X.—DÜRER, Christ on the Cross. Dresden Gallery.
And just so with those painters who produce academic art or, as it has been known for many years, classic art. It is based upon an abstraction, an ideal taken from memories or remains of Greek art; and it is produced, in a scholastic way, according to an unwritten canon of academic proportions. Bouguereau and Lefebvre are the last notable exponents of it in France, and excellent craftsmen they are, too; but somehow their pictures always remind one of the book-keeper’s handwriting. They are very good as official handicraft—excellent drawings after a model—but they seem to lack character. They have no more force than the pretty girl on the outside of the handkerchief box, for whose existence, indeed, they are largely responsible. The want of stamina and vitality in their pictures may be accounted for readily enough, because again the man is absent. The work is mapped out by rule and done by academic precept. As for the feeling and the enthusiasm of the painter they are not apparent, and the product is accordingly colorless, mechanical, somewhat insipid.
This academic art is just as impersonal as the so-called realistic art, but, of course, neither of them is impersonal through the ignorance of their producers. It is a part of their creed that the painter should be absolutely “wiped out of the canvas,” and that the picture is complete only when the means of its production (including the painter) are no longer apparent in the work. The realist believes that nature is above all, the most beautiful of all beauties, and that the best the painter can do is to copy her in all humility of spirit. The academician believes that the academic rule—the consensus of tradition as to what constitutes beauty in art—is better than any one painter’s eyes and hand, and that the best the moderns can do is to follow the greatest of the ancients, namely, the Greeks. But we have seen the impossibility of absolute realism in art and we can imagine the futility of copying an art of the past to be applied to a people of the present. In practice neither kind of art has proved satisfying. The insistence upon academic and realistic formulas has always led to denials and revolts. The bitterest quarrels in art have hinged upon whether painting should be personal or impersonal, whether a man should follow a model, a rule, an inexorable law, or whether he should create and be a law unto himself. We have been told many times that the struggles and neglect of the Delacroixs, the Corots, and the Millets were due to the stupid public that refused to recognize them; but on the contrary, it was the stupid academicians of the École des Beaux Arts who would not understand them and denounced them. The protestants did not conform to the academic standard—they did not recite by rote.
Great art never has admitted a law; it will not be bound down to a model or a formula; it will not tolerate a rule if it can gain by breaking it. It is primarily the expression of man’s delight in what he sees or feels, and every man must express himself in his own way and in his own language. Indeed, the longer we ponder over the subject the surer we are to agree in substance with Véron that “of every work of art we may truly say that its chief value consists in the personal character of its author.”
These different kinds of art—realism, classicism, individualism—we frequently hear spoken of in metaphysical terms, which one hesitates to use for fear of producing confusion. When a person begins talking about “the real” and “the ideal,” “the objective” and “the subjective,” we are at once all at sea; because those words seem to have been used to define everything in the art world, and no two definitions mean quite the same thing. But as we may consider impersonal art hereafter, perhaps it is as well to say that it is often referred to as objective art. That is to say, it is as much as possible a realization of the object or thing painted. It is the outer view, seeing things beautiful in external nature. Personal art, on the contrary, is usually referred to as subjective art. It is the inner view, seeing things beautiful in the mind’s impression or the heart’s emotion. The interest in the one case centres in the representation of the model; in the other case it emanates from the expression of the painter himself.
Of course, the work of art does not necessarily hinge upon this question of personality or impersonality in the picture. There is the decorative quality that counts for much; there is something in subject that may be of importance; and there is, too, the style of the work, which may be strong enough to overcome other and perhaps detracting features. We have not yet finished with our consideration of the picture, and are not yet ready to draw a conclusion. It may be that conclusions in art are the better for not being “drawn” too rigidly. The arts which depend so largely upon varying personalities and temperaments cannot be summed up and proved with the exactness of a mathematical problem. Sometimes from a mass of illustrations one may extract a few general principles, and if we succeed in doing that we shall be taking at least one step forward in the appreciation of art.
CHAPTER III
IMAGINATION OF THE ARTIST
In our consideration of the varying points of view held by painters we have been placing the responsibility for the variations upon the human eye. The argument has been that people see differently one from another; and from that you have perhaps inferred that there is a difference in the construction of eyes. It is true that there may be a physical difference through imperfections of sight, as when one is near-sighted or has some astigmatism or is color-blind. But defective vision does not account for the individual view and is not a factor in the present consideration. The physical make-up of the eye may be assumed as practically the same with all men. The retina is merely a mirror which receives an impression of a scene or object. But the reception of the impression is not the beginning and the end of seeing. The complete act requires a mental recognition of what is seen—requires perception. The word “seeing” then should be understood as meaning not only the mirror-work of the retina, but the perception of that work by the mind.
In the matter of perception there may be differences among men and still be no great display of what we have called individuality. Some people perceive much while others seem almost blind. You know that the eyes of an unconscious person may be wide open, with the retinas mirroring everything, and yet the mind perceiving nothing. And so people who are quite conscious may look at things and not see them. The blue shadows cast upon the snow were, no doubt, seen centuries ago, but not perceived until the very recent time of the impressionists; and the Hebrews must have seen the difference between the blue sky and white light as the Greeks the difference between the hues of yellow and orange without being aware of what they saw.[[4]]