What Is Art?

lengths the insanity and deformity of art may go, especially WHAT IS ART?

43 when, as in onr days, it knows that it is considered infallible, may be seen by what is being done in the art of our circle to-day.

So that the theory of art, founded on beauty, expounded by sesthetics, and, in dim outline, professed by the public, is nothing but the setting up as good, of that which has pleased and pleases us, i.e. pleases a certain class of people.

In order to define any human activity, it is necessary to understand its sense and importance. And, in order to do that, it is primarily necessary to examine that activity in itself, in its dependence on its causes, and in connection with its effects, and not merely in relation to the pleasure we can get from it.

If we say that the aim of any activity is merely our pleasure, and define it solely by that pleasure, our definition will evidently be a false one. But this is precisely what has occurred in the efforts to define art. Now, if we consider the food question, it will not occur to anyone to affirm that the importance of food consists in the pleasure we receive when eating it. Everyone understands that the satisfaction of our taste cannot serve as a basis for our definition of the merits of food, and that we have therefore no right to presuppose that the dinners with cayenne pepper, Limburg cheese, alcohol, etc., to which we are accustomed and which please us, form the very best human food.

And in the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense serve as the basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of objects which afford us pleasure serve as the model of what art should be.

To see the aim and purpose of art in the pleasure we get from it, is like assuming (as is done by people of the lowest moral development, e.g. by savages) that the purpose and aim of food is the pleasure derived when consuming it.

Just as people who conceive the aim and purpose of food to be pleasure cannot recognise the real meaning of eating.

44 WHAT IS ART?

so people who consider the aim of art to be pleasure cannot realise its true meaning and purpose, because they attribute to an activity, the meaning of which lies in its connection with other phenomena of life, the false and exceptional aim of pleasure. People come to understand that the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. And it is the same with regard to art. People will come to understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e. pleasure. The acknowledgment of beauty {i.e. of a certain kind of pleasure received from art) as being the aim of art, not only fails to assist us in finding a definition of Avhat art is, but, on the contrary, by transferring the question into a region quite foreign to art (into metaphysical, psychological, physiological, and even historical discussions as to why such a production pleases one person, and such another displeases or pleases someone else), it renders such definition impossible. And since discussions as to why one man likes pears and another prefers meat do not help towards finding a definition of what is essential in nourishment, so the solution of questions of taste in art (to which the discussions on art involuntarily come) not only does not help to make clear what this particular human activity which we call art really consists in, but renders such elucidation quite impossible, until we rid ourselves of a conception which justifies every kind of art, at the cost of confusing the whole matter.

To the question. What is this art, to which is offered up the labour of millions, the very lives of men, and even morality itself? we have extracted replies from the existing aesthetics, which all amount to this: that the aim of art is beauty, that beauty is recognised by the enjoyment it gives, and that artistic enjoyment is a good and important thing, because it is enjoyment. In a word, that enjoyment is good WHAT IS ART?

45 because it is enjoyment. Thus, what is considered the definition of art is no definition at all, but only a shuffle to justify existing art. Therefore, however strange it may seem to say so, in spite of the mountains of books written about art, no exact definition of art has been constructed. And the reason of this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.

CHAPTER V CHAPTER V What is art, if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses the whole matter? The latest and most com- prehensible definitions of art, apart from the conception of beauty, are the following: — (1 a) Art is an activity arising even in the animal kingdom, and springing from sexual desire and the propensity to play (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer), and (1 &) accompanied by a pleasurable excitement of the nervous system (Grant Allen). This is the physiological- evolutionary definition. (2) Art is the external manifestation, by means of lines, colours, movements, sounds, or words, of emotions felt by man (Ѵёгоп). This is the experimental definition. According to the very latest definition (Sully), (3) Art is “the production of some permanent object, or passing action, which is fitted not only to supply an active enjoyment to the producer, but to convey a pleasurable impression to a number of spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage to he derived from it.”

Notwithstanding the superiority of these definitions to the metaphysical definitions which depended on the conception of beauty, they are yet far from exact. (1 a) The first, the physiological-evolutionary definition, is inexact, because, instead of speaking about the artistic activity itself, which is the real matter in hand, it treats of the derivation of art. The modification of it (1 &), based on the physiological effects on the human organism, is inexact, because within the limits of such definition many other human activities can he included, as has occurred in the neo-sesthetic theories, which 46 i WHAT IS ART?

47 )п as art the preparation of handsome c^B^hes, pleasant s, and even of victuals.

e experimental definition (2), Avhich makes arKQonsist e expression of emotions, is inexact, because a man'^ay iss his emotions by means of lines, colours, sounds, or. s, and yet may not act on others by such expression; hen the manifestation of his emotions is not art. e third definition (that of Sully) is inexact, because le production of objects or actions affording pleasure e producer and a pleasant emotion to the spectators arers apart from personal advantage, may he included showing of conjuring tricks or gymnastic exercises, other activities which are not art. And, further, • things, the production of which does not afford are to the producer, and the sensation received from 1 is unpleasant, such as gloomy, heart-rending scenes poetic description or a play, may nevertheless he uhted works of art.

e inaccuracy of all these definitions arises from the fact .n them all (as also in the metaphysical definitions) Jh^ t considered is the pleasure art may give, and not the )seJt may serve in the life of man and of Immanity. order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, ise to consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in vay, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the 3 of intercourse between man and man. ery work of art causes the receiver to enter into a n kind of relationship both with him who produced, producing, the art, and with all those who, simul- isly, previously or subsequently, receive the same c impression.

iech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of serves as a means of union among them, and art acts similar manner. The peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse^ distinguishing it from intercourse by me of words, consists in this, that whereas by words a i transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art transmits his feelings.

The activity of art is based on the fact that a r receiving through his sense of hearing or sight ano man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To the simplest example: one man laughs, and another, hears, becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another, hears, feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, another man, seeing him, comes to a similar state of r By his movements, or by the sounds of his voice, a expresses courage and determination, or sadness and ness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and sp and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a ^ expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respe love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and < are infected by the same feelings of admiration, dev - fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons phenomena.

And it is on this capacity of man to receive another expression of feeling, and experience those feelings hi ^ that the activity of art is based.

If a man infects another or others, directly, immediat; his appearance, or by the sounds he gives vent to at th time he experiences tlie feeling; if he causes anothe to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning, or tc or cry when he himself is obliged to laugh or cry, or t( when he himself is suffering — that does not amount tc Art begins when one person, with the object of; another or others to himself in one and the same: expresses that feeling by certain external indicatior take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced WHAT IS ART?

49 y, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, scribes himself, his condition before the encounter, the rroundings, the wood, his own lightheartedness, and then e wolf’s appearance, its movements, the distance between mself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy when ling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived rough and infects the hearers and compels them to feel lat the narrator had experienced, is art. If even the у had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of e, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, invented an encounter with a wolf, and recounted it so to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced .en he feared the wolf, that also would be art. And t in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced bier the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment aether in reality or in imagination), expresses these lings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, rage, or despondency, and the transition from one to 'ther of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by nds, so that the hearers are infected by them, and erience them as they were experienced by the composer. ?he feelings with which the artist infects others may be 5t various — very strong or very weak, very important or Y insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love native land, self-devotion and submission to fate or to I expressed in a drama, raptures of lovers described in ovel, feelings of voluptuousness expressed in a picture, :age expressed in a triumphal march, merriment evoked a dance, humour evoked by a funny story, the feeling quietness transmitted by an evening landscape or by a iby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful •esque — it is all art- 4 гѵВАТ IS ART?

Sf> If only the spectators or auditors are infected by t feelings which the author has felt, it is art.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, a having evoked it in oneself then, by means of movements, lin colours, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transi that feeling that others may experience the same feeling ^his is the activity of art.

; Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one m consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on '.others feelings he has lived through, and that other peo^ ' are infected by these feelings, and also experience them.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestati of some mysterious Idea of beauty, or God; it is not, as 1 sesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of ma emotions by external signs; it is not the production pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but ii a means of union among men, joining them together in i same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progr I towards well-being of individuals and of humanity.

As, thanks to man’s capacity to express thoughts by woi every man may know all that has been done for him in • realms of thought by all humanity before his day, and can, the present, thanks to this capacity to understand the thoug of others, become a sharer in their activity, and can hims hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoug he has assimilated from others, as well as those which h; arisen within himself; so, thanks to man’s capacity to infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all t is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting own feelings to others.

If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoug conceived by the men who preceded them, and to pass or WHAT IS ART?

51 others their own thoughts, men лѵоиМ he like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Hauserd And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might he almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another.

And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself, and as generally diffused.

ЛУе are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theatres, concerts, and exhibitions; together with buildings, statues, poems, novels...But all this is hut the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled with works of art of every kind — from cradle-song, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special importance.

This special importance has always been given by all men to that part of this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their religious perception, and this small part of art they have specifically called art, attaching to it the full meaning of the word.

That was how men of old — Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle — looked on art. Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Christians regard art; thus it was, and still is, ^ “The foundling of Nuremberg,” found in the market-place of that town on 26th May 1828, apparently some sixteen years old. He spoke little, and was almost totally ignorant even of common objects. He subsequently explained that he had been brought up in confinement undergi’ound, and visited by only one man, whom he saw but seldom. — Trans.

52 WHAT IS ART?

understood by the Mahommedans, and thus is it still under- stood by religious folk among our own peasantry.

Some teachers of mankind — as Plato in his Republic^ and people such as the primitive Christians, the strict Mahommedans, and the Buddhists — have gone so far as to repudiate all art.

People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent view of to-day, which regards any art as good if only it affords pleasure) considered, and consider, that art (as contrasted with speech, which need not be listened to) is so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their Avills, that mankind лѵіИ lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art.

Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied that which cannot be denied — one of the indispensable means of communication, without which mankind could not exist. But not less wrong are the people of civilised European society of our class and day, in favouring any art if it but serves beauty, i.e. gives people pleasure.

Formerly, people feared lest among the works of art there might chance to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art altogether. Now, they only fear lest they should be deprived of any enjoyment art can afford, and patronise any art. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first, and that its consequences are far more harmful.

CHAPTER УІ Вит how could it happen that that very art, which in ancient times was merely tolerated (if tolerated at all), should have come, in our times, to be invariably considered a good thing if only it affords pleasure?

It has resulted from the following causes. The estimation of the value of art {i.e, of the feelings it transmits) depends on men’s perception of the meaning of life; depends on what they consider to be the good and the evil of life. And what is good and what is evil is defined by what are termed religions.

Humanity unceasingly moves forward from a lower, more partial, and obscure understanding of life, to one more general and more lucid. And in this, as in every movement, there are leaders, — those who have understood the meaning of life more clearly than others, — and of these advanced men there is always one who has, in his words and by his life, expressed this meaning more clearly, accessibly, and strongly than others. This man’s expression of the meaning of life, together with those superstitions, traditions, and ceremonies which usually form themselves round the memory of such a man, is what is called a religion. Religions are the ex- ponents of the highest compreucnsion of life accessible to the best and foremost men at a given time in a given society; a comprehension towards which, inevitably and irresistibly, all the rest of that society must advance. And therefore only religions have always served, and still serve, as bases for the valuation of human sentiments. If feelings bring 54 WHAT IS ART?

men nearer the ideal their religion indicates, if they are in harmony with it and do not contradict it, they are good; if they estrange men from it and oppose it, they are bad.

If the religion places the meaning of life in worshipping one God and fulfilling what is regarded as His will, as was the case among the Jews, then the feelings flowing from love to that God, and to His law, successfully transmitted through the art of poetry by the prophets, by the psalms, or by the epic of the book of Genesis, is good, high art. All opposing that, as for instance the transmission of feelings of devotion to strange gods, or of feelings incompatible with the law of God, would he considered had art. Or if, as was the case among the Greeks, the religion places the meaning of life in earthly happiness, in beauty and in strength, then art successfully transmitting the joy and energy of life would he considered good art, hut art which transmitted feelings of effeminacy or despondency would be had art. If the meaning of life is seen in the well-being of one’s nation, or in honouring one’s ancestors and con- tinuing the mode of life led by them, as was the case among the Komans and the Chinese respectively, then art trans- mitting feelings of joy at sacrificing one’s personal well-being for the common weal, or at exalting one’s ancestors and maintaining their traditions, would he considered good art; hut art expressing feelings contrary to this лѵоиИ be regarded as had. If the meaning of life is seen in freeing oneself from the yoke of animalism, as is the case among the Buddhists, then art successfully transmitting feelings that elevate the soul and humble the flesh will he good art, and all that transmits feelings strengthening the bodily passions will be had art.

In every age, and in every human society, there exists a religious sense, common to that whole society, of what is good and what is bad, and it is this religious conception that decides the value of the feelings transmitted by art.

WHAT IS ART?

55 And therefore, among all nations, art which transmitted feelings considered to he good by this general religious sense was recognised as being good and was encouraged; hut art which transmitted feelings considered to he had by this general religious conception, was recognised as being bad, and was rejected. All the rest of the immense field of art by means of which people communicate one with another, was not esteemed at all, and was only noticed when it ran counter to the religious conception of its age, and then merely to be repudiated. Thus it was among all nations, — Greeks, Jews, Indians, Egyptians, and Chinese, — and so it was when Christianity appeared.

The Christianity of the first centuries recognised as productions of good art, only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers and hymn-singing, evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to follow his example, renuncia- tion of worldly life, humility, and the love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected: for instance, tolerating plastic representations only лѵЬеп they were symbolical, they rejected all the pagan sculptures.

This was so among the Christians of the first centuries, who accepted Christ’s teaching, if not quite in its true form, at least not in the perverted, paganised form in which it was accepted subsequently.

But besides this Christianity, from the time of the whole- sale conversion of nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine, Charlemagne, and Yladimir, there appeared another, a Church Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ’s teaching. And this Church Christianity, in accordance with its own teaching, estimated quite otherwise the feelings of people and the productions of art which transmitted those feelings.

This Church Christianity not only did not acknowledge the fundamental and essential positions of true Christianity, — 5б WHAT IS ART?

the immediate relationship of each man to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of all men, and the substitution of humility and love in place of every kind of violence — but, on the contrary, having set up a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology, and having intro- duced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, and not only of these divinities themselves, but also of their images, it made blind faith in the Church and its ordinances the essential point of its teaching.

However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, Ьолѵеѵег degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the life-conception of Homans such as Julian and others; it was, for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time was assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear of torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered good; all art opposed to this was considered bad.

The teaching on the basis of which this art arose was a perversion of Christ’s teaching, but the art which sprang up on this perverted teaching was nevertheless true, because it corresponded to the religious view of life held by the people among whom it arose.

The artists of the Middle Ages, vitalised by the same source of feeling — religion — as the mass of the people, and transmitting, in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry or drama, the feelings and states of mind they experienced, were true artists; and their activity, founded on the highest conceptions accessible to their age and ІѴЛАТ IS ART?

57 common to the entire people, though, for our times a mean art, was, nevertheless a true one, shared by the whole community.

And this was the state of things until, in the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society, doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity. When, after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and its abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom of the classics, and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of the teaching of the ancient sages, and, on the other hand, the incompatibility of the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they lost all possibility of continuing to believe the Church teaching.

If, in externals, they still kept to the forms of Church teaching, they could no longer believe in it, and held to it only by inertia and for the sake of influencing the masses, who continued to believe blindly in Church doctrine, and whom the upper classes, for their own advantage, considered it necessary to support in those beliefs.

So that a time came when Church Christianity ceased to be the general religious doctrine of all Christian people; some — the masses — continued blindly to believe in it, but the upper classes — those in whose hands lay the power and wealth, and therefore the leisure to produce art and the means to stimulate it — ceased to believe in that teaching.

In respect to religion, the upper circles of the Middle Ages found themselves in the same position in which the educated Eomans were before Christianity arose, i.e. they no longer believed in the religion of the masses, but had no beliefs to put in place of the worn-out Church doctrine which for them had lost its meaning.

There was only this difference, that whereas for the Romans who lost faith in their emperor-gods and household- gods it was impossible to extract anything further from all 58 WHAT IS ART?

the complex mythology they had borrowed from all the conquered nations, and it was consequently necessary to find a completely new conception of life, the people of the Middle Ages, when they doubted the truth of the Church teaching, had no need to seek a fresh one. That Christian teaching which they professed in a perverted form as Church doctrine, had mapped out the path of human progress so far ahead, that they had but to rid themselves of those perversions which hid the teaching announced by Christ, and to adopt its real meaning — if not completely, then at least in some greater degree than that in which the Church had held it. And this was partially done, not only in the reformations of Wyclif, Huss, Luther, and Calvin, but by all that current of non-Church Christianity, represented in earlier times by the Paulicians, the Bogomili,^ and, afterwards, by the Waldenses and the other non-Church Christians who were called heretics. But this could be, and лvas, done chiefly by poor people — who did not rule. A few of the rich and strong, like Francis of Assisi and others, accepted the Christian teaching in its full significance, even though it undermined their privileged positions. But most people of the upper classes (though in the depth of their souls they had lost faith in the Church teaching) could not or would not act thus, because the essence of that Christian view of life, which stood ready to be adopted when once they rejected the Church faith, was a teaching of the brotherhood (and therefore the equality) of man, and this negatived those privileges on which they lived, in which they had grown up and been educated, and to which they were accustomed. Not, in the depth of their hearts, believing in the Church teaching, — which had outlived its age and had no longer any true meaning for them, — and not being strong ^ Eastern sects well known in early Church history, who rejected the Church’s rendering of Christ’s teaching and were cruelly per- secuted. —Trans.

WHAT IS ART?

59 enough to accept true Christianity, men of these rich, governing classes — popes, kings, dukes, and all the great ones of the earth — were left without any religion, with hut the external forms of one, which they supported as being profitable and even necessary for themselves, since these forms screened a teaching which justified those privileges which they made use of. In reality, these people believed in nothing, just as the Eomans of the first centuries of our era believed in nothing. But at the same time these were the people who had the power and the wealth, and these were the people who rewarded art and directed it.

And, let it be noticed, it was just among these people that there grew up an art esteemed not according to its success in expressing men’s religious feelings, but in proportion to its beauty, — in other words, according to the enjoyment it gave.