Popinjay Art is plentiful enough. It is the trick whereby mediocrity antics itself into a sort of notoriety, and cynical cleverness indolently plays the fool with an easily humbugged public. It is probably calculated—perhaps with some reason—that these stagey tricks, and limelight effects, and dismal draperies, and bogey surprises, and peep-show horrors will perplex people into a foolish wonder, if not into an impossible enjoyment or an honest approval. Maybe that is all which is aimed at? But what an aim for anything calling itself Art!
Posturing Pierrots and smirking skeletons, goggling sphinxes and giggling cocottes, cadaverous surprises and ensanguined startlers, all the parade of nightmare and nastiness, pall upon the mind, as the phantasmagoric effects and sickly scents do upon the senses, of the visitors to the Salon Parisien. Whim and fantasy are all very delightful in their way. But this is not Wonderland, it is the world of drunken delirium and the Witches' Sabbath. A girl with emerald face, purple hair, and vivid vermilion lips, peeping between amber portières, is an inoffensive though purposeless, and not very interesting bizarrerie. But such gratuitous ghastlinesses as "Will o' the Wisp," "Felo de se," "Vive la Mort!" and particularly the offensively named "Ecce Homo," are simply revolting horrors. Somebody has hazarded the statement that they are Edgar-Poe-ish. Pooh! Poe was creepy sometimes, but he was an artist, an idealist, subordinating even occasional horror to the beautiful in his daring dreams.
A FORTIORI
Philistine Father: "Why the dickens don't you paint something like Frith's 'Derby Day'—something everybody can understand, and somebody buy?"
Young Genius: "Everybody understand, indeed! Art is for the few, Father, and the higher the art, of course, the fewer the few. The highest art of all is for one. That art is mine. That one is—myself!"
Fond Mamma: "There speaks my own brave boy!"
Impartial Satire
As a rôle Punch was a strong partisan in art; yet on occasion he could hold the balance. I have illustrated the change in his view of Whistler, but it never degenerated into abuse. The dialogue, "Wrestling with Whistler," suggested by the exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in the spring of 1892, impartially satirizes Whistlerites, frank Philistines, and the literal and prosaic persons who were puzzled and bewildered by "arrangements," "harmonies," "symphonies" and "nocturnes." These simple souls, unable to recognize the objects depicted, were not helped by the faithful who retorted, "Ah, but it's the way he saw it!" To-day, as thirty years ago, their point of view is faithfully expressed in the unconscious irony of the serious elderly lady:
I've no patience with the man. Look at Gustave Doré now. I'm sure he was a beautiful artist if you like. Did he go and call his "Leaving the Prætorium" a "Symphony" or a "Harmony," or any nonsense of that kind? Of course not—and yet look at the difference!