madness, murders, and death generally: the dying person exhibiting in detail all the phases of agony. In music the most usual effects are a crescendo, passing from the softest and simplest sounds to the loudest and most complex crash of the full orchestra; a repetition of the same sounds arjppeggio in all the octaves and on various instruments; ІО WHAT IS ART?
or that the harmony, tone, and rhythm be not at all those naturally flowing from the course of the musical thought, hut such as strike one by their unexpectedness. Besides these, the commonest effects in music are produced in a purely physical manner by strength of sound, especially in an orchestra.
Such are some of the most usual effects in the various arts, hut there yet remains one common to them all, namely, to convey by means of one art what it would he natural to convey hy another: for instance, to make music describe (as is done hy the programme music of Wagner and his followers), or to make painting, the drama, or poetry, induce a frame of mind (as is aimed at hy all the Decadent art).
The fourth method is that of interesting (that is, absorbing the mind) in connection with works of art. The interest may lie in an intricate plot — a method till quite recently much employed in English novels and French plays, hut now going out of fashion and being replaced hy authenticity, i,e. hy detailed description of some historical period or some branch of contemporary life. For example, in a novel, interestingness may consist in a description of Egyptian or Roman life, the life of miners, or that of the clerks in a large shop. The reader becomes interested and mistakes this interest for ati artistic impression. The interest may also depend on the very method of expression; a kind of interest that has now come much into use. Both verse and prose, as лѵеіі as pictures, plays, and music, are constructed so that they must he guessed like riddles, and this process of guessing again affords pleasure and gives a semblance of the feeling received from art.
It is very often said that a work of art is very good because it is poetic, or realistic, or striking, or interesting; whereas not only can neither the first, nor the second, nor the third, nor the fourth of these attributes supply a standard of excellence in art, but they have not even anything in common with art.
IVffAT IS ART?
II Poetic — means borrowed. All borrowing merely recalls to the reader, spectator, or listener some dim recollection of artistic impressions they have received from previous works of art, and does not infect them with feeling which the artist has himself experienced. A work founded on something borrowed, like Goethe’s Faust for instance, may be very well executed and be full of mind and every beauty, but because it lacks the chie:^ch.aracteristic of a work of art — completeness, oneness, the inseparable unity of form and contents expressing the feeling the artist has experienced — it cannot produce a really artistic impression. In availing himself of this method, the artist only transmits the feeling received by him from a previous work of art; therefore every borrowing, whether it be of whole subjects, or of various scenes, situations, or descriptions, is but a reflection of art, a simulation of it, but not art itself. And therefore, to say that a certain production is good because it is poetic, — i.e. resembles a work of art, — is like saying of a coin that it is good because it resembles real money.
Equally little can imitation, realism, serve, as many people think, as a measure of the quality of art. Imitation cannot be such a measure, for the chief characteristic of art is the infection of others with the feelings the artist has experienced, and infection with a feeling is not only not identical with description of the accessories of what is transmitted, but is usually hindered by superfluous details. The attention of the receiver of the artistic impression is diverted by all these well-observed details, and they hinder the transmission of feeling even when it exists.
To value a work of art by the degree of its realism, by the accuracy of the details reproduced, is as strange as to judge of the nutritive quality of food by its external appearance. When we appraise a work according to its realism, we only show that we are talking, not of a work of art, but of its counterfeit.
II2 WHAT IS ART?
Neither does the third method of imitating art — by the use of what is striking or effectful — coincide with real art any better than the two former methods, for in effectfulness — the effects of novelty, of the unexpected, of contrasts, of the horrible — there is no transmission of feeling, but only an action on the nerves. If an artist were to paint a bloody wound admirably, the sight of the wound would strike me, but it would not be art. One prolonged note on a powerful organ will produce a striking impression, will often even cause tears, but there is no music in it, because no feeling is transmitted. Yet such physiological effects are constantly mistaken for art by people of our circle, and this not only in music, but also in poetry, painting, and the drama. It is said that art has become refined. On the contrary, thanks to the pursuit of effectful- ness, it has become very coarse. A new piece is brought out and accepted all over Europe, such, for instance, as Hannele^ in which play the author wishes to transmit to the spectators pity for a persecuted girl. To evoke this feeling in the audience by means of art, the author should either make one of the characters express this pity in such a way as to infect everyone, or he should describe the girl’s feelings correctly. But he cannot, or will not, do this, and chooses another way, more complicated in stage management but easier for the author. He makes the girl die on the stage; and, still further to increase the physiological effect on the spectators, he extinguishes the lights in the theatre, leaving the audience in the dark, and to the sound of dismal music he shows how the girl is pursued and beaten by her drunken father. The girl shrinks — screams — groans — and falls. Angels appear and carry her away. And the audience, experiencing some excitement while this is going on, are fully convinced that this is true aesthetic feeling. But there is nothing aesthetic in such excitement, for there is no infecting of man by man, but only a mingled feeling of WHAT IS ART?
ИЗ pity for another, and of self-congratulation that it is not I who am suffering: it is like what we feel at the sight of an execution, or what the Eomans felt in their circuses.
The substitution of effectfulness for aesthetic feeling is particularly noticeable in musical art — that art which by its nature has an immediate physiological action on the nerves. Instead of transmitting by means of a melody the feelings he has experienced, a composer of the new school accumulates and complicates sounds, and by now strengthen- ing, now weakening them, he produces on the audience a physiological effect of a kind that can he measured by an apparatus invented for the purpose.^ And the public mistake this physiological effect for the effect of art.
As to the fourth method — that of interesting — it also is frequently confounded with art. One often hears it said, not only of a poem, a novel, or a picture, hut even of a musical work, that it is interesting. What does this mean? To speak of an interesting work of art means either that we receive from a work of art information new to us, or that the work is not fully intelligible, and that little by little, and with effort, we arrive at its meaning, and experience a certain pleasure in this process of guessing it. In neither case has the interest anything in common with artistic im- pression. Art aims ^t^nf ecting.people.with feeling experi- enced by the artist. But the mental effort necessary to enable the spectator, listener, or reader to assimilate the new information contained in the work, or to guess the puzzles propounded, by distracting him, hinders the infection. And therefore the interestingness of a work not only has nothing to do with its excellence as a work of art, hut rather hinders than assists artistic impression.
We may, in a work of art, meet with what is poetic, and ^ An apparatus exists b}’' means of which a very sensitive arrow, n dependence on the tension of a muscle of the arm, will indicate :he physiological action of music on the nerves and muscles.
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realistic, and striking, and interesting, but these things cannot replace the essential of art — feeling experienced by the artist. Latterly, in upper-class art, most of the objects given out as being works of art are of the kind which only resemble art, and are devoid of its essential quality — feeling experienced by the artist. And, for the diversion of the rich, such objects are continually being produced in enormous quantities by the artisans of art.
Many conditions must be fulfilled to enable a man to produce a real work of art. It is necessary that he should stand on the level of the highest life-conception of his time, that he should experience feeling and have the desire and capacity to transmit it, and that he should, moreover, have a talent for some one of the forms of art. It is very seldom that all these conditions necessary to the production of true art are combined. But in order — aided by the customary methods of borrowing, imitating, introducing effects, and interesting — unceasingly to produce counterfeits of art which pass for art in our society and are well paid for, it is only necessary to have a talent for some branch of art; and this is very often to be met with. By talent I mean ability: in literary art, the ability to express one’s thoughts and impressions easily and to notice and remember characteristic details; in the depictive arts, to distinguish and remember lines, forms, and colours; in music, to distinguish the intervals, and to remember and transmit the sequence of sounds. And a man, in our times, if only he possesses such a talent and selects some specialty, may, after learning the methods of counterfeiting used in his branch of art, — if he has patience and if his aesthetic feeling (which would render such productions revolting to him) be atrophied, — unceasingly, till the end of his life, turn out works which will pass for art in our society.
To produce such counterfeits, definite rules or recipes exist in each branch of art. So that the talented man.
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IIS having assimilated them, may produce such works a froid, cold drawn, without any feeling.
In order to write poems a man of literary talent needs only these qualifications: to acquire the knack, conformably with the requirements of rhyme and rhythm, of using, in- stead of the one really suitable word, ten others meaning approximately the same; to learn how to take any phrase which, to be clear, has but one natural order of words, and despite all possible dislocations still to retain some sense in it j and lastly, to be able, guided by the wo’’^^" for the rhymes, to devise some semblance c feelings, or descriptions to suit these wordi, acquired these qualifications, he may unceasin poems — short or long, religious, amatory or patri ing to the demand.
If a man of literary talent wishes to write a story or novel, he need only form his style — i.e. learn how to describe all that he sees — and accustom himself to re- member or note down details. When he has accustomed himself to this, he can, according to his inclination or the demand, unceasingly produce novels or stories — historical, naturalistic, social, erotic, psychological, or even religious, for which latter kind a demand and fashion begins to show itself. He can take subjects from books or from the events of life, and can copy the characters of the people in his book from his acquaintances.
And such novels and stories, if only they are decked out with well observed and carefully noted details, preferably erotic ones, will be considered works of art, even though they may not contain a spark of feeling experienced.
To produce art in dramatic form, a talented man, in addition to all that is required for novels and stories, must also learn to furnish his characters with as many smart and witty sentences as possible, must know Ьолѵ to utilise theatrical effects, and how to entwine the action of his іб ІѴЛАТ IS ART?
іб ІѴЛАТ IS ART?
characters so that there should not be any long conversa- tions, but as much bustle and movement on the stage as possible. If the writer is able to do this, he may produce dramatic works one after another without stopping, selecting his subjects from the reports of the law courts, or from the latest society topic, such as hypnotism, heredity, etc., or from deep antiquity, or even from the realms of fancy.
In the sphere of painting and sculpture it is still easier for the talented man to produce imitations of art. He need only learn to draw, paint, and model — especially naked bodies. Thus equipped he can continue to j^aint pictures, or model statues, one after another, choosing subjects according to his bent — mythological, or religious, or fan- tastic, or symbolical; or he may depict what is written about in the papers — a coronation, a strike, the Turko-Grecian war, famine scenes; or, commonest of all, he may just copy anything he thinks beautiful — from naked women to copper basins.
For the production of musical art the talented man needs still less of what constitutes the essence of art, i.e. feeling whereлvith to infect others; but, on the other hand, he requires more physical, gymnastic labour than for any other art, unless it be dancing. To produce works of musical art, he must first learn to move his fingers on some instrument as rapidly as those who have reached the highest perfection; next he must know how in former times polyphonic music was written, must study what are called counterpoint and fugue; and furthermore, he must learn orchestration, i.e. how to utilise the effects of the instruments. But once he has learned all this, the composer may unceasingly produce one work after another; whether programme - music, opera, or song (devising sounds more or less corresponding to the words), or chamber music, i.e. he may take another man’s themes and work them up into definite forms by means of counterpoint and fugue; or, what is commonest of all, he WHAT IS ART?
may compose fantastic music, i.e. he may take a conjunction of sounds which happens to come to hand, and pile every sort of complication and ornamentation on to this chance combination.
Thus, in all realms of art, counterfeits of art are manu- factured to a ready-made, prearranged recipe, and these counterfeits the public of our upper classes accept for real art.
And this substitution of counterfeits for real works of art was the third and most important consequence of the separation of the art of the upper classes from universal art.
CHAPTER XII In our society three conditions co-operate to cause the pro- duction of objects of counterfeit art. They are — (1) the considerable remuneration of artists for their productions and the professionalisation of artists which this ha& pro- duced, (2) art criticism, and (3) schools of art.
While art was as yet undivided, and only religious art was valued and rewarded while indiscriminate art was left unrewarded, there were no counterfeits of art, or, if any existed, being exposed to the criticism of the whole people, they quickly disappeared. But as soon as that division occurred, and the upper classes acclaimed every kind of art as good if only it afforded them pleasure, and began to reward such art more highly than any other social activity, immediately a large number of people devoted themselves to this activity, and art assumed quite a different character and became a profession.
And as soon as this occurred, the chief and most precious quality of art — its sincerity — was at once greatly weakened and eventually quite destroyed.
The professional artist lives by his art, and has continually to invent subjects for his works, and does invent them. And it is obvious how great a difference must exist between works of art produced on the one hand by men such as the Jewish prophets, the authors of the Psalms, Francis of Assisi, the authors of the Iliad and Odyssey, of folk-stories, legends, and folk-songs, many of whom not only received no remuneration for their work, hut did not even attach WHAT IS ART?
19 their names to it; and, on the other hand, works produced by court poets, dramatists and musicians receiving honours and remuneration; and later on by professional artists, who lived by the trade, receiving remuneration from newspaper editors, publishers, impresarios, and in general from those agents who come between the artists and the town public — the consumers of art.
Professionalism is the first condition of the diffusion of false, counterfeit art.
The second condition is the growth, in recent times, of artistic criticism, i.e. the valuation of art not by everybody, and, above all, not by plain men, hut by erudite, that is, by perverted and at the same time self-confident individuals.
A friend of mine, speaking of the relation of critics to artists, half-jokingly defined it thus: “ Critics are the stupid who discuss the wise.” However partial, inexact, and rude this definition may he, it is yet partly true, and is incom- parably juster than the definition which considers critics to be men who can explain works of art.
“ Critics explain! ” What do they explain?
The artist, if a real artist, has by his work transmitted to others the feeling he experienced. What is there, then, to explain 1 If a work be good as art, then the feeling expressed by the artist — he it moral or immoral — transmits itself to other people. If transmitted to others, then they feel it, and all interpretations are superfluous. If the work does not infect people, no explanation can make it contagious. An artist’s work cannot he interpreted. Had it been pos- sible to explain in words what he wished to convey, the artist would have expressed himself in words. He expressed it by his art, only because the feeling he experienced could not be otherwise transmitted. The interpretation of works of art by words only indicates that the interpreter is him- self incapable of feeling the infection of art. And this is WHAT IS ART?
WHAT IS ART?
actually the case, for, however strange it may seem to say so, critics have always been people less susceptible than other men to the contagion of art. For the most part they are able лѵгЬеге, educated and clever, but with their capacity of being infected by art quite perverted or atrophied. And therefore their writings have always largely contributed, and still contribute, to the perversion of the taste of that public which reads them and trusts them.
Artistic criticism did not exist — could not and cannot exist — in societies where art is undivided, and where, con- sequently, it is appraised by the religious understanding-of- life common to the whole people. Art criticism grew, and could grow, only on the art of the upper classes, who did not acknowledge the religious perception of their time.
Universal art has a definite and indubitable internal criterion — religious perception; upper-class art lacks this, and therefore the appreciators of that art are obliged to cling to some external criterion. And they find it in “ the judgments of the finest-nurtured,” as an English sesthetician has phrased it, that is, in the authority of the people who are considered educated, nor in this alone, but also in a tradition of such authorities. This tradition is extremely misleading, both because the opinions of “ the finest-nurtured ” are often mistaken, and also because judgments which were valid once cease to be so with the lapse of time. But the critics, having no basis for their judgments, never cease to repeat their traditions. The classical tragedians were once con- sidered good, and therefore criticism considers them to be so still. Dante was esteemed a great poet, Kaphael a great painter, Bach a great musician — and the critics, lacking a standard by which to separate good art from bad, not only consider these artists great, but regard all their productions as admirable and worthy of imitation. Nothing has contri- buted, and still contributes, so much to the perversion of art as these authorities set up by criticism. A man produces a WHAT IS ART?
I2I WHAT IS ART?
I2I work of art, like every true artist expressing in his own peculiar manner a feeling he has experienced. Most people are infected by the artist's feeling,; and his work becomes known. Then criticism, discussing the artist, says that the work is not bad, hut all the same the artist is not a Dante, nor a Shakespear, nor a Goethe, nor a Raphael, nor what Beethoven was in his last period. And the young artist sets to work to copy those who are held up for his imitation, and he produces not only feeble works, hut false works, counterfeits of art.
Thus, for instance, our Pushkin writes his short poems, Evgenia Опедіщ The Gipsies, and his stories — works all varying in quality, hut all true art. But then, under the influence of false criticism extolling Shakespear, he writes Boris Godunoff, a cold, hrain-spun work, and this production is lauded by the critics, set up as a model, and imitations of it appear: Minin by Ostrovsky, and Tsar Boris by Аіехёе Tolstoy, and such imitations of imitations as crowd all litera- tures with insignificant productions. The chief harm done by the critics is this, that themselves lacking the capacity to he infected by art (and that is the characteristic of all critics; for did they not lack this they could not attempt the impossible — the interpretation of works of art), they ■ pay most attention to, and eulogise, hrain-spun, invented works, and set these up as models worthy of imitation. That is the reason they so confidently extol, in literature, the Greek tragedians, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespear, Goethe (almost all he wrote), and, among recent writers, Zola and Ibsen; in music, Beethoven’s last period, and Wagner. To justify their praise of these hrain-spun, invented works, they devise entire theories (of лѵІіісЬ the famous theory of beauty is one); and not only dull but also talented people compose works in strict deference to these theories; and often even real artists, doing violence to their genius, submit to them.
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Every false work extolled by the critics serves as a door through which the hypocrites of art at once crowd in.
It is solely due to the critics, who in our times still praise rude, savage, and, for us, often meaningless works of the ancient Greeks: Sophocles, Euripides, ^schylus, and espe- cially Aristophanes; or, of modern writers, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespear; in painting, all of Raphael, all of Michael Angelo, including his absurd “Last Judgment”; in music, the whole of Bach, and the whole of Beethoven, including his last period, — thanks only to them, have the Ibsens, Maeterlincks, Verlaines, Mallarm^s, Puvis de Cha- vannes, Klingers, Boklins, Stucks, Schneiders; in music, the Wagners, Liszts, Berliozes, Brahms, and Richard Strausses, etc., and all that immense mass of good-for- nothing imitators of these imitators, become possible in our day.
As a good illustration of the harmful influence of criticism, take its relation to Beethoven. Among his innumerable hasty productions written to order, there are, notwithstand- ing their artificiality of form, works of true art. But he grows deaf, cannot hear, and begins to write invented, iW' unfinished works, which are consequently often meaningless t and musically unintelligible. I know that musicians can ' imagine sounds vividly enough, and can almost hear what they read, but imaginary sounds can never replace real ones, and every composer must hear his production in order to perfect it. Beethoven, however, could not hear, could not perfect his work, and consequently published productions which are artistic ravings. But criticism, having once acknowledged him to be a great composer, seizes on just these abnormal works with special gusto, and searches for extraordinary beauties in them. And, to justify its lauda- tions (perverting the very meaning of musical art), it attributed to music the property of describing what it cannot WHAT IS ART?
describe. And imitators appear — an innumerable host of imitators of these abnormal attempts at artistic productions which Beethoven wrote when he was deaf.
Then Wagner appears, who at first in critical articles praises just Beethoven’s last period, and connects this music with Schopenhauer’s mystical theory that music is the ex- pression of Will — not of separate manifestations of will objectivised on various planes, but of its very essence — which is in itself as absurd as this music of Beethoven. And afterwards he composes music of his own on this theory, in conjunction with another still more erroneous system of the union of all the arts. After Wagner yet new imitators appear, diverging yet further from art: Brahms, Eichard Strauss, and others.
Such are the results of criticism. But the third condition of the perversion of art, namely, art schools, is almost more harmful still.
As soon as art became, not art for the whole people but for a rich class, it became a profession; as soon as it became a profession, methods were devised to teach it; people who chose this profession of art began to learn these methods, and thus professional schools sprang up: classes of rhetoric or literature in the public schools, academies for painting, conservatoires for music, schools for dramatic art.
In these schools art is taught! But art is the transmission to others of a special feeling experienced by the artist. How can this be taught in schools % No school can evoke feeling in a man, and still less can it teach him how to manifest it in the one particular manner natural to him alone. But the essence of art lies in these things.
The one thing these schools can teach is how to transmit feelings experienced by other artists in the way those other artists transmitted them. And this is just what the Н’ЛАТ /S ART?
professional schools do teach; and such instruction not only- does not assist the spread of true art, hut, on the contrary, by diffusing counterfeits of art, does more, than anything else to deprive peo2:)le of the capacity to understand true art.
In literary art people are taught how, without having anything they wish to say, to write a many-paged com- position on a theme about which they have never thought, and, moreover, to write it so that it should resemble the work of an author admitted to he celebrated. This is taught in schools.
In painting the chief training consists in learning to draw and paint from copies and models, the naked body chiefly (the very thing that is never seen, and which a man occupied with real art hardly ever has to depict), and to draw and paint as former masters drew and painted. The composition of pictures is taught by giving out themes similar to those which have been treated by former acknowledged celebrities.
So also in dramatic schools, the pupils are taught to recite monologues just as tragedians, considered celebrated, declaimed them.