Samuel Kneeland

“ Must we, then, give up our saints, angels, and devils, and other venerable, beautiful, and ugly monsters in art, so endeared by childish memories and fears? United to and supported by ignorance and blind belief, they stood as truths in the infancy of the race; separated from these, and subjected to the light of reason and knowledge, they fall from our acceptance as beliefs, and from the highest sphere of art, where nature and truth should henceforth be the grand aims of the artist. ”

“ Let me not be understood as pretending to say that there is no art or beauty in purely fanciful creations in painting or sculpture. There is a place, and a genuine one, for the allegorical, the symbolic, the mysterious, the unreal, if you will, in art; but such art, from the very fact of its unreality, untruthfulness, and impossibility, is, I maintain, a lower type than that which is strictly natural and true. Wings of angels, as messengers of glad tidings or guardian spirits, are, as fanciful creations, beautiful, though untrue ”

“ Seeing manatees and seals reclining on the shores, holding their young in their arms while suckling them, like all mammals, the semi-human faces, the womanly position, and the tender care and anxiety for their young in this act—their hearts would be filled with such joy at thoughts of home, and their eyes with tears long pent up, that the combination of indistinct vision and excited imagination would transform the creatures they saw into the beautiful women they longed to see. ”

“ I know very well that I am treading here on debatable ground, and that those who follow, or think they follow, the ideal in art, will rise as a host against me. My object here is to show that art has too much neglected the laws of living animal nature; that mythology has been followed rather than zoölogy, where attention to the latter would have been just as good for all the purposes of art, and far better for the interest of truth. In one sense, the ideal is the ultimate aim of art, if by that is meant that it shall suggest true ideas, and excite emotions which shall educate and elevate ”

“ A painting or a statue may be beautiful, as interpreting the emotions or religious beliefs of man at any particular epoch of bis history; but, if the ideas symbolized or suggested become untrue or unbeliefs, they thereby lose in artistic value, and no longer belong to the domain of the highest art. Nothing that is simply temporary, no mere conventionalism, however beautiful at the time, which becomes unnatural or impossible as man advances in knowledge, can, in my opinion, belong to the highest art. ”

“ It seems to me that the symbolic in art bears a relation to the natural and the true, similar to that which the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians do to the written languages of the moderns—the one indefinite, suggestive, but variously interpreted, local, and temporary; the other defifinite, positive, universal, and for all time unmistakable—and that we might as well go back centuries and adopt the hieroglyphic as the simply symbolic without reference to its truth in art. Symbolism is the visible expression of a myth, possessing a variable amount of truth and a large amount of error ”

“ It has been said, and no doubt truly, that as knowledge increases, the imagination decreases; in such an event our ideal will soon become the real, without exaggeration, and nature and art will no longer be divorced, even in appearance. Increasing intelligence is the great and never-ceasing iconoclast which breaks to pieces the images created by imperfect knowledge of facts. ”

“ We must not confound the results of the imagination, which exaggerates possible parts seen, or supposed to be seen, in nature, with the wholly unreal products of the fancy; we may admit their beauty, but, however definite and pleasing their outlines, if their combinations, when tested by reason, are impossible, they must be regarded as lower than the natural. They may answer for gas-fixtures, monuments, memorial windows, and various articles of household decoration, but not for anything demanding admiration and following as a work of high art. ”

“ The ideal, or that which suggests the idea of a heavenly messenger, need not be false to nature; an angel without wings is just as ideal and suggestive, and not an anatomical impossibility. That the form of an angel need not of necessity have wings is shown by a painting in the museum at Naples of the "Holy Family," attributed to an artist of the Florentine school, in every respect admirable, and usually called the "Virgin of Purity." The angels have no wings, and carry lilies in their hands; wings would have added nothing to the picture, which is remarkable for its natural beauty. ”

“ Instances might easily be mentioned, but I will merely allude to them to show that art has not always been true to nature and fact, and to say that we are not only at liberty, but in duty bound, to protest against all untruthfulness, whether it offend the eye or the reason. ”

“ In our day, when reason is supreme, the thinking world can not be made to believe that progress means evil, even though it modify ideas of things once considered sacred and beyond reason; and any belief, practice, sentiment, or influence, which can not bear the light of reason, and hence can not be said to be founded on truth, deserves to be removed as a bar to human progress. ”

“ If Theology and Art are sisters (and they are in one sense) , let them be twin sisters, walking hand in hand, with the stamp of truth, as we know it, in every line, word, and feature, irrespective of any pious frauds or false rules of art bequeathed to us by past ages. Spiritual truth ought to be reënforced by scientific truth, and art as well as religion will be the gainer. ”

“ I would say here that, in mere ornamentation, conventional representations suggestive of the intended image may be legitimately and artistically used with good effect; but if they are contrary to nature, whether on a candlestick or a church tower, they must belong to the lower spheres of art; and no metaphysical subtilty, no assumption of æsthetic culture, no aspirations after an imaginary and impossible ideal, ought, in this nineteenth century, to raise them to the highest position in art. ”

“ While I do not deny the artistic value of the imaginative, symbolic, and ideal, I maintain that such, at the present time, if contrary to nature, is not the highest art, is not necessary for the expression of the most ennobling ideas, and is not demanded by the most exalted aspirations of humanity. ”

“ MANY persons of culture and poetic imagination, with a keen sense of the beautiful, but with little knowledge of living nature, believe and maintain, and in one sense justly, that certain works of old and modern masters are works of high art, from color, grouping, elegance of figures, and the various accessories which, in themselves, or by ideas and emotions excited by them, make painting and sculpture very powerful agents in instructing and elevating kind. ”

“ If you add another pair of limbs as wings, you make an anatomical nondescript, an impossible monster, devoid of truth, false to nature, odious to the highest art.
The smooth, comparatively hairless skin of man, angel, or devil, is incompatible with the feathers of a bird's wings; his bony tissue has not the air-spaces, nor does it communicate with the lungs, as in the bird, which is thus rendered specifically lighter. His thorax or chest is too movable for the support of muscles of flight, even if angels were made armless and winged ”

“ I speak of art from the natural, not the imaginative point of view, and my arguments are addressed chiefly to such as have a fair knowledge of anatomy, physiology, zoölogy (living and fossil) , and the laws of development in the animal kingdom. As, however, many deeply interested in the progress of art have very little acquaintance with living nature, it will be necessary for me to enter into some details, tiresome perhaps for the scientific expert, but important for the popular understanding of my argument. ”

“ The Greeks and Romans, whose principles of art the moderns have chiefly imitated, personified certain ideas of their social state, deified and worshiped them. As a general rule, they found in nature the types which they idealized; in some cases, from ignorance, superstition, or love of the marvelous, they departed from nature, and to that extent, in my judgment, their art was false. Art, as I understand it, should be the interpreter of nature, without too servile an imitation; art may transfigure nature, but should never be false to it ”

“ Any one who discusses the principles of art from the point of view of the true, without reference to the beautiful, labors under great disadvantages, arising chiefly from the intimate connection between art and religion. Most of the best works of the old and modern masters, in painting especially, embody the theologic beliefs of the period, and suggest ideas of spiritual, not of physical truth. As there is evolution in nature and in theology, let us hope there is also evolution in art ”

“ It is true, as Goethe has well said, that "it is in her monstrosities that Nature reveals to us her secrets," which we now know are but the expressions of natural laws; I hope to show that in the monsters of art she only reveals to us her weakness. ”

“ Those who are easily and strongly moved by these spiritual emotions will not listen to reason, which they maintain has nothing to do in the premises. Let such cling to their spiritual truths, and to the artistic representations which embody and suggest them, and regard them as high art if they please; but, at the same time, let the truth as it is in nature and reason have a chance to appear in the field of art. ”

“ Even admitting that a work of high art by the old masters may include the impossible, the unnatural, as symbolic, if judged by the knowledge of the times and the motives of the artist, that is no reason for advocating similar errors in the nineteenth century. ”

“ The man must eat for the horse, as his is the only mouth, which would necessitate a diet repugnant even to the most fanatic vegetarian. We naturally inquire if he must also breathe for the horse; there must be double lungs, double heart, double stomach, double intestines, double body, six limbs, long tail, hoofs and hands—a monster considerably worse than the single-bodied but six-limbed art-angels above alluded to. ”

“ There may be no contradiction in the belief in the existence of spiritual beings far above us in power, and that such may even communicate with mankind in various ways; but, if they assume to the eye the shape and functions of humanity, they should be made to conform to the laws of human anatomy and physiology. ”

“ I will allude to a few other monstrosities in ancient art, copied by the moderns, to further illustrate my meaning.
It was natural that a barbarous people, at the first and distant view of men on horseback, should imagine that they were creatures half man and half horse; hence the fabled Centaurs, a people of Thessaly, who were among the earliest to bring the horse into the service of man. As is well known, the Centaurs had the head, arms, chest, and body of a man as far as the hips, joined to the chest, body, and four limbs of the horse. ”

“ An artist may be ignorant of history, chronology, and zoölogy, as well as of anatomy and physiology, and may be a perfect child in bis knowledge of common things beyond his immediate every-day sight. Even Raphael, Albert Dürer, Salvator Rosa, Vandyke, Paul Veronese, Poussin, and many others, have greatly erred in these respects. ”

“ As far as we know locomotion in the animal kingdom, the wings and the legs are not moved at the same time in progression in the air; it is seen only in some birds with very rudimentary or short wings, who use their wings to help them in running on the ground, which is not the ideal of the artist's angel. ”

“ Should any object that following strictly the laws of nature will have a tendency to lower the aspirations of the artist, we may refer to a sister science in defense of our position. The signs of the times have convinced many a timid but reasoning soul that fidelity to truth and nature can never injure religion, however much it may shatter ideal theologies; nor in art can it injure anything but the false and the temporary—the grand underlying principles resting on the basis of eternal truth. Are we not justified, then, in saying, "The essentially beautiful must be in nature ”

“ The faith in spiritual truths which artists embody by symbols, without being of necessity weakened, will be modified by knowledge, and thus render forms once suggestive of beauty and goodness now untrue and monstrous. ”

“ I mean nothing ugly, misshapen, gigantic, or dwarfish, or with any congenital anomalies of conformation, rendering impossible the accomplishment of the ordinary functions of life, but the union of parts incompatible with each other, and impossible when brought to the test of reason and natural laws, however beautiful or suggestive they may be, and however consecrated by unquestioning ages of social, religious, and æsthetic acceptance. ”

“ But, though winged heads are anatomically legitimate, physiologically we can not understand the action or the origin of any muscles sufficiently powerful to move the head, to say nothing of the other incongruities, especially of the union of human hair, face, and skin with the feathers of a bird. As pure symbols these are acceptable for the infancy of the human race, but are not therefore to be perpetuated by the moderns. ”