Popular art

“ Art has always responded to the uprush of a genuine popular enthusiasm, has embodied, shaped and moulded the ideas tossed about from mind to mind, and from man to man in a period of national effervescence and progress. ”

“ This fault which I have admitted, this want of universality is not surprising, since it was necessary for these three poets to stand apart from the tide of opinion, and disregard the popular tastes, in order to attain firmness, depth, or permanent beauty. And they being, as I have said, the pilot-minds of their time, their works enjoy a growing, though not a rapidly growing, popularity. ”

“ 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 I 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. ”

“ In the matter of art the development is distinctly reflex. The exhibition of works of genius will slowly instruct and elevate the popular taste, and in time the cultivated popular taste will reject mediocrity and demand better things. Only a little while ago few people in the United States knew how to draw, and only a few could tell good drawing from bad. ”

“ Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of specialists—artists of all sorts—and an accompanying development of appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case in primitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and rewarded by a popular appreciation of her work—or his.
Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artistic expression and appreciation far higher than we see now. ”

“ Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. ”

“ When he says that country peasants have in the past appreciated, and do still appreciate, works of the highest art, he means that the way to detect a work of xviiiart is to see what is apparently most popular among the masses. Go into the streets or music-halls of the cities in any particular country and year, and observe what is most frequently sung, shouted, or played on the barrel-organs. ”

“ Here is your great artist, your great exceptional mind groping in the darknesses beneath the surface of life, half apprehending strange elusive things in those profundities, and striving—striving sometimes to the utmost verge of human endeavour—to give that strange unsuspected mystery expression, to shape it, to shadow it in form and wonder of colour, in beautiful rhythms, in phantasies of narrative, in gracious and glowing words. So much in its essential and precious degree is art. Think of what the world must be in the wider vision of the great artist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For upward of twenty years the enthusiastic Audubon lived in the remotest woods, journeying to and fro on foot thousands of miles—or sailing on great rivers, great as any seas—with his unerring rifle, slaughtering only to embalm his prey by an art of his own, in form and hue unchanged, unchangeable—and now, for the sum of one shilling, may anybody that chooses it behold the images of all the splendid and gorgeous birds of that continent. ”

“ Whether the medium be the painter's color, the musician's tones, or the poet's words, the purpose of the representation is fulfilled in so far as the work expresses the emotion which the artist has felt in the presence of this spectacle. He, the artist, more than I or another, has thrilled to its mystery, its tumult, its power. It is this effect, received as a unity of impression, that he wants to communicate. This power of the object over him, and consequently the content of his work, is beauty. ”

“ Moreover, as this personage is the most captivating, the most important and the most conspicuous of all, it is he whom artists present to the public, now concentrated in an ideal personage, when their art, like painting, sculpture, the drama, the romance or the epic, is imitative; now, dispersed in its elements, as in architecture and in music, where art excites emotions without incarnating them. ”

“ The public, on the other hand, should consider art, not as a matter of fashion, or as an opportunity to display its clothes, but should feel it as a true and profound enjoyment, and do everything to second the artist's efforts. ”

“ Is our artist a genre painter: then does his mind see small things to delight in them, or to delight us—if this, he is our servitor or little better,—does he go at the whole thing with the sincerity of an artistic purpose and somewhere place a veritable touch of genius, or only represent one item after another until the whole catalogue of items is complete, careful that he leave behind no just cause for reproach? Has the man dignified his subject and raised it to something above imitative art, or does he clearly state in his treatment of it that imitation is the end of art? ”

“ The arts which employ any of these senses must satisfy their bias, however much they may appeal to higher faculties; nothing which rankly offends them can by any possible means be made beautiful. Thus painting must be charming in color, and music in tone; and certain colors and tones are charming for no deeper reason than that which makes certain foods palatable.
The interest in perception [3] assumes special prominence in the great visual art of painting. ”

“ Taking the Fine Arts at their lowest value, as a mere source of pleasure, from the love of imitation or representation of agreeable objects—the remembrancer of scenes of interest, the elegant accomplishment by which homes are embellished and made more beautifully homely—surely some little gratitude is due, where it has been the fashion to be sparing of any praise, to those good and pious men who in their convents prepared, improved, and invented colours as well as implements of Art; were themselves the early painters, and by their extensive patronage may be called the Fathers of the Arts. ”

“ Some who glance over these opening remarks before entering upon the search for such material in the body of the book as may seem available for their immediate purpose, may consider that this view of the subject is unpractical; but we would remind such that all art, pictorial, sculptural, decorative, or what not, is only noble and worthy of the name so far as it affords food for thought in the spectator, and testifies to thought in the artist, and that the nobility of the work is in direct proportion to such evidence of inner life. ”

“ That such performances should have been so extolled in the very seat and centre of the fine arts, seems wonderful. But in this manner has public taste been operated upon; and from the period when art was carried to the highest point of excellence known in modern times, it has thus gradually declined. A succession of artists followed each other, who, being esteemed the most eminent in their own time, were praised extravagantly by an ignorant public; and in the several schools they established, their own productions were the only objects of study. ”

“ And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts—that is to say, the drama and sculpture—are to teach what is noble in past history, and lovely in existing human and organic life.
4. And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, is that they strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of popular minds to which they are addressed.
5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these arts, is that they make themselves be forgotten in what they represent; and so fulfil the words of their greatest Master,
"The best, in this kind, are but shadows." ”

“ All which infers, moreover, that a full appreciation of any true work of art cannot be extemporized; for such a work has a thousand meanings, which open out upon the eye gradually, as the eye feeds and grows and kindles up to them: its virtue has to soak into the mind insensibly; and to this end there needs a long, smooth, quiet fellowship.
PRINCIPLES OF ART.
The several forms of Art, as Painting, Sculpture, Music, Architecture, the Poem, the Drama, all have a common root, and proceed upon certain common principles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How many out of the hundreds and thousands of inspired girls and women who have turned to the easel or the desk have become great artists? Upon the stage they may; but I have often questioned whether the dramatic art be a true art, or rather a half-art, in which half-talents can reach the highest eminence. And those who are called actors of genius, what are they in comparison with men of true genius in art, in literature, in music? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Comment cette amitié qui est un sentiment et qui est la fleur de l’âme s’exprimerait-elle mieux que par une oeuvre d’art, c’est-à-dire la fleur du goût et du génie humain?
L’art, en effet, est l’essence du travail des siècles et ses oeuvres seules survivent aux siècles. Une civilisation achevée s’exprime par l’art: l’art résume toujours ce que l’humanité sent et pense. ”

“ For all this there are gems scattered up and down, which will woo the eye to a repeated study, and, if we may judge from the flocking crowds, educate the public taste to an increasing love of whatever is lovable in Art. ”

“ Was it not to embellish and beautify all lives, rather than crowd out the thousands that the few might feast on some exquisite vision? Was any art higher than that which boldly thrust aside shams, and went to the shaping of true, strong, faithful aims in the work placed before one? ”

“ And 'real' life, purged of monotony by the wit, discrimination or extravagance of the artist, or—on a lower plane—by the combination only of approved comical or sentimental or melodramatic elements, is the most popular and marketable of all subjects. ”

“ As the theoretically latest manifestation of the craving for social expression there will thus appear an impulse to represent or describe objective events or things, by which a feeling similar to that of [Pg 99] the producing artist may be called forth in his audience. And thus in almost all art-forms, in ornament and music as well as in painting and novels, there will be found an imitation of nature which serves what in the widest use of the term we may call an epic purpose. ”

“ Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. ”

“ AND now we come to that great and important subject, the Fine Arts, which day by day are becoming more appreciated and find a rapid increase of patrons. It is true that there are some who do not regard Art as an essentiality, and who are even indifferent to it as an ornament. ”

“ I find that what your people need is not so much high imaginative art but that which hallows the vessels of everyday use. I suppose that the poet will sing and the artist will paint regardless whether the world praises or blames. ”

“ Once artistic success became a matter of royalties it was an easy prey to bourgeois conditions, which were that art and literature should either be merely entertaining or point a respectable moral. Only a few Romantics were proof against this insidious influence. To those recalcitrants we owe the motto "Art for art's sake." ”

“ By this quality they become apt to serve the purposes which are essential to the artistic craving; and by the same quality they satisfy the requirement of fullest possible enjoyment which is made by the spectator. What we demand of the perfect work of art is—to resort to an often-used image—that it shall be as a shell, which we may lift in our hand and bring to our ear, but in which, notwithstanding its smallness, we may hear the roaring and singing of the sea. ”

“ Consequently the ultimate appeal is to the taste of the public, for art, if it be not the desire to give pleasure by the representation of beauty, is nothing. Beauty, of course, must not necessarily be confounded with prettiness; it may be beauty of character. The result is, therefore, that the decorative art of any period is an indication of that which gives pleasure at the moment, and an absolute reflex of the artistic wishes, desires, and tastes of the cultivated classes to whom executive art must appeal. ”