That the ultimate aim of painting is to touch the crowd we have admitted; but painting must not address the crowd in the language of the crowd; it must employ its own language, in order to move, dominate, and direct the crowd, not in order to be understood. It is so with religions and philosophies. The artist who concedes nothing, who does not explain himself and relates nothing, accumulates an internal strength whose radiance shines on every hand.
It is in consummating ourselves within ourselves that we shall purify humanity; it is by increasing our own riches that we shall enrich others; it is by kindling the heart of the star for our own pleasure that we shall exalt the universe.
To explain Cubism, or any attempt in art to suppress the objective, one must fall back on music.
Grieg calls a certain composition “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” Not for a moment did he attempt realistically to suggest a hall, a mountain, a king or any object; to have done so would have been folly. And if that particular composition were played for the first time before a body of keen musicians, no title mentioned, and not a word said about its being a part of the Peer Gynt suite, no two would agree as to what the composer had in mind, though many might have very interesting impressions regarding the mood of the composer in writing it.
But once understand it is part of the Peer Gynt suite and once told it is “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” the weird and fascinating music explains itself, it is recognized as a wonderfully successful attempt to realize an impressive scene by a combination of sounds.
The veriest tyro in music feels the cheapness of imitative music, the imitation of the nightingale, the ripple of notes to imitate a rippling brook, the beating of a drum to imitate thunder, the tremolo of violins to represent fright, etc., etc.
From such bald attempts at realism to the abstract beauty of a symphony by Beethoven is a vast interval.
The severely logical composer will not name his symphony for fear of suggesting ideas that will interfere with the pure enjoyment of his abstract conception. There have been painters—like Whistler—who preferred to call their works “Harmonies” or “Arrangements” or “Studies” rather than subject their canvases to a clamoring horde of suggestions by choosing names that must inevitably divert the observer.