Nevertheless, despite this compromise, the purpose of art is uncompromisingly attained. For art does not seek to give us nature over again, but to express its feeling tones, and these are conveyed when we get an idea of the corresponding object, even if that idea is inadequate from a strictly scientific point of view. We do not react emotionally to the infinite detail of any object, but only to its presence as a whole and to certain salient features. The artist succeeds when he constructs a humanized image of the object—one which arouses and becomes a center for feeling. This image, when made of a few elements, may be far more telling than a much more accurate copy; for there is no diffusion of interest to irrelevant aspects. How effective a medium for expression are the few and simple lines of Beardsley's draftsmanship! The amount of detail necessary to convey an emotionally effective idea is relative to the technique of the different arts and varies also with the suggestibility and discrimination of the observer. Here no a priori principles can be laid down for what only the experimental practice of the artist can determine.
Moreover, the negative suggestions of a work of art, although they are effective in preventing entire belief in the reality of the idea expressed, do not hinder the communication and appreciation of the attached feelings. Just so long as the belief attitude is not wholly extinguished, this is the case; and the skillful artist takes care of that. Of course, an attitude of self-surrender, of willingness to accept suggestions, has to be present and we cooperate with the artist in creating it. Aesthetic belief implies sufficient abandon that we may react emotionally to a suggestion, but not enough that we may react practically. We let the idea tell upon our feelings; we do not let it incite us to action. The aesthetic plausibility of an idea depends largely upon its initial plausibility with the artist. There is nothing more contagious than belief. To utter things with an accent of conviction is half the battle in getting oneself believed. If the artist pretends to believe something and expresses himself with an air of assurance, we accept it, no matter how preposterous it may be from the practical or scientific point of view. Think of Rabelais!
A work of art is a logical system. It presupposes certain assumptions, postulates, conventions, which we must accept if we are to live in its world. Now, in order that we may accept them, the artist must first have vividly accepted them himself. Only if they have become a very part of him, can they become at all valid for us. The failure of classicistic art in a non-classical age, of "Pre-Raphaelitism" after Raphael, is a failure in this—the artist has never lived even imaginatively in the world he depicts. His belief is an artifice and a sham, and he cannot impose upon us with his pretense. But once we have accepted the artist's postulates, then we are prepared to follow him in his conclusions. In the Homeric world, we shall not balk at the intercourse between gods and men; in mediaeval painting and drama, we shall accept miracle; in Alice in Wonderland, we shall accept any dream-like enchantment. But we demand that the conclusions shall follow from the premises, that the whole be consistent. We cannot tolerate miracle in a realistic novel or drama, or glaring inaccuracy of fact in a historical novel, because they are in contradiction to the laws of reality tacitly assumed. The final demand which we make of any work, of art is that it live. What can be made to live for us may be beautiful to us. But nothing can draw our life into itself which has not drawn the artist's, or which is untrue to its own inner logic.
One of the most life-creating elements of a work of art is imagery. Everywhere in art the tendency exists for ideas to be filled out, rendered concrete and vivid, through images. In looking at a painting of a summer landscape, for example, we not only recognize the colors as meaning sunlight, but actually experience them as warm; in looking at a statue we not only recognize its surface as that of the body of a woman, but we feel its softness and smoothness; which involves that the ideas of sunlight and a human body, employed in interpreting the sensations received from these works of art, are developed back into the original mass of images from which they were derived. However, although ideas are formed from images, they are not images,—as our ordinary employment of them in recognizing objects attests. We may and usually do, for example, recognize a mirror as smooth without experiencing it as smooth—the image equivalent of the idea remains latent. Our ordinary experience with objects is too hasty and too intent on practical ends for images to develop. On the other hand, the leisurely attitude characteristic of the aesthetic experience is favorable to the recall of images; hence, just as in the aesthetic perception of objects we put our feelings into them, so equally we import into them the relevant images. The aesthetic reaction tends to be total. Our demand for feeling in art also requires the image; for feelings are more vividly attached to images than to abstract ideas. It is a fact familiar in the experience of everybody that the strength of the emotional tone of an object is a function of the clearness of the image which we form of it on recall. We can preserve the feeling tone of a past event or an absent object only if we can keep a vivid image of it; as our image of it becomes vague, our interest in it dissipates. Everywhere in our experience the image mediates between feeling and idea. So in art. Images have no more an independent and self-sufficient status in art than sensations have; like the latter they are a means for the expression of feeling. In the painting of sunlight, for example, the images of warmth carry joyousness and a sense of ease; in the statue, the tactile images convey the emotional response to the represented object. In literature the expressiveness of images is perhaps even more impressive. Consider how longing is aroused by the tactile, gustatory, and thermal images in the oft-quoted lines of Keats:—
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth.
Examples might be multiplied indefinitely.
In literature alone of the arts, images from all departments of sense can be aroused. Visual images play a greater role there than in painting and sculpture, for the reason that, in the latter, visual sensations take their place—we do not image what we can see. In sculpture, the greater part of the imagery is of touch and motion—in the imagination, we feel the surfaces and move with the represented motions; the whiteness or blackness of the materials prevents the arousal of the image of the color of the body. In painting, besides the temperature images already mentioned, there are touch images—in still-life, for example, when silks and furs are represented; images of odors, in flower pieces; of motion, in pictures which depict motion, as in the racing horses of Degas; of taste, in pictures of wine and fruit. Of course the kind and amount of imagery depend upon the imaginal type to which the spectator belongs and the wealth of the imaginal furnishing of his mind. In any art, moreover, the chief and requisite thing is expression through the sense medium, which should never be obscured by expression through associated images. It is not the primary business of a flower painter to arouse images of perfume, but to compose colors and lines; nor the function of the musician to arouse the visual images which accompany the musical experience of many people, but to compose sounds. In sculpture, on the other hand, images of touch and movement play an almost necessary part, for they are constituent elements in the representation of form and motion; yet it is not indispensable to the appreciation of sculpture that images of the sweet odor of the human body be awakened. The image is seldom the basis of aesthetic appreciation; it is more often its completion. But we shall go into these matters more in detail in our special chapters.
In the representative arts, particularly painting and sculpture, the associated images are fused with the visual sensations which constitute the medium. I see the softness and sweet-odorousness of the painted rose petal, just as I see the real rose soft and sweet; I see the surface of the statue firm and shapely, just as I see the human body so. This is because the ideas of the things represented in painting and sculpture seem to be actually present in the visual sensations which they interpret; the flower and the man seem to be there before me. In these arts, aesthetic perception is a fusion of image with sensation in much the way that normal perception is. In literature and music, on the other hand, the connection between the sense medium of the art and the associated images is less close; and for the reason that the sounds are no part of the things which they bring before the mind. In looking at a picture of a rose, I see the red as an element of the rose represented; whereas, in reading about a rose, I only seem to hear a voice describing it. In the latter case, therefore, the olfactory and visual images have a certain remoteness and independence of the word-sounds; I do not actually see and smell them in the sounds. However, in the case of familiar words with a strong emotional significance, the fusion of image with sound may be almost complete. Who, for example, does not see a sweet and red image of a rose into the word-sounds when he reads:—
Oh, my love's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June.
Or, when Dante describes the selva oscura, who does not see the darkness in the word oscura? In all such cases a strong feeling tone binds together the word-sound with the image. This fusion is most striking in poetry because of the highly emotional material with which it works.