“It is superficial,” they said.
“Yes, for he does not know the true character of those for whom he works, nor care to know his subject. The smirking advertisements one sees are a good example of prettiness. But many artists, working for money alone, fall into this cheap, easy habit of pleasing the worst taste.”
“Wouldn’t you call ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ a pretty book?” asked Henry.
“No, indeed,” I answered; “it is far too genuine and lifelike to be merely pretty.”
Henry insisted it was written for money, and was merely sweet and pleasing. The others disagreed with him so strenuously, I had hardly a chance to say, as before, that one might write for money the thing needful to be said. Virginia asked whether I did not think Jessie Wilcox Smith’s drawings merely pretty? I said I thought them so now and then, but that sometimes her deep love and understanding of childhood made them shine with loveliness.
Marian said: “Some people are merely pretty and uninteresting.”
“Often,” I answered, “they want just that. They look for superficial admiration, and show only their superficial prettiness.”
“But, of course, that isn’t art,” said Marian.
“Sometimes it is,” answered Florence.
I spoke of sculpture as the Greek drama of visual art, a metaphor that appealed to those of them—Florence, Marian, Henry—who knew enough of Greek drama, with its masks and buskins, and its far-offness, to understand. The distance, the unlifelikeness of the material, is its charm. The colored German marbles lose artistic beauty in gaining lifelike color.