III
The problem, however, of photographic reproduction and of imagination still awaits a satisfactory solution. We have seen that no objection whatsoever can be raised against the marvellous representative detail of, say, Jan Van Eyck's "Jan Arnolfini and His Wife." Nor can we explain the joy and love expressed in the picture by reference merely to the forms and colours in abstraction from the objects and persons. For that would be transforming the living and individual unity of artistic vision into the abstract schemata of scientific thought. And art is not science, although it might very well express the delights and struggles of the scientist. But, on the other hand, there are pictures which, at any rate, appear to represent objects with the same accuracy and detail as Jan Van Eyck, and yet definitely fail to rank as works of art. They may often give us pleasure, they are often informative, but a little introspection reveals that that pleasure is due to our being reminded of something that is not itself in the picture, and that the information is not about our emotion but about an historical or a scientific fact. Similarly with the photograph which has still greater precision of scientific (not artistic) observation, and for that very reason is artistically still more jejune and barren. But there is yet another visual product which is neither photographic nor artistic "reproduction," namely, imaginative representation. From internal as well as external evidence we can infer that certain pictures were painted by the artist "out of his head," and others from "the models," and we find that artists like Velasquez, who painted masterpieces from the model, often failed miserably in their attempts at imaginative work.[19] Of course, it is doubtful how far this distinction can be carried; for we have no direct proof that many of the most realistic pictures were not pure inventions, and that much of the apparently imaginative work, such as Blake's, was not simply composite memory. Imagination is just as dangerous and ambiguous a term as reproduction.
[19] Cf. "La Couronnement de la Vierge." A voluminous mass of pompous clothing floating on some well-fed babies' heads.
These, then, are the "facts" to be explained. On the one hand, we have undeniably a reality of perception and photography which is not that of art but often extraordinarily akin to it; on the other hand, we have a visual art which divides itself into three groups, each of which qua art is of equal value: realistic, imaginative, and, thirdly, formal, decorative, or abstract art. What is desired is some synthetic conception which will make intelligible the similarities and differences and contradictions dwelling in these, at any rate, superficially different kinds of vision.
Behind the conception of thinkers like J. A. Symonds there always lay the photographic reality which was the common reality of everyone, and supplied all the materials for the artist's reality: the framework of forms and colours, of objects and persons. It was regarded from the æsthetic point of view as rather a nightmare, for it was so unemotional, so much the same all through, so unpliable. And the explanation of art was that it consisted of this same reality, but as seen through the temperament of the artist and, therefore, somehow, by some mysterious wizardy, coloured with emotion, electrified into all kinds of subjective illuminations, a fascinating mirage. Or instead of the word temperament one substituted the phrase creative imagination. This means substantially the same thing, but it leads us away a bit further from photographic reality, widening the gulf between the two. We cannot create the outer world, but we can create an inner world of imagination, and actually bring into our life something intimately new, shedding a light of its own that never was on sea or land. Drive this argument a little further and we arrive at Cubism and Futurism.
This is the philosophical view which dominates most art criticism of to-day, and probably quite rightly so. It is fairly safe, and it "corresponds to the facts" with tolerable accuracy. It is sufficiently eclectic not to offend either an ardent philosophical realism or an ardent idealism. And it does not fall into the error of condemning one kind of art and exalting another, although our æsthetic taste when unprejudiced by theory proclaims both kinds equally delightful. This, however, is no reason why we should not attempt to deepen the theory with a view to giving it a closer organic unity and explaining facts which it does not seem at present to take into account. Needless to say, we may get entangled and strike out on a wrong track. For thinking, like everything else, is experimental.