Part 2 (1/2)

Every artist must choose his own problem He may take it from wherever he likes, provided he can ot to express and the stiies he will need to express theot to reenerally the subject--is of no consequence in itself It is merely one of the artist's means of expression or creation In any particular case one problem may be better than another, as a means, just as one canvas or one brand of colours may be; that will depend upon the temperament of the artist, and we may leave it to him For us the proble test of absolute ”rightness” It is the gauge that measures the pressure of steam; the artist stokes his fires to set the little handle spinning; he knows that his ot his pointer to the h it; but it does not drive the engine

What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? No more than this, I think The contemplation of pure form leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete detach forto suppose that the eh the forms we contemplate by the artist who created them If this be so, the transmitted emotion, whatever it may be, must be of such a kind that it can be expressed in any sort of fors, pots, textiles, &c, &c Now the emotion that artists express comes to some of thenificance of nificance of anyconsidered as an end in itself But if an object considered as an end in itself nificance) than the same object considered as arelated to human interests--and this undoubtedly is the case--we can only suppose that e consider anything as an end in itself we becoreaterco its accidental and conditioned importance, we beco, of the universal in the particular, of the all-pervading rhyth about is that which lies behind the appearance of all things--that which gives to all things their individual significance, the thing in itself, the ultimate reality And if a more or less unconscious apprehension of this latent reality of e emotion, a passion to express which is the inspiration of many artists, it seems reasonable to suppose that those who, unaided by material objects, experience the same emotion have come by another road to the same country

That is the metaphysical hypothesis Are we to shole, accept a part of it, or reject it altogether? Each htness ofam I sure Be they artists or lovers of art, mystics or mathematicians, those who achieve ecstasy are those who have freed theance of hunificance of art must make himself humble before it Those who find the chief importance of art or of philosophy in its relation to conduct or its practical utility--those who cannot value things as ends in themselves or, at any rate, as directthe best that it can give Whatever the world of aesthetic contemplation may be, it is not the world of human business and passion; in it the chatter and tumult of material existence is unheard, or heard only as the echo of some more ultimate harmony

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The existence of the Ku K'ai-chih hth centuries), was a typical pri, Chen, Wei, and Tang dynasties a development out of the exquisitely refined and exhausted art of the Han decadence--froler--is to call Romanesque sculpture a develop has happened to refill the stream of art What had happened in China was the spiritual and emotional revolution that followed the onset of Buddhism]

[Footnote 2: This is not to say that exact representation is bad in itself It is indifferent A perfectly represented fornificance to representation The quarrel between significance and illusion seems to be as old as art itself, and I have little doubt that what makes most palaeolithic art so bad is a preoccupation with exact representation

Evidently palaeolithic draughtsnificance of form Their art resembles that of the more capable and sincere Royal Acadeher than that of Sir Edward Poynter and a little lower than that of the late Lord Leighton That this is no paradox let the cave-drawings of Altamira, or such works as the sketches of horses found at Bruniquel and now in the British Museuirl from the Grotte du Pape, Brassempouy (_Musee St Germain_) and the ivory torso found at the same place (_Collection St Cric_), be, indeed, palaeolithic, then there were good palaeolithic artists who created and did not imitate form

Neolithic art is, of course, a very different er Fry per story that will illustrate my view When Mr Okakura, the Government editor of _The Temple Treasures of japan_, first ca the pictures of those who from want of will or want of skill did not create illusions but concentrated their energies on the creation of form He understood immediately the Byzantine masters and the French and Italian Primitives In the Renaissance painters, on the other hand, with their descriptive pre-occupations, their literary and anecdotic interests, he could see nothing but vulgarity and nificant for, or rather had dwindled to a shallow stream, overlaid and hidden beneath weeds, so the universal response, aesthetic emotion, was not evoked It was not till he caain found himself in the familiar world of pure art

Similarly, sensitive Europeans who respond ireat Oriental art, are left cold by the trivial pieces of anecdote and social criticisly cherished by Chinese dilettanti It would be easy toof so obvious a truth]

[Footnote 4: Anyone who has visited the very latest French exhibitions will have seen scores of what are called ”Cubist” pictures These afford an excellent illustration of my thesis Of a hundred cubist pictures three or four will have artistic value Thirty years ago the saht have been said of ”Impressionist” pictures; forty years before that of romantic pictures in the manner of Delacroix The explanation is simple,--the vast inality nor any considerable talent Left to themselves they would probably produce the kind of painful absurdity which in England is known as an ”Acadeiftbut a fool, and many students understand that the ordinary cultivated picture-goer knows an ”Acadelance and knows that it is bad Is it fair to condeive his picture a factitious interest, or even for trying to conceal beneath striking wrappers the essential mediocrity of his wares?

If not heroically sincere he is surely not inhumanly base Besides, he has to imitate someone, and he likes to be in the fashi+on And, after all, a bad cubist picture is no worse than any other bad picture If anyone is to be blauish between good cubist pictures and bad Blame alike the fools who think that because a picture is cubist it must be worthless, and their idiotic enemies who think it must be marvellous People of sensibility can see that there is as much difference between Picasso and a Montres and the President of the Royal Academy]

II

ART AND LIFE

I ART AND RELIGION

II ART AND HISTORY

III ART AND ETHICS

[Illustration: EARLY PERUVIAN POT FROM THE NASCA VALLEY _In the British Museum_]

I

ART AND RELIGION

If in my first chapter I had been at pains to show that art owed nothing to life the title of e of inconsistency

The danger would be slight, however; for though art owed nothing to life, lifeto art The weather is admirably independent of human hopes and fears, yet few of us are so sublimely detached as to be indifferent to the weather Art does affect the lives ofcolour and rey and trivial affair Art for so Also, art is affected by life; for to create art there must be men with hands and a sense of form and colour and three-dimensional space and the power to feel and the passion to create

Therefore art has a great deal to do with life--with emotional life