My subject is art and thought about art. I deal with aesthetics only so far as they concern art, that is to say I shall not attempt any purely philosophic speculations about the nature of art and I shall speak of the speculations of others, such as Croce and Tolstoy, only so far as they seem to me likely to have a practical effect upon art. My subject is the art of to-day and our ideas about it. We are beginning at last to connect aesthetics with our own experience of art and to see that our beliefs about the nature and value of art will affect the art we produce. Hence a new aesthetic is very slowly appearing; but I have to confess it has not yet appeared.
Indeed there are at present two conflicting theories of art, one or other of which is held consciously or unconsciously by most people who are interested in art at all, and both of which I think are not only imperfect but to some extent false. They are theories about the relation of the artist to the public, and because of the conflict between them and the falsity of each, we are confused in our ideas about art, and the artists are often confused in their practice of it.
The first theory has been expressed, not philosophically but with great liveliness, by Whistler in his Ten O'clock, and has had great influence both upon the thought of many people who care about art and upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no concern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. There is no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental one; and the less of that the better for the artist and his art.
Whistler states it in the form of a New Testament of his own.
'Listen,' he says. 'There never was an artistic period. 'There never was an art-loving nation. 'In the beginning man went forth each day—some to do battle, some to the chase; others again to dig and to delve in the field—all that they might gain and live or lose and die. Until there was found among them one differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd. 'This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethren—who cared not for conquest and fretted in the field—this designer of quaint patterns—this deviser of the beautiful—who perceived in nature about him curious curvings—as faces are seen in the fire—this dreamer apart, was the first artist.' 'And when from the field and from afar, there came back the people, they took the gourd—and drank from it.'
Whistler means that they did not notice the patterns the artist had traced on it.
'They drank at the cup,' he says, 'not from choice, not from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because forsooth there was none other.'
So gradually there came the great ages of art.
'Then', he says, 'the people lived in marvels of art—and ate and drank out of masterpieces for there was nothing else to eat and drink out of, and no bad building to live in.'
And, he says, the people questioned not, and had nothing to do or say in the matter.