In former years, we inquiring youngsters in foreign studios
were much bewildered by the repetition of a certain phrase.
Discussion of almost any picture or statue was (after other forms
of criticism had been exhausted) pretty sure to conclude with,
“It’s all very well in its way, but it’s not
Art.” Not only foolish youths but the
“masters” themselves constantly advanced this opinion
to crush a rival or belittle a friend. To ardent minds
seeking for the light and catching at every thread that might
serve as a guide out of perplexity, this vague assertion was
confusing. According to one master, the eighteenth-century
“school” did not exist. What had been produced
at that time was pleasing enough to the eye, but “was not
Art!” In the opinion of another, Italian music might
amuse or cheer the ignorant, but could not be recognized by
serious musicians.
As most of us were living far from home and friends for the
purpose of acquiring the rudiments of art, this continual
sweeping away of our foundations was discouraging. What was
the use, we sometimes asked ourselves, of toiling, if our work
was to be cast contemptuously aside by the next
“school” as a pleasing trifle, not for a moment to be
taken seriously? How was one to find out the truth?
Who was to decide when doctors disagreed? Where was the
rock on which an earnest student might lay his cornerstone
without the misgiving that the next wave in public opinion would
sap its base and cast him and his ideals out again at sea?
The eighteenth-century artists and the Italian composers had
been sincere and convinced that they were producing works of
art. In our own day the idol of one moment becomes the jest
of the next. Was there, then, no fixed law?
The short period, for instance, between 1875 and the present
time has been long enough for the talent of one painter
(Bastien-Lepage) to be discovered, discussed, lauded, acclaimed,
then gradually forgotten and decried. During the years when
we were studying in Paris, that young painter’s works were
pronounced by the critics and their following to be the last
development of Art. Museums and amateurs vied with each
other in acquiring his canvases. Yet, only this spring,
while dining with two or three art critics in the French capital,
I heard Lepage’s name mentioned and his works recalled with
the smile that is accorded to those who have hoodwinked the
public and passed off spurious material as the real thing.
If any one doubts the fleeting nature of a reputation, let him
go to a sale of modern pictures and note the prices brought by
the favorites of twenty years ago. The paintings of that
arch-priest, Meissonier, no longer command the sums that eager
collectors paid for them a score of years back. When a
great European critic dares assert, as one has recently, of the
master’s “1815,” that “everything in the
picture appears metallic, except the cannon and the men’s
helmets,” the mighty are indeed fallen! It is much
the same thing with the old masters. There have been
fashions in them as in other forms of art. Fifty years ago
Rembrandt’s work brought but small prices, and until Henri
Rochefort (during his exile) began to write up the English
school, Romneys, Lawrences, and Gainsboroughs had little market
value.
The result is that most of us are as far away from the
solution of that vexed question “What is Art?” at
forty as we were when boys. The majority have arranged a
compromise with their consciences. We have found out what
we like (in itself no mean achievement), and beyond such personal
preference, are shy of asserting (as we were fond of doing
formerly) that such and such works are “Art,” and
such others, while pleasing and popular, lack the requisite
qualities.
To enquiring minds, sure that an answer to this question
exists, but uncertain where to look for it, the fact that one of
the thinkers of the century has, in a recent
“Evangel,” given to the world a definition of
“Art,” the result of many years’ meditation,
will be received with joy. “Art,” says Tolstoi,
“is simply a condition of life. It is any form of
expression that a human being employs to communicate an emotion
he has experienced to a fellow-mortal.”
An author who, in telling his hopes and sorrows, amuses or
saddens a reader, has in just so much produced a work of
art. A lover who, by the sincerity of his accent,
communicates the flame that is consuming him to the object of his
adoration; the shopkeeper who inspires a purchaser with his own
admiration for an object on sale; the baby that makes its joy
known to a parent—artists! artists! Brown, Jones, or
Robinson, the moment he has consciously produced on a
neighbor’s ear or eye the sensation that a sound or a
combination of colors has effected on his own organs, is an
artist!
Of course much of this has been recognized through all
time. The formula in which Tolstoi has presented his
meditations to the world is, however, so fresh that it comes like
a revelation, with the additional merit of being understood, with
little or no mental effort, by either the casual reader, who,
with half-attention attracted by a headline, says to himself,
“‘What is art?’ That looks
interesting!” and skims lightly down the lines, or the
thinker who, after perusing Tolstoi’s lucid words, lays
down the volume with a sigh, and murmurs in his humiliation,
“Why have I been all these years seeking in the clouds for
what was lying ready at my hand?”
The wide-reaching definition of the Russian writer has the
effect of a vigorous blow from a pickaxe at the foundations of a
shaky and too elaborate edifice. The wordy superstructure
of aphorisms and paradox falls to the ground, disclosing fair
“Truth,” so long a captive within the temple erected
in her honor. As, however, the newly freed goddess smiles
on the ignorant and the pedants alike, the result is that with
one accord the æsthetes raise a howl! “And the
‘beautiful,’” they say, “the
beautiful? Can there be any ‘Art’ without the
‘Beautiful’? What! the little greengrocer at
the corner is an artist because, forsooth, he has arranged some
lettuce and tomatoes into a tempting pile! Anathema!
Art is a secret known only to the initiated few; the vulgar can
neither understand nor appreciate it! We are the
elect! Our mission is to explain what Art is and point out
her beauty to a coarse and heedless world. Only those with
a sense of the ‘beautiful’ should be allowed to enter
into her sacred presence.”
Here the expounders of “Art” plunge into a sea of
words, offering a dozen definitions each more obscure than its
predecessor, all of which have served in turn as watchwords of
different “schools.” Tolstoi’s sweeping
truth is too far-reaching to please these gentry. Like the
priests of past religions, they would have preferred to keep such
knowledge as they had to themselves and expound it, little at a
time, to the ignorant. The great Russian has kicked away
their altar and routed the false gods, whose acolytes will never
forgive him.
Those of my readers who have been intimate with painters,
actors, or musicians, will recall with amusement how lightly the
performances of an associate are condemned by the brotherhood as
falling short of the high standard which according to these
wiseacres, “Art” exacts, and how sure each speaker is
of understanding just where a brother carries his
“mote.”
Voltaire once avoided giving a definition of the beautiful by
saying, “Ask a toad what his ideas of beauty are. He
will indicate the particular female toad he happens to admire and
praise her goggle-eyes and yellow belly as the perfection of
beauty!” A negro from Guiana will make much the same
unsatisfactory answer, so the old philosopher recommends us not
to be didactic on subjects where judgments are relative, and at
the same time without appeal.
Tolstoi denies that an idea as subtle as a definition of Art
can be classified by pedants, and proceeds to formulate the
following delightful axiom: “A principle upon which no two
people can agree does not exist.” A truth is proved
by its evidence to all. Discussion outside of that is
simply beating the air. Each succeeding
“school” has sounded its death-knell by asserting
that certain combinations alone produced beauty—the
weakness of to-day being an inclination to see art only in the
obscure and the recondite. As a result we drift each hour
further from the truth. Modern intellectuality has formed
itself into a scornful aristocracy whose members, esteeming
themselves the élite, withdraw from the vulgar public, and
live in a world of their own, looking (like the Lady of Shalott)
into a mirror at distorted images of nature and declaring that
what they see is art!
In literature that which is difficult to understand is much
admired by the simple-minded, who also decry pictures that tell
their own story! A certain class of minds enjoy being
mystified, and in consequence writers, painters, and musicians
have appeared who are willing to juggle for their
amusement. The simple definition given to us by the Russian
writer comes like a breath of wholesome air to those suffocating
in an atmosphere of perfumes and artificial heat. Art is
our common inheritance, not the property of a favored few.
The wide world we love is full of it, and each of us in his
humble way is an artist when with a full heart he communicates
his delight and his joy to another. Tolstoi has given us
back our birthright, so long withheld, and crowned with his aged
hands the true artist.
