THE DIGNITY OF ALL TRUE ART.
The kinship between all the various branches of art is so very close, that instead of speaking of them as different arts, it would really be more accurate to describe them as only different media for expression of the same truth. Our object in trying to express ourselves in some one form of art, is to bring home to those to whom this form most appeals, truths which we see are passed over by them unheeded and uncomprehended when expressed in another. Many of the principles and truths I hope to bring before you are so much more easily set forth in other arts than that of language, that the attempt to use this form would seem unnecessary and undesirable were it not for the truth of what I have just said, that each of the arts appeals & clearly expresses its meanings and teachings only to a part of those to whom it is addressed. All feel something of the meanings expressed through art, no matter what form of expression may have been chosen, but every one will be more directly appealed to and will more clearly understand the message expressed in one art than they would that, or some other message, expressed in another.
It cannot be denied that many get from music what they see not in poetry, while others learn from poetry what they miss in music, painting, sculpture, or architecture; that some can feel and know truth in architecture they find not in the drama, and many learn from the drama what no other art can teach them.
For though it is true that many of our greatest artists could have expressed themselves, as some have expressed themselves, with equal power through several media; many of our greatest poets might have made equally great painters, and our painters, poets; still few could possibly find time to acquire equal knowledge of several arts. And though most men, being masters of one art, will have abundant sympathy and love for the others, yet life will prove too short for them to come to feel and know the messages or truths of any other with equal clearness. But, having them in the depths of their natures, they will feel, though dimly perhaps, that they are all one, and that their vital truths belong to all alike, and are essentially the same in all, and are of the very life of all that is worthy, all that is beautiful, true, or noble.
Now all the greatest truths are so broad and universal in their very elements, that they are incapable of clear definition and must depend on the subtleties of true art for expression. And in this lies the dignity of all true art, in that by it and through it only can the highest truths be taught, or true education reached.
Music is the most perfect means of saying what cannot be expressed in words. None of us can translate into words what has been revealed to us through music, it is a means of expression above and beyond words; painting, poetry, sculpture, architecture, even a mere colour scheme, can all tell us much which is beyond the power of any direct expression. The deeper the truth the more dependent it is upon one or other of these arts for its expression. None of us can say what music has brought home to us, none of us can tell what a beautiful building has said to us. If we try to give all these things in words, “beauty,” “truth,” or that hopelessly feeble phrase “elevating influence,” and kindred terms, are all that come to our aid with which to tell of them. Into these weak inadequate words we have to read all that which we have learned from other arts, & so give them a meaning they are incapable of conveying, unless we have felt it through influences above and beyond them. Music, the most perfect of the arts, is the most subtle, the most inexplicable. It seems to be, (if I may use the expression), the most direct gift of God to man, excepting of course that revelation of Himself which we call Nature, and which is above all arts or anything needing man’s instrumentality.
Why has music this power of calling forth all that is best in us, of making us feel the great things beyond expression? We cannot say.
We feel, and so we know and realise, that music never deceives, and is the only art which is never misunderstood. Her revelation is either taken or left, it is either comprehended or passed by unheeded, but it is never misconstrued. It may be understood and felt in a degree only. It may give more of its message to one than to another, but in so far as it is understood at all, it is truly understood and never misleads, and herein lies its greatness.
Some there are who say they can express by language or other arts what the musician is speaking of in his music; this only shows that all in which music transcends other arts is beyond their conception. The messages music has for us are above and beyond such things as can be put into words, and to have it merely telling a story which could equally well, or perhaps even better, have been told in words, or even to have it imitating the sounds of the sea, the voices of the storm, the whisper of the trees, or the sorrow of the wind, is to miss much of its greatness.
The messages of music may have been at some times the same as those of Nature, in the sea, the stream, or the trees, but to make it merely a less comprehensible language, telling us what written or spoken language can tell us, is to take from it much of its nobility and to deprive it of some of its most sacred prerogatives.
So if we follow this through we see its truth in all the arts. Poetry, partaking of the character of music, can bring home to us things too subtle, too high, to be told to us in prose, but may be misunderstood as music cannot be. In its highest influences, in those elements which it has in common with music, it is, like music, either taken rightly or not comprehended at all, but in many of its lesser and more definable messages it may be misunderstood.
A very little thought will show how absolutely true in literature is what I have said, as to the position art must hold as the only means of expressing the greatest truths, and will show too, that just as our theme advances in dignity, will it increasingly need the aid of art to give it expression. The meanest things of life are most easily expressed. We can give our financial position with clearness in figures. We can express the composition of a gas with absolute accuracy in a formula. We can give almost any mere scientific fact in words. We can even state the properties of a triangle with some definiteness. But beyond this we cannot go without calling Art to our aid; and the higher we attempt to soar the more dependent upon her do we become.
Our laws and legal documents are a constant comment upon and illustration of the utter failure inevitably resulting from any attempt to express with absolute accuracy, without the aid of art, any of those things which involve questions of morality, love, truth, justice, or any of the higher qualities of our nature; for they have always been and must always be the most obscure, involved, and incomprehensible attempts at expression in any language.
So we go upwards from the scientific formula and the laws of geometry, past the legal document to the newspaper article, and everyday prose, until we come to the more matter-of-fact forms of philosophy, thence on to parable, fiction and fairy tale, & from these to sculpture, architecture, painting, and poetry, calling in at every stage more and more of the aid of art, until we arrive at last at that most perfect art, and most complete expression, music. And observe, all the way through the series we have moved less and less within the regions of definitely statable facts, and more and more in the regions of those truths which can be felt & known, but not definitely expressed.
Great truths, which are for all time and all peoples, must be expressed in an art at any rate as high in dignity as parable in one of its many forms. The greatest teachers have recognised this. All great truths must be presented in a form in which those who are capable of realising them can find them, while others miss, & each can take away what he can comprehend. This is only another way of saying again, great truths can only be expressed through the medium of art, for it is an essential property of all true art that it shall suggest and imply more than it actually says.
I have said art is the only true educator between man and man, and a knowledge and appreciation of those things which through art alone we can learn, is the only true education. But I would not for one moment be thought to lose sight of the fact that Nature can and does teach us more than any work of man. She has influences over us tending to the highest education; with these I was not concerning myself in the above, for I was speaking of man’s influence upon his fellow man. I am to try and give some idea of wherein lies the life and vitality of some of the humbler branches of art. I say humbler, for I will have none of the shallow hypocrisy of those who, not being able to paint a great realistic picture, pretend that their little conventional decorations are a higher and nobler branch of art, and who, because the great picture may be still greater by being also decorative, and can only attain to its greatest when it is also decorative, argue that all decorative art is greater than pictorial.
It is my aim to show that to these applied arts also belongs much of that power to express those higher things which are felt and known only through art.
We all know that the mere form of a chair, the contour of a mould, the shape of a bracket, a scheme of colour, have power to affect us, in a degree, in just the same way music does, and, with awe let us realise it, even as Nature herself does. And I would have every craftsman and every practiser of the arts as deeply impressed with the dignity this places upon him, and the responsibilities it brings with it, as he can possibly be. I would have him feel this truth, that in his degree he is instrumental in either forwarding or retarding his fellow men in their highest and truest education; that in just so far as his art is true or false, real and vital, or feeble and insincere, he is advancing or hindering this great work; that true art is the grandest work of which humanity is capable, and that through it alone can man advance to higher things than those of which he is now capable.
We can none of us know, and certainly none of us are in any danger of over-estimating, the good influence of a beautiful building upon all those who pass and repass it daily; and the smallest and most insignificant article in our daily use has, in its own degree, like power to help or hinder our development.
Wherein truth in art consists, none but the artist can know, and he cannot tell to another what he knows of it himself; he has learned it, first from an inborn instinct and gift, and second, by that education which true art only can promote, and others can only come to a knowledge of it in the same way.
The whole spirit and trend, all the outside circumstances, influences, and conditions of modern life, are against the artist and true art. The present individualistic and competitive basis of society makes a living art almost an impossibility, but I do not propose we should concern ourselves now with questions which are not within the designer’s power, but only with those things which he can and must see that he personally rightly understands and practises.
No good work in any field of art was ever yet done in a hurry; it maybe done quickly, with the utmost energy, this will probably only give it vitality, but all outside pressure means death to art.
All true art work must always be done under the very keenest stress of mental effort; it cannot be slovenly, careless, or interestless in its smallest detail, but must be wrought with every faculty alert with an absorption and concentration amounting to abandon, and it must be done, can only be done for the love of it. Other motives there may be, and in greater or less degree there will be, but this must be first and paramount, or true art is impossible.
A very fruitful cause of failure is the effort to be original. In the loathsome distortions of fashion we see daily the result of this attempt to originate new forms, simply for the sake of novelty, without the slightest reference to any feeling for beauty or fitness. Originality has no value other than a purely commercial one, unless the original thing has advantages over the commonplace. Most of the things which we have about us show unmistakably that their designers went to work in the wrong spirit from the very first. We see at a glance that the position taken up was this. The designer has said to himself “This is generally done so and so, in such and such a manner; now how can I modify this to make it in some degree original: where can I introduce a little novelty?”
No good result was ever yet arrived at by any one who took up this position. No: the way to go to work is, to get clearly into your mind the functions, duties, requirements and limitations of the thing to be designed, then choose the material or materials which will enable it best to fulfil its functions, duties, and requirements, and keep within its limitations. Afterwards, with a full knowledge and candid recognition of the properties and characteristics of your materials and the best way of using them, set to work to evolve the form which will, in the simplest and most direct & at the same time most beautiful and decorative manner, fulfil the requirements, and the result will bear the impress of your own personality, it will have your own feeling, and will probably also have something of true originality.
You may if you like, with all this clearly in your mind, pass in review the customary forms employed to fulfil the conditions, retaining such characteristics as you see are valuable either because they advance the objects, or add to the comeliness, but this must come second not first.
I would like you to notice in passing that this right and true method of going to work in design is entirely inapplicable to all things having no functions to fulfil, by such a throng of which we are now surrounded.
The whole trend of modern civilisation would make the outlook for the artist one of blank hopelessness, were it not that there are signs of a reaction, due to the efforts of great men who have fought hard that art may not die.
We call the present the “Machine Age.” Now the influence of machinery on art is one of the most degrading we have to contend with, for every advance made by machinery must mean a corresponding retreat on the part of art.
When I have expressed the keen sense of pleasure given me by the beautiful variety of surface, the light and shade, the crisp, clean adze cuts, the vital human interest, of some old beam, the commercial mind has said to me “If the workman who wrought it had possessed the tools with which to get it up to a better surface, he would not have left it as it is.” This is probably true, but it does not affect the question of the relative beauty of the two beams, the absolutely square, smooth, machine planed one, and the irregular rough hewn one so full of character and interest. The artistic value of each is a question quite apart from such considerations. To-day, if we require a beam in our building, we take every bit of natural character out of it, and bring it, by mechanical processes, to as dead and flat, as lifeless and monotonous a state as possible, then we stupidly try to replace some of the natural and characteristic beauty we have been at so much trouble to get rid of, by some form of applied ornament, moulding, or what not, which probably has only this one result, that it obscures the one trace of natural beauty which has been able to survive the previous processes, that is the grain and figure of the wood. Afterwards we stand and look at it, with a sort of feeling that there is something wrong, and wonder why it was so much more beautiful before.
This is only one illustration, it would be easy to give hundreds. For beauty of texture and surface are nothing to the machine producer or the commercial spirit of to-day.
When I say I want a piece of copper just hammered out to the size and shape I require without that grinding and polishing by which all trace of the hammer & human hand is lost in mere smoothness and mechanical finish, the workman tells me it will be injurious to his credit, people will see nothing in it but bad workmanship and inability to finish. He would prefer to efface the sympathetic surface and natural beauties of the beaten metal as completely as possible, then he would put it in a press and stamp some meaningless pattern on it, but the result would be entirely uninteresting to him, and he would have no satisfaction in it, unless sheer commercialism had utterly killed every grain of everything higher than itself in his nature.
Think of the beauty of leaded glass compared with the lifeless hard mechanical perfection of polished plate. This beauty has nothing to do with its old-fashioned look, with romantic associations, or quaintness of effect; it is simply an inherent property of all leaded glazing, due to the wonderful and never ending charm of the play of light and shade on the different panes, each one catching the light slightly differently from any other, some glistening brightly, others dead and sombre, and the rest occupying every tone between the two. One sheet of glass with the leading laid upon it would be more ugly and meaningless than the plate glass. Many would-be artistic people think that it is an essential characteristic of the artistic that it should be in some degree eccentric or unusual. This is as great a delusion as any one could well labour under. That it is the case at the present time cannot be denied; but it is because we have sunk to such depths of degradation, that the artistic has become the eccentric and unusual, not that to be different from the ordinary is the property of the artistic. There was a time when the exact reverse was the case, when simple natural beauty was the rule in all things and ugliness the exception, and the unusual and eccentric was then the inartistic.
So also many would-be artistic people think that things derive an artistic value simply from being old or old-fashioned. This again is entirely untrue except of such things as undergo a modification and change for the better in themselves at the hands of old Father Time. But this too is an error easily accounted for, as at the present time, as regards the common things of daily life, the standard of design is so debased that it would be almost impossible to bring out of the past (at any rate of centuries before the last), forms for these which would not surpass in beauty those now current among us. If art in our homes were living and progressive the old and old-fashioned would be the ugly and inartistic.
A perfectly frank recognition of construction and an honest compliance with its demands is an absolute essential of all good designs; any attempt to disguise or thwart, or failure to acknowledge, the necessary characteristics and features of construction, must result in artistic disaster and is indeed a very fruitful cause of it. So also is that kindred error, the adoption of a less perfect construction to get the form wanted. It is not necessary I should dwell upon this now, for it is recognised by all art teachers, though by very few of those who practise the applied arts, and illustrations of the truth of it meet us in abundance on every hand and will occur to all.
Neither is it necessary (and for the same reasons) that I should say much about imitations & shams; wood made to simulate stone or marble; iron cast in forms suited only to wood; wood worked into forms suited only to stone, or in imitation of stone, as in tracery and groining. The evil of all this is too well known, and I have had to pass over it for the sake of what is less recognised and not so often brought before us. To put the right thing in the right place; to give it its most appropriate form, and above all things the form which will best enable it to fulfil its functions and uses, and withal the simplest, most direct, and the most perfect in construction; this is the first duty of every designer, and in doing this he will generally find he gets the maximum of beauty.
The conscious effort to be original will always produce abortions and painful results; the only originality worth anything is arrived at in trying to do something better not something new; and the true artist shows himself in giving beauty of form, of colour, and design to the necessary and useful, and adding that higher usefulness belonging to a work of art. But may we not have ornament, pure ornament which has no other definite use? Certainly we may, but let us at the very outset apply this test to it. It does not, we say, fulfil any useful purpose on the physical plane, does it fulfil any purpose on that higher plane of which I have spoken? Is its educational influence good? If so we will welcome it. If not let it go. And I fear, when this test is applied, it will be found that there is but little of the enormous profusion of the (so-called) ornament spread over everything about us, which would not have to go.
Most of us would do well to change it all for one or two good pictures, a bit of really beautiful metal work, carving, or embroidery, done by an artist with his own hand, and possessing something of that dignity of true art I have tried to show.
BARRY PARKER.