Under the head of “System of the Particular Arts,” Hegel sets forth, in this third part, the theory of each of the arts—Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and Poetry.
Before proceeding to the division of the arts, he glances at the different styles which distinguish the different epochs of their development. He reduces them to three styles: the simple or severe, the ideal or beautiful, and the graceful.
1. At first the simple and natural style presents itself to us, but it is not the truly natural or true simplicity. That supposes a previous perfection. Primitive simplicity is gross, confused, rigid, inanimate. Art in its infancy is heavy and trifling, destitute of life and liberty, without expression, or with an exaggerated vivacity. Still harsh and rude in its commencements, it becomes by degrees master of form, and learns to unite it intimately with content. It arrives thus at a severe beauty. This style is the Beautiful in its lofty simplicity. It is restricted to reproducing a subject with its essential traits. Disdaining grace and ornament, it contents itself with the general and grand expression which springs from the subject, without the artist’s exhibiting himself and revealing his personality in it.
2. Next in order comes the beautiful style, the ideal and pure style, which holds the mean between simple expression and a marked tendency to the graceful. Its character is vitality, combined with a calm and beautiful grandeur. Grace is not wanting, but there is rather a natural carelessness, a simple complacency, than the desire to please—a beauty indifferent to the exterior charms which blossom of themselves upon the surface. Such is the ideal of the beautiful style—the style of Phidias and Homer. It is the culminating point of art.
3. But this movement is short. The ideal style passes quickly to the graceful, to the agreeable. Here appears an aim different from that of the realization of the beautiful, which pure art ought to propose to itself, to wit: the intention of pleasing, of producing an impression on the soul. Hence arise works of a style elaborate with art, and a certain seeking for external embellishments. The subject is no more the principal thing. The attention of the artist is distracted by ornaments and accessories—by the decorations, the trimmings, the simpering airs, the attitudes and graceful postures, or the vivid colors and the attractive forms, the luxury of ornaments and draperies, the learned making of verse. But the general effect remains without grandeur and without nobleness. Beautiful proportions and grand masses give place to moderate dimensions, or are masked with ornaments. The graceful style begets the style for effect, which is an exaggeration of it. The art then becomes altogether conspicuous; it calls the attention of the spectator by everything that can strike the senses. The artist surrenders to it his personal ends and his design. In this species of tête-à-tête with the public, there is betrayed through all, the desire of exhibiting his wit, of attracting admiration for his ability, his skill, his power of execution. This art—without naturalness, full of coquetry, of artifice and affectation, the opposite of the severe style which yields nothing to the public—is the style of the epochs of decadence. Frequently it has recourse to a last artifice, to the affectation of profundity and of simplicity, which is then only obscurity, a mysterious profundity which conceals an absence of ideas and a real impotence. This air of mystery, which parades itself, is in its turn, hardly better than coquetry; the principle is the same—the desire of producing an effect.
The author then passes to the Division of the Arts. The common method classes them according to their means of representation, and the senses to which they are addressed. Two senses only are affected by the perception of the beautiful: sight, which perceives forms and colors, and hearing, which perceives sounds. Hence the division into arts of design and musical art. Poetry, which employs speech, and addresses itself to the imagination, forms a domain apart. Without discarding this division, Hegel combines it with another more philosophical principle of classification, and one which is taken no longer from the external means of art, but from their internal relation to the very content of the ideas which it is to represent.
Art has for object the representation of the ideal. The arts ought then to be classed according to the measure in which they are more or less capable of expressing it. This gradation will have at the same time the advantage of corresponding to historic progress, and to the fundamental forms of art previously studied.
According to this principle, the arts marshal themselves, and succeed one another, to form a regular and complete system, thus:
1. First Architecture presents itself. This art, in fact, is incapable of representing an idea otherwise than in a vague, indeterminate manner. It fashions the masses of inorganic nature, according to the laws of matter and geometrical proportions; it disposes them with regularity and symmetry in such a manner as to offer to the eyes an image which is a simple reflex of the spirit, a dumb symbol of the thought. Architecture is at the same time appropriated to ends which are foreign to it: it is destined to furnish a dwelling for man and a temple for Divinity; it must shelter under its roof, in its enclosure, the other arts, and, in particular, sculpture and painting.
For these reasons architecture should, historically and logically, be placed first in the series of the arts.