was early enough.
The audience and critics who greeted him in Prince's Hall, London, on
that never to be forgotten occasion, were puzzled by what they chose to
regard as Whistler's "new pose." As a matter of fact, he was not posing
at all, but had called them to him that he might impart to them, out of
his very heart, the standard of artistic faith by which his life was
ruled. It was a revolt not so much against the conclusions of modern
paintings nor a plea for Japanese art (he does not mention Japan except
once in the beautiful final sentence: "The story of the beautiful is
already complete, hewn in the marble of Parthenon--and broidered, with
the birds, upon the fan of Hokusai at the foot of Fusiyama") as against
the pedantic and realistic methods in art, a fierce crusade for the
ideals of painting. His style is virile, individual, marvellously
condensed and suggestive. It contains a number of beautifully put
phrases like: "Art happens--no hovel is safe, no prince can depend
upon it."
[Illustration: THE LIME BURNER (ETCHING).]
"Colours are not more since the heavy hangings of night were first drawn
aside, and the loveliness of night revealed."
"If art be rare to-day it is seldom heretofore." In these aphorisms he
puts his finger on the secret of literary expression--the application of
the simplest and subtlest means to the most complicated and inexistent
subject.
Paragraphs as the following must excite the admiration of every literary
man.
"Alas! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. She has naught in
common with such practices. She is a goddess of dainty thought--reticent
of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better
others."
"She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only--having
no desire to teach--seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions
and at all times as did her priest Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque
grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, and
lamented not that its inhabitants were not Greeks."
Or again:
"Humanity takes the place of art, and God's creations are excused by
their usefulness. Beauty is confounded with virtue and, before a work
of art, it is asked: 'What good shall it do?'"
"Hence it is that nobility of action in his life is hopelessly linked
with the merit of the work that portrays it; and thus the people have
acquired the habit of looking, as who should say, not _at_ a picture,
but _through_ it, at some human fact, that shall, not from a social
point of view, better their mental or moral state. So we have come to
hear of the painting that elevates, and the duty of the painter--of the
picture that is full of thought and of the panel that merely decorates."
Whistler fought principally for three big ideas:
"That the main object of painting was to express the beauty of the
technical medium unalloyed by any exterior motive, independent of time
and place."
"That art was not restricted to any special locality, but universal,
cosmopolitan."
"That art could be understood only by the artist and that all criticism
consequently was futile occupation."
All these arguments have sifted down into the rank and file of the
profession, they have become common property and are continually used in
the every-day conversations of artists. They are all three open to
criticism, and in a way (like all things, according to Walt Whitman)
have done as much harm as good.
That the main object of art is art, cannot be confuted. But what is art
in painting! Is all poetry and sentiment in a painting to be expressed
by the actual handling of the colours, the process of handling and the
mechanism of brushwork! Can all the poetry be contained in the objects
themselves and the way they are painted? It has become the fashion of
artists to say that they are _painters_, not _artists_.
Now what do they mean by this? What is a painter? A person who can
handle the brush and who knows colour, or, in other words, who masters
the tool of his trade. And what is an artist? The term artist is not
limited to one profession. It applies to a musician or a sculptor as
well as painter. In calling somebody an artist we mean to convey that he
has a poetic conception in his work. But he must surely possess an equal
mastery of technique or he would be unable to express it. And is the
painter absolutely void of poetic conception? Surely not. He tries to
get the poetry out of the medium itself, while the artist adds something
from the outside to the medium. In that sense Abbott Thayer, Ryder and
Inness are artists, Sargent and Chase are painters. But how about
Chavannes, Whistler, Israels? I suppose they are both. There we are in a
dilemma. They oppose subject painting; the beauty of the object, the
poetry that is inherent in what they see before them, is supposed to be
sufficient. But they object to the phrase that they are merely
interested in surface beauty, they assert that they search for character
and the inner meaning of things as much as anybody else. In this they
contradict their own and Whistler's argument. Whistler himself was all
his life a subject painter. Of course he has avoided telling stories,
but he has suggested them, and given to each picture that vague note of
interest which every true painting should possess. The main purpose is
to make the picture more interesting. And you cannot make a picture more
interesting without adding something. Painting for painting's sake is an
impossibility. One cannot translate nature and life into colour without
the help of the imagination. A little more or less, what is the
difference?
The second claim, that all art is cosmopolitan, has been welcomed by all
our ex-patriots, who have neither the strength nor the inclination to
discover virgin material in their own country and to translate it into
beauty. It furnishes a marvellous loop-hole for the imitative talent.
Whistler said: "There is no such thing as English art--art is art when
it is good enough." This is at its best merely a truism. We perfectly
agree that only good workmanship makes a painting worthy of the name of
art, but surely Hogarth, Gainsborough and Constable have a true native
flavour in their work, which they could have gained nowhere but on
British soil. All art, when perfect, can command universal appreciation,
but it is perfect in most instances only when it has, perhaps not so
much a local interest, but a local motive or stimulant, i. e. it must
have inhaled the atmosphere of some peculiar locality and the faculty to
exude it again. I believe, Whistler used his argument largely as a
subterfuge, to hide his own enthusiasm for Japanese art. He understood
how to amalgamate the foreign influences and his own individuality (this
I have analyzed at length in some other chapter). His art in a sense was
cosmopolitan, but merely because he was the first to adopt the new
principles of an Eastern art; and it is just as easy to trace American
as Japanese or Old Master traits in his work. I claim that all great art
is local, and mention only three of the greatest painters, Velasquez,
Rembrandt, and Dürer, to prove my argument. They surely were imbued with
the spirit of their time and country. And I am equally certain that a
painter who would express America as it is to-day (as Whitman has done
in his time in literature) would be a greater man than Whistler. The
foremost masters of the nineteenth century, Monet, Manet, Chavannes, and
Whistler, were all innovators in technical problems, for they discovered
new mediums of expression, and, in a way, only prepared the way for more
concentrated expressions of art.
The third great theory of the essay, which consists largely of
Whistler's arrogant assertions as to the superiority of the artist and
his own hatred for so called connoisseur, dilettante, and critic, has
made a very proud man of the painter. Imagine an ordinary wielder of the
brush reading the following sentence: "Vulgarity--under whose
fascinating influence 'the many' have elbowed 'the few,' and the gentle
circle of Art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity, whose
leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where the gods once spoke in
whispers.
"And now from their midst the dilettante stalks abroad. The amateur is
loosed. The voice of the æsthetic is heard in the land, and the
catastrophe is upon us.
"The artist in fulness of heart and head is glad, and laughs aloud, and
is happy in his strength, and is merry at the pompous pretension--the
solemn stillness that surrounds him."
Whistler lashed himself into the belief that he was the sole judge of
his work. This is a very erroneous attitude. Creation is an unconscious
process. Few artists have the critical faculty to analyze their work,
and years pass before he is able to get a clear view of his own work. If
we were an art-loving nation things would be different, but interest in
painting has become a privilege of the rich and of museums; it is too
remote to be considered an immediate pleasure. It needs some kind
intermediator to bring about more sympathy between the public and the
artist. What writers, who can write and to whom the smell of paint is
not unfamiliar, see in a picture, is one thing. What a painter desires
to express is an entirely different proposition, but this is no reason
to find fault with the writer. What he says may be explanatory and
interesting. A work of art is made to arouse sensations, pure or
æsthetic, emotions and vagrant thoughts, and they will differ vastly in
every beholder. This may be beyond the pale of unattached writers and
gentlemen clerks of collections and appointed preachers, into which
Whistler has divided the critics, but there is no argument necessary to
make any reader believe that authors like Hawthorne, the Goncourts, Guy
de Maupassant, Paul Heyse, Mallarmé, knew how to write about art.
Whistler also laughed at the pretence of the state as a fosterer of art.
In this he was right. Art can not be forced upon a community. It is a
matter of individual appreciation. It is a matter of conquest.
But this is, after all, a busy world we are living in, and unless things
are pointed out to us we may overlook them or not even learn of their
existence, no matter how hungry we may be for new sensations. And that
is the crucial point where the art writer may prove useful. The majority
of artists entertain no kindly feeling towards art writers. In their
just anger with critics, who arrogate to themselves the right of telling
an artist how he should have done his work, they forget that the real
writer on art, misnamed critic, has quite a different aim, and is their
best friend. For he takes upon himself the duty of mediating between
artist and public. Without him, we may say, the true artist is nowhere.
True art (in opposition to commercial work and all vulgar practices to
which pictorialism is put) is a difficult matter to comprehend. When
the public, composed of people whose energy is drained almost to
exhaustion by daily associations and occupations, suddenly encounters a
new phase of art, it can no more formulate a just opinion of it than it
could when placed face to face with the tablets of Karnak and Sakkarah.
Just as the electrician in a new invention must explain the working of
natural forces, so must the "critic" explain the work of the artistic
forces which come into play in the production of a picture. Most artists
have become popular--as far as the true artist can become popular--only
after the eyes of the public have been opened by some critic. Such
artists as find no apostle to proclaim their creed die unattended. Many
an artist left his family in poverty; but after his death critics dwelt
at length upon the beauties of his pictures, and only then the public
began to pay enormous prices for them.
And Whistler himself! Does he not refute his own contempt by his
Barnum-Boulanger-like use of the press? True enough all his little
squibs and elaborate bids for notoriety had some underlying truth which
he wished to express. But if ever an artist realized the power of type
it was Whistler.
As for the ordinary critic--he deserves our deepest sympathy. He proves
beyond dispute "that there is something rotten" in our art
appreciation. Old Japan and the Primitifs knew them not. He is harmless,
however, as he has absolutely nothing to do with art. He is a necessary
evil produced by the shortcomings of the time. Anatole France's remark
about art criticism, that it should be the adventure of one's soul among
masterpieces, is enough, but he forgets that the adventure should be the
experience of a literary artist. For the only criticism that is lasting
is either biographical in tendency or artistic commentary, which by a
new work of art reflects the beauty of the original. If a picture is
really beautiful, one should be able to write a poem about it, or
express it in music, dancing or some other art.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ (LITHOGRAPH).]