Delsarte System of Oratory

by Delaumosne

The best conditions under which an excellent work of art should be produced are undoubtedly the following: The conceiver possesses in the highest possible degree of development the modalities of being essential to the kind of creation undertaken, and these in their most perfect harmony; but this perfection of intensity and of the relations of the elements of the concept by no means necessitates the artist's formation of types at once morally, intellectually and physically artistic. This depends upon the truth of his subject. That he embellish it, whatever it may be, by his artistic interpretation and execution, is all that we should expect.

In the new manifestation which we now consider, where expression of sentiment is given predominance, the artist, interpreter of the passions, sentiments, weaknesses and vices as well as of the virtues and sympathies of humanity, must, in order to interest or chasten, show to it its own image, which reflection will be most frequently not an ideal of perfection but a type of suffering and vice, of weakness and depravity. A work will be successful in proportion as the chisel shall be most indefatigable in putting in relief the virtue or the vice which characterizes the subject. The greatest artist shall be he who renders most striking the characteristic predominance, whatever it may be, of the type created or interpreted. To sum up: Art is proportional to the faculties of the artist, and the work is the result of an application of these faculties to some special manifestation of the human ego.

Impressionalism, as in the other arts, should be considered in two aspects: the impression of the artist and that of the public or observer. The question then arises, what kind of a public should be impressed that the artist may merit a place in the higher ranks of æsthetics? While we have recognized that judgments in questions of art are the result of a certain sympathy existing between artist and observer, we have decided also that in considering such a question, all observers cannot be considered equal. In sculpture as in literature, where appreciators are possibly more numerous, we must admit that knowledge and capability or even sincerity are rarely of any weight in the balance of the grand juries of history or in the verdicts of contemporaries. The ignorant multitude sanction the grossest works because these only come within their understanding. Encouraged by the applause of numbers and by the lack of restraint which wins applause, artists descend the rounds of the ladder of progress which step by step has marked the ascent of the great schools and the great masters, and the result inevitably must be the return to mere sketches in sculpture, and painting will diminish to imagery. This end is quickly and readily reached, so easy and so fatal is the descent in these paths of decadence.

"All styles are good except the tedious," a well-known critic has said. Pursuing the import of this thought, we are led to the speedy conclusion that the null should never enter into competition. Nothing better than that the condition of priority should exist between diverse styles and opposite schools; but why strive to institute comparison between a synthetic idea and the absence of synthesis and idea, between certain proportions and harmony and the absence of proportion and harmony, between a style and the absence of style? Whatever the subject and whatever the mode of treating it, the intelligence of the artist should always be visible in his work.

I am more and more thoroughly convinced that the theory of Delsarte, fatal to simplisme, is the true theory of art. What can be more simpliste than impressionalism when viewed as a school? It considers no law or science, disregards entirely analysis and logic, the Good and the Beautiful; it is given over to sensation; vague impressions which are, whatever may be said to the contrary, only the inferior part of man's faculties, indispensable surely, but that which we have in common with the animals and little children; very interesting to observe among animals, a charming grace in children, but a most unimportant factor in adult existence, particularly in the artist's life, unless it be governed by the intellect and subject to the sanction of feeling.

Application of the Law to Painting.

If any art should be given over to impressionalism it seems as if it should be painting. To see and to transmit what is seen,--is not this the true office of the painter, his undoubted mission? Yes, on condition that the artist has the requisites for seeing correctly! And if he rises to composition, he must also be endowed with a creative intellect, with a portion of that mental power which will permit him to embrace a conception synthetically, and to coördinate its parts.

Among the impressionalists of our time, there are assuredly painters of talent; but what talent they possess is, as it were, against their will: the influence of tradition, the weight of the medium in which they live unconsciously restrain them. Then, it must be confessed, this impressionability of the artist has its intrinsic merits, if it is kept to its place and degree; but it must be regarded as certain, that if the simpliste artist makes himself distinct in his work, it is because he contains within himself more of the requisites for what he undertakes, and because, without his having summoned them, the faculties of the understanding and the æsthetic sense have come to his aid.

If Delsarte admitted the precept that "everything is perceived in the manner of the perceiver," he, of course, did not admit that every perceiver should make his own law: his conception of the æsthetic trilogy would never have permitted him to open this Babel for the vanity of ignorance.

To finish with simplisme or naturalism, let us say that, carried to its utmost extreme, it becomes a fixed idea, a monomania; has not impressionalism attained to this even in the choice of colors? It has been said of certain painters that they had only to upset their palette on the canvas to compose their pictures! Yet this varicolored chaos is not the characteristic of the school On the contrary, certain favorite colors prevail; do not green and violet rule almost exclusively in some of the most striking pictures from impressionalist brushes?