The artist's paradox: Vision, genius, and the perils of patronage

“ In fact, not only the history of the soul, but that of all full human achievement, as studied in great creative personalities, shows us that such achievement has always two sides. (1) There is the solitary vision or revelation, and personal work in accordance with that vision. The religious man's direct experience of God and his effort to correspond with it; the artist's lonely and intense apprehension of beauty, and hard translation of it; the poet's dream and its difficult expression in speech; the philosopher's intuition of reality, hammered into thought. ”

“ To take the highest example, we cannot know how far keener the power of Vision was in the pictures seen by Shakespeare than in those which he has revealed to the world. It is this want of proportion between the power to see and the power to execute that has made the despair of artists of all time, whether painters or poets, sculptors or prose-writers, so dissatisfied must they ever be with their own productions compared with the creations they see so vividly. ”

“ As with other things, so is it also with Violins; if they are to be produced with the stamp of artistic merit, they must be paid for accordingly; without patronage the worker necessarily becomes careless. ”

“ It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness. Stupidity is soon blinded by the splendour of wealth, and cowardice is easily fettered in the shackles of dependance. To solicit patronage, is, at least, in the event, to set virtue to sale. None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood; few can be assiduous without servility, and none can be servile without corruption. ”

“ The seeing of things as they really are—the seeing of a proportion veiled from other eyes (together with the power of expression) , is what makes a man an artist. What makes him a great artist is a high fervour of spirit, which produces a superlative, instead of a comparative, clarity of vision. ”

“ Vision, in the old Roman conception, was the distinguishing faculty of the poet. And indeed vates, not poeta, marks the fundamental condition of his art. The seer precedes the maker. It is not indispensable that he should see more than other men, but he will see more clearly. ”

“ When you look thus, you surrender your I-hood; see things at last as the artist does, for their sake, not for your own. The fundamental unity that is in you reaches out to the unity that is in them: and you achieve the "Simple Vision" of the poet and the mystic--that synthetic and undistorted apprehension of things which is the antithesis of the single vision of practical men. The doors of perception are cleansed, and everything appears as it is. The disfiguring results of hate, rivalry, prejudice, vanish away. ”

“ Such, then, is the nature of the æsthetic vision, the vision with which we contemplate works of art. It is to such a vision, if to anything outside himself, that the artist appeals, and the artist in his spare hours may himself indulge in the æsthetic vision; and if one can get him to do so, his verdict is likely to be as good as any one’s.
The artist’s main business in life, however, is carried on by means of yet a fourth kind of vision, which I will call the creative vision. This, I think, is the furthest perversion of the gifts of nature of which man is guilty. ”

“ Therefore the artist requires imagination in order to see in things, not that which nature has actually made, but that which {56} she endeavoured to make, but could not, because of the never-ceasing conflict between the various forms of will. Through the penetrating vision of this imagination, the artist recognises the Idea. ”

“ The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols ­ the ”

“ II. If this brief exposition has carried the reader's assent, he will readily apply the principle, and recognise that an artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds artistic skill with which to make us see. He may have clear conceptions, yet fail to make them clear to us: in this case he has imagination, but is not an artist. Without clear Vision no skill can avail. ”

“ One may ascend into regions so remote from the common concerns of life that it becomes difficult to procure the help of analogy, even in the terms and processes of the Arts. But suppose a painter—I need not say that I mean an artist—who is visited by an idea so wonderful, so super-exalted in its beauty that he recognises his impotence; he knows that no pigments and no technique can do anything but grossly parody his vision. Well, he will show his greatness by not attempting to paint that vision: he will write on a bare canvass vidit anima sed non pinxit manus. ”

“ To praise a blockhead's wit because he is great, is too frequently practised by authors, and deservedly draws down contempt upon them. He who is favoured and patronized by a great man, at the expence of his integrity and honour, has paid a dear price for the purchase, a miserable exchange, patronage for virtue, dependance for freedom. ”

“ The very patronage which lifts a man into notice kills his genius and insults his manhood. A drawing-room pet is the highest title an artist can claim in these days, and, to gain that pitiful renown, he must throw overboard all respect for principle, all love of art. He must even make himself uncomfortable, forego innocent habits, burden himself with stupid formalities, in order to reach that favor which he feels in his inmost soul will only degrade him when he has won it. ”

“ Nay, not unfrequently, for the mere sake of bringing forward those who are willing to depend wholly on their patronage, (such is the force of an ill-understood ambition,) men will often reject the meritorious designs which may be presented to them, while they cause the most worthless to be put in execution; whence it follows, that their own fame is diminished by the poverty and insufficiency of the work; for all who have judgment in such matters, consider the artist and his employer to be of one mind, since they are conjoined in one and the same work. ”

“ The public—the national spirit, is wanting; individual patronage is confined, is misdirected, is arbitrary, demanding of the artist any thing rather than the highest and purest intellectual application of his art, and affording nor space nor opportunity for him to address himself to the grand universal passions, principles, and interests of human nature! ”

“ Surely we always bestow especial praise on one who resists the evil influences of hereditary wealth, and surely our praise is deserved.
The good which private wealth has done in the way of patronizing literature and art is, I am convinced, greatly overrated. The beneficent patronage of Lorenzo di Medici is, like that of Louis XIV., a chronological and moral fallacy. What Lorenzo did was, in effect, to make literature and art servile and in some cases to taint them with the propensities of a magnificent debauchee. ”

“ Their taste is a servile dependant on their vanity, and their patronage has an air of pauperism about it. Perhaps the only public patronage which was ever really useful to the arts, or worthy of them, was that which they received first in Greece, and afterwards in Italy, from the religious institutions of the country; when the artist felt himself, as it were, a servant at the altar; when his hand gave a visible form to Gods or Heroes, Angels or Apostles; and when the enthusiasm of genius was exalted by mingling with the flame of national devotion. ”

“ The spectator sympathized with the artist’s inspiration. No elevation of thought, no refinement of expression, could outgo the expectation of the thronging votaries. The fancy of the painter was but a spark kindled from the glow of public sentiment. This was a sort of patronage worth having. The zeal and enthusiasm and industry of native genius was stimulated to works worthy of such encouragement, and in unison with its own feelings. ”

“ Make the most of your talent. Become something more than a portrait painter. Become a great artist; and when all men acknowledge your talent, Miss Dearborn will be proud to accept your devotion, and to reward it. Is my advice good?"
"Mother, you put new life into me," said the young man, his face glowing with new hope. "I have always wished to become a true artist. I am a portrait painter because poverty made it necessary." ”

“ The painter who is content with the praise of the world in respect to what does not satisfy himself, is not an artist, but an artisan; for though his reward be only praise, his pay is that of a mechanic,--for his time, and not for his art. ”

“ It does not in the least follow that the hurried work of a fashionable painter will contain more for your money than the quiet work of some unknown man. In all probability, you will find, if you rashly purchase what is popular at a high price, that you have got one picture you don't care for, for a sum which would have bought twenty you would have delighted in. For remember always that the price of a picture by a living artist, never represents, never can represent, the quantity of labour or value in it. ”

“ The artist, however mean and avaricious he may appear, knows that he cannot really sell himself for money any more than the philosopher or the scientific investigator can sell himself for money. He takes money in the hope that he may secure the opportunity for the free functioning of his creative power. ”

“ The artist must be blind to distinctions between "recognized" or "unrecognized" conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. ”

“ And thus the power of the riches of the patron (always imperfect and doubtful, as we shall see presently, even when most authoritative) depends first on the poverty of the artist, and then on the limitation of the number of equally wealthy persons, who also wants seats at the concert. So that, as above stated, the art of becoming "rich," in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms, it is "the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour." ”

“ It is not enough known that the patronage which really counts to-day is exercised by quite small and humble people. These people with a few hundreds a year exercise a genuine patronage by buying pictures at ten, twenty, or occasionally thirty pounds, with real insight and understanding, thereby enabling the young Ishmaelite to live and function from the age of twenty to thirty or so, when perhaps he becomes known to richer buyers, those experienced spenders of money who are always more cautious, more anxious to buy an investment than a picture. ”

“ That is the end, and production whether of wealth or population only the means to that end, to be regulated accordingly. As things are, we confuse the means with the end, and make of production a fetich.
Let me take a parallel from the fields of Art. What kind of good in the world is an artist who sets to work to cover the utmost possible acreage of canvas, or to spoil the greatest possible number of reams of paper, in deference to the call from a vulgar and undiscriminating market for all he can produce? Do we admire him—a man whose ideal is blind supply to meet blind demand? ”

“ Patronage can never keep pace with this "painting for the million system." The world will be inundated with mediocrity. This fever of art will terminate in a painting-plague. What is to become of the artists? Where will you colonize?
Now let us purpose a plan. Let the members of the Academy come to this resolution that instead of exhibiting some 1300 pictures annually, they will not admit into their rooms more than the 300—and so cut off the 1000—that the said 300 shall all have good places, and shall be the choicest works of British talent. ”

“ The artist should be patronized as well as the artisan. Time should be given to the refinement, the grace, the sweetness of life. We have followed too long and too earnestly the false philosophy taught in “Poor Richard's Almanac,” that money-getting is a sort of secular religion, and “there will be sleeping enough in the grave.” Our American life is one long “fitful fever.” ”

“ Skill in one's art, profession, or trade is conscience applied; it is honesty, veracity, and fidelity using the eye, the voice, and the hand to reveal what lies in the worker's purpose and spirit. To become an artist in dealing with tools and materials is not a matter of choice or privilege; it is a moral necessity; for a man's heart must be in his skill, and a man's soul in his craftsmanship. ”