Art union

“ Art, all art, has this characteristic, that it unites people. Every art causes those to whom the artist’s feeling is transmitted to unite in soul with the artist, and also with all who receive the same impression. But non-Christian art, while uniting some people together, makes that very union a cause of separation between these united people and others; so that union of this kind is often a source, not only of division, but even of enmity towards others. Such is all patriotic art, with its anthems, poems, and monuments ”

“ 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. ”

“ Handbills were then sent over the United States announcing this fact. Of course, with such a celebrated work as this, thousands would be seduced to purchase a ticket, and thus place the Art-Union in a most flourishing condition, and probably secure to it at least double the sum which it had paid, or the sculptor had originally received, for the statue.
Now let us consider this transaction in its true light. The Art-Union was established solely for the purpose of benefiting artists, protecting their interests, and increasing the knowledge of art among the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We insist only on the modification of the natural by the personal; for Nature is, and ever must be, at least the sensuous ground of all Art: and where the outward and inward are so united that we cannot separate them, there shall we find the perfection of Art. So complete a union has, perhaps, never been accomplished, and may be impossible; it is certain, however, that no approach to excellence can ever be made, if the idea of such a union be not constantly looked to by the artist as his ultimate aim. ”

“ The author of the following remarks on Art-Unions, is an eminent artist, whose name has never been associated with any discussions of these Institutions, or with any controversies connected with them, and he has not, we believe, since the foundation of the first Art-Union in America, had any production of his own in the market. ”

“ All such results must be effected by our citizens at large, for we cannot expect legislative aid, and hence it is that we feel the necessity of impressing upon the public attention the operation of the Art Unions, as the great popular plan for fostering talent, infusing a love for the beautiful in Nature and Art, and cultivating those studies which invariably mark national progress in civilization, refinement and general happiness. ”

“ We submit to the gentlemen connected with the Art-Union, that they should not suffer the hirelings they may sometimes employ upon the Bulletin, thus to refer to such artists and such men as Durand, Wier, Kellogg, Elliott, and many others, who have ventured to think that their Association does not present altogether the best means to be devised for the promotion of the fine arts. ”

“ In the same line, and to the same effect, are our Art-Unions and Associations for "the encouragement" of Art; some less bad than others, but all bad, because founded upon a wrong principle, and working to a wrong end. ”

“ The odium of the policy which subjects to a high rate of duty the paintings of foreign artists and exempts the productions of American artists residing abroad, and who receive gratuitously advantages and instruction, is visited upon our citizens engaged in art culture in Europe, and has caused them with practical unanimity to favor the abolition of such an ungracious distinction ”

“ That was the prosperous day of the Art Unions, in which the artists clubbed their output, and the subscribers parted the works among themselves by something so very like raffling that the Art Unions were finally suppressed under the law against lotteries. ”

“ III. Have they furnished any peculiar advantages to artists, as a body, by supplying the means of their improvement, in a free access to books, casts, pictures, or good engravings?
IV. Do Art-Unions promote the interests [Pg 192] and reward the labors of those who are most eminently deserving?
V. Do they elevate the pursuit of art, in the minds of the people, and teach them its value, by distributing to them, in return for their subscriptions, only the best specimens which they can purchase from the studios of our artists? ”

“ Socialists, therefore, who desire to build up a larger and fuller human life, based upon collective ownership of the means of material existence in a co-operative commonwealth, cannot afford to leave Art out of account, as the great source of joy, the harmonising influence of beauty, the spirit of order and proportion, at once creative and adaptive, capable of lifting men’s thoughts on to the loftiest plane, and yet, withal, a sweet familiar and domestic spirit, cheering and comforting, and gladdening the eyes with form and colour, as it sheds its refining influence everywhere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ I should have said, during the days of a certain great political and social upheaval which laid the foundations of modern life in general, and of our gallant ally, the French Republic, in particular. The historic festivals of which I speak were in charge of the great artists and composers of the nation, and their art and music were used to express the common emotion and purpose of the People. So it will be with ours. Our artists will unite to express the new ideals of mankind, and together with each other and with the People, will lay the foundations of a new and democratic art. ”

“ Shall not America, partly through the people being followed, partly led, by the art-seers, develop an art like that of the past, which, "by the very fact that it must speak to the soul of multi- tudes in a language prescribed by precise relations," thus having "its technical merits exalted, reached the lofty expression which reveals itself in fragments, the immortal footprints of bygone civilizations"? Shall she not by being true to her traditions and her destiny, her "manifest destiny," a democracy grand and great, develop an art such as the world has not yet seen ? ”

“ There is to-day the inward interest which unites art and society, but that which brought power and glory to those other deep agitations, is destroyed. The social art has gone and has not yet returned. Whom do we principally meet in these days? Sculptors? No, the manufacturers of statues. Painters? No, the manufacturers of pictures. Musicians? No, the manufacturers of music. Everywhere artisans, nowhere artists. ”

“ I can imagine the squeezing and intriguing between the friends of applicants and their parliamentary deputies, between the deputies and the Minister of Fine Arts; and I can imagine the art produced to fulfil a popular mandate in the days when private jobbery will be the only check on public taste. Can we not all imagine the sort of man that would be chosen? Have we no experience of what the people love? Comrades, dear democratic ladies and gentlemen, pursue, by all means, your schemes for righting the world, dream your dreams, conceive Utopias, but leave the artists out. ”

“ If in some cases the more purely ornamental parts, such as the floral borders and initials, were the work of one artist, the text of another, and the miniatures of another, all I can say is, that each worked together as brethren in unity, contributing to the beauty of a harmonious and organic whole; and if such division of labour can be ascertained to have been a fact, it goes to prove the importance of some co-operation in a work of art, and its magnificent possibilities. ”

“ The National Sculpture Society’s ideals, to be valuable and enduring, must concern themselves with the ethical205 as well as the artistic side of various questions brought before the body. On the ethical side, it has, not without inherent difficulties, established its Code governing Competitions, the Code itself being governed by the Society’s avowed principle of fostering art with integrity. ”

“ You can do honest and good work as designers and illustrators and architects, as workers in wood and metal and stone; but you are hampered and bound by the conditions of your day, and you cannot by your best efforts make Art national till you have established joy in labour. No great school of Art can ever arise in our midst in such a form as to carry with it through all the world its national character, until the nation itself has found that voice (which to-day seems so conspicuously absent, even when we close our shops to make holiday) ”

“ One effect of the endowment of Institutions for the Fine Arts is, to make the union of the accidents of fortune and fashion, that is, of the extrinsic and meretricious, indispensable to the artist. He is violently taken out of his own sphere, and thrust into one for which he is qualified neither by nature nor habit. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ When, too, the energies of humanity are concentrated upon perfecting the conditions of human life itself, and on increasing its pleasurable resources, and cultivating the aesthetic faculties, it is quite possible that the community might be prepared to make even considerable sacrifices for the sake of the beauty and joy in works of Art—as indeed they have always done. ”

“ The movement, however, towards a revival of design and handicraft, the effort to unite—or rather to re-unite—the artist and the craftsman, so sundered by the industrial conditions of our century, has been growing and gathering force for some time past. It reflects in art the intellectual movement of inquiry into fundamental principles and necessities, and is a practical expression of the philosophy of the conditioned. ”

“ 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 ”

“ At any rate, because at the very base of his civilization lies that marvellous sense of social relations and human solidarity, a French artist will never feel entirely satisfied unless he can believe that his art is somehow related to, and justified by, Life. ”

“ With them art is inseparable from utility and communal activities, upon which it has an immediate modifying or strengthening effect. The movement of civilization, with the exception of the Greek, mediaval, and renaissance city states, has involved a breaking away from this original unity until, among ourselves, art is developed and enjoyed in isolation from the rest of life. Art is valued for its own sake, for its contribution to culture, not for any further influence upon life, and this freedom has come to be part of its very meaning. ”

“ I hear you ask, "should an organisation have been called into life for the sole purpose of considering in public matters relating to the development and spread of art in this country? What hitherto unfulfilled ends do you seek to achieve? Do you aim at the wider extension of artistic education in this country? But vast sums from the public purse are annually devoted to its promotion; schools of art multiply, one might almost say swarm, over the face of the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the creative implications of this new pictorial art, with the whole visual-minded race clamoring for more, what may we not dream in the way of a new renaissance? How are we to step in to the possession of such a destiny? Are the institutions with a purely literary theory of life going to meet the need? Are the art schools and the art museums making themselves ready to assimilate a new art form? Or what is the type of institution that will ultimately take the position of leadership in culture through this new universal instrument? ”

“ Why should not the many organizations such as “Friends of American Art,” etc., whose disinterested purpose is to advance art, organize a movement the object of which will be to place, by loaning if necessary, pictures and small sculpture in the offices and business haunts of the busy American man, and so create a new demand for beautiful things? ”