Cubists and Post-Impressionism

by Arthur Jerome Eddy

But that makes the attitude of the observer the test whether a given product is or is not art, while the true test is the attitude of the producer.

Whether a given work is or is not art is determined and forever fixed at the time of its production. If art to him who creates it, it is art to all humanity for all time; neither a man’s neighbors nor future generations can deprive it of its character.

Quite a good many years ago I made the attempt, in lecture and book form, to define art.[40]

What is Art? The question is as old as man himself, for we have no records of men without some manifestation of the art impulse....

Man is the combination of thought and symbol; thought striving to express itself, and symbol, the means whereby it achieves that end. The symbol may be sound, word, or song; or it may be line, form, or structure; it matters not. A cry is the language of the child; speech is the every-day utterance of the man; the heart of the singer bursts forth in song; the musician speaks in harmonies, the painter in line and color, the sculptor in form, the architect in structure, the poet in rhyme and rhythm—and each is silent save in his own way....

Now what is the distinction between thought expression which is art and thought expression which is not art?

In its broadest significance, and in its very essence, art is delight in thought and symbol.

Mark the union—art is delight in both the thought and the symbol. Without the double delight—the combination of these two quite distinct delights, there can be no art.

To the writer of prose there may come a beautiful fancy; he delights in it and hastens to record his thought. He may write the most flowing, the most perfect prose, but as he writes he is still occupied with his thought; his sole object is to find words which will but express it. The same fancy comes to the poet; he, too, delights in it, and seeks to record it; but when the poet touches pen to paper he is seized with a new and an entirely distinct delight, a delight in his method of expressing his thought; he may even permit his delight in his symbol, the flow, rhythm and ring of rhyme, to sweep him onward in forgetfulness of his first fancy—literature is filled with such examples.