The Whistler book

by Sadakichi Hartmann

The third great theory of the essay, which consists largely of Whistler's arrogant assertions as to the superiority of the artist and his own hatred for so called connoisseur, dilettante, and critic, has made a very proud man of the painter. Imagine an ordinary wielder of the brush reading the following sentence: "Vulgarity—under whose fascinating influence 'the many' have elbowed 'the few,' and the gentle circle of Art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity, whose leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where the gods once spoke in whispers.

"And now from their midst the dilettante stalks abroad. The amateur is loosed. The voice of the æsthetic is heard in the land, and the catastrophe is upon us.

"The artist in fulness of heart and head is glad, and laughs aloud, and is happy in his strength, and is merry at the pompous pretension—the solemn stillness that surrounds him."

Whistler lashed himself into the belief that he was the sole judge of his work. This is a very erroneous attitude. Creation is an unconscious process. Few artists have the critical faculty to analyze their work, and years pass before he is able to get a clear view of his own work. If we were an art-loving nation things would be different, but interest in painting has become a privilege of the rich and of museums; it is too remote to be considered an immediate pleasure. It needs some kind intermediator to bring about more sympathy between the public and the artist. What writers, who can write and to whom the smell of paint is not unfamiliar, see in a picture, is one thing. What a painter desires to express is an entirely different proposition, but this is no reason to find fault with the writer. What he says may be explanatory and interesting. A work of art is made to arouse sensations, pure or æsthetic, emotions and vagrant thoughts, and they will differ vastly in every beholder. This may be beyond the pale of unattached writers and gentlemen clerks of collections and appointed preachers, into which Whistler has divided the critics, but there is no argument necessary to make any reader believe that authors like Hawthorne, the Goncourts, Guy de Maupassant, Paul Heyse, Mallarmé, knew how to write about art.

Whistler also laughed at the pretence of the state as a fosterer of art. In this he was right. Art can not be forced upon a community. It is a matter of individual appreciation. It is a matter of conquest.

But this is, after all, a busy world we are living in, and unless things are pointed out to us we may overlook them or not even learn of their existence, no matter how hungry we may be for new sensations. And that is the crucial point where the art writer may prove useful. The majority of artists entertain no kindly feeling towards art writers. In their just anger with critics, who arrogate to themselves the right of telling an artist how he should have done his work, they forget that the real writer on art, misnamed critic, has quite a different aim, and is their best friend. For he takes upon himself the duty of mediating between artist and public. Without him, we may say, the true artist is nowhere. True art (in opposition to commercial work and all vulgar practices to which pictorialism is put) is a difficult matter to comprehend. When the public, composed of people whose energy is drained almost to exhaustion by daily associations and occupations, suddenly encounters a new phase of art, it can no more formulate a just opinion of it than it could when placed face to face with the tablets of Karnak and Sakkarah. Just as the electrician in a new invention must explain the working of natural forces, so must the "critic" explain the work of the artistic forces which come into play in the production of a picture. Most artists have become popular—as far as the true artist can become popular—only after the eyes of the public have been opened by some critic. Such artists as find no apostle to proclaim their creed die unattended. Many an artist left his family in poverty; but after his death critics dwelt at length upon the beauties of his pictures, and only then the public began to pay enormous prices for them.

And Whistler himself! Does he not refute his own contempt by his Barnum-Boulanger-like use of the press? True enough all his little squibs and elaborate bids for notoriety had some underlying truth which he wished to express. But if ever an artist realized the power of type it was Whistler.

As for the ordinary critic—he deserves our deepest sympathy. He proves beyond dispute "that there is something rotten" in our art appreciation. Old Japan and the Primitifs knew them not. He is harmless, however, as he has absolutely nothing to do with art. He is a necessary evil produced by the shortcomings of the time. Anatole France's remark about art criticism, that it should be the adventure of one's soul among masterpieces, is enough, but he forgets that the adventure should be the experience of a literary artist. For the only criticism that is lasting is either biographical in tendency or artistic commentary, which by a new work of art reflects the beauty of the original. If a picture is really beautiful, one should be able to write a poem about it, or express it in music, dancing or some other art.