Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Fenton, Edward" to "Finistere" / Volume 10, Slice 3

by Various

The nature of this impulse, and the several grounds of these pleasures, are subjects which have given rise to a formidable body of speculation and discussion, the chief phases of which will be found summarized under the heading [Aesthetics]. In the present article we have only to attend to the concrete processes and results of the artistic activities of man; in other words, we shall submit (1) a definition of fine art in general, (2) a definition and classification of the principal fine arts severally, (3) some observations on their historical development.

I. Of Fine Art in General.

According to the popular and established distinction between art and nature, the idea of Art (q.v.) only includes phenomena of which man is deliberately the cause; while the idea of Nature includes all phenomena, both in man Premeditation essential to art. and in the world outside him, which take place without forethought or studied initiative of his own. Art, accordingly, means every regulated operation or dexterity whereby we pursue ends which we know beforehand; and it means nothing but such operations and dexterities. What is true of art generally is of course also true of the special group of the fine arts. One of the essential qualities of all art is premeditation; and when Shelley talks of the skylark’s profuse strains of “unpremeditated art,” he in effect lays emphasis on the fact that it is only by a metaphor that he uses the word art in this case at all; he calls attention to that which (if the songs of birds are as instinctive as we suppose) precisely makes the difference between the skylark’s outpourings and his own. We are slow to allow the title of fine art to natural eloquence, to charm or dignity of manner, to delicacy and tact in social intercourse, and other such graces of life and conduct, since, although in any given case they may have been deliberately cultivated in early life, or even through ancestral generations, they do not produce their full effect until they are so ingrained as to have become unreflecting and spontaneous. When the exigencies of a philosophic scheme lead some writers on aesthetics to include such acts or traits of beautiful and expressive behaviour among the deliberate artistic activities of mankind, we feel that an essential distinction is being sacrificed to the exigencies of a system. That distinction common parlance very justly observes, with its opposition of “art” to “nature” and its phrase of “second nature” for those graces which have become so habitual as to seem instinctive, whether originally the result of discipline or not. When we see a person in all whose ordinary movements there are freedom and beauty, we put down the charm of these with good reason to inherited and inbred aptitudes of which the person has never thought or long since ceased to think, and could not still be thinking without spoiling the charm by self-consciousness; and we call the result a gift of nature. But when we go on to notice that the same person is beautifully and appropriately dressed, since we know that it is impossible to dress without thinking of it, we put down the charm of this to judicious forethought and calculation and call the result a work of art.

The processes then of fine art, like those of all arts properly so called, are premeditated, and the property of every fine art is to give to the person exercising it a special kind of active pleasure, and a special kind of passive or The active and the passive pleasures of fine art. receptive pleasure to the person witnessing the results of such exercise. This latter statement seems to imply that there exist in human societies a separate class producing works of fine art and another class enjoying them. Such an implication, in regard to advanced societies, is near enough the truth to be theoretically admitted (like the analogous assumption in political economy that there exist separate classes of producers and consumers). In developed communities the gifts and calling of the artist constitute in fact a separate profession of the creators or purveyors of fine art, while the rest of the community are its enjoyers or recipients. In the most primitive societies, apparently, this cannot have been so, and we can go back to an original or rudimentary stage of almost every fine art at which the separation between a class of producers or performers and a class of recipients hardly exists. Such an original or rudimentary stage of the dramatic art is presented by children, who will occupy themselves for ever with mimicry and make-believe for their own satisfaction, with small regard or none to the presence or absence of witnesses. The original or rudimentary type of the profession of imitative sculptors or painters is the cave-dweller of prehistoric ages, who, when he rested from his day’s hunting, first took up the bone handle of his weapon, and with a flint either carved it into the shape, or on its surface scratched the outlines, of the animals of the chase. The original or rudimentary type of the architect, considered not as a mere builder but as an artist, is the savage who, when his tribe had taken to live in tents or huts instead of caves, first arranged the skins and timbers of his tent or hut in one way because it pleased his eye, rather than in some other way which was as good for shelter. The original type of the artificer or adorner of implements, considered in the same light, was the other savage who first took it into his head to fashion his club or spear in one way rather than another for the pleasure of the eye only and not for any practical reason, and to ornament it with tufts or markings. In none of these cases, it would seem, can the primitive artist have had much reason for pleasing anybody but himself. Again, the original or rudimentary type of lyric song and dancing arose when the first reveller clapped hands and stamped or shouted in time, in honour of his god, in commemoration of a victory, or in mere obedience to the blind stirring of a rhythmic impulse within him. To some very remote and solitary ancestral savage the presence or absence of witnesses at such a display may in like manner have been indifferent; but very early in the history of the race the primitive dancer and singer joined hands and voices with others of his tribe, while others again sat apart and looked on at the performance, and the rite thus became both choral and social. A primitive type of the instrumental musician is the shepherd who first notched a reed and drew sounds from it while his sheep were cropping. The father of all artists in dress and personal adornment was the first wild man who tattooed himself or bedecked himself with shells and plumes. In both of these latter instances, it may be taken as certain, the primitive artist had the motive of pleasing not himself only, but his mate, or the female whom he desired to be his mate, and in the last instance of all the further motive of impressing his fellow-tribesmen and striking awe or envy into his enemies. The tendency of recent speculation and research concerning the origins of art has been to ascribe the primitive artistic activities of man less and less to individual and solitary impulse, and more and more to social impulse and the desire of sharing and communicating pleasure. (The writer who has gone furthest in developing this view, and on grounds of the most careful study of evidence, has been Dr Yrjö Hirn of Helsingfors.) Whatever relative parts the individual and the social impulses may have in fact played at the outset, it is clear that what any one can enjoy or admire by himself, whether in the way of mimicry, of rhythmical movements or utterances, of imitative or ornamental carving and drawing, of the disposition and adornment of dwelling-places and utensils—the same things, it is clear, others are able also to enjoy or admire with him. And so, with the growth of societies, it came about that one class of persons separated themselves and became the ministers or producers of this kind of pleasures, while the rest became the persons ministered to, the participators in or recipients of the pleasures. Artists are those members of a society who are so constituted as to feel more acutely than the rest certain classes of pleasures which all can feel in their degree. By this fact of their constitution they are impelled to devote their active powers to the production of such pleasures, to the making or doing of some of those things which they enjoy so keenly when they are made and done by others. At the same time the artist does not, by assuming these ministering or creative functions, surrender his enjoying or receptive functions. He continues to participate in the pleasures of which he is himself the cause, and remains a conscious member of his own public. The architect, sculptor, painter, are able respectively to stand off from and appreciate the results of their own labours; the singer enjoys the sound of his own voice, and the musician of his own instrument; the poet, according to his temperament, furnishes the most enthusiastic or the most fastidious reader for his own stanzas. Neither, on the other hand, does the person who is a habitual recipient from others of the pleasures of fine art forfeit the privilege of producing them according to his capabilities, and of becoming, if he has the power, an amateur or occasional artist.

Most of the common properties which have been recognized by consent as peculiar to the group of fine arts will be found on examination to be implied in, or deducible from, the one fundamental character generally claimed for Pleasures of fine art disinterested. them, namely, that they exist independently of direct practical necessity or utility. Let us take, first, a point relating to the frame of mind of the recipient, as distinguished from the producer, of the pleasures of fine art. It is an observation as old as Aristotle that such pleasures differ from most other pleasures of experience in that they are disinterested, in the sense that they are not such as nourish a man’s body nor add to his riches; they are not such as can gratify him, when he receives them, by the sense of advantage or superiority over his fellow-creatures; they are not such as one human being can in any sense receive exclusively from the object which bestows them. Thus it is evidently characteristic of a beautiful building that its beauty cannot be monopolized, but can be seen and admired by the inhabitants of a whole city and by all visitors for all generations. The same thing is true of a picture or a statue, except in so far as an individual possessor may choose to keep such a possession to himself, in which case his pride in exclusive ownership is a sentiment wholly independent of his pleasure in artistic contemplation. Similarly, music is composed to be sung or played for the enjoyment of many at a time, and for such enjoyment a hundred years hence as much as to-day. Poetry is written to be read by all readers for ever who care for the ideas and feelings of the poet, and can apprehend the meaning and melody of his language. Hence, though we can speak of a class of the producers of fine art, we cannot speak of a class of its consumers, only of its recipients or enjoyers. If we consider other pleasures which might seem to be analogous to those of fine art, but to which common consent yet declines to allow that character, we shall see that one reason is that such pleasures are not in their nature thus disinterested. Thus the sense of smell and taste have pleasures of their own like the senses of sight and hearing, and pleasures neither less poignant nor very much less capable of fine graduation and discrimination than those. Why, then, is the title of fine art not claimed for any skill in arranging and combining them? Why are there no recognized arts of savours and scents corresponding in rank to the arts of forms, colours and sounds—or at least none among Western nations, for in Japan, it seems, there is a recognized and finely regulated social art of the combination and succession of perfumes? An answer commonly given is that sight and hearing are intellectual and therefore higher senses, that through them we have our avenues to all knowledge and all ideas of things outside us; while taste and smell are unintellectual and therefore lower senses, through which few such impressions find their way to us as help to build up our knowledge and our ideas. Perhaps a more satisfactory reason why there are no fine arts of taste and smell—or let us in deference to Japanese modes leave out smell, and say of taste only—is this, that savours yield only private pleasures, which it is not possible to build up into separate and durable schemes such that every one may have the benefit of them, and such as cannot be monopolized or used up. If against this it is contended that what the programme of a performance is in the musical art, the same is a menu in the culinary, and that practically it is no less possible to serve up a thousand times and to a thousand different companies the same dinner than the same symphony, we must fall back upon that still more fundamental form of the distinction between the aesthetic and non-aesthetic bodily senses, upon which the physiological psychologists of the English school lay stress. We must say that the pleasures of taste cannot be pleasures of fine art, because their enjoyment is too closely associated with the most indispensable and the most strictly personal of utilities, eating and drinking. To pass from these lower pleasures to the highest; consider the nature of the delight derived from the contemplation, by the person who is their object, of the signs and manifestations of love. That at least is a beautiful experience; why is the pleasure which it affords not an artistic pleasure either? Why, in order to receive an artistic pleasure from human signs and manifestations of this kind, are we compelled to go to the theatre and see them exhibited in favour of a third person who is not really their object any more than ourselves? This is so, for one reason, evidently, because of the difference between art and nature. Not to art, but to nature and life, belongs love where it is really felt, with its attendant train of vivid hopes, fears, passions and contingencies. To art belongs love displayed where it is not really felt; and in this sphere, along with reality and spontaneousness of the display, and along with its momentous bearings, there disappear all those elements of pleasure in its contemplation which are not disinterested—the elements of personal exultation and self-congratulation, the pride of exclusive possession or acceptance, all these emotions, in short, which are summed up in the lover’s triumphant monosyllable, “Mine.” Thus, from the lowest point of the scale to the highest, we may observe that the element of personal advantage or monopoly in human gratifications seems to exclude, them from the kingdom of fine art. The pleasures of fine art, so far as concerns their passive or receptive part, seem to define themselves as pleasures of gratified contemplation, but of such contemplation only when it is disinterested—which is simply another way of saying, when it is unconcerned with ideas of utility.

Modern speculation has tended in some degree to modify and obscure this old and established view of the pleasures of fine art by urging that the hearer or spectator is not after all so free from self-interest as he seems; that in the An objection and its answer. act of artistic contemplation he experiences an enhancement or expansion of his being which is in truth a gain of the egoistic kind; that in witnessing a play, for instance, a large part of his enjoyment consists in sympathetically identifying himself with the successful lover or the virtuous hero. All this may be true, but does not really affect the argument, since at the same time he is well aware that every other spectator or auditor present may be similarly engaged with himself. At most the objection only requires us to define a little more closely, and to say that the satisfactions of the ego excluded from among the pleasures of fine art are not these ideal, sympathetic, indirect satisfactions, which every one can share together, but only those which arise from direct, private and incommunicable advantage to the individual.

Next, let us consider another generally accepted observation concerning the nature of the fine arts, and one, this time, relating to the disposition and state of mind of the practising artist himself. While for success in other arts it is only Fine arts cannot be practised by rule and precept. necessary to learn their rules and to apply them until practice gives facility, in the fine arts, it is commonly and justly said, rules and their application will carry but a little way towards success. All that can depend on rules, on knowledge, and on the application of knowledge by practice, the artist must indeed acquire, and the acquisition is often very complicated and laborious. But outside of and beyond such acquisitions he must trust to what is called genius or imagination, that is, to the spontaneous working together of an incalculably complex group of faculties, reminiscences, preferences, emotions, instincts in his constitution. This characteristic of the activities of the artist is a direct consequence or corollary of the fundamental fact that the art he practices is independent of utility. A utilitarian end is necessarily a determinate and prescribed end, and to every end which is determinate and prescribed there must be one road which is the best. Skill in any useful art means knowing practically, by rules and the application of rules, the best road to the particular ends of that art. Thus the farmer, the engineer, the carpenter, the builder so far as he is not concerned with the look of his buildings, the weaver so far as he is not concerned with the designing of the patterns which he weaves, possesses each his peculiar skill, but a skill to which fixed problems are set, and which, if it indulges in new inventions and combinations at all, can indulge them only for the sake of an improved solution of those particular problems. The solution once found, the invention once made, its rules can be written down, or at any rate its practice can be imparted to others who will apply it in their turn. Whereas no man can write down, in a way that others can act upon, how Beethoven conquered unknown kingdoms in the world of harmony, or how Rembrandt turned the aspects of gloom, squalor and affliction into pictures as worthy of contemplation as those into which the Italians before him had turned the aspects of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day. The reason why the operations of the artist thus differ from the operations of the ordinary craftsman or artificer is that his ends, being ends other than useful, are not determinate nor fixed as theirs are. He has large liberty to choose his own problems, and may solve each of them in a thousand different ways according to the prompting of his own ordering or creating instincts. The musical composer has the largest liberty of all. Having learned what is learnable in his art, having mastered the complicated and laborious rules of musical form, having next determined the particular class of the work which he is about to compose, he has then before him the whole inexhaustible world of appropriate successions and combinations of emotional sound. He is merely directed and not fettered, in the case of song, cantata, oratorio or opera, by the sense of the words which he has to set. The value of the result depends absolutely on his possessing or failing to possess powers which can neither be trained in nor communicated to any man. And this double freedom, alike from practical service and from the representation of definite objects, is what makes music in a certain sense the typical fine art, or art of arts. Architecture shares one-half of this freedom. It has not to copy or represent natural objects; for this service it calls in sculpture to its aid; but architecture is without the other half of freedom altogether. The architect has a sphere of liberty in the disposition of his masses, lines, colours, alternations of light and shadow, of plain and ornamented surface, and the rest; but upon this sphere he can only enter on condition that he at the same time fulfils the strict practical task of supplying the required accommodation, and obeys the strict mechanical necessities imposed by the laws of weight, thrust, support, resistance and other properties of solid matter. The sculptor again, the painter, the poet, has each in like manner his sphere of necessary facts, rules and conditions corresponding to the nature of his task. The sculptor must be intimately versed both in the surface aspects and the inner mechanism of the human frame alike in rest and motion, and in the rules and conditions for its representation in solid form; the painter in a much more extended range of natural facts and appearances, and the rules and conditions for representing them on a plane surface; the poet’s art of words has its own not inconsiderable basis of positive and disciplined acquisition. So far as rules, precepts, formulas and other communicable laws or secrets can carry the artist, so far also the spectator can account for, analyse, and, so to speak, tabulate the effects of his art. But the essential character of the artist’s operation, its very bloom and virtue, lies in those parts of it which fall outside this range of regulation on the one hand and analysis on the other. His merit varies according to the felicity with which he is able, in that region, to exercise his free choice and frame his individual ideal, and according to the tenacity with which he strives to grasp and realize his choice, or to attain perfection according to that ideal.

In this connexion the question naturally arises, In what way do the progress and expansion of mechanical art affect the power and province of fine art? The great practical movement of the world in our age is a movement for the development of Fine arts and machinery: “art manufactures.” mechanical inventions and multiplication of mechanical products. So far as these inventions are applied to purposes purely useful, and so far as their products to not profess to offer anything delightful to contemplation, this movement in no way concerns our argument. But there is a vast multitude of products which do profess qualities of pleasantness, and upon which the ornaments intended to make them pleasurable are bestowed by machinery; and in speaking of these we are accustomed to the phrases art-industry, industrial art, art manufactures and the like. In these cases the industry or ingenuity which directs the machine is not fine art at all, since the object of the machine is simply to multiply as easily and as perfectly as possible a definite and prescribed impress or pattern. This is equally true whether the machine is a simple one, like the engraver’s press, for producing and multiplying impressions from an engraved plate, or a highly complex one, like the loom, in which elaborate patterns of carpet or curtain are set for weaving. In both cases there exists behind the mechanical industry an industry which is one of fine art in its degree. In the case of the engraver’s press, there exists behind the industry of the printer the art of the engraver, which, if the engraver is also the free inventor of the design, is then a fine art, or, if he is but the interpreter of the invention of another, is then in its turn a semi-mechanical skill applied in aid of the fine art of the first inventor. In the case of the weaver’s loom there is, behind the mechanical industry which directs the loom at its given task, the fine art, or what ought to be the fine art, of the designer who has contrived the pattern. In the case of the engraving, the mechanical industry of printing only exists for the sake of bringing out and disseminating abroad the fine art employed upon the design. In the case of the carpet or curtain, the fine art is often only called in to make the product of the useful or mechanical industry of the loom acceptable, since the eye of man is so constituted as to receive pleasure or the reverse of pleasure from whatever it rests upon, and it is to the interest of the manufacturer to have his product so made as to give pleasure if it can. Whether the machine is thus a humble servant to the artist, or the artist a kind of humble purveyor to the machine, the fine art in the result is due to the former alone; and in any case it reaches the recipient at second-hand, having been put in circulation by a medium not artistic but mechanical.

Again, with reference not to the application of mechanical contrivances but to their invention; is not, it may be inquired, the title of artist due to the inventor of some of the astonishingly complex and astonishingly efficient Perfected machines: are they works of fine art? machines of modern-times? Does he not spend as much thought, labour, genius as any sculptor or musician in perfecting his construction according to his ideal, and is not the construction when it is done—so finished, so responsive in all its parts, so almost human—is not that worthy to be called a work of fine art? The answer is that the inventor has a definite and practical end before him; his ideal is not free; he deserves all credit as the perfector of a particular instrument for a prescribed function, but an artist, a free follower of the fine arts, he is not; although we may perhaps have to concede him a narrow sphere for the play of something like an artistic sense when he contrives the proportion, arrangement, form or finish of the several parts of his machine in one way rather than another, not because they work better so but simply because their look pleases him better.

Returning from this digression, let us consider one common observation more on the nature of the fine arts. They are activities, it is said, which were put forth not because they need but because they like. They have the Fine arts called a kind of play. activity to spare, and to put it forth in this way pleases them. Fine art is to mankind what play is to the individual, a free and arbitrary vent for energy which is not needed to be spent upon tasks concerned with the conservation, perpetuation or protection of life. To insist on the superfluous or optional character of the fine arts, to call them the play or pastime of the human race as distinguished from its inevitable and sterner tasks, is obviously only to reiterate our fundamental distinction between the fine arts and the useful or necessary. But the distinction, as expressed in this particular form, has been interpreted in a great variety of ways and followed out to an infinity of conclusions, conclusions regarding both the nature of the activities themselves and the character and value of their results.