I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if
we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will
entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be
advertisement. I do not necessarily mean that there will be no good art;
much of it might be, much of it already is, very good art. You may put
it, if you please, in the form that there has been a vast improvement in
advertisements. Certainly there would be nothing surprising if the head
of a negro advertising Somebody’s Blacking now adays were finished
with as careful and subtle colours as one of the old and superstitious
painters would have wasted on the negro king who brought gifts to
Christ. But the improvement of advertisements is the degradation of
artists. It is their degradation for this clear and vital reason: that
the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase
their riches; which is a considerable step lower. After all, it was as
a human being that a pope took pleasure in a cartoon of Raphael or a
prince took pleasure in a statuette of Cellini. The prince paid for
the statuette; but he did not expect the statuette to pay him. It is my
impression that no cake of soap can be found anywhere in the cartoons
which the Pope ordered of Raphael. And no one who knows the small-minded
cynicism of our plutocracy, its secrecy, its gambling spirit, its
contempt of conscience, can doubt that the artist-advertiser will often
be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control, and
of which he could feel no moral approval. He will be working to spread
quack medicines, queer investments; and will work for Marconi instead of
Medici. And to this base ingenuity he will have to bend the proudest
and purest of the virtues of the intellect, the power to attract his
brethren, and the noble duty of praise. For that picture by Millais is
a very allegorical picture. It is almost a prophecy of what uses are
awaiting the beauty of the child unborn. The praise will be of a kind
that may correctly be called soap; and the enterprises of a kind that
may truly be described as Bubbles.