There is, no doubt, plenty of material for art to appropriate of higher grade than the representation of animal spirits and downright citizenship in all their essentially insignificant detail. Man has clearly more serious interests and objects than these, interests which have unfolded as his own spirit has widened and deepened, and in harmony with which it is his truest interest to remain. An art will take highest rank which sets before itself the task of giving adequate representation to this more vital, or at least more profound, content. And here at once we are confronted with the old question, what is the source which will supply us with the forms most fitting to such creations of mind. On the one side theorists maintain the opinion that, inasmuch as the artist creates these lofty ideas, which he desires to clothe in artistic form, he must, also supply their artistic forms, create, for example, from his imagination the ideal figures of Greek gods, Christ, his apostles, saints, and so on. In strenuous opposition to this view Herr von Rumohr has entered the lists. This writer is of opinion that art is on a false track in supposing that the artist discovers the forms of his production in himself rather than in Nature, and it is under this conviction that he has reviewed the masterpieces both of Italian and Dutch painters. On this head he finds it a matter of censure ("Italian Investigations," i, p. 105) "that the theory of art, during the sixty years which have elapsed, should be at the pains to prove that it is an object, or rather the main object, of art to improve upon creation as it is particularised, and by doing so to substitute forms which have no particular relation to anything, which would ape Nature's creation by going several points beyond her, and release mortal man from all responsibility for the fact that Nature has not known how to make her appearance more beautiful." And consistently with such a point of view he further advises the artist "to have nothing to do with the gigantic task of attempting to ennoble or elucidate the natural form, or attempt any such exalted function of the human Spirit under what name soever it may be written down in works upon art" (ibid. p. 63). He is, in short, wholly convinced that, however exalted and spiritual[293] the subject to be treated may be, completely adequate forms are to be found in Nature as immediately perceived, and consequently maintains (p. 83), "that the exposition of Art, even in the case of subject-matter as highly spiritual as it is possible to conceive, is never indebted to a symbolism capriciously created by man[294], but depends wholly for its consistency upon what is presented as significant by Nature in organic form." No doubt in advancing this Herr von Rumohr has particularly under review the ideal types of antique art as they are expounded by Winckelmann. It is for all that the abiding service of Winckelmann to have pointed out and set forth in harmonious relation these very types, although he may doubtless have, committed errors of judgment with regard to particular masterpieces while carrying through the same. As a possible example of such an oversight Herr von Rumohr thinks he has made out (p. 115) that the increase of length in the lower half of the body, which Winckelmann has characterized as an ideal feature of the antique, is really borrowed from Roman statuary. And naturally enough, as an opponent of the Ideal, improves the occasion by insisting that the artist should unreservedly take Nature into his confidence in the study of form. Here, and here alone, he will find the presence of true beauty. To quote this writer once more it is affirmed (p. 144), "that the beauty of most importance depends on a symbolic of forms rooted in Nature rather than human caprice, a beauty through which these forms are nourished into their characteristic and symbolic relations, in the vision of which we necessarily have brought back to our memory definite images and conceptions, and are made more definitely conscious of previously dormant feeling.[295]" I And so finally it appears that in this writer's view (p. 105) "a mysterious trait of our spiritual life, what many would perhaps call Idea, seems to bind together the artist and the appearances of Nature, in which latter he is constantly and continuously learning to recognize the true character of his own artistic purpose[296], and to find himself in a position through them to give expression to it."
There can be no question, of course, that ideal art has no business at all with "a symbolism capriciously created;" and, if it really is the case that these ideal types of the ancients have been composed only to reduce the veritable forms of Nature to false and empty abstraction, we may freely admit that Herr von Rumohr is justified in his most trenchant opposition.
For our own part we would emphasize the points of fundamental importance to be grasped in this antithesis between the ideal of art and Nature as follows:
The forms which are borrowed from immediate Nature to determine an ideal content must be assumed to be thus taken symbolically in the usual sense of the term, namely, that they are not thus immediately significant in themselves, but only as the external embodiment of that which is inward and spiritual, the content, in fact, they express. It is only Spirit, even in the reality which they possess outside the limits of art, which constitutes their ideality in its contrast with that they entirely owe to Nature simply as such, and which is unable to reveal to us what is essentially mind. It is the object of art, on its more noble plane, to give external shape to the inward content of Spirit. This content we discover in the conscious life of men realized in the world. As such it possesses—we include with it our conscious human experience generally—an external semblance directly presented in and through which it finds expression. So much may readily be conceded. At the same time from a philosophical point of view it is simply futile to inquire whether we ought to look to the direct facts of Nature alone for objects and physiognomical traits of beauty and expression to serve as entirely adequate materials for art's representation, shall we say, of the majesty, repose, and power of a Jupiter or of a Juno, Venus, Peter, Christ, Madonna, or any other divinity, or saint. Arguments may be supported on either side, and the question can only remain finally undecided, being wholly empirical. For the only sufficient way of deciding the matter would be to contrast what is borrowed with the realities it purports to represent, and this, in the assumed case of the Greek gods, might be matter of some difficulty; and, to take the present day, one man will see traits of beauty in their perfection where another a thousand times more acute will see nothing. But over and above such considerations we must observe that the mere beauty of form will never give us that we have named the Ideal, inasmuch as the individuality of the content is a constituent part of it, and therein form is necessarily included. A human face, for example, may be both regular and beautiful in its outlines and yet remain cold and devoid of all expression. The ideal figures of the Greek gods are, on the contrary, true individualizations; the universality of their ideal conception does not exclude the characteristic determination which belongs to each of them. And the vitality of the Ideal consists just in this, that this determinate and fundamental spiritual significance, which it is the function of art to exhibit, should wholly transfuse by appropriate artistic treatment all the particular aspects of the external embodiment, such as composition, pose, motion, physiognomy, and configuration of limbs, so that nothing empty or insignificant should be left, but the entire work should reflect that ideal significance. All that we have learned from Greek sculpture in recent times of a quality which, in fact, emanates from the school of Pheidias, is characterized by nothing so much as this penetrative vitality. The Ideal is preserved in all its severity without any lapse in the direction of mere grace, softness, elegance, and exuberance, yet retains the form in close relation to the ideal significance which should be embodied throughout the whole. This supreme vitality is the distinguishing mark of the great artist.
We may call a typical significance of this kind, in contrast to the particularity of the external world, essentially abstract. This is pre-eminently the case in sculpture and painting, arts which illuminate but a momentary state, without proceeding to such a varied development of exposition as we find, for example, in that where Homer is able to depict the character of Achilles as mild and courteous no less than severe and terrible, to say nothing of all his other characteristics. No doubt it is possible to find such a significance expressed in purely immediate reality. There are, for instance, few countenances which cannot reflect the moods of piety, devotion, and cheerfulness; but such faces also express countless other moods which either are quite inappropriate to that ideal significance, or are only indirectly related to it. For this reason it is by virtue of its particular realization that a portrait acquaints us of the fact that it is a portrait. In many old German and Flemish pictures we find the patron of the picture included in the composition with his entire family of sons and daughters. All are necessarily painted as though taken in an act of devotion, and this spirit illuminates every countenance; but at the same time we have quite as clearly set before us in the men stalwart warriors, men of vigorous action, disciplined on the strenuous field of life and commerce, and in the women dames of an equally doughty life-experience. If we compare with such faces—and we may restrict our comparison wholly to these very pictures, which are famous for their close approach to Nature in their delineation of physiognomy—those of the Virgin Mary, and the saints and apostles who surround her, we shall find in these latter one preponderating expression; and all the physical lineaments, whether we look at build of bone, structure, or muscle, traits of that express motion or repose, are concentrated upon this one artistic effect. That which is felt to be appropriate to the one class and not to the other exactly differentiates the distinction between the genuine Ideal and mere portraiture.
Some may imagine it possible for the artist to compose the ideal content of genuine types by a process of sifting and selection from the facts of immediate Nature, or quite possibly from the various physiognomies and compositions which collections of engravings from the copper-plate or the wood may furnish. But a process such as this of mere collection and sifting is not the end of the matter. An artist must maintain the creative impulse alert throughout. He must himself, in the strength of his own imagination, already impregnated with the knowledge of appropriate form and made vital with profound experience and emotion, give such an embodiment to the significance, which is the inspiring motive of the work, as will make it appear throughout as metal cast at one time and is one state of fusion.
B. THE DETERMINACY OF THE IDEAL
To comprehend the Ideal in its intrinsic significance, that is to say, according to its fundamental notion, was a comparatively easy task. But the beauty of art, in so far as it is the Idea, is not to be restricted to the purely universal standpoint of its notional concept; even as so comprehended it must necessarily include within it determination and particularity, and is compelled to take definite embodiment as external reality. The question consequently arises in what way is the Ideal able still to assert itself in this process of objectification in the medium of external things and their finitude, and despite all that is antagonistic to ideality; and as a corollary to this we have to inquire how finite and determinate existence is enabled to attach to itself the ideality of the beauty of all art.
We propose to regulate this inquiry with the following division of our subject matter.
First, the determination of the Ideal in its simplest terms.