Recent Developments in European Thought

by Unknown

But then a strange thing happened. There arose a new class

'who discovered the cheap, and foresaw fortune in the facture of the sham. Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, the gewgaw, and what was born of the million went back to them and charmed them, for it was after their own heart.... And Birmingham and Manchester arose in their might—and Art was relegated to the curiosity shop.'

I do not think this can be a true account of the matter; for, if the people were not aware of the existence of art and did not value it at all, how came they to imitate it? One imitates only that which one values. Imitation, as we know, is the sincerest form of flattery; and you cannot flatter that which you do not know to exist.

But Whistler's account of the primitive artist is also wrong, so far as we can check it. We may be sure that, if the other primitive men had seen no value in his pursuits, they would have killed him or let him starve. And the artist, as he exists at present among primitive peoples, is not a dreamer apart. The separation between the artist and other men is modern and a result of modern specialization. In many primitive societies most men practise some art in their leisure, and for that reason are interested in each other's art. In fact they notice the cups they drink out of much more than we do. If we did notice the cups we drink out of, we should not be able to endure them. In primitive societies there are not star pianists or singers or dancers; they all dance and make music. Homer himself was a popular entertainer; he would have been very much surprised to hear that he was a dreamer apart. In fact Whistler made up this pretty story about the primitive artist because he assumed that all artists must be like himself. He read himself back into the past and saw himself painting primitive nocturnes in a primitive Chelsea, happily undisturbed by primitive critics. He is wrong in his facts, and I believe he is wrong in his theory. There is a relation, and a necessary relation, between the artist and his public; but what is the nature of it? That is a difficult question for us to answer because the relation now between the artist and the public is, in fact, usually wrong; and Tolstoy in his What is Art? tried to put it right.

What is Art? is a most interesting book, full of incidental truth; but I believe that the main contention in it is false. I will give this contention as shortly as I can in his own words.

'Art', he says, 'is a human activity, consisting in this—that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.'

Now this is well enough as far as it goes, but it is not enough, and just because it is not enough it leads Tolstoy into error. Clearly, if art is nothing but the infection of the public with the feelings of the artist, it follows that a work of art is to be judged by the number of people who are infected. And Tolstoy with his usual sincerity accepts these conclusions; indeed, he wrote his book to insist upon them. He judges art entirely as a thing of use, moral use, and he says it can be of no use unless a large audience is infected by it. A work of art that few can enjoy fails as art, just as a railway from nowhere to nowhere fails as a railway. A railway exists to be travelled by and a work of art exists to be experienced by as many people as possible. Here are the actual words of Tolstoy:

'For a work to be esteemed good and to be approved of and diffused, it will have to satisfy the demands, not of a few people living in identical and often unnatural conditions, but it will have to satisfy the demands of all those great masses of people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious life.'

Now this sounds plausible; but consider the effect of it upon yourself. You listen to a symphony by Beethoven; and before you esteem it good, you must ask yourself, not whether it is good to you, but whether it will satisfy the demands of those great masses of people who are situated in the natural conditions of laborious life. Tolstoy does proceed to ask himself this question about Beethoven's Choral symphony and about King Lear, and condemns them both because, he says, a Russian peasant would not understand them. But if we all obeyed him and asked this question about all works of art, we should none of us ever experience any work of art at all; for, while we listened to a piece of music, we should be wondering whether other people understood it; that is to say we should not listen to it at all. And what is this Jury of people situated in the natural conditions of laborious life who are to decide not individually but as a Jury? Who can say whether he himself belongs to them? Who is to choose them? Tolstoy chose them as consisting of Russian peasants; he, like Whistler, believed in the primitive, but for him it was the primitive man, not the primitive artist, who was blessed. In his view there would be no Jury in all western Europe worthy of deciding upon a work of art, because we none of us are situated in the natural conditions of laborious life. So we must change all our way of life or despair of art altogether. Not one of the great ages of art would satisfy his conditions. Certainly not the Greeks of the age of Pericles, or the Chinese of the Sung dynasty, or the thirteenth century in France, or the Renaissance in Italy; and as a matter of fact he condemns most of the great art of the world, including his own.

We can escape from the tyranny of Tolstoy's doctrine, as from the tyranny of Whistler's, only by considering the facts of our own experience of art. The fact that we can enjoy and experience a work of art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and experience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art is for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his own amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art, in fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the primitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and always has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the public, but not the relation which Tolstoy affirms.