III
“Ah, Master!” I said, “you doubtless have the gift of persuasion. But, after all, what is the good of proving the usefulness of artists? Certainly, as you have shown us, their passion for work might set a good example. But is not the work which they do at the bottom useless, and is it not that precisely which gives it value in our eyes?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that happily works of art do not count among useful things, that is to say, amongst those that serve to feed us, to clothe us, to shelter us—in a word, to satisfy our bodily needs. On the contrary, they tear us from the slavery of practical life and open before us an enchanted land of contemplation and of dreams.”
“The point is, my dear friend, that we are usually mistaken in what is useful and what is not,” Rodin answered. “I admit that we must call useful all that ministers to the necessities of our material life. But to-day, besides that, riches are also considered useful, though their display only arouses vanity and excites envy; these riches are not only useless, but cumbersome.
Ceres
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
“As for me, I call useful all that gives us happiness. Well, there is nothing in the world that makes us happier than contemplation and dreams. We forget this too much in our day. The man who, with just a sufficiency, wisely enjoys the numberless wonders which meet his eyes and mind at every turn—who rejoices in the beauty and vigor of the youth about him; who sees in the animals, those wonderful living machines, all their supple and nervous movements and the play of their muscles; who finds delight in the valleys and upon the hillsides where the spring spends itself in green and flowery festival, in waves of incense, in the murmur of bees, in rustling wings and songs of love; who feels an ecstasy as he watches the silver ripples, which seem to smile as they chase each other upon the surface of the water; who can, with renewed enthusiasm, each day watch Apollo, the golden god, disperse the clouds which Earth wraps closely around her; the man who can find joy in all this walks the earth a god.
“What mortal is more fortunate than he? And since it is art which teaches us, which aids us to appreciate these pleasures, who will deny that it is infinitely useful to us? It is not only a question of intellectual pleasures, however, but of much more. Art shows man his raison d’être. It reveals to him the meaning of life, it enlightens him upon his destiny, and consequently points him on his way. When Titian painted that marvellously aristocratic society, where each person carries written in his face, imprinted in his gestures and noted in his costume, the pride of intellect, of authority and of wealth, he set before the patricians of Venice the ideal which they wished to realize. When Poussin composed his clear, majestic, orderly landscapes, where Reason seems to reign; when Puget swelled the muscles of his heroes; when Watteau sheltered his charming yet melancholy lovers beneath mysterious shades; when Houdon caused Voltaire to smile, and Diana, the huntress, to run so lightly; when Rude, in carving the Marseillaise, called old men and children to his country’s aid—these great French masters polished in turn some of the facets of our national soul; this one, order; this one, energy; this one, elegance; this one, wit; this one, heroism; and all, the joy of life and of free action, and they kept alive in their compatriots the distinctive qualities of our race.
The Torn Glove
By Titian
“Take the greatest artist of our time, Puvis de Chavannes—did he not strive to shed upon us the serenity to which we all aspire? Are there not wonderful lessons for us in his sublime landscapes, where holy Nature seems to cradle upon her bosom a loving, wise, august, simple humanity? Help for the weak, love of work, self-denial, respect for high thought, this incomparable genius has expressed it all! It is a marvellous light upon our epoch. It is enough to look upon one of his masterpieces, his Sainte Geneviève in the Pantheon, his Holy Wood (Bois Sacré) in the Sorbonne, or his magnificent Homage to Victor Hugo (Hommage à Victor Hugo) on the stairway of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, to feel oneself capable of noble deeds.
“Artists and thinkers are like lyres, infinitely delicate and sonorous, whose vibrations, awakened by the circumstances of each epoch, are prolonged to the ears of all other mortals.
“Without doubt, very fine works of art are appreciated only by a limited number; and even in galleries and public squares they are looked at only by a few. But, nevertheless, the thoughts they embody end by filtering through to the crowd. Below the men of genius there are other artists of less scope, who borrow and popularize the conceptions of the masters: writers are influenced by painters, painters by writers; there is a continual exchange of thought between all the brains of a generation—the journalists, the popular novelists, the illustrators, the makers of pictures bring within the reach of the multitude the truths discovered by the powerful intellects of the day. It is like a spiritual stream, like a spring pouring forth in many cascades, which finally meet to form the great moving river which represents the mentality of an era.
Victor Hugo Offering his Lyre to the City of Paris
By Puvis de Chavannes
“And it should not be said, as it is sometimes, that artists only reflect the feeling of their surroundings. Even this would be much; for it is well to hold up a mirror in which other men may see themselves, and so to aid them to self-knowledge. But artists do more. Certainly they draw largely from the common fund amassed by tradition, but they also increase this treasure. They are truly inventors and guides.
“In order to convince oneself of this, it is enough to observe that most of the masters preceded, and sometimes by a long period, the time when their works won recognition. Poussin painted a number of masterpieces under Louis XIII. whose regular nobility foretold the character of the following reign; Watteau, whose nonchalant grace would seem to have presided over all the reign of Louis XV., did not live under that King, but under Louis XIV., and died under the Regent; Chardin and Greuze, who, in celebrating the bourgeois home, would seem to have announced a democratic society, lived under a monarchy; Prudhon, mystical, sweet and weary, claimed, in the midst of strident imperial fanfares, the right to love, to meditate, to dream, and he affirmed it as the forerunner of the romantics. Nearer to us, Courbet and Millet, under the Second Empire, pictured the sorrows and the dignity of the people, who since then, under the Third Republic, have won so preponderant a place in society.
“I do not say that these artists determined these great currents, I only say that they unconsciously contributed to form them; I say that they made part of the intellectual élite who created these tendencies. And it goes without saying that this élite is not composed of artists only, but also of writers, philosophers, novelists and publicists.
Mother and Babe
By Rodin
“What still further proves that the masters bring new ideas and tendencies to their generations is that they have often great trouble in winning acknowledgment for them. They sometimes pass nearly all their lives in striving against routine. And the more genius they have, the more chance they run of being long misunderstood. Corot, Courbet, Millet, Puvis de Chavannes, to cite no more, were not unanimously acclaimed until the end of their careers.
“It is impossible to do good to mankind with impunity. But, at least, the masters of art, by their determination to enrich the human soul, have deserved that their names should be held sacred after their deaths.
“There, my friends, is what I wished to say to you upon the usefulness of artists.”