While we empower the police to put down with a strong hand the exhibition in shop windows, and the censor of stage plays and spectacles to interdict the parade in theaters of pictures and scenes of an “immoral” character, because it is recognized that these have a tendency to corrupt the mind of youth—and age, too—nothing whatever is done to restrain the daily increasing evil of pictorial placards displayed on every boarding, and of highly-wrought scenes produced at nearly all the theaters, which not only direct the thoughts, but actively stir the passions of the people in such way as to familiarize the average mind with murder in all its forms, and to break down that protective sense of “horror” which nature has given us, with the express purpose, doubtless, of opposing an obstacle to the evil influence of the exemplification of homicide. It does seem strange—passing strange—that this murder culture by the educationary use of the pictorial art has not been checked by public authority. We have no wish to make wild affirmations, but knowing what we do, as observers of development, we can have no hesitation in saying that the increasing frequency of horribly brutal outrages is by no means unaccountable. The viciously inclined are, in a sense, always weak-minded—that is to say, they are especially susceptible to influences moving them in the direction their passions incline them to take; and when the mind (or brain) is imprest through the senses, and particularly the sense of sight, in such manner as to produce mental pictures, either in waking thoughts or dreams of homicide, the impulsive organism is, as it were, prepared for the performance of the deeds which form the subjects of the consciousness. We are, of course, writing technically; but the facts are indisputable, and we trust they will be sufficiently plain. It is high time that this ingenious and persistent murder-culture should cease.—London Lancet.
(2371)
PICTURESQUE
Thomas Rowlandson, the artist, at one time in his career devoted himself to book illustration, in a series of plates on Goldsmith, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne and other humorists of his day. It was this that led William Combe, then in a debtors’ prison, and who had never met the artist, to write his humorous poem, “Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque.”
Ought not every Dr. Syntax of the pulpit or platform go in search of the picturesque? (Text.)
(2372)
PIETY
In considering the pictures of sacred subjects produced in the early ages of faith and simplicity, we must not forget that the chief intention of the artist was to stimulate the piety of the spectator, and not to make a “pretty” picture. Thus it is recorded of the saintly Florentine monk, Fra Angelico (1387–1455), that before he began the painting of a religious subject he fasted and prayed, and that while he was at work on his picture he always remained kneeling.—Frederick Keppel, “Christmas in Art.”
(2373)