ART FOR ART'S SAKE
What is Art?
Art is a mystery--something which responds to a special sense, peculiar
to the human race. This is ordinarily called the esthetic sense, but
that is an inexact term, for esthetic sense signifies a sense of the
beautiful and what is esthetic is not necessarily beautiful. Sense of
style would be better.
Some of the savage races have this sense of style, for their arms and
utensils show a remarkable feeling for style, which they lose by contact
with civilization.
By art let us understand, if you please, the Fine Arts alone, but
including decorative art. Music ought to be included.
I shall astonish most of my readers, when I say that very few people
understand music. For most people it is, as Victor Hugo said, an
exhalation of art--something for the ear as perfume is for the olfactory
sense, a source of vague sensations, necessarily unformed as all
sensations are. But musical art is something entirely different. It has
line, modeling, color through instrumentation, all making up an ideal
sphere where some, like the writer of these lines, live from childhood
on, which others attain through education, while many others never know
it at all. Furthermore, musical art has more movement than the other
fine arts. It is the most mysterious of them all, although the others
are mysterious as it is easy to see.
The first manifestation of art occurs through attempts to reproduce
objects. Such attempts have been found which date back to prehistoric
times. But what is primitive man's idea in such attempts? He wants to
record by a line the contour of the object, the likeness of which he
wishes to preserve. This contour and this line do not exist in nature.
The whole philosophy of art is in that crude drawing. It bases itself on
nature even while making something quite different in response to a
special, inexplicable need of the human spirit. Accordingly nothing can
be more chimerical or vain than the advice so often given to the artist
to be truthful. Art can never be true, even though it should not be
false. It should be true artistically, by giving an artistic translation
which will satisfy the sense of style of which we have spoken. When Art
has satisfied this sense of style, the object of artistic expression has
been attained; nothing more can be asked. But it is not the "vain effort
of an unproductive cleverness," as our M. de Mun has said; it is an
effort to satisfy a legitimate need, one of the loftiest and most
honorable in human nature--the need of art.
If this is so, why should we demand that Art be useful or moral? It is
both in its own way, for it awakens noble and honest sentiments in the
soul. That was the opinion of Théophile Gautier, but Victor Hugo
disagreed. The sun is beautiful, he used to say, and it is useful. That
is true, but the sun is not an object of art. Besides, how many times
Victor Hugo denied his own doctrine by writing verses which were merely
brilliant descriptions or admirable bits of imagination?
We are, however, talking of art and not of literature. Literature
becomes art in poetry but forsakes it in prose. Even if some of the
great prose writers rendered their prose artistic through the beauty and
harmony of their periods and the picturesqueness of their expressions,
still prose is not art in its real nature. So, crude indecency aside,
what would be immoral in prose ceases to be immoral in verse, for in
poetry Art follows its own code and form transcends the subject matter.
That is why a great poet, Sully-Prudhomme, preferred prose to verse when
he wanted to write philosophically, for he feared, on account of the
superiority of form to substance in poetry, that his ideas would not be
taken seriously. That explains as well why parents take young girls to
hear an opera, when if the same piece was played without music they
would be appalled at the idea. What Christian is ever shocked by _La
Juive_ or Catholic frightened away from _Les Huguenots_?
Because prose is far removed from art, it is unsuited to music, despite
the fact that this ill-assorted union is fashionable to-day? In poetry
there has been an effort to make it so artistic that form alone is
considered and verse is written which is entirely without sense. But
that is a fad which can't last long.
Sometime ago M. de Mun said:
"Not to take sides is what the author is inhibited from doing. Art, to
my way of thinking, is a setting forth of ideas. If it is not that--if
it limits itself solely to considerations of form, to a worship of
beauty for its own sake, without regard to the deeds and thoughts it
brings to light, then it seems to me no better than the vain effort of
an unproductive cleverness."
The eminent speaker is absolutely right as far as prose is concerned,
but we cannot agree with him if poetry is considered.
Victor Hugo, in his marvellous ode, _La Lyre et La Harpe_ brings
Paganism and Christianity face to face. Each speaks in turn, and the
poet in his last stanza seems to acknowledge that both are right, but
that does not prevent the ode from being a masterpiece. That would
not be possible in prose, but in the poem the poetry carries all before
it.
[Illustration: M. Saint-Saëns in his Later Years]
Why is it that geniuses like Victor Hugo, distinguished minds, thinkers,
and profound critics, refuse to see that Art is a special entity which
responds to a certain sense? If Art accommodates itself marvellously, if
it accords itself with the precepts of morality and passion, it is
nevertheless sufficient unto itself--and in its self-sufficiency lies
its heights of greatness.
The first prelude of Sebastian Bach's _Wohltemperirte Klavier_ expresses
nothing, and yet that is one of the marvels of music. The Venus de Milo
expresses nothing, and it is one of the marvels of sculpture.
To tell the truth, it is proper to add that in order not to be immoral
Art must appeal to those who have a feeling for it. Where the artist
sees only beautiful forms, the gross see only nudity. I have seen a good
man scandalized at the sight of Ingres's _La Source_.
Just as morality has no function to be artistic, so Art has nothing to
do with morality. Both have their own functions, and each is useful in
its own way. The final aim of morality is morality; of art, art, and
nothing else.