For so the relative success and power today of the arts of expression seem to assure us. When we come to look into the subject, we find that modern life, which finds its expression freely in prose and in verse, and to a slight extent in music, finds some expression also in those arts which deal with expression. It is perhaps not a great artistic epoch that we are living in, although, if some one were to rise by and by, and maintain that it was, I would not be sure that he was wrong. It is certainly a kind of novel and in many ways admirable art in the way of expression. Great thoughts have found expression almost worthy of them in painting, in sculpture, in etching, in wood-engravings, in color and in black-and-white; in the single costly work of art and in the easily multiplied and cheap productions of the press. It is true that in these the thoughts are not always worthy of the expression they receive. This is partly because we have nearly lost the desire of talking about our religious beliefs in line and color and modelled form, and that no other subject of equal universal interest has taken the place of the ancient, simple and popular theology.
Patriotism, as shown in scenes of battle and pictures of deeds of gallantry and self-sacrifice; poetry, as seen in pictures which suggest sweet thoughts of young love and of home affections and of childish grace; the love of wild nature, as seen in our school of landscape art, now nearly fifty years old and flourishing—none of these nor all of them together have quite replaced the priestly theology of the Middle Ages as a subject for art, for none are quite so universal or appeal quite so readily to the untutored eye and mind. And so the uniform is better painted than the soldier very often, and the outside of nature than her inward spirit, and the flesh of the baby or the golden hair of the girl better than the baby nature or the girl nature in each instance. But this is to be stated merely as a drawback from praise which would otherwise be too unmeasured and too universal. The world contains a vast amount of good art of very recent date, and every year adds to the amount. The worst thing that can be said of the time is that it should be capable of producing so incalculably great an amount of bad art at the same time; that the walls of the Paris Salon should be so hung with inferior work every year that the important pictures are lost in chaos; and that, while this is true of the Salon, it is true to an immeasurably greater degree of the Royal Academy, of the New York Academy and every other exhibition in the world, except where a selected few paintings hang on reserved walls.
And as for sculpture, that is to say expressional sculpture, it is even more true in this case that the poor works terribly outnumber the good ones, though this is less noticed and makes less impression on the public. Our English-speaking communities do not even think of sculpture as a thing to look to for any refined enjoyment. How far the labors of a dozen living men, all Frenchmen but two or three, may have sufficed during the past score of years to change the public mind in this matter, I am not ready to say; but, surely, it has not been the general thought that sculpture is anything more than an expensive and perfunctory way of doing one’s duty to a great occasion or a great man. This, however, is temporary. The good sculpture exists and will be recognized. So much for expressional art.
But, as for the arts of decoration, once more, there is not so much to be said. As yet the way to subdue technicalities and enthrone design has not been discovered. The way to produce beautiful buildings is known to none. The way to produce good interior decoration, good furniture, good jewelry, beautiful stuffs, has only been seen by here and there one, and his lead no one will follow. The fact of his having done a fine thing, or of his doing fine things habitually, acts not as an attraction to others, but as a warning to them to keep off. Every artist strives to do, not as his neighbor has done, and better, but as his neighbor has not done. The potteries work no better, because of one pottery which turns out beautiful work. The wall-paper makers still copy, slavishly from Europe and Japan, fortunately if they do not spoil in copying, in spite of the occasional production of a wall-paper which an artist has succeeded in. The carpet-weavers caricature Oriental designs by taking out of them all movement and spirit, while their best customers buy the original rugs. If some rich man were to make a museum of modern decorative art, from which he would carefully exclude all that which was not in some way fresh and intelligent, and if not good, at least promising, a room like this one would hold all his trophies, even though he should use his millions to ransack Europe and America. It is nobody’s fault, least of all is it the architect’s fault. For see what you expect of an architect. He must know about digging deep holes; and about sheath-piling, that he may retain the loose soil and keep it from smothering the workmen at the bottom of his excavation; and he must know the best machines to use for drilling rock and the best method for removing it; he must know about all the stones in the country and the best way of making concrete; he must be familiar with the thousand new inventions, and discriminate carefully and rightly between this range and that, and between this form of trap and the other, between a dozen different steam-heaters and twenty systems of ventilation; he must be prepared to give his owners exactly what they want in the way of windows and chimney-corners, of cupboards, shelves in available corners, and recesses to put away step-ladders and brooms. But observe that if he fails in any one of these things, he will fail in that which his owner really cares about; still more, if he fails in the economical administration of the funds allowed for the building, will he fail in that which the owner most cares about. Less beauty, less success in producing a novel, an original, a thoughtful, a purposeful design will hurt him but little, but insufficient care as to the circulation of hot-water will ruin him.
Now, no man can do all that, and still produce delicate and thoughtful designs. No man can be busy laying out work, superintending work, explaining to contractors and reasoning with employers, and still be producing delicate and thoughtful designs. An extraordinary fellow here and there may surprise us by what he does under such circumstances, but it will be but little and feeble in comparison with what he might do. The community must see its way to paying some to eschew plumbing and stick to design, if they mean to have any design. This has been done, indeed, in the matter of monumental-glass, and to a certain extent in wall-decoration by means of painting; but it must be done in what is more vital yet—in architectural sculpture of all sorts and all grades; of vegetable, animal and human subjects; in low relief, in high relief and in the round; in detached work and associated groups—or no architecture for us. I say, then, that as things are constituted, the architects are not particularly to blame for not having achieved much in the way of decorative art, either on the exteriors of their great buildings or in the beauty of their interiors. Not much to blame; but yet they are so far to blame as that no one else is to do this work if they do not. The architects and the artists who are associated with them in the work of supplying us with what we call decorative arts of all sorts, form the only class of the community to whom the rest of the community can look to for advancement in this direction. It is probable, then, that what such an associate has to do is two-fold; or rather it has two things to do: One is to study the beautiful art of the past, and to study it patiently and lovingly, feeling confident of this that the interests of the pursuit grow more absorbing every day; and the other is to watch the arts of the present, and to keep an open and perspective mind with regard to them, feeling sure of this that they will grow more complex and interesting every day, and that now and again some chance of something good will appear, here and there, giving us great opportunities to help, if we are clever enough to perceive them.
The study of the arts of the past is more entrancing every day because we are so much better informed, because we are daily better informed about them. Archæology, having gone through a long apprenticeship, is doing wonders today; and, although ancient buildings are suffering from the accursed restorer, they are also more thoroughly known, more rightly judged, more sympathetically analyzed than ever before; while monuments other than buildings, those, that is, that are not open to the attacks of the restorer, are preserved in practical safety, and they also are minutely and honestly studied in a way of which our ancestors knew nothing. There is, therefore, more pleasure to be got out of the study of ancient art today than ever before, and that condition of things is a permanent one. Our children will have even better opportunities than we.
And, as for the arts of the present, the arts that are being produced around us, they are to be looked at as calmly and temperately; with, on the other hand, as little as possible of that provincial which makes cathedrals out of carpenters’ Gothic churches, and, on the other hand, without carping, but with good-natured patience, with a feeling that if things are not very good, they can hardly be expected to be better; that we, in this country at least, are only half-civilized in the ways of cultivation, and we do uncommonly well for such babes as we are in literature and art. With patience then, and with impatience about nothing but this, that we deny ourselves the study of the great works of art of Europe and Asia by thirty per cent and forty per cent and sixty per cent duty, and deny to the author all proper remuneration for his work by the lack of common honesty. No other nation of European blood does these things. It is not a matter of politics. No protectionists so ardent in the Bismarck ranks as to propose to levy a tax on literature and science. No selfish grabber so small, even among peoples whom we consider less honest than we, who approves of stealing an author’s books under color of the law. While we send to Washington Congressmen who keep such laws on the statute-books, our community is not “barbarous” so much as savage; for such acts are the acts of savages; that is, of men who have no reasonable motive for their acts, but act impulsively, like grown-up children.
And now, after this evening, let us return from theory and general principles, to practice and details, and see whether we can find out how it is that Indians combine color, how Japanese use natural form decoratively, how Chinamen make porcelain lovely and noble; how Greeks of old time have sculptured and Frenchmen have created Gothic architecture, and Italians have raised painting to the highest heaven of achievement. There is happiness, if study can give it. And for those to whom scholarship is less attractive than action and production, there is sculpture in small and large, in stone, marble, terra-cotta, wax, clay, plaster, bronze, iron, lead, gold and silver; there is inlay of all material and styles, from square tiles to minute glass tesseræ; there is painting with all known vehicles and of all sorts; the whole to be devoted to the beautifying of buildings in which we have to live and work and rest. There is a plenty to do for those who know how to begin.
To Protect Plate-glass in Building.—Passing along Dearborn Street, recently, I saw a crowd watching closely the placing in position of some enormous panes of glass in a handsome new building. The glass was the best French plate, and the workmen handled it as carefully as if it were worth something more than a week’s wages. The task of putting it in place was no sooner completed than one of the workmen grabbed a pot of whiting and with a big brush daubed a lot of meaningless marks on it. I thought it about as silly a thing as a man could do, and with the usual reportorial curiosity asked the foreman why he allowed it. The answer was a crusher. “Why,” said he, “we have to mark them in that way or they’d be smashed in no time.” My look of amazement doubtless prompted him to further explanation, for he said: “You see, the workmen around a new building get in the custom of shoving lumber, etc., through the open sash before the glass is put in. They would continue to do it even after the glass is in if we didn’t do something to attract their attention. That’s the reason you always see new windows daubed with glaring white marks. Even if a careless workman does start to shove a stick of timber through a costly plate of glass he will stop short when his eye catches the danger sign. That white mark is just a signal which says, ‘Look out; you’ll break me if you are not careful.’”—Chicago Journal.