The battle for art's soul: democratic expression versus the tyranny of taste

“ In spite of present practice, and quite apart from Ten O’Clock and other painter extravagances, art is still believed to be in some way an expression of a time, a place, and a people. The world has not yet grown so small that it does not continue to exhibit race characteristics in its art manifestations. That the all-the-world-as-one idea may be farther-reaching, more universal in its scope, and therefore loftier in its art expression than any national or race expression is very possible ”

“ There are always two sides to a quarrel, and there are several sides to art. It may be a symphony of color as Whistler insisted, an arrangement of line or a matter of facile workmanship as Alexander and Chase contended. No one will deny that. In fact there is a modern disposition to locate the art of a picture strictly within the limits of craftsmanship. But a picture may express something more than the skill of the painter. Many of the craft have shown that it is a means of expressing moods, passions, feelings, sentiments, emotions ”

“ They were both painter-poets—the one painting on the outskirts of Paris, the other gathering his material on the outskirts of civilization here in America.
Inness, Wyant, Homer Martin, Winslow Homer—no one ever questioned the Americanism of their art. They are our very own—the product of this new soil. Even their limitations recite our history. As for their aspirations, with their passionate love for the beauty of our own American landscape, may it not be fairly claimed that in these they are representative of the American people? ”

“ They immediately set up studios in New York, and, with the enthusiasm and assurance of youth, began to impart information to the effect that the only painting of importance was that of Europe. As for the native American art, it was not worth reckoning with. The Academy of Design was merely the abiding-place of the ossified, and, of course, it would be surrendered on the demand of the younger men. But the Academy, after a battle of words, declined to give up the fort, and a little later declined even to hang some of the pictures of the gifted. ”

“ Much paint has been spread on canvas in that time and hundreds of hands have been busy producing pictures. The “young men” have become old men and many of them have dropped out. The movement itself no longer moves, though some of its best men are still painting. But what is the net result of these forty years? Have the European-trained, after all, succeeded in producing in their one generation, sans tradition, an American art? No one will question for a moment that they have produced many exceptionally good works, even masterpieces; that they are a competent, even learned, body of artists ”

“ The beauty of nature re-forms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.
All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is Art. ”

“ But trained taste is grounded in reverence and discipleship, a lowly and firm basis for departure, from which it may, if it has the power to do or to discern, rise in its strength, and leave behind those who have shown the way, or soar in great flights beyond their view. So it has often been seen in the history of art, and such is the right order of growth. It needs the living voice and the attentive mind, the influence of trained and experienced judgment to guide us in the beginning, but the guide must let us go at last and we must rely upon ourselves. ”

“ But though there be naturally a very wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothings tends further to encrease and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty. When objects of any kind are first presented to the eye or imagination, the sentiment, which attends them, is obscure and confused: and the mind is, in a great measure, incapable of pronouncing concerning their merits or defects. The taste cannot perceive the several excellencies of the performance ”

“ And they have converted the discussion on beauty into a question concerning taste, as did Hutcheson, Voltaire, Diderot, and others. But all attempts to define what taste is must lead to nothing, as the reader may see both from the history of æsthetics and experimentally. There is and can be no explanation of why one thing pleases one man and displeases another, or vice versa. So that the whole existing science of æsthetics fails to do what we might expect from it, being a mental activity calling itself a science ”

“ Who can decide how much in a picture belongs to the idiosyncrasies and associations of the person who looks upon it. Artists undoubtedly powerful and fine may have nothing in them which touches the nervous sympathies and tastes of some persons: who, therefore, shall establish any authoritative canon of taste? who shall say that Claude is finer than Zuccarelli, or Zuccarelli than Claude? A man might as well say that the woman who enchants him is the only true Venus for the world.
Then, again, how much in painting or in poetry depends upon the frame of mind in which we see or hear! ”

“ But as the artist, to give vivid perceptions must be perspicuous and concise, and yet to exhibit usefulness requires mihere are two opposite qualities required in the writer, in one of which his imagination, in the other his reasoning faculty is every moment liable to offend; what has he in this case to guide him? Taste is, perhaps, his only director. Taste in writing, is the exhibition of the greatest quantity of beauty and of use, that may be admitted into any description without counteracting each other. ”

“ They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. ”

“ The taste of a whole community is the dead level of mediocrity, and a proof of the scant attention paid to art in America is the place given it in the newspapers—before the fashions and after the dog fights. ”

“ By taste, after he has exercised and corrected it by manifold examples from art or nature, the artist checks his work; and after many, often toilsome, attempts to content taste he finds the form which satisfies him. ”

“ When we say taste, we mean not crudely the knowledge of what is right in art: taste estimates the degrees of excellence, and by comparison proceeds from justness to refinement. Our language, or rather those who use it, generally confound, when speaking of the art, copy with imitation, though essentially different in operation and meaning. ”

“ But again, I infer that there is a connexion between good taste and good morals, because there is an analogy between those qualities in matter which excite the emotions of taste, and those relations on which morals depend. So much is this the case, that some philosophers found morality upon a theory of the beautiful, considering it a sublime harmony. In all beautiful objects in nature, or in art, there is an order, a propriety, a fitness, a proportion ”

“ As I imagine the difference in national beauty is marked by the difference in national morals, so, of course, must the difference of the opinions of individuals on the subject of beauty be. In fine, as the moral sense of mankind is coarse or refined, so will be their taste of beauty.
Of this I am certain, that true refinement is the effect of true virtue; that virtue is truth, and good; and that beauty dwells in them, and they in her. ”

“ Taste is sublimated morality. It is the appreciation of the proportion and fitness of all things in the universe, and of course it is above simple morality, for that is founded upon a partial view. Taste is the universal, where a system of morals is the local."
"Can't you say that of art?" asked Rangely. "I should think art is the universal, where religion is the provincial. A religion expresses the needs and the aspirations of a race or a country, while art embodies the aspirations and attributes of humanity." ”

“ But not only, as in the cases now mentioned, is a right state of moral feeling favorable to taste, but the emotions of taste also tend to introduce moral ideas and emotions. It is, as I conceive, chiefly from this fact that nature has a tendency to lead the mind [Pg 17] "up to nature's God;" for we must all be conscious that when we view nature as beautiful or sublime, this tendency is strongest. ”

“ But this is precisely what has occurred in the efforts to define art. Now, if we consider the food question, it will not occur to anyone to affirm that the importance of food consists in the pleasure we receive when eating it. Everyone understands that the satisfaction of our taste cannot serve as a basis for our definition of the merits of food, and that we have therefore no right to presuppose that the dinners with cayenne pepper, Limburg cheese, alcohol, etc., to which we are accustomed and which please us, form the very best human food. ”

“ And in the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense serve as the basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of objects which afford us pleasure serve as the model of what art should be.
To see the aim and purpose of art in the pleasure we get from it, is like assuming (as is done by people of the lowest moral development, e.g. by savages) that the purpose and aim of food is the pleasure derived when consuming it. ”

“ People come to understand that the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. And it is the same with regard to art. People will come to understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e. ”

“ And since discussions as to why one man likes pears and another prefers meat do not help towards finding a definition of what is essential in nourishment, so the solution of questions of taste in art (to which the discussions on art involuntarily come) not only does not help to make clear what this particular human activity which we call art really consists in, but renders such elucidation quite impossible, until we rid ourselves of a conception which justifies every kind of art, at the cost of confusing the whole matter. ”

“ So that the theory of art, founded on beauty, expounded by æsthetics, and, in dim outline, professed by the public, is nothing but the setting up as good, of that which has pleased and pleases us, i.e. pleases a certain class of people.
In order to define any human activity, it is necessary to understand its sense and importance. And, in order to do that, it is primarily necessary to examine that activity in itself, in its dependence on its causes, and in connection with its effects, and not merely in relation to the pleasure we can get from it. ”

“ But, for this very reason, what is called good taste takes fright at all more profound effects of art, and is silent where the reality comes in question, and where externalities and trivialities vanish. For when great passions and the movements of a profound soul are unveiled, we are no longer concerned with the finer distinctions of taste and its pettifogging particularities. [Pg 65] It feels that genius strides contemptuously over such ground as this, and, shrinking before its power, becomes uneasy, and knows not which way to turn. ”

“ They, like all the rest of us, think that taste in art is an irrational mystery; they trust in the expert and usually in the wrong one, as the ignorant and superstitious trust in the wrong priest. For as religion is merely mischievous unless it is tested in matters of conduct, so taste is mere pedantry or frivolity unless it is tested on things of use. These have their sense or nonsense, their righteousness or unrighteousness, which anyone can learn to see for himself, and, until he has learned, he will be at the mercy of charlatans. ”

“ They too have a right to be as silly as they like; and some people will buy their work, however silly it may be, as they would buy pictures—that is to say, for the good of their souls and not because they like it.
How are we to get rid of this distinction we have made between the artist and the tradesman? How are we to recover for the artist the virtues of the craftsman and for the craftsman the virtues of the artist? At present we get from neither what we really like. Art remains to us a painful mystery ”

“ The popular ideal of art has always been to paint grapes so nearly like the real fruit that the birds will peck at them, and the only excuse for not responding to this widespread demand is that the artist is unskillful.
The people's doctrine has good evolutionary reason back of it. Vision was first developed in the animal by its use in recognizing objects, and recognition is still its chief function and greatest pleasure. The easier the recognition, the greater our sense of capacity; and perhaps the largest element in the enjoyment of pictures is the sense of unaccustomed capacity of vision. ”

“ Moreover, it cannot be said that the majority of people lack the taste to esteem the highest works of art. The majority always have understood, and still understand, what we also recognize as being the very best art: the epic of Genesis, the gospel parables, folk-legends, fairy-tales, and folk-songs, are understood by all. How can it be that the majority has suddenly lost its capacity to understand what is high in our art? ”

“ The art we have is the whole of art, the real, the only art, and yet two-thirds of the human race (all the peoples of Asia and Africa) live and die knowing nothing of this sole and supreme art. And even in our Christian society hardly one per cent of the people make use of this art which we speak of as being the whole of art; the remaining ninety-nine per cent live and die, generation after generation, crushed by toil, and never tasting this art, which, moreover, is of such a nature that, if they could get it, they would not understand anything of it. ”

“ This investigation has brought me to the conviction that almost all that our society considers to be art, good art, and the whole of art, far from being real and good art, and the whole of art, is not even art at all, but only a counterfeit of it. This position, I know, will seem very strange and paradoxical; but if we once acknowledge art to be a human activity by means of which some people transmit their feelings to others (and not a service of Beauty, nor a manifestation of the Idea, and so forth) , we shall inevitably have to admit this further conclusion also. ”

“ Mr. Sheldon reports him as saying, “is simply to reproduce in other minds the impression which a scene has [Pg 24] made upon him. A work of art is not to instruct, not to edify, but to awaken an emotion. Its real greatness consists in the quality and force of this emotion.”
And he practised this preaching. Such nervous manifestations as enthusiasm, emotion, and imagination working together and producing an impression were the means wherewith he constructed pictures in his mind. They made up his point of view, and without them we should perhaps have heard little of George Inness as a painter. ”

“ But the fever of intensity that burned in Inness and his visionary way of looking at things were the very features that made possible his greatness as an artist. There is something in the abnormal view—one hardly knows what—that makes for art. Certainly the “practical” work of the camera gives only a statement of fact where the less accurate drawing of a Millet gives something that we call “artistic.” ”

“ Art begins when some one, with the object of making others share his feeling, expresses his feeling by certain external indications.
Normal human beings possess this faculty to be infected by the expression of another man’s emotions. For a plain man of unperverted taste, living in contact with nature, with animals, and with his fellow-men—say, for “a country peasant of unperverted taste, this is as easy as it is for an animal of unspoilt scent to follow the trace he needs.” ”

“ The exhibits afforded pathetic evidence that the older immigrants do not expect the solace of art in this country; an Italian expressed great surprise when he found that we, although Americans, still liked pictures, and said quite naively that he didn't know that Americans cared for anything but dollars—that looking at pictures was something people only did in Italy.
The extreme isolation of the Italian colony was demonstrated by the fact that he did not know that there was a public art gallery in the city nor any houses in which pictures were regarded as treasures. ”

“ Or in mere blind reaction we think that we dislike what the mob likes. But in either case our likes and dislikes are not ours at all and, what is more, they are no one's. Taste in fact is bad because it is not any one's taste, because no one's will is exercised in it or upon it. When it is good, it is always real taste, that is to say some real person's taste. In the work of art the artist does what he really likes to do and expresses some real passion of his own, not some passion which he believes that he, as an artist, ought to [232] express. ”

“ Still, it p. 227is now only a matter of time, I really believe, until someone will find leisure to rebel against spending so much on a style of picture that is supposed to mould the tastes of the people—quite erroneously, for we are but little influenced by what we do not understand—and paintings which show an art as beautiful and more vital, and more comprehensible, to the people will be insisted on; for each year shows the Australians rebelling, with a greater persistency, against the adaptation of themselves to past ideals, the pouring of new wine into old bottles. ”

“ The mission of art—now truly democratic—is to level—in principle up, in practice down. Do not forget, sir, that the English have ever regarded æstheticism as unmanly, and grace as immoral; when to that basic principle you add the principle of serving the taste of the majority, you have perfect conditions for a sure and gradual decrescendo."
"Does taste, then, no longer exist?" asked the Angel.
"It is not wholly, as yet, extinct, but lingers in the communal kitchens and canteens, as introduced by the Young Men's Christian Association in the days of the Great Skirmish. ”

“ The spirit of art is not the spirit of trade: it is not a question between the grower or consumer of some perishable and personal commodity: but it is a question between human genius and human taste, how much the one can produce for the benefit of mankind, and how much the other can enjoy. It is ‘the link of peaceful commerce ‘twixt dividable shores.’ To take from it this character is to take from it its best privilege, its humanity. ”

“ While the material condition of our planet—the heat or friction within it—remains favourable to human life, there will, there must needs be, a continual crescendo in the stature of Humanity, through the ever-increasing friction of human spirits one with the other; friction supplied by life itself, and, next after life, by those transcripts of life, those expressions of human longing, which we know as art. Art for art’s sake—if it meant what it said, which is doubtful—was always a vain and silly cry. As well contend that an artist is not a man. ”

“ In England, during this period, the writers on æsthetics define beauty more and more frequently, not by its own qualities, but by taste, and the discussion about beauty is superseded by a discussion on taste. ”

“ Taste, therefore, is subjective, because man himself is a microcosm, having the operation of universal methods in his own being, and discerning what is in harmony therewith. So far as he discerns this, he has taste; so far as he can utilize it in forming new and ideal structures, he is a creative artist.
The modern effort errs, in its false assumption of freedom, whenever a workman is encouraged to make rules limited to his own capacity. A sane and noble "impressionism" is that which reveals to us the individuality, the distinctive genius of an artist ”