I
Possibly it is a purely subjective impression, but I seldom face a
masterpiece in art without suffering a slight melancholy, and this
feeling is never influenced by the subject. The pastoral peace that
hovers like a golden benison about Giorgione's Concert at the Louvre,
the slow, widowed smile of the Mona Lisa, the cross-rhythms of Las
Lanzas, most magnificent of battle-pieces, in the Velasquez Sala at
the Prado, even the processional poplars of Hobbema at the National
Gallery, or the clear cool daylight which filters through the window
of the Dresden Vermeer--these and others do not always give me the
buoyant sense of self-liberation which great art should. It is not
because I have seen too often the bride Saskia and her young husband
Rembrandt, in Dresden, that in their presence a tinge of sadness
colours my thoughts. I have endeavoured to analyse this feeling. Why
melancholy? Is great art always slightly morbid? Is it because of
their isolation in the stone jails we call museums? Or that their
immortality yields inch by inch to the treacherous and resistless
pressure of the years? Or else because their hopeless perfection
induces a species of exalted envy? And isn't it simply the
incommensurable emotion evoked by the genius of the painter or
sculptor? One need not be hyperaesthetic to experience something akin
to muffled pain when listening to certain pages of Tristan and Isolde,
or while submitting to the mystic ecstasy of Jan Van Eyck at Ghent.
The exquisite grace of the Praxiteles Hermes or the sweetness of life
we recognise in Donatello may invade the soul with messages of
melancholy, and not come as ministers of joy.
One can't study the masters too much--I mean, from the amateur's
view-point; in the case of an artist it depends on the receptivity of
his temperament. Velasquez didn't like Raphael, and it was Boucher who
warned Fragonard, when he went to Rome, not to take the Italian
painters too seriously. Imitation may be the sincerest form of
flattery, but it sometimes stifles individuality. I think it is
probably the belief that never again will this planet have another
golden age of painting and sculpture that arouses in me the melancholy
I mention. Music has passed its prime and is now entering the twilight
of perfections past for ever. So is it with the Seven Arts.
Nevertheless, there is no need of pessimism. Even if we could, it
would not be well to repeat the formulas of art accomplished, born as
they were of certain conditions, social as well as technical. Other
days, other plays. And that is the blight on all academic art.
"Traditional art," says Frank Rutter, "is the art of respectable
plagiarism," a slight variation on Paul Gauguin's more revolutionary
axiom. No fear of any artist being too original. "There is no isolated
truth," exclaimed Millet; but Constable wrote: "A good thing is never
done twice." Best of all, it was R. A. M. Stevenson who said in effect
that after studying Velasquez at the Prado he had modified his
opinions as to the originality of modern art. Let us admit that there
is no hope of ever rivalling the dead; yet a new beauty may be born, a
new vision, and with it necessarily new technical procedures. When I
say "new," I mean a new variation on the past. To-day the Chinese and
Assyrian are revived. It is the denial of these very obvious truths
that makes academic critics slightly ridiculous. They obstinately
refuse to see the sunlight on the canvases of the Impressionists
just as they deny the sincerity and power of the so-called
post-Impressionists. The transvaluation of critical values must
follow in the trail of revolutions.
It is a pity that New York as yet has not had an opportunity of
viewing the best Cezannes, Gauguins, and Van Goghs. I did not see the
exhibition several years ago at the Armory, which was none the less an
eye-opener. But I have been told by those whose opinion and knowledge
are incontrovertible that this trinity of the modern movement was
inadequately represented; furthermore, Henri Matisse, a painter of
indubitable skill and originality, did not get a fair showing. It
would be a superfluous and thankless task to argue with critics or
artists who refuse to acknowledge Manet, Monet, Degas. These men are
already classics. Go to the Louvre and judge for yourself.
Impressionism has served its purpose; it was too personal in the case
of Claude Monet to be successfully practised by every one. Since him
many have hopelessly attempted the bending of his bow. Manet is an
incomplete Velasquez; but he is a great colourist, and interpreted in
his fluid, nervous manner the "modern" spirit. Degas, master designer,
whose line is as mighty as Ingres his master, is by courtesy
associated with the Impressionistic group, though his methods and
theirs are poles asunder. It seems that because he didn't imitate
Ingres in his choice of subject-matter he is carped at. To-day the
newest "vision" has reverted to the sharpest possible silhouettes and,
to add confusion, includes rhythms that a decade ago would not have
been thought possible.