CHAPTER XXVII
THE INS AND THE OUTS
There are two types of human temperament and attitude which manifest themselves in the world’s art product: the Art of Beauty and the Art of Power.
The Art of Beauty is produced by ruling classes when they are established and safe, and wish to be entertained, and to have their homes and surroundings set apart from the common mass. I do not mean that simple and primitive people do not produce beauty of a naïve sort; but for such art to develop and mature, it must be taken up by the privileged classes, patronizing and encouraging the artist, and making his work a form of class distinction. The fact that the men who produce this art have come from the people is a fact of no significance; for the ruling classes take what they want where they find it, and shape it to their own class ends. The characteristics of the Art of Beauty, whether in painting, or sculpture, or music, or words, or actions, are those of rest and serenity, pleasure in things as they actually exist; also clarity of form—because the leisure-class artist has time to study technique, and knows what he wants to do.
In every human society there is one group which controls, and another which struggles for control; the “ins” versus the “outs,” the “haves” versus the “have-nots.” In every well-developed civilization this latter class will be strong enough to have its art, which is apt to be crude and instinctive, full of surging, half-expressed and half-realized emotion. Such art lays stress upon substance, rather than form; it aims, or at any rate tends, to arouse to action; and so we call it the Art of Power.
This is the art which is generally described as “propaganda” by established criticism; the distinction being, as we have previously explained, itself a piece of propaganda. The Art of Beauty is equally propaganda; it is the gas-barrage of the “haves,” and the essence of its deadliness lies in the fact that it looks so little like a weapon. But to me it seems clear enough that when a leisure-class artist portrays the graces and refinements of the civilization which maintains him, when he paints the noble features, and quotes the imaginary golden words of ruling-class ladies and gentlemen, he is doing the best he knows how to protect those who give him a living. Nor is he, as a rule, without some awareness of the harsh and rough and dangerous forces which surround him, besieging the ivory tower, or the temple, or the sacred grove, or wherever it is that he keeps his working tools. But even where the artist is instinctive and naïve, the class which employs him knows what he is doing; it knows what is “safe and sane,” and “of sound tendency”; it approves of such art, and pays its money to maintain such art.
Unless the society is stagnant, like China, its social life is marked by changes of power. The revolutionary classes succeed, and replace the old rulers; whereupon we note at once a change in their art. Those who were dissatisfied now find peace; those whose emotions overwhelmed them now find themselves able to order their thoughts; those who were interested in what they had to say now achieve triumphs of technique; in short, those who were producing an Art of Power now begin to produce an Art of Beauty. And so we are in position to understand what happened to Christian art, when the martyrs and the saints broke into “good society.”
The Roman Empire fell about five hundred years after Christ, and for another five hundred years the Italian peninsula was a battle-ground of invading barbarian hordes. When finally things settled down, the land was held by a great number of feudal princes and plundering groups, having their lairs in castles and walled cities. Christianity was the official religion, and abbots and bishops and popes were robber chiefs commanding armies. In between their military campaigns they took their pleasures like other princes; and among their pleasures were those of art.
The inner emotions which Christianity cultivated were free to those who sought them in monks’ cells and hermits’ caves, but they could not be purchased nor rented out, and they wilted in the atmosphere of palaces and courts. So gradually we find Italian religious art undergoing a change. The saints become gentlemen of refinement wearing scholars’ robes; Jesus becomes a heavenly prince, in spotless linen garments and a golden crown, casting benevolent looks upon the clergy; the Virgin Mary becomes the favorite mistress of a duke or abbot or pope—or perhaps the painter’s own mistress. This latter arrangement is common, for business reasons easy to understand. The lady is at hand, and has nothing to do while the painter is painting; he gets the service of a model free, he flatters his lady love’s vanity, and at the same time he keeps her safe from other painters. So the poison of luxury creeps into what is supposed to be religious art; and we see the symbols of martyrdom and holy sacrifice employed to glorify the vanities and cloak the vices of the predatory classes.
But the soul of man never dies; it goes on struggling for justice and brotherhood, in spite of all betrayal and persecution. So inside the church and outside comes a long line of heroic souls, fighting to restore the primitive simplicity and honesty of the faith. The struggle between the “ins” and the “outs,” the “haves” and the “have-nots,” takes the form of heresy and schism, of mendicant and preaching orders and Protestant sects. Young and obscure servants of God arise, denouncing the corruption of the church machine. Some retire to monasteries, spurning the wicked world; others take literally the words of Jesus, and go out upon the road without scrip or cloak, preaching to whoever will hear them, and living on charity. They are denounced and excommunicated, their followers are slaughtered by the tens and hundreds of thousands; but the movement persists, and when the leaders die they are canonized, and become in their turn themes for artists—to be “idealized,” and dressed in spotless raiment, and made fit for stained glass windows and the art galleries of prelates and princes. St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, putting on beggar’s clothing and being publicly disinherited by his father; Savonarola in the fifteenth century, persuading the rich to throw their jewels into the flames, and being publicly hanged in Florence; Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, preaching against the sale of indulgences and nailing his theses to the church door; George Fox in the eighteenth century, crying out against priestly corruption in the streets, and jailed time after time; Bishop Brown in the twentieth century, kicked out of the Episcopal church for repudiating dogma and defending Communism—such are the figures which have kept the Christian religion alive, and such are the themes of vital religious art.