Modern art

“ The great secret, on the other hand, of the beauty of the most exquisite specimens of modern art, lies in the simplicity of expression which they bear, in their production of one uniform emotion, from all the parts of one harmonious composition. ”

“ The fact is, that modern art is not so much distinguished from old art by greater skill, as by a radical change in temper. The art of this day is not merely a more knowing art than that of the thirteenth century,—it is altogether another art. ”

“ There are hundreds of them throbbing and gleaming in the night—this very moment—lonely cities in the hollow of the stars, bringing together the nations of the earth.
When the spirit of our modern way of living, the idea in it, the bare facts about our modern human nature have been noticed at last by our modern artists, masterpieces shall come to us out of every great and living activity in our lives. Art shall tell the things these lives are about. ”

“ Those qualities in painting by which it is ordinarily judged are for the most part irrelevancies from the standpoint of pure æsthetics. They have as little to do with a picture’s infixed greatness as the punctuation in Faust or the words of the Hymn to Joy in the Ninth Symphony. Small wonder that modern art has become a copious fountain-head of abuse and laughter; for modern art tends toward the elimination of all those accretions so beloved by the general—literature, drama, sentiment, symbolism, anecdote, prettiness and photographic realism. ”

“ It is perhaps the most astonishing realization of the modern ideal, the most accomplished transcript of the actual appearance of nature, that has yet been produced. It is because of its great merit, because of its extraordinary success in what it attempts, that it leads one to the serious consideration of the nature of the attempt and of the gain and loss involved in the choice that modern art has made. ”

“ They summoned their best artists to illustrate it, and illuminate it in pen-and-ink, half-tones, startling colors, and photographic reproductions, sketches theatrical, humorous, and poetic, caricatures, pictures of tropical luxury and aristocratic pretension; in short, all the bewildering affluence of modern art which is brought to bear upon the aesthetic cultivation of the lowest popular taste. ”

“ The freedom of modern art, and the universality of its field, are great things, and the value of the second is easily seen in the extraordinary variety of subject-matter in the longer poems of the nineteenth century. ”

“ All these appeals to art to set herself more in harmony with modern progress and civilisation, and to make herself the mouthpiece for the voice of humanity, these appeals to art ‘to have a mission,’ are appeals which should be made to the public. The art which has fulfilled the conditions of beauty has fulfilled all conditions: it is for the critic to teach the people how to find in the calm of such art the highest expression of their own most stormy passions. ”

“ I'm talking about three phases of modern art because they, I think, clearly display the change of ideas of our time. In fact, my generation after famous predecessors, to whom we were followers, sought to open window widely on nature: to see everything, to say everything. ”

“ The realism of modern art is due partly to a greater knowledge of, and a greater attention to, costume, architecture, furniture, and all the properties of the stage on which we place our personages, but it is also due to our making truth a primary object. ”

“ Serious modern art, despite its often22 formidable and bizarre appearance, is only a striving to rehabilitate the natural and unalterable principles of rhythmic form to be found in the old masters, and to translate them into relative and more comprehensive terms. ”

“ Though much of that exists in our modern decorations, it is highly desirable that it should not partake of that character; a little taste, a little poetry, gracefulness, order, and some display of general knowledge, of artistic combinations and principles, cannot fail to make our productions more valued and valuable. Give a tinge of some originality,—display an attempt of your own inventive powers, based upon acknowledged principles of beauty and effect, and your productions will soon reach an eminence of which art is ever capable! ”

“ She observes that simplicity and definiteness, that a certain corporeality and externality—or what in modern critical dialect we would call objectivity—are notes of antique art; while variety and shading of colour, and a habit of self-reflection developed by Christianity [subjectivity] , are the marks of modern art. "Simplicity in the arts would, among the moderns, easily degenerate into coldness and abstraction, while that of the ancients was full of life and animation. ”

“ The simple fact is, that old art was brought into that service, and received therein a peculiar form; that modern art is not brought into that service, and has received in consequence another form; that this is the great distinction between mediæval and modern art ”

“ 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. ”

“ And if, in the application of these principles, in spite of my endeavor to render it impartial, the feeling and fondness which I have for some works of modern art escape me sometimes where it should not, let it be pardoned as little more than a fair counterbalance to that peculiar veneration with which the work of the older master, associated as it has ever been in our ears with the expression of whatever is great or perfect, must be usually regarded by the reader. ”

“ For this, Art is required, and the true disciples of the great artist are not his studio-imitators, but those who become like his works of art, be they plastic as in Greek days, or pictorial as in modern times; in a word, Life is Art’s best, Art’s only pupil. ”

“ So the matter stands: from the first dawn of history till quite modern times, art, which nature meant to solace all, fulfilled its purpose; all men shared in it; that was what made life romantic, as people call it, in those days; that and not robber-barons and inaccessible kings with their hierarchy of serving-nobles and other such rubbish: but art grew and grew, saw empires sicken and sickened with them ”

“ The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality, and so the critic, with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamour of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. ”

“ For instance, almost the whole system and hope of modern life are founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main nineteenth-century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get everything by grinding--music, literature, and painting. You will find it grievously not so; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. ”

“ Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men; ”

“ In order to understand the social and dynamic significance of modern dramatic art it is necessary, I believe, to ascertain the difference between the functions of art for art's sake and art as the mirror of life. ”

“ In tracing the progress of the Art, and upon comparing the merits of artists of ancient and modern times, it is to the moderns that we assign the palm of superiority, especially for perfection of detail in the ornamentation. ”

“ THROUGHOUT the entire history of the fine arts, no period of æsthetic innovation and endeavour has suffered from public malignity, ridicule and ignorance as has painting during the last century. The reasons for this are many and, to the serious student of art history, obvious. ”

“ It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art here, as in all other cases, consists. ”

“ Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing. ”

“ The moment we attach other than purely æsthetic values to paintings—either ancient or modern—we are confronted by so exten33sive and differentiated a set of tests that chaos or error is unavoidable. In the end we shall find that our conclusions have their premises, not in the work of art itself, but in personal and extraneous considerations. ”

“ One can imagine what an infinity, what variety and richness, of details it should contain.
Our subject presents, at the same time, another kind of interest more elevated and not less alluring. Here each Art appears in its different phases and in its diversified progress. It is a history, not alone of the Arts, but of the epoch itself in which they were developed; for the Arts, regarded in their generality, are the truest expression of society. They speak to us of tastes, of ideas, of character: they exhibit us in their works. ”

“ And yet, I say, how have we of these latter days treated the beauty of the earth, or that which we call art?
Perhaps I had best begin by stating what will scarcely be new to you, that art must be broadly divided into two kinds, of which we may call the first Intellectual, and the second Decorative Art, using the words as mere forms of convenience. The first kind addresses itself wholly to our mental needs; the things made by it serve no other purpose but to feed the mind, and, as far as material needs go, might be done without altogether. ”

“ This fertilisation of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art. ”

“ For, without beating about the bush, let us consider what the real state of art is. And first I must ask you to extend the word art beyond those matters which are consciously works of art, to take in not only painting and sculpture, and architecture, but the shapes and colours of all household goods, nay, even the arrangement of the fields for tillage and pasture, the management of towns and of our highways of all kinds; in a word, to extend it to the aspect of the externals of our life. ”

“ And yet there is great enjoyment, to some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme of general criticism and constant conversation. ”

“ What is this art, which is considered so important and necessary for humanity that for its sake these sacrifices of labor, of human life, and even of goodness may be made?
"What is art? What a question! Art is architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry in all its forms," usually replies the ordinary man, the art amateur, or even the artist himself, imagining the matter about which he is talking to be perfectly clear, and uniformly understood by everybody. ”

“ Before we can come to a true initiation into, and an abiding enjoyment of, the domains of representative art, we must have a keen, clear, settled, and contented view of its limitations. Far less of the fruitlessness of discontent enters into poetry and literature than into the subject of painting and sculpture. ”

“ What would become of the classics, of drama, architecture, and the poets of nature and human life? No: Literature would be all out of key if nature were left out, all out of key if art were lacking. Nature's work and man's work are the warp and woof of life, and closely interwoven are the various threads in the fabric we call civilization. ”

“ All attempts to define absolute beauty in itself—whether as an imitation of nature, or as suitability to its object, or as a correspondence of parts, or as symmetry, or as harmony, or as unity in variety, etc.—either define nothing at all, or define only some traits of some artistic productions, and are far from including all that everybody has always held, and still holds, to be art. ”

“ Literature springs to life, throws off antiquated dress, and takes its graceful modern form. The fine arts flourish as never before; the canvas, the marble, the precious metal, feel the subtle [Pg 396] touch of the eager artist, and give birth to beauty which is immortal. The heavy prison-castle of the Frank, the Goth, the Norman, the Anglo-Saxon, retires abashed before the elegant, airy, poetic palace of the Renaissance.
Nor does the revival of learning limit itself to literature, architecture, painting, sculpture. It extends to law, to commerce, to agriculture, to religion, to education. ”

“ To wring from nature its countless harmonies of tone and colour, to seize and interpret the endless subtleties of individual form and character—these are the ideals that have inspired and have satisfied many of the greatest painters the world has produced. Who then shall say that Art has need of any other, any wider ambition? ”

“ His successful efforts were the result of deep reflection, a fine taste, and a noble imagination. He strove to exhibit the perfections of nature, and to impart an air of grandeur to all his productions. He commenced art where Art itself began. ”