In former years, we inquiring youngsters in foreign studios were much
bewildered by the repetition of a certain phrase. Discussion of almost
any picture or statue was (after other forms of criticism had been
exhausted) pretty sure to conclude with, “It’s all very well in its way,
but it’s not Art.” Not only foolish youths but the “masters” themselves
constantly advanced this opinion to crush a rival or belittle a friend.
To ardent minds seeking for the light and catching at every thread that
might serve as a guide out of perplexity, this vague assertion was
confusing. According to one master, the eighteenth-century “school” did
not exist. What had been produced at that time was pleasing enough to
the eye, but “was not Art!” In the opinion of another, Italian music
might amuse or cheer the ignorant, but could not be recognized by serious
musicians.
As most of us were living far from home and friends for the purpose of
acquiring the rudiments of art, this continual sweeping away of our
foundations was discouraging. What was the use, we sometimes asked
ourselves, of toiling, if our work was to be cast contemptuously aside by
the next “school” as a pleasing trifle, not for a moment to be taken
seriously? How was one to find out the truth? Who was to decide when
doctors disagreed? Where was the rock on which an earnest student might
lay his cornerstone without the misgiving that the next wave in public
opinion would sap its base and cast him and his ideals out again at sea?
The eighteenth-century artists and the Italian composers had been sincere
and convinced that they were producing works of art. In our own day the
idol of one moment becomes the jest of the next. Was there, then, no
fixed law?
The short period, for instance, between 1875 and the present time has
been long enough for the talent of one painter (Bastien-Lepage) to be
discovered, discussed, lauded, acclaimed, then gradually forgotten and
decried. During the years when we were studying in Paris, that young
painter’s works were pronounced by the critics and their following to be
the last development of Art. Museums and amateurs vied with each other
in acquiring his canvases. Yet, only this spring, while dining with two
or three art critics in the French capital, I heard Lepage’s name
mentioned and his works recalled with the smile that is accorded to those
who have hoodwinked the public and passed off spurious material as the
real thing.
If any one doubts the fleeting nature of a reputation, let him go to a
sale of modern pictures and note the prices brought by the favorites of
twenty years ago. The paintings of that arch-priest, Meissonier, no
longer command the sums that eager collectors paid for them a score of
years back. When a great European critic dares assert, as one has
recently, of the master’s “1815,” that “everything in the picture appears
metallic, except the cannon and the men’s helmets,” the mighty are indeed
fallen! It is much the same thing with the old masters. There have been
fashions in them as in other forms of art. Fifty years ago Rembrandt’s
work brought but small prices, and until Henri Rochefort (during his
exile) began to write up the English school, Romneys, Lawrences, and
Gainsboroughs had little market value.
The result is that most of us are as far away from the solution of that
vexed question “What is Art?” at forty as we were when boys. The
majority have arranged a compromise with their consciences. We have
found out what we like (in itself no mean achievement), and beyond such
personal preference, are shy of asserting (as we were fond of doing
formerly) that such and such works are “Art,” and such others, while
pleasing and popular, lack the requisite qualities.
To enquiring minds, sure that an answer to this question exists, but
uncertain where to look for it, the fact that one of the thinkers of the
century has, in a recent “Evangel,” given to the world a definition of
“Art,” the result of many years’ meditation, will be received with joy.
“Art,” says Tolstoi, “is simply a condition of life. It is any form of
expression that a human being employs to communicate an emotion he has
experienced to a fellow-mortal.”
An author who, in telling his hopes and sorrows, amuses or saddens a
reader, has in just so much produced a work of art. A lover who, by the
sincerity of his accent, communicates the flame that is consuming him to
the object of his adoration; the shopkeeper who inspires a purchaser with
his own admiration for an object on sale; the baby that makes its joy
known to a parent—artists! artists! Brown, Jones, or Robinson, the
moment he has consciously produced on a neighbor’s ear or eye the
sensation that a sound or a combination of colors has effected on his own
organs, is an artist!
Of course much of this has been recognized through all time. The formula
in which Tolstoi has presented his meditations to the world is, however,
so fresh that it comes like a revelation, with the additional merit of
being understood, with little or no mental effort, by either the casual
reader, who, with half-attention attracted by a headline, says to
himself, “‘What is art?’ That looks interesting!” and skims lightly down
the lines, or the thinker who, after perusing Tolstoi’s lucid words, lays
down the volume with a sigh, and murmurs in his humiliation, “Why have I
been all these years seeking in the clouds for what was lying ready at my
hand?”
The wide-reaching definition of the Russian writer has the effect of a
vigorous blow from a pickaxe at the foundations of a shaky and too
elaborate edifice. The wordy superstructure of aphorisms and paradox
falls to the ground, disclosing fair “Truth,” so long a captive within
the temple erected in her honor. As, however, the newly freed goddess
smiles on the ignorant and the pedants alike, the result is that with one
accord the æsthetes raise a howl! “And the ‘beautiful,’” they say, “the
beautiful? Can there be any ‘Art’ without the ‘Beautiful’? What! the
little greengrocer at the corner is an artist because, forsooth, he has
arranged some lettuce and tomatoes into a tempting pile! Anathema! Art
is a secret known only to the initiated few; the vulgar can neither
understand nor appreciate it! We are the elect! Our mission is to
explain what Art is and point out her beauty to a coarse and heedless
world. Only those with a sense of the ‘beautiful’ should be allowed to
enter into her sacred presence.”
Here the expounders of “Art” plunge into a sea of words, offering a dozen
definitions each more obscure than its predecessor, all of which have
served in turn as watchwords of different “schools.” Tolstoi’s sweeping
truth is too far-reaching to please these gentry. Like the priests of
past religions, they would have preferred to keep such knowledge as they
had to themselves and expound it, little at a time, to the ignorant. The
great Russian has kicked away their altar and routed the false gods,
whose acolytes will never forgive him.
Those of my readers who have been intimate with painters, actors, or
musicians, will recall with amusement how lightly the performances of an
associate are condemned by the brotherhood as falling short of the high
standard which according to these wiseacres, “Art” exacts, and how sure
each speaker is of understanding just where a brother carries his “mote.”
Voltaire once avoided giving a definition of the beautiful by saying,
“Ask a toad what his ideas of beauty are. He will indicate the
particular female toad he happens to admire and praise her goggle-eyes
and yellow belly as the perfection of beauty!” A negro from Guiana will
make much the same unsatisfactory answer, so the old philosopher
recommends us not to be didactic on subjects where judgments are
relative, and at the same time without appeal.
Tolstoi denies that an idea as subtle as a definition of Art can be
classified by pedants, and proceeds to formulate the following delightful
axiom: “A principle upon which no two people can agree does not exist.”
A truth is proved by its evidence to all. Discussion outside of that is
simply beating the air. Each succeeding “school” has sounded its
death-knell by asserting that certain combinations alone produced
beauty—the weakness of to-day being an inclination to see art only in the
obscure and the recondite. As a result we drift each hour further from
the truth. Modern intellectuality has formed itself into a scornful
aristocracy whose members, esteeming themselves the élite, withdraw from
the vulgar public, and live in a world of their own, looking (like the
Lady of Shalott) into a mirror at distorted images of nature and
declaring that what they see is art!
In literature that which is difficult to understand is much admired by
the simple-minded, who also decry pictures that tell their own story! A
certain class of minds enjoy being mystified, and in consequence writers,
painters, and musicians have appeared who are willing to juggle for their
amusement. The simple definition given to us by the Russian writer comes
like a breath of wholesome air to those suffocating in an atmosphere of
perfumes and artificial heat. Art is our common inheritance, not the
property of a favored few. The wide world we love is full of it, and
each of us in his humble way is an artist when with a full heart he
communicates his delight and his joy to another. Tolstoi has given us
back our birthright, so long withheld, and crowned with his aged hands
the true artist.