BOOK I.
TERMINOLOGY AND ARGUMENT.
“The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveller on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass, alone the one to be grasped, hence the delight in detail.”
J. M. Whistler.
CHAPTER I.
TERMINOLOGY.
Terminology.
It were better at the outset to define our terms, for nothing leads more certainly to confusion in studying a subject than a hazy conception of the meanings of words and expressions. Perhaps in no branch of writing have words so many meanings as in writings on Art, where every expositor seems intent upon having his own word or expression. For this reason we wish clearly to define the words and art expressions in use in this book. Not, be it understood, that we claim in any way for any definitions that they are the rigid and final definitions of the expressions used, but we define what we mean by certain words and terms so that the reader may understand clearly the text in which such words occur, our aim being to be clear and to avoid all empty phraseology.
Analysis.
Seizing the impression of natural objects, and rendering this impression in its essentials has been called analyzing nature; and the impression so rendered is an analysis.
Art.
Art is the application of knowledge for certain ends. But art is raised to Fine Art when man so applies this knowledge that he affects the emotions through the senses, and so produces æsthetic pleasure in us; and the man so raising an art into a fine art is an artist. Therefore the real test as to whether the result of any method of expression is a fine art or not, depends upon how much of the intellectual element is required in its production. Thus Photography may be, and is, in the hands of an artist, a method of expression producing works of fine art, because no such works can be produced in photography by a man who is not an artist; whereas organ-grinding is a mode of expressing music, but the result is not a fine art, because no intellect, and therefore no artist, is required to produce the expression; a monkey might produce as good music on a hand-organ as could a Beethoven.