Society of Arts

“ He proposed to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, to paint gratuitously, a series of pictures, allegorically illustrating the culture and progress of human knowledge, which now decorate the great room of the Society ”

“ In 1760 and 1761 he obtained premiums from the Society of Arts. He was, like his father, a fellow of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and signed their roll in 1766. He first exhibited with them in 1762, sending a portrait. ”

“ As has been already pointed out, the Royal Academy in its youth owed much to the Society of Arts; and it is worthy of note that, not only was the first exhibition of the works of rival artists held in the Society's rooms, but the first collection of photographs exhibited there in 1853. The Society still maintains a liberal tone, and is generous enough to grant the use of its handsome room to many societies for the purpose of holding their various meetings. ”

“ In 1765 he gained the premium of the Society of Arts for the elevation of a side of a street in classical style, being then under thirty years of age, and from 1766 he was a frequent exhibitor at that society's gallery. ”

“ With regard to those societies of popular and educational intention the old Society of Arts in the Adelphi, founded in 1754, enjoys a good record. Numerous lectures on art subjects have from time to time been given, and in 1887 a scheme was devised by which awards are made to student-workers in design. ”

“ It is to be remembered that individual and social stimuli must be [284] varied enough to touch men at all points and call out a response from every faculty of their nature. These arts, therefore, that make life real and socialize it and cheer men and women on their way, play a vital part in the education of society and deserve as serious consideration as the other educational agencies and institutions that find a place in the social economy of the community. Numerous amateur musical and dramatic societies testify to the interest of the people in these refined arts. ”

“ Such a society was in due time formed, and, under the name of the 'Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society,' initiated the wider movement which, from itself as source, has spread all the world over, and created a new interest. The arts and crafts have been born again, and, in a new sense, occupy the attention of mankind. ”

“ And so, with the growth of societies, it came about that one class of persons separated themselves and became the ministers or producers of this kind of pleasures, while the rest became the persons ministered to, the participators in or recipients of the pleasures. Artists are those members of a society who are so constituted as to feel more acutely than the rest certain classes of pleasures which all can feel in their degree. ”

“ In 1906 and succeeding years a new form of organisation was established. Members spontaneously associated themselves into groups, "The Nursery" for the young, the Women's Group, the Arts Group, and Groups for Education, Biology, and Local Government. The careers of these bodies were various. The Arts Group included philosophy, and, to tell the truth, almost excluded Socialism. But all of us in our youth are anxiously concerned about philosophy and art and many who are no longer young are in the same case. Moreover artists and philosophers are always attractive. ”

“ The Society of Dilettanti, a company of distinguished men interested in promoting the arts and improving the public taste, which has been continuously in existence since 1736, enrolling in each generation the greatest painters and writers of the time, elected Page to membership. ”

“ We can scarcely conceive of art without society or society without art. The development of society has been the development of art, and human civilization has advanced through all the stages of culture into which ethnologists subdivide it as the result of successive advances in the perfection of the arts. ”

“ The painters have gotten together with a Society of Fine Arts, the sculptors have formed a Society of Chisellers, and all the authors from Homer down to myself have got up an Authors' Club where we have a lovely time talking about ourselves, no man to be eligible who hasn't written something that has lasted a hundred years. ”

“ The Society was therefore founded, with a charter membership of about fifty persons, which included many of the poets doing significant work to-day, together with critics and representatives of other arts, the purpose from the outset being to include the appreciators of poetry as well as its producers. ”

“ In founding the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society we desired to give opportunities of personal distinction for artistic work in design and craftsmanship, to put designers and craftsmen in the same position as other artists, such as painters and sculptors, before the public in this respect by giving the names of all responsible executants of a work. ”

“ The Artists’ Society, formed in 1830, has for its object the providing of facilities to enable its members to perfect themselves in their art. To this end there is a good library of works on art, and abundant opportunities are afforded for general study from the life. In the furtherance of a cult the Japan Society, devoted to the encouragement of the study of the arts and industries of Japan, is a typical example; and the Society of Mezzotint Engravers is representative of those bodies formed in the interests of particular groups of workers. ”

“ If you would learn to write, 't is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light. ”

“ The Royal Institution in Mosley Street occupies a large building, established for the encouragement of the Fine Arts by exhibitions of paintings and sculptures, and the delivery of lectures.
The Philosophical Society was established in 1781, and has numbered among its members Dr. ”

“ First it should be noted that there are very few societies designed for the artistic improvement of artists. The Artists’ Society has already been mentioned; and the Art Workers’ Guild, which meets at Clifford’s Inn Hall, provides meetings, from which the public is excluded, where profitable discussions take place on questions of craft and design. But, as a rule, the art society, of which only artists are members, is organized for exhibition purposes or for the protection of interests. ”

“ The New English Art Club, founded in 1885 as a protest against academic art, achieves its purpose by exhibition only. The International Society of Painters and Engravers, again, represents the wider ideas of the 20th century. ”

“ I do not mean, of course, that all art work must be correlated in detail to the other work of the school, but simply that a spirit of union gives vitality to the art, and depth and richness to the other work. ”

“ Once admit that the Contemporary Movement is something a little out of the common, that it has the air of a beginning, and you will catch yourself saying "Beginning of what?" instead of settling down quietly to enjoy the rare spectacle of a renaissance. Art, we hope, serious, alive, and independent is knocking at the door, and we are impelled to ask "What will come of it?" This is the general question, which, you will find, divides itself into two sufficiently precise queries—"What will Society do with Art?" and "What will Art do with Society?" ”

“ As an instance of the tendency of art workers to combine, the Society of Art Masters is a good illustration. This is an association of teachers of art schools, controlled by the art branch of the Board of Education, and has a membership of over 300. Good work of another kind occupies the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. ”

“ A glance at the constitution of the Society will show your objects are declared to be: the encouragement of industrial Art by the promotion of excellence of design, the support of Schools of Art throughout the country, and the formation of a National Gallery of Art at the seat of Government. ”

“ So then, generally, it should be the object of government, and of all patrons of art, to collect, as far as may be, the works of dead masters in public galleries, arranging them so as to illustrate the history of nations, and the progress and influence of their arts ”

“ The Art Workers’ Guild, dating from 1884, was the source from which the new society sprang, the immediate purpose of the latter being to get the work of men who combined art with handicraft before the public by means of exhibitions, the committees of the Royal Academy and kindred associations refusing to accept examples of applied art for the exhibitions which they devoted to what they called “fine art proper.” ”

“ There is besides an academy of drawing, which has now about nine or ten students, and merits notice as being the only memorial of a society which was formed in the year 1795, called the Economical Society of Friends of the Kingdom, for the diffusion and encouragement of Literature and Science. ”

“ Live for your Art, not for that limited, narrow, uncharitable, scandalmongering section of the great public [Pg 350] which calls itself "Society," and which loves to patronize Art in any form at the least possible cost to itself. ”

“ There are friendly societies worked by artisans, which owe their success to the inspiration of University men, and there is one branch of the Charity Organization Society which still keeps the mark impressed on it, when a man of culture did the lowest work. ”

“ First of all, the stimulation of artistic production, and the extension of artistic appreciation. Our Society, which is composed of rather staid men, themselves not peculiarly fitted to pass judgment outside the field of science, will invite, let us say, twenty of the most generally and highly valued of English and American authors to form themselves into a Committee on Literary Awards, as a branch of the Society for Social Research. ”

“ However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject, and return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by which p. 62I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is to use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which he is to work. I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best in England are the arts in which the public have not been interested. ”

“ According to the rules they framed for their governance, the society was to be "for the study of artistic human figures." It was to meet three times a week, in the evening, and work for a couple of hours. ”

“ The Art committee, in their report, expressed "their surprise and gratification at the rapid stride which the fine arts have made in our infant city," and believed that the State possessed "an abundant artistic talent, yearning to evolve itself, and fertile as our soil, which only awaits the cultivating hand of taste and wealth to foster and promote its growth." ”

“ The union with this interloping tendency, so foreign to the whole aristocratic temper of art, has produced portrait; and by the position of this hybrid, or at least far from regularly bred creature; by the amount of the real artistic quality of beauty which it is permitted to retain by the various schools of art, we can, even as by the treatment of similar social interlopers we can estimate the necessities and tendencies of various states of society, judge what are the conditions in which the various schools of art struggle for the object of their lives, which is the beautiful. ”

“ The multiplication of art periodicals, lectures, books, photographs, meetings of societies and gilds, museums, schools of arts and crafts, polytechnics, scholarships, facilities for travel, exhibitions, even those of the Royal Academy, to which objects of applied art are now admitted, not only encourages many persons to become workers and designers in the applied arts, but exposes everything to the plagiarist, who travesties the freshest idea before it has well left the hands of its originator. ”

“ The furtherance of a cult and the specializing of work have also given rise to many new associations in Great Britain, besides the Royal Academy (see Academy, Royal) . At the outset, therefore, it will be well to mention the leading art societies thus described. The (now Royal) Society of Painters in Water Colours, founded in 1804, and the (now Royal) Society of British Artists (1823) , are typical of those societies which exist merely for purposes of holding exhibitions and conferring diplomas of membership. ”

“ There are three ways in which institutions for the promotion of the fine arts may be supposed to favour the object in view; either by furnishing the best models to the student,—or by holding out the prospect of immediate patronage and reward,—or by diffusing a more general taste for the arts. ”

“ The promotion of the arts, the artistic interests and abilities of all working people and the dissemination of artistic works and achievements are obligations of the state and all social forces. Artistic creation is based on a close connection between cultural workers and the life of the people. ”

“ What she read described the formation of the New Modernism, the Artistic Society about which so much was being said among well-informed circles of the Art World, with the reservation that nothing must be accepted as official. ”

“ In a summary discussion such as the present, many such questions—regarding the future of art and of culture itself, the nature and prospects of art in a democratic society, the fate of the individual today—will of necessity remain virtually untouched. ”