These, then, are the "facts" to be explained. On the one hand, we have undeniably a reality of perception and photography which is not that of art but often extraordinarily akin to it; on the other hand, we have a visual art which divides itself into three groups, each of which qua art is of equal value: realistic, imaginative, and, thirdly, formal, decorative, or abstract art. What is desired is some synthetic conception which will make intelligible the similarities and differences and contradictions dwelling in these, at any rate, superficially different kinds of vision.
Behind the conception of thinkers like J. A. Symonds there always lay the photographic reality which was the common reality of everyone, and supplied all the materials for the artist's reality: the framework of forms and colours, of objects and persons. It was regarded from the æsthetic point of view as rather a nightmare, for it was so unemotional, so much the same all through, so unpliable. And the explanation of art was that it consisted of this same reality, but as seen through the temperament of the artist and, therefore, somehow, by some mysterious wizardy, coloured with emotion, electrified into all kinds of subjective illuminations, a fascinating mirage. Or instead of the word temperament one substituted the phrase creative imagination. This means substantially the same thing, but it leads us away a bit further from photographic reality, widening the gulf between the two. We cannot create the outer world, but we can create an inner world of imagination, and actually bring into our life something intimately new, shedding a light of its own that never was on sea or land. Drive this argument a little further and we arrive at Cubism and Futurism.
This is the philosophical view which dominates most art criticism of to-day, and probably quite rightly so. It is fairly safe, and it "corresponds to the facts" with tolerable accuracy. It is sufficiently eclectic not to offend either an ardent philosophical realism or an ardent idealism. And it does not fall into the error of condemning one kind of art and exalting another, although our æsthetic taste when unprejudiced by theory proclaims both kinds equally delightful. This, however, is no reason why we should not attempt to deepen the theory with a view to giving it a closer organic unity and explaining facts which it does not seem at present to take into account. Needless to say, we may get entangled and strike out on a wrong track. For thinking, like everything else, is experimental.
IV
1. The very first observation to be made is that ordinary vision is not photographic: it is shot through and through with emotional elements which are part and parcel of every concrete colour and form that is seen. The photographic reality is obtained by a process of thinning down, so that only the skeleton of similarities remains. It consists of a consciousness of general facts—this is a tree, it has leaves with clearly delineated edges, underneath it is a brown and white cow.
2. Nevertheless, even if the normal man in the street were to depict precisely the semi-emotional reality which he sees, it would not necessarily be a work of art. The Royal Academy is a convincing proof of this fact. But this is not because the normal man's vision is essentially different from that of the artist; the reason is just the opposite: his seeing is borrowed from the artist, it is second-hand property. Considered in connection with the co-ordinated arrangement of the ordinary man's life this borrowed vision is absolutely correct and in its place, just as is his borrowed knowledge of science, mathematics, history. But if he tries to isolate it and put it apart in a frame, claiming for it an original independent value, it immediately becomes false, pretentious, sentimental. It still, however, is not photographic: it is an emotion out of place. There is, of course, also in Academy pictures a great deal of photography, that is to say of general statement.
3. The artistic disvalue of such statements lies not in the fact that they are reproductive and "true to nature," but in the deliberate stripping of all emotional content. So far from giving a completer and truer account of reality, the photograph gives a thoroughly impoverished account.[20] It must not, however, be inferred that art should assist or take the place of, say, geological drawings, because these drawings are intentionally confined to similarities and general facts.
[20] The cinematograph drama might become genuine art, because one can look through the generality of the photograph into the human imaginative synthesis. It is on a par with a photograph of a picture or of a building.
4. The conception of the "creative imagination" is liable to lapse into a false kind of mysticism. Imagination is always about reality. Rembrandt possessed a marvellous imagination, yet for that very reason he has considerably increased and enhanced the human consciousness of reality. In the same way the interior of a beautiful church evokes and deepens our consciousness of religious emotion, and, therefore, of the profound significance of life. And it is not the life of some abstract mysticism, but of man in the travail of history. All art is imaginative, but it is equally real and objective, it adds to our consciousness of the world in which we live. We need not even object to the metaphor about holding the mirror up to nature, for we cannot see ourselves except in a mirror.
It might be possible, therefore, to overcome the apparent distinction between "painting from the model" and "out of one's head," and to show that they are both the same kind of activity. There is no doubt that imaginative work has its roots in ordinary perception; even the creator of pure designs is using lines and colours which are visible, and he gets his suggestions from the external world. And even though in the process of creating the artist seems to move away from external reality into his inner being, the created product is definitely about external reality. The Cenotaph in Whitehall is our mourning over the dead: Goya's etchings The Disasters of War are part of our concrete consciousness of war. Blake, too, where he is not lost in impossible symbolism, is always referring back to life.