ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
If it is possible for this nation to become artistic in tastes and habits, we shall not fail. There is no branch of special education more enthusiastically advocated and patronized. Of course the end in view will require more advocacy and more patronage—a great deal more—but we are doing so much that the necessary more will doubtless be done. It should be remembered too, that if blood tells in the matter of art culture we have no lack of blood drawn from the artistic nations. Flemings, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and even Greeks, come to New York in large numbers; and if Anglo-Saxon blood were condemned as unartistic by inevitable natural incapacity, we should still be able to produce great artists in abundance—if method, zeal, and patronage could do this thing. We will not prophesy; let us wait and see. It is understood, of course, that much, perhaps most of our art, is industrial. We need to educate a large corps of designers for useful goods, which are also ornamental; and this type of artist is so well rewarded when he displays inventive faculty that we are likely to surpass all other peoples in this department of work. It is not easy to separate completely in our thinking this branch of art from that which aims only at artistic pleasure. A design for goods may be perfect art, and satisfy all the requirements of the æsthetic sense. But it is obvious that decorative art is very close to industrial art in nature and purpose. And the purpose has always been condemned by high art, for it looks straight at the sale of the goods at good prices.
It is complained every year in New York, when the art exhibitions come on for criticism, that the pecuniary motive for work, and the avidity of artists for good sales, depress the imagination of the lovers of good work. In substance, then, our trouble as to art—that we are a commercial race—seems to get into the schools and infect their atmosphere. The evil is not that success is rewarded; but that success is not possible to an artist who thinks always of his reward. Art, like religion, requires a spirit of self-renunciation. Success in art is not possible to one who consumes his energy in thinking about the sale of his pictures. To become rich by art one must be first willing to starve to death in the service of art truth. We are not demanding such sacrifices; we are only suggesting that without the spirit of them the pure art of this country will not attain the eminence which our enthusiasm seeks to reach.
“Sordid treatment” of themes is inevitable in the sordid atmosphere which, we are told, is breathed in all our circles of art. Besides, the museums are founded by good natured people who are poor guides and directors and yet must control, because they are patrons. One art journal declares that enough energy has in the last five years been expended in behalf of art to have given it a firm establishment. It adds that most of this energy has been wasted. Art students and art teachers and art institutions and publications multiply, but they do not give us high art. We read this complaint and recall the story of the oil-king in western Pennsylvania who ordered the teacher of his daughter to “buy her a capacity, without regard to expense.” If art comes to us to stay it will come by a slow change of thought, feeling, and aspiration. It is probable that this change has begun; let us hope that it will ripen to a gracious and mellowed maturity. The art-life will find ample room in our hospitable civilization, if it can acquire the courage to live its own life and escape being a parasite on the robust body of our commercial life.
EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.
The force of the “Chautauqua Idea” is not abating; on the contrary it works its way into new homes and distant fields—for instance, we have the C. L. S. C. Class of 1888, which commenced to form last July, and now numbers about 20,000 members. The “Florida Chautauqua,” in Florida, is a new plant, and now our C. L. S. C. friends in Canada are raising a fund of $50,000 with which to purchase and furnish grounds near Niagara Falls, for an Assembly after the Chautauqua fashion.
Many prominent Chautauqua workers are at the Florida Chautauqua now in session at Lake de Funiak. Among them are the Rev. Frank Russell, Mrs. G. R. Alden (Pansy), the Rev. A. A. Wright, Dean of the Chautauqua School of Theology, Prof. W. D. Bridge, Prof. W. F. Sherwin, Mrs. Juvia C. Hull, the Rev. S. G. Smith, D.D., the Meigs-Underhill Combination, Prof. C. E. Bolton, Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller, Dr. O. P. Fitzgerald, Prof. R. L. Cumnock, Wallace Bruce, Hon. John N. Stearns, Col. G. W. Bain, Mrs. Emma P. Ewing, Hon. Lewis Miller, etc. Many prominent lecturers, singers and readers as yet not known publicly at Chautauqua, are at this Southern Chautauqua, or on the program for the closing week. Dr. Gillet, in preparing the royal feast of four weeks’ continuance, has subsidized the country generally for his purposes, and all prominent denominations are tributary thereto. Nearly or quite all the departments (save the C. S. L.), known at Chautauqua, are in successful operation. The Assembly already takes high rank in design and desire, and professors, lecturers, readers, singers, helpers, are among the very best. No Assembly in the land starts off with a more brilliant outlook, or with such strong financial backing.