Beauty and the Beast: An Essay in Evolutionary Aesthetic

by Stewart Andrew McDowall

I think it is just to say that the religious picture is not episodic. It represents what, for want of a better word, we have termed a static intuition. In the greatest Madonnas, even those of the beginning of the decadence, such as Raphael’s, all the birth-pangs, all the pain, and all the achievement of life at its highest go to make up the intuition of the artist. I venture to think that in one picture at least, the Madonna of the Magnificat, the artist even hints subtly that he is expressing in an image the whole meaning of the world, by distorting his figures and modifying his lights as they would be distorted and modified when reflected in a convex mirror. διὰ κάτοπτρον is for all art, but the fact is not evident to him who only glances. The artist’s intuition must be understood, by a mind that follows it creatively; even if its creation be at times over-ingenious.

The religious picture, no doubt, could not have been painted but for the historic episode which it represents. But there is a strong presumption that it does not owe its intuition to one episode, nor even to the whole history of a life; though a Crucifixion, an Entombment, and indeed a Madonna, would only be intelligible in their fulness to one who knew the life of Christ. It is the relation of a whole Life, Divine yet Human, to the life of each one of us that lies at the bottom of the artist’s vision. Only a great Christian can paint a great Madonna, however sin-stained he may be. Magdalene, who loved much, could see deeper than jesting Pilate, deeper than the self-righteous Pharisee.

There is here no intrusion of an alien element; a vision of Reality is represented in one medium. The episode no doubt is there, but it is incidental, and does not constitute the vision. Episode is always there, even in a landscape; the question is whether the appeal—the original intuition—is episodic or universal. But no doubt the human relation is emphasised; and in this respect we have moved far away from landscape. The relation of man to inanimate nature is however included and interpreted in the artist’s vision. I think that the half-conscious perception of this lies behind the frequent introduction of landscape in such pictures. It may be said that these simply help to complete the composition, but to say this is to beg the question. Why do they complete the composition? Why do they satisfy us? Is it not that they form an intrinsic part of the artist’s intuition; that in the harmony of figures and landscape he symbolises, and we after him, the universal harmony which he has seen?

In a portrait, too, we read not only the relation between sitter and artist, which must be a relation of deep sympathy and understanding if the portrait is to be anything but an imitation, but also the relation of the sitter to all the events of his life. Think of Raeburn’s portrait of James Wardrop. The strength, the kindliness, the rugged purpose, the humour with which the old man faced his life all through are there. It is the face of a man who has fought and won, and in fighting and winning has learned much wisdom. Think of Giorgione’s Portrait of a Gentleman, with its wealth of refinement; with its conviction that “manners makyth man,” sustained with gentleness already many times when courtesy and calm were not easy. Yet here too there is no representation of episode. The painter’s art is faithful to itself and allows no alien intrusion. The harmony, the unity of a man’s life, compounded though that life be of sequent episodes, makes the artist’s intuition. History has become philosophy. An absolute thing, an aspect of Reality, is presented, and we feel somehow that it is not set against the world but includes the world.

The same kind of thing may be said of lapidary art, and we will not dwell on it in detail. The sculptor sees beauty in the human or animal form and in three dimensional representation generalises from it, whether his work represent an individual or an ideal; for the individual is used to express an ideal, the ideal is localised in an individual. The problem of the architect is somewhat different, being on the theoretic side the attempt to portray in three dimensions that which the designer of geometric patterns expresses in two—rhythm and order; multiplicity that establishes a unity; unity that interprets a multiplicity. But here, more than in other arts, the practical has to be kept in mind, and a harmony preserved between the economic and the theoretic activities. Generally one or other predominates, no one clear idea is expressed, and in consequence, much modern architecture, especially domestic and civic architecture, is unpleasing. To build a house is harder than to paint a picture, because men have to live in a house; and in a contention between two ideas the artistic side is overbalanced by the practical. Moreover the idea of relationship is comparatively subordinate here just because two ideas are set over against one another. The relationship of a thing to a man is in view. The aim is primarily economic, and beauty takes a second place because the intuition of harmony is vague and its expression imperfect.

If, however, a house is built, as some Tudor and Georgian houses were, with an eye to simple proportion which must not be violated, but otherwise with the realisation that it had to be lived in, and that it must be designed solely with this end in view, the result is eminently pleasing. There is no falsity, no attempt to mingle irreconcileables, no striving after a beauty that cannot be achieved because it is without meaning in such a connection.

We may now turn to music, in some ways the most difficult of all. Beginning with the evolutionary aspect, as with linguistic art we find its origin in the relation of beasts to each other and to the world. The mating-call, the crooning of passion and of satisfied well-being, the warning of danger, the hunting call, the sound of the wind, the sea, the river, the “going in the tops of the trees,” provide the ground-work of both, expressing the relation of beast to beast, and beast to thing. But, as we have seen, such calls, such sounds, and the language to which they give rise, are episodic. The sense of unity and endurance is lost. Just as, over against the visual symbols of episode which constitute the beginnings of literature we find the visual symbols of unity and static endurance which characterise pictorial art, so too we find the auditory symbols of episode that make speech, and the auditory symbols of unity that make music. We saw that, to preserve the episode of speech, visual symbolism is eventually called in. Even to-day the untrained reader has to form the sound with his lips as he reads; for the more expert the visual symbol definitely represents the sound: the written symbols have their own timbre. So too with music. To preserve the unity from being lost, it comes at last to be symbolised visually, and there are many who can hear the music as they read the score. Both the letter on the page and the notes on the stave are symbols of the second degree—symbols of symbols—for what they symbolise is in itself the symbol of the artist’s intuition of a unity in multiplicity. This in parenthesis.

We have said that in purely episodic sound such as the danger-call and the mating-call the sense of unity is absent. Doubtless no call is really and wholly episodic, in man at any rate, but it cannot be questioned that the episode is predominant. The sense of relation is transient; the economic need is all important.

But the theoretic activity cannot be left out of account for long. The man of to-day, when he feels his whole being in harmony, his body tingling from the cold bath, sings lustily. When we are well and cheerful we sing. So too when a bird is well and cheerful, with all his bodily needs satisfied or soon to be satisfied—so readily satisfied as to be themselves a pleasure of anticipation—he sings. No doubt the cave-mother sang to her baby in quiet murmurs; no doubt the cave-father hummed as he lolled in the cave-mouth after dinner, idly binding an arrow-head upon the shaft. Somehow, in a rhythmic sequence of sound the satisfaction of a body in harmonious rhythm with itself and its surroundings is expressed. Then, we may imagine, the singer becomes aware of his song, and begins to think about it. The beauty of the song as a whole, the beauty of a sequence in sound that makes a unity, is consciously perceived, and a new art dawns. It is an art very similar to that of the designer of geometric patterns. Unity is established through infinite multiplicity of details, in forming no one of which is the unity forgotten. The music mirrors an intuition of harmony in a Reality that owes its unity to its multiplicity and its multiplicity to its unity; a Reality that is based on relationship of parts.