Lionel R. McColvin

“ So we must not be tempted to deny that art is essentially a source of pleasure simply because it is the source of the finest, most lasting, pleasure. To do so is to alienate those who are most in need of its influence. ”

“ Books, music, pictures, sculpture, however, minister to only a small part of the artistic needs of the community. By far the most widespread, though not necessarily the most valuable, art-products are those which we may describe as commercial, or industrial, or, better, “applied” art. Only a minority, even in this age, concern themselves with the first-named, but we all wear clothes, use furniture, live, work, play, and worship in buildings, eat and drink out of vessels, and so on, through every one of our daily occupations. Into each of these art can, does, and must enter. ”

“ If a painting or a poem reaches perfection, he asks no more. But the sociologist must take a different attitude. To the artist and the critic the work is the end; to the sociologist it is the beginning. ”

“ Our attitude towards the arts must lead us to relate them more closely to our other interests and, as a corollary, the different kinds and different values of artistic enjoyment must be synthesized. We desire neither to set art upon a pedestal of superiority nor to despise it as a recreative frivolity. We need to realize on the one hand that all human activities possess of a necessity positive or negative artistic significance which we cannot avoid ”

“ The result is that to-day the average quality of the whole artistic consumption of the populace is considerably lower than it had ever been before in civilized times. Though every day more and more people are reading some kind of printed matter, witnessing plays—silent and audible—of a sort, looking at pictures, [16] penny plain or twopence coloured, though the time is not far distant when every man will be interested to some extent in art in one or other of its forms, our art-life is developing not so much in quality as in quantity. ”

“ The chief aim of education and popularization must be, however, to increase the realization of the function of art—which is (though art may fulfil other purposes) to provide enjoyment, enjoyment in its [46] highest, most spiritual form maybe, yet nevertheless enjoyment. For the pursuit of art is the pursuit of the beautiful, especially the beautiful which is of man’s creation. If this pursuit cannot give pleasure, the fault must be ours, since the “beautiful” which cannot give pleasure to any is not beautiful. ”

“ At the outset it will be desirable to state that when I speak of the future of art I do not mean the “art of the future”. Art can be considered from either an inside or an outside point of view; that is to say, we can deal either with its nature, problems, and performances—art itself, or with the amount and quality of the interest taken in art by men and women—the “art-life” of the community. ”

“ Every object, every occurrence almost, has its artistic aspect. With every manufactured article, every human production, however, this artistic quality is within our control. When we make a cup, a hat, or a church, we can make it as beautiful or as ugly as we like, subject to certain limitations, some of them real, some imaginary. ”

“ The second need—after education—is to make good art more accessible. We have seen that, so long as the supply of art is a commercial proposition, little, if any, improvement in its average quality can be expected. Until, in some way, the good can be given the same chance as the bad, the majority will continue to clamour for the bad, since it will be the only thing they know. It seems, therefore, that the only effective way to break the vicious circle is to try to put art-provision as far as possible upon a non-commercial basis. ”

“ Secondly, the popularizer must not rob his public of its self-respect or unduly destroy its faith in its own judgment in artistic matters. To do so is to open up another source of prejudice and to raise a fresh obstacle to enjoyment, for he who loses faith in his own opinions, who is told that he should put no trust in his own judgment, endeavours to embrace the artistic standards of others. ”

“ The “art-life” of the civilized world is at present in a transition period, which is fraught with distinct, though maybe unrealized, dangers. Its problems are only indirectly related to the present and the future state of art-production: whether we foresee development or retrogression in modern tendencies in literature, [6] painting, music, and so on, these dangers will need to be faced, or they will, at least, minimize the value of the creative work of to-morrow. For we are concerned not with the production of art but with the enjoyment and appreciation of art. ”

“ The most significant tendency of art and the greatest danger, which operates in all fields, is, therefore, that commercialism, mass-production, standardization, and the heeding of large volumes of demand will lead to an increase in the quantity of art-production but a decrease in the average of its quality, unless the evils of the system are counteracted by certain developments, the chief of which are education, co-operation, and the birth of a new attitude with regard to art-ideals. ”

“ Let all who can afford the more beautiful production purchase it, but let them pay the extra price under protest. The manufacturer must be made to realize that it is anti-social to make a profit out of beauty, when by so doing he condemns the less fortunate man to suffer the ugly. As the business-man is at heart as much interested as any other person in the welfare of his fellow-men, this might have some influence. And an independent inquiry (conducted by, say, a group of art-students or a University) might achieve a little. ”

“ And, still further, there is the psychological or spiritual element, art satisfying human needs which are unsatisfied by other activities, supplementing, filling the gaps in our personal development. We cannot put art into a watertight compartment. The extent to which art appeals to an individual, and the particular way in which and the special medium through which artistic impulses find expression, will depend very largely upon biological and social factors, upon the materially ordered associations of the individual, his work, his health, everything that impinges upon his life. ”

“ Apart from the moral value of cultivating a sense of proportion, of perspective, of the inter-relation of parts—a sense which is as essential to a sane life as to the appreciation of a picture or a musical composition—nothing could lead more readily to an understanding of the artist’s aims and plan of campaign. In music, for instance, a brief account of the sequence of the main themes, which could be memorized, would render intelligible and whole a composition which otherwise would seem meaningless, shapeless, and dreary. ”

“ The point I would urge at present is simply that the value of art to humanity does depend very largely upon the desire and opportunity of men to take advantage of it. The poet whose works are ignored saving by the very few may be as impotent as a mute inglorious Milton.
Therefore there are two factors—production and reproduction, or, shall we say, creation and distribution. A musician [8] composes a symphony, a dramatist writes a play, a novelist a story—that is the first factor. ”

“ We badly need writers who, without being namby-pamby, superior, or academic, can help the man with the germ of interest, writers who can point to the ascending steps in the ladder of taste. Theirs is not an easy task. In the first place, they must be themselves interesting, for only a minority are willing to read books with an ulterior motive. ”

“ Frankly I believe the remedy to lie in the hands of those who want good art. None of these now can get as much of it as they desire; most enjoy only a small portion. If people set to work to provide for themselves so that, instead, a large part of their artistic desires was satisfied, they would so do a great deal to improve the average tastes of the community, since the membership of a healthy organization always increases. ”

“ Those who daily traverse roads consisting of disorderly jumbles of architectural misfits lose the sense of serenity, order, and fitness they might gain in happier surroundings. The second of the points mentioned before is that no building can be judged apart from its surroundings. An essential of every work of art is that its parts shall form a well-balanced whole, each detail being subordinated to the general effect, which must convey a sense of completeness. ”

“ He thinks that the enjoyable aspects of art are fairly obvious and that there is no point in looking beyond the obvious unless he is seeking for some extra-artistic element—some intellectual or spiritual value. As he is only seeking enjoyment, why should he waste time looking for anything else? It must, therefore, be made quite clear to him that the chief aim of the educationist is to increase his pleasure in art and that there is no ulterior motive. ”

“ And the corollary of this, as said before, is that, since artistic potentialities exist in all men according to their being and environment, the realm of art will present as large a variety of values, types, and manifestations as does our life itself. ”

“ Therefore there is a great need for systematic education in the appreciation of art. Many more attempts are being made to-day than there were a few years ago; yet the subject—a very difficult one—is still in its infancy. The methods and aims of such education have not yet been adequately formulated and must exercise educationists in the near future. Failing a well-defined plan, they have taken refuge in aspects of art-instruction which are not those best calculated to stimulate genuine enjoyment. This explains to some extent the confusion of practical and appreciative ends. ”

“ The favourite pursuits of early civilizations were not those of to-day, and it is very unlikely that any one factor has done so much to change taste as the development of means of reproduction. The pursuit of once-popular arts need not die out; it need not even decline, since the numbers of those interested in all the arts is increasing; but the proportionate or relative interest alters. This being so, can we ignore the influence of the mechanical factor? ”

“ In the first place all forms of art, good, bad, and indifferent, have benefited by mechanical means of reproduction. The actual numbers of those who can experience the finest things in art have increased manifold, and to that extent, the art-life of the world is better off than before. ”

“ It is wrong to attribute this tendency to a mere desire to be “in the swim”; much more often it is because readers, unconsciously classing themselves as average, argue that the book which interests the average man will interest them. To a [27] large extent this applies to all popular art. Few people care to “waste their time” experimenting when it is so much easier to fall in line with the crowd. The only wonder is how the popularity of the “best seller” and its kind begins: once that has happened the rest is a normal process. ”

“ Fifthly, industrial designers have not received due recognition and are not well organized in relation to the industries. The designer is not always as well acquainted with the special qualities and limitations of the material to which his designs are to be applied as he might be; the manufacturer does not often [69] enough realize the importance of the designer; and the young artist is apt to despise design—naturally, because personal public recognition is never awarded to the designer—and the best men prefer more pretentious if more precarious fields. ”

“ Let us go back to the pre-mechanical era, when only a small number of people had any opportunity for contact with art and only a few had developed a love for and the ability to appreciate its higher manifestations. ”

“ We have seen that the mechanical factor has, by making the fourth-rate more accessible, increased the number of those with fourth-rate tastes. Now we encounter the commercial factor which enters at some stage into every art and almost every artistic activity. Books, music, and pictures must be published, plays produced, concerts arranged, art-objects manufactured, and so on. Outlay of capital is almost invariably involved, and those with capital can seldom be induced to use it without the usual expectation of gain. ”

“ For the second limitation is that manufactured goods are intended primarily for utility, and the incentive for their production is profit. So long as we are content to take the ugly but useful, so long as our artistic discrimination does not give added commercial value to the beautiful, we can have no right to expect the manufacturer to bother. ”

“ There are so many things in this world of imperfectly developed men and women that give pleasure and are most unbeautiful, that we hesitate to class our precious goods in the same category lest they be tarred with the same brush. ”

“ In a world the majority of whose inhabitants are quite incapable of thinking intelligently or logically about the most important influences in their lives, where politics and religion and the fundamental human relationships are governed by ignorant prejudices and irrational habits, where a large proportion of men are mentally and physically below par, can we expect every man and woman to [36] possess the latent ability to embrace the beautiful? However that may be, this obstacle to artistic education can be removed only by the sociologist, the educationist, the moralist, and the biologist. ”

“ It is agreed that if good stocks do not increase at the same rate as inferior stocks they will gradually die out. If, in a world full of artistic endeavour the good artistic stocks are not as sturdy as the remainder, they too will in time die out. So long as the commercial and mechanical factors are allowed full play, the good artistic stocks will be at a disadvantage, and so the future of the finest elements of art depends upon the success of efforts to counteract these factors. ”

“ As the latter is the more important, since without it production would be sterile, it is an essential preliminary that the conditions necessary for the healthy growth of a more widespread, deeper-rooted love of the beautiful should exist. We are now viewing the situation as sociologists, as men, rather than as artists. The artist can be satisfied when he attains a certain level of performance: at least he can work with content and happiness while he is seeking to reach a may-be unattainable perfection. ”

“ In the first place, the public, whether popular or other works are concerned, has no power to select at all; it can only take or leave what is offered, which is a very different thing, leading at the best to incomplete satisfaction and at the worst to considerable waste. In the second place, the business-man selects not according to popular demands but according to his ideas of popular demand—again a different matter. ”

“ The art-lover is probably not getting much harm; the music-lover is now often relieved by mechanical instruments from the necessity for technique; than the historical studies of the last-named, however, nothing more dreary and futile could be invented.
Improvement in the methods of education in appreciation must involve the total abolition of the Examination system. Examinations may be able to show whether a man can draw “correctly”, play the notes of a composition, or is versed in the dates of a number of writers and able to list their important works. ”