The shadow effect: When an icon's brilliance obscures the collapse of its institution

“ In the production and contemplation of these we appear to escape the principle of rule and system. In the creations of art we seek for an atmosphere of repose and animation as some counterpoise to the austerity of the realm of law and the sombre self-concentration of thought; we seek for blithe and powerful reality in exchange for the shadow-world of the Idea. And, last of all, the free activity of the imagination is the source of the fair works of art, which in this world of the mind are even more free than Nature is herself. ”

“ The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow, and the proportion is the same between poetry and painting. Because poetry produces its results in the {66} imagination of the reader, and painting produces them in a concrete reality outside the eye, so that the eye receives its images just as if they were the works of nature; and poetry produces its results without images, and they do not pass to the brain through the channel of the visual faculty, as in painting. ”

“ This is what Vasari himself says of the effect of the picture:—"In this portrait of Leonardo's, on the contrary, there is so pleasing an expression and the smile that while looking at it one thinks it rather divine than human, and it has ever been esteemed a wonderful look since life itself could exhibit no other appearance." ”

“ Ideas of power vary much in relative dignity.
I. Ideas of Power.—These are the simple perception of the mental or bodily powers exerted in the production of any work of art. According to the dignity and degree of the power perceived is the dignity of the idea; but the whole class of ideas is received by the intellect, and they excite the best of the moral feelings, veneration, and the desire of exertion. As a species, therefore, they are one of the noblest connected with art ”

“ We pass from the independence of individuals, sometimes to the power of the king, sometimes to the predominance of the great landowners. But there is no political organization founded upon ideas of general law and public interest; all institutions have reference to private rights and interests. Two opposite forces are in conflict; there is nothing to reveal the division of powers, and their tendency towards one common object. {176} There are no representatives of the rights of all ”

“ Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, — objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The street is full of humiliations to the proud. ”

“ Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce. Surplus power, alone, is the proof of power.—A transvaluation of all values,—this note of interrogation which is so black, so huge, that it casts a shadow even upon him who affixes it,—is a task of such fatal import, that he who undertakes it is compelled every now and then to rush out into the sunlight in order to shake himself free from an earnestness that becomes crushing, far too crushing. This end justifies every means, every event on the road to it is a windfall. ”

“ That the Idea, the true reality behind appearance, is revealed with so much more force and clearness in the productions of art than directly in nature is due to the power of the artist to abstract the pure Idea, the reality, from the actual and the accidental, omitting all disturbing, non-essential qualities. He disentangles that which is real and essential from the confused mass presented in experience. The artist lets us see the real world through his eyes. That he has these eyes, that he knows the inner nature of things, apart from all their relations, is the gift of genius. ”

“ The ideal can never be adequately reproduced. It is the loadstar, the motive force. The artist feels it, he is ruled by it, it is his undefined "excelsior," the imperious desideratum imposed on him by the law of Beauty, and the very persistence of its inner prompting proves its truth and the impossibility of its attainment.
To draw from an imperfect and lower reality the elements which shall measure and determine the extent to which the said reality agrees or disagrees with Nature's reasonable law, herein lies the artist's highest function. ”

“ We are now in a better condition to understand all that is really implied in the assimilation by art of that which is strange in the external features of remote history, and the true conception of the objective life of her creations. A work of art must primarily enclose for us within its embrace the higher interests of spirit and volitional power, all that is essentially human, and possesses real weight, the depths, that is to say, of man's emotional life. ”

“ The fall of an apple is an intense reality (especially if it falls upon your head) ; but the law which regulates its speed is for you an intellectual [71] abstraction as remote as the idea of a “combination in restraint of trade,” or the definition of “art for art’s sake.” Whereas the irrepressible vivacity of Sam Weller, and the unctuous hypocrisy of Pecksniff, and the moist humility of Uriah Heep, and the sublime conviviality of Dick Swiveller, and the triumphant make-believe of the Marchioness are facts of experience. They have touched you, and you cannot doubt them. ”

“ It is the same difference as there is between Nicole and Pascal, between Bayle and Satin-Simon.
What is the faculty which gives relief, brilliancy, and incisiveness to thought? Imagination. Under its influence expression becomes concentrated, colored, and strengthened, and by the power it has of individualizing all it touches, it gives life and permanence to the material on which it works. A writer of genius changes sand into glass and glass into crystal, ore into iron and iron into steel; he marks with his own stamp every idea he gets hold of. ”

“ The imagination is, as Coleridge says, the great unifying power; it draws together things that are apparently remote. But its analogies to be of value should surely have validity apart from the mere shifting mood of the man who perceives them. ”

“ And a painter in Paris, even though he starve on a few sous a day, can have so much that is lovely and full of picturesque charm in his daily pursuits: the long, wondrous galleries full of the arts he adores; the réalité de l'idéal around him in that perfect world; the slow, sweet, studious hours in the calm wherein all that is great in [Pg 290] humanity alone survives; the trance—half adoration, half aspiration, at once desire and despair—before the face of the Mona Lisa ”

“ By the instinctive collaboration of everybody concerned, intellect and taste hold festival, and the associations of reality are exchanged for the associations of imagination. So understood, society is a form of poetry ”

“ Nothing, as before remarked, is now more common than the complaint that the ideals which imagination sets up are not realized, that these glorious dreams are destroyed by cold actuality. These ideals which, in the voyage of life, founder on the rocks of hard reality may be in the first instance only subjective and belong to the idiosyncrasy of the individual, imagining himself the highest and wisest. ”

“ The various suggestions that have been made as to the meaning of Mona Lisa's smile, seem to have no other foundation than the fancies of mystic minds. The smile has been called dangerous, sinister, ambiguous, provocative, purposely enigmatic, significant of a loose woman, expressive of sublime motherhood, reminiscent of Eastern intrigue, and so on, the mildest criticism of this kind affirming that the smile will ever remain an enigma. ”

“ The street cars and railroads pass so close to the museums that the dust and vibration which they cause are serious. In Paris, the chief collections have been brought together in the old royal palace of the Louvre, situated in the heart of the city, and although street cars pass along one side the traffic is not so heavy as to cause vibration, though there is much noise and dust. Accessibility is assured by the innumerable lines of motor buses which pass the museum on all sides, as well as by the underground, which has a special stop at that point. ”

“ No person is admitted with a stick, and guards attend to preserve the pictures from injury, and the exhibition from riot. The gallery of the Louvre is at present, unfortunately, badly lighted110 throughout, owing to the light issuing chiefly on one side, from long windows. This inconvenience, however, is soon to be remedied; by observing the same manner of lighting, as in the adjoining apartment.
From the museum, we descended into la Salle des Antiques, which contains all the treasury of grecian and roman statuary. ”

“ Here one passes from room to room without the intervention of corridors, and the temptation to go on and see just a little more is enhanced by the variety in the shape of the rooms and by the material displayed. On the other hand nothing is so wearisome as the long gallery in the Louvre, where one passes some of the most remarkable paintings the world has ever known but is too wearied by the oppression of their nearness and the interminable length of the space that must be covered to be able to enjoy them. ”

“ The conflict between [Pg 56] the individual and the state, labour and capital, the man and the woman; the conflict between the greed of material gain and the spiritual life of man, the organized selfishness of nations and the higher ideals of humanity; the conflict between all the ugly complexities inseparable from giant organizations of commerce and state and the natural instincts of man crying for simplicity and beauty and fulness of leisure,—all these have to be brought to a harmony in a manner not yet dreamt of. ”

“ A plain wooden trim in a neutral tone, neither too light nor too dark, is to be preferred. In many cases it will be found possible to do away with door trim entirely, making the plaster turn around the opening. Where the floor is of marble the baseboard should also be of marble because of ease in cleaning. For the same reason, when the floor is of wood the baseboard should be of wood. The so-called hospital finish is of doubtful usefulness in a museum and it must be remembered if this is specified that no furniture, pedestal, or case can be made to set really flush with the wall. ”

“ Thus commonly, while the mind is inflated from an affluence of subordinates, it becomes corrupted to a flux of pride, the very summit of power being pander to desire. And in truth he orders this power well who knows how both to maintain it and to combat it. He orders it well who knows how through it to tower above delinquencies, and knows how with it to match himself with others in equality. For the human mind commonly is exalted even when supported by no authority: how much more does it lift itself on high when authority lends itself to its support! ”

“ Property which is only available for those who will support an established219 institution has a tendency to warp men’s judgments as to the excellence of the institution. The tendency is aggravated when the property is associated with social consideration and opportunities for petty power. It is at its worst when the institution is tied by law to an ancient creed, almost impossible to change, and yet quite out of touch with the unfettered thought of the present day. ”

“ An institution may be burdensome and hurtful without being felt to be so; or, if felt to be so, the feeling may not be sufficiently acute to prompt to the action necessary to obtain a change; or, again, the feeling, though more or less acute, may not be accompanied by a sense of power to make the change. Look at individuals. ”

“ Let there be some object, larger and more fantastic in design, and the sleep, like the snow, instead of softening the contours, serves only to cloak its true shape; puzzles the mind, the eye, and renders it more sinister for this distortion.
Virginia would waken, fix her mind on cheerful topics, fall into a light sleep and promptly become the prey of the same bizarre fancies differently presented; the constant element was the face of Dessalines; sometimes scowling, sometimes sad, stricken, or perhaps luminous with purposeful strength and dominant action. ”

“ Noises there are in the swamp, having their source for the most part in the lower element of living deadness, and transmitted echoless beneath the miasmatic blanket shrouding the cypress tops; also, there come noises from above, noises droning, homophonous; doubtful noises like those emanating from the fever-stricken brain and seem now within, now without.
Light is shorter than shadow; death longer than life. A gnat lives in the sunshine and lives but a day; the worm lives in the mold and lives long. The lower the type of life the more tenacious it becomes of the little spark it holds. ”

“ and the endurance of monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while an inferior man will not pay the price; ”

“ The hair which falls over the left shoulder is hardly indicated against the left breast, thus differing from the Louvre picture. The hands appear more rhythmic and perfect in drawing, and the whole picture is unbelievably beautiful.
This new discovery is of such interest that it is as well to quote certain authorities who refer to incidents in Leonardo's working life. Muntz states: "As early as 1501, Fra. Pietro de Nuvolaria reports in one of his letters to the Marchesa Isabella D'Este that two of Leonardo's pupils were painting portraits which he occasionally worked upon himself." ”

“ The Isleworth work is said to be contemporary with the Louvre picture and much larger, and already there are critics who say that it even has claims for serious consideration as the original masterpiece of Leonardo. The owner, however is content that the work should be judged on its own merits, but holds that it is intrinsically a more beautiful work of art than the famous Paris picture. ”

“ I consider it with the utmost attention, Landskip, and every part, and find it the same as my father's in every respect, the same particularly in the coloring of the hands as distinguished so that at that distance I could remember no difference, nor can I tell which I should chuse."
Furthermore it is authoritatively stated that the secretary of the king's gallery admitted to Richardson that many experts had doubted the authenticity of the "Mona Lisa" in their gallery. ”

“ For the conditions of production: the former social classes, the former laws, State institutions, and intellectual systems were adapted to a state of the productive forces which is either in process of disappearing, or no longer exists. The social and intellectual superstructure no longer corresponds to the economic foundation. The productive forces and the conditions of production come into conflict with each other. ”

“ At the same time the man of the West is not willing to admit that he is growing in power alone, he likes to think that he is growing also in wisdom. Only by keeping this situation in mind can we hope to understand how [364] emotional romanticism has been able to develop into a vast system of sham spirituality. I have said that the Rousseauist wants unity without reality. If we are to move towards reality, the imagination must be controlled by the power of discrimination and the Rousseauist has repudiated this power as “false and secondary.” ”

“ A Criticism of Modernity.—Our institutions are no longer any good; on this point we are all agreed. But the fault does not lie with them; but with us. Now that we have lost all the instincts out of which institutions grow, the latter on their part are beginning to disappear from our midst because we are no longer fit for them. Democracy has always been the death agony of the power of organisation: already in “Human All-too-Human,” Part I., Aph. ”

“ In view of the picture he draws in his New Atlantis of a State organized for collective inquiry, we readily forgive him his exaggerations.
Power over nature was not to be individual but collective; the Empire, as he says, of Man over Nature, substituted for the Empire of Man over Man. Let us employ Bacon's own words with their variety of picturesque metaphor: "Men have entered into the desire of learning and knowledge,... ”

“ The harp of the minstrel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it records. Every great writer may be at once known by his guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty which is not of his creation, and the knowledge which is past his finding out.
And must it ever be otherwise with painting, for otherwise it has ever been. Her subjects have been regarded as mere themes on which the artist's power is to be displayed; and that power, be it of imitation, composition, idealization, or of whatever other kind, is the chief object of the spectator's observation. ”