Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

But the silliest definition of art, as an activity or process, is that by Benedetto Croce, the Italian writer.

Croce is a comparatively new, but already a much discussed, sesthetician, one of those metaphysico-philosophers who have thought it wise to tackle the problem of art as “a thing in itself,” and who begin with a definition which is either imtenable, or so mystical as to be incomprehensible, even to other metaphysicians, and then waste their dialectical talents on trying to prove the soundness of their definitions — since they know the very fundamental importance of a soimd definition, if we wish at all to discuss art or anything else — and who end in boring stiff the man in the street, who, above all, should be interested in art, and who may be seriously in search of a clear, invulnerable definition of everything discussed.

[...]

This is sheer nonsense, which he himself establishes by the fact that he at once runs to definitions himself, and then gives this bizarre definition :

Art is intuition."

-- Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great (1925) by Frederick Ruckstull

"To us this stuff is mere esoteric verbal junk, and it is against such transcendental verbal “jazz” that Veron so vigorously protests in the very opening paragraph of his clear, limpid book, “Esthetics” (1873), in which one can understand every line from cover to cover, whether we agree witn him always or not, because nowhere is there any obscurity."-- Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great (1925) by Frederick Ruckstull

{{Template}} Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great (1925) are a collections of previously published essays by Frederick Ruckstull. It is the text of a moral crusader, calling many modern artists sadists (158 times) and degenerates (168 times).

[edit]

Full text[1]

GREAT

WORKS OF ART

And What Makes Them Great

By F. W. RUCKSTULL

MEMBER NATIONAL INSTITUTE ARTS AND LETTERS; ORGANIZER or NATIONAL SCULPTURE SOCIETY; FIRST CHLEF OF SCULPTURE ST. LOUIS WORLD’S FAIR

12239

“/ count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with difficulty and labor”

Emerson

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. Garden City New York

Call No

M-

F. W. Ruckstun

Made in the United States of America

■X’

■f.,

s'*'

ALL THOSE ARTISTS AND LAYMEN

OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT WHO HAVE DONE THEIR BEST TO HOLD HIGH THE CREATIVE IDEAL OF

THE TRUE, THE GOOD, AND THE BEAUTIFUL

This Volume Is Dedicated

■o

Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and who- ever strives for it, strives for something that is Godlike. True painting is only an image of God’s perfection, — a shadow of the pencil with which He paints, a melody, a striving after harmony. Michael Angelo.

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grand- child. Dante.

For his chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught lyre

None but the noblest passions to inspire.

Not one immortal one corrupted thought.

One line, which dying he could wish to blot.

Bulwer-Lytton.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of great ideas. Ruskin.

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

Michael Angelo.

Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below.

Which always find us young And always keep us so.

Emerson.

Drawing by R. Allston Brown. The Cover DEbiox.

Or Tuc “Art World”

Its color was changed nearly every month. The Bu^t of •’Jupiter Utrieoli, and the other classic accessories, were used lo suggest a return, by artists, towards some form of classic beauty and perfection.

THE

ART WORLD

A Monthly for the Public

Devoted to

THE HIGHER IDEALS

February 1918

COMBINING

THE CRAFTSMAN

a , ; -d

NEW YORK N. Y.

Plbi.ished vt Xii. 2 West 45th St

Title Page of “The Art World” Magazine.

Printed in red and black.

PREFACE

Anarchy reigns in the world of art today.

The cause is: “Modernism.”

Plato and Aristotle already named The True, the Good, and the Beautiful, as the fundamental basis of all great art. It was so regarded throughout history, since the creations of Homer and Phidias down to i860, a stretch of nearly three thousand years, a period marvellous to contemplate, as we ascend the stream of art and analyze its evolution. And yet, today, the world of art is in a state of chaos astonishing to behold. To satisfy himself of this fact, let the Reader care- ftdly examine, and reflect over, some works of art illustrated in Figures l to 8, the result of the inflicting upon the world of one foolish fad after another. He will observe a gradual drift- ing away from the normal to the abnormal. (See Appendix.) And, strange to say, every inventor of one of the weird fads which these things represent, has been backed up, as Tolstoy said, by some casuistic "new theory” of art, of some preten- tious critic, to justify its production and its infliction on the public, to the bewilderment and weakening of the present and succeeding generations.

Among the other proofs of the chaos existing in the world of art, let the Reader carefully reflect over the meaning of the following extract, from the October, 1924, issue of a New York magazine, aiming to be popular among the “Smart Set,” entitled :

The Cult of the Second-Rate

One cannot move much among the critics, writers, and intellec- tuals of New York without being struck by the prevalence among them of an extremely up-to-the-minute pose, or attitude. This

PREFACE

pose, which exists in an even greater degree in Europe, consists in a quite formidable worship of the second-rate. The underlying and unifying motif of this cult is, an actual or alleged distaste for the noble and the great: for the acknowledged masterpieces of hterature, drama, art, acting, or, even, in furniture, and deco- ration, and a resultant enthusiasm for such things, that fall short of any true greatness — that is, an enthusiasm for the obviously inferior.

This is an astonishing article to appear in a public magazine.

For, since the birth of man, all his progress has resulted only from his “Cult of the First-Rate.” Hence, this “Cult of the Second-Rate” is a lunatic step, back towards savagery. When may we hope to hear of the “Cult of the Third-Rate,” etc., if the corrupt part of the press is not challenged and checked in its nefarious propaganda of this moral and artistic retrogression, and for lucre only?

Ever since the Greeks, in that marvellous Periclean age, suddenly switched from the primitive archaic to the search for truth and perfection, and started “The Cult of the First- Rate,” perfection became the universal art ideal, vmtil Michael Angelo, the greatest all-round artist that ever lived, said:

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle!

And, however the styles and manners of expression in art changed, the ideal of perfection, and of the First-Rate, was always followed by the artists, as well as by laymen, in all the walks of life, especially those who are, today, loved and honored by the race.

Actually, “The Cult of the Second-Rate” is as old as Nero, and his parasitical coryphees, who helped to ruin Rome. The same cult was strong during the French “Regence.” Like prostitution, it is ever with us. But, to dignify this rotten cult, by a semi-serious analysis, with a sympathetic leaning towards an approval of it, and to succeed in putting it over on the public, through the press, is proof enough that degeneracy is rampant among us, at least among our self-styled “intelli- gentsia,” whose “worship of the second-rate” has made enough progress to call for the ministrations of psycho-analytic physicians, and the neurologists in our insane asylums.

In 1893 , 1 succeeded, after others had faded, in persuading J. Q. A. Ward, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Olin Warner,

PREFACE

then the leading sculptors of the country, to join in organiz- ing the National Sculpture Society.

None of these were enthusiastic about the formation of that society. But their finally consenting to join, on my solicitation, made its organization possible. I became the first Secretary of the Society ; and, for the next three years, devoted one half of my time and energy to strengthening it.

One of the motives for my becoming so profoundly inter- ested in that society was: to start a counter-move against the wave of “Modernism” in art, which was then coming here from Europe, and which seemed to me to be a grave menace to the higher interests of American art.

To do this most important and pressing work, I had hoped that some leading professional scidptor would come to the fore, take the time needed, and write a common-sense treatise on aesthetics and art — not an outsider, no “esoteric literary critic,” burdened only with an urge to cleverly babble about things he had studied only superficially, but, rather, some sculptor who, besides having mastered his own craft, had sounded the depths of aesthetics and could elucidate its mys- teries in a clear manner, and, being more independent than a painter, could help to brush away the cobwebs of sham aes- thetics engendered by the commercial art dealers and art- politicians of Europe and their confederates, artists and critics, empty of conscience, but full of mystical, metaphysical clap- trap, elaborated only to befog and entrap that portion of the public not gifted with a talent for analysis, and for the pur- pose only of imloading degenerate works upon the unsuspicious patrons of art.

Not having their authority, I asked J. Q. A. Ward, Presi- dent of the Society, to write such a book; then Augustus Saint- Gaudens; then others; but they all refused saying, in sub- stance: “You do it ! We agree with you, but we do not know how to set things down in writing.” Were they frightened by the implications in Job’s cry:

O that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Al- mighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book.

Be that as it may, as the years went by, I became more and more restless, pushed on by an ever-increasing urge to do what

viii

PREFACE

no American artist had thoroughly done; do it even at the expense of a larger success as a sculptor. I began to feel like Hamlet ;

The time is out of joint: 0 cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right !

The problem how to stem this drift, in America, towards a complete topsy-turvying of the art world, appeared to me ever more pressing; and, as I had done some writing on art which met with favor among my confreres, it did not take much urging to determine me to make the effort to combat this intellectual pest called “Modernism.”

Shortly after arriving at this decision, it happened that, one evening, in the fall of 1914, I sat at a round table, in the “Grill Room” of the National Arts Club, of New York, with a few other artists. Being a sculptor, I felt more independ- ent than did the painters present to give vent to my feelings in any discussion on art. Up came the subject of Chaos in art, and “Modernistic” art. I condemned its fimdamental gos- pel — the Negation of Beauty. The conversation was over- heard by the chairman of the committee which then managed the “Open Table,” that is, the Monday evening meetings in the “Grill Room,” to dine and hear discussions of all sorts of topics of the day. He remarked : “Why not give us an address, here, on that very topic?” I agreed; and, on the evening of January 25, 1915, I delivered an address on “Social Art.” This met with such favor that members and guests subscribed enough money to print five hundred copies of the address. These were so much sought after that they were soon ex- hausted and five himdred more copies were printed and also soon exhausted.

A copy of this address reached Mr. John Hemming Fry, the figure-painter, of New York, and he was so impressed with the gospel preached in that essay that he conceived the idea of starting a monthly Art Magazine, to disseminate the prin- ciples I had expressed in that address, and to lay before the public — ^not specially the artists — clear notions as to what makes a work of art truly great and, therefore, enduring — the only kind of works of art a nation should be anxious to see cre- ated by its citizens. The result was that, after some delay, we formed the Kalon Publishing Company, which issued the

PREFACE

first number of a Magazine, in October, 1916, imder the name of “The Art World,” with myself as Editor. Thus, at 63, I drifted into writing about art, instead of keeping on producing it .

The Magazine was from the start more successful than we had hoped. But, within twelve months, our country was at war with Germany, and then the Government made a reli- gious crusade against everything savoring of luxtuy. Though art is the greatest necessity to fine living, yet it is a luxury. Thus our subscriptions did not, in the crashing noise and turmoil of the war, increase with the rapidity we had wished, we having, finally, had only about six thousand subscriptions, not sufiicient to make the Magazine self-sustaining; and, the overhead charges having become imexpectedly heavy, because of war-prices, and returns from advertising being small, Mr. Fry decided, at the end of the third volume, to unload the burden of the publication, which he had generously borne all by himself, all the more since we felt that, in the eighteen num- bers of the Magazine, we had accomplished much more than we had thought possible.

I then went to half a dozen of our millionaires, for finan- cial assistance to continue the Magazine, but they all said: “Wait until we win this war; we cannot now bother about an Art Magazine, however fine, until the war is won.” So Mr. Fry merged “The Art World” with “Arts and Decoration,” a trade magazine. I was made Editor of the new com- bination, but for another six months only, and then retired from the press.

Three months before we gave up “The Art World,” we notified our subscribers of our war-forced retirement from the field. We received over a hundred letters of regret, from all parts of the country, many saying: “It would be a calam- ity if ‘The Art World’ should cease to appear.” And, ever since then, we have heard many expressions of regret at the disappearance of the Magazine, but also many inquiries as to the possible reprinting of many of the leading articles.

Finally, Mr. Fry and I decided to have the most important articles reprinted, in book form, tmder the title: “Great Works of Art, and What Makes Them Great,” with such clarifications and amplifications as they needed to make them as complete and effective as possible.

PREFACE

All the articles here reprinted were written by me, except one by Mr. Fry.

The main purpose back of "The Art World” was to strike a body-blow at the insanity, sham, and degeneracy in the Modernistic art movement, and to help to put order in the place of the chaos which we found in the world of art, as a result of that movement. And, if we accede to the many urgings we have received to reprint these articles, it is done largely because of the need of destroying the absurd meta- physico-cssthetic nonsense and transcendental "bunk,” in- jected into the world of art by commercialized art dealers, and their hired "critics” in the daily and monthly press, and by charlatan, or semi-demented, book makers, of various degrees of mystic, vapid erudition, nauseating to the common- sense artist, and bewildering to the layman in search of truth about art and aesthetics.

Hence, this is a book of combat, in which little quarter will be given to certain tendencies in the art world and the pessimistic cynicism and puerile hypocrisy by which they are pushed forward. And, in order to make this book effec- tive, it is necessary that asme strong statements should be made, in order that certain truths should sink into the public mind. But no statement will be made merely to create a sen- sation; life is too short for such stupidity.

I am well aware of Emerson’s injimction:

Nerve us incessantly with aflormations. Do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauties of the good!

But the Concord Sage, though the most fascinating and lofty writer America has produced, and worthy of being our Mentor, must never be taken literally. For he dwelt more in suggestions than in fact. Witness this remark, which is the key to all his writings and his thought, and which should be printed in the title page of every new edition of his works :

We learn to prefer imperfect theories and sentences, which contain glimpse of truth, to digressive systems which have not one valuable suggestion.

You cannot build an enduring house, until you clear the ground of ruins or useless encumbrances and lay solid founda- tions. The glorious Parthenon could not rise, xmtil Kimon cleared away the ruins of the temple Xerxes destroyed. Hence,

PREFACE

we must “bark”; we must “knock”; we must pull down — to clear the ground for something more worthy.

This book is not offered as a work of literary art. It is a plain argument for a cause, and, since these various articles were written at different times, and often imder great pres- sure, some repetitions of thought were inevitable. But these repetitions will only emphasize those thoughts and make them all the more remembered. To eliminate these repeti- tions would require a rewriting of all the articles, which would defeat our purpose.

Several of the articles herewith included were prepared for publication in “The Art World,” but, for various reasons, were delayed until too late, owing to the discontinuance of that Magazine.

The general design of “The Art World” Magazine’s covet is my own, its carrying out was ably done by Mr. R. Alston Brown, of New York. See Fig. 9. The title-page, also my design, is reproduced in Fig. 10. It suggests a return to the rationally ideal, the sane, and the sublimely beautiful, as the 'only avenue to such art as can be truly called Great.

I have no private axe to grind, no grouch to ventilate, since I am content with my modicum of success in life and art. Moreover, having passed the biblical allotment of years that is accorded to men by holy writ — “threescore years and ten ” — ^and no longer reaching out to take from my competitors public commissions for art works; and being now merely a detached observer of what one of our neurotic “critics” called “The Art Game,” but one who is looking on with a deep anxiety for the future of his country; and not having any art works to sell, I cannot be justly accused of trying to “boost the prices” of works of art I have collected, as some “critics” do, or of trying to sell things I have made.

Moreover, a perusual of the eighteen issues of the “Art World,” wiU prove that I, as editor, had adopted the policy of illustrating and eulogizing every really praiseworthy American work of sculpture or painting, however different the manner of the work might be, from the impersonal manner I believed in. It will also become apparent that we had engaged in a cam- paign to react against the over-appreciation of all foreign art: by eulogizing, when we honestly could, the works, in all the arts.

PREFACE

xii

produced by Americans, so as to help our country to come into its own.

Finally, being an independent in art; belonging to no school; being in the service of no “art party,” I trust the public will regard as entirely unprejudiced the views I shall lay before it as to what constitutes a work of art, and what makes it truly great.

This book was written to enlighten the public, in regard to certain conditions in the world of art, and to help it to a knowl- edge of the common-sense principles that underlie all sane art.

It is especially addressed to the Business Men of America, also to the teachers in our Schools and Colleges and Laymen generally, to serve as a guide as to what is truly great in art, and worth while to teach to students of art.

It is not intended to instruct professional artists or art critics.

Nearly all the chapters appeared in “The Art World” Magazine, from October, 1916, to March, 1918. All but one of these chapters were written by me, though they all passed through the hands of several other men for criticism. Some have been rewritten and amplified.

Since these chapters contain the fundamental ideas of more than one man, I shall, throughout, use the impersonal pronoun “we.” And I assume all responsibility for every statement made in the book, some of which are obvious, some of which I can prove to be true, while others are true with- out my being able, now, to furnish proof.

P. W. Ruckstull.

New York, December, 1924.

CONTENTS

_ PAGE

Preface „

Introduction ... ,

CHAPTER

I.- — What is Art.^ — Section I • • • • 37

II. — What is Art? — Section II ■ ... 57

III. — What is Beauty? • • • - . . 93

IV. — Style and Manner in Art — Section I . .135

V, — Style and Manner in Art — Section II . . 162

VI.~Abstraction vs. Representation . . ,187

VII. — Conception in Art 219

VIII. — Composition in Art 233

IX. — Expression in Art ..... 244

X. — Drawing in Art 258

XI. — Color in Art 270

XII. — Technique in Art 285

XIII. — Analysis of Works of Art . . . .311

XIV. — Analysis of Works of Art .... 333

XV. — “Deformation of Form” a Social Menace . 369

XVI. — Analysis of Works of Art .... 416

XVII. — The Gospel of Ugliness, According to Mephis-

topheles 4^1

XVIII. — Independence in Art

XIX. — Examples of Noble Works of Art by Americans 462

XX. — Conclusion

Appendix

Autobiographical Notice . . . .517

Index ■**••*•. 543

ILLUSTRATIONS

ncusE

PACINO

PAGE

1. — Miss Pogani — Brancussi

2. — Nude Woman Standing — Matisse .

3. — Concertina Man — Dobson

4. — Landscape — Maurer ....

5. — Cosmic Synchromy — Russell .

6. — King and Queen — Duchamp

7. — Princess Bonaparte — Brancussi

8. — Portrait — Picasso ....

9. — Art World Cover — Brown

10. — Art World Title Page

11. — Walking Man — Rodin

12. — Headless Woman — Rodin

13. — “Doing the Split ” — Rodin

14. — Self Portrait — Cezanne .

15. — Photo of Cezanne ....

16. — Temptation of St. Anthony — Cezanne

17. — Landscape in Provence — Cezanne .

18. — Self-Portrait — Van Gogh

19. — Hina-Tefatan — Gaugin

20. — Woman Seated — Matisse .

21. — Portrait — Matisse ....

22. — Back of Woman — Matisse

23. — Two Chopped-up Women

24. — Savage Negro Sculpture

25. — “Significant Form ” — Picasso .

26. — Profile — Rouault

27. — ^Jupiter Otricoli — Greek ....

28. — Newport Rock — La Farge

29. — “Youth ” — Cole

29. -A, B, c, D. — “Voyage of Life ” — Cole

30. — Construction of the Eye — Gray

31. — Horizontal Line ....

32. — Square

33. — Octagon

34. — Ellipse

35. — Circle

36. — Erechtheion Cap Mnesicles

37. — Spiral Shell

38. — Spiral Column

39. — Zig-Zag Line

V 8 8

25 25 25 25 25 25

41 41

100

101

On page

104

105 105 105

lod

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ILLUSTRATIONS

40. — Roman Cornice

41. — Greek Fret

42. — ^Undulatory Line

43. — ^Two Upright Lines

44. — Pyramidal Lines

45. — Mixed Lines

46. — Picturesque Beauty ....

47. — Graceful Beauty

48. — Sublime Matterhorn ....

49. — “Landscape ” — Lorrain ....

50. — Great Pyramid

51. — “Charity ” — Del Sarto ....

52. — Descent from the Cross — Vicenzo

53. — Descent from the Cross — Rubens .

54. — Score of “Last Rose of Summer” .

55. — “Holy Family,” Francis I — Raphael

56. — Madonna — Bouts

57. — Madonna — Meinling

58. — Ionic Cap — Beginning ....

59. — Ionic Cap — Beginning of Ornament .

60. — Ionic Cap — ^Temple at Delos

61. — Ionic Cap — Temple of Apollo, Lesbos

62. — Ionic Cap — Temple at Neandria .

63. — Ionic Cap — Temple of Diana, Ephesus 6^ — Ionic Cap — Temple at Illysus

65. — Ionic Cap — ^Temple of Nike, Athens .

— Ionic Cap — Propyl.ea, Athens

67. — Ionic Cap— Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

68. — Ionic Cap — Temple of Apollo, Miletus — Ionic Cap — ^Temple of Erechtheion — Mnei

6^a.— Olympia — Manet

6^b. — Sleeping Venus — Giorgione .

70. 70-A. — Origin of Corinthian Cap — Greek

71. -^OMPOSiTE Cap — Roman ....

72. — Moses — Michael Angelo ....

73. — Portrait of Man — Denner

74. — ^Venus de Medicis — Cleomenes

75. — ^Venus de Milo — Greek ....

76. — A “Hoo-Hoo ” — Epstein ....

77. — ^WooL worth Building — Maurer

78. — ^The Mosaic Law in Mosaics — Sloan

79. — ^Torso in Wood — Dobson ....

80. — Portrait — Rivera

81. — ^A Woman — Archipenko ....

82. — ^WoMAN Seated in Chair — Archipejiko .

83. — ^“Counterpoint ” — Herzog .... 84-A. — George Gisse — Holbein .... 84-B. — Innocent X — Velasquez

85. — Christ Bearing the Cross — Brueghel .

86. — ^The Passion — Memling ....

87. — Surrender of Breda — Velasquez

FACING

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On page 106

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On page

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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88. — Coronation of Josephine — David

89. — The Fall of the Damned — Bosch

90. — The Last Judgment — Michael Angelo

91. — ^“Peace ” — Chavannes ....

92. — Head of Jesus — Leonardo

93. — ^The Last Supper — Ghirlandajo

94. — ^The Last Supper — Raphael .

95. — The Last Supper — Tintoretto

96. — ^The Last Supper — Del Sarto

97. — The Last Supper — Leonardo .

98. — The Last Supper — Giotto

99. — Head of Angel — Meloszo

100. — Cupid Captive — Bougereau

1 01. — Creation — Michael Angelo

102 . — St. Denis — Chavannes

103. — SiSTiNE Madonna — Raphael .

104. — Coronation of the Virgin — Van Eyck

105. — Maids of Honor — Velasquez .

106. — Self-Portrait — Diirer

107. — Santa Barbara — Palma Vecchio .

108. — Philip IV — Velasquez ...

109. — The Witch — Franz Hals

no. — ^T he Visit — Geoffroy . . . ■

111. — The Concert — Giorgione ...

1 12. — Breakfast on the Grass — Manet .

1 13. — ^The Doctor — Fildes ....

1 14. — The Bathers — Cezanne .

1 15. — Portrait, Bronze — Matisse

1 16. — Portrait, Paint — Matisse

117. — Landscape in Provence — Cezanne

1 18. — ^“Significant Form ” — Picasso

119. — Profile — Rouault ....

120. — Man With a Broken Nose — Rodin

121. — Bust of Chavannes — Rodin .

122. — St. John — Rodin ....

123. — Burghers of Calais — Rodin .

124. — Photo of Balzac ....

125. — Statue of Balzac — Rodin

126. — Green Venus — Van Dongen .

127. — Family Life — Archipenko

128. — Spring — Etching — Rodin

129. — ^Javanese, Drawing — Rodin .

130. — Madame Vicuna — Rodin .

131. — ^Victor Hugo, Group — Rodin .

132. — ^Eve in Despair — Rodin .

133. — Eve in Despair — Rodin .

134. — Danaide — Rodin ....

135. — Caricature of Rodin — Morin

136. — The Transfiguration — Raphael . 136-A. — Maids of Honor — Velasquez

137. — ^The Secret — Titian ....

TAcnto

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ILLUSTRATIONS

noou

138. — ^The Toilet — Degas

139. — Decadence of Romans — Couture ....

140. — ^Modern Art — Couture

141. — ^Marriage — Boulanger

142. — Marriage — Boulanger

143. — Boronali’s Masterpiece — Boronali

144. — ^Donkey Painting his Masterpiece — Boronali .

145. — ^Affidavit of a Donkey Painting

146. — Shaw Monument — St.-Gaudens ....

147. — ^Washington Monument — Ward ....

148. — ^Death and the Sculptor — French

149. — ^The Sun Vow — MacNeil

150. — Checkers up at the Farm — Rogers

1 51. — ^The Reader — Fry

152. — Marquand — Sargent

153. — Two Men — Johnson

154. — ^The Ascension — La Forge

155. — The Uses of Wealth — Blashfield

156. — ^The Connoisseur — Watrous

157. — ^The Truants — Howe

158. — “Peace” — Inness

159. — The Evening of Life — Durand ....

160. — ^As THE Sowing, the Reaping — Sylvester .

161. — ^The Road to Concarneau — Picknell .

162. — ^Insane Picture — ^What Is It? .

163. — Insane Picture — A Ghost from the Beyond .

164. — Insane Picture — Man of the Future

165. — Insane Picture — Noah in the World Building

166. — Insane Picture — A Cabaret ....

167. — ^Insane Picture — ^A Fabulous Creature .

168. — Insane Picture — At the World’s End .

169. — Insane Picture — Despair

170. — A Neophyte, etc. — Aubrey Beardsley .

171. — ^The Monster — M. Behmer

172. — ^Insane Picture— Danger — Alfred Kubin .

173. — ^Angel — Mestrovic

174. — ^Love of Death — Biegas

175. — Tennis Player — Roosevelt

176. — Sunday Night — Pach

177. — ^Torso — Duchamp

178. — ^Temptation of St. Anthony — Covert .

179. — Satire on “Individualism” — ^from “Life” .

FAcnro

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ILLUSTRATIONS IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Evening

Mrs. Phil. Overstoltz John Russell Young . Mercury Amusing Himself Soldier Monument — ^Jamaica . Solon

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ILLUSTRATIONS xix

FACING

PAGE

Maj. Gen. John F. Hartranft 524

Wisdom 525

Force 528

Quadriga 528

“Gloria Victis,” Baltimore Cone. Monument . . . 529

Defense of the Flag 529

Defense of the Flag: Profile of Soldier .... 529

John C. Calhoun 532

Gen. Wade Hampton 533

Woman’s Monument 536

Drawing for Lincoln Group 537

Gothic Dome, for Lincoln Group — Schinkel . . . 537

Plaster Model, Lincoln Group 537

U. M. Rose Statue 537

Dewey Triumphal Arch — Lamb 537

Minerva 537

Back of Minerva 537

“America Remembers’’ 337

National Peace Monument — Riickstull and Fougeronsse . 537

GREAT WORKS OF ART AND WHAT MAKES THEM GREAT

PART I

FIRST PRINCIPLES

AS TO BEAUTY

A thing of Beauty, is a joy forever. Keats.

He hath made all things beautiful in His time.

Solomon.

A genuine perception of beauty is the highest education.

Fuseli.

The Beautiful is better than the Good, for it is the good made perfect. John Stuart Mill.

The Beauty of the Lord our God be upon us . . . yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it. King David.

Without the great Arts, that speak to his sense of beauty, man seems to me a poor, naked, shivering, creature!

Emerson.

Spirit of beauty, . . .

Thy light alone, — ^like mist o’er moimtain driven.

Or music by the night wind sent Thro’ strings of some still instrument.

Or moonlight on some midnight stream.

Gives Grace and Truth to life’s imquiet dream.

Shelley.

In brief, with perhaps bolder grasp, we should claim: that abstract and absolute Beauty extends her mighty wing over every department of the creative plan or constructive life, divine or human, in proportion as the immortal and celestial principles retain their sway. John Ward Stimson.

INTRODUCTION

The search for the Ultimate has been, and will ever be, the most serious occupation of mankind. Man, ever since he has been mentally awake, has wondered; “ Whence did I come? Whither am I going? And what is the highest thing I can do — on this earth?”

Our answer to the first and second questions is ; we do not know.

Our answer to the third question is :

Mankind should ever co-operate — to establish and main- tain Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Why? In order that there may be created a Paradise of Beauty on this earth. And civilization is on a high or low plane among a people, and in an epoch, in ratio of the degree to which there is prevalent among it the aim to achieve this purpose. In fact, the creation, on this earth, of a Para- dise of Beauty, is the loftiest earth-ideal ever offered to man- kind. It is an ideal we did not create; we only share it with others, who have gone before.

Where do we get our authority for asserting that a Paradise of Beauty, on this earth, is the highest earth-ideal ? Both from the Bible, the highest religious authority; and from Nature, the highest authority admitted by Science.

In I. Kings, l8th chapter, 21st verse, we read;

If the Lord be God, follow Him !

Then the pertinent question is ; Follow Him— in what ?

The answer is found in Ecclesiastes, 3d chapter and nth verse, in which Solomon, the Wise, said ;

He Hath Made All Things Beautifxil in His Time !

Throughout the Bible, we are urged to imitate God. If we wish to obey, it is clear that our highest duty is ; to imi- tate God in that which we can daily see in His constant occu- pation — the creation of the Beautiful.

GREAT WORKS OF ART

But, if you, Reader, do not consider the Bible as an author- ity fit to command — or to even give us a hint — as to what is the highest thing we can do on this earth; and, if you prefer to go to Nature for a hint to guide you; if you prefer to imi- tate Nature, what will you find in Nature?

You will find, that Nature is one vast laboratory for the creation of Beautiful forms, lines, colors, and soimds. Nature does nothing else than create beauty. And everything in Nature — ^when perfect of its kind, and undefiled by man — is Beautiful. It is, of course, true that Nature, now and then, catastrophically, “slips a cog,” which results in some ugly things — through the destruction, or maiming, of beautiful things. But, how quickly she busies herself in covering over such ugliness as, by accident, she occasions !

If you penetrate the sky, or delve to the bottom of the sea, or dig in the earth, you will find — everywhere — an inex- haustible store of beauty. Therefore, we may say; that both the Bibip and Nature suggest to us — to Create the Beautiful!

Therefore, every Religion — though it sprang into existence first through a desire to propitiate a much-feared god — thrived and grew strong through men wishing to reach a won- drously beautiful region, in which they supposed God must dwell. This place was, by different peoples, called different names, but these names all signified; a Paradise of Beauty.

In the past, before science destroyed, not religion, but the foundations of all rigid religious “dogmas," this Paradise was supposed to be the reward — after death — which men would earn by being “good” on this earth; that is; by following the dog- mas established by the Priests and Kings of the earth. But, for a hundred years, there has been an ever louder and more general cry — ^for a Paradise to be enjoyed by mankind here, on this earth.

Moreover, every King that ever lived surrounded himself with as much of a Paradise of Beauty as possible — as soon as he could command and pay for one. Multimillionaires do the same thing today, and everywhere. Showing that the longing for Beauty is the profoundest hunger of mankind.

This hunger for Beauty is the creatrice of all art. Man can create nothing beautiful except through art. Man brings nothing with him into this world, and all he leaves after him

INTRODUCTION

— of real value — is: his art creations. It follows, logically, that art is the highest thing man can produce on earth.

Hence, the more we reflect over the problems of life the more surely will we come to regard as the highest interest of the race, the fostering of the ideal of a Paradise of Beauty, on this earth, in which to perfect the race and to prepare the souls of men for meriting a paradise to come — after death — if there shall be one.

We therefore offer three slogans to our readers :

First : the soul of a man is holy — in ratio of the degree of anxiety he feels for lifting himself and mankind above the merely animal and the ugly. There is no other holiness — as far as this life is concerned.

Second: Every thing, or act, on this earth is holy only — in ratio of its fundamental necessity to the creation and main- tenance of a Paradise of Beauty on this globe.

Third: Every existing thing, concrete or abstract, and every human action, is unholy, and also criminal — to the degree that it militates, in its effects, against the realization of a Paradise of Beauty on this earth, and its conservation, when once realized.

If the above three maxims should be inscribed on the walls of every public building of the world, a long step forward would be quickly made towards a realization of this highest aspiration of mankind.

It follows that, since the creation of a Paradise of Beauty on this earth is the highest interest of the race, it is easy to establish the degree of bestiality or criminality of a man — by the amount of degenerating things and acts he has contrib- uted to swell the ugliness of this world.

These, almost obvious, truths have been dimly sensed by men, even in the infancy of the race.

From the foregoing, it follows that, in the last analysis, there are only two human energies which are worthy of our profound reverence, and they are — Love and Art.

By love, we mean all kinds of love, but above all : love of oiir neighbor, enough to do him justice: to ensure the peaceful evolution of the race towards perfection, the probability of which some question. But these doubters may be influenced to change their point of view, if they will investigate why that profound thinker, Herbert Spencer, said :

GREAT WORKS OF ART

Progress is not an accident, it is a necessity, and the day will come when man will be perfect.

By art, we mean those eight arts that are properly in- cluded in the category of “The Fine Arts”: Architecture, Belles-Lettres, Drama, Landscape-Gardening, Music, Painting, Poetry, and Sculpture, to name them alphabetically.

Since, for ages past, civilized men have sung in unison: “God is Love!” and, since, God, through nature, is ever occu- pied in creating beauty, thus serving us as an example, the natural inference is that, next to love, art is, we repeat, the most important thing on earth — after man has procured for himself those material things necessary to his physical existence and comfort.

This may sound Utopian. But all ideals are at first Utopian. “The heterodoxy of today is the orthodoxy of tomorrow!” someone has said. But that the world is slowly trending that way, is proven by the following incident:

It is well known that President Coolidge is strenuously trying to maintain his reputation as a devotee of “common- sense practicality!” Hence, it is a surprising step toward — what is usually called — “Utopianism,” when, in his speech, on Aug. 28, 1924, before the National Fraternal Congress, at Washington, he said:

It is because the fraternal spirit is an attempt to translate these ideals into daily life and action that it is entitled to so much com- mendation and approval. It deserves to rank among the soundest and most practical efforts of the present day to better the life of man- kind.

Emerson said:

ALL NATURE IS BENT UPON EXPRESSION

That is true of the yose, singing to us in the morning her song of color and perfume, as well as of the poet who chants immortal verse for our delectation and our solace. And, from the time that man had the slightest leisure, from hunting his food and securing safety in his cave-dweUing, he used some of that leisure in expressing himself: by making more or less imitative representations of nature’s creatures, on the walls of his caves, or on the utensils of bone he used, imtil he arrived at his highest power of expression, and was able to create the majesty of the Acropolis, at Athens; the splendors of the

INTRODUCTION

Forum, in Rome; and the beauty in the Epics of Homer and Virgil; ha which works art reached its highest expression in history.

From this, one would have expected that art would be, if not on a higher, at least not on a lower plane, than it had reached two thousand years ago. But this would be a pro- found error.

We did not venture on the enterprise of writing this book, with the intention of proving that we can write as well as sculp. Hence, we have not, as did Flaubert and Gautier, made strenuous efforts to do some stylistic, or manneristic writing. In this we are going coimter to the spirit of this epoch, which seems to be temporarily dominated by the shallow remark of Chateaubriand :

A book lives only by virtue of its style, which is a fallacious half-truth, seeing that Homer’s “Iliad” lives across the ages, not because of its style — which disappears in every translation — but because of its substance, its con- tents — the wonderful story it tells. We have been more influenced by the thought of Emerson:

It makes all the difference in the world in the force of a sentence whether there is a man back of it or not.

and, encouraged by the example of that foimt of common- sense, Moliere, who did not hesitate to say:

Je prends mon bien oil je le trouvei so, like him, “We take our property where we find it,” and give it back to the public, in oitr own form it is true, but totally indifferent to any notions of style — except clarity of thought, and a constant respect for the Reader: so as not to overtax, with over-involved phrases, his power of paying attention, which, Herbert Spencer says, is the foimdation of all good style.

Finally, since we are not bent on parading as a writer, we have not hesitated to largely give of the wisdom of the great thinkers who have gone before, encouraged in this by the thought of our greatest American writer:

By inclination, necessity, and choice — we quote.

Civilization is, perhaps, the most important five-syllable word in the language. Yet, how few ever give a thought to ascertain its true meaning. How strange this is, since whether

GREAT WORKS OF ART

a state of civilization is high or low, is of the utmost importance to men, and is at all times the chief object of the leaders of the State. Unfortimately, the word — like the word “Art” — is used to designate two distinct things: a Process and a Product.

We will give our own, slowly-formulated, definition of the word, from the standpoint of — a process:

Civilization — ^as a process — ^means; a getting away from THE animal and the UGLY, AS FAR AS POSSIBLE, TOWARDS THE SPIRITUAL AND THE BEAUTIFUL — CONSISTENT WITH THE PRESERVA- TION AND THE PERFECTING OF THE RACE.

Civilization — as a product — is called a state, or a condition, of civilization, found among a certain people at a certain epoch. We will accept the definition of Guizot as to the meaning of Civilization, — as a state of being, — which is as follows:

Civilization, therefore, in its most general idea, is an improved condition of man resulting from the establishment of social order in place of the individual independence and lawlessness of the savage or barbarous life. It may exist m various degrees: it is suspectible of continual progress.

Matthew Arnold said:

What is civilization? It is the Humanization of man in society, the satisfaction for him, in society, of the true law of human nature.

That true law is, as we have said above, and we repeat here : a getting away from the animal and the ugly as far as possible, towards the spiritual and the beautiful — consistent with the preservation and the perfecting of the race.

Therefore, the ideal of every man, who has sufficiently evoluted to desire to progress towards perfection, is: to be shorn of as many of the attributes of the animals as possible.

We are all making progress towards an inevitable state of de-animalized, ennobled perfection.

But this progress is slow, because of our still imperfect social organization. There are, as yet, too many individuals who are too heavily weighted down with individualistic, carnal, or animal characteristics to permit the whole of mankind to progress faster. Another strange thing is: that not one man in a thousand thinks of the importance of the truth put, by that fine spirit, Renan, into his remark:

A complete civilization must take account of Art and Beauty, almost as much as of morality and of intellectual development.

And, right here, we wish to say — once for aU — that, when

A remarkably well constructed figure. But, having been delib- From a photo, bought in a shop in Paris. A degrading specimen of

erately decapitated, hacked, and mutilated, it is proof of Rodm symbolic sadism in art.

having been tainted with tendencies to symbolic sadism in art.

INTRODUCTION

we use the word “spiritual," we do not refer to Christianity, or to churchianity, or any sort of religiosity, involving any sort of dogma. We refer simply to that which is anti' materialistic, anti-vulgar, anti-brutal, and anti-pomographic, in every degree. We mean the dis-camalized nude, not the disgustingly naked; the refined, the idealized, the poetic; everything superior to the merely physical, or the coldly “intellectual”; everything capable of highly ecstacizing only the soul, or spirit. We mean that kind of beauty of which Congreve said:

There is something in true beauty which the vulgar cannot admire.

But, if the so-called “radicals” in life failed to grasp the full import of the spiritual — as the most creative of all forces — how much more strange that so many men, in the 19th cen- tury, should have forgotten: that all Streams of Tendency, toward aU sorts of license, unless controlled and checked, fatally broaden and deepen, until they end in disaster!

And how curious that so many, so-called, “leaders of thought,” with more brilliancy of imagination than soundness of judgment, gifted with more “artistry” than wisdom, should have sprung up, to clutter the world of thought with brilliant lucubrations, in the so-called “belles-lettres”: novels, stories, dramas, essays, poems, etc., aU leaning towards pessimism and materialism, towards a sham paganism, of a kind which the finest Hellenic pagans would have repudiated with disgust; and who have flooded the world with sugar-coated intellectual poisons, all tending towards the slow but sure disintegration of society, and this by men and women arrogating to them- selves the title: “Intelligentsia”!

So that the ugly fact, which now stares us in the face, is: the vast increase of degeneracy, among all classes, beginning with the artistic, and percolating down through all the strata of society.

With 4,500,000 morons in the land, who can neither read nor write, and, therefore, and above all cannot reason straight, however cunning in material matters they may appear; and who all the more easily become warped in their social point of view by watching the morbid examples, in conduct and art, held up to them by some of our “intelligentsia,” whose im- moral instruction they better — by doing worse; with these

lo GREAT WORKS OF ART

reproducing unchecked and filling our jails with other and worse undiscriminating morons; with our asylums, in con- sequence, full of all sorts of victims of their own horrible, imnatural practices, of so many kinds that it is amazing; and with these physical and psychic diseases reflecting and mani- festing themselves in all the arts, — all the direct result of indifference to the spiritual and truly beautiful, — is it not high time that something should be very frankly said that may tend to open the eyes of the generous, but too busy, American public to the oncoming of the worst wave of social cholera; cumulative moral, physical, and political degenera- tion — ending in abnormal sex-perversion which destroyed once all-powerful Rome?

By sex-perversion we mean: first, all abnormal sex-indul- gence; second, all unnatural sex-indulgence; third, all unpar- donable adultery; fourth, all descriptions, or representations — in any of the arts — of the sex-relation, for the purpose of excit- ing the passions of the reader or of the beholder, be the motive money or notoriety. Oh, we know how easy it is to cry out : “Another Jeremiah!” It is easy to say: “We should worry!” Louis XV. also said, “After us the Deluge!” as a joke. It was witty, but proved, in the next generation, a precursing death- knell of the elegant, but posterity-despising. Bourbon aristoc- racy!

Natural, rational love: the holy union of a normal man and woman, with the fixed purpose of fotmding a home, and endowing the state with say, two or more strong, beautiful children, and raising them, to be able to serve, as both em- bellishments and bulwarks of the state, in peace or war, is the most sublime thing a man and woman can do on this earth. For it is imitating God in His highest function, which Solomon expressed in his immortal line, which we will often repeat ;

He hath made all things beautiful in His time I

It is creation in its highest sense, transcending all the art creations in the world.

When will American youths and maidens, when they arrive at maturity, engrave this thought on the tablets of their minds, in whatever form they might care to embody that thought? When will they see that the greatness and majesty of their cotmtry, in the future, depends entirely on the force

INTRODUCTION

of the decision with which they inscribe this sublime aspiration on their inner temple, where dwells their ego or soul?

When we speak of sex-perversion, we speak of something the horror of which can only be realized in the pages of Kxaift- Ebing’s “Psychopathic Sexualis.” And to be convinced of its alarming spread in Europe, one has only to consult Freud’s “General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,” page 265, where, in speaking of this growing evil, he says :

We have here a field of observation like any other. Moreover, the evasion that these persons are merely rarities, curiosities, is easily refuted. On the contrary, we are dealing with very frequent and widespread phenomena. Those who call themselves homo- sexualists are the conscious and manifest inverts, but their number is as nothing to the latent homosexualists.

When the Apostle John said, “God is Love,” he meant poetic, spiritual, racially-beneficent love. Such love is the source of everything fine, noble, and great ever done or created since time began. Hence, those philosophers who have in- creasingly been saying, of late, that the origin of art is the sex- instinct, are correct.

Says Havelock Ellis, in his latest book, “The Dance of Life”:

To some, a glimpse of this great truth has from time to time ap- peared. Ferrero, who occupied himself with psychology before attaining eminence as a brilliant historian, suggested thirty years ago that the art impulse and its allied manifestations are trans- formed sexual instinct; “the sexual instinct is the raw material, so to speak from which art springs,” etc. . . .

Mobius, a brilliant and original, if not erratic, German psycholo- gist, who was also concerned with the question of difference in the amount of sexual energy, regarded the art impulse as a kind of sexual secondary character.

It is along this path, it may perhaps be claimed, as dimly glimpsed by Nietzsche, Hinton, and other earlier thinkers, that the main explanation of the dynamic process by which the arts, in the widest sense, have come into being, is now chiefly being explored. One thinks of Freud and especially of Dr. Otto Rank, perhaps the most brilliant and clairvoyant of the younger investigators who still stand by the master’s side, etc. (page 109, et seq.)

Let us accept and venerate this doctrine ; That, when love is pure, holy, altruistic in purpose, then becomes creative the

GREAT WORKS OF ART

sex-impulse, and engenders the sublimest beauty. But let us never for a moment forget that when it becomes perverted to an impure, imholy, imaltruistic expression, of merely carnal libidinity, it becomes destructive as a stream of tendency and causes naught but putrifying ugliness, a poison which — unless its spread is checked — will empest and insure the slow but certain disappearance from the earth of aU civilization, and the retrogression of man towards savagery.

One of the most insidious of the various forms which sex- perversion takes — both in life and art — is Sadism, so named after the Marquis of Sade, who first analyzed it, in his vicious novels. “And what is sadism?” the innocent Reader may ask. In his astonishing book, already cited, Krafft-Ebing opens his description of sadism, in life, thus:

That Ittst and cruelty frequently occur together, is a fact that has long been recognized and not infrequently observed. Writers of all kinds have called attention to this phenomenon.

He then describes the various forms this mania takes, in an abnormal semi-insane sex-pervert : the impulse to maltreat the woman who has given herself to him, without knowing him to be a sex-pervert; and cites in detail many cases — here unprintable — of all degrees of cruelty, perpetrated by those subject to this disease, sadism: from merely biting and scratch- ing the victim, after embracing her, to murdering her and then violating her body— /row a slight, to a monstrous, mutila- tion, according to the severity of the attack of the erotic, mutilation-frenzy.

To realize the Satanic nature of this ftuy to mutilate some- thing admirable in itself, a beautiful human body, one must read Krafft-Ebing’s details.

But the worst of it is that, just as the blood of the whole human race is said to have become gradually syphilicized, even though no visible evidences appear on the body of the average normal person, likewise this mania to post-amorous mutilation has so spread, that thousands of people have it now — in a latent tendency, which may or may not manifest itself, objectively, in a very severe or tragic form, all depend- ing on the state of mind and morals, plus the philosophy of life, dominating an individual having this tendency latently active within him. “Jack the Ripper” was a sadist, whose

INTRODUCTION

malady did not manifest itself until he was well along in life. So was “The Girl Cutter of Augsburg” (see Krafft-Ebing). Many others have the stigmata, in so slight a degree that it cannot be noticed — in its usual form.

“Masochism,” named after the novels of Sacher-Masoch, is the opposite to sadism, and consists in the devotee allowing himself to be maltreated, humiliated, and mutilated, instead of he doing the maltreating of his victim. And Krafft-Ebing says: “The number of cases of undoubted masochism thus far observed is very large, ” page 90.

However, as bearing directly on sadism in art, there are many who are “ideal sadists and masochists.” Says Krafft- Ebing:

The perfect sadistic counterpart to this case of masochism, looked upon in this light, is offered by Case 35, which is a case of symbolic sadism.

At any rate, there is a whole group of masochists who satisfy themselves with the symbolic representation of situations correspond- ing with their perversion; “a” group, that corresponds with group “e” of “symbolic” sadists, just as the previously mentioned cases of masochism correspond with the groups “c” and “a” of sadism. Thus, just as the perverse longings of the masochist may, on the one hand, advance to “passive lust-murder” (to be sure, only in imagination ) ; so, on the other hand, they may be satisfied with sym- bolic representations of the desired situations, which otherwise are expressed in acts of cruelty, page 115. (Italics ours.)

'V\Tien this disease, this yearning to mutilate nature’s forms, human or non-human, develops into an extreme activity^ it is called: Sade-o-mania, whether it manifests itself in objec- tive acts of mutilation of the htunan form, etc., or in inexplic- able symbolic representations of such mutilations — ^in art. And the victim of this affliction may, like the victim of insan- ity, have been entirely innocent of having contributed, per- sonally, to bringing upon himself this mysterious pathological condition.

In order that the Reader does not err in thinking that the lowest dregs of men, only, are thus affected, and to let us know that some of the greatest artists have been so afflicted, Krafft- Ebing says:

It is interesting and worthy of mention, that one of the most celebrated of men was subject to this perversion, and describes it in

GREAT WORKS OF ART

his autobiography (though somewhat erroneously). From Jean Jacques Rousseau’s “ Confessions” it is evident that he was affected with masochism, page 119.

He also says, page 121 :

There were also elements of masochism (and sadism) in the cele- brated, or notorious, French writer, C. P. Baudelaire, who died insane.

Baudelaire came of an insane and eccentric family. From his youth he was mentally abnormal. His vita sexualis was decidedly abnormal. He had love-affairs with ugly, repulsive women — negresses, dwarfs, giantesses. About a very beautiful woman, he expressed the wish to see her hung up by her hands, and to kiss her feet. This enthusiasm for the naked foot also appears in one of his glowing poems, as the equivalent of sexual indulgence. He said wmnen were animals who had to be shut up, beaten, and fed well. The man, displaying these masochistic and sadistic inclinations, died of paretic dementia. (Lombroso, “The Man of Genius.”)

It is but just to say that some question the truth of these charges.

Be that as it may, it is certain that Baudelaire was, par excellence, the Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde character, in the field of art. We can see that in his poems as well as in his prose writings; though, in the latter, it manifests itself only in a few spots. For, in his prose, he seems to have been su- premely conscious that he was addressing a searching public that would pardon no “breaks” of logic or sound sentiment, while in his poetic states he simply “let himself loose” to a dominant emotion and, in the poems which resulted, he seems to have expressed himself only to himself, rather than to the public, to whom he seems to have offered them — as an after- thought. Thus we see that both Rousseau and Baudelaire, the two fiercest clamorers for “Individualism” and “Liberty in Art,” and who may be regarded as the very fountain heads of “Modernism,” were afficted with sex-perversion in the forms of “sadism” and “masochism,” diseases which had not yet, in their time, been diagnosed and named as such.

That both had literary” genius, cannot be doubted. That Baudelaire was entirely sane when he wrote some of his poems, is certain: that he was semi-insane while writing others, is equally certain to those who have access to, and can read in the French, those poems which were expurgated, by the Police,

INTRODUCTION

from the first edition of his “Flowers of Evil.” Thus we see that perverted modernism has its final roots in sex-perversion.

Among Krafit-Ebing’s patients were also wealthy, and socially prominent, and highly “cultured” people of both sexes, victims of acute forms of this malady of sadism, of post- love cruelty, and desire to injure, to humiliate, to loll, and to mutilate the body of the one previously loved, and all the result of the disobedience by their ancestors, if not by themselves, of Nature’s most beneficent law expressed so finely by St. Paul ;

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.

That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not hav- ing spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Ephesians v., 25, 27.

How pitiable, that a man should ever be afifiicted with any sort of dementia because of the sins of his forefathers! That he should be pimished by physical defects, like Byron’s club- foot, or ^sop’s hunchback, may even pass; but to be also stricken with semi-insanity — which is worse than total idiocy — is an awful calamity, and has been a terrible scourge to the rest of mankind; because a large majority of men, until lately, had no means of knowing that certain men, brilliant talkers and perfectly sane one day, were, on the morrow, partially insane, and threw out foolish paradoxes, and also seemed to possess enough hypnotic power to make, even men of talent, accept them as gospel truths ! Baudelaire seems to have had this power, as did Rousseau. Both were diseased, yet both were enormously influential, over a very large class of people, especially such as are afflicted with only potential sadism, if only to the degree of being satisfied to indulge their latent in- clination towards mutilating the human body by seeing such mutilation done in pictures and statues, and made by other men, which accounts for their childish and weird appreciation of such absolutely degenerate works of art, in which the human body is maltreated and mutilated, tortured, twisted, in every direction, by all sorts and degrees of sadistic deformations; hacking, decapitation, grotesqueing, debasing ; and symbolizedby an extreme over-departure from the truth and beauty of nature.

Many members of all nations are, now, more or less, stricken with sex-perversion and sadism, or its counterpart — like the

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reverse of a medal — ^masochism. But, since Paris has become — in one section of it — the centre of the Hedonism of the world, which is reflected in the open sensualism of its life and art, and which, if history is true, makes it a worthy successor of the corrupt section of Alexandria of old, it was quite logical that this section should give birth and beatification to a Baudelaire, and accept him enough to name after him one of the streets of Paris. Also, it is quite natural, that it should engender a lot of artists, who either created or admired sadistic art, such as Rodin, chief of the art sadists, Manet, Degas, Cezanne, and their foolish followers, all afflicted with either active or latent sadism: manifesting itself either in concrete acts, or in symbolic, yclept artistic representations of Nature- mutilation in their art works, as is shown by the illustrations Figs. II to 26. These four men originated — and helped to push to the limits of laughable insanity — the modernistic movement in art. This movement was then grasped by the more than equally sadistic groups of German artists. And, as is usual with all base imitators, they went their Paris com- peers one better, “bettered the instruction,” as Shakespeare says: did work even more insane than the French; and then even claimed that they, and not the French, were the fathers of modernism. “O tempora, O mores!” we may laughingly exclaim, with the Latin grumbler, at the grotesqueries of life. [See Appendix.]

We do not mean even to imply that any of these men were personally addicted to committing, objectively, sadistic acts. We mean simply to say: that they were the hapless victims of the ever-spreading psychic disease of sadism which, like syphilis, is more and more penetrating, in a form and to a degree more or less noticeable to a pathologist, and manifesting itself in a secret penchant towards producing and appreciating symbolic sadistic works of art, showing grotesque multila- tion of the human form, especially that of the female form. This subtle, sadistic plague, may attack not only an artist but as well princes, priests and peasants, as does pellagra, or any other wide-spreading plague, a punishment inflicted by Nature for the violation, by our ancestors, of her laws.

Naturally, since there are moral morons even among our “intelligentsia,” who cannot reason straight, and who lack

INTRODUCTION

self-respect enough to never imitate anyone, certain English devotees of intellectual, symbolic sadism in art, and charlatans, adopted the Paris modernistic art gospel; bought its fruits; imitated them; and in every way protagonized that gospel and its sadism-laden sesthetics: many of these men being afflicted with only latent and others with incipient sadism. For, to admire, or to imitate, that which a sadist in art does, amounts to uniting ourselves to him. For it was Goethe who said:

When we admire anything, we have the germ of producing it within ourselves.

To admire the good, tends to unite us with the good; to admire evil, tends to unite us with the evil. “Birds of a feather flock together!” someone said. Hence, those who admire sadism in art; who buy its fruits; or sell them; above all those who applaud it, publicly, in the press, are incipient sadists — to the degree of the intensity of their genuine enthusiasm for it; or, they are worse still, vile, commercial ghouls, willing to traffic in social narcotics and poisons, knowing them to be such, and using cynical, charlatanistic methods to enable them all the better to profiteer in it.

Sadism is rooted in Ego-mania.

We repeat, it is profoimdly true as Emerson says, that :

All nature is bent upon expression !

Hence, everything, from a monad to a man, wishes to, and should be encovuaged to, express itself. When this is done with a noble purpose back of it, one that is altruistic, it results in beneficent egotism; but when it is done with the imaltruistic purpose of merely rushing into the limelight, striking one’s chest, and bellowing out: “Gentlemen, I am here!” and then, like a cuttlefish, throwing out a beclouding, and bewildering, and poisoning, even though glittering, nightshade perfume horrifying to the elite, but acceptable to the moron majority, and to the degeneracy of all; then we have dangerous Ego- mania. This is always a mark of more or less insanity. Rous- seau — 1712-1778 — started this, modem, stream of tendency towards the extreme assertion of the Ego, towards “Individual- ism ” — as an “ism " — the most destractive of all gospels. Yet, it has become a “cult” in all the arts, and even pushed to insanity by the modernists, during the last generation, above

i8 GREAT WORKS OP ART

all in Paris, until the sane men of France, seeing the danger, are revolting against the moral and aesthetic degeneracy now apparent on all sides in Paris.

Jean Carrere, in his “Degeneration in the Great French Masters,” shows the evil sub-spirit and the degenerative under- current in the books — written, it is true, with great “liter- ary craftsmanship” — of Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Stendhal, Sand, Musset, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Verlaine and Zola; and deploring the degenerating influences they have let loose, analyzes them, and warns his own people against them. He says, in his “Foreword”:

There are good masters and bad masters. The responsibility, the mission, of the poet I do not propose to ascertain and define here. The good poet, the beneficent master, is the builder of cities, the creator of heroes, the inspirer of energy, the giver of light, the sun-like radiant being.

Every great poet is heroic. By that quality we measure his greatness. There is something more than a secret affinity between the hero and the poet ; there is a vital connection. The one sustains the other, and is sustained by him. They are two flowers from one sap, both are born of the same yearnings of mankind for an ideal nobleness. Almost always there is a poet in the hero, and a hero in the true poet. For both of them, life and work are an eternal self-dedication to the bettering of the race. Bestowal of oneself, love of one’s fellows, deep pity, disdain for material enjo3anents, siiffering borne to make the future glorious, these are common features of hero and poet. . . .

By a “bad master,” a source of degeneration, I mean one who, gifted with the power to seduce men by the charm and wealth of his imagination, by his skill in weaving harmonious and captivating phrases, instead of urging himself toward heroism, and drawing toward it the souls which he influences, surrenders himself in his writings to all the seductions of the life of ease, uses his talent for his exaltation of mean pleasure and gross desires, and on that ac- cotmt becomes, for those whom he has enchanted, a teacher of weakness, egotism, cowardice and cupidity. The good master is the one who leads us toward an ideal of strength and light: the bad master is the one who leaves us with mind overcast and senses quivering.

There have been in all hterature bad masters of this character. Some, men and women of incomparable grace and ability, count among the immortals. In Greece there were Anacreon, Sappho^

INTRODUCTION

Euripides, and Lucian; at Rome, Tibullus, Catullus, even Horace, Ovid, Suetonius, and Petronius; in France, the greatest of them were Villon, Montaigne, and Jean Jacques Rousseau. But the last cen- tury was the chief period of their reign. In that epoch of general confusion and disturbance of the nations, all sorts of larvae emerged from the depths of human nature, and bad masters arose on every side; masters of souls more effectively than ever before, yet beyond question bad. Too weak to resist the degeneration that environed them, they were, nevertheless, strong enough to create enduring work. On that account, their influence was especially mischievous, and it persists today. It has fallen so surely upon all of us that one has only to point to it to raise angry protests.

These bad masters still enjoy their victory. They have ardent, loyal, all-powerful defenders. That is why I cannot hesitate to enter the lists against them.

Dante, in a word, is a virile and sunny genius, not, perhaps, the most perfect, but the most robust of the beneficent masters. Rous- seau is, on the contrary, a feminine genius, a genius of the night. He is all uncertainty and weakness. He is, by the very force of his genius and his indisputable originality, the most mischievous and most influential of the bad masters.

None could venture to contradict us when we say that Rous- seau was one of the greatest geniuses whose word ever stirred the world; that his work is grandiose and astounding; that his style has an incomparable novelty and beauty; that he extorts our admira- tion, even our S3nnpathy, by the smooth and large flow of his elo- quence and the sincerity of his fiery passion; that, in a word, he was a great writer and a great man. [Carrere overlooked that he was a sadist, and that a sadist cannot be a great man.]

How is it then, that this great [?] man and great writer does not inspire us with light and strength, but leaves us in confusion and ir- resolution? How is it, that we are aU compelled to admit that we feel ourselves less good at heart and less clear in mind after reading the author of the “Confessions" and “Emile" whereas we always find ourselves stronger after reading the “Divine Comedy"! How is it that the very passions, invectives, even hatreds of the exiled Florentine glow with splendor and endow us with strength, while the passions, invectives, and hatreds of the wandering son of Geneva leave us troubled, unbalanced, and morally enfeebled?

That is a point to be studied closely if we would understand Rousseau’s work and detect its fundamental vice ; and we shall dis- cover it by an illuminating comparison. We shall find that Dante is the moral guide of Nations and of poets because he always sacri-

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ficed his hiimble personaUty in a public cause, and that Rousseau is a source of disorder and impotence because he was always ready to sacrifice order and the public cause to his own over-weening personality.

I know, that in using this language, I am apt to shock many of my contemporaries. I am the better prepared to expect their astonishment and annoyance as I long shared their error, and 1 re- gard it still with a certain sympathy. But it is important to make my position clear at the very outset of these studies, and to open a direct attack upon the real evil, which is Individualism.

Those sacred rights of the individual ! — did I not devote my youth to defending this free development of personality, these proud and frenzied claims which the apostles of “self,” from Rousseau to Ibsen and Nietzsche, have hurled at us? And how little it moves me that others defend them today! Unlike the converts who pass from sect to sect, I have a particular affection for those who cherish the illusions which once appealed to myself.

He then tells why he abandoned the individualistic point of view, then he continues:

Would it be correct, as a description of Rousseau’s work, or an indication of its general spirit, to say that he was an individualist?

He is, in reality, neither an egotist nor an individualist ; yet he acts and speaks like an egoist, and he bequeaths to the world a vast and powerful work which infallibly, in the century following him, led to the exaltation of individual passions to the detriment of social needs. That is the paradox of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

What is the cause of this divergence of intention and realiza- tion? How is it, that a man who would be good and virtuous be- comes pernicious in his influence and cowardly in his life?

It is because he was more deeply tainted than any other with that malady which fell upon so many souls in the latter part of the eighteenth, and during the whole course of the nineteenth, century: the malady of “self” — a dark, distressing preoccupation with one’s own personality. Rousseau was certainly neither an egoist nor an individualist, but he was what we may call an “Ego-maniac.”

If we have made these long quotations from Carr&'e, it is because he is a clairvoyant writer, and a Frenchman, who will not be called a “Puritanical American,” an epithet he would instanter repudiate, and because the average American would pooh-pooh such views, if given as oims. We simply endorse them in toto. Moreover, Carrere thus has shown the innate viciousness of the whole gospel of “individualism” — as an uim — in all its forms, as an aim in life, and which, in any form.

INTRODUCTION

is nothing but unsocial ego-mania; in its unchecked effects disgusting and destructive; and, when raised to a cult, Satanic !

He has also shown, once for all that genius for pyrotechnical verbal-pirouetting is not always accompanied by genius for sovmd thinking, and that logic and decency are more essential to the perpetuity of the race, than any mere expression of per- sonal “style” or manner in art, be it ever so novel and flashy. Rousseau and his followers had not elevated into a cult this mania for “the expression of one's 'personality.' " It remained for the sick-minded modernists to do this, because they de- veloped that new disease — “Novelty-mania.” It remained for them to raise this himger for “self -contemplation” and “the expression of one’s personality” to the leading dogma of their cult.

What did “personality” mean, to the mind of that absurd Frenchman who first insisted that the highest Junction of an artist is: “to express his own personality”? Heaven only knows what he meant, or who he was, or what sort of “per- sonality” he had.

Now it stands to reason that any artist who is primarily engaged, all his life, in expressing merely those peculiar char- acteristics which single him out, sharply, from his fellowmen, instead of profoundly expressing the characteristics of other men, of mankind, becomes a mere “touter” for himself, of his own characteristics, hence a self-exploiter, and an ego- maniac, in ratio of the deliberate noise he makes in thus ex- pressing his peculiar temperament, or personality. This would be true if he possessed and manifested only good characteristics.

But suppose he possessed also evil and disgusting charac- teristics, should he exploit those also, and, so, make himself contemptible to his fellowmen, as did Rousseau; or should he hide his evil traits and exploit only his good ones, and thus become a cowardly hypocrite : by failing to appear in his true colors as a true self-parader?

The truth is, this whole cult — of the expression of one’s “personality”; of “self-expression”; of the latest fad: “expres- sionism” — is nothing but an ego-maniacal madness!

For, what the artist must do, if he wishes at all to become worth remembering, is : to humbly follow in the wake of Shake- speaj-e, Michael Angelo, and Phidias, and do as they did.

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They never even thought of asking themselves whether they had “personality,” such an intellectual malady not having been known in their day as — the “expression of one’s person- ality.” They strove with might and main always to create beauty. They knew that the only way to do that is : to “Hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature.” And in the doing of which those of their personal characteristics — which in any way at all are useful to mankind — radiated unconsciously from them and flowed into their works, thus dignifying human nature, glorifying their own genius, and elevating the race.

Nothing is more amazing than the support which the tendency towards an increase of sadism in art has received from journalists: in the press, newspapers and magazines — first in the lowest yellow sheets, which make it a cult to be as immoral as the police will allow — and then in those of the highest authority, which pretend to be purveyors “of light and leading ” ! Every one of these is guilty of either conscious or unconscious, voluntary or involuntary, sadism, who either honestly, or commercially, admire the representation in paint- ing and sculptvure of the human body when shown in a mutilated or in a tortured form.

That, as a result of such a propaganda for the cult of sadism in art, there has resulted a vast increase in immorality and crime, is certain. We have it on the highest authority on vice suppression in this city, that one of the art-editors of one of our largest dailies in New York was trapped, arrested, fined $1000, and then quietly discharged from his paper for having allured to his so-called “Studio” young girls with whom he had himself photographed in a manner showing he was nothing but a masochist and a degraded sex-pervert.

And does not the public know that the repeated contem- plation of representations of mutilated or tortured human bodies powerfully suggests, to the mentally weak morons, that the human body is not sacred, as Novalis claimed, and that this gradually produces a psychic indifference to its reverence and preservation, and a callousness towards a mutilation of it by themselves, and to a kfiling by others, as nonchalantly done as one would throw away a sucked orange? How about the cynical, callous monsters who murdered the poor Frank boy in Chicago — just to have a “new emotional experience?”

INTRODUCTION

Alienists have long ago warned us of the coming of this psychic malady as a consequence of the spread of this sadism in art, and the erection of it into a cult, by the increasing mob of degenerates in the world.

This sadism in art finds an hypocritical defense in the preser- vation of mutilated statues and pictures, mosaics, etc., pre- served in our museums. These should be preserved. But why any man should, today, deliberately model a human body and then mutilate it and hack it, and exhibit it, except as a revelation of his sadistic soul, passes our comprehension.

The first man, as far as we know, to do this was Rodin — who was regarded in Paris, as a moral sot. In his “Walking Man,” Fig. ii, we have a glaring example. Here is the body of a man, modelled so skillfully that he seems to live and walk, and then the head and arms are hacked off, and the body other- wise mutilated. Now, we can understand that this might occur to a statue crushed by a falling temple, in an earthquake, and then, when imearthed, preserved as a record of the state of sculpture at a given epoch. But, to deliberately produce such a cadaver in marble, and sell it, perhaps, is proof of the work- ings of a mind tainted with sadism. Fig. 12 is another Rodin specimen. This photograph was bought in a public photo store in Paris. To make such a thing for a study for some other complete work, and then smash it, is done by all sane sculptors; but to have it photographed, and the photos sold, publicly, shows that Rodin had a degenerate mind, and a soul steeped in sadism. But the most senile example of Rodin’s sadism is “Doing the Split,” Fig. 13. Reader, study this carefully. Did anyone, before this, ever make so insane a “deformation of the form” — Rodin’s recipe for producing g-r-e-a-t style in sculpture! Here we have monstrositation with a vengeance, ending in a mutilation of the body of poor woman— ^ever the object of these attacks by sadists, and in this case, resulting in a “prize-piece” of sadism in art.

Cezanne was also tainted with sadism, perhaps through no fault of his own. Notice, first of all, his own “Portrait by himself,” Fig. 14. Then look at his photograph. Fig. 15. Is there any resemblance between the two? The so-called “Portrait of himself,” by himself, shows morbidity, an urge toward self-mutilation, which is a form of masochism, and

GREAT WORKS OF ART

his photograph reveals, to the skilled physiognomist, indica- tions of a nature at once fierce, violent, and unbalanced, as is testified to by his biographer, Vollard, who, on page 5 of his notorious propaganda-biography, says:

But in spite of his nature violent and sensitive to excess, etc., which all his stuff shows, and manifests.

Now, notice his "Temptation of St. Anthony,” Fig. 16. Notice the distortion and partial mutilation of the bodies. Finally notice the "Landscape in Provence,” Fig. 17. We know Provence well enough to say that no such mutilated landscape exists there. It is a glaring proof of Cezanne’s penchant to mutilate, which we find throughout his work, and is an insult to nature.

It may be said, that these are extreme examples of his mutilation of nature’s forms. Granted! But, a cursory examination of all of his works will show therein a general tendency towards mutilation : either by commission or omission. And that he seems to have been a sex-pervert seems probable when we study his many, more or less vulgar, nude studies and pictures, especially his "The New Olympia,” and "The Strug- gle,” in the sumptuous volume on "Cezanne," by the Paris art-dealer, Ambroise Vollard, written apparently to boost the prices of his "collection” of Cezanne’s works — in order to un- load them, at gigantic profits, on those American collectors who have lost their sense of discrimination, and have developed a weakness for succumbing to the cynical, weasel-propaganda conducted by the masters of the art-world of today, the astute dealers in art — instead of going to the artists direct, and buying what truly appeals to them and emotions their own soul. And then these dealers — through some of these bimcoed collectors — will either easily inflict these sadistic atrocities on some of our art museums, or jimmy them in through "influence,” or by browbeating some poor director, who is powerless to protect the public against the hanging of these things in the great museum over which he presides.

These two leaders in the production of sadistic art, Rodin and Cezanne, have had numerous followers. Among these are also active sex-perverts and sadistic artists, as well as others who are not so glaringly tainted; because sadism in art, after its initiation by Rodin and Cezanne, soon became suf-

Fio. 21 . BY Matisse.

PORTR.VIT.

A charlatan specimen of “deformation of the form.”

A charlatan “deformation of the form’' worthy only of a maniac suffering from sym- bolic sadism.

Fig. 22. BY Matisse.

Back of a Woman.

A sample of symbolic sadism m sculp- ture. Note the cabalistic mutilation of the figure.

Fig. 23,

Subject and Artist Unknown.

A shining e.xample of symbolic sadistic muti- lation of a human body, in painting.

INTRODUCTION

ficiently widespread as a cult — thanks to the growing pessimism and unrest, after 1880— to make it pay to produce it. The story is too long to tell. Many of the producers of sadist art are unconsciously sadists. For they, inwardly, laugh while producing it ; but the sadist stigma is, nevertheless, upon their souls. But, being unfortunate Bohemians, needing money, and sadistic art being easy to produce, they “fake it up” and palm it off — on those moneyed morons who are really tainted with incipient sadism, and who deeply, or only vaguely, appreciate it, and upon the others who merely speculate in it. Were these fabricators not tainted with the malady of sadism they would not parasite on mankind— by producing it.

It is those who, like Rodin and Cezanne, produced sadistic art by predilection, and those who are sufficiently tainted to genuinely and actively appreciate it, who are included among the active, dangerous sadistic influences in the world of art.

Then we come to Van Gogh, who cut off his own ear and sent it to his mistress, and who died insane. In Fig. 18, a “Self-portrait,” he shows a distortion of his own head amount- ing to sadistic mutilation. His malady was a combination of sadism and masochism.

Then we have another victim, Gaugin. Fig. 19 shows sadistic malformation of the human form.

All of these mutilators of nature’s masterpiece were more or less immoral men, and showed more or less signs of insanity before they died. None of them had a single respectable mes- sage for mankind — outside of some technical fol-de-rol. Not one of them contributed an iota of inspiring beauty capable of lifting men above the merely carnal. Then why should men, above all Americans, pay the slightest attention to them, to the inevitable detriment of American art and life?

Among the living producers of mutilated, sadistic art, we will n am e only one — Matisse, one of the earliest fabricators of such perverted stuff, and who poses both as a painter and a sculptor, if you please. Fig. 20 shows “Woman Seated,” show- ing deliberate malformation. But the “fine fleur” of sadistic mutilation is shown in his “Portrait,” Fig. 21. Then notice the riot of mutilation in his “Back of a Woman,” Fig. 22. Note the deliberate mutilation of the female body. Remember most ac- tive sadists in life are men, and their victims always women.

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In Fig. 23, by a sadistic “Master” in art, we have the bodies of two women chopped up in the most approved sadistic fashion. Subject and “artist” imknown to us.

We do not mean even to suggest that any of these “artists” would chop up a live woman. They may be mere jocose charlatans, having fun “putting over” their fabrications of this art-junk on such moron rich as do not know what to do with their money and have fxm in throwing it away, and who have been “propagandized” by the corrupting art traffickers of Europe and buncoed to believe that this sadistic art has a “great future!” But we do think they have been too busy in New York — for the moral health of America, their works having come here via Paris, where they were highly eulogized by some degenerate “appreciators” of symbolic sadism in art or by bribed Bohemian penny-a-liners, who are re-echoed here by our sterile intelligentsia, and we resent their efforts to graft their upas-art upon our own, still sane, school of art.

Among the artists, suffering from this malady of subconscious sadism, it manifests itself, we repeat, either consciously or un- consciously by symbolic sadism in their art, as in the examples furnished by all of the leaders in the propagation of the cult.

There are other living and still more lunatic sadistic artists, both men and women, whom we might name and whose works we might illustrate. But for obvious reasons of police regula- tions we refrain.

We now offer illustrations of savage, negro art, which has of late been “honored,” even by exhibition in our museums, and eulogized, by demented victims of subconscious sadism, as “splendid” and “inspiring” examples of “abstract art” all showing mutilations or grotesque distortions — either by omission or commission — of the human form; see Fig. 24. Reader, is not the public exhibition and eulogy of such bar- baric art an evidence of the semi-dementia of those who are capable of such childish folly?

But there is a still more pernicious class of victims of this virus of sadism in art which, like pellagra, has silently spread through certain strata of our so-called “intelligentsia,” and in which “high-brow” strata also wriggle, cheek by jowl, all sorts of “intellectual” flotsam and jetsam, such as is always upheaved by the overheated civilization of our overcrowded

INTRODUCTION

capitals. We refer to those writers who foist upon the public pretentions, esoteric books, in which — ^as “appreciators,” or as critic-collectors — they eulogize this sadistic art. Claim- ing with nauseating, pontifical vocabulary to be the final arbiters of what is great and worthy in art, they eulogize this sadistic art, and so bewilder and mislead the public, all in an effort to unload their art -junk — ^at a smart profit! Truly they are a calamity. One of these, an adventurer in book making, who, after eulogizing, with a cunning that is almost sure to convince the rich morons, but which to us is silliness incarnate, says, in a book we will not name :

Out of the seething conflict of forces good is sure to come; the amoxmt of good depending directly upon the sharpness of the con- flict;

this being the usual apology of those wishing to bunco the public with sham art — the good it will do ! This refers to the various forms of symbolic sadism in art one finds among the fifty or more “isms” that have been advocated by their creators during this generation in the maltreated world of art.

Then there is Mr. Clive Bell, who also “fell,” sincerely or fraudulently, for the sadistic art of Cezanne, Gaugin, Van Gogh & Co., and who, in his book, “Art,” makes himself mysterious and ridiculous by saying that “Significant Form” is the essence of all art worthy of the name, and then offers, as an example, what looks Hke a woman chopped up into abstract form, Fig. 25 -

Finally, we have Mr. Roger Fry, who in his pontifical “Vision and Design” seems to prove that he also is a victim of the pest of symbolic sadism in art. For not only does he follow Mr. Bell, in his admiration for mutilated art, while admitting he does not quite understand Mr. Bell’s ipsi dixit of “significant form,” but he frankly admits he is an art “collector,” and illustrates two of his “treasures” in his book. We illustrate one of these. Fig. 26. Reader, please examine this, and remember Mr. Fry eulogizes this chopped-up poor female head as a great work of art — if not in so many words, then by implication. For us, it is a frank piece of s3anbolic sadism in art, worthy only of an insane artist, and not as good as some, by far, that we have seen, made'in asylums by maniacs. (See Appendix.)

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And it is men like these who, because they write in a “per- sonal style,” by some strange hocus-pocus, succeed in forcing their way into the newspapers, magazines, and libraries, where they increase the number of those smitten by this sadistic and masochistic tendency, and who dole out their degenerating poisonous eulogy of this degenerating junk, with a cimning casuistry and chaos-producing cynicism that is justified only if you look at the world as an Alexandrian lupanar, and life therein as naught but a libidinous song and dance !

There remains only to be said: that all forms of over- abstraction in art — amounting to mutilation — and which have only since about 1870 been presented to the public as “pictures" and “statues,” and which are presented as representations of something, but generally tmder false and misleading titles, all of these fall into the category of sadistic art ; and those who really appreciate such art, and buy it — only because they really do admire it — such people may be sure they are victims of an art-cholera which, originally engendered by partially or wholly demented sex-perverts, has insidiously worked its way through certain strata of our society, like an invisible plague, becloud- ing the mind and debasing the soul, until the ^mhappy victims are powerless to discriminate between what is good or bad, sane or insane in art, but who might possibly, if they are not too hopelessly degenerate, be aroused back to common-sense in art by a careful perusal of the police-reports as to the alarm- ing increase, in this coimtry, of all forms of really criminal sadism and masochism in our life, the indirect result of the increase in the production, the exhibition and the cimning eulogy of sadistic art: in which is prominently displayed a tendency to mutilate the body, especially of women, by de- mented male voluptuaries, who are encouraged and urged on by the deforming power of the force of suggestion in all these, more or less revolting, examples of sadism in art, when paraded and eulogized in our press, in our commercial art galleries, and even in some of our museums!

The nearest historical parallel to modernistic sadism in art is probably that of the Roman Emperor Nero. When we read Suetonius’s “History of Twelve Caesars” and ponder over the revelati®ns he makes in his sketch of Nero, in sections 28, 29, 35 (translated by P. Holland : Dutton & Co., N. Y.), we are amazed.

INTRODUCTION

Nero’s chief intellectual ambition was to be recognized as an artist, as a musician, poet, actor, and charioteer. Aside from that, he was a combination of fox, hyena, and hog. The atrocities he committed were so manifold, so degraded, so sadistic that, if we printed them here, we would be accused of sensationalism. However, Suetonius records that :

Besides Octaria, he married two wives, to wit, Poppasa Sabina, then Statilia Messalina. . . . Soon weary he was of Octavia’s company and forsook her bed. . . . Soon after, when he had es- sayed many times to strangle her, but in vain, he put her away, pretending she was barren. . . . The twelfth day after the said divorcement of Octavia he espoused and married the aforesaid dame Poppzea, whom he loved entirely; and yet, even her also he killed, with a kick of his heel, for that, being big with child and sickly withal, she had reviled him and given him shrewd words for coming home so late one night after his running with chariots.

When we then read, in section 34, of the various fantastic attempts he made to kill his own mother, because she had chided him for his monstrosities, we are amazed at the depth of depravity to which a man can fall who is only half-insane. Says Suetonius:

Worse matter yet than all this and more horrible, is reported besides, and that by authors of good credit who will stand for it; namely, that he ran in all haste to view the dead body of his mother when she was killed, that he handled every part and member of it, found fault with some and commended others, and being thirsty in the meantime took a draught of drink.

If only half of what Suetonius records of Nero is true, he was ideally equipped for the rdle of a modernistic sadist in art: a tendency to mutilate what we love, or have loved.

The enormous sham and humbug of Nero’s art, the great claims he made for it, were identical with the claims made for their art by the modernistic producers and protagonizers of sadistic art. His desperate attempts to destroy everything that had preceded him, even to setting fire to Rome, and play- ing the harp while the city was burning ; his futile attempt to re-name the city “Neropolis” ; his killing and making way with judges in art-contests into which he entered with professionals; his removing by dagger and poisons of such rivals as he feared; his killin g one wife about to give him a child ; and his mutilating the body of his own mother — after having her murdered, prove

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that he was the high-priest of sadism — both in life and art — in history.

In reality, as far as artistry is concerned, Nero was the apotheosis of impotence. He knew it. But he wished to pose as a great artist, the penetration of Greek art into Rome having made the patronage of fine art “fashionable.” To succeed, he had to remove this judge, browbeat that one, and do away with dangerous rivals by murder, exile, or incarcera- tion, in order to win prizes ! All these methods were charlatan- istic, and are in vogue today in the art world, though in a modified form. In his utter lack of the creative instinct, in his colossal ego-mania and vulgarity, he more than rivalled the most brilliant stars of the sadist cult of today.

Thus he perpetrated and propagandized inferior and incom- petent art ; and, worst of all, indicated to apt pupils the best means for propagating this impotency throughout the Roman world of art, as well as of life. For the manifesting and the tolerating of incompetency in art drags in its train the same sort of impotency in industry, and then in daily living.

Hence, it is safe to say that the real d4b^cle of the Roman Empire began with Nero in his mutilation of things in art and in life — in sadism.

But it is the peculiar distinction of the present-day sadism in art that it is the first time in the history of the race that sadism has become an original Cult, with a system of propa- ganda; established societies in Europe; and a definite litera- ture!

What is the reason for this? Has the human race become so degraded that, for the first time in history, it presents the conditions favorable for such an unspeakable debauchery? Is it a reaction from the hideous negation of beauty, bom of modem industrial science? Or is it the revolt of an impotence, issuing from a paralysis of the creative instinct? Certain it is, that a consciousness of impotence breeds a hatred of all that is creative. It leads directly to a rebellion against the whole cosmic process of the Universe. The impotent are infected with a powerful aversion to all organization, to all natural functions of the human body. Consequently, the different forms of sex-perversion present the available means for the negation of those natural functions, through a substitution of

INTRODUCTION

imnatural practices. When transferred from the sphere of real life to that of symbolic art, we have all sorts of degeneracy and aberration.

Engendered by Nero, latterly resurrected by J. J. Rousseau, taken up by Rodin, Cezanne, and their fellow-victims, it climaxed, about 1865, in this pearl of aesthetic idiocy:

The pursuit of the beautiful in art is an antique fad; the artist should not seek beauty; but, choosing any subject, noble or ignoble, he should express its character in a personal technique. See “ LTm- pressionism, son Histoire, son Esthetique, ses Maitres,” by Camille Mauclair, 1904, pages 36-40.

The flatmting of this impudent dogma in the face of man- kind, was a calamitous crime against civilization, the enor- mity of which will best be realized when we reflect: that the creation of the Beautiful is the divine prupose of God, or of the Cosmic purpose of Nature; is the universal law; and the deliberate violation of which is, in the final analysis, the un- pardonable sin.

They did not know it was a calamitous confession of impo- tence, of exhaustion, above all of a degenerative, spiritual pessimism, engendered by a lot of men who were either bom and raised, or imbibed their ideals of life and art, in the lowest slums of Paris, in which neiurosis and rebellion perpetually float in the air.

This fundamental spiritual fatigue and intellectual im- potence is proven by the fact that these modernists have, alto- gether, not produced a single great work of art — with the exception of a few busts and trifles — which will not be looked upon with more or less derision when the world gets back to real moral and intellectual health and normality.

That this disease of sadism in art has invaded America to a surprising extent, can also be learned from a perusal of the score or more of magazines sold at our subway stands making an appeal to, and cynically calculated to develop, a perverted sex- instinct in our coimtry, and which can have but one result— the spread of sadism, in both life and art.

In this age of camouflage, every sort of poisonous, seditious propaganda of psychopathic sex-perversion, and campaigns for the undermining of American institutions, are masquerad- ing in the guise of silly pacifism, pseudo-altruism, appeals for

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“Liberty” (but meaning license), or new, and ever new, ctdts in the arts, each more inept than the last.

Fortunately, there are signs that the American people are awaking to this state of affairs, and that the broods of native traitors, corrupted by foreign enemies, all emasculated eunuchs, subterranean sex-perverts, hiding behind smoke-screens of pretended altruism and uplift, will be smoked out of their caves and lined up to be known for what they are.

It is true, that London has been the centre of finance ; but Paris has been, and is, the centre of civilization, refinement, elegance, and beauty, in spite of its purlieus and slums. Every city is like a ship which has barnacles attached to it. Because humanity, like the sea, engenders its parasitic barnacles, its flotsam and jetsam. Hence, the larger the ship, and the larger the city, the more barnacles will we find on its bottom, carrying on a meaningless, ignoble existence, no one knows why, retarding the progress of the race, and good only to serve as manure for a cabbage garden. We find such human vermin in New York, and London, as well as in Paris. Only, Paris — having its world-wide reputation for refinement, brilliance and beauty, created by its great and highly civilized citizens of the past — attracts, not only the cultirred people of the earth, but also the vilest riff-raff, to a greater extent that any other city. For does any one suppose that the scoundrels, thieves, and prostitutes, of all shades and grades, and degenerates of all kinds, nemotics of genius, pathological mystics, charlatan gamblers, and sadistic mongrels, are not also attracted by the world-wide primacy of Paris in beauty and gayety, for which Victor Hugo rightly dubbed Paris ‘ ‘ The Capital of the World ’ ’ ? On the contrary, these are the human misfits which imerringly gravitate to Paris, preferring to invade the most cifitivated spot in the world to any other — so long as they feel they can squeeze into its crowds and, like all parasites, refuse to contribute their share of the doing of social chores. That is why they form a pest, which the real men are tmceasingly forced to hold in check as best they can. But, the greater a city, the finer its life and beauty, the more difficult is it to keep the pest within bounds.

Since Paris is the “City of Light” and the “Capital of the World,” every philosophic man of the world feels that every man of culture should contribute his help to keeping this

INTRODUCTION

World-Capital as free from being the source of moral degenera- tion as possible, especially in view of the fact that the strong men of Paris — its great and truly enlightened bourgeois, whom even the eccentric Baudelaire called “the salt of the earth” — are always doing all they can to sweep back this invading vermin, much of which helps to crush still lower the under class and to brutalize it and, so, to increase the victims of a pathological neurosis which, when coupled with mental genius, becomes formidable, even mystic, in its cruelty, diabolism, and sadistic degeneracy. It was Carlyle who wrote :

Truth ! I cried, though the heavens crush me in following her. N o falsehood, though a celestial lubberland were the price of apostacy !

In this apostrophe he made, perhaps, the most important statement of his life. But, apparently, it has ceased to ring in the ears of mankind. For never since his time and epoch, which produced such seekers after truth as Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall and Darwin in the English-speaking world, has there been, we will not say a preference for falsehood, but such indifference to the truth, in life and art. People seem to have heard of the clever remark, made by that old Greek philosopher, Democritus, nearly 500 B.c.

Truth lies at the bottom of a well !

And they seem to have said: “Since that is true, why bother about truth?” For, how else are we to accoimt for the great number of “isms” and “cults,” some silly, others satanic, which find either amused or demented devotees? But Democ- ritus was wrong, as most metaphysicians are.

And here we wish to give a gentle admonition to all meta- physicians :

Leave ^Esthetics alone!

Metaphysicians, as a class, are bom with a penchant for building mystic philosophic systems, as children pile up picture blocks, and they usually lose themselves in a jimgle of transcen- dental verbal speculations, in which, like a spider in a forest, they spin webs of esoteric ratiocination, utterly useless to mankind except as mental gymnastics: to enable men to ac- quire the power to analyze human speculation and which in the end destroys metaphysics, as a practical human asset. A brilliant example of this was furnished by poor Bishop Berkley who, in his early manhood, proved to himself that :

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The material world does not exist, outside of oim own minds. But, later in life, he came back to earth and common-sense, and said:

Metaphysics corrupts the religious spirit, destroys faith, and petrifies the mind.

We will not follow him quite that far. But the world of philosophy is strewn with exploded metaphysical systems, erected in the hope of finding the Absolute, which is as futile a search as the finite trying to comprehend the infinite, and which made the late Anatole France ridicule the whole tribe of metaphysicians. In this he was but echoing Voltaire, one of the greatest minds of the past.

Nitze and Dargon, in their “History of French Literatme,” say:

Indeed, Voltaire’s great contention is: that Metaphysical thought leads nowhere. He occasionally admits, though he never feels, that it may have a certain value as a mental g3nnnastic and even as a means of spiritual elevation. But he scorns the great philosophers, those “romancers of the soul,’’ from Plato to Des- cartes, and he insists that we can never know the truth about the chief Metaphysical problems.

As long as these fine gentlemen confine themselves to metaphysics proper, we reverence them; for the search after the ultimate is the noblest “game” on earth. But when they enter the world of concrete art, and mix Metaphysics with ^Esthetics, then they make the judicious grieve. For how true are the lines with which Veron opens his, generally sound, “L’Esthetique”:

There is no science which has been more subjected to the rever- ies of metaphysicians than aesthetics. From Plato down to the official doctrines of our day, they have made of art, I hardly know what sort of amalgamation of quintessential phantasies and of transcendental mysteries, which find their supreme expression in the conception of that Ideal Beauty, immutable and divine pro- tot5q)e of real things. It is against this chimerical ontology that we shall try to react.

There is enough truth in this attack on transcendental aesthetics, by Veron, to suggest to the metaphysicians to keep their hands off of aesthetics and art, even though Veron was inspired to write his book to help destroy the French Academy because most of its members, in his day, leaned towards the

INTRODUCTION

point of view that an un -aristocratic democracy can never foster the creation of great art, in which they were not far wrong.

For nearly a thousand years, from 500 B.c. to the end of the Roman Empire, Greece was the source in the world whence original ideas — viable and fallacious — welled up. After the “mediaeval night,” France became the orginatrice of new ideas — sane and insane — and Paris earned the sobriquet of “La Vdle Lumiere” — “The City of Light.” So that even Dante went to school in Paris, in the 14th century.

Ever since, Paris has influenced the thought of the world, more than any other city. Even the basic thoughts of the Constitution of the United States are largely French — barring the first ten Amendments, which are a resume of the English “Bill of Rights.” Americans, above all, are more swayed in their superficial actions by what the Parisians think and do, than by the “morale” of any other city. Which perhaps helped Guizot to the conclusion :

French civilization has shown itself more active, much more con- tagious, than that of every other country.

Paris passes through periodical crises of optimism and pes- simism, of varied length of duration. A pessimistic state of mind reigned there during the entire last half of the 19th century, at least among many superficially clever and brilliant circles. This pessimism seems to have radiated over the western peoples, affecting not all but many, and made them mentally so fatigued and spiritually listless, that the weirdest swami-nonsense from mystic India, and the most sodomic notions of Neronic Rome, found, and still find, an easy lodgment in the souls of some, and in the languid, tolerant, blase minds of other members of our own real, as well as of our sham, intelligentsia.

That weak people should become mentally languid after a century of battling for the truth, is natural. But the strong, knowing that the truth is not “at the bottom of a well,” but on the motmtain tops, should find inspiration again in the thought of Bacon ;

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage- ground of truth — a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene — and to see the error and wanderings and mists and tempests in the vale below.

They should take pride in gathering up their loins once

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again, in response to this thought of Bacon, were it only in the feeling that it is more sublime to bum out than to rot out! And the leaders of the race should ever impress the average man with this : that there is no game or sport half so fascinating as the pursuit of truth, since tmth is the basis of everything that man hopes to make endure.

By doing this, they will at least establish in men enough contempt for falsehoods, and the even more dangerous half- tmths, which Tennyson flayed; so that, by degrees, the danger- ous indifference to truth and logic, now prevalent in the world of art, as well as in some other fields of human activity, will be reduced to a minimum.

Moreover, pessimistic indifference to tmth develops an incapacity for making discriminations, the most necessary of all intellectual functions. This pleases all those who prey on mankind, in every field of activity, above all in those fields where taste and feeling are our main guides — in the various arts.

Finally, the public should reflect over the sacredness of the Human Body. Novalis said:

There is but one temple in the world, and that temple is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men, is reverence to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay hands on a human body!

This Hellenic thought, uttered by a German poet of the, i8th century, should be graven in every public building, court, and cathedral. For the contempt shown for this, the highest and most beautiful form, has, in the last century, been carried to a degree vmworthy even of barbarians. So that a mania for the brutal mutilation of that body, not only objectively in life, but subjectively in art, has grown to such an extent as to be amazing.

This dangerous sadistic mania, and its kindred manifesta- tions, can only be checked and held in bounds, by publicity and facts. And we trast the Reader will accept our asstirance that we are aiming only to help to stem a wave of degeneration, coming from abroad, which is a menace to our country and to western civilization.

Our task now will be : to attempt to show what, in the judg- ment of the wisest men of the past, should be the meaning of the words Art, Beauty, Style, Manner, etc., and what makes a work of art truly great, merely clever, or trivial, or degenerate.

CHAPTER I

WHAT IS ART?

Section One

Origimlly published in the October, 19x6, issue of "The Art World,’’ corrected

and amplified.

At present, when the inquiring public, which pays for works of art, enters the gates of the art world, in search of knowledge, it becomes bewildered by the anarchy it finds there.

In order to know how to thread its way through this miserable confusion, in its effort to obtain sound notions as to what constitutes enduring art, the only sort worthy of being paid for by public savings and taxes, the first thing the public must know is: That there is no more distressing impertinence in life than the criticizing of art, above all adversely, by a man who has not a well-defined standard, by which to judge a work of art. And how few, even among artists and critics, have even so much as a sane, not to speak of an invidnerable, definition of art? How unlike a banker, who judges a gold dollar by a clear and fixed standard!

Tolstoy spent, he said, twelve years in writing his book, “What is Art ? ” and he came near answering it correctly. He doubly spoiled his job by assuming that a moujik can appre- ciate every great work of art as well as a master and a man of aesthetic culture. By this sort of mental bias, moral and im- moral excessivism, and slipshod thinking, the anarchy in the world of art has been propagated, imtil that field of human endeavor is no longer one of unalloyed joy.

The anarchy in the intellectual world began to end when Bacon substituted inductive for deductive reasoning, common- sense for cryptic ratiocination. He insisted that we begin, in our reasoning, at the bottom of things, and reason up to

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God, instead of the reverse. And Kant destroyed the anarchy in the moral world when, out of the muck of speculation, he drew his common-sense “Categorical Imperative”:

Act so that your action may be made the standard of universal action!

And the world of art will never be purged of its anarchy until we use Baconian common-sense: go first to the bottom, find the broadest foundation, and build up from there — to find an invulnerable Definition of art.

What do we mean by the word — Art? What does the word really mean to you. Reader? That is a question every man should answer to himself, since the word. Art, is the most important word of all from the standpoint of a refined state of civilisation. The word has been used to designate everything under the sim, from “The Art of Poetry” to “The Art of Goose Washing”; from “The Art of Living” to “The Art of Dying”! From time immemorial the plain citizen, when he spoke of a work of art, meant a picttire, or a statue; an opera or a poem, etc. Hence, it seems charlatanistic to have Havelock Ellis say:

Art is the siun of aU the active energies of mankind.

And to have him quote Prof. Santayana:

In a thoroughly humanized society everything — clothes, speech, manners, government — is a work of art.

When thought becomes as “broad” as this, it becomes a species of shallow, misleading, confusing, intellectual pirouet- ting, devoid of all helpful discrimination. As the French say: “Qui trop embrasse mal etreint” — “He who embraces too much embraces badly.” We will therefore confine ourselves to searching for a definition of a work of art, such as may be embraced in the Eight Fine Arts.

Plato confounded beauty with art; hundreds of imitative writers did the same after him. Moreover, in all ages in all countries, there have been profoundly selfish men, crooks and charlatans, in religion, politics, trade, and art, all hating clear, sound definitions of things. Why? Because they impeded their games of “bxmcoing” their fellow-men, to exploit them in one way or another. That is why every strong government fixes a definition, a “standard,” for a “dollar,” for a “pound,” and for a “bushel.” Should a banker be approached for a

WHAT IS ART?

loan, the conversation would soon end if he had the slightest inkling that the borrower had a definition of a “dollar,” “pound,” or “franc” different from that which is accepted and prevails in the world of money. Therefore, the greatest minds in history have eagerly sought exact definitions of every con- crete thing as well as of every abstract concept.

One of the main reasons why Socrates lost his life was because of his persistent nagging of his fellow-citizens to define their terms, in order to force them to clarify their thoughts. The Athenians, for this and other reasons, finally made him drink the cup of hemlock. All the same, the stamping of the Athenian “drachma” with a fixed value, a fixed definition, helped along the commercial supremacy of Athens. Plato and Aristotle also eagerly sought definitions. Cicero said :

Every investigation which is rationally undertaken, concerning any subject, ought to start out with a definition, so that it may be understood what is the subject of discussion.

The importance of definitions became recognized more and more across the centuries. In France the French Academy was created by Richelieu, in 1635. Its chief work has been to find a clear, fixed definition for every word in the French language; and, up to date, its “Forty Immortals” have finished with only about half of those words. If in 250 years more, they finish the whole vocabulary, they will have been at work 500 years — making definitions!

Voltaire said :

If you wish to converse with me, define your terms !

In fact, to define a thing, is to give it a separate existence in nature. It lifts it out of the unknown and the misunderstood. Hence, Taine was correct when he said :

There is no activity more fecund in universal and capital con- sequences than that of making definitions.

But, definitions of art-terms must be made, not to bolster up any pet theory of art, to serve some selfish and often cor- rupting end, as so many art charlatans have done. A definition must be made only with the highest interest of the race con- stantly in view. And, therefore, as D’Alembert well said, it must be “clear, universal, and particular”; that is: inclusive of the particular as well as of the general. Moreover, definition is the mortal enemy of that often misleading pest, ambiguity.

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And yet there have always been men who coined phrases that could be used by fools and crooks in their war on all definitions.

Erasmus said: “All definitions are imfortunate.” What he meant by that, no doubt, was that they were unsatisfactory to him. No doubt he belonged to those tough-willed philosophers of whom Bacon said, “they quarrelled over the meaning of terms for a thousand years, hence philosophy made no prog- ress” — this, no doubt, because each stiff-necked old thinker would not agree to the other fellow’s definition, because, through vanity, he wanted his own to prevail; and they could not be made to come to an agreement by public opinion because they had no printed periodicals in which to wage their verbal battles, and to appeal to the great public for a verdict, as we are going to do, in this chapter.

No formulated definitions of art have come down to us from the Greeks. They did not need them. But that there must have been many efforts made to define art during the six centuries following Phidias seems certain. For Plotinus, the Alexandrian philosopher (205-270 A.D.), made a remark that has been often quoted by the enemies of definitions of art-terms ;

Art deals with things forever beyond human definition.

Henry E. Abbey copied this, in huge, gilt letters, in a “lunette,” in the dome of the Capitol, at Harrisburg, Pa. It was a silly thing to do. For art had been successfully defined, by at least two men, before he committed his little folly. For Plotinus was a Neo-Platonist, writing 700 years after Plato, and in Rome during its decadence, and he was, like Plato, a transcendental metaphysician, only more so, who had never learned to reason inductively. Of him says Havelock Ellis, in his “The Dance of Life”:

Plotinus seems to have had little interest in art, as commonly understood, and he was an impatient, rapid, and disorderly writer, not even troubling to spell correctly. All his art was in the spiritual sphere. It is impossible to separate Mslhetics, as he understood it, from ethics and religion. (Italics ours.)

No wonder he coxdd not see how art cotdd be defined. When you include ethics, religion, life, in your conception of what art is, then Heaven itself cannot define it. The Renais- sance also failed to formulate a generally acceptable definition of art.

WHAT IS ART?

4 *

The first — but unsuccessful — attempt to define art, as far as we know, was made by Bacon, which we will analyze pres- ently. Not until Baumgarten issued his “.^Esthetics,” in Germany, in 1750, had serious efforts been made to find a final definition of art. Most of those that had been made were illogical and not based on common-sense, hence jeered at. In spite of the jeering, which so many artists latmch at a new definition of art, instead of helping to define it, we notice that it is true, as Tolstoy said:

Every charlatan artist, when he invents a new fad in art, also trots out a private definition of his own — to justify that fad.

The philosophers and metaphysicians have not only failed to give us a clear, logical, and invulnerable definition of art, but they have so confused the whole subject by a jungle of esoteric, often contradictory, and sometimes incomprehen- sible, jargon, that the artists themselves must work out a definition, that will, of necessity, have to be accepted by all normal thinking and feeling men, free from jealousy. We are going to try to find such a definition. We will first of all examine some untenable definitions, then some that are good — as far as they go — and then give our own. And, as this is the most important matter, today, before the world of art, the reader will have to be patient to the end.

Art may be looked at from two rational standpoints :

First : as a Process; an activity, or a method, as artistry, or as a way of doing things.

Second; it may be looked at from the standpoint of a Product; the result of an artist’s handling of a certain process, or method, artistry, or craftsmanship, or a way of doing things — which four synonyms mean the same thing, i.e., a process ending in a product which, when completely finished and signed by the artist, is a thing, which we call A Work of Art, excellent or ridiculous, good or bad.

Therefore, we can define art from the standpoint of a product, a Work of Art, or we can define it from the standpoint of a process, used by an artist to produce a work of art.

Let us now examine some of the fallacious definitions made from the standpoint of art as a process.

Bacon said:

Art is man added to Nature.

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This is a good definition of “style" in art, because that is what style in art is — the addition to nature of man’s rearrange- ments of nature, by adding to her arrangements, or by taking away from them, in his efforts to perfect her arrangements, in which perfecting he sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. But it is absturd as a definition of “art” — that is, fine art — which we usually mean when we use the word art — because, while the addition of man to nature may result in a work of fine art it may also result in a work of industry, from farming to manufacturing steel, and we cannot use one definition to define both “art” and “industry.”

After Bacon, came Goethe. He said:

Art is called art because it is not Nature.

This is also a good enough definition of style in art, because that is what style is — a departure from natirre, from the crass realism of copying nature. It is really a plea for idealism in art ; but it is as much of a failure as a definition of “art ” as is that of Bacon. These two definitions, with the great authority of such names as Bacon and Goethe, false as they are, have done much to confuse the discussion of art, etc., during the last century and a half, since these definitions refer to style in art, which is one element in the process of producing a work of art, in other words: artistry. In fact, many men regard all art only from the standpoint of style. That is : a work that lacks what they think is style, is, for them, not a work of art at all. An utterly false point of view.

Dr. Johnson said:

Art is but the power of doing things which is not taught by nature.

John Stuart Mill said:

Art is but the employment of the powers of nature for an end.

These two definitions are absurd, if they were made to define fine art — Architecture, Drama, Painting, Poetry, Sculp- ture, etc., to name them alphabetically — however applicable they may be to the mechanical arts, or the various activities of man, from farming to navigating the sea.

Coleridge said:

Art is not a thing, it is a way.

This is highly absurd as a definition of fine art. But it is so widely disseminated that, in Arkansas, a negro barber, who has enough skill to be popular, among those who have them-

WHAT IS ART?

selves shaved, will consider himself an “artist” and hang out his sign: “Tonsorial Artist”! Why not? Shaving is not a thing, it is “a way,” a way of doing things. And the “Ton- sorial Artist” has, perhaps, a better way than some other barbers. But his activity, his “art,” ends in nothing but a mess of soap and bits of dead beard and a clean skin on the face of his client. This product may be called a good shave, but scarcely a work of art ! Hence, is it wise to make the bar- ber’s skill, or anyone’s skill, dexterity, or way of doing things, the basis of a definition of art?

The same is true of a cowboy lassoing a steer; or of a bil- liardist making a “run” of lOO points. Both of these occupa- tions require great skill and dexterity, as rare as is found among painters and sculptors in the manipulation of brush and colors, chisel and marble. Cowboys also have “a way,” a way of doing things. But are we going to call cow-roping and cue- pushing art ?

When we talk, or think, of art, with a big “A,” we have, for thousands of years, had in mind the Fine Arts, and usually only such concrete human works as we call pictures and statues, which are things. Why should we now change that mental attitude, that concept of art? Why should we allow a few new-fadists to rush into the limelight and take such evanescent artistic processes as painting and carving and haugh- tily proclaim those processes as the only basis for a definition of art ; to substitute a vanishing process for a concrete thing as a starting point for a true definition, and thus topsy-turvy the processes of thought which had not only always been in vogue, but which we can prove are logical? Shall we allow them to do this, without challenging their right to do so? But this conception, that skill is art, is widely disseminated, even among prominent artists. Says Sir Frederick Leighton :

Art means the power to do; undoubtedly the idea is the source, the Achievement is art.

This is also fallacious as we will see.

A certain class of artists, for private and selfish ends, took these definitions as a cue, which led R. D. W. Stevenson to proclaim the silly slogan :

Technique is Art, and those who are not interested in technique, are not interested in Art !

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We say this is silly because technique is not art, it is only part of a work of art. Technique is an exhibition of mere skill, no more difficult than the skill, or technique, needed to play first-class billiards, or baseball, or to properly drive a mule! Does anyone suppose that any of these things is easy to do, or can be learned, in their deeper mysteries, without a special gift for doing those things supremely well? Only a very rare cowboy knows the technique of “skinning a mule,” but he does not call his sldll, art I

We can best see the childishness of all of these definitions of art — as a process, or activity — by applying to them the reductio ad absurdum thus: It may take “art,” or skill, to make a machine, but a machine is not a work of art, it is a mechanical contrivance. It may take “art,” skill, to properly shave a man, but a negro barber’s shave is not a thing, not a work of art, it is but “a way” of doing things. It may take wonderful skill, or “art,” to make a “rtm” of loo points at billiards, but such a “run” is not a work of art, it is merely clever billiard playing — “o way” of doing things.

Every human activity, from driving a nail to driving a loco- motive, can be raised from a bungling into an “art,” as a process. If that is what you mean by art, let us define it thus :

Every simple human activity becomes an “art” in ratio of the degree of quick perception, sound judgment, unfailing memory, rapid decision, and dexterity of hand necessary to obtain results surprisingly above the ordinary.

But such a definition cannot apply to a concrete thing, a picture or statue, it can apply only to processes, which may or may not end in concrete things.

Tolstoy also fell into the error of making a formula which makes of art an activity — a process:

Art is a hiunan activity, consisting in this, that one person con- sciously, by certain external signs, conveys to others feelings he has experienced, and other peoples are affected by these feelings and live them over in themselves. (Italics ours.)

But, supposing a great artist aims to affect our feelings and fails to do so, what then ? Does that failure remove his finished work out of the category of art? Assuredly not.

This definition of Tolstoy is so manifestly inadequate, that one is astonished to see so powerful an artist as Tolstoy

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failing to see the poverty of his definition; and it is rather sad — because he came close to the truth, in his reasoning which led up to his own definition.

His definition is faulty for this reason : Thousands of works of art have been made in which the authors tried hard to “convey to others feelings” which they had experienced, but had Jailed to convey them. How many dramas are put on the stage every year and fall flat, and are taken off in a week! How many plays of Shakespeare fall flat, today, and which, even in his own day, did not “convey to others feelings he had experienced ” ! Are these plays to be taken out of the category of art — because they fail to move us? Of course not! They are still works of art. But they are not popular works of art; they may not be great works of art, but they remain works of art.

Michael Angelo’s nude “Christ,” in the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, in Rome, fills us with derision, so do the “Giants” of Julio Romano, in the palace at Mantua. Does that take them out of the category of art? Not at all. They may not be high art, noble art, or great art, but they belong in the class of human works, things we call works of art. Is a work of art to be taken out of the category of art because it is a bad work of art? Nonsense! A bad man, a crippled man, an insane man, is still a man!

But the silliest definition of art, as an activity or process, is that by Benedetto Croce, the Italian writer.

Croce has been “cutting quite a swath” in philosophic discussions of late years, simply because he has had energy and endurance enough to “make much noise,” as Napoleon sug-

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gested we must do “to be remembered.” He seems to belong to that class of men who are blessed with a vast and tough memory which enables them to recollect nearly ever^dhing they read, like Macaulay, John Jay, and others we could name. This enables them to display their erudition, of which some men are foolishly proud. This impresses a great many men who seem never to have grasped the truth in Longfellow’s fine line :

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.

That is, they fad to see that a man may have a ship-load of knowledge, yet lack in sound judgment.

We do not need, in the world of art, any more cryptic, metaphysical ratiocination, in words and phrases so “high- brow” that the plain citizen cannot make heads or tads out of it, and ends, after listening to, or reading of a mass of it, in turning away from the whole subject, with a feeling of intel- lectual inferiority, or disgust. We have had too much of such esoteric, “swami-nonsense” already. What we do need is clear reasoning, such as anyone can understand, such as one finds in the profound books of Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Taine.

Let us not allow ourselves to be inordmardy impressed and mentally overpowered by a man like Croce, whose chief stock in trade is a barrel of facts, and a well-spring of involved, stylistic, phrases, but who is deficient in sound judgment, which, as Goethe says, “is difiicidt.” It is singular indeed that he shotdd be gudty of a glaring self-contradiction, in a vital matter, in the early pages of his pretentious book, “.^Esthetics, as Science of Expression,” on page 89 of which he says:

For no single definition of a single fact can be given, but there are innumerable [?] definitions of it, according to the cases and the purposes for which they are made.

This is sheer nonsense, which he himself establishes by the fact that he at once runs to definitions himself, and then gives this bizarre definition :

Art is intuition.

which he makes the basis of his work of 500 pages, and which is the most senseless definition of art ever made in any book on -Esthetics. And then he upsets this by saying on page 13:

Art is expression.

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Which is also inadequate.

Not only does Croce define art as “intuition,” but, on page 4, he had already begun making definitions ^id tried also to define “intuition,” thus:

Intuition is the undifferentiated unity of the perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible. In our intuitions we do not oppose ourselves as empirical beings to external reality, but we simply objectify our impressions, whatever they be.

Now, why offer this muddy, cluttered-up sentence, or any other definition, if, as he says, “no single definition of a single fact can be given ” ? Why write his involved book on .i^lsthet- ics at all — if he cannot give definitions such as ordinary normal minds can easily understand, making his work of no use to anybody, except perhaps to a few Ma-jong Mandarins in their “Ivory Towers,” chewing the cud of metaphysical terminology? Why inject this new aesthetic bomb into the world of art? That a scientific thinker, like Spencer, Huxley, and Darwin, should discuss aesthetics and art, yes! But why should a metaphysician discuss them? Metaphysicians have never contributed one iota to the progress of art because of their intervention. They have merely increased the con- fusion. It remains for the artists to clear up this confusion.

On page 7 of his work, Croce begins a confusing talk about “intuition” being “representation,” and vice versa, and on page 8 he says :

Every true intuition or representation is also expression. That which does not objectify itself in expression is not intuition or representation, but sensation and mere natural fact. The spirit only intuites in making, forming, expressing. He who separates in- tuition from expression never succeeds in reuniting them.

Intuitive activity possesses intuitions to the extent that it ex- presses them.

Reader, can you get any meaning from this Zoroastrian paragraph?

Moreover, on page ii he says:

To intuitite is to express ; and nothing else, nothing more, but nothing less than to express.

To us this stuff is mere esoteric verbal junk, and it is against such transcendental verbal “jazz” that Veron so vigorously protests in the very opening paragraph of his clear, limpid book, “Esthetics” (1873), in which one can understand every line from cover to cover, whether we agree witn him always or not, because nowhere is there any obscurity.

But, to the unthinking, as well as to the half-baked, ama- teur dabblers in the art of metaphysical verbal coruscating, this stuff of Croce is great “philosophizing,” and they are overwhelmed into a deep-bending humility by this pontifical, mystical jargon; and, with minds all agape, they, with re- verential wonder, catapult themselves into the conclusion that this man, Croce, must be a powerful prophet, all the more since his brahminical ipsi dixits are embroidered with an impressive mass of real erudition, skillfully handled. But, we repeat, let us not be overwhelmed by this display of erudition — minus judg- ment. Let us consider his statement on page 8 , as above quoted :

Every true intuition or representation is also expression.

Either he deliberately takes that which we ordinary people, since Aristotle, have always called “ait,” and calmly dares to label it “intuition” (which would be impertinence), or he really means “intuition.”

Well, to begin with, there are many concepts as to what “intuition” means, or signifies. Example: In Larousse’s great French Encyclopedia, we find the following definition, or description, of the word “intuition”:

Internal observation, consciousness: It is by intuition that we know ourselves. In the system of Kant, it means : Representa- tion of an object, formed in the mind by sensation. Intellectual intuition. In the system of Schelling, it means: transcendent act, by means of which the mind grasps the absolute in its identity.

According to the doctrines admitted in the official philosophy of France, the intuitive faculties are three in number: consciousness, interior perception, and intuitive reason.

The German philosophers use the word intuition in a much nar- rower sense. Kant used this word only to designate the perception of exterior phenomena, and those forms which we ourselves give to those phenomena, in order to render them intelligible.

We could give other descriptions of the meaning attached to the word intuition, which, like “art,” has never yet been defined to the satisfaction of the majority of “philosophers,” some of whom would do well to carry a hod instead of bom- barding mankind with mystical, semi-insane verbal pyrotech- nics, and some of whom deliberately start a “game in philos- ophy,” by adopting a new definition of some fundamental idea

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as a beginning, which will inevitably mislead any reader who has not the anal3rtical power to destroy this very initial defini- tion, on which the whole work of the would-be philosopher is built up. How silly therefore to make the thing called “in- tuition” — about which the greatest thinkers have differed, and many still differ — the basis, or substance, of a definition of art — the most important thing in aesthetics, even in life ?

Art is intuition. Intuition is art ! ! !

Reader, does this give you anything, or lead you to a peace- ful state of mind as to the real meaning of art ?

The result is, we have a book by H. Wildon Carr, of about 400 pages, in which he tries to expound and explain what Croce really means by “intuition,” etc., but he also fails to make it clear. The same was done by Bosanquet, and others, in lesser treatises.

Thus, because of his vicious ambiguity, Croce will be dis- cussed, and discussion keeps a man in the limelight! We would not be surprised to see spring up “Croce-Clubs,” as their were “Browning-Clubs,” arisen to find out the meaning oi some of Browning’s poems, but which clubs are now dead along with those mystic poems of his that none could imderstand, a fate which, later on, surely awaits Croce’s “.(Esthetics.” For men are too busy to “fool around” very long with something a man did not have mind enough to state in clear and easily tmderstandable terms.

But the poor student will now have to wade through some more futUe volumes — contradictory of other volumes — in his effort to get a clear notion of the fundamentals of art. The mere fact that the various expounders of Croce’s philosophy felt constrained to expound him, proves that he did not state his case clearly, which is proof that he is not a clear thinker, but merely a muddier of the philosophic waters. In fact, the deeper one wades into the aesthetic system of Croce, the more futile it becomes. Had he said: “Intuition is the beginning of art” — it would pass. But to say: “Art Is intuition,” is either stupidity or charlatanism.

Commenting on his system, in “La Vie des Peuples,” a review of Paris, in 1921, Paul Rival says:

With great ingenuity, and force of analysis, M. Croce essays to define the exact limits of art.

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“Art,” says he, “is intuition,” and he considers that intuition is closely synonymous to vision, contemplation, imagination, fantasy, figuration, and representation. Those make quite a lot of syno- n3rms, and the meaning of this intuition can scarcely be precise. It is cm this uncertain term that M. Croce bases his entire system. Fecund system, and which opens unceasingly new views, but which only half persuade the mind. ... I fear, however, that the theory does not offer to the critic a very solid support, and that it will not preserve him from grave errors of judgment. . . .

In spite of its defects the work of M. Croce is a great renewal of interest in aesthetics. It is valuable more because of its negative than because of its positive qualities. It destroys more than it con- structs. (Italics are ours.)

When one reads between the lines of this comment, and bears in mind the great restraint, the ultra polite and Addison- ian manner, used by the French essayists, when they write for the serious “Reviews” of Paris, one recognizes the severity of the condemnation of: “It destroys more than it constructs.”

That is the tragedy of this book, of 500 pages, by a man of immense erudition, a plethora of words of aU shades of mean- ing, but a famine of helpful ideas. And we will quote his own words, on page 78 :

The attempt to keep up with these infinitely varying usages of words leads into a trackless labyrinth of verbalism in which many philosophers and students of art have lost their way.

This describes exactly his own book, and his case — the work of a man with an immense memory, but little wisdom or soimd judgment. In fact we may here once more join with Goethe in saying :

Art is long, life is short, judgment difficult, and opportunity fleeting.

What makes this performance of Croce aU the worse is that he disdains the definition of art by Veron, whose book, “^Esthetics,” is vastly more clear, logical, and constructive than his own.

Moreover, to quote Paul Rival once more:

Also, M. Croce is full of contempt for the journalists and the artists who mix-in with reasoning about art. They are incompetents who lose themselves in the paths recognized long ago by philoso- phers as without issue.

Some impudence this, coming from a metaphysician with

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no constructive genius whatever, and lost in a jungle of verbal eccentricities! Did he ever read the interviews on art with Hollandia by Michael Angelo? And Michael was no incom- petent! And how about Leonardo, Reynolds, Fromentin, Delacroix, Mhlet, and a score of others we could mention? These men were not “incompetents.” Every one of them gave to the world more sound and clear ideas on art, and with infinitely less verbal waste, than did Croce.

Moreover does he imagine that because Rembrandt, Rubens, and Titian did not go into print, that they cotdd not have written profoundly on aesthetics, and yet remained great artists? There are various reasons why they did not do so. First, because m their day it was not the custom to rush into print; second, it was too costly; third, those great artists were too busy creating in an age when artists were the companions of kings, and the industrialists were regarded as mere money- muckers.

But the principal reason was that, down to 1850, there was no need of clearing away the chaos in the world of art, because a need did not exist, for the reason that artists, from Phidias down to Couture, looked at art from the same point of view: the creation of a work of art, so sublime as to highly emo- tion the utmost possible number of people, that is, art as a product not as a process, not as original “artistry,” not as a peculiar, personal “way of doing things,” a la Coleridge.

In short, Croce’s performance calls up in our mind a picture of a turbulent, spouting whale, madly plunging over a narrow sandbar into a shallow lagoon, close to the ocean, and there splashing and swashing about, whipping with his tail the water into a foam, killing a few small fish and then sloshing over again, back into the sea, leaving nothing of his behind him but a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, except confusion !

Is he sincere? Or is he one of those bellowing “individual- ists,” smitten with the malady of ego-mania, of which we have had only too many during the last century, and who, to “nm a career,” — any old career that brings them into the “lime- light,” — adopt the Cagliostro spirit and, with a sublime, cynical impertinence, do not hesitate to play football with common-sense by abandoning those few tracks of thinking

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which, for mental stability, must inevitably be followed by the sane part of mankind; and this just to be “different,” like a boy mounting a barrel of potatoes and shouting to “the gang ” : “ Fellers ! Look at me ! ” Or can it be that he is actual- ly suffering from mental strabismus, and cannot reason straight while geysering words! words!! words!!! We will let pos- terity settle that. That we are not alone in becoming exasper- ated with Croce, is proven by this footnote, on page 84, in “The Dance of Life,” by Havelock Ellis:

I have to admit, for myself, that, while admiring the calm breadth of Croce’s wide outlook, it is sometimes my misfortvme, in spite of myself, when I go to his works, to play the part of a Balaam a rebours. I go forth to bless him: and somehow, I curse.

No doubt many others feel likewise.

So much for Croce, and the definitions of art from the standpoint of a process.

The question now is: What does the public think of when we use the word “Art”? It instinctively thinks oi finished products — completed works of art, such concrete things, as statues, paintings, palaces, dramas, etc. ; it never thinks of the “artistry” needful to produce them imtil long after it has been startled and emotioned, by their excellence or stupidity, to remain to study them. Therefore, to choose the process needed to produce a work of art, and then label that process art, instead of taking a completed concrete thing, a work of art and defining that — is nonsense: if done by error, and charla- tanry: if done for a selfish purpose.

The process-worshipping artists, d Voutrance, the devotees of mere artistry, are the modernistic artists of the last fifty years. To these, a work of art is great when it is painted or modelled or rhymed in a certain manner, or way: which they call “great.” So that, in their eyes, every work will be equally great among a hundred which an artist might produce, pro- vided aU of them have the same “greatness” of “a way” of doing things, no matter how ignoble, or insane, how petty and trifling, may be the subject or result of the “way.”

According to this conception, the most idiotic or immoral art-concoction is great art if its “technique,” or craftsman- ship, is, in their eyes, great. Not the character, high or low, of the things, but the “way” the thing is done, cotmts with

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those who accept poor Coleridge’s dictum: “Art is not a thing, it is a way.” We wonder did Carlyle have that bit of non- sense in mind when he decided to write his essay on “Cole- ridge,” in which he “flays him alive”?

The acceptance of this point of view by so many of the short-sighted artists: that the process in a work is aU that counts and not the total quality of all the six elements, Con- ception, Composition, Expression ; Drawing, Color, Technique, which really go to make up a work of art — is the root-cause of the production of so many incomprehensible, degenerate, works of art, some partially, some totally insane, and which has thrown the world of art into a state of bewilderment and chaos, so that, when the great public goes to an exhibition for bread, it is offered mere mush, if not a stone !

The adoption, by painters, of this process definition, in place of the ancient product point of view, means the worship of mere brush work, and a peculiar, personal, ping-ponging of pigment over a canvas, in the domain of picture painting; it is the apotheosis of trivial materialism, instead of sublime spiritualism. And what is true of painting is true of aU the other arts.

One of the latest definitions of art, by modernistic writers, is as follows, by Clive Bell :

These moving combinations and arrangements I have called, for the sake of convenience and for a reason that will appear later, “Significant Form.”

Modernistic art being almost entirely an art of deliberate exaggeration, and deformation, either by an over-simplifica- tion, or an over-exaggeration of the forms of nature, until they look tmnatural, and the result either of incompetence or of a deliberate intention to swindle the public by the most cimning sort of “highbrow” propaganda, originated by the shrewd commercial art dealers of Paris; — this latest definition, made to boom modernistic art, is a private one, a class defini- tion, coming under the condemnation of Tolstoy, that: “When- ever a charlatan artist invents a new art -fad, he also trots out a new definition of art to justify that fad.” It is a definition inspired by a class, in the world of art, who regard mankind as so gullible that they expect to be successful in the most im- pudent campaign ever imagined, as far as history records, to

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make men abandon their fundamental habit of looking for a naturalistic, more or less true, representation of life as it appears to all men who are sane, and to substitute for that natural habit the artificial habit, so appealing to modernists alone, of looking in art for forms that are “created,” “imagined,” “concocted,” and as unnatural, even sadistic, and incomprc’ hensible, as if seen in a drunken dream ! We may analyze this impertinent definition in a later chapter.

What the world of art needs is not our definition of art, nor yours. Reader, but a definition that the majority of normal, sane people will be compelled to accept because it is a true definition, and based on the very nature of man; a definition of art of universal applicability, and covering aU art, even modernistic art, however sane or insane. Let us see if we can find such a definition, limiting our conception of what the word art includes to the eight arts : Architecture, Belles-Lettres, Drama, Landscape-Gardening, Music, Painting, Poetry, Sculp- ture, to name them alphabetically.

Let us first consider four constructive definitions, from the standpoint of art as a product: as a thing, a work of art, and by four well-known writers.

Alfred Stevens, the Belgian painter, said :

Painting is nature seen through an Emotion.

This is a poor formula, but it contains the first suggestion we were able to find — and that not by a befuddled metaphysician , but by an artist — of the underlying element of all art : Emotion.

Delsarte, French musician, teacher, and writer, said;

Art is an Emotion, passed through thought, and fixed in form.

This is, imquestionably, one of the best definitions of art in the abstract — that is, art considered merely as a work of art, indifferent as to whether it is good or bad art. Moreover, it is easily remembered.

Eugene Veron, in his “^Esthetics,” gives another true definition of art in the abstract :

We can therefore, as a general definition, say that art is the mani- festation of an emotion outwardly translated either by a combina- tion of lines, forms, or colors, or by a series of gestures, sounds, or words, subjected to certain rhythms.

As a definition of what art is, in the abstract, it is so true as to final.

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These three definitions of art, by Stevens, Delsarte, and Veron, suggest the most basic, most inclusive, and also the most exclusive, definition of art that can be made, namely :

Art is the Expression, in Some Form, of Human Emotion.

This simple definition includes all works usually placed in the category of Fine Arts. Per contra, it excludes all works whatsoever made by man which are made only for a material use. No matter how complex or wonderful they may be, these cannot be called works of art. No matter how much skill may be required to produce them, they must all be rele- gated to the category of works of industry.

But works of art also have a use, it is true, but only a spiritual, a sublimating use, lifting man above the monotony of material existence, while all human works which have a strictly utilitarian use, from a tin pan to a wonderful watch or radio- machine, hold men down to the earth, away from the realms of the ideal, from the poetic.

Thus we have made two clear distinctions:

First : that art may be looked at as a process; and also,

Second : that art should be defined only from the standpoint of art as a product, i.e.: finished works of art.

We have no hesitancy in saying that we regard the making of these two distinctions, as one of the most fecund contribu- tions ever made to the science of aesthetics. They have never been made before, and will have a far-reaching effect in the future. And the making of these two distinctions alone justi- fies the broadcasting of this book. True, this simple definition that we have made, defines art only in the abstract, it indicates only the basis oi every work of art, however rudimentary, or great.

But while there are works of art in which the artists never thought of doing anything beyond the expression of their own emotions, having been made merely in childishly playing with form, there are other works in which the artists deliberately aimed, above all, at the stirring of the emotions of others, in addition to expressing their own. Some of these works, in both categories, are excellent, others are worthless.

Also, we have works of art in which the artists aimed to arouse the lowest emotions and passions of their fellow-men. Hence, we have good and bad, trivial and great works of art, and even works that are licentious and degenerate.

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The highest interests of the state demand that we dis- criminate between these various works — sort the bad from the good, the trivial from the great — and give to each, as nearly as possible, the place it should, by right, occupy in the hierarchy of art. How can we distinguish the one from the other?

For the highest function of an artist is not merely to express his own emotions in a form that will please merely himself, but in a form that will please his fellow-men, especially in the case of works of art made for the public, at public expense. That is: while the mere expression of human emotion, in some form, constitutes art, the direct route to the creation of works of art of more or less greatness is by means of stirring the emo- tions of others, of mankind.

Tolstoy was the first artist to embody this idea — of convey- ing our emotion to others — in a definition of art :

To call up in oneself a feeling once experienced, and having called it up in oneself by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, images, expressed in words, to so convey this feeling that others ex- perience the same feeling — in this consists the action of art. (Italics ours.)

That is: not only shotdd the artist, we repeat, express his own feelings, but do so in such a form, or manner, that the work of art, when complete, be it a poem or opera, statue or painting, shall also arouse the emotions of others — if possible of mankind. To Tolstoy belongs the credit of being the first man to point out this necessary function of an artist : if he is one who really wished to be even understood, above all if he wishes to be appreciated, as every great artist does. And Tolstoy was, not a metaphysician, but an artist.

The painter Leighton said ;

Art is based on the desire to express and the power to kindle in others, emotions astir in the artist, and latent in those to whom he addresses himself.

And a greater than he, the poet Goethe, said:

The chord that wakes in kindred hearts a tone.

Must first be tuned and vibrate in your own.

CHAPTER II

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Section Two

Originally published in the October, igi6, issue of “The Art World," corrected and

amplified

With this much as a background and foundation to build on, let us now proceed to build up a complete and sound defini- tion of art, one that we believe will not be successfully con- troverted ;

Poe said, in the foreword to his “Eureka”:

To the few who love me and whom I love ... I present this composition as an art product alone: let us say as a romance; or, if it be not urging too lofty a claim, as a poem.

Let us do likewise, above all since the greatest thinkers, since Aristotle, have always regarded art as a product. And let us go to the foundation of things.

We said that the basis of all art is the expression and con- veying of human Emotion. The question now is: What is an Emotion? Let us see if we can find and define it.

No psychologist, biologist, or metaphysician knows, exactly, how we are constituted. Many of them differ about this most important matter. For example: Delsarte the French teacher posits the theory that we are a “Trinity,” and says:

Three expressions are requisite for the formation of the Trinity, each presupposing and implying the other two. There must be ab- solute co-necessity between them. Thus, the three principles of our being, life, mind and soul, form a trinity. Why? Because life and mind are one and the same soul; soul and mind are one and the same life; life and soul are one and the same mind.

But, ever since Plato, the majority of thinkers have divided man into three separate entities. Body, Mind and Soul, Scho- penhauer going even so far as to say that he thought there was

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within him a Minister Intellectual," who brought to him, his Ego, his thoughts and ideas.

Others claim that we are nothing but a machine, in a skin ; containing flesh, bones, and a nervous system, which acts in a certain way, and which they are now trying to ferret out and expose. How difficult this is going to be is shown by this remark of Prof. C. T. Winchester, in his “Principles of Literary Criticism”;

The relation of any physical process, like a nerve change, for in- stance, to a mental concept, is absolutely inconceivable — utterly mysterious and inexplicable.

Moreover, in a paper, read in 1923, before the Heretics’ Club, at Cambridge University, England, that careful scientist, J. B. S. Haldane, said:

Psychology is hardly a science yet. Though a vast number of empirical facts are known, only a few great generalizations of them — such as the existence of the subconscious mind — have been made.

And F. Matthias Alexander, in his fine book, “Constructive Control of the Individual,” says;

that the mind and body must be considered as a unit, never separately.

We will not contest these statements.

As for us, we shall not try to establish ultimate realities, believing, with Herbert Spencer, that they are “imknown, inscrutable, and tmknowable.” We will confine ourself to appearances — as to what we are, and how we act, within the trinity which has, from time immemorial, been called body, mind, and soul; our physical, mental, and spiritual life — how what takes place within us appears to us;

It is as certain as we can be of anything that we have a body. Also, it is certain that we experience what we have for ages agreed to call sensations; thoughts and feelings; and emo- tions. Besides these, there is within us a power, a something, we call “Ourselves,” sometimes called our “Ego,” or “We,” or “I,” or “Me” — a judging faculty, or power, or person.

We shall use these terms, body, mind and soul, simply as the pawns are used in pla3ring chess: to facilitate the process of thinking.

Now, this power which we call “ourselves,” our Ego, is incessantly bombarded, or agitated by sensations, by thoughts.

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and by emotions — three categories of things that are distinctly different, as much as the red, white, and blue of our Flag, though they are correlated and united, and function together.

Whence come these different effects upon us, upon our consciousness — or our Ego? You may say that a sensation comes to us through our nerves being affected by some pres- sure upon them which is transmitted to a nerve centre, which we call the “mind,” if the thing transmitted is a thought, or idea. But why use the term “mind" if it is merely a nerve ganglion? If you assume the concept “mind,” as being dif- ferent from a mere nerve centre, you posit that mind as an entity separate from a nerve centre, and, hence, from the body. This seems to be a certainty : because thoughts come before oiu-, so-called, “mind,” as before a judgment seat; and, either the mind, or some other power, our Ego, estimates the value of those thoughts to ourselves immediately, or to the race pro- spectively, and accepts those thoughts and acts upon them, or rejects them and does not act upon them. That is: there is a constant judging process going on within us. Is that going on in a nerve centre, or in our, so-called, “mind”?

After fifty years of delving into philosophy and meta- physics, from Plato to William James, we are familiar with the ideas on psychology, now current among the schools. But no one has ever demonstrated the source of oiu: complex con- ceptions, such as form the basis of a work of art, such as: the conception, composition, and expression; the pattern, the arrangement of the lines and colors in a pictiue, statue, temple, etc., and which come into our mind complete, as ghostlike apparitions, so completely finished, as pictures or images, that all we need to do is to paint or model them from the image, held in the grasp of the memory — if our memory is strong enough like that of Michael Angelo.

Whence come these conceptions? You may answer that they well up from the depths of the subconscious mind. But, what do we. Reader, what did Hudson — who first emphasized the existence of a subconscious mind — what does anyone really know about the existence of such a thing as a “sub- conscious mind” — distinct from a nerve ganglion? Nothing! It is an attractive posit of the imagination. But we have no proof of it.

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Then why divide an entity, called a human being, into a body, mind, and soul, as has been the custom since Plato? Evidently, to assist us in thinking.

Dr. Wm. J. Bahey, Director of the Endocrine Laboratories, of New York, lately delivered a lecture, in Washington. A newspaper report of this (April 26, 1924) said:

Dr. Bailey declared that: We have too long regarded insanity as purely a brain condition. He maintains that the seat of insanity is in the endocrine glands, “which absolutely control every brain function.”

If that is true, what becomes of our so-called “mind” — as an entity?

In the New York “Times,” of May 5, 1924, appeared a report of a “symposium on psychoanalysis,” held in the parish- hall of St.-Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie, on the day previous, in which Dr. Brian Brown said, in part :

The twentieth century has rightly been termed the age of psychology. There is a flood of words on this subject and we are terrorized by them. We are unable to make sane deductions from this logorrhea.

Freud did not teach psychology.

He gave us a view of the unconscious mind, and his ideas on this were “rotten." Freud’s idea was: that there is an outer compart- ment where harmful ideas are herded, ready to rush into our con- sciousness. Furthermore, he resolved everything into sex instinct. (Italics ours.)

And the New York “Times,” in its accoimt of the proceed- ings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its meeting of January 2, 1925, at Washington, has a note to this effect :

The conception of a chemical soul was put forward by Dr. Louis Berman of New York, who said that the chemical substances produced by the endocrine glands governed the mental, moral, and physical make-up of every human being and afforded real knowledge of the basis of personality.

These are up-to-date clashes of opinion, between different sorts of thinkers, on mind and psychology, such as leave us completely in the air, and make all dogmas on “psychology” seem childish!

Therefore, until the philosophers and scientific thinkers, of all schools, finally agree on what is the real mental and psycho-

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logical stracture of ourselves, let us continue to use the old, and useful, symbols, body, mind, and soul, to designate the seat of those physical, mental, and spiritual agitations, which we have been in the ages-old habit of calling “sensations,” “thoughts,” and “emotions.” The “thyroid gland” may be the source of one category of agitations, the “pituitary gland” of another category, and the “adrenal” gland of the third category of our internal experiences. It does not much matter. No one really knows. This confusion led Havelock Ellis, in his latest work, to say:

It may be, however, we are beginning to realize that there are no metaphysical formulas to suit ail men, but that eroery man must be the artist of his own philosophy. (Italics ours.)

This justifies us in ignoring all fossilized metaphysical dogmas and £esthetic systems built up on them, and our offering a pragmatic — because workable — system of psychol- ogy of our own, not as a /ad, but as a symbol.

One thing is certain : a sensation is a different thing from a thought, and a thought is a different thing from an emotion. Whether we become conscious of these in a “nerve centre,” or a “nerve complex,” is immaterial for our discussion here.

One other thing is certain: these internal agitations, or interior apparitions, which we call sensations, thoughts, emo- tions, and which are perceived by us, are more or less imder the control of a power which sits eternally in judgment over them, as they pass before our consciousness, as pictiures before a movie-screen, and also passes on the desirability, and the imdesirability of all of these, and accepts or rejects them, to the extent of its power of willing. Let these two certainties be our starting point.

Now, this judging, willing, determining power we will call the Ego — for the sake of a personification — very useful in thinking. This Ego is, now and then, called the “I,” the “Us,” “We,” “Ourselves,” “Consciousness.”

We will regard this Ego as independent of the other three — the body, mind and soul — and the only part of us w^hich, we think, will be immortal; and we have been in the habit of calling this power the soul, or the spirit. The rest of our per- sonality will pass away.

This has suggested to us the following symbolic concept :

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We have within us in reality, /owr powers; physical, mental, spiritual, and judicial. The body is the source of ovu: sensa- tions; the mind the source of our thoughts and the store-house of our feelings; and the soul the reeipient, or source, of our emotions; while the Ego is the dominating, all enveloping, personality— the “I,” the “Us,” the “Me.”

It may be, that we have within us three different nerve complexes, each the source, the perceiver, and transmitter of our sensations, or our thoughts, and of our emotions to the brain. But we do not know this. And to accept this view would only complexify our reasoning. Therefore, to simplify and facilitate our reasoning, it is better to say ; our body is the source of our sensations, the mind of our thoughts and feelings, and the soul of our emotions. And this concept is as true and sound as any other.

This concept brought forth the further suggestion that, in order to aid our thinking still more, it would be well to sym- bolically personify these four powers; into a “Minister Physi- cal,” “Minister Intellectual,” “Minister Spiritual,” and — the ruling Judge — the Ego.

Then, since Novalis calls the body, “The Temple of the Soul,” came forth the further symbolic conception; that from the moment that we open our eyes, the Ego sits in a constant state of expectancy, enthroned in a hall, surrounded by three chambers — one, the office of the Minister Physical, who brings to the Ego trains of sensations; another, the office of the Minister Intellectual, who offem to the Ego trains of thoughts; and the last, the office of the Minister Spiritual, who brings to the Ego trains of emotions.

Some of these trains make up simple, or complex states of consciousness, which may be pleasant or unpleasant, depend- ing upon the nature of our environment, and our personality, or Ego. As these sensations, thoughts, and emotions are offered to the Ego, it judges their value to the organism, to us, and accepts or rejects those which it thinks wiU enlarge or decrease its, or our, happiness. All of which, we repeat, is merely symbolic personification, to help us to think clearly, while admitting that, after fifty years of the study of psychol- ogy, we know nothing about how we are really organized. Nor does any one else actually know.

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This idea of s3mibolizing our organization was suggested to us, we repeat, by a remark of Tolstoy, in an article in which he said:

Schopenhauer often used to talk about having a “Minister In- tellectual” who like a servant, brought to him his thoughts and ideas.

We simply amplified this idea of Schopenhauer.

Of course, we do not know where the body begins and ends, or where the mind and soul begin and end. They are so in- terrelated, interwoven, that, now and then, they seem to be as one, or two, or three; then again as three, dominated by a foiurth, the Ego. Hence, all our sensations, thoughts and feelings, and emotions overlap, so that some states of con- sciousness are made up of physical, intellectual, and spiritual elements, fused into one whole.

But, our life — apart from mere existence — is carried on mainly in these three fields of experience — physical, intellec- tual, and spiritual agitations; sensations, thoughts and feelings, and emotions.

One thing is certain : we, as organisms, or personalities, are made up of four distinct entities, which we will call respec- tively, a sensing Body, a thinking Mind, an emotionable Soul, and a judging Ego; and, while we are awake, we are, at one moment, entirely dominated by the body, at another moment by the mind, at another moment by the soul, at another mo- ment by the ego ; and, at another moment, these four entities engage in a conference over some sensation, thought or emotion, these moments being of varying duration; and it may be we harbor a fifth entity; a Sub-conscious mind, which dominates us completely: during our sleep. It makes no difference what names we give to these four, or five, entities.

The Memory, may be likened to a book-case, in a chamber of the mind, where are stored up the records of the sensations, thoughts, and emotions, which were of sufficient importance in our past experience to be serviceable : when called for by the Ego, through the mind, or through the Minister Intellectual aforesaid.

Our Ego stands in the same relation to our Mind and Memory as does a lawyer to his clerk and law-books. He has a vague recollection only of a certain case of the past, whose de- tails have become suddenly important to him. So he orders

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his clerk to dig out this case, from among his law-books. Like- wise, our ego may remember, only vaguely, certain experiences and ask the mind to dig them up — out of the memory store- house — as when we wish to quote a poem, but clearly recall only the first line, and sit down and cudgel our mind, which slowly, line by line, digs up the entire poem — from the obscure recesses of the memory, and patches it together, as it were, into a coherent whole.

Now, we nearly all agree as to what is a sensation and a thought. But we are vague about what is an emotion and how it differs from a feeling — also sometimes called passion.

As this is an extremely important matter, and needs clarify- ing at all hazards, we will say; in a book of 586 pages on “The Meaning of God in Human Experience, a Philosophic Study of Religion,” by William Ernest Hocking, Ph.D., Alford Profes- sor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, in Harvard University, 1922, we find the following, on p. 65 :

Emotion is a name usually reserved for certain of our more com- plex feelings, but speaking literally, all feeling is e-motion, a flight from what is, to something beyond.

He makes this, to a large extent, the very basis of his long and involved metaphysical argtiments, to prove his thesis as to “the nature and worth of religion.”

To our mind, this definition of emotion is so contrary to fact, that it spoils his whole book, for us. And it proves the pressing necessity of the literati of the world getting together, and deciding on the real and final meaning that all should attach to a certain number of words such as are necessary for a profitable exchange of ideas — about one hundred words in number — so as to obviate the enormous waste going on, and also the irritation all students must experience as they wade through heavy, and often tedious tomes in quest of solid knowledge and a logical point of view from which to look at life. As our contribution, we shall define and describe “Emo- tion” and “Feeling” as they appear to us, and in what sense we shall use them in this book. ‘

^ Our sensations are, primarily, mere agitations of the body, reaching the Ego through the senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. But some sensa- tions are so interwoven with, and spiritualized by, thoughts — especially those coming through the eyes and ears — that we call such sensations — Emotions.

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An Emotion is something that is felt only by the Soul, or Ego. A Feeling is something that lodges only in the mind.

An Emotion is a surprise, which comes to the soul suddenly; is more or less of a shock; agitates the soul only for a more or less short while; and, then, disappears. A Feeling is either an emotion transformed into a thing lodged in, and nursed by, the mind, or it is a thing that grows tip slowly within the mind, without any preliminary, engendering emotion.

An Emotion is like a surprise visitor, who calls, chats for a short while, in our reception room (or the Soul), and then departs; while a Feeling is like a sudden visitor, but who has decided to lodge with us ; or like a child who has grown up in our house (the mind) and keeps on lodging with us, perhaps even for a lifetime. The nature of a feeling — lodging with us, is clearly described when Shakespeare makes Shylock say :

So I can give no reason, and I will not.

More than a lodged hate, and a certain loathing I bear Antonio, that I follow thus A losing suit against him.

Says Lord Kaimes, in his excellent “Elements of Criticism ” :

An internal motion or agitation of the mind, when it passeth away without desire, is denominated an emotion; when desire fol- lows, the motion or agitation is denominated a passion [or feeling]. (Italics his, brackets are ours.)

Example; We once awoke in a stuffy cabin on a ship at sea, at four A.M. ; we felt dull and stupid ; dressed, climbed to the hurricane deck, and were suddenly confronted by an apparition of a gorgeous sunrise. We were highly surprised by this marvellous panorama of dazzling colors and cloud forms. As the display was extraordinarily brilliant, and imusual, like an Aurora Borealis, we were more than merely surprised, we were astonished, shocked. This surprise, this shock, was an Emotion, and nothing else than an Emotion, a spiritual disturbance, in that part of us called the soul. Hence, to be surprised, is to be emotioned, and in the soul.

Now, it happened that this special Emotion was an agree- able one, for reasons we shall discuss in the chapter on Beauty. We caU this emotion, Delight, to distinguish it from other sorts of Emotion. We will clarify this later.

But, supposing that, on reaching the deck, we had, unex-

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pectedly, beheld a great ship enveloped in flames, so close as to endanger our own ship, and had seen people jumping into the sea? We would also have had a surprise — an Emotion. This Emotion we would have found highly disagreeable, and we would call it Terror. Not fear, but terror; because fear is not an Emotion, it is a Feeling, which always springs from the source csi&ed. terror. Why this? For the following reason ;

A Feeling is a state of mind, and it comes to us, not suddenly, as does an Emotion to the soul, it comes to us more slowly. A feeling sometimes grows out of an emotion, and sometimes it arises within us by a slow growth in the mind, without any preliminary and initial emotion.

Now, we repeat, we have negative and positive emotions. The negative emotions are such as are so neutral that they are neither agreeable or disagreeable. The positive emotions are such as are distinctly agreeable or disagreeable.

Moreover, every emotion, we repeat, is a shock, a jolt — slight or powerful. We receive such a shock from every object that we see with our eyes, just as we do a shock from every note struck on a piano, and which we hear. Things that we see hourly and daily, and sounds that we hear continually, like the ticking of a clock, finally make no impression on us, because we become dulled to them. But, let an unusual object suddenly loom up before us, or a strange soimd fall on our ear, then we are instantly shocked, jolted, impressed, emo- tioned, and all alive to them. Commonplace, daily shocks affect us but little, or not at all; but extraordinary shocks, either of terror, delight, or awe, of joy or sorrow, kill people daily, by the tremendous emotions they arouse in some people. The gradations of the intensity of our emotions are infinite.

Finally, we experience high and noble, and low and ignoble emotions.

Our lowest emotion is terror. It generates the feeling of fear, which is not an emotion. The emotion of terror is short, and the resulting of fear is longer in duration, may last a lifetime, with some people.

Disgust is a low emotion, and is also short. It always ends in the feeling of hatred, which endures at least as long as its object is in sight, or hearing, or smelling.

Self-seeking — that interior movement, which instantly

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impels us to grab a purse we happen to see in the street and appropriate it to ourselves — is a low emotion. It always, imless checked, engenders the feeling of greed, which, if not controlled, ends in making of us a petty thief, or a monstrous bandit, like Genghis Khan.

It is so with all of our emotions. Violent laughter is a sudden emotion, and ends in a prolonged feeling of hiunor. Sudden pity is an emotion, and may end in a prolonged feeling of sorrow; delight is a sudden emotion, ending in a prolonged feeling of gentle affection; ecstasy is a sudden emotion, ending in a prolonged feeling of worshipful love, for a person, or object or place. Awe is the highest emotion the human soul can experience; it is a sudden emotion, ending in a prolonged /ee/fng of reverence for the object that aroused the emotion.

Now, this is true not only of persons, but of a scene in nature, or a work of art. That is to say: What takes place between a man and a woman takes place between a man and a work of art. Thus: Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”; Bryant’s “Thanatopsis”; Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna”; Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”; Mansart’s park at Versailles; things which at first give us a quick emotion, perhaps only a slight one, may slowly arouse in us a feeling of love for these things so intense as to transfer our love to the artists who created them, and thus bring him enduring fame, in contradistinction to a passing notoriety.

Now, going back to our symbolic three Ministers and the Ego : every emotion is aroused in the soul, then it is, let us say, grasped by the Minister Spiritual, and presented to the Ego, who then decides whether that emotion is beneficial, and to be entertained in future, or not. If the Ego decides the emotion is beneficent, it becomes a part of the spiritual furniture of the Ego. But, let us say the emotion of disgust reaches the soul, and is grasped by the Minister Spiritual and held before the Ego. If the Ego judges that it is not a beneficent emotion it rejects it.

That is to say : the soul is the recipient — or generatrix — of all of our emotions. These are all passed up to the Ego, for judgment, or evaluation. Those that are accepted, as of real value, are then passed by Minister Spiritual over to Minister Intellectual, let us say, who stores, and transforms these emo

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tions into durable feelings, the duration depending upon the temperament of the Ego, or the “personality” of the man.

The mind, therefore, is the storehouse of all the feelings resulting from the emotions experienced by the soul, and judged by the Ego as either beneficent or maleficent, and passed on to the mind, as it were.

Now, static monotony is death, we repeat. Active move- ment and variety mean life. Hence, every emotion we ex- perience enriches our life, by taking us away from the drab, deadly-monotonous commonplace. Hence, we desire con- stantly new emotions that bring us variety and happiness.

If we are low vulgarians in our taste, we will find happiness only in low emotions and sensations, such as do not take us far away from the warm “flesh pots of Egypt.” If we are spiritually minded, and adore the True, the Good, and the spiritually Beautiful, we will seek such emotions as will tend like, a cathedral spire, or a mountain top, to lift us up towards the supernal. Recalling Emerson’s lines:

We mount to Paradise On the stairway of surprise !

Our life, while we are conscious, is but one train of more or less violent emotions. WTiile we are asleep and tmconscious, we perceive no emotions. For all practical piuposes we are dead. We merely exist, and we begin to really live only when we awake, become conscious and experience enjoyable emo- tional agitations, be they slight and superficial, or powerful and profound. We can therefore say:

Emotion is life and life is Emotion.

All else that happens to us, in our semi-comatose sleep, is mere blind existence. For, from the moment we awake into consciousness and realize that we are alive, it is a surprise, an emotion to us, usually pleasant, sometimes impleasant. Then the very first object we recognize is another surprise, another emotion.

Only, while we remain living, year in year out, in one and the same environment, and daily have the same realization that we are awake, and living the daily same surprises, emo- tions, coming to us from each of the objects in our chamber, home, and business, to which we go daily: these surprises, or emotions, are no longer called surprises or emotions, because

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they have become almost exasperatlngly commonplace, be- cause of their daily, yearly repetition.

But, how about the soldier, blinded by shell-shock for a couple of years, but who, after some slight operation, finally, and suddenly, again sees? Think you that he will not be agreeably astonished and highly emotioned each moment that he again recognizes the commonplace things in his chamber which, before his accidental blindness, had been so common -place as to be a bore ? That is why many physicians order a patient to take a trip somewhere — “/or a change." As each separate little siu^rise is a shock, slight or great, and mostly agreeable, a trip around the world will cure many a superficial sickness.

Why do all highly organized and easily emotioned people love to travel? Because every step, every moment, brings them a new surprise, hence a new emotion, and in endless variety. A trip to the Orient is one long train of surprises or emotions, some unpleasant, but most of them pleasant, and of such novelty and beauty, that the first trip up the Nile is one long train, a melody, of pleasant, emotion-bringing sur- prises. But, after a dozen trips, the Nile will appear very monotonous and tiresome, to the ordinary man, bent only on curiosity-satisfying sight-seeing and not on the discovery of a hidden tomb.

In a pleasure-giving, musical-melody, every separate note is a new, emotion-giving surprise, though the surprise is a purely physical sensation. If now the train of notes is highly varied, and so cadenced and harmonized as to be a highly melodious melody, it is capable of emotioning us to ecstasy and tears. But, let any one play the “Beautiful Blue Danube” fifty times in fifty hours, in succession, it would make us hate that wonderful waltz.

Moreover, every thought is an emotion-bringing surprise. Hence, the pleasure the writer finds in writing a story. For, as ideas, or thoughts come to him — he knows not from where — each more original and surprising than the last, he becomes emotioned to a creative heat, which gives him the highest joy he, a writer, can experience. Thus Goethe said :

When my hour for writing comes, I sit down to write. I never wait for inspirations. But, gradually, the inspiration and heat of creating comes, as I write.

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Our desire for novelty and originality is rooted in this end- less love of emotion-bringing surprises. This is true of dress- ing; eating; of everything, as well as of all the arts. That is why an exhibition of art is so interesting and pleasure-giving; each picture, statue, etc., is a new surprise, shock, agitation, emotion. That is to say: three hours spent in a great art gallery, are as full of pleasure to a man who gets much pleasure through his eyes, as is an opera to one who gets much pleasure through the ears; each picture is a small melody, as each melody in an opera is a small picture and delight-giving; and, therefore, these enrich our life, during an hour or two, to a most extra- ordinary extent. And that is why art is the highest thing in life. It takes us away from drab monotony, which is a fore- taste of the tomb.

In short, we may say; that every object in the universe is a source of some sort of an emotion to us, of which the soul is the recipient, and the transmitter to our Ego — to us. Hence, the various objects that we see or hear, for the first time, give us a series of shocks, emotions, weak or powerful; and the pleasur- able emotions they give us result merely from the variety of the shocks; short and long, in infinite, gradations, so cadenced into harmonious rhythms and melody that they give us pleasure, of which we will deal more fully in the chapter on Beauty. We might go stni deeper into this matter, but we have gone suf- ficiently far for our purpose. So we will define “Emotion” and “Feeling” as follows:

AN EMOTION IS A MORE OR LESS VIOLENTLY AGI- TATED STATE OF THE SOUL, OF SHORT DURATION, OCCASIONED BY A SURPRISE, A SHOCK, RESULTING FROM THE IMPACT UPON THE SOUL OF THE FACTS AND THINGS OF LIFE AND NATURE, EITHER INTER- NAL, OR EXTERNAL TO US.

A FEELING IS A MORE OR LESS AGITATED STATE OF THE MIND, OF A LONGER DURATION THAN AN EMOTION, SOMETIMES ENGENDERED BY AN EMO- TION, AND SOMETIMES ARISING WITHIN US BY SLOW GROWTH, WITHOUT A PRELIMINARY EMOTION.

Thus we see that the experiencing of emotion is at the very base of our life. It remains to be shown that the expression of emotion is at the very base of all forms of art.

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Nature has so organized us that, as soon as we experience an emotion, we feel a sudden impulse to express it. And this imptdse is powerful in ratio of the intensity of the emotion.

No impression without expression, says James. Because every surprise and every emotion also exerts a pressure: strong in ratio of the native impressionability and emotionabdity of a man, which, tmless relieved, becomes a burden. That is why so few people can keep a secret. The hearing of a secret causes a surprise, a shock, an emotion, and the first impulse, in the vast majority of normal people, is to unload this secret on someone else — to pass it on. If we are bound by a promise not to reveal a secret, it becomes a burden which only the strongest can support, the average person being devoid of enough self-control to hold back the pressure the secret exerts. When we give away the secret, we feel a real relief — Oof! — of a burden! Was this what Aristotle called the “katharsis of the emotions,” an explosive expression of our emotion?

Now, this act of the mere expression of an emotion, if it ends in some kind of Form, in a definite PRODUCT, in the shape of a finished Poem, or Statue, or Picture, or Building, or Garden, or a Story, or even a Dog-Collar, even a Joke, is already a Work of Art. It makes no difference how trivial or sublime, how beautiful or ugly, how moral or immoral: every expression of human emotion, in whatever form it may be made, is a work of art ; and it makes no difference whether it stirs the emotions of only one man, or of all mankind, or of no one.

Because in your effort to express your own emotions you must use some sort of vehicle, or form, or shape, which has no other use on earth, primarily, than to express your emotion.

Therefore, every man is a rudimentary artist, as soon as he merely attempts to express his emotion, even in rudimentary form.

Moreover, the strongest hunger of the soul is for self- expression. Our whole life, from waking to going to sleep, is but one process of self-expression. Hence, there is no greater punishment than enforced, perpetual silence. In fact, every animal, insect, tree, flower and rock, also answers to the Cos- mic Urge and craves to express itself in some form, and nearly always in some form of beauty.

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This deep truth found again an adequate expression in Emerson’s profoimd remark :

ALL NATURE IS BENT UPON EXPRESSION.

Because, self-expression is the greatest relief and greatest joy- vouchsafed by the universe, and reflection -will con-vince the reader that this must be so.

Therefore, Tolstoy is correct -when he says :

The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, recemng through his senses of hearing and sight another man’s expression of feeling (emotion), is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it.

So that we repeat, we may define art — in the abstract — as follows :

ART IS AN EXPRESSION, IN SOME FORM, OF HUMAN EMOTION.

But that is not sufficient.

There are all sorts of normal and abnormal men. There are men so self-centred that they do not care to express their emotions, even to their most intimate acquaintances. These are the silent men. These never become artists, because they never have anything to communicate.

Then there are other men whose greatest joy consists in expressing their emotions, but who are so utterly indifferent to the happiness of others that, to relieve themselves of their own emotional pressure, they will sing, or rhyme, or dance a jig, draw or pamt: only to please themselves, just to relieve, to express, their own emotions.

Some go further; and, full of contempt for mankind, they express their emotions, and throw the product on the jimk-pile, and they are usually not worth much more than that. These are all more or less abnormal men.

But, then, there is the normal majority of men, whose greatest joy consists, not in merely expressing their emotions, glad or sad, but in Communicating them to others; in order to share them.

Others go still further; and, not content with merely sharing their emotions, yearn to stir the emotions of their fellows, and mankind: to stimulate them to action. These are the highly developed, emotional men, who usually become professional artists, in one of the eight arts.

These artists very rarely choose a subject for an art-work

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that is disagreeable ; because, for stirring the emotions of man- kind and profoimdly, a work of art must not be disagreeable, or ugly. To be, for a long time, worth whde, it must be as agreeable and beautiful as possible, and express, and convey, not a low, but a high, state of emotion.

To the highly developed man, an emotional state is high and agreeable, or low and disagreeable, in ratio of the distance to which it lifts him above merely animal existence, away from the muck and misery of the commonplace things of the earth, earthly — from boredom.

There are, we repeat, three categories of these lifting, pleasurable emotions; the various kinds, and degrees, of MIRTH, DELIGHT, and AWE. These we experience in various degrees of intensity. And, however much an acquired wisdom may, for the sake of variety in life, dictate an occasional passing through a disciplinary, unpleasant state of emotional experience, the Ego, usually, prefers to experience and express pleasant emotions. Hence, we cite again Emerson’s remark: We mount to Paradise On the stairway of surprise !

What he meant is, that we mount on the stairway of pleasant-Emotions.

Now, suppose a man hears a ftmny story, laughs like a lord, and rushes off to tell it to you, and says: “Jack, I’ve got a new one, a corker!” and then tells a story with every trick he can muster to make you laugh. He does this because he finds a real happiness and relief in forcing you to Share his happiness. If you do not laugh, he will look at you, quizzically, and say to himself: “Well, that story seemed awfully fimny to me, when Smith told it. Am I thick, or is he?” And he is really unhappy because he failed to make a “hit ” with you. If you then say: “Well, old top, the story’s a good one, but a ‘chest- nut ’ ! I laughed over that two years ago,” he will feel relieved that he is not so “thick” as he seemed to himself, but he will resent your non-display of social hypocrisy in not laughing, any way, just to give him a chance to share his happiness with you because you refused his “treat!” of a joke.

Therefore, a mere funny story, even a joke, is already a work of art , because it is an effort at the expression of emotion in some form.

Hence, the primordial spiritual push in every normal man —

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and abnormal men do not count in a discussion of art — is not only to stimulate him to express his emotions to himself, but to stir the emotions of his nearest neighbor. If he succeeds, his reward for the effort is a certain satisfaction, at having suc- cessfully relieved himself of his emotional burden, or pressure.

But there is a higher reason. Carlyle said:

The deepest hunger of the human soul is for human recognition. Why? Because, as James says, in his “Psychology” ;

No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. That is to say: men cannot live and be happy without the recognition of their fellow-men. And three years of solitary confinement, in the prisons of Italy, suffices to drag a man to insanity and the grave.

Moreover, man knows, by instinct, that, if he can share the happiness of his own glad emotions, with his neighbors, by arousing in them the same emotions and joy, by adequately expressing them, he will obtain for himself not only the joy of recognition, but the admiration or love of his neighbors and, so, bind them to himself, and thus, gradually, more or less, according to his power of expression, conquer the world and carve out a place — immortality — in the hearts of mankind. Thus he satisfies that feeling, which, when healthy, we call self-love or egotism, which is rooted in the elemental himger for self-preservation : nature’s first command !

Says Darwin, in his “Autobiography,” in order to explain why he succeeded in life:

What is far more important, my love of natural science has been steady and ardent. This pure love has, however, been much aided by the ambition to be esteemed by my fellow naturalists.

Thus we see that the hunger for hiuiian recognition, with the vast majority of men, even the greatest, is the strongest driving-power in the world, the very Cosmic Urge which is pushing man from high to higher, toward an evermore perfect state of civilization : through the more and more perfect expres- sion of those of his emotions which lift his fellows up to himself, and beyond !

Hence, those men who have the largest and deepest hunger for the love of their feUow-men — ^for “human recognition” —

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are impelled to serve them most, and, so, enter the ranks, not only of the great artists, but of great heroes, and the saviors of the race. And the more gifted the artist, the more of this “htmger for human recognition” will he possess.

He may not care for a “blatant beating of the big bazoo,” or for a vulgar notoriety, but, deep down, he will have enough of that “decent respect for the opinion of mankind,” as Jeffer- son said, to make his work so perfect that he will run the chance at least of escaping the critical condemnation of ridicule of his contemporaries, which is a desire for at least a negative human recognition, and equally rooted in the primal desire for self- preservation. Hence, feebleness of desire for human recognition always accompanies creative mediocrity.

If this hunger for human recognition is so strong that it will make a man, with a beneficent purpose, work for it, by clean, rational methods, it may be called and welcomed as beneficent egotism. A man so possessed will never be content merely to express his own emotions, and “let it go at that!” He will be doubly urged on; first by a natural impulse, and second, by an acquired desire to communicate his emotions to his fellow-men, to stir the emotions of mankind, in some language, or medium of expression. And the greater this urge in a man, and the greater the skill and power he manifests, in stirring the emotions of mankind, and the more lofty and sublime the emotions with which he fills the majority of men, and for the longest period of time, the greater artist he will prove to be !

Per contra, should a man’s self-love and desire for human recognition take on a diseased form, and luge him to seek only a quick notoriety: simply to have himself talked about, like Beaudelaire, Oscar Wilde, or Cagliostro, by methods at once charlatanistic and vmclean, then it becomes Ego-mania, a destructive force, not only in life, but also in art.

Some say: “The main object of the artist should be to express his thoughts.” This is a faulty statement. For, a thought is not a simple thing like an emotion. It is a complex idea or concept, built up, formed, of emotions and sensations experienced previous to the birth, or formulation, of the thought.

Moreover, there are many thoughts that we have which

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are worthless for artistic expression, because when expressed they would not, could not, emotion others enough to interest them, for any length of time, and, so, the labor needed to express them would be useless waste. .

But supposing you were walking down Fifth Avenue and you were suddenly confronted by a snarling lion, escaped from the “Zoo.” If you were a normal human being, you would experience an emotion of terror. You would express that, either by a shriek or grunt and flight, or you might assume an heroic attitude of defense and await the attack of the lion. So far, thought had nothing to do with the case. You had not had time to think.

But, supposing you decided to express that experience, that emotion of terror aroused by a lion, by some sort of objec- tive representation of it, which would be step number one in the creation of such a work of art; what would you do? You would turn the emotion over to your mind, which would for- mulate a concept of how to express that emotion, how to present it, to represent it. To do that, your mind would have to think, engage in thought, in reasoning, to compose. The concept arrived at might be crude; but stiU appeal enough to your mind as worthy of elaboration towards perfection, and you would decide to carry out, in form that concept. That decision, would be step munber two. Then you would make a sketch of your raw concept. That would be step munber three. Then you would, by thinking out this and that detail, arrive at a finished, and to you, perfect and fixed form, in a composed picture — either of words, or painting, or marble, or any other material. This illustrates the fundamental truth of that charming definition of art, of Delsarte:

Art is an Emotion, passed through Thought, and fixed in Form.

That is to say : in art an emotion always precedes a thought ; and, in art, a thought is of no interest to us, except in so far as it helps to express and increase the power, or helps to enoble, an emotion : thought being merely a means to an end, the end being to express and to arouse some emotion sufficiently power- ful and profotuid to make one feel that it is worth while, for various reasons, to express that emotion in a form that will effectively transmit that emotion to others; for, vmless a work of art does transmit, effectively, our emotions to others, it will

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fall flat and be useless waste, which is socially sinful, in ratio of the expense involved in executing that useless work of art.

What would take place, in the creation of a simple objec- tive work of art like the emotion of terror aroused by the lion, would take place in the case of a complex, subjective work of art, such for example as representing the display of human sympathy as we And done so brilliantly in that picture, “The Doctor,” by Luke Fildes, in the Tate Gallery, in London (see Fig. 113). Here is expressed a thought, an idea, a concept, originating not in an emotion caused in us by the sudden apparition of a lion, but apparently by an originating thought, in the mind alone. But there is where the fundamental error comes in. No one could possibly formulate the thought, or concept, of representing the display, and value, of human sympathy tmless he had previously experienced the emotion which results from the sight of human sympathy, displayed by someone, and seen its value, socially. In this case also an emotion would have preceded the formidating thought which worked up the concept.

Therefore, turn the matter over as you will, you wfll always end by seeing that the primal act, in the creation of any work of art, is the preliminary experiencing of an emotion ; and the successive acts are merely the expressing of that emotion, through thought, in some — representative — form.

Thus, we have gradually dug down to the ftmdamental truths of life; that a surprise is an emotion; that agreeable emotions give us happiness; that to share this happiness with our neighbors is a desire implanted in us by nature; that to do this we express oiu: emotions in the most adequate and forceful form we can command: by Poetry, Oratory, Painting, Sculp- ture, Music, Architecture, etc., all of which we call art. In short, we repeat, the joy of experiencing and expressing and conveying human emotion, is at the basis of both life and art.

Now, these facts are the deepest and broadest basis for an invulnerable definition of art. Hence, we repeat, the simplest, solid definition of art — in the abstract — is this :

Art is an expression of human emotion in some form.

But, as we said before, this is not sufficient. Therefore, philosophers have striven for a more comprehensive and detailed definition.

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Now, lest the la5mian may think that the defining of art is not an important national matter, we will quote a part of our address on “Social Art,” delivered at the National Arts Club, in 1914, in which we, speaking in the first person, said:

Previous to the Fall of 1899, I was frequently called by the United States Government, as an expert, to testify as to whether certain statues, held for duty at the Customs House, here, were works of art. One day, in 1899, while at work as general manager of the building of the Dewey Arch, at Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, Charles R. Lamb, who designed the Arch, appeared to me looking somewhat gloomy. “What’s the matter, old man?” I queried.

“Oh,” he replied, “I have just come from the Customs House, where I lost a case. I had one of my Church Altars cut in Caen stone, in Caen, France; and, when it got here, I was forced to pay duty, on the plea that it was not a work of art. I protested. But a number of sculptors said it was not a work of art. And so I lose.”

“What!” Isaid. “They testified your altar is nota workof art?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Why, they are dreaming!” I said, and I told him my idea of what constitutes a work of art, and why his altar is, inevitably, a work of art.

“Will you testify to that before the Collector?” he asked.

‘ ‘ Surely ! ” I replied. And we proceeded with work on the Arch.

Later, I was subpoenaed before the Collector and, as near as I can recollect, this took place: Arrived at the Customs House I took my seat, and, while the stenographer and the Collector lis- tened, his attorney established my status as an expert. Then he placed before me a blueprint of an altar. After examining it I said: “Well, sir?”

“Do you consider that a work of art?” he asked.

“I certainly do.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“Well,” with a solemn pause, “do you know that St.-Gaudens, Ward, Hartley, MacDonald, Rhind, and others have testified that it is not a work of art?”

“That does not worry me. A man may be a great success as a synthetic sculptor, and a great failure as an analytical thinker. All the men you mention have simply never gone to the bottom of things in their thinking on the theory of art and ssthetics.”

“Well,” he said, with a sardonic air, “can you define art?”

“Yes, I can,” I replied.

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"Will you kindly do so?”

‘T then gave him this definition of art:

“EVERY HUMAN WORK MADE, IN ANY LANGUAGE, WITH THE PURPOSE OF EXPRESSING, OR STIRRING, HUMAN EMOTION, IS A WORK OF ART; AND A WORK OF ART IS GREAT IN RATIO OF ITS POWER OF STIRRING THE HIGHEST EMOTIONS OF THE LARGEST NUMBER OF CULTURED PEOPLE FOR THE LONGEST PERIOD OF TIME.”

“Well,” he said, “isn’t that rather broad?”

“Of course it is broad. A definition, in order to define, must be both inclusive and exclusive, and I think you will find mine con- clusive,”

He looked stalemated. And I continued: “All thinkers on art, however they may differ on details, agree on this: That the function of all artists is: First, to express their own emotions, and second, to stir the emotions of their fellow-men, be those emotions trivial or great, high or low. Now, a Cathedral is the greatest in- strument on earth for stirring the highest human emotions, and the altar is the most important part of that instrument. If the altar is a mere rock, it is not a work of art; it is a mere article of use. But, if the altar shows some land of design, and an effort to make the altar beautiful, in order to arouse the emotions and lift the soul of the worshippers, it is a work of art, no matter what its design.

“You have not asked me if this altar is a Great work of art. And that is none of the government’s business. The question the government alone should ask is this : ‘ Is this altar a work of art ? ’ I reply that, if it were the most grotesque design in the world, so long as the deliberate purpose of the artist was to express his emo- tions and to arouse the emotions of his fellow-men, however simple or complex, skillful or crude his design may be, it is a work of art, no matter how it may grate upon the feelings of other men whose tastes differ from that of the artist.

“The sculptors who testified that the altar is not a work of art meant to imply that it is not a Great work of art. But, for the pur- pose of the infliction of a tariff, the government should not ask: ‘ Is a work of art great or trivial ? ’ It should allow every original work of art, however good or bad, to come in free for an American, and strike with fifteen per cent duty every such work of art, of an alien. The only question the government should ask is this: ‘Is it morally clean, and an original work of art; that is, not a dupli- cate, not a copy?’ Many critics call many of the works of Rodin fine; many others call them crimes in marble. Who is going to de-

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cide? Hence, the question of the excellence or greatness of a work of art, imported, is beyond the province of a government, so long as the work is morally clean.”

‘‘That is all,” he said.

The case went to Washington and Mr. Lamb won. The gov- ernment accepted my definition of art; and, reversing the Collec- tor’s decision, even though bolstered up by the testimony of the leading sculptors named above, returned him his money.

Moreover, the government at once abolished its foolish system of calling down to the Customs House, as experts, a certain number of temporarily prominent artists to pass on such works of art, about the artistic quality of which the officials of the Collector were doubtftxl; and thus one more government absurdity and nuisance was abolished, all because of my definition of art, as the Deputy Collector later informed me.

This incident shows the supreme importance of a final and correct definition of art ; from which no one can escape. And I think that my definition, as above given, is such a final one.

The importance of my definition of art is derived not from my defining art in the abstract, not because the United States Gov- ernment accepted my definition, but because it is the first definition in the history of sesthetics which, besides defining art in the ab- stract, also defines Great Art, and asserts that the greatness of a work of art depends upon its power of stirring our highest emotions, and for the longest period of time. Thus, it furnishes a beacon light for all those artists who wish to create truly great and enduring art, in- stead of wasting their lives producing ephemeral “artistic stunts,” destined for the morgue of oblivion.

Another important point. Every sesthetician, from Baiun- garten to Tolstoy, agrees that Art is a Language, for communicating with our fellow-men. This has, lately, been questioned by a few aberrated writers on art. My definition reaffirms that art is A

LANGUAGE.

Finally, my definition divides art into two great categories: Trivial and Great Art. That is, merely Decorative and Playful art, and Expressive, Stimulative art. What divides the two Hke a wall? The spirit of social service.

A merely decorative work of art is addressed only to the senses, having no meaning beyond satisfying om* sensuous love of agree- able lines, colors, sounds, and movements. And this is a trivial ftmction, by the side of the great spiritual function of arousing the highest emotions of the soul of mankind.

An expressive work of art of any kind, in which the artist

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clearly aimed to produce a thing so beautiful, by poetizing his sub- ject, as to arouse universally, the emotions of mankind, belongs to the category of great works of art, even if it lacks mere technical cleverness. Why? Because, when we produce a thing which gives joy and ecstasy to the majority of mankind, or at least of our own race, we create an active, unifying social force, a thing that brings all men of our race, high or low, prince or peasant, into a sym- pathetic relation. It tends to increase the love between man and man. And that is the highest thing possible on this earth. And, when we engage in such an activity we ally ourselves with the loft- iest forces of nature, or with our Heavenly Father: “Who so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son” to lift man- kind into a greater and grander unity. Therefore, those expres- sive works of art, which show that the artists struggled hard to stir our loftiest emotions, they belong to the category of great art. It makes no difference if they are technically as defective and awk- ward as are the works of Fra Angelico at Florence, or of Orcagna at Pisa, when compared with such perfect works as Titian’s “As- sumption,” or Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” Just as the hunch- back slave, .i^lsop, is in the category of great men, because he solaced and buttressed the courage of mankind and spiritualized its aspira- tion: so, even the awkward works of Angelico and Orcagna are great, because they radiate a social spirit which has lifted the soids of millions of men above the commonplace to the sublime, above the material to the spiritual. Thus they became a social power, working for higher social ends. They became unifying, binding forces, which still work in the direction of concentrating the ener- gies of men for the perfection of the race and its environment. That is what entitles them to be placed in the temple of truly great art.

Therefore, when the facts of life and nature lift an artist into a state of sublime creative emotion, and he translates that emotion into a work of supreme beauty that arouses sublime emotions in his fellow-men, high or humble, he becomes a conqueror of the world. While the artist, who spends a long life in merely expressing himself in smart or clever works, which show clearly that he thought nothing of lifting his fellow-men to noble, spiritual enterprises but, rather, of calling the attention of the world to his clever, technical, stylistic stunts, he is destined to be forgotten. For, as Emerson said:

“The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes.”

That is to say, the difference between trivial and great art is one of a spiritual and social purpose.

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Thus we see, there are three points of view from which, at different times, men have defined art:

First: The Style and Manner point of view, chosen by Bacon and Goethe, and their imitators, and based on the idea : that Style alone makes art, and which is false, since style and manner are but parts of a complete work of art.

Second: The Cleveristic point of view, based on the idea: that skillful art-activity dextrous “artistry” or craftsmanship, displayed in the production of a work of art and in a “per- sonal” manner, alone is art, which is also false, since all these qualities are also but parts of a work of art.

Third: The Completed Work of Art point of view, which is the correct one : because it embraces every element of art activity underlying the other two points of view: style; manner; clever, dextrous “artistry” or craftsmanship, etc., and which is the most inclusive possible point of view.

The main cause of so much confusion in aesthetics is the fact that every aesthetician, heretofore, has tried to define in one definition more than is possible to define in one definition in any human language, and, in addition, has done it in slip- shod language, like Plato, when he defined Beauty as “Variety in Unity,” which is childish, seeing that Variety in Unity will also produce the Ugly! You cannot define two diametrically opposed things by one definition! A definition of Day will not define Night. And it is amazing that, during two thousand years, himdreds of writers have, like stupid parrots, repeated this error. Variety in Unity is one element of beauty, but those three words do not define beauty.

It is impossible to include in a definition of art every ele- ment that enters into a work of art. Hence, all we can do is: to find the fundamental thing that separates a work of art from ever3rthing else, and that is, the expression of human emotion in some form. After that, the most we can do is to suggest what makes a work of art greater and greater, from the most trivial to the most great.

Hence, it is astonishing that no aesthetician has, heretofore, been able to see that, to avoid destructive confusion in the world of art, we must divide all art into at least three distinct categories: Trivial Art, Clever Art, and Great Art.

And what is it that divides these three categories? It is:

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their relative power of stirring either only the sensuous; or merely the intellectual; or the spiritual emotions of mankind. In each of these three categories of art we see a display of a greater and greater anxiety, energy, and power on the part of the artist, first: to express adequately his own emotions or, second, his trying to stir the emotions of his fellow-men.

For example, a crude Japanese fan, involving only a few grotesquely drawn rocks and some water, manifestly made in a careless mood, showing no great energy or labor of love, and made to appeal only to our love of sensuous color, and arousing in us only a gentle emotion, of such mirth as forces us to say : “Hello! isn’t that cute?” — such a work is a trivial work of art; but it is, nevertheless, a work of art. Why? because the man who made it found some degree of joy in merely expressing his simple, sensuous, even grotesque emotion, in some form — an emotion of mirth.

An example of clever art is a Louis XV screen, with Frago- nard decorations. The function of the screen is a trivial one, and the subject of the decorations is trivial also. But the whole thing is lifted out of the category of purely trivial art into the category of clever art, by the extraordinary display of intellec- tual imagination, plus loving dexterity of hand, and anxiety in the composition and execution of so perfect a thing, of its kind, an exponent of the cleverness of a clever age, so that we can imagine the joy both the cabinet-maker and the painter foimd in the mere making of the screen. Hence, it appeals to our intellect as well as our senses, and arouses in us an emotion of delight, a higher emotion than the emotion of mirth.

An example of a great work of art is Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” We know of “Last Suppers” by five of the great Renaissance artists, by Tintoretto, Raphael, Ghirlandajo, Del Sarto, and Leonardo. Tintoretto was so little emotioned by the subject, that he handled it in a nonchalant way, and the result is trivial, and makes us smile rather than worship. Raphael’s decoration is dignified, but also nearly as trivial as Tintoretto’s, because it has neither the cleverness of composi- tion of that of Ghirlandajo, nor the dramatic expression of that of Del Sarto. It lacks character. The one by Ghir- landajo is truly clever, because of the clever and charming composition and color scheme, and a certain serenity that

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pervades it. But it is only clever, because it lacks the pro- foundly dramatic expression possible in the subject. The one by Del Sarto is less charming in color and composition than Ghirlandajo’s, but greater because more dramatic, and showing more profoundly expressed human emotion on the faces of the actors in the drama. Hence, it stirs in us loftier emotions.

But the greatest of the five, and one of the six greatest works of the painter’s art of all time, is that by Leonardo. Why? Because he alone of the five was himself emotioned by the subject to the highest pitch, and then made the finest composition, and with infinite love and labor succeeded in imaging and then expressing the emotioning dramatic dis- turbance, which must have followed, when Jesus said:

Verily, verily, I say imto you, that one of you shall betray me !

The more we contemplate the large copy in Milan, made of the original fresco, the more we gradually feel an emotion of awe — the highest emotion the soul can experience. And this emotion becomes stronger, as we note the perfect science of composition, drawing and expression of the picture, and then the loving anxiety with which he aimed to so perfect his work, that it should stir the emotions of his fellow-men and so, make them share in his own emotional exaltation !

In Leonardo’s own day the world already acclaimed this picture as the greatest of all “Last Suppers.’’ And today, the world is more than ever united in the opinion that it is not only the greatest “Last Supper” ever painted, but that it is one of the six greatest painted pictures ever produced.

Before some trivial work you will hear people say: “What, that? that isn’t a work of art!” They do not mean it is not “a worh of art” — what they do mean is that it is not a clever or a great work of art; and, imable to express themselves, in correct or clear language, they use general terms, ending in a slipshod remark.

In fact, slipshod thinking, talking, and writing, are respon- sible for most of the anarchy in aesthetics in the world of art.

You cannot say a man is not a man, because he is a stupid, and not a clever or a great man, can you? Even an African pigmy is a man. You cannot say an expression of human emotion, made in form, in any language whatsoever, is not a work of art, simply because it is trivial, and not clever, or

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great. No matter, we repeat, how trivial or bad a man is, he is still a man ; no matter how trivial and weak a work of art is, it is still a work of art.

People often say: “Isn’t that Artistic?” What they really mean, and should say, is “Isn’t that Clever?” That is what they really do mean. Every art work is “artistic,” but even some of the greatest works of art lack “cleverness.”

But, to go deeply into the differences which divide the trivial from the clever, and the clever from the great, would take a volume. All we can consider, here, is one sample of each.

What is true of painting is true of poetry. A trivial poem is the following :

Yankee Doodle came to town A-riding on a pony.

Stuck a feather in his hat And called him Maccaroni.

It is a grotesque poem, because it arouses merely our mirth, and then ridicule, but it is a poem nevertheless.

A clever poem is Poe’s :

I dwelt alone In a world of moan And my soul was a stagnant tide,

Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride.

Till the yellow-haired, smiling Eulalie became my smiling bride.

It is of no special significance, but its varied and melodious lines, s killf ul composition, and dextrous rhyming arouse, to a certain extent, otu: intellectual admiration, and, to a certain degree, an emotion of delight, though falling short of arousing in us an emotion of awe and, therefore, lift it from the category of trivial, and puts it into the category of clever, art.

A great poem is Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,” the closing lines of which are :

So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night.

Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave.

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

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As we gradually read and grasp the meaning of this poem, one of the four greatest short poems in the language, we are slowly filled with an emotion of awe — ^by the grandeur and cadence of the lines, and by the nobility of the thought. But, far more than that. As we feel, gradually, with the passing years, steal over us the increasing consolation that this poem makes us feel; as we become impressed with the thought that all men must share our fate, and that “death levels all ranks and lays the shepherd’s crook beside the sceptre of a king, we gradually find ourselves sustained and calmed in the face of death on our sick-bed; and, as we gradually learn to feel that the poet aimed to console us, aimed to lift us to a lofty plane of thought and emotions, we feel an ever-increasing love for him, and finally thank destiny for having lent the world so fine a soul long enough to enable it to evolve so sublime a masterpiece, and to endow mankind with it, to serve for all time as a stimulus to noble action, and as a fortifying consola- tion to afflicted humanity, helping it to a serene resignation, as it sees itself gradually forced to depart from this world, so adorably beautiftd to the soul, in spite of the miseries the mind and body may, now and then, pass through during our span of life. And then the universal veneration we feel for the poet apotheosizes him into a sure immortality.

What is true of poetry and painting is true of sculpture, architecture, music, and all the arts, all of which are governed by the same fundamental laws.

Now, beginning with the most rudimentary and trivial works of art, there are less and less trivial works: up to the line where the higher category, the clever works of art, begins; then there are more and more clever works; until we reach the line where the category of great works of art begins, the three categories overlapping each other; then we reach greater and greater works of art; imtil we arrive at the greatest work, in each of the eight arts of the world. And that work is the one which the largest number of cultured people have voted, after the longest period of time since its creation, to be the greatest work of art, of its kind.

Why do I say cultured people? Because Tolstoy made the mistake of supposing that a crowd of vmcultured moujiks, with rudimentary brains, are able to judge a work of art. They are

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not! Why? Because into the creation of a great work of art enter many complex elements, capable of stirring many dif- ferent emotions of different people to different degrees, many of which are technical, intellectual elements, of which an un- cultured man can know nothing, elements which can make an appeal only to the intellectually cultured men.

For instance, a Spanish peasant will enter the cathedral at Seville, and look at a fine “Madonna,” by Murillo, and be scarcely moved, then turn to a shrine and see a waxwork “Madonna,” bedizened with crude red, blue, and green silk, brass spangles, and tin tinsel, and be emotioned to delight, even to rapture! Both the wax-doll and the Murillo are works of art, but one is utterly trivial, the other is great; the difference being one of intellectual science and craftsmanship and of a spiritual suggestiveness, totally beyond the grasp of the peasant, and within the comprehension and appreciation of only cultured and spiritually awake people.

It is astonishing that so great an artist as Tolstoy should have so ignored the social value of the merely intellectual elements in a work of art, in view of his crusade for social uplift! This is another proof of his excessivism and of his being, not a deep analytical thinker, but rather a synthetic and sympathic artist.

Finally, time is a great factor in determining the greatness of a work of art. Time has a contempt for all things made without its aid. The artist who ignores time, both in the making of his art-work and in entrusting it to its care, is doomed to oblivion, and all his aesthetic tergiversations and “artistic jumping-stunts” will be but pitiable waste of energy.

It is safe to say of those among the works of Greek art, which have come down to us, and have, imiformly, during two thousand years of time, been voted, by all sorts of minds, as the best and still the best, that they really are the best.

Thus, it is certain that the “Jupiter Otricoli” in the Vatican Fig. 27 is the greatest representation of the Godhead ever made by man, and one of the greatest art creations of all time, as far as we know; because it has been successively de- cided to be so by the majority of the wisest and most pro- fovmdly cultured men of the world. Against such a verdict the ipse dixit of an individual, merely raises a laugh!

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And what is a “cultured” man? He is a man who, first of all, is able to reason logically; who has learned the meaning of life, i.e., to get away from the animal toward the spiritual; who will not do an unjust thing; who has learned the social value of things; who has enough self-control to prevent his judgment from being too much warped by his own taste and temperament; who is dominated by common -sense; who has perspicacity enough to save himself from capitulating to the latest shrewd propaganda — to accept the latest art fad — simply because some one says it is “up-to-date”; and who, finally, is filled with enough love for his fellow-men to enable him to feel what is good or bad, in its effect, on the highest interests of the race, and who has a fixed desire to contribute his share toward the elevation of mankind as far as in him lies.

He alone knows the real value of any spoken word, whether in type, paint, sound, or stone. He alone is able to look back in imagination over the past and, reasoning by analogy, say what works of art will likely endure in the future. Are there many such men among artists? No! Many among peasants? No! And very few of these are found among the so-called upper and rich classes. It is in the great middle class that most men of culture are found. Some are poor and some are rich.

This cultured class embraces, of course, artists of aU kinds. But it also includes philosophers, statesmen, metaphysicians, lawyers, critics, savants, educators, and men of high intellec- tual activity generally. And it is this great cultured class which finally — by a majority verdict — gives to every work of art its place and rank.

Thus, to sum up, we see: that we exist only, so long as we are asleep; that we begin to live, only when we are awake, because we then literally enjoy various states of consciousness in which we, our Ego, experiences different kinds of agitations or emotions, some physical, some intellectual, some spiritual. By a fiat of nature we are impelled to express those emotions, all the more certainly the stronger the emotions ; to do this we must use certain kinds of language or form; and, as soon as our emotion is expressed, in some form, merely with the pur- pose of expressing that emotion, no matter how trivial the emotion or how trivial the form of expression, it is already a

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work of art, rudimentary in ratio of the triviality of the emo- tion and of the form.

When, however, the emotion is a powerful one, and of a lofty kind, and expressed in a form having an extraordinary power of stirring the emotions, of lifting, not only of an in- dividual, but of mankind ; then we have a great work of art.

So, we repeat :

EVERY HUMAN WORK MADE, IN ANY LAN- GUAGE, WITH THE PURPOSE OF EXPRESSING, OR STIRRING, HUMAN EMOTION IS A WORK OF ART; AND A WORK OF ART IS GREAT IN RATIO OP ITS POWER OF STIRRING THE HIGHEST EMOTIONS OF THE LARGEST NUMBER OF CULTURED PEOPLE FOR THE LONGEST PERIOD OF TIME.

We have no hesitancy in saying that we regard this defini- tion of art as the most important slogan ever announced in the world of art. And for the following reasons :

As soon as the American people, or any people, resolves that it will strive to have immortal works of art from its artists — because it supports them for that purpose — and that there is only one way by which such enduring works of art can be produced, and that that way is indicated in our defini- tion of art, that is; that an artist should aim to stir the high, the higher and the highest emotions of the largest munber of people for the longest period of time; and, when once that aim becomes predominant in the American world of art, our artists will as surely respond to the universal desire of the American people, as did the Greek artists to the Hellenic desire for a supreme Parthenon; as did the Guilds of the 13th century respond to the general longing for the most wonderful churches, and the Renaissance artists respond to the general desire to see the Papacy glorified.

Almost as important, and as a necessary corollary from the above definition of art, follows this declaration that:

All ART IS A LANGUAGE, and, as Herbert Spencer says, “an apparatus for the conveyance of thought.”

To sustain this view, we could cite the declarations of a score of artists, from Michael Angelo to Millet, and of writers, from Aristotle to Taine. To do so, would be merely a clutter- mg-up of this book.

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A man’s “artistry,” that is to say, his manner of composing, drawing and technique; of writing, painting, or carving; form the machinery by which he conveys his emotions, thoughts, and feelings to his fellow-men; while his Conceptions — his ideas, and emotions — form the messages, which, when com- pletely expressed or represented, in a work of art we call poems pictures, statues, dramas, operas, temples, etc. It follows that, since a railroad is built only for the purpose of conveying more or less precious freight, and a telegraph-line for the pur- pose of conveying more or less precious messages, the freight and messages are of prime importance, and the railroad and telegraph-line are of secondary importance, to mankind.

It follows, logically, that the messages an artist conveys to mankind, are first in importance, compared with his “artistry,” or machinery of conveyance, and that, in consequence, the envelope and contents, the poem, statue or picture, will be the more precious to the receiver, mankind, the more exalting, consoling, and life-giving thoughts and emotions it radiates.

To drive this thought home, we repeat: Art is a language.

Further: Since aU thought must be divided into two categories, simple thoughts and complex thoughts, so all works of art must be divided into two classes:

Decorative art and Expressive art, or simple and complex art.

By Decorative art, we mean all such works in which no complex ideas are attempted to be conveyed to the world, and by which it is sought merely to beautify the surface of something, from a tea cup to a temple, and only by such simple forms and patterns as express no ideas, such as “Truth,” “Justice,” “Charity,” etc. Under the head of decorative art, come such things as carpets, wall-paper, dresses, hats, jewelry, and all the host of mere abstract ornaments, which give pleasure to the eyes and ears — ^without arousing in us a train of ideas.

By Expressive art, we mean aU such art in which is con- veyed — in forms of more or less emotion-stirring beauty— such thought-arousing messages as “Truth,” “Justice,” “Courage,” “Sympathy”; “The Crucifixion,” by Angelico, or “The Decadence of Rome,” by Couture, Fig. 142.

We find this same division of art into decorative and ex- pressive works, in poetry and in music. All poems which are

WHAT IS ART?

merely descriptive, and devoid of a special thought-arousing message, are merely decorative.

Example; Bums’s “Tam O’Shanter” is a merely decorative poem, written for our amusement, not to point a moral or to set us to thinking. While his “Address to the Unco Guid,” with its profound message, is a poem truly expressive, and of his inmost soul. What is trae of poetry, is true of music. Such compositions as are made up of merely successive lines of melody, devoid of suggestions of any thought or message, are merely decorative music. But, when they are intended to enhance the meaning of the words of a song or Opera, and do so — then they are expressive music, like Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” which actually does intensify the religious awe which the accompanying words express, or Wagner’s “Wedding March,” which expresses the triumph of love, when the mar- riage is accomplished. And, so, with all the arts.

Of course, every time a man says merely. Hello ! he expresses something of himself — his voice, his energy, his temperament, more or less. Even when a bug walks across your eyeglasses he expresses himself — since it is true, as Emerson says, we repeat :

All Nature is bent upon Expression.

But it must be obvious, that a “Rock at Newport,” by La Farge Fig. 28, is less expressive and less thought-com- pelling than the “Youth,” by Thomas Cole, Fig. 29. Hence La Farge’s picture is mere Decorative art, and Cole’s picture is Expressive art.

(Here is the place for us to say — ^in parenthesis — about this pic- ture of Cole: It is one of a series of four, allegorizing “The Voyage of Life” and its four phases: “Childhood,” “Youth,” “Manhood,” “Old Age.” See Fig. 29-a, b, c, d. Soon after being painted, thousands of engravings, on steel, of this series were sold in America. This was about fifty or sixty years ago, because no finer allegory was ever expressed in paint than in this series.

Even admitting that — as mere “painting” or “technique” — they are not as “clever” as the works of Tiurner or Corot, of Con- stable or Daubigny, nevertheless they are — as conceptions, com- positions, and as expressions of a lofty poetic spirit — on a level with the finest things created during the 19th century. And the artistry, or “technique,” is good enough, and of a quality adeqiiate to the ex- pression of the conceptions.

And, after all is said, is the mere “activity,” or process, of

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“painting” — of the ping-ponging of pigment across a silly canvas — to “realize,” as Cezanne always aimed and failed to do, of some trivial subject and a puerile design, and a mere pretext for painting ; is it really a worthy life-occupation for a six-foot man, or even of a self-respecting woman? We say — No!

From the standpoint of inspiring youth, of nerving manhood, and of consoling old age. Cole’s “Voyage of Life” series is one of the supreme works of American art!

Of course, the degenerate modernists — some of whose works are illustrated in Figs, i to 26, and who regard the expression of a noble idea as mere contemptible “literature” — these will cynically laugh at us, since, to them, whatsoever in art is not “abstract,” “de- formed,” mutilated, sadistic, grotesque, tortured, degenerate, and decaying, hence viciously ugly — ^these men will utter to St. Luke, patron saint of art, the blasphemy that these masterpieces of Cole: “Are not art at all!”

But, we ourselves could not resist the urge to illustrate them, in the first number of “The Art World” Magazine, October, 1916, and prefaced by a magnificent engraving of “Youth,” by the greatest living engraver on wood, by Timothy Cole — no relation to the painter.

These four noble canvases now hang over four steam-radiators, in St. Luke’s Hospital, here, where we had them photographed specially for “The Art World.” They will go to pieces soon — to the eternal disgrace of America — unless rescued by some wideawake, liberal American, and placed in the Metropolitan Museum. There they should be restored, and himg in a special room — all by them- selves — ^to the greater glory of American Art!

Finally, in order to successfully convey any thought or idea, or emotion, we must Represent these by means of such forms, or symbols, or words as can be understood — by those to whom we attempt to convey our thoughts or emotions. For, if such symbols, or forms, or words are so strange, that normal minds cannot imderstand them, or will find them repellent — ^ because they are so grotesque, distorted, or ugly, and, there- fore, at war with the symbols that have been currently used for ages for the conveyance, by one man to another, of his emotions, thoughts, and feelings, — then the Representation wiU be incomplete, or ineffective, or repellent and, so, a repre- hensible waste of human energy, time, and material.

Hence, the most successful and highest possible representa- tion of the highest ideas and emotions, is the highest function possible of an artist.

head in sculpture in the wurld.

the whole set placed in the Metropolitan Museum.

CHAPTER III

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

A Definition

Appeared in the November, 1916, issue of "The Art World"

Next to What is God? the most serious question of the age is — What is Beauty? Because, strange as it may appear to the unreflecting, on the proper answering of that question depends the Character of our future civilization. Why, will appear later.

When we contemplate Nature it suggests to us that Beauty is the vestment and expression of the Creator; that He made the pursuit of the Beautiful the Supreme Law of the Universe; that every insect, shrub, and even crystal,[senses and obeys that law and makes itself and environment beautiful; and that tmdeveloped or degenerate men alone violate the law.

Be that as it may, nothing is more amazing than the anarchy in the World of Art with regard to the meaning of the word Beautiful.

And the principal cause is — the Metaphysician !

The Metaphysician is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse on earth. When he engages in the most exhaus- tive of labors — common-sense Thinking, otherwise called Inductive Reasoning, and never publishes as Truth a mere hypothesis until he can prove it, and so becomes a torch- bearer for humanity — then he is a Creative Power. But when he indulges in fantastic guessing, otherwise known as Deductive Ruminating, and, with an insolent assumption of authority — in mystic, esoteric jargon — publishes as truths a lot of skirt-dance speculation, and so allures mankind to rush into a morass of uncertainty and fear-compelling darkness, in which men quarrel and run over each other like frightened

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ants when their hUl is upset — then he becomes a destructive force.

Real thinking of the investigative kind, by which a man aims to penetrate into the innermost meaning of things, is the most difficult and dangerous human function. Because — like Blondin walking a tight-rope over Niagara — should the thinker ever lose his balance and fall away from common- sense he will be precipitated into the abyss of error and chaos.

Bacon already testified to the evU work of some meta- physicians when he said:

Philosophy has made no progress in a thousand years, because philosophers have wasted their time in wrangling over the meaning of terms,

ending in “Words, words, words!”— as Hamlet said.

But, sad to say, no matter how absurd or destructive of human happiness their systems may be : if they are only dressed up in some pretentious, brilliant, mystic garb, they will find some money-mucking bookseller to scatter them abroad for lucre; just as any degenerate picture, if painted with blatant brilliancy, will find a degenerate art-dealer to inflict it upon the public as being, if not beautiful, at least “so interesting." Hateful word — ^how many crimes in art have been committed in thy name!

As a sample of how a metaphysician can go astray Plato said: “Beauty is variety in unity,” a childish definition. Because by variety in unity we also obtain the Ugly. And we cannot define beauty and ugliness by one definition.

The causes of the confusion in this matter are three : First, lack of knowledge; second, slipshod thinking, talking, and writing; third, dishonest talking and writing in order to con- done, or bolster up, some sort of fraud in the World of Art.

As to lack of knowledge: In early days, thinkers did not know what beauty is, or means. Hence, the almost fruitless gropings after a definition of beauty, by Plato and Socrates. And, as the habit of reasoning inductively had not been estab- lished tmtn Bacon came into the arena of philosophic investi- gation and the deductive method of arriving at truth was cur- rent, Plato and his fellow-speculators deduced everything from the gods. So that, in Plato’s mind, an artist did not make a perfect statue by altering the proportions; refining the parts

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

of his model; or by combining in one work the perfect parts of several models; but he copied the perfect model he had seen in a previous existence and retained in his memory. Hence, he called himself a realist, the only really real things being the perfect models of things in heaven! We now know Plato went astray, because he lacked knowledge.

As to slipshod thinking and talking and a confused use of words; A law of our nature allures us always to follow the line of least resistance. Hence, we are apt to use a short instead of a long word, and one word instead of two, if the short and single word will express our thought sufficiently clearly to suit us, even if we are, later, forced to use synonyms to make our meaning clear to the person we are talking to. Hence, the origin of slang, among those who do not care about maintaining the purity of the language. Such persons will say: “That’s a beauty!” instead of: “That is beautiful.” Then, to economize further, they will say: “That’s a beaut!” “She’s a beaut!” instead of: “She is beautiful.”

Also, if one word will express, in a general and vague way, what we should express in a special and precise way, by a special and precise word, but to do which requires effort, we are apt to fall into the lazy and slipshod habit of using one word to express two, or many more, things, or qualities.

One such word is “beauty.” We use it to express whatever is attractive or pleasing to us — physically, mentally, or spirit- ually. Another such word is “fine.” Whatever has any spe- cial excellence we call “fine.” We say: “A fine needle,” and “a fine bull”; “a fine boy,” and “a fine ship.” Therefore, it is obvious that we cannot define the word “fine,” if we admit that it can, or should, be used to characterize such different things as a needle, bull, boy, and ship.

Therefore, how can heaven itself define “beauty” if it is used to characterize a bulldog, the more ugly he is, and a woman, the more beautiful she is; a beefsteak, a sixteen-inch gun, and a rainbow; a soul, a mind, and a game of chess; a system of morals, or a philosophy of life? And thus, unless we limit the use of the word “beauty” to certain things, it cannot possibly be defined.

Now, as to fraudulent uses of the word.

The public must be told that every merchant, in order to

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push the sale of his wares, must be more or less of a self- advertiser, and so degenerates easily into a charlatan. In the same way, every eager and get-quick-notorious-and-rich artist, who cares more for present profit than for the love of his fel- lows, is usually more or less of a charlatan advertiser. Hence, it is important to reflect over Tennyson’s remark:

That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;

That a lie which is aU a lie may be met and fought with outright ; But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

For, since the world is governed by slogans, a half -lie is the most dangerous of maxims. Example: Rodin, in order to condone those of his sculptures which are radically ugly, said :

Nature is always beautiful.

This is a half-lie. It is contradicted by his quondam friend Whistler:

That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, untrue. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong.

This is also a half -lie, and absorbed from Baudelaire, the prophet of the artificial in art, and also used by Whistler to defend those of his works which are merely artificial trifles.

The truth is: ever3rthing in Nature is beautiful to us in Pattern and Line — ^when it is a perfect thing of its Type; when it is imperfect, or maimed, or decaying, it is not beautiful and often is very Ugly.

The frequency with which “Interesting” is confounded with Beautiful is amazing. It never occurs to some slipshod thinkers that a decaying old man or woman may be highly “interesting,” even very lovely, without being at aU beautiful, and may — ^be very ugly. It is also astonishing how many will call a thing beautiful simply because it is — new.

Beauty does not mean Interesting, nor Variety, nor Art, nor Novelty. It means all these and something more.

Plato, in his Dialogue of “Hippias Major,” makes Soc- rates ask Hippias:

What is beauty? Is it a reality or an appearance ? What is the common quality of all those things, each diverse from the other, which we call beautiful ?

Let us try to answer this question and, using the common- sense inductive method, build up from the bottom of things:

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

When one contemplates Nature, one would say — the Cre- ator has established a cosmic urge and ordered it to provide, for the entertainment of men, all kinds of Variety. And to ensure this variety, there were established, first: “The Law of the Continuity of Effects,” to preserve the type of all things; and then: “The Law of Differentiation” for the sake of vari- ety within the type.

The result is that the mass of men in each Race are of one Type, which we call Normal, with but little variation — though all different.

By the side of this normal type we have some Abnormal variations. But when these vary too greatly they die, and so the general type is preserved.

Hence, we are concerned only with the great stream of nor- mal htunan beings, which moves on in a broad path, fringed on one side by a smaller stream of the undeveloped, and on the other side by a small stream of the over-developed, both destined to disappear.

Practically speaking, when a human being is born he is, we repeat, made up of a Body, a Mind, a Soul, and an Ego — each of these being merely germs, capable of great develop- ment. This is allegorical, of covuse. No psychologist knows exactly how our intellectual and spiritual processes are carried on, and none ever will know — ^with mathematical certainty.

At birth the body is the most advanced and the only one of the germs capable of perceiving and subconsciously apper- ceiving anything — ^and through the Senses.

Later, when the mind perceives and apperceives, and the soul intuitions and feels, and the ego is able to judge the value of what the body senses, the mind perceives, and the soul feels, then the entire man, working in unison — Creates, using as material the stored-up experiences of his senses and emo- tions.

Therefore, avoiding all hair-splitting psychology, we claim that, practically speaking, what takes place in each human or- ganism is this : The Ego sits enthroned, as it were, in a cham- ber, and is surrounded by three other chambers, occupied by what we call Minister Physical, Minister Intellectual, and Minister Spiritual; these Ministers present to the Ego from time to time long or short Trains of Sensations, Trains of

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Thoughts, and Trains of Emotions — to be judged by the Ego as of value or no value to the whole organism.

That which gives pleasure or pain to the body, by reflex action, gives pleasure and pain to the Mind, Soul, and Ego.

We do not Live when we are Motionless and Emotionless in sleep — ^we simply Exist. We begin to really live only when we are awake and our faculties are agitated and our bodies put in motion — by the impact upon us of our environment. That is to say : the Ego loves movement of, and in, the body, mind, and soul of some kind, but ■g>veieT&hlY Agreeable, forward movement. That is the root of all Progress. We will reconsider movement later.

There are Three Categories of things outside of man in Nature — Objective, Semi-objective, and Subjective. Objec- tive things are such as have Form, which can be seen by the eye; Semi-objective things are such as can be partly seen by the eye and by the mind — like Poetry, or can be seen partly by the eye and be heard by the ear — such as Music; and Sub- jective things are such as can be seen only by the mind — such as Thoughts, Concepts, Ideas.

The main reason why thinkers of the past floundered about in a bog of metaphysical verbiage when trying to define and analyze Beauty is: that they tried to define three, differ- ent, things in a single definition — objective, semi-objective, and subjective Beauty — which is impossible. Because:

Objective beauty appeals principally to the Eyes and its primary effects are upon the eyes; semi-objective beauty, such as poetry or music, appeals only partly to the eyes and partly to the Ears, and partly to the mind; subjective beauty appeals to the Mind alone.

But, while it is impossible to find one definition that will define all kinds of beauty, it is possible to show, as Plato sur- mised, that there is one essence, or common quality, that is characteristic of and imderlies aU beauty whatsoever. Let us find this essence :

When we speak of Beauty we should always mean Objec- tive or Semi-objective Beauty. That is why Emerson said :

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty hath its own excuse for being.

lx)rd Kaimes (1762) limited the objects which are beauti-

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ful to those which appeal to our Sense of Sight. What appeals to us through the ears may be agreeable or delightful, but it is not — Beautiftil. Dugald Stuart (i8io) in an eclectic spirit affirms that the meaning of the word Beauty, instead of being restricted in conformity with any particular system, should continue to be the generic word for expressing every quality which, in the world of Nature or Art, contributes to render them agreeable to — the Eye. And Tolstoy says :

In Russian, by the word krasota (beauty) we mean only that which pleases the Sight. And, though, latterly, people have begun to speak of an “ugly deed” or of “beautiful music,” it is not good Russian. In Russian a deed may be kind or good, unkind or bad; but there can be no such thing as “beautiftil” or “ugly” music.

Plato already said :

Beauty lies in the pleasure of sight and hearing.

Coming to earth, we find her (Beauty) shining in clearness through the doorway of sense. . . . This is the privilege of Beauty, that she is the loveliest, and also the most palpable to sight.

We could quote much more, from Plato down, to show that beauty is a matter that fundamentally concerns — the Eyes, and then the Ears.

We will restrict ourselves therefore to find the common quality predicable of all objective beauty and let the metaphysi- cians wrestle with the question of subjective beauty:

Every object in Nature or Art throws off — ^projects towards us — Rays of Light. As aU objects have different colors these rays of light are also varied in color.

These rays of light eternally fall upon the eyes with a cease- less PATTERING — like hail upon a roof.

It is this everlasting pattering upon the eyes, of the vari- ously colored rays of light, which is the first cause of the pleas- imable emotions which we experience when we confront cer- tain combinations of objective things in nature, and which we call objectively beautiful.

The second basic element is movement. Movement is life. Sitting still is death.

Therefore, from the day we are born until we die, nothing gives us more pleasure than movement — in our body, mind, and soul : provided the movement has variety, is easy and with- out shocks that are unpleasantly severe.

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That is why, as Children, we love running, jumping, “shoot- ing the shutes,” the “Russian” railways at Coney Island, even if these movements are intermingled with some slight jolts that make us shout with glee.

These are all more or less jerky, jostling movements. And they usually give us an emotion of Mirth, from a smile to shouts of laughter. We call these jostling movements.

Then there is a second category of movements, free from all jolts, jerks, shocks, but full of gliding. This gliding move- ment we feel in skating, swimming downstream, in which the current carries us, as it were, in its arms ; driving up and down a gently rolling, over-hdl-and-dale, country road, when it is in good order and devoid of holes, and when we do it in a cushioned carriage, in which we are cradled, from side to side, as we were in our mother’s arms and in our cradle, which, hav- ing been oiur first movements and which gave us pleasure, we never forget. That is why we love sailing in a boat, on a beautiful sunny day, over a gently-wavy lake, or sea. AH of which give us a feeling of being gently cradled. All of these are serpentine or undulatory movements. All these cradling movements arouse in us a more or less active emotion of Delight.

Then, there is a third category of movements, those which lift us off the earth: such as swinging in a swing which, as children, gives us so much pleasure, if the swing is a long and high one; or the feeling of plunging down a cavernous depth in the sea, between two immense waves, after a gale while on a steamship, whose staunchness we saw proven by the storm, now passed, first plunging down and then rising high up again. This feeling of pleasure, this emotion at being lifted, is what makes us enjoy going up in a balloon; or flying through the air on an aeroplane; or going up on the elevator of the Eiffel Tower, at Paris; or up the “Funiculare” to the summit of the Rigi, in Switzerland; or to the top of Vesuvius, at Naples. All these movements are lifting movements, which take us up, up, away from the earth, away from the commonplace haunts we are daily forced to tread while on the earth. Moreover, and this is very important, and to be remembered: these upward, lifting movements, awaken in us a desire, rudiment- ary but nevertheless real, of wishing for wings, so that, like

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

lOI

Icarus, we might fly towards the suns and stars! It arouses in us the hunger to quit the earth, and fly from planet to planet ; and starts omr imagination to peering into the infinitude of space.

Now, we cannot be thus lifted off the earth, bodily, with- out experiencing an emotion of Au'e. At least this occurs the first time we are thus lifted off the earth, off our feet. Of course, familiarity with anything dulls our emotionability to that thing.

But, it has often occurred to us that one of the root-causes why most men desire immortality in heaven, or to be there reunited with, and lost in, God, as do the Brahmans, is the emotion of awe they feel when being lifted off the earth, or when they climb up to a mountain top.

Now, the movements we feel and enjoy in oiur body and the accompanying emotions, we also experience in our mind and soiil. How is this?

We have two eyes. These are wonderfully constructed. Their movements are controlled by six muscles attached to the eyeball — two above, two below, and one on each side — which make the eye move and revolve in any direction the will directs. See Fig. 30. What is true of the body is true of the eye — movement is life, standing still is death. Movement in the eyes, like movement in the body, gives us pleasure, and the movements in the eyes give us the very same sensations that we feel through the movements of the body.

These, then, are the two basic sources of the enjoyment of the emotions, caused in us by those objective things in nature which we call Beautiful: the pattering upon our eyes of col- ored rays of light, and such movements as give pleasure to the muscles of the eyes.

Now, we repeat, we hate monotony, because it gives us pain and is a foretaste of death; and we love variety, because it gives us surcease from pain and also positive pleasure, because it means — life.

What is true of the body is true of the eyes and ears and, by reflex action, of the mind and soul.

What is true of Nature is true of Aj t, both objective, and semi-objective.

That is to say :

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Monotony of movement of any muscle of the body brings pain to that muscle. So, if we move otu- eyes up and down, continually, for only a few seconds, we will feel pain in our eyes — on account of the Monotony of the movement, and the repeated Jerkings at the end of each movement; because these produce a strain on the eyeballs. Even the holding of the eye riveted to one spot for a short while will give us pain in the eyes, on accovmt of the strain on the muscles of the eye.

Now, all Nature is dominated by Lines — not color.

This had never been denied until the Romantic school, with Delacroix at their head, proclaimed the supremacy of Color over Line. It was a false gospel, but appealed to those who could not draw and those who hungered for “something new.” Defended with clever casuistry, by the commercial artists and critics, it misled the unwary until one excessivist chirped:

The public must be told that Color is the Alpha and Omega of art !

The stupidity of that statement is so grotesque that, as Beaumarchais said: “We must laugh at it in] order not to weep.” For, that color is secondary in art is proven by the fact that we derive, not quite, but almost as much pleasure from a steel engraving of any painting as we do from the paint- ing itself, that we prefer sculpture and architecture, without color, and that in poetry and music, the highest of all the arts, color is not used at all. The truth is :

Man’s entire intellectual and spiritual development has been dominated — not by color, but by the Omnipresence and Tyranny of lines in Nature. What does a sea captain mean when he says of his ship: “She has beautiful lines!”? He means the contour of the ship — ^the Outside Edge of the Form its Pattern.

There is not a single line in a great cumulus cloud. But it has a Contour, by which it is silhouetted against the blue sky. In other words, it has a PATTERN.

Besides that, it is interspersed with lesser contours of the lesser cloud forms. These show contours and patterns of contours in ever varying variety. It is this endless \'ariety of movements which we experience in our eyes as they follow or perceive the contours of patterns and of lines which is the second basic element of all Objective Beauty.

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Our eyes are forced to follow the lines or patterns of every object in Nature, whether they wish it or not. They have no choice in the matter. They cannot escape the tyranny of Nature’s lines. The following of these lines by our eyes places them in movement. If this movement is of such a natime that it gives us physical pleasure and, by reflex action, arouses in us emotions of mirth, delight or awe, we call the combination of objective things which do that, Beautiful.

R. L. Stevenson said:

Literature, although it stands apart, by reason of the great destiny and general use of its medium in the affairs of men, is yet an art like other arts. Of these we may distinguish two great classes : those arts like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like archi- tecture, music, and the dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely abstract. Each class, in right of this distinction, obeys principles apart ; yet both claim a common ground of existence, and may be said with sufficient justice that the motive and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern; a pattern, it may be, of colors, of sounds, of changing attitudes, geometrical figures, or imitative lines; but still a pattern. That is the plane on which these sisters meet; it is by this that they are arts; and, if it be well they should at times forget their childish origin, addressing their intelligence to virile tasks, and performing unconsciously that necessary function of their life, to make a pattern, it is still imperative that the pattern should be made.

Now, supposing a man should be born blind, he would be living only physically, and that is the tragedy of being bom blind. Then, suppose a blind man should be put to sleep, alone, in a spherical room, without corners or lines, painted all white and devoid of all objects; and then suppose we could, by a miracle, make him see, during the night, without his being conscious of it. "When he awmke, and opened his eyes for the first time, he would be so astonished on seeing the Light, that he would be to the highest degree agitated and emotioned with delight.

This falling — this pattering — of light upon the eyes is, we repeat, the primal element of all objective beauty. This must not be forgotten.

Should the blind man now be allowed to remain alone for a long time in this spherical, white, lineless, spotless room, see-

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ing nothing but light, his delight would soon leave him, bC' cause he would feel he was not much better off than when he was blind and saw only darkness, because all he saw now would only be white instead of black. And, if nothing happened to appear on the spherical wall of white, he would fall back into the same sad intellectual stupor he was in before — because of the Unchanged Monotony of the white color, which at first gave him such an emotion of delight; and should nothing at all ever happen, he would gradually wilt and die — even if well fed — because eternal monotony means death.

But, suppose him lost in thought, sitting and gazing at a given spot of that white wall, and that there should suddenly appear a black, but straight, horizontal line of about five feet long, the surprise again would be so great as to give him an- other emotion of delight, different from the first. But if he saw nothing else, he would be forced to run his eye over that straight line,

Fio. 31

from right to left and back again, eternally over the same line. This would soon disgust him, because he would feel pain from the strain on the muscles of his eyes. Because: every time his eyes reached the ends of the line, they would experience a jerk as they were shuttlecocked back and forth. Hence, he would soon hate that short, cut-off line.

Supposing the straight line to be replaced by a Square line or pattern: Fig. 32, of say two feet square. The man’s eyes would be compelled to spin around that four-cornered pat- tern and receive a jolt on his eyes in each angle of the square in each corner. This would soon give him pain in the eyes and disgust him.

Moreover, this square tends to hold the eye and soul im- prisoned, and we dislike being held prisoner. We instinctively love all forward progressing Motion. Hence, we love racing and all speeding.

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For the same reason we do not like — detached from other things— such patterns as the Octagon, Fig. 33, or the Circle, Fig. 35, or the Ellipse, Fig. 34, or any other imprisoning lines or patterns — when they are of a certain size, and unrelieved and unvaried by other lines — ^inside of the patterns, because they also hold us spinning around in a circle. Of course, when these patterns are very small, like dots, they do not weary our eyes. It is only when they are of a certain size. We love a certain amount only of spinning about — when this spinning is in a forward direction.

Fig. 36. — Ionic Capital Fia 37. — Spixal Shell

From the Erectheioa

Therefore we love a certain amount of the Spiral the basis of all Graceful Beauty, See Fig. 36, the most gracefully Beautiful capital ever created. We like this kind of spiral line because it has a beginning and an ending — a forward movement, and an outward Ejecting thrust — at the end of the line. Hence we love a ram’s head with horns. But when the spiral has an Inward thrust, and, so, holds us spinning around the centre, eternally digging in, as in Fig. 37, we do not like it because — it holds the eye bound to one spot; this creates a strain and we dislike all strains. It is the forward, or upward, moving spiral that we love — Fig. 38.

So much for disagreeable lines. And let us now consider agreeable lines ;

Supposing there should appear on the blind man’s spherical wall a zigzag line. Fig. 39. The man would find in this line or Pattern a certain physical enjoyment, mixed with a certain sense of humor, of Mirth. Why? Because, while the zigzag line would Jolt the eyes, the jolting would be varied, and we enjoy variety of movement; and, we repeat, we en- joy all movement that is forward. And the sense of humor

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would result first, from the disorder of the questionable, zigzag movement of the line or pattern — all disorder being Mirth- compelling, because God is Order; and perfect order is Sublime and Awe-inspiring. Per contra, Dis-order is Comic and Mirth- inspiring.

Moreover, and this is fundamental, Forward repetitive pres- entation of lines, or of spots, or of sounds is the very basis of all MELODY. No melody without repetitive sounds, or spots, or lines.

Fig. 39. — ^Zigzag Line

We enjoy all melody, however simple, because of the phys- ical enjoyment resulting from our feeling alive — ^because of our being agitated, then put in motion. First, in forward movement, and then, in agreeably repetitive movement, and then in varied movement. It is pmely sensuous enjoyment. See Fig. 40.

Here we see a cornice of a Greek temple. Note the various kinds of repetitive ornament carrying the eyes in an easy, imdulatory movement. From each one a ray of light is re- flected and projected, which reaches and patters upon orir eyes like the sounds from a piano. This pattering of rays of light on our eyes is, we repeat, the first basic element of all beauty in all objective works of art, as the running of the scales on a piano is the basic element of all beauty in all semi- objective art, such as music and poetry.

It is the melody in the repetitive lines of ornament which makes it agreeable in spite of the fact that the sTnalt angles slightly jerk the muscles of our eyes.

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This suggests that the more forward-moving and repetitive and varied — hence melodious — a line of spots, forms, sounds or words is, the more we enjoy that line — be it in Poetry, Music, Architecture, Painting, Sculpture or Landscape-Gardening.

We experience a still higher enjoyment from the con- templation of a Greek fret. Fig. 41, when it is not too wide, and the squares not large. Because, first : while we are jerked by the angles of the lines, these jolts are neutralized by the variety and forwardness of the movement ; and second : our

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Fig. 41. — Greek Fret

mirth, caused by the jolts of the angles, is succeeded by a feel- ing of rudimentary delight — because of our perception of the reasoned-out order in the pattern; we see it is not accidental, like the zigzag line, but Designed, and very cleverly so. But, above all, because the line is more easily followed and more Melodious than the zigzag line. Fig. 39.

Our enjoyment of anything in Nature and Art depends, not only upon ife Pattern, but also on its Size and proportion to our eye. Example : A Greek fret as above, one inch wide, will give us a certain amount of delight, because its melody will not be neutralized by any perceivable jerkings of the muscles of the eyes by the angles of the squares, because these are small, and the eyes take in many of them at one glance — hence glide over the angles. But, to make that fret wider — without making our eyes larger in proportion — the amount of delight will at once be lessened ; make it too wide and it will become a source of pain because each square and angle will then be large enough to noticeably jerk the muscles of our eye, and too much. Hence Proportion is a most important element in all beauty, but an element we cannot notice now.

Fig. 42. — Undueatory or Serpentine Line

Supposing now there appeared on the walls of the blind man’s room a rhythmic, wavy, serpentine line, with an undu- latory movement, as in Fig. 42. The man would at once have

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a feeling of pleasure in his eyes. Because first ; the sinuous line or pattern forces our eyes into movement and, second, because the movement is pleasant, because the line is easy to follow — on account of the absence of all angles, hence, absence of jerks and jolts and we enjoy all foreward, undulatory movement; above all, because of the rhythmic repetition of the waves in the line, which CRADLES THE EYES.

We instinctively enjoy being Cradled, because we were cradled before we were born; then, in our mother’s arms and then in our cradles. Moreover, all Nature, the heavenly bodies, the seasons, the weather, civilization, are governed by rhythmic, cradling wave-motion and lines of progression. In fact Nature abhors the straight line, even more the rectangle, always avoids them when possible, and eternally seeks the curve. In all Creation man alone violates this cosmic law — in his more or less ugly art. Hence the gentle, shockless repe- tition of the wave movement gives us a distinct physical delight. But above all, because such a line is still more melodious. In other words, undulatory, cradle-like movement is the basis of all Graceful beauty and gives us Delight.

Fig. 43. — Two Upright Lines

Pyramid ALIZED

Supposing now there appeared on the cell-wall of the blind man two Perpendicular lines. Fig. 43 he would feel a LIFTING movement or emotion. Then suppose these lines should meet and form a Pyramid, Fig. 44, say six feet tall. The man would at once experience a stronger Lifting movement • because, while two perpendicular lines already lift the eyes in rapid Upward movement, when these two lines meet, and become a PYRAMID, the following by the eyes of these two lines from the base of the pyramid to the top, increasingly pushes the eyes aloft and finally flings the sight into the infin- ite; and, whde we enjoy simple forward movement, and still more undulatory cradling movement, there is nothing we

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enjoy quite so much as being lifted — when we apprehend no danger in the process. Hence the intense fascination of going up in a baUoon, of mounting in an aeroplane, and of climbing alpine heights; of looking at skyrockets, the moon and eve- ning star — they lift us. All children love being gently lifted off the ground, even dogs love it. In fact, the lifting-power of anything in life and Nature, from a man to a mountain, is its most precious power or quality. Why do we love to be lifted? Because this lifting of the body or of the eyes upward arouses in us the emotion of awe. Why? Because we are so organized. Why? We do not know. Is it the eternal beck- oning of the Creator — lifting us to look at Him and His love of the beautiful?

Finally, supposing there should appear on the wall of the blind man a line or pattern composed of all the varied elements we have spoken of — of the Angular, of the Serpentine and pyramidal, Fig. 45, the man would be lifted to the highest emotion of Delight. Why? Because here he would find a combination of lines offering the most varied elements of mel- ody of line, "united in a proportioned HARMONY of line.

Fig. 45. — Combination of Angular, Serpentine, and Pyramidal Lines

Now, these statements are not opinions. They are phys- ical facts, and govern all normal mankind, and the few ab- normals do not count.

These facts, at once destroy the foolish dictum “Beauty is relative.” Beauty is not relative — ^it is Absolute, as absolute as anything is.

Taste is relative. Why? Because here again Nature de- mands, and has implanted in each of us, a hunger for Variety, of which we will speak later.

We will now answer the question of Socrates thus :

THE COMMON QUALITY OF ALL BEAUTY. WHICH WE PREDICATE OF OBJECTIVE THINGS IN NATURE OR ART, IS— A CERTAIN MELODY, PRODUCED IN US BY THE PATTERING UPON OUR EYES OF VARI- OUSLY COLORED RAYS OF LIGHT— INTERSPERSED

GREAT WORKS OF ART

WITH VARIOUSLY AGREEABLE PATTERNS OF LINES, THE FOLLOWING OF WHICH, BY OUR EYES, VARI- OUSLY STIRS OUR EMOTIONS.

That is to say — Melody is the fundamental essence of all Beauty. No melody, no beauty!

As we said before, every impression made upon us from without, or concept coming to the Ego from within : is a sur- prise, a shock, either scarcely perceptible, as a shock, or very powerfully felt. These are either physical surprises — to the body, or mental siurprises — to the mind, or spiritual sur- prises — to the soul. We might caU all of these three kinds of surprises, emotions. But, for the sake of clarity of thinking, we will call the physical surprises, sensations; the mental sur- prises, thoughts ; the spiritual surprises, emotions. Why this ? Because our physical and mental surprises might arouse in us a desire to possess and enjoy or to hate, in some way, the objects which arouse those surprises, while the spiritual surprises, aroused in the soul, are purely spiritual surprises because not followed by any carnal desire to possess, or to hate, the objects which arouse those smprises, rather on the contrary, as we have shown in the previous chapter, to allure us to surrender ourselves to them, either in rapt contemplation or self -abnega- ting service.

We repeat, it is true that our spiritual emotions are all short, and that these short emotions are. sometimes, trans- formed into longer endiuing feelings and desires. But, then, they have ceased to be emotion, and have become something different, i.e., feelings; have left the soul; become lodged in the mind, and become part of the mental furniture of feelings.

Of course, since sight and hearing are two of our five senses, all beauty has upon us a sensuous effect. But, seeing that sight and hearing are, in reality, supra-physical, at least enough to be out of relation to the carnal senses of taste, touch, and smell and the body as a whole, we can call the effect upon us of beauty a super-sensuous effect; and the effects of the impact of beauty upon us are spiritual in ratio of the absence of all carnality, such as when we are enraptured by a sublime scene in nature, or art, like in Lorrain’s “Landscape, ” see Fig 49; or Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” see Fig. 136; or when we hear Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony.” These are all

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

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sensuous effects, but so far above the Carnal that we call them high and spiritual emotions, in contradistinction to such low emotions as terror, jealousy, or disgust.

Now, among all our emotions there are three categories which are so far above the carnal, in essence, that we can justly call them the highest emotion, all the more since they are the ones which we will have mostly in mind in this investigation.

These three categories are, we repeat: MIRTH, DE- LIGHT, AWE — which we feel in various degrees of intensity. We call these the highest, and spiritual, emotions because >they lift us the farthest away from and above the carnal, the material, and the commonplace earth-earthy environment, in which we are usually forced to carry on our existence.

These three categories of spiritual emotions are aroused in us by three distinct categories of beauty found in nature and in works of art :

First: PICTURESQUE beauty;

Second: GRACEFUL beauty;

Third: SUBLIME beauty.

Picturesque Beauty is that in which angular lines predom- inate — accompanied by a certain amount of disorder, Fig. 46, As our eyes are jostled about among the angular forms of this scene on the Danube and the mind notes the slight disorder, there is aroused in , us, a certain melody of line, disorder, color, etc., of a quality that stirs our emotion of MIRTH. Hence the ^ emotion of mirth is a corollary of Picturesque Beauty. This element of disorder in the pic- turesque must not be forgotten. Nature is order. Hence, we repeat, all supreme order is sublime and awe-inspiring. Per contra — all disorder is comic and mirth-inspiring. We do not exactly laugh over this scene, it is not mirthful enough for that; but, with a budding smile and slightly closing eyes, we say: “Isn’t it charming!” This mirth-provoking composi- tion could easily be exaggerated into a laugh-provoking compo- sition — ^by making the squares and angles much larger, and grotesque, and by adding still more disorder.

Mirth, being one of the three highest categories of emotion — ^because lifting us away from otuselves and the commonplace drudgery of our daily lives, up towards the Creator, is there- fore a spiritual emotion. Hence it is one of the most precious

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things in life. Therefore a dean, funny story, told anyTvhere, or a fine comedy, played in a theatre, should be studied and supported at all hazards by the public interested in a higher life and art.

Graceful Beauty is that in which serpentine or undulatory lines predominate — accompanied by Logic and Order, Fig. 47. As our eyes follow the graceful, serpentine lines of this picttue, and are Cradled about in the undulatory and varied curves of the pattern, of the stream, the path, and the trees, the cradling of which gives us a variety of shockless, easy, rippling movement, which pleases the eyes and then our soul, it fills us with a still higher emotion than mirth, an emotion we call DELIGHT.

This delight is enhanced by the absence of aU disorder. Delight is also a spiritual, because lifting emotion, and is higher than mirth only, because it lifts us farther away from the commonplaces of life towards the Creator. Moreover the savant composition, and the proportioning of the whole into a harmonious order, please our intellectual hunger for logic, for construction and invention.

Sublime Beauty is that in which pyramidal lines predom- inate, see Fig. 50. No one can appreciate the wonderful lift- ing power of the Great Pyramid tmtil he has stood, at evening, on the roof of the Mena House, at the foot of the pyramid, when the sim gives a rosy tinge to the majestic pile. Nor can one then avoid feeling an emotion we call AWE, a higher emotion than Delight only, because it lifts us still farther away from the earth-earthly towards the infinite. This is not s im ply because of its size, or sunset color, but, as we explained be- fore, because of its outside lines converging to a point, and then rapidly forcing the eyes and mind along the ever-diminishing lines to the apex and — beyond. This, we repeat, lifts and flings the eyes into infinite space, and so rouses in us an emo- tion of awe, the highest we can feel, because of the awe-inspir- ing uncertainty and MYSTERY of the beyond, towards that Creator with whom the Ego ever longs to be vmited, the athe- ist to the contrary notwithstanding.

It is this lifting and upward projecting power that makes such a mountain as the Matterhorn so awe-inspiring Fig 48.

In' PuBi ic Libr \ry, Xew York.

An example uf undulator;-, serpentine lines and contours, :n graceful beauty in nature.

LaNDSCAI’K.

Iv Naiional Gallery, L<)m><>n.

Turner, himself a great landscape painter, called this the most beautiful landscape ever painted. The majority of normal critics inrlorsc this judgment. So do we. Xote the combination of angular, serpentine, and pyramidal lines anti Cf>ntnurs.

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It is this lifting power of the Pyramidal which invests every object that is pyramidalized with that noble character we call Monumental.

If we now combine a certain quantity of all the elements: of the Picturesque, Graceful and Sublime, in one composition, and proportion them into a Melodious harmony, we have the most ecstasizing arrangement or pattern of beautiful lines pos- sible, Fig. 49.

Here we have Claude Lorrain’s “Landscape,” judged by Turner, and most critics, as the most skillful composition, or all-round beautiful landscape, in the world. And in this there are angular lines — to jostle the eyes and arouse onr mirth; ser- pentine lines — ^to cradle the eyes and give us delight; and pyra- midal forms to lift the eyes and arouse our emotion of awe. These lines are all arranged with such perfect proportion into such a harmony that we call this picture Sublime.

Added to this is a delicious color-scheme. So that this whole work throws us into such an ecstasy of delight as to force some persons to tears, the first time they see the picture.

If then we notice that the technique of the “painting” is so perfect, its atmosphere so marvellously rendered as to bathe the whole in a flood of shimmering light, the demands of our mind for skill and sufficiency of truth are so well satisfied — that oim criticism is disarmed, and we instinctively and in- stantly abandon ourselves to the spiritual enjoyment of this foretaste of Elysium! We could say much more about this picture.

But, in Art, to obtain the best results, viz. : a Harmony, capable of stirring otir highest emotions, nothing must be done to excess. Example; Del Sarto in his “Charity,” Fig. 51, has not only made one pyramid of his group, but three in one — making four. It is so evident that we notice the pyramidaliza- tion too much. This is again shown by the picture of “The Descent from the Cross” by Vicenzo, Fig. 52, in which we see two ladders so evidently used, because he had heard of the power of the pyramid to lift the soul, that he overdid it. His work is a picture of two ladders, with accessories. But Rubens, who was a great composer, and also used two ladders, in his “Descent from the Cross,” Fig. 53, veiled these so skillfully that we do not notice them. We do not notice the pyramidal-

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ization of the picture but we feel it, and so our mind is not forced to ask, as in Vicenzo’s picture, “Why so much ladder?’’ And, while in Vicenzo’s picture we are puzzled and otrr emo- tionment is retarded, in Rubens’s picture we are spiritually free to be highly and quickly emotioned — because of the ab- sence in our mind of all mental speculation. For, every work of art win fail to quickly create an emotional state of the soul; in ratio of the amount of intellectual speculation it arouses — before we are emotioned; and, if our emotions are not aroused quickly, on the first impact upon us of the work, they win never be aroused afterward, however much the in- tellect may admire it — as time goes on. But the Ego is al- ways more in search of spiritual emotion than of intellectual interest, because spiritual Awe is higher than intellectual Delight. This must never be forgotten. This is why all talk of “intellectualizing our emotions’’ is childish.

In this pictrore by Rubens, one of the four greatest altar- pieces on earth, we see a marvellous pattern of a great lifting pyramidal mass, interspersed with various graceful cradling lines, sending forth variously colored rays of light which, patter- ing upon our eyes, and again through our eyes upon our mind and soul, these are jostled, then cradled, but, principally, lifted.

Moreover, and this is very important, he not only pyramid- alized his mass of figxtres but he curved — domed — the top of his pyramidal mass. The reason why the Dome of St. Peter’s is more awe-inspiring even than the Pyramids is : because the pyramidal mass is domed by exquisite curves. Therefore the always-critical mind, instantly seeing here in Rubens’s picture an order and perfection of arrangement and technical execu- tion, and a satisfying adequacy and appropriateness of expres- sion on the faces and in each detail, the mind and soul are free to abandon themselves to the physical, intellectual, above all spiritual lifting power of this wonderfully melodious tell- ing of a sublime story, and we are instantly emotioned by this grand harmony, into rapture and awe! Of course, only once — the first time we see it— not afterwards. Because, alas! “familiarity breeds contempt ’’—even of the highest.

This is strictly true only for the normal majority of those who lived in the epoch for which this picture was painted and

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in which the Bible stories were generally believed, or of those who still have faith in the Bible and the mission of Christ. Because to-day there are many laymen and artists who call all religious pictures “junk” and hate the very sight of them. These, of course, being prejudiced, are incompetent judges.

We must never forget that, as there are various degrees of primary colors — the Red, Blue and Yellow, so there are various degrees of primary categories of lifting emotion — Mirth, De- light and Awe, for which we use various terms from smiling to rapture. So much for objective things that we call Beautiful.

Now, what is true of objective things is true also of semi- objective Music: Melody is the essence of all beautiful music. Angular, jostling trains of melody Amuse or charm us; ser- pentine, cradling trains of melody Delight us; pyramidal, lift- ing trains of melody Awe us.

The same effects which are produced in us by the combi- nations or patterns of lines, composed by nature in a land- scape, or by a painter in a picture, are produced in us by the patterns of lines of musical notes, composed by a musician. The reader will see this if he will again look at the pattern of lines in Fig. 45 and then look at the pattern of lines of dots, or notes, made by the composer of the score of “The Last Rose of Summer,” Fig. 54, in one of the short themes, which he intro- duced twice, in his moving melody. He will notice at the

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Fig. 54. — Score of “ Last Rose of Summer ”

Note the rise and fall of the notes

start, a slight depression in the line of dots, from left to right, and then a varied, gradual rise, from the lowest to the highest note, and again a decline towards the lowest note, on the right, carried away to a state of emotion which we call Sublime, and etc. Thus, this pattern of notes forms a more or less pyramidal

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line, giving us a well-felt lift every time we hear the score played. It has a low beginning and a rise to a climax, lifting us, and to so high a state of emotional agitation that we are carried away to a state of emotion which we call sublime, and which we feel when we are, for the first time, in the presence of the Great Pyramid, Fig. 50, or the “Matterhorn,” Fig. 48.

Now, while in a landscape in nature, or in a picture, the eye and mind are forced to follow the patterns of lines, in a musical composition of lines and patterns of dots the same thing happens, except that the ear and the mind follow the lines of dots and notes. Thus, the law of varied, melodious, harmonized lines applies also to music: without variegated, melodious lines, to be followed by the ear and mind, we have no high, emotion-stirring, melody, and no music — such at least as can captivate the hearts of mankind, and hold them for any length of time.

A flat, monotonous line of notes wUl never arouse in us any high lifting and powerful emotion.

Jerky, or angular, melodies, like some pieces of “jazz,” full of syncopation, which jerk and jostle the ear, and fill us with mirth, we call picturesque music; undulatory melodies, like “The Beautiful Blue Danube,” which cradle the ear. in easy serpentine motion, fill us with delight, and we call it grace- ful music; while such melodies as lift us, and by easy stages, like “Dixie,” arouse in us a gentle ecstasy which, when ampli- fied and piled up, with savant variations, by the composer, like in the Overture to “Tannhauser,” lifts us to the empyrean, and arouses in us the emotion of awe, we call sublime music.

What is true of music, is true of the Drama. It proceeds very much along the same lines as shown in Fig. 45. Begin- ning with a low, quiet first scene, it proceeds, in pyramidaliz- ing fashion, with variegated scenes, ever higher and higher, in emotion-arousing interest, until the climax of emotion is reached at the end of the Third, or Fourth Act; then there is a rapid descent, back to the earth.

There is much so-called music of to-day which is not music at all, it is nothing but organized noise, jarring to the nerves disgusting to the mind and revolting to the soul. It is utterly devoid of the easy, shockless, undulatory movement, and of the proportion necessary to create a melodious harmony.

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This is no doubt because “modernistic” musicians, like “mod- ernistic” painters, feel that they cannot go beyond the classic, melodist-musicians of the past, and so they have conjured up scientific “musical problems” which they must solve; and the modernistic painters have fished out of nothingness sci- entific “color problems,” with the solution of which they bore mankind, until “technique” and “virtuosity” have taken the place of melody and music. And, in music as well as in painting, because the public knows nothing about the tech- nical tricks of musical composition and cares little, however much they may interest “musical artists” — the modernistic musicians, like the modernistic painters, must needs howl: “The blockhead public knows nothing about musical art!” As if the solution of scientific problems in sound and color alone make Art !

But the fact is, there is a lot of degenerates in the field of music as well as in the field of the other arts, who do not yet know that they are decadents, and that “novelty” is not orig- inality; that what is intellectually “interesting” to the mind, in science, has little place in art. Because, while it may interest the mind, it can never emotion the soul; and what is clever or novel, is not necessarily Beautiful and is often distressingly Ugly.

What is true of music is true of poetry — such as is not to be acted on the stage. No poetry, will ever be called beautiful which lacks the easy, shock-less, undulatory, cradling rhythmic, well-ordered, balanced, and lifting movement of lines and of words. The Vers-Librists may protest against this until black in the face, it will not avail them! The very constitution of our entire organism is eternally against them. Their stuff may be “interesting” scientifically, as “intellectualized- emotion”; but as sure as oil and water will eternally reject each other, so the soul will eternally ward off the coldly intel- lectual; and, however, interesting to the observing mind of the psychologist “intellectualized emotion” may be, the soul will have none of it — because all the soul has any use for is truly spiritual emotion. And in this the Ego will forever sus- tain the soul, since, in the last analysis and by a fiat of Nature, the soul — the “Minister Spiritual,” as we have, metaphor- ically, said — is, and will remain, the favorite and Prime Min- ister of the Ego.

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Therefore the “novelty” cranks, as well as crooks, among critics and artists in the world of art who, in our spiritual life, wish to eject the Soul from its supremacy and replace it by the Intellect, and merely for the sake of novelty and because of the atrophy of their imaginations, and who aim to substitute cold Intellectuality for warm Emotion in art and try, by all sorts of charlatan tricks and cuttle-fish methods, to befog and to mislead the public in order to unload their degenerate art, are making out of themselves nothing but donkeys, at whom the next generation will staringly wonder!

Space limit prevents a discussion of all the different degrees of different kinds of emotions. But it must be remembered that Wonder is not Awe. Wonder is an intellectual and Nega- tive emotion, giving us — ^like surprise — neither pleasure nor pain. We wonder, to an equal degree daily, over the telephone, but it is a cold, mental emotion. Whereas the awe we feel in face of the Pyramids at sunset is a varying but Positive emo- tion, lifting some persons to a tear-compelling awe.

Abstract thought being entirely subjective, it is a funda- mental error to call any mere thought beautiful, no matter how original and great. Face to face with Le Verrier’s con- ception that, because of the variation in the orbit of Uranus, there must be a planet beyond, one which could be found by mathematics, we may say: “It is a sublimely beautiful thought!” But this would be a wrong use of language, be- cause we cannot SEE thought, except in the mind. We can call it an astonishing, great, noble thought, but not a beauti- ful thought. In fact, slipshod adjectivizing, like slipshod thinking, is one of the vices of our mental processes and very common.

Nevertheless, there is a slight justification for calling a thought Picturesque — because of its jolting angularity and amusing disorder; or graceful, because of its soothing, cra- dling, delight-giving quality; or sublime, because of its lifting and awe-inspiring grandeur. In this subjective sense, then, the same law: that Melody is the Essence of all Beauty and of all kinds of Beauty, may be applied to subjective Thought.

We would like to know which bunco-metaphysico-juggler first strove to astonish the gadabouts in aesthetics with the notion: “All beauty is relative!”— an utterly absurd idea.

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But it was the cranks and crooks in the world of art who instantly adopted this as a slogan — to defend their artistic tergiversations. Those art-crooks and crooked critics, when they invent a new art-fad and then, in order to “work it,” invent, as Tolstoy said, a new and cryptic esthetic theory to square with and defend as gospel their new fad, always hark back to this fustian of the “Relativity of Beauty.” And just as for some generations the childish aestheticians confounded beauty with art, so our art-crooks to-day slily confound beauty with Taste; and, since taste is really relative, and the carps in the world of art are too lazy to think, they swallow this plaus- ible bait.

We repeat — there is no such thing as “relative beauty.” Beauty is absolute, at least as absolute as anything on this earth can be. It is taste — or the appreciation of beauty — which is relative.

Socrates, we repeat, asked Hippias: “What is beauty? Is it a reality or only a seeming?” We say it is a reality, as long as is real that combination, or pattern, of things which sends forth the variously colored rays of light and sounds which arouse in us the melody which stirs our emotions, and which we therefore call beautiful.

Of course, in a certain sense nothing is real, because every- thing is evanescent, nothing endures. For, as Shakespeare says: Rocks impregnable are not so stout nor gates of steel so strong But Time decays!

You may say the red color of the tomato is not real, be- cause, when you liquify it completely, there is no more red color. But that is absurd. For, as long as the tomato exists, it throws off a red ray of color, which is so real that it affects our nervous system. We all know that a red room warms us; a blue room cools us; a green room soothes us; and a yellow room excites us. Of course, it is true that :

Things are not what they seem.

We know that the sight of certain ugly things is so nauseat- ing that they make us vomit. The effect is a real effect. So the reality of the effect upon us of beauty is a reality. We know that certain melodies have a real power to depress us into sad, unpleasant mental states which, if continued long enough, will disintegrate us, as nitric acid will brass. And we know

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that the unbroken stillness, and soundless monotony, of a room, devoid of all interest and emotion-arousing things, wUl so depress us, that it will drive us, first mad, and then kill us. This is a reality and not a relativity.

Per contra, we know that a change of scene will, usually, cure certain maladies, above all if the new scenes are beautiful.

Hence, beauty is a reality, and will exist and continue to function on the nature of man as long as continues to exist the combination, or pattern, of things which throws off, shoots forth, the melody-arousing, colored rays of light or sound, interspersed with, to our eyes and ears, pleasure-giving lines — which we call “beauty,” and the essence of all beauty. Of course, as Shakespeare says:

We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

But as long as the componenet elements, of which we are made, hang together, we are real, as combinations, and pat- terns, and feel and suffer pleasure and pain, which is real enough to increase or decrease our life, even though eventually fre, and this earth, wiU evanesce into mere invisible electrons !

It is, therefore, silly to apply to beauty the theory of Berk- ley, that nothing exists unless we perceive it. Because it is absurd to say that the Statue of Liberty does not exist because those who live in Albany cannot come down to see it and per- ceive it. Hence, it is utterly abstud to say: “Beauty does not exist, because people differ in their capacity for perceiving it. ”

We admitted that taste is relative. But not nearly to the extent that some think. There are some things which are so perfect, so imiversaUy appealing, that the vast majority of normal people admire them, have a taste for them, when they are not topsy-tiuvied into prejudice against them, by some erratic metaphysical theory, or religious, or racial sentiment.

No one was ever heard to say that the “Venus de Medici” is not beautiful. But as a matter of taste, and for ethical rea- sons, some have said she is dangerous or immoral — because they do not believe in the nude in art — ^not knowing that, when a nude is chaste and spiritual, hence Delight-giving, it is Moral — ^because pure delight is lifting, and whatever Iffts us is moral.

But even Hindoos, Chinese, and Japanese will say the “Venus” is beautiful, and they will also say the “Venus de

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Milo” is beautiful. But then, when it comes to choosing a woman resembling one or the other for a wife — then taste comes in as a factor. That is, between a blonde “Venus de Milo” and a brunette “Venus de Milo,” a blonde man would, in- stinctively, prefer the brunette. For, as Emerson says: “Therefore the brown will marry the grey and the grey will marry the brown” — for biological reasons.

Madame Recamier was of such exquisite beauty that, when she appeared, most other women paled. Yet Napoleon hated her. Why? Because he had unfortunately married the retrousez-nosed, only physically charming, weak Josephine, and he feared the political power of the Recamier. He knew what evil the Pompadour and Madame de Maintenon had done with the power of their beauty. Ugly women, through jealous fear and in self-defense, often decry some world beauty with: “Hm! I don’t see why you men call her beautiful, I think she lacks charm!” while aching in secret to possess her beauty. It is true that some perfectly beautiful women do lack “charm,” but rarely.

No one was ever heard to say that the Yosemite Valley with its wonderfully lifting beauty is not sublime. Though few would care to live there always — ^as a matter of taste.

Moreover, every nation has, by instinct, the same ideas as to what is beautiful in Nature. Example: Whenever a Hindoo, Japanese, or Chinese aims to represent a Goddess of Beauty, does he make a head having the characteristic hook nose of the Hindoo, the high cheek bones of the Jap, or the oblique eyes of the Chinese? No! Examine the representa- tions of their Goddesses of Beauty which their most cultured men think are the finest, and you will find they approach the type of the Greek head of the “Venus de Milo.” Why? Be- cause, as Shakespeare said, “One touch of nattue makes the whole world kin.”

The vast majority of mankind, be they Japanese or Hin- doo, African or Caucasian, will vote the statue of the “Venus de Medici” as the most gracefully beautiful statue of antiquity. The few who dissent are simply abnormal and do not count. And this beauty is not a matter of Color, but of Form, of Line and Construction.

The reason is, that beauty is primarily a physical matter,

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ovtr calling anything beautiful depending primarily on the degree of physical delight or ecstasy which can be aroused in us by the melody which is produced in our eyes — and afterwards reflexly, in our minds and souls — through the eyes of all normal people being forced to follow the melody-arousing Lines of a work of art or of Nature, in which man or God has, by subtle composition, established a melodious harmony, as fixed as Mathematics, and eternally affecting the nerves of all normal people in nearly the same manner.

This Tyranny of Lines in Nature or Art is Absolute. There- fore all beauty is absolute.

Beauty does not change. The degrees of our appreciation of beauty vary and change. And so, as long as we live on the physical plane, we will lean more toward physical beauty; when we become more spiritual, we will lean more toward spirit- ual beauty — ^both being, at bottom, based on physical delight, in varying degrees. This accounts for our change of taste. For, as we grow older we grow more spiritual, less animal, and are moved less and less by crude beauty, and it requires more and more refined beauty to emotion us.

That beauty is absolute, is also borne out by this fact that, centuries after their death, when all selfish rivalry of masters and schools had ceased, the vast majority of un-crooked and normal people and critics agree that the fotir greatest Altarpieces in the world are Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” Titian’s “Assumption,” Rubens’ “Descent from the Cross,” and Veronese’s “Martyrdom of St. George.” And this ver- dict will stand for all time — even though a few prefer other altarpieces — just because they are one-sided and honest, or many-sided and crooked.

Professor Batchellor said;

Down in the unconscious depths of our soul Music sways the currents of our lives. . . . What does this mean? This uni- versal music, so like a voice speaking out of everything, must have a deep meaning. All nature is a parable! Music in the particles, music in the globes, we see her molding atoms, planets, systems, by her Law — of Harmony.

Paul Gaultier, in speaking of Melody in Art, in his article on “The Meaning of Art ” in “Lippincott’s Magazine” for June, 1914, page loi, says;

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Is not Architecture — which is a music of Lines, as music is an architecture of sounds — the symbol and even the work of this law of life (melody), of its innumerable variations, of both its agitation and its calm?

Sir Frederick Leighton in his “Academy Lectures” says:

Poetry and Music, twin born sisters and long divided, play on a sense of Rhythm and Melody, universal in men. Painting and sculpture appeal to the other sides of our .^Esthetic sensibility — the perception of Form and Color, which latter has in its action upon us much in common with melody; of proportion, which is to intervals of space what rhythm is to intervals of time and light and shade.

A. J. Eddy, in his “Recollections and Impressions of J. M. Whistler,” says:

And, as in sound and color, there is also a music in line.

William Knight, in his “Philosophy of the Beautiful,” says:

Noble architecture has even been described as “frozen music.” These correlations of visible, audible, and structural Beauty, bring out its underl3nng unity, and explain it. The whole universe of light may be regarded as visible music, the entire realm of sound as audible form.

And Walter Pater said:

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

And J, A. Symonds said, of the frieze on the Parthenon :

No procession could have made such music to the understanding as that sculpture does.

And Baudelaire, who sometimes saw things clearly, said:

We find in color, harmony, melody, and counterpoint.

But why quote more?

Metaphysical speculators have so beclouded and complex- ified the subject of beauty that, to answer aU the questions they have asked, would take ten volumes. Most of then- questions are absurd, because they have, from Plato and Aris- totle down, confounded Beauty with Art; spoken of them, in so many instances, as one, when they are distinctly two, that one wearies in going through their endless lucubrations. As a clan of thinkers they have posited, as elements of the Beau- tiful: brilliancy, sheen, smoothness, proportion, symmetry, order, association of ideas, spirituality, sympathy, fitness, use, goodness, truth, etc., etc., etc. !

These are all separate elements, which may enter, as ad-

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juncts, into a beautiful scene in nature, or into a work of art. But the principal foundation-eXement, without which no work of Art, or scene in Nature, can truly be called beautiful is Emotion-stirring MELODY — ^aroused in us by a variegated Pattern of lines, forms, and colors; of words, sounds, and movements.

Each intellectual or spiritual element, added to this funda- mental quality, or melody-producing pattern, serves only to intensify the effect upon us of this basic Melody: helps to build it up into a finer, more penetrating and conquering melodious pattern. Example:

On a trip up the Nile, in 1900, on a small Nile-boat, we arrived, towards evening, at a point where we could look over a flat country, as far as the Libyan desert. It was a monot- onous prospect. But, suddenly, the cloudless sky was suf- fused with a pink glow. Several passengers remarked it, but made no exclamation of any especial or appreciative emotion. The sky grew darker and more red; it was a monotonous, vast sheet of red glow, very pleasing, as melodious red color, but brought no expression of high emotion from any one.

But, suddenly, the boat reached a bend in the river, swung around, and thus brought into view a small town with a minaret, small houses, and palm trees, superimposing them, as a variegated melodious pattern of lines, upon the vast canvas of red, thus making of the sky a red background, for a pictiure. Instantly a passenger said : “Ah! Now, isn’t it beautiful!”

Why this? Because the sudden swinging arotmd of the boat, and the superimposing on the red screen of the sky, of the silhoiiettes of the varied things in the small town, suddenly created a picture made up, I repeat, of a pattern of varied lines and contours of things, the following of which by the eyes gave pleasure to the muscles of the eyes, by a cradling movement, and which was transmitted to the nerve centres, with which the eye-muscles are connected.

The tmusual red glow was of itself pleasing enough, having been a change in the sky, from the blue-gray tone, prevalent since morning; but the red prospect before us, as we reached that open, wide, flat space, did not become melodious, pleas- urable, or emotion-arousing, until a pleasme-giving pattern of lines and forms was superimposed on the red color, and thus

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created a rippling, shimmering, dancing, melody of lines and color.

This again proves that, in every picture in nature, lines and patterns of lines and forms are of primal importance and color of secondary importance.

Color merely enhances the beauty of lines of a beautiful scene in nature, as when the sun suddenly bursts out from behind a large bank of clouds, and sheds over a grand moun- tain-panorama the brilliant light which makes green more brilliant, and red more red, and shadows more deep. It thus helps to build up, as we said, a beautiful picture, the princi- pal element of which is a pattern of variegated melody-arousing, hence, emotion-stirring, lines and contours, of forms. Hence, in all natural beauty, the Line is the main thing !

Also, it is a merely sensuous thing, since it affects only the muscles of the eyes, or the tympanums of the ears, and by reflex action only, the soul and the Ego. The same is true of every work of art, especially m such as are not creative but imitative, in which a scene, or form, in nature, is slavishly copied.

Now, in a creative work of art, a work in which an artist has tried to express, or embody, some abstract conception, of say “Peace and War,” or “Sacred and Profane Love,” and in which composition plays the principal role, in such a work, beauty is a mere dress, in which a conception is decked out to insure oiur approving of the conception, plus the dress. It is always nothing but a mere decoration of the surface of things. It is, we repeat, a merely sensuous matter.

For, one artist may be unwise enough to be indifferent to that important element of sensuous beauty and attempt to express “Love” with a certain composition lacking in melody- arousing lines, and so, produce a work which, while it appeals to our intellect, fails to stir our emotions. This happened often to that eccentric artist Blake, who so often sacrificed beauty of pattern to intellectual interest.

Such a work might have enough beautiful lines to save it from being called repellent, but it would not be called full of beauty, that is, beautiful. Whereas, another artist might take the same subject and make a picture so full of lines of beauty, that we would instantly call it beautiful — full of beauty.

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This remark, that beauty is a merely sensuous matter, whl, perhaps, make some surface-thinkers shiver, especially such as have always regarded it as a “spiritual” matter, since the word “beauty” occurs nearly a hundred times in the Bible, and Solomon said :

He hath made all things beautiful in His time !

But, they will be reconciled when we say: beauty, in Na- ture’s landscapes, or sea-scapes, or cloud-scapes, is sensuous in its effects; but, as it never involves any sort of desire, or love, or hate, but appeals only to the soul, and, so, is devoid of every carnal intimation, such beauty may be called, I repeat, supra-sensuous and semi-spiritual.

But, among man’s works of art, there are some that are nearly, or totally, ugly; others which are semi-ugly; others there are, in which beauty plays a secondary role, and others in which beauty is the main and only consideration; and these works of art, as we will see in a later chapter, may be so full of carnal beauty as to be dangerous.

Moreover, much beauty has a raw and a refined aspect; as petroleum, or a diamond, or a country goose-girl have a raw and refined aspect. Petroleum is a crude, greenish, un- palatable oil, but, when passed through certain alembics, it becomes “petrolatum,” an oil as clear as crystal, and a taste- less medical substance; a diamond, in a mine at Kimberly, is merely a rough stone; but, when passed through the hands of an Amsterdam grinder, it becomes a brilliant jewel; and take a raw, unkempt, but fundamentally beautiful Kentucky- mountain girl, whose real beauty and potential charm only the wise perceive, and pass her through a ten years’ course in a refining school; light up her face by spiritualizing her in- nate, native goodness, and make it radiant by an acquired, yet firmly fixed, nobility of purpose, and you will have a fas- cinating beauty, which, before that, had only the raw elements of beauty.

Thus, in a work of art also, beauty may be spirittialized, by permeating the raw beauty with a distinctly exalting refine- ment, through nobility of thought, or spirituality of purpose. This refinement is fused into, impressed upon, it by the artist through style in composition, and manner of execution, which includes also manner of expression. This refinement may be

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infused into the work, consciously, by a wise and highly cul- tured artist, or even, unconsciously, by an artist of native refinement but who may lack profound culture. To illustrate :

Examine Manet’s picture “Olympia,” Fig. 69-0. There we have the raw material of a beautiful work of art. Actually it is commonplace, even repellent. Why? Because, while the main lines in it are nearly beautiful, they are less so than in pictures very similar to it. Besides, the face of the woman is evidently the square-jawed, hard, carnal face of a demi- mondaine of a common type. Outside of its clever “painting, ” it leaves us cold indeed.

But, now, look at the “Venus” of Giorgione, Fig. 69-6 a subject and a composition very similar to those of Manet and Titian. But, what a contrast! Here the general lines of the composition of the woman are nearly the same; but, while that of Manet’s radiates vulgarity, Giorgione’s radiates such refinement, that we are forced to call it beautiful. That of Manet is brutally realistic, while that of Giorgione is ideal- istic, poetized — by a style and a manner and a refinement of taste in form which lifts it into the realm of poetic beauty, so that we do not feel any immoral intention, or at least an indifference to chastity, on the part of the artist, while we do feel these immoral implications in the pictures of Titian and Manet.

Here the Reader may properly ask: ‘‘What do you mean by — Poetry?”

We will have to answer this question briefly: Like the words “art” and “civilization,” the word “poetry” is capable of being defined as a process, or as a product. The product that we seek in any poem is a state of emotional exaltation. In reading a scientific treatise, we do not want any such states of emotional exaltation, we want mental calm — ^in order the better to follow the reasoning of the writer of the treatise. It is the very lack of the power of arousing in us of states of emotional exaltation, which distinguishes a poem from a prose scientific treatise — which is intended to interest the mind only — a poem being a work of art, and usually intended to emotion the soul.

Whatever exalts the soul, and through the soul the Ego, has a poetizing power, and whatever fails to exalt the soul has no poetizing power.

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No emotion can be called poetic, unless it lifts us above the material states, in which we usually live, up into the realms of the spiritual and the ideal, to which we never mount imless we are exalted into them — either by our imagination being activated from within us or stirred by beautiful, spiritual things exterior to us. Such emotions as “terror," “disgust,” “aversion,” cannot be called “poetic.”

Now, this power — of arousing in our soul exalted states of emotion — may be possessed by a written poem, or by a woman, or a landscape, a statue, a pictiure, a drama, or a build- ing, etc. Also, such works of man and nature may leave us absolutely unemotioned, even though produced with the inten- tion of arousing our emotions.

Also, such things may emotion us only slightly, and only once; or they may emotion us very highly, and recurrently. Finally, poetry must be distinguished from a poem or a son- net, some of which are absolutely devoid of the power of arousing in us exalted emotional states.

We, therefore, define “poetry” as follows:

Poetry is an exalted emotional state of the soul, occasioned by the impact upon it of the facts and things of life and nature.

A poem is an expression of emotion — in a written language, of a more or less rhythmic form.

And a poem is great in ratio of its power of arousing the most exalted states of emotion, in the largest number of cultured people, for the longest period of time.

From this it follows that — in a sense — a statue may be a poem — in marble; a picttu*e may be a poem — in color; a cathedral may be a poem — in stone, etc.

This is, briefly, what we mean by poetry. We think we could demonstrate the soimdness of oiu: definition, but it would require a volvune.

We now come — in this discussion of Beauty — to a very important matter, to which we wish especially to call the attention of the Reader.

There has lately been given another proof of the truth of Tolstoy’s remark that : whenever an artist invents a new fad in art, he, or his backers, soon trot out a new “esthetic the- ory,” or “principle” — to justify that fad!

Fig. 55.

The Holy Family of Francis I.

BY Raphael.

The most gracefully beautiful of all of Raphael's madonna pictures. Showing the influence on him of (Ireek art, then being unearthed in Rome and Italy. Xote the pyramidal mass of Mary and Jesus, and the cursed lines through the mass.

Fig. 58. Crude beginning of Fig. 59. — Beginning of the Fig. 6o. — Early Ionic cap

a column. Ionic style of capital. from Delos.

Fig. 67. — From mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

Fig. 68. — From Temple of Apollo at Miletus.

Fig. 69— From the Erech- theion Temple, Athens.

Showing the Evolution of the Ionic Order of Greek Column

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12 ^

This has often been done, by a Paris clique of cynical prop^ agandists of degenerate modernistic art: artists, dealers, and their hired critics, all engaged in the festive game of unloading their art-trash — in which they only speculate — on the undis- criminating morons of the world, especially on those in Amer- ica.

But the most vicious and reprehensible trick of all, is the recent re-laimching of the aesthetic “gold brick” called:

The Beauty of the Ugly.

This has been, and is a dangerous, subversive, aberration; all the more so since it has now been imported into America, by the foxy foreign art dealers and their henehmen in this country: those blatant, charlatan “art critics” who soil our leading newspapers with their cr5q)tic lucubrations, and do it with such diabolic cunning that they catch the morons among our rich, and also many among our pretentious “in- telligentsia,” in their vUe campaign of unloading the modern- istic art-junk on our people. To give a satisfactory account of the genesis, and growth, of this absurd aesthetic aberration, would require a volume.

But the insanity of this notion, that “there is beauty in ugliness,” is so obvious, that one is amazed at the impudence, “the gall,” of an “art critic” using it, in a great New York City journal, in a defense of the vulgar, pathological works exhibited, for sale, in the lair of a foreign art dealer, on Fifth Avenue, and painted by a degenerate French artist who, as a result of his debauchery in the dives of Montmartre fit is said in Paris), died in a madhouse!

For, one might as well claim there is sweetness in vinegar; daylight in darkness; squareness in roimdness; saintliness in devilishness, as that there is beauty in ugliness plus vulgarity. Beauty is so eternally repelled by Ugliness, that the two can no more mix than oil and water. Hence, the “art critic” who rhapsodizes — in the press — on “the beauty in the ugliness” of vicious degenerate works of art, by a degenerate artist, is either a dangerous charlatan or a maniac!

And yet, to such a low point of degeneration have these French “Red” modernists fallen, that they trumpet-out this weird aesthetic contradiction in terms, in the fond hope and stupid belief that nobody in the world will have common- sense

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and courage enough to see and challenge the idiotic fraud, which they so sorely need to justify their maniacal art pro- ductions so as to unload them on a generous world!

That the ugly, the monstrous, is, now and then, fascinat- ing, is true, as for examples a bulldog, deformed into ugliness, or a double-horned rhinoceros or a monstrous dinosaur. But, while these things may fascinate us to disgust, or even terror, as a snake does a bird, they — or representations in art of equally ugly things do not emotion us to delight or awe, as do Turner’s ‘‘Budding of Carthage” and Michael Angelo’s “Moses.” They may ^'interest” us; but, we repeat, everything on earth, however vUe, is ‘'interesting.” Medical books, showing the horrors of human disease and corruption, are extremely “in- teresting,” even fascinating. But the function of the artist, is not that of a warning Health Commissioner. The artist has but one excuse for being on earth and that is, not merely to interest us, but to highly emotion us; to lift us, as far as is possible above the muck and dirt and moral horrors — ^result- ing from the accidents of life and from the abnormal conduct of human misfits. The business of the artist is to create beauty, not to record human degeneration — ^at least not in the graphic and plastic arts.

That notion of “beauty in ugliness” was first preached by Rodin, when he sent his “Man with a Broken Nose” to the Salon, in 1864 — ^and had it promptly rejected by the Jury: not because it was not cleverly modelled, but because it was so ugly and, hence, an encumbrance upon the earth, see Fig. 120, which gives “aesthetic joy” to those vulgar artists who seek examples of mere technical skill and puerile “personality,” produced at any price.

As the evil result of the preaching of this vicious gospel — of “the beauty of ugliness” — which tends to uglify and vulgar- ize our life in aU its phases, is exposed in a later chapter, on Rodin, we wish here to merely warn the reader that this char- latan slogan is a fraud, and an insult to our intelligence, be- cause “there is no such animal” as a thing that is at once both beautiful and ugly.

And, from a technical standpoint, no matter how skillful the lines in a picture or drawing, or how true the “values” in the color of a painting, you cannot speak of the “beauty in

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the ugliness” of a line or color, without meriting the ridicule, or contempt, of intelligent persons.

In conclusion: the question which Plato, in his Dialogue of the “Hippias Major,” makes Socrates ask of Hippias:

What is Beauty? Is it a reality or a seeming? What is the common quality of all those things, each diverse from the other, which we call beautiful?

is it a set of questions that is really unanswerable? In a sense, President Geo. W. Samson, of Columbia College, Wash- ington, was correct when he said: ‘‘The inquiry: ‘What is beauty? ’ is irrational.” For Plato should have been aware that the word ‘‘beauty” was, even in his day, misused to indis- criminately characterize everything that pleases us: a pleas- ing soul, a pleasing fish; a pleasing thought, a pleasing goose; a pleasing sentiment, a pleasing temple, statue, poem, drama, even a pleasing bulldog or crocodile! If it pleased, it was called beautiful! And he should have known that all these things — visible and invisible — could not have a “common quality” which would be found in all those things, especially since, we repeat, he said:

Beauty lies in the pleasure of sight and hearing.

And, in the “PhEedrus,” he correctly said:

Coming to earth we find her [Beauty] shining in clearness through the doorway of sense. . . . This is the privilege of Beauty, that she is the loveliest, and also the most palpable to sight.

These ideas are Plato’s greatest contribution to a final finding of a fitting definition of beauty.

Since he came so close to answering his own question: ‘‘What is Beauty?” it is indeed passing strange that, in his “Symposium,” he should have set down the following mystic thoughts:

He who would proceed aright in this matter should begin to visit beautiful forms; soon he wiU perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then, if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that beauty in every form is one and the same. And, when he perceives this, he will become a lover of all forms, and next he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of out- ward things.

Here are the basic ideas, the root, of that ages-long confu- sion about the essence of the beautiful: Plato’s confounding

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the subjective form of the formless mind with all other — ob- jective — forms; finding a kinship between a formless, subjec- tive mind, which we cannot see, and a concrete objective form, which we can see, and then ascribing even a higher beauty to that formless mind, which we cannot see, — this after having sensed the truth that beauty is “ a matter of sight and hearing ! ’ ’

It shows that much of Plato’s thought was tentative and experimental; more of a reaching-out after the finality of things than a final analysis; more suggestive than realized, — that is, if his thought came down to us in his own words and lost nothing in translations.

But his point of view, as set down above, was unfortunate, from the standpoint of the cost of centuries of wasteful confu- sion. For Plato was imitated in his ideas and reasoning by hundreds of other, more or less superficial, thinkers and writ- ers, who were either unable, or too lazy, to take up Plato’s common-sense notion of limiting beauty to things of sight and hearing, and then building up on this a final definition of beauty.

This was largely because of the transcendental point of view of all of Plato’s thinking, which fascinated the always more or less mystic thinkers of the Hellenic and Roman worlds, a point of view expressed by Plato in the “Republic”:

And what is it that he who has attained to knowledge knows? It is this :

That all visible things are types, in which are mirrored to us the featiures of certain archetypes, and are, therefore, the mere shadows of higher realities. The aesthetic education of man consists in his learning thus to rise from the type to the archetype.

which “archetypes” were to be found only in heaven!”

This Metaphysic of Plato in aesthetics overawed nearly all thinkers down to Lord Kaimes (1762) who was the first, we believe, to again limit the objects that are beautiful “to those which appeal to oiur sense of sight.”

Then came Coleridge, 1840, and, going back to Plato, again insisted that

Beauty exists only in objects appealing to the eye and the ear.

Since then, the general trend of thought has been to fi- nally accept Plato’s dictum, one of the most positive he gave to the world:

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Beauty lies in the pleasure of sight and hearing.

Much more might be said to prove that beauty is a reality, when it does occur in Nature and art, and to prove that some forms of beauty make a universal appeal to all normal people, of even the lowest races, while other forms make only a local appeal, or only to a few highly overdeveloped, or abnormal, people. And the more refined these people are, the more will they lean, in their taste, toward refined forms of beauty; and the coarser they are, the more will they prefer coarse and vulgar types of beauty.

But, we think we have said enough to prove that emotion- stirring Melody is the common quality of all objective or semi- objective beauty.

We will now submit a final definition of the Beautiful ;

ALL COMBINATIONS OF THINGS IN NATURE AND IN ALL WORKS OF ART, ARE MORE OR LESS BEAU- TIFUL: WHICH SEND FORTH, PATTERING UPON OUR EYES AND EARS, VARIOUSLY COLORED RAYS OF LIGHT AND SOUND, INTERSPERSED WITPI AGREEABLE PATTERNS OF LINES, THE FOLLOW- ING OF WHICH, BY OUR EYES AND EARS, CREATES IN US PLEASING MELODIES OF LINES, COLORS, AND FORMS; OF SOUNDS, WORDS, AND MOVEMENTS, AND WHICH AROUSE IN US VARIOUSLY AGREEABLE EMOTIONS.

In other words. Melody is the Essence of all Beauty. Mon- otony means ugliness, hence stagnation, depression, melancholy, and emptiness of existence. Melody means Beauty, hence agi- tation, evolution, rapture, and fullness of life.

What is true of objective things is true of semi-objective things and of subjective things — ^there is no beauty without melody.

A man is a man principally because he always walks and stands on two legs. If now we add to him a fine brain, we make him a better man, and we make him stiU better by add- ing a white skin, etc. And so, an object is beautiful, prima- rily, because of its beautiful Pattern of Lines. If now we add beautiful color we make it more beautifial, and by adding a lovely sheen, and a noble spiritual thought, we make it still more beautiful, etc. But, no matter how noble your thought.

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lovely your sheen and beautifid your color — if you have not a beautiful Pattern — you have no beautiful object.

We have now shown what is the universal essence of all Beauty, and answered for the first time since Plato the ques- tion Socrates posed to Hippias: “What is the common qual- ity of all those things, each diverse from the other, which we call beautiful?”

NOTE

The word “moron ” comes from the Greek word “moros” — fool. It does not mean exactly a “fool.” It means a per- son permanently, or occasionally, unwise, or even childish. All persons are bom morons — because childish. They grow out of moronism as they grow wise. But an adult only is called a moron, and then only when he shows a lack of the power of reasoning straight, or of following a person who does reason straight; when he shows a lack of logic, of discrimination and of sovmd judgment.

A person may acquire a vast store of knowledge and a bril- liant imagination and yet remain a moron — because he has, through false reasoning, adopted an unsound philosophy of life. There are too many of such in our so-called “Intelhgent- sia,” who become destructive forces when, because of the at- tractive power of their verbal coruscations, they mislead those who are partial morons — by advocating a false philosophy of life and of art.

Of coiirse, all men, even the most wise, make mistakes. Therefore Napoleon said; “Even the greatest of us are children more than once a day.” And those who are habitually wise, — in great things, may find some consolation, when they occasion- ally err, by reflecting over Genesis VI, 6: “And it repenteth the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”

Proving that — if the Bible be trae — even the good Lord could make a mistake.

CHAPTER IV

STYLE AND MANNER IN ART Section One

Originally published in the December, igi6, issue of “ The Art World,” correcied

and amplified

Chateaubriand said; “A book lives only by virtue of its style.”

Being a Romanticist and, so, naturally, an excessivist, he did not see that this phrase is only a half-truth, and there- fore also a half-untruth.

In fact, this slogan of Chateaubriand, is the first proof we have been able to find that, when an artist, in any of the arts, becomes infected with the microbe of “personal style,” he de- velopes a cumulative disease which we call; Style-o-mania, and which shrivels the poet and the painter, for examples, down to mere pedlers of personal, puerile peculiarities; trans- forms them, from artists with a message to lunatic searchers, not after something worth-while to read, to hear, or to con- template, but who, like a jungle-monkey, swinging from tree to tree, chase through the world of art, to find some new imheard of manner of saying nothing, simply a manner, different from any ever seen since art began. And, when they think they have found it, then, like the moimtebank monkey in the crotch of a tree munching his new found kernel, they, in their “Ivory- Tower,” look down upon the serious artists, in quest of some sublime substance, and call him a “duffer”! and then encumber the earth with meaningless trash!

No work of art lives only by virtue of its style. Even the artists, for whose approval alone many foolish artists strive, in siUy contempt of the verdict of the cultured public, even

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the greatest stylists in art, need more than mere Style. For the common-sense artist knows that a work of art, in order to live, must have both an agreeable Style and Contents of endur- ing interest or value.

An attempt to analyze this question of style, in art, soon leads us into a labyrinth of such amazing intellectual aberra- tion that one is almost allured to join the pessimists who say: “What’s the use of trying to do anything? ’’ But we must try to get order out of chaos :

Fifty years ago we sat in Harding’s picture store, in St. Louis, looking at two landscapes. Two men entered:

“Say, Jim! I like that picture.”

“So do I. But I prefer that one.”

“Why?”

“Well, it has a certain style.”

“Style! style! What does he mean by style?” we asked ourself. We had never heard the word used before, except in relation to women’s hats. And we immediately posted to the Mercantile Library and dug into the encyclopaedias of the world for a definition of style — of style in the abstract.

But nowhere did we find one that clearly stated what con- stitutes style, nor how it can be produced in a work of art. We fotmd the word confoimded with ‘ ‘ manner. ” We foimd that the definitions spoke of “a manner of doing things,” “a way of doing things,” etc. All confusing and disheartening! But. being born with a hunger for a knowledge of fimdamentals, we decided to clear up this matter, because it seemed so im- portant. Therefore, when, ten years later, we foimd ourself studying sculpture in Paris, we took up the matter in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and talked over it with leading artists; but we could not, during years, solve the problem of finding an invulnerable formula, for a definition. Finally, after years of reading of the various essays on style, we chanced to come across the remark of Bacon: “Art is man — added to Nature.” We said: “That is not true. That is a half-truth. Art is more than that.” But, thinking over the remark of Bacon, it oc- curred to us that, what Bacon really meant, was not: “Art is man added to Nature,” but “Style is man added to Nature.” Later we came across the line of Pope :

True art is Nature, to advantage dressed.

its other realistic accessories.

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and then, as Carlyle said: “Es ging mir auf ein Licht,” we be- gan to see a light !

But then, being confronted with such words as Individual, Universal, Epochal-Style, Manner, etc., we were kept a long time from finding the desired formula, or definition, that would cover the case and prove on analysis to be invulnerable. In fact, soon after entering this domain of aesthetics, monopolized mostly by metaphysicians, afflicted with the malady verbi-osis, and sustained in their word-geysering by a lot of agile literary loop-the-loopers, plagiarizing the muddled metaphysicians, we found such chaos and lack of common-sense, such a danse macabre of “Words, words, words!” as Hamlet said, that we were tempted to return to the portal and carve on its tym- panum the words of Dante :

Let those who enter here leave all hope behind I

We found that Michael Angelo contemned Dutch art be- cause, as he said, “It lacks style.” That is, they were “real- ists,” who gloried in meticulous imitation. And yet, according to Prof. Benard, in his “Esthetics of Aristotle,” they had the authority, of at least the words, of the old Stagirite. Says Benard :

What is (according to Aristotle) the principle of art ? This prin- ciple, which has received such various interpretations and has furnished matter for so many disputes, is: imitation. The passage is explicit and seems devoid of ambiguity: —

“All the arts are imitations. The arts differ only by their means of imitation, by the objects which they imitate, and by their manner of imitating them.”

Benard then goes on to show that, according to the modem partisans of idealism in art, Aristotle did not exactly mean crass, vulgar imitation. Then he proves, that that is what he really did mean, and then he says:

Theoretically, Aristotle admits the principle of imitation as the essence of art, he admits it in the real, narrow, and vulgar sense of the word. There is no means of understanding otherwise the pas- sages where this principle is dwelt upon, explained, and motived. It is thus in spite of all that the philological theorists of art may say of this Greek word: [Mimesis.] For him, in common with the beasts, the origin of art is the instinct of imitation which, in the eyes of modern asstheticians, is a profound error, but which was inevitable at the beginning of science. Aristotle is the father of this theory of

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imitation, which for centuries reigned in the schools, and which had to be fought to a finish, to establish another theorj', one in which the true principle of art was understood as well as the true process by which it is created, the process of artistic idealization, in the sense in which it has been claimed.

This Aristotelian theory of art remained supreme in many strong minds, as a theory, for ages. Even Boileau the French poet, in his “Art Poetique,” says:

There is no serpent or Monster so odious

But which, if well imitated, will fail to please the eyes.

But, in spite of this theory, all artists have ever been both imitative and creative. For, as we will show later, it is impos- sible to make an effective work of art, one that will arouse the permanent admiration of mankind, without resorting to both those activities : imitation and creation.

But during the years of the endless discussion of this sub- ject, there were developed two Streams of Tendency, each of which, when followed persistently, with grim logic, and Avith- out the restraint of the qualifying power of the other stream, landed the partisans of both tendencies, either in a crass, vul- gar realism, or in an incomprehensible, equally dead, idealism, as we shall see. Two classes of men surged to the fore: one class despising all style in art, and the other making of it a childish fetich.

Many men have made definitions of style, but, to date, none has been found satisfactory to critics.

So late as the spring of 1924, Mr. W. C. Brownell, our lead- ing critic, in the May munber of “Scribner’s Magazine,” began a series of three articles headed “Style,” in which he says of style:

Defining it is so difficult, perhaps, because it may be described as strictly indefinable.

The reason Mr. Brownell, and others, have hitherto fotmd it not only “difficult,” but impossible, to define style is because they confounded the idea of style, in the abstract, with good or fine style. To define fine style in an invulnerable formula, is not only difficult, but impossible, because too many ele- ments enter into fine style and about which men are not agreed. But to define style— -in itself — ^in the abstract, apart from good or bad style, is possible, as we shall see.

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The most famous dissertation on Style, is that by the French savant Buffon, delivered before the French Academy, August 25. 1753- In this he declared:

Le Style est de I’homme meme.

Textually translated, this reads:

Style is OF the man himself.

It is usually quoted as: “Style is the man.”

This was not intended by Buffon as a final definition of style. He meant to say that, while the contents of a book might not be OF the man, while these contents would be the common creation of mankind, his manner of presenting those contents, anew, that manner was of, and belonged to, the man himself. But, he also analyzed style, and tried to describe its main elements. Among other things he gave this remark as his real definition :

Style is nothing other than the order and movement which we put into our thoughts.

By that he meant the fundamental construction, plan and composition of a work. For, he says further of this “order and movements” of our thoughts:

If these are connected closely, and vigorously compressed, the style will be firm, nervous, and concise. If they are allowed to fol- low one another loosely and merely at the lead of diction, however choice this be, the style will be diffuse, nerveless, and languid. How- ever brilliant the colors he employs, whatever the beauties of de- tails he introduces, the work will not really be a construction; hence, though admiring the brilliancy of the author, we may suspect him of lacking true genius. ... It is for want of plan, for want of suflicient preliminary reflection on his subject, that a man of intel- ligence finds himself embarrassed with uncertainty at what point to begin writing. . . . When however, he has made a plan, when he has collected and put in order all the essential thoughts on the subject, he recognizes without difficulty the instant when he ought to take up his pen; he is aware of the critical point when his min d is ready to bring forth, he has now only pleasure in writing: his ideas follow one another easily, and the style is natural and smooth. (Italics are ours.)

That is to say: the basic element in all style, good or bad, is the sort of plan or composition in the arrangement of the vari- ous masses, paragraphs, lines, and members of his book, statue or picture that an artist makes and by which he ex-

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presses his thoughts, and upon which arrangement and com- position, the character of the thoughts, depend the real power of the work of art to emotion mankind. Thus, in the abstract, it is true, as Buffon said ; order and movement are the funda- mental elements of all style. But that does not clarify the subject sufficiently, because, in every style, whether individual or co mm unal or imiversal style, that has ever appeared, there are two, antagonistic, elements: the imiversal and the individ- ual; the general and the particular; the one element being im- personal, and not at all belonging to the author, and the other derived from, and belonging absolutely to, the author himself.

That is to say : in every work of art is the element of the na- tional, communal, or racial habit of thinking and feeling; of social ideas and sentiments; hopes and fears; delights and ecstasies ; hates and reverences. These are not of the author. They are the imiversal heritage and accumulation of his people, of his race, or of mankind. This is the impersonal element. This element exerts upon the individual a pressure, during a certain epoch, long or short, and so strong that we can easily tell when a certain artist lived, by a mere glance at his work, all the way back to the days of Rameses.

This impersonal element is the generally prevalent and fol- lowed style, which dominates an epoch, long or short. The Egyptian had a general architectural style, which prevailed over the valley of the Nile for 4000 years, with but slight modi- fication in details. The Classic Greek style has dominated the western world for 2500 years. The Gothic style has had a vogue for about 700 years, while the Empire style had a vogue of less than a century. This, we repeat, is the universal, the impersonal element in the style of any particular man. This element we will call the general style, or simply — Style.

Now, when an artist follows the general style, prevalent during his time, without any notable contribution of his own, he is said to lack a personal style, because he added nothing to the fundamental composition of the prevalent style. But, it must not be forgotten that, while an artist may work in the general style, prevalent in his time, he may add to it a new spirit of his own, a spirit of greater or lesser degree of beauty, of elegance or stiffness ; of refinement or coarseness, even ugliness, and which is always the result of the loftiness, or baseness, of the plane on

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which a work in conceived, composed, and expressed. But this belongs to the style-part of the work, because it is finally a mat- ter of beauty of line and of beauty of composition, and is then a matter of proportion and of fine drawing.

For example, why is Raphael called the ‘ ‘ Prince of Artists ” ? Because of his personal manner of painting? Not at aU! It is because of his style — the exquisite, poetic, eternally alluring beauty of many of the faces of his madonnas, children, and priests. No painter ever felt, more surely than Raphael, what kinds of faces and heads, of men, women and children, would be regarded, universally, as beautiful — this apart from the grandeur of the composition of his pictures, as a whole. See “Holy Family of Francis I,” Fig. 55, perhaps the most grace- fully beautiful religious picture in the world — we mean sensu- ously beautiful. Study it. Reader. Then, imagine the faces suddenly turned into the hard, ascetic, tm-beautiful, house- frau faces, as on the Madonnas of Bouts and Memling, Figs. 56, 57, and this without changing one important line ! But this Raphaelic, ideal, beauty, is a matter of composition, of the construction of the facial lines, and, so, belongs to the 5fy/e-part — style being always a matter of composition, of construction, “of order and movement.”

Now, that spirit of beauty, that idealization of common- place types of humanity into tmcommon types, is Raphael’s personal contribution to the general style to which Italian art had, in his day, developed. It marks the apogee of Italian painting, in the direction of spiritualized, sensuous beauty, of a deathless charm, for all those whose minds are not warped by this or that prejudice or assthetic “theory.” It marks the farthest influence of classic Greek art on Italian painting. So much so, that we would not be much surprised to learn that his works had been painted by Appeles or Zeuxis, instead of by Raphael.

Now, besides the general Style prevalent at any given epoch, short or long, and which is always the result, not of the sudden invention of one man, but always a matter of growth or evolu- tion, through the contributions of many men, there is also a general Manner, prevalent during a given epoch. For example : by far the greatest number of artists, from Van Eyck, on to Raphael, painted in a smooth manner. See “Holy Family of

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Francis I,” Fig. 55. Many of them tried to realize nature completely, by the closest possible imitation. The painters tried to completely efface their brush-marks, or anything that could shout out loud: “This thing is painted!” This de- liberate manner of painting smoothly lasted across four centur- ies. Not imtil about 1850, did anyone speak of the “charm’’ of the “touch” in painting. Baudelaire was the first writer to speak of this, and he was the prophet of Modernism. Then, painters began slowly to search out for a personal way of ap- plying paint to canvas. This, personal, element in a man’s manner is what he adds to the general manner: his caprice, in- vention of new details of execution, his temperamental way of executing even the conventional details invented by others, in the past, but which he may have handled with a flavor personal to him alone, and recognizable by those experts whose business it is to familiarize themselves with such matters. This personal addition belongs to his manner.

But, this personal contribution is too often called his style, when it has nothing to do with style — not being a matter of basic composition — and is purely his manner, a matter of super- ficial, surface, technical execution. This can, perhaps, be best illustrated in painting, and in the works of the Dutch artists Hans Memling and Dirk Bouts, Figs. 56-57. We know at a glance that these are two Dutch pictures, of the 15th century; we know this by the general style of their composition and ar- rangement, spirit and expression. This general, semi-primitive style dominated all the Dutch, also German, artists for nearly two centuries. Bouts and Memling worked imder the pres- sure of that general, impersonal style: which was no one man’s invention, but was a racial growth, through the addition of one detail after another, by many artists, from the 13th century down to the 15th century.

Now, where does the personal element of Bouts and Mem- ling appear in these two works?

Well, they added nothing to the general style. The style of their pictures, in composition and spirit, is the prevalent Dutch style of their epoch.

But also the manner of their painting, is in the manner then prevalent, all over the North of Europe, that is : the manner of putting on pigment : in a smooth way, so as to eliminate all

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marks of the brush, “touches,” etc., thus realizing Whistler’s remark;

A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.

No one, in those days, dreamed of straining after “slap- dash,” technical-stunting, known today, as a peculiar and per- sonal “technique”; so that it is impossible for even many ex- perts to tell who were the authors of certain pictures of that epoch from their mere painting, and which were almost never signed. So that many of these early pictures look as though they were painted by one school of a few men, the ideal of that age being: not to lyricize, to parade, one’s self, to show off yourself, your skill, your cleverness, your vaudeville song-and- dancing-ness. Their sole aim was to convey to the world their deep religious emotions and feelings, in the most perfect and beautiful and effective dress they could command ; to convey to the world a message, to tell a story, in a manner so impersonal, but perfect, that it should seem as if made by the hand of an angel, or by Saint Luke, the patron of painting. The age was too religious, too impersonal, for egotism or self-assertion, on the stage of life. That tendency came in with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Then, where do we find any personal element whatever in these two pictures, by Bouts and Memling?

Well, if you coxdd see the pictiues, side by side, you would notice three things: that, in spite of these two painters hav- ing tried to leave no trace of a brush-mark, they yet left certain marks which they could not avoid leaving, due to their personal temperaments. When looked at with a magnify- ing glass this difference can be easily seen. But, besides that, you would notice that the blues in Bout’s picture are blues of a different character and tone from the blues in the Memling picture, the reds and greens, etc., being different, and, in each case, characteristic of the artist, and of him alone. Also you could detect small differences in the manner of the drawing, of a line, of a hand, etc., all unconsciously mani- fested.

Now, these small personal qualities of brushing on of color, and quality of tone of color, and of drawing, flowed into their work, unbeknown to those two artists, were not at all con- sciously sought, and entered into their manner of painting

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simply because they felt color and line in their own way, and could not put on color in any other way, nor draw in any other manner. Nor did they care much about either of those petty qualities, since all they were after was impersonal perfection by the very elimination of such personal qualities.

WeU, these three qualities, of their own brush-work, and personal feeling in color and drawing, are the only really per- sonal contribution made by them to the general element of the style prevalent in those days, and found in these two pictures. And these three petty elements come under the head, not of style, but of manner, fused in a complete whole, composed of two distinct elements: of style and manner — the one element, the style-part, being impersonal, and the other, the manner- part, being personal.

This personal element is what some writers call the personal "accent.” But this accent is a part of the manner of an artist, and distinct from any style he may manifest.

In other words: What an artist puts into his work con- sciously and deliberately, belongs to his style or manner; but that which into his work unconsciously, is his "accent."

Now, we repeat, such a "personal accent” was not only not sought by those artists, they had never even heard the term used. It is a modem term, scarcely more than fifty years old. And it was the modernistic artists and their asstheticians who raised that “personal accent” into an aim, an idol, and a puerile fetish in the world of art. It was this temperamental, personal, accent which Zola, a rabid modernist, had in min^ when he coined his foolish definition :

Art, is a corner of nature — seen through a temperament.

Of course, by “art” he meant “style” — to justify his own style, no doubt. It was a silly remark, but the source of much harm.

What is tme of painting, is true also of sculpttue. The same principle also applies to all the arts.

We repeat, every work of art — at least of the last 6000 years — manifests those two elements: style and manner. And, we repeat, these are always antagonistic. For, every personal element which an artist adds to a general style tends to destroy that general style, by a process of progressive change.

Now, in every epoch, when a style has gained such a vogue

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that it is generally loved and followed, then; every new caprice of an artist which, when superimposed on the generally admired style, and thus tending to destroy that general style, is resented. And naturally so. For, the instinct of self-preservation makes most men prone to wish to conserve whatever seems to them admirable, and, hence, good to them.

Unfortunately, nature has so constructed us that we, in- evitably, tire of all things — even of the finest— and this instabil- ity of appreciation makes us seek something new, change, novelty. This is strongest in those who have the least property. This is true in all things — morality and gastronomy; govern- ment and art; politics and religion. Those who have the most property and power are the most active in hating change; those who have nothing, but want much, are the most persistent pushers for change.

Hence, we always have with us the Universalists and the Individualists ; those in favor of im-personal art and those who vociferate for personal art. Those in the two camps who are the hot-headed extremists, are always at war with each other. But, in between, is always a large number who are “Middle of the Road” men, and who, like the Greeks, have chosen for their motto the one inscribed on the Athenian treasure-house at Delphi;

MEYDEN AGAn!

“Nothing too much!” Never to extremes — which always meet!

What is true of art is true of morals and government. The extreme “individualist” is the ego-maniacal, selfish man, who will not be bound by any law, and who pushes his point of view to the extreme. He, becomes the revolutionist, the Bolshevik, who not only wants a change but an extreme change, and, criminal in the extreme, wants it at once and by topsy-turvying the existing structure, and who hates the very idea of easy, shockless, evolution, and is willing to usher in chaos, if he can only obtain his wish as soon as possible. If it were not that society constantly throws to the surface, as boiling soup does its scum of useless fat, many destructive, neurotic, semi- demented, and sometimes totally insane individualists, a dis- cussion of style in art were, today, needless, or at least a work of purely amusing supererogation.

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If now we go back to Btiffon’s real definition of style :

Style is nothing other than the order and movement which we put into our thoughts,

we will find that, at bottom, Buflon, we repeat, meant by order and movement, the fundamental composition of a work of art. And, by his remark, “Style is OF of the man himself,” we will find he meant the superficial details of the execution, or tech- nique, or manner, in a work of art. In other words: com- position is the Style, and technical surface execution is the Manner, in any man’s style.

We will now say that, for a clear discussion of the problems involved in a work of art, we must divide it into Six Elements:

First : Conception— -<ya. a high or low social plane ; Composi- tion — on a high or low aesthetic plane; Expression — with a pro- found or shallow thoroughness.

Second : Drawing — involving the thoroughly natural con- struction and drawing of forms; Color — black and white or multicolored; Technique — the personal execution of the surface elements. The first three being ftmdamental, the second three superficial.

The first three come imder the head of what Buffon calls “the order and movement which we put into our thoughts,” the constructive elements, and constitute the main and most im- portant elements in any style. The second three elements come vmder the head of Buffon’s: “The style is of the man.” That is, what the artist adds of himself — his “artistry,” his technical skill, his temperament; that which flows into his work almost vmconsciously, above all when he is not deliberately searching to find and practice a personal, peculiar, “way of doing things,” or an “individual accent.”

These personal elements make up his Manner.

Now, every building that is worthy of being called a work of art, is such because it is a building which has been developed from a mere box-like, or tent-like, bare shack or primitive con- struction; has evolved into a work of art through a system of proportion and a system of ornamentation, such as we never find in nature. From the first upward movement, each step, each product, in its evolution, into a real work of art, is a step away from nature. And every new addition, of these un-natural, these artificial, elements to the primitive structure, is an addi-

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tion of man to the natural elements. Therefore, Bacon defined art as: “Man — added to nature.” What he meant by art was, we repeat, style. That is also why Goethe said:

“Art is called art, because it is not nature.”

He also meant, not “art,” but style in art. In their minds

‘Art” is style; and style alone is art.

That is to say: all style in a work of art is a departure from primitive nature — a re-arrangement, re-composing of Nature’s forms and scenes.

Moreover, we all know how a style in dress comes into being and is — by our easily ceding to a tendency— pushed on, on, to an extreme, imtil it is followed by every one and, thus, be- comes, finally, a commonplace, almost a second nature, until it is changed.

But, we repeat, no matter how beautiful the style, or how comfortable, there comes a time when we weary of it, all the more if we belong to a highly imaginative, liberty loving, and freedom possessing people. Then, soon, some one, more novelty-hungry than the others, will make a break and thus start a new fashion. At first it will appear bold. But, then, another, and another, by virtue of our native instinct to imi- tate, wUl follow, and soon a new fashion is in vogue and, in its turn, becomes commonplace; and then there comes a new weariness and a new break, a new departure from the common- place. Thus, it is evident that every style is a departure from nature and the commonplace. Also, in the arts of painting and sculpting, style is obtained only by departing from the crass imitation of the actual truth of Nature.

To make this still more clear, let the reader look at Fig. 58. This represents the natural way in which, perhaps some Greek barbarian, who lived close to nature and did not dream of style or beauty in building a primitive temple, set up a rough post, and a cap on top of that, to better the support of two beams resting on the post. Later, another builder came, and added, under the supporting beams, an ornamental cap. Fig. 59. This was a great step in advance. It was really the beginning of a new and true style — the Ionic. This suggested, as the years went by, an improvement and we had the early Ionic caps, from the temple at Delos. Fig. 60. Then followed a change in the details of the above and we had the Ionic cap

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from the temp-e o_ the Apollo, at Lesbos. Fig. 61. Another architect put some different personal details into the Ionic cap and produced the cap from Neandria. Fig. 62. Then came some genius and gave the Ionic cap the form we see in Fig. 63, from the original temple at Ephesus. Here was an immense jump in advance, in the evolution of the Ionic cap. What sug- gested this step is in dispute. But the next step was the II- lissus Cap. Fig. 64. Then came the cap of the temple of Nike Apteros, at Athens. Fig. 65. Then the cap of the Propylaea, on the Acropolis, Fig. 66.

This was followed by the Cap of the Mausoleum of Hali- carnassus, Fig. 67, and that of the temple of Apollo, at Miletus, Fig. 68.

Finally, came the great architect Mnesicles, and designed the cap for the Erechtheion, on the Acropolis, the most ornate and beautiful of all Ionic caps. Fig. 69. It now was the most perfect. No one knew it was the most perfect. But, since then, scores of Ionic caps have been designed, but none as beautiful as this. Thus, from the simple natural post, by suc- cessive steps away from raw nature, came this perfect Ionic style, by each succeeding builder, or architect, adding some- thing of himself, of his own caprice or taste, to the general Ionic style, imtil it became a Universal style and so beautiful as to have an eternal charm, across the ages, for all mankind.

Now, every departure from this universal, Erechtheion Ionic wiU be an individualistic Ionic, good or bad, always more or less degenerate, imtil someone comes and makes a better and more beautiful Ionic cap, which is scarcely conceivable, since there has been no advance on the Erechtheion cap for over two thousand years.

When we had arrived at this point in our researches on style, we sought a formula for a definition of style.

Having at last found that Style and Manner were abso- lutely different, having nothing to do with each other; that Style was a fundamental matter and Manner a superficial mat- ter; but that the two had been confounded for ages, by slipshod thinkers and writers, until it had become a habit to say Style, when the speaker or writer meant Manner, we saw that the two, though correlated, would have to be defined separately.

Finally, one bright morning, when our mind was in a par-

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ticularly synthetic mood, it brought us a formula which, after much manipulating, we modelled into the following form ;

STYLE, IN ART, IS: A MATTER OP FUNDA- MENTAL COMPOSITION, OF THE ARRANGEMENT OF LINES, MASSES, AND COLORS, OF WORDS, SOUNDS, AND MOVEMENTS, INDICATING A DE- PARTURE FROM THE TRUTH OF NATURE AND FROM THE COMMONPLACE.

And then quickly followed this formula :

MANNER, IN ART, IS: A MATTER OF SUPER- FICIAL TECHNICAL EXECUTION. INDICATING A DEPARTURE FROM THE TRUTH OF NATURE AND FROM THE COMMONPLACE.

Let us analyze these : An exact photograph of anything in Nature has no style or manner. Why? Because it is a mechanically truthful copy of the thing, photographed by a machine. An absolutely exact copy of anjrthing in nature, by means of carving — assuming that to be possible — would have no style, nor manner. An absolutely exact copy of anything in nature by means of painting — ^assuming that possible — would have no style, or manner. Any piece of writing, re- porting the simplest, unarranged, and imornamented conversa- tion, would have no style, or marmer.

But, for the time being, let us confine ourselves to style and marmer in painting; for, what is true of style in painting, is true of all the arts.

Let us suppose a painter sits down to paint a landscape. So long as he copies exactly the composition of what is before him, no style enters into his work. Why? Because he makes no changes in the composition. But as soon as he leaves out of his composition a branch of a tree, or a shrub, or a rock, style does enter his work. Why? Because he departed from the truth of Nature, by taking out something. Style would also enter his work if he should change the direction of a fence or the height of a hill, because he then also departed from the truth of Nature, by adding something that was not in the Na- ture-picture before him.

In other words, either by subtraction or addition he re- composed what Nature offered to his view, and to the extent to which he did this, viz., departed from the truth of Nature by

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subtraction from, or addition to, the composition, so would style enter his work. Therefore, the more he left out in the representation of the scene before him of the facts of Nature, the more style he would have in his work, and the more he added of his own imagination, the more style he would put into his work.

This leaving out, or adding to; re-arranging, of the lines, masses, and colors, is the function we call Composition. Hence, style is, fundamentally, a matter of composition, of the ar- rangement of the facts, the objects, the things which make up a work of art and, also, composition is, stylization. This refers to the purely material side, of the arrangement, of the component parts of a work of art.

But, there is in every work of art a spiritual side, an ele- ment of idealism, high or low, and which, when superimposed on the composition, or arrangement, amounts to an idealization of the style — ^up or down. Example :

If the reader wiU examine the “Olympia,” by Manet, Fig. 69-a, and examine the “Sleeping Venus,” by Giorgione, Pig. 69-b, he will see that the composition, the general arrangement, of both of these works is very "much alike, as regards the figture of the woman. That is, the fimdamental style, the ar- rangement, is practically the same. If we now examine closely the picture of Manet, we will see a representation of a woman, so realistically done, that she is not only nude but naked. Moreover, the realism, with which the woman is rendered, shows that Manet strove to make a portrait-like copy of his model — a hard faced woman, whose character, as a demi- mondaine or worse, is indicated by the accessories in the general composition.

There is nothing really beautiful about the woman. She is not exactly ugly; she is common, vulgar. To a satyr, she would, no doubt, be attractive; to a refined poet, she would be repellent. Hence, we cannot see how Manet could ever have brought himself to either begin or finish this work. It is, in short, one of the most crassly realistic and materialistic pic- tures ever produced. There is nothing lifting, nothing ex- alting about it. It is depressing, to aU men who at all think it still worth while to so act that the race wiU be saved from slid- ing back into the morass of the sensualism of Alexandria, which led to the ruin of Rome,

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The picture, of course, has a style of its own. But, accord- ing to some, it has no style at all, because of its lack of ideal beauty: Victor Hugo, for instance, saying, “Style is the/nrw of the beautiful”; while another French writer, Boutard, said:

“ Style, by the mere fact that it is the true expression of that which is beautiful in the ideal, is the most important part of art, and, so to say, art in its entirety.”

This is again a confounding of style with art, and of art with idealism. In fact, the partisans of idealism in art say that, since the stylization of anything is its idealization, there- fore “style” and “ideal” are synonymous terms. This is an error.

Let the Reader now examine the “Sleeping Venus,” of Giorgione, Fig. 69-b. Here we have a figure of a woman com- posed almost the same as that in Manet’s “Olympia.” The composition, the arrangement, is very similar. The facts, the material side, the fundamental style, are nearly the same. They differ in this, that in Giorgione’s work we find a lifting beauty, impressed upon its composition or style by the artist having transfigured the face of his model, away from the earthly types of beauty, to an angelic type, such as Giorgione imagined the Venus might have looked like. He expressed his idea of “supernal beauty,” ethereal beauty, as Poe would have said. In other words, while Manet realized his model, with- out any transfiguration, representing her merely as she actually appeared to him, Giorgione idealized his, according to his idea. That is, Manet materialized his composition while Giorgione poetized his, and this poetry is the result only of the composi- tion, the arrangement of the lines and proportions in the face, body, and landscape.

Now, the absence of all idealization of the form, in Manet’s work, does not rob it of style; but its style is depressing, be- cause of its depressing subject and of its expression in a de- pressing spirit. If it may at all be said to have been idealized, according to Manet’s ideas, it was a low, downward idealiza- tion. For it leads the mind of the spectator directly to the “cave” in which “Olympia,” her Negress, and black cat lodge, vamp, and exploit her victims, like the Sphinx of old! The work is absolutely carnal and earth-earthy, holding the soul tied to a strumpet.

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On the other hand, the idealization in Giorgione’s work lifts us up to the Elysian fields, away from the earth, exalts us into the realms of poetry. It also has style, but an enohled style, while the style of Manet’s work is ignobled by a debasing spirit.

Fundamentally, style, in the abstract, has nothing to do with the idealism, high or low, in a work of art, since style is merely a departure from the truth of nature and the commonplace in the matter of line and form, whether up or down, towards Olympus or Tophet. For a man is always a man, be he good or bad. And a style is always a style, be it good or bad, high or low, depressing or exalting. We will touch on good or bad style presently.

Now, as to Manner in art, with which style is so frequently confounded: manner, we repeat, has nothing to do with style, because it is altogether a matter of surface, technical execution, while style is a matter of fundamental composition or arrange- ment.

It is true that, in the surface execution, an artist may, through awkwardness or indifference, depart from the model before him in matters of small detail, and so impinge on the function of composition and stylization; but this will be so slight as to make it not worth considering, if he aims at truth. To explain:

Suppose ten good painters were told to paint a landscape, from exactly the same point of view, and to make an exact copy, on pain of death for non-exactness. Suppose each painted every object before him as it existed. Each would have a dif- ferent manner of representing the trees, shrubs, houses, hill s, clouds, etc. Why? because Nature has ordained that no two men on earth shall feel and act, and be, exactly alike. Variety is the deepest hunger of Natiure, because it is the fimdamental element of all beauty. Therefore, one painter woiild paint his trees with many detailed leaves, another with very few de- tailed leaves, or leaves of a different character. The ob- server would recognize that every one of the ten paintings were portraits of the scene, none having any style whatever, because none showed any change, no composition : through sub- traction or addition of one or more objects. But still, each would have a different touch, different tone of color, different

Fig, 70. Fig. tq-a.

The Supposed Origin of the Corinthian Capital.

A basket, covered with a block of wr.od, around which grew up acanthus plant's. The capital ascribed to rallicratc Showinj' ’^hc nnlurnl and the stylized acanthus leaf.

Fig. 71 .

Composite Capital, made of Ionic and Cokin thian.

The combining of the two creating a new style, or order.

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values of color, etc. — in short, a different manner. Suppose all followed the composition, drawing, and color of every object exactly, one would have a color almost exactly natural and the others, colors more or less unlike those of Nature.

That is: their composition would be exactly alike, but the surface execution, the manner of representation, would, in- evitably, be different in all the ten pictures. Now, just in ratio of the degree to which their manner of representation produced a result different from that which Nature produced, would their manner be a greater or less departure from the truth of Nature.

To make this stdl more clear: we have a style of archi- tecture called “Gothic.” And yet, we have also a French Gothic, English Gothic; Spanish, German, and Italian Gothic. They are all of the Gothic style. What then makes them French, English, or Spanish Gothic? Nothing but the slight differences that, in the various coimtries, gradually crept into the manner of the execution of the surface details of the Gothic style. The style — the fundamental composition — is Gothic, but the manner — the handling of surface details — is Spanish, Italian, German, etc., because these people /e// in a different way from the inhabitants of the Isle de France who created the “Gothic” style, and, so, wanted a little variety put into the style.

Again, we have a himdred or more different kinds of Corin- thian colximns. They are all Corinthian, because fimdament- ally their capitals are generated from the elements of the acanthus plant. The man who made the first Corinthian capi- tal did not copy the leaves of the acanthus exactly. He stylized them, by departing from the petty truths of their form. See Figs. 70, 70a.

Those who copied this capital, either through inability to copy exactly, or in order to be slightly different, made slight changes in their manner of making a capital in Corinthian style. And thus was produced the great variety of Corinthian capitals. Finally, someone determined to add an entirely new element, not found in the acanthus plant, but already found in the Ionic capital; and the result of this superposing of these two elements was simply the creation of an entirely new style called the Composite, Fig. 71.

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Thus we see that, after the creation of the original funda- mental style, the gradual addition, or taking away, of small details, in the manner of the execution of the Corinthian, did not affect its style, but, as soon as a. fundamentally new element was introduced, its style became changed into a new one.

Now, an artist’s manner is not of supreme import. That is why Sedaine said: “Style is nothing, or it is a small matter,” and de Maistre said: “Style is but an accent.” They both used the wrong word ; they did not mean a man’s style, but his manner.

All through his life an artist may have a certain general style, but more than one manner. In speaking of Whistler, Symonds said:

And in his disinterested greediness, which would follow and capture the whole and his own part of the world, he experiments with many mediums, and he has many manners, though only one style.

And, so, Dussault said of Massillon :

No affectation, no trace of manner, ever corrupts the amiable simplicity of his style.

But, while manner is unimportant, style is important, though not so important as some men try to make us believe, like Boutard who, we repeat, said :

Style, by the fact that it is the true expression of what is beauti- ful in the ideal, is the most important part of art and, so to say, art in its entirety.

which is true only of a lofty imiversal style, but not of manner, which is, today at least, confounded with, and foolishly called, style.

For example: No one has ever succeeded in conveying the amazing grandeur of the Canyon of the Colorado. Thomas Moran came close to doing so. But the man who finally does succeed in painting an exact representation of that marvel of Nature, even without any style whatever, will produce a great work of art, because nature will have furnished an arrangement astonishingly different from the commonplace.

Of course, this contravenes Boutard. But he erred in not seeing, or forgetting, that, in all viable ideal art, creation is a duplex activity, made up of imitation and invention; that any ideal work of art, in order to live, must be based upon the real;

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and that it takes as much artistry-power to truly represent, on canvas, a majestic landscape, with its atmospheric distance, its light, perspective, and color, as it takes to present the imagined ideal. To talk about photography in this case is “bosh,” for no camera ever did truly re-present nature, in any of its as- pects, beyond the confines of a barnyard, not even succeeding in giving a true report of a man’s face.

That ideal expressive art may have a higher social value than merely decorative representative art, is not now the ques- tion. More of that later.

But style is produced not only by departure from the truth of Nature, but also by a departure from the Commonplace. All things, even the finest, become commonplace when they are repeated too often and for too long a period ; for we tire of sameness. Variety is the cosmic law ! By repeating over and over again a beautiful Corinthian coltunn we gradually come to regard it as the logical column. Nature’s column, and so it be- comes identified with Nature itself. So that a departure from a long-established commonplace style is really synonymous with a departure from Nature itself.

That keen intelligence, Max Nordau, in his “Art and Artists,” has an illuminating chapter on “The Question of Style” He says:

Every human activity is excited by a need. We fabricate weapons, implements, shelter, and clothing, because we need them. In the earliest stages of human artistic skill, purpose and material alone control the productions of the hiunan hand; style so far as we can speak of such a thing, is purely Constructive. . . .

At first construction rules alone; next decoration joins it, but very timidly and very modestly. . . .

There is another contrast between construction and decoration. The constructive is the social element in the product of human labor; the decorative the individual one.

In construction expression is given to a need which is, at a given time and a given place, shared by many or all ; it answers not only a condition but a demand of a community. Decoration is, at any rate originally, the outcome of individual taste and individual imagina- tive power. Construction is a thing necessitated, and therefore banal; decoration is superfluous, and therefore charming. (Italics are ours.)

This fact that social need is the force which determines the

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fxmdamental form of the construction of anything, is illus- trated by the Egyptian and Greek temples. In Egypt, where it never rains, they did not need rofn-shedding roofs on their temples. Hence, their roofs are all flat. In Greece, where it does rain often, they needed rain-shedding roofs. Hence, they have hip-roofs. At first, the temples were constructed without any decoration — an element superposed later on the construc- tion, in ever-changing manners. But these changing manners of decoration never affected the fundamental construction, or style, of the Greek Classic, or of the Egyptian, temples.

Now, every radical departure from Nature, ending in a new style, ends also in an originality. Which is extremely desirable, because originality means variety, and variety is our funda- mental need.

But, the danger is always present of an over-worship of mere originality, in order to obtain variety, to the neglect of the other elements — Beauty of style: proportion, grace, sublimity, nobility, elegance, etc. And that there has been, at least dur- ing the last half century, an over-worship of mere originality, is certain. In fact, the chaos in the art world today is due en- tirely to this excessive chase after mere originality, to the silly forgetting of all the elements of Beauty of style.

It is high time that this over-worship of style or manner in art should cease. For style being a departirre from the truth of Nature, its pursuit, in and for itself, soon develops an increas- ing contempt for Nature, and a love for the artificial; and, once we enter on that stream of tendency, we soon arrive at the grotesque and insane, as the Cubists and Futurists have demonstrated. Because a little reflection will prove that every step, away from the truth of Nature that an artist makes in his selfish pursuit of a personal style alone, is a step in the direction of insanity, in art!

To what extent may an artist in his search for style depart from the truth of Nature, before the public has the right to call him insane? Evidently that is to be determined, not by the artist, or his cronies in the world of art, but by the public, to whom he offers his works, and who support him. Because his works are supposed to express — to represent — the life of the past and the life of his time. Logically, when an artist piles up a lot of colored blocks and calls it “Introspection,” or

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hangs on a string a lot of brown shingles and calls it a “Nude Descending a Staircase,” the public has a right to call him either a maniac or a bunco-charlatan ! This is the crux of nearly all the art quarrels, and of the anarchy, in the world of art today, which hangs on this question : To what extent may a man de- part from Nature in any work of art, before he is called insane?

What does history teach? It teaches that the greatest works of art, of every great art epoch, showed truly a depart- ure from Nature, but only a slight departure, and the works of art which have been most worshipped, across the ages, show only a very modest departure from the truths of Nature — ^in order to obtain a higher and more perfect type of Nature. For, no matter how “artistically” and stylistically any ugly thing is rendered if carried to an insane extreme, the public will have none of it. We will explain this elsewhere in a chapter on the “Deformation of the Form.”

The best statement we have of the limits of Personal stylization is contained in Hamlet’s advice to the actors :

To hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to Nature.

A mirror does not exactly reflect Nature. There is always, in all mirror-reflection, a something not Natme, showing that it is only mirrored, only reflected. And by this slight, modest departtire, insisted on by Shakespeare, we arrive at the result which Pope expressed when he said;

Art is Nature to advantage dressed.

That is: not distorted, not extravagantly, ludicrously, re- pellently dressed, but “to advantage dressed,” namely, em- bellished, idealized, POETIZED, if you will!

Moreover, there is the difficulty of obtaining true construc- tive style in any work of art. Any bungler can de-poetize Nature, give it a degrading style; but to poetize the common- place, dress it up advantageously, in a creative style, requires a great constructive artist.

When Michael Angelo, an individualist, but a reserved, moderate, and sane one, made his famous reclining figures for the ornamentation of the Medici tombs, he went to the limit of rational departure from Nature in the pursuit of style. He had genius and insight enough to know when he had departed far enough from Nature, and these figures alone would have im- mortalized him.

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But his rival, Bandinelli, seeing that a departure from Na- ture, to obtain style, was applauded, and envious to beat Michael Angelo, made his “Hercules and Cacus” ; but he went so far away from Nature, that his group is grotesque. When set up in Florence, it was laughed at, in derision, called “a sack of pine apples,” by Michael Angelo, and by others a bag of onions, etc., and almost raised a riot.

Before that, Bandinelli had a healthy reputation. But, in making that group, he toppled over into the abyss of excessivism and over-individualization; so that today there is none so poor as to do it honor. And there it still stands, his work, before the Ufizzi Gallery, still ridiculed and laughed at, a warning, as eternal as the marble, to all excessivists, saying that, in the pursuit of style, we must not depart too far from Nature, if we wish our work to escape the condemnation of our contempora- ries or of posterity. No better lesson on the subject of the limitation of stylization than these two works of Michael Angelo and Bandinelli.

Will the artists of this epoch take warning from these ex- amples?

This subject of style is so vast, that we can now only touch briefly on the subsidiary phases of it.

There are various kinds of style : Universal style, Individual style. Racial style. Epochal style, etc. But we will notice, here, only the two first mentioned.

Universal style is sometimes called “The Grand Style,” by the French, and impersonal style by some, and by others sim ply — Style; just as some say there is only one kind of art and that is — Art.

But, the universal style has certain definite qualities, and when these are found in a work of art they relegate that work to the style called universal or impersonal. Every work of art is said to have imiversal style in which we find :

First: A composition so perfect that it appears to have been thus composed by a law of necessity; so that we feel that, to change the composition, would spoil it. Second: In which the proportions are so wise, that they harmonize perfectly with the thought or emotion the work was intended to convey. Third: In which there is nothing so peculiar, queer, or puz- zling — ^in form, color, drawing or details — as to instantly arouse

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in the spectator the question: “Why did the artist do that thus, or put that in his work?” For, Nature always did and eternally will dominate man enough to force him never to let go of her guiding hand long enough to lose sight of her. Hence no work of art, whose style is said to be tmiversal, ever ceases to be relatively true to Nature, that is: all its parts, which are supposed to be alive, will look natural, even though Nature in its forms may be somewhat accentuated. Fourth: In a uni- versal-style work of art, the manner of the artist, no matter how wonderful it may be, will be so impersonal that one might with difficulty ascribe it to any particular artist, so that the work- manship will look as if it were the hand-work of a god rather than of a man.

That is, the artist of such a work of art will be so intent on getting to your soul, with the utniost possible force, and rapid- ity, the emotions he desires to arouse in you, so he might share his own emotions with you, that he will so absolutely hide him- self behind his work, as a wise dramatist will hide behind his play on a first night, that you will not suspect it was his crafts- manship, by any peculiar mannerisms, or technical tricks that will shout to yotu" ears or crash into your eyes, before your soul will have had time to seize the import, or meaning, of his com- position, and the idea which it is supposed to represent and express; his primal aim being, not to parade himself and any bag of technical tricks of his, but to “put over” his emotion, idea, conception, story to captivate you.

These four characteristics will be found in every truly great work that “strikes us all of a heap,” siuprises us profoimdly, and emotions us instantly. Examples of such works in the tmiversal style are:

Portions of Homer, Dante, and Milton; “Hamlet,” “School for Scandal,” and “Alabama”; the “Parthenon,” the “Taj Mahal,” and the “Capitol” at Washington; the “Venus de Milo,” Michael Angelo’s “Moses,” Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa,” and Velasquez’s “Crucifixion.”

There are many others, all of which look as though any giant might have made them, or the Olympian Vulcan! In none of these, and kindred works, do we find any cat’s paw marks, peculiar to the artist, staring you in the face, and to which, with petty vanity, he points with childish pride, reveal-

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ing a boiling ego-mania, as would be the case if a dramatist should sit down before the footlights, as a play of his was im- curtained, on the first night, thus forcing the spectator to first see him, instead of his play ! In works of this character, in the universal style, in which the artist sought to emotion you, to capture your heart, mind, or soul, instead of, like a Beau Brummel parading before you; the attention is not over-oc- cupied by details of mystic curiosities, of symbolism, or of technique, all of tertiary importance, or worse than useless; but the mind quickly grasps the whole work in one glance, seizes the significance of the work instantly; and, so, a profoimd emotion follows in the spectator, of high or low order, according as the work is exalting or depressing.

Such universal styles in architecture are followed univers- ally for ages. Note especially the Greek Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric — even Japan having built her present Imperial Palace in the classic style, even though in a Louis XIV modification. And wherever power, majesty, sublimity, is aimed at, this style is chosen.

A Racial style is that of the Chinese.

An Epochal style is that of the Rococo. But we wiU pass over these.

“Individual” style means a style obtained, not only by a departure from Nature, but by a peculiar kind of departure, and followed only by certain artists, in order that one should recognize their special styles, at first sight. Such a style is al- ways more or less an ego-maniacal style, indulged in by artists who do not always aim to perfect Nature, to benefit mankind, but, in their hunger to assert and exploit their “personality,” go to extravagances. When this “individualism” in style is not overdone, it is not too offensive. But, when it is overdone, when an artist is so feverishly anxious to let people know that he passed here, or there, on this earth, and, to do so, not only departed from Nature, but deliberately uglified it, in order to leave behind him a personal odor, like a fox passing through a forest, as the “modernistic” artists do — then it becomes nause- ating. And the mystery is becoming greater every day why the “modernists” fail to see the handwriting on the waU, the “Mene, mene tekel upharsin”? It passes understanding why they cannot sense that their excessive departure from Nature

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will inevitably land them in the abyss of a ridiculous and la- mentable failure, and that the public will, ultimately, throw stones of condemnation upon them, for having tried to bunco mankind into a belief that anything will ever justify an extrava- gant departure from Nature, above all a degrading departure, in an ego-maniacal effort to make a peculiar kind of a noise, so the passing crowd should not overlook them, as they perorate on the street corners.

CHAPTER V

STYLE AND MANNER IN ART Section Two

What is true of style, is true of manner, in art. Why an artist will be unobtrusive and sane in his dress and life, but becomes loud-mouthed and grotesque in his manner, when pro- ducing a work of art, ending in the ugly, the repellent and bunco-mystifying, is incomprehensible. It seems almost im- possible, when we study the history of art, and find there re- corded the truth: that no case of excessive departure from Na- ture in art, either through childish incompetence or through the stupidity of ego-mania, ever escaped the indifference or positive condemnation of mankind.

There is only one explanation. In the nineteenth century the commercial activity of certain art speculators, art critics, art dealers, and book publishers deluded these artists into the hope that they could keep up the game of “putting over” on the public the excessive modernistic creations. Thus certain weak-minded artists were encouraged to believe that monstrous creations can be made to endure, by main strength and brass- band advertising.

To go profoimdly into the question of what constitutes good style among the sane styles, and to discuss it from all angles, would mean the writing of a book, devoted to style alone. We have no such aim.

But we may say: Why try to do anything, good or bad, unless you wish to effectively succeed in doing it? Even a tumble-bug will exhaust itself in trying to successfully do what it starts out to do. A style may be good or bad, coarse or re- fined, but it is never so contemptible as when it is ineffective, and the fundamental elements of all effective styles are three; First, Clarity, then. Force; and, finally, Melody,

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Of these three the prime element is : Clarity.

Herbert Spencer in his profound little essay, on “The Philosophy of Style,” written, not to define style, but to indi- cate the elements of good style, after referring to certain current niles of composition, in order to obtain effective style, says :

On seeking for some clue to the law underlying these current maxims, we may see shadowed forth in many of them, the import- ance of economizing the reader’s or hearer’s attention.

To so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least possible mental effort, is the desideratum towards which most of the rules above quoted point.

When we condemn writing that is wordy, or confused, or intri- cate — ^when we praise this style as easy, and blame that as fatiguing, we consciously or tmconsciously assume this desideratiun as our standard of judgment.

Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced. In either case, whatever force is absorbed by the ma- chine is deducted from the result.

A reader, or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him, requires part of this power; to arrange and com- bine the images suggested requires a further part; and only that which remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and under- stand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived. (Italics ours.)

We could quote Aristotle, Longinus, and Buffon to sustain Spencer in his dictum : that clarity, lucidity, is the first essen- tial of all good style.

Now, this is true not only of style in literature but in all the arts, since every art is but a language for conveying thought or emotion. The chief aim of an artist — at least one who is not a duffer and in pursuit merely of a temporary notoriety, but an artist who seeks to produce works that wiU endure — his chief aim will always be : to convey his thought to the public in the clearest, most forceful, and in the hast attention-consuming, style and manner.

Rivarol said:

Ce qui n’est pas clair, n’est pas frangais.

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“That which is not clear, is not French.”

In short, clarity demands that there must be no mystery, no confusion; nothing cryptic or puzzling in any work of art, if the artist hopes to conquer his audience. And that is true of all of the eight arts.

Now, as to Force in style: through the economy of words, this is finely shown in the following masterly analysis by Her- bert Spencer, in his “Facts and Comments,” of a phrase of an- other “stylist,” Matthew Arnold :

Another example is furnished by the apostle of culture, Mr. Matthew Arnold. On the page of the Academy, preceding that from which I have just quoted, there is a laudatory essay on him, under the title Reputations Reconsidered. In it is reproduced one of his sentences with this introduction: “His own judgment was per- petually guided by the principles laid down in a famous passage beginning:

“There can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one’s mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry.” {Essays in Criticism, 2d Ser., p. 16.)

My first remark is that the phrase “useful help” conceals a pleonasm. A help is defined as a thing which aids or assists, and a thing which does that is a useful thing; so that a “useful help” is a useful useful thing. Instead of “ no more useful help ” he should have writen “no better help.” We come next to the clause — “what poetry belongs to the class of truly excellent.” Why all these words? What belongs to the class of the truly excellent is necessarily truly excellent. Why then speak of a class? The phrase shoidd be: — “What poetry is truly excellent.” Then, again, the clause “to apply them as a touchstone” is, to say the least, awkward. Surely it should be to “apply them as touch- stones.” Once more, what is the use of the final words “to other poetry”? The first part of the sentence has already implied that “other poetry” is a thing to be tested. Hence, leaving out inter- mediate clauses, the statement is that, for discovering what poetry is “truly excellent,” certain tests should be applied “to other poetry”! To convey the intended meaning the sentence should have run: — There can be no better helps for discovering what poetry is truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than linps and expressions of the great masters, kept always in mind and ap- plied as touchstones. Or otherwise: There is no better way of dis-

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covering what poetry is truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to keep always in mind lines and expressions of the great masters and apply them as touchstones. Thirteen words are saved and the meaning definitely expressed.

To illustrate stiU more the profound significance of Herbert Spencer’s dictum that “Economy of attention” is the funda- mental requirement of all good style, in any work of art in which an artist wishes to successfully convey an emotion or thought, let us cite a few short poems. A little reflection will convince the Reader that the less words in a poem, or lines and masses in a picture, or in a statue or building, used by the artist to convey his message, the more forceful and vivid will be the effect upon the reader, spectator, or auditor, provided the words, lines, colors, etc., are so arranged as to be easily and quickly understood and grasped by the reader, spectator, or hearer. Some people imagine that a poem, to be great, must be long, and in a mystic, Browning-esque language, such as no one can easily understand. Great Error!

Some poems, and among the immortal ones, are in only one verse, and in the simplest language. Here is one by Bums. It is the second-last stanza of his “Address to the Unco Quid,’’ but it is really a poem in itself:

Then gently scan your brother man,

Stni gentler sister woman;

Tho’ they may gang a kennin’ wrang;

To step aside is human:

One point must still be greatly dark The moving why they do it ;

And just as lamely can ye mark.

How far perhaps they rue it.

Here is another, “The Chambered Nautilus,” which sea urchin increases the size of the successive chambers it inhabits in its shell, as it grows older. It is by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the delightful “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” :

Build thee more stately mansions, 0 my Soul !

As the swift seasons roll Leave thy low- vaulted past!

Let each new Temple, nobler than the last.

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast.

Till thou at length art free.

Leaving thine out-grown shell by life’s unresting sea.

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Such gems, of poetry-arousing verse, in which not a super- fluous word is used and no lines loaded down with too much “literary baggage,” go straight to the soul, like an unencum- bered arrow and, so, quickly exalt us to a high emotional state, a poetic state; and, thus, they successfully console us, en- courage us, stimxilate our life currents, by lifting us to higher planes of thought and feeling, and, so, justify the remark of the Sage who said:

Let me write a people’s songs and I care not who makes its laws.

And what is true of poetry is true of all the arts.

As to Melody of style, we will merely say: this requires not only clarity, hence ease of comprehension of the thought of the artist; economy of words and lines, to increase the quickness of the penetrating power of the work; but it needs rhythmic ele- gance of lines, such as have the power of '‘cradling" the eye, or ear, or mind, as we pointed out in our chapter on Beauty.

This agreeable, melodious cradling is the least quantity of sensuous pleasure we have a right to expect in any work which is put forth as a work of art, which an artist troubles us to look at, be it in poetry or sculpture; painting or architecture; music or drama. If, in addition to that, the artist can add to this cradling, a soul-lifting, exalting power, so as to make his work not only elegant but also sublime, so much the better.

Bulwer Lytton said:

Refined manners are more important than religion.

The same is true of art.

A work of art, to endure, must have not merely style, but a beautiful style, not just any old style. It must have also, not only an effective manner, but a refined and restrained manner, not a manner that shouts out, hke a circus tout: “Gentlemen! I am here ! Behold me — ^and nothing but me ! ” It must have not only originality, but a rational and fine originality. By that we mean : it must have no novelty so strange and weird as not to be imderstood by the man of average intelligence. We mean a rational originality, one not detached from life. For, an agreeable and acceptable originaUty must, after all, be the commonplace, plus an agreeable difference.

Works that do not fill these requirements are destined to encumber the earth for a short time only. They may find

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their way to the walls of some library or museum and remain there for a time ; but the pressure of public common-sense wnll, as sure as the tides, relegate them to the art-morgue and, ulti- mately, to the jimk-pile !

Mr. Brownell’s reputation, as a writer, rests largely on his admirable “French Traits.” In that, he was always clear and simple. Lately, he has become so involved, so stylistic, or so mannered, in his writing, that many of his long paragraphs are irritating, because they are so obscure that they force you either to painfully grope your way slowly, from word to word, or to reread the entire paragraphs, to get the true meaning of the matter. Hence, some of his “fine writing makes diffi- cult reading.” But, now and then, when he completely for- gets his idol. Style, he wings off a delightful paragraph. Here is one of his latest ;

For the effect of the spirit of style in a work of art is precisely to add wings to it. The effect of following any objective ideal is elevation. Uplift means first of all getting out of one’s self. It appeals in this way to the imagination as adventure does. But it also involves what adventure does not, definite aspiration rather than vague enthusiasm. And this aspiration to achieve rather than to experience, to reach a goal rather than to explore the unknown, to attain the normal rather than invent the novel, springs from per- ceiving the existence, in the ideal sphere, of a quality for which we have no other word so apt as perfection. (Italics ours.)

There are epochs in which too much attention is paid, not to good style, but to personal style, or the personal element in style. Those epochs we caU interregnum-epochs. They al- ways appear between two other, creative, epochs. That is to say : an epoch will arrive in which a national wave of emotion, of exaltation, will hunger for expression, and this in an imper- sonal style and manner, an epoch in which both public and artists are busy trying to realize, or to express, a national ideal, and during which there will exist a large amount of, if not complete, social harmony.

During such an epoch, a general style will be created and be- come dominant, and personal manner will not be hectically paraded by the artists, because it will seem gross, petty, and vulgar, for a man, at that time, to obtrude himself and his par- ticular manner, instead of trying to express the national emo-

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tion in the impersonal style, which will, in that epoch, be everybody’s manner. For, in a great creative epoch, when the nation is aroused, it is the people which speaks and not the in- dividual; he must then sink himself in the Nation, as he does in the army in war. He must not only sing, but sing in tune. Then, peculiar notes are not wanted. The artist is then, through social pressure, forced to suppress, if not his egotism, at least any leaning towards a cacophonic ego-mania.

When, then, the governing impulse of that epoch has been weakened, because the national ideals of the epoch shall have been well, or sufficiently, expressed, then comes an epoch of spiritual fatigue. National expression having had its vogue, national relaxation, and then introspection, will follow. The “Marseillaise,” the grandest national anthem ever composed, having been simg enough, the people will say, “Oh! Zut alors! En voilaassez!” that is; “Oh! Rats, enough of that!” And then there will begin a carnival of vaudevillianism in life and art, an epoch of triviality, even immorality, in everything. Exalting poetry and impersonal style will be at a discount, and will be, by the roughnecks in art, called “Bunk,” “Old Hat,” “Victorianism,” etc!

Then men will shout: “Now, let’s have something differ- ent! Damn the classic! Hurrah for the personal! We’ve simg our national song, haven’t we? And say, it was a corker. What? Well, now church is over, and I’m going to the ‘Bal BuUier’ and have a good time. I’ve been constrained long enough. I am going to git my gal and ‘chahuter.’ Come along and see me sling my legs ‘fifty ways for Sunday!”’

And he goes to the Bullier, and there, it is wine, women, and song, in a wild cohu-bohu, each corybant trying to be, first personal, then funny, then extravagant, even to insanity, each having his personal pose — none must be anywhere near alike — his “difference,” Hellenic or Hellish, being his only true con- tribution to the riot of gallic gayety!

During such an epoch, grandeiu- of style in art is kicked on the junk-pde, and Universalism in style succumbs to Individual- ism in manner!

And this will go on until the nation gets close to the brink of dangerous weakness, when the prophets will again be lis- tened to; or, until a war comes along, and whips the nation out

Fig. 73.

Portrait of a Man, Ln* the Louvre.

BV DeNN'ER.

An example of meticulous copying of details, yet falling short of actual truth to nature. .Vote that the ear is set back too far. Holbein, in his George Gisse, has less detail but more life, see Fig. 84.

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of its worshipping at the shrine of ego-mania and individualism d Voutrance and, so, end that interregnum-epoch of triviality !

During such epochs. Cleverness will be aimed at, instead of perfection. And, by degrees, great art will cease to be longed for, or produced, by the artists, except by such as have their eyes ever fixed on immortality across the ages, instead of a notoriety during their epoch. These few will never forget the lesson they have learned, that ego-mania, triviality, and mere cleverness will not carry a man’s name far down the corridors of time, nor permanently enrich his country. Such artists know the truth of what Amiel said :

Cleverness is useful in everything — sufficient for nothing.

Also they feel, by instinct, with Goethe ;

Clever men are good, but not the best.

All great Creative art epochs were ushered in by some great wave of national emotion, which all the people were, by in- stinct, bent on expressing, in a national celebration, and in which the people gladly followed their leaders.

After the Battle of Salamis, came the Periclean age; after Rome became mistress of the world, came the Augustan age; after Constantine, came the Byzantine epoch. Then came the Thirteenth Centvuy, when the world celebrated the triumph of Christianity; then came the Renaissance Epoch, in which was celebrated the triumph of Humanism and of the Papacy; then, under the Bourbons, and with Versailles, was celebrated the consolidation of France; the liberation of the Netherlands was celebrated by the Dutch, in art, from Van Eyck to Rubens ; the French Revolution found its celebration in the Empire style, and, finally, came the greatest art epoch France has had, the post-Prussian War Epoch, from 1872 to 1900, during which France strained every nerve to show that she still lived!

In all of these great national celebrations, during which egotism and personal assertion were unpopular, there were de- veloped a new, a general, an impersonal style; and being im- personal — ^because being unselfish, and because the wave of emotion was powerful enough to exalt the nation up to a mood of national expression, which made the nation creative. For the more powerful the emotion, the more imperious the need for its expression, and in the most exalting possible form, the more creative becomes both the nation and the individual.

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But, at the same time, and long before such a creative epoch entirely exhausts itself, the cynical ego-maniacs, a crop of which is always spawned up during every social ferment, will become busy, trying to stem this national and impersonal trend of expression, and begin a war upon it. And just as soon as the national wave of emotion only begins to subside, the ego-maniacal individualists will surge to the surface, like the seventeen-year locusts, and empest the air, not with melody, but with their noise and rasping cackle!

This happened in France. Already toward the end of the 70’s, in the midst of that great creative epoch, cynical ego-mania, and “modernism,” its twin sister, began to lift their heads; and, by 1900, they had triumphed, and extreme personal mannerism was in vogue, and has remained in vogue ever since. Also, as a direct result, France has never been in a lower moral state, than it has been during the last twenty-five years, until today — 1924 — women are paraded naked in the public theatres of Paris I

Hence, we rejoice to see Mr. Brownell say something, which he should have said thirty years ago, instead of waiting to say it in June, 1924, m the “ North American Review.”

Too much may tmdoubtedly be made of style [personal manner he means], too disproportionate homage paid to it. Divorced from the pressure of substance, it betrays that insipid effect of pedantry parading as power which stamps the mind behind the work as mediocre.

How finely that is illustrated by Michael Angelo, the great- est artist that ever Hved. His “Moses,” Fig. 72, has a style which seems to be classic, except for a few accents, here and there. In fact, we woidd not be surprised to find that it had actually been made by some Greek sculptor, under Roman in- fluence, and dug up, cleaned, and attributed to hlichael. And as for any personal manner of surface modelling or execu- tion — which surface manner is the major element in any “personal style,” so called — it scarcely exists: for the entire statue is polished! All superficial mannerisms — so dear to the petty minds of the present uncreative, ego-maniacal, inter- regnum-epoch in which we are living — have been wiped out, absolutely. And yet, it is the greatest, most exalting, statue in the world, when we see it for the first time, in that little

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church of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome! Angelo, in this statue, did not seek to parade a purely personal manner, dif- ferent from that of any predecessor, he despised that. What he sought was, to make a worthy, adequate, world-alluring statue of Moses, not a vulgar advertisement of the surface cleverness of Michael Angelo. To conquer the world, he sup- pressed every call of his Ego to parade a peculiar and personal manner, and strove only for sublimity of mass, beauty of line, and profimdity of expression and, thus, achieved grandeur and imiversality of style. We can never pay too much attention to impersonal style; for the slightest overemphasis, in any work of art, of a personal manner, makes of it a candidate for an early oblivion.

To show the exalting power of impersonal, universal style, and, then, the debasing power of over-stylization, in any art, here is a commonplace phrase of natural speech :

“I have for a long time been asking myself whether it is better to keep on, and continue living on this earth, midst the evils and mysteries of life, or whether I should end it all by suicide.”

This phrase is absolutely devoid of style : because it is plain, commonplace, natural speech, such as anyone would use who was not imder any creative, emotional impulse, or who was not bent upon stirring our emotions, through art. It has no style, because it has no obvious special arrangement of form, made for the sake of the arrangement or form, hence it is no departure from nature, or the commonplace, in speech.

Now, here is another phrase, expressing the same ideas as the one above;

“To be alive a long time, midst the troubles and worries of this life, or to die quickly, that is the question I have been asking myself for lo! these many days.”

This phrase has a small amoimt of style, or stylization, because in it is a slight departure from commonplace speech. But here the mind is already attracted away from the thought to the style.

Here are some lines from Shakespeare, containing almost the same ideas expressed in the phrases above ;

To be or not to be, that is the question:

Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer

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The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them?

These lines have true and fine style. Note, first the elimination in these lines of the unnecessary words and details of the preceding phrases. Note their deliberate composition into lines more or less short; note the attention to form. Note the rhythm. Note the exalting tone, which results from this difference of arrangement and form, in addition to the choice of more rare words and secondary ideas. It is this which adds the lifting element, which we call poetic, and which makes us call the soliloquy “poetry.” Above all, note that the mind has been, by the style, taken away still farther from the thought — but not to the danger-point, where style drowns thought. The result is not yet “artistic,” “ aesthetic,” arti- ficial enough to make the lines ineffective as an emotioning or poetizing power; there is here an equilibration between the at- tracting power of the thought and of the alluring power of the style; and this it is which gives the entire soliloquy its exalting and emotioning power, and so makes it immortal.

Now, take the same ideas and handle them thus:

To be Or not To be!

That Is the

Question of the hour for me —

You bet!

And yet.

Why ponder Yonder

O’er life’s illusions?

Nix — not for me !

Here we have the introduction of Style, a departure from the commonplace and natural, to the point of exaggeration and bombast. We offer this with apologies to the late Wm. J. Lampton, a clever exponent, in our daily papers, of a certain exaggerated, bright, and amusing style. In the lines there is still some sense. But note that here the equilibration between the attracting power of the thought and the power of style to allure the soul has been destroyed; besides, the lines, though

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taking us away from the commonplace, take us sideways — to some cafe, as it were, not upwards towards a cathedral; they are no longer exalting to sublimity, they are no longer ‘ ‘ poetry. ’ ’ They have been artisticated, aestheticized, stylized, into arti- ficiality, and debased into merely amusing doggerel.

Now, we will arrange the same ideas in this style:

To be not! ! !

Not to be? be-be?

Hee, ho! Zip! Hee! bee!

What’s got? Bing! Scot!

Miseries! flub-dub! Burden!

Fardels? Nit! Iseries!

Poison? Yow! Stab! ! phizeries! ! !

Life? Zut! bla-a-a-Curtain.

Here we have “Esthetic Emotion,” so called. This should please Mr. Clive Bell, and the other mad devotees of the Matisse, Van Gogh, and Cezanne school of “Significant Form,” because here we have no longer any semblance of natural speech but a distortion, a “deformation of the form” in speech, worthy of a yapping maniac, in which the “form” has become more important than the thought to be conveyed. This is what the extremists call: “Abstract style” — !

We do not wish, even by implication, to classify any sane “vers libristes” with “G. S.,” or with any of the maniacs who Idss her skirt-rims. But we offer this as an explanation of the debasing force of the pursuit of personal overstylization, and its inevitable landing of the pursuer into a state of insanity, and also as a warning of the disintegrating power of the stupid philosophy of certain modernists, namely: that “aesthetic emo- tion,” “significant form,” and “deformation of the form,” obtained only by an overstylization into the inane and the insane, should be the aim of an artist.]

The social danger at the basis of this destructive aesthetic phdosphy, engendered by the bunco art dealers, bunco critics, bunco artists, and the commercial publishers of art journals in Eiu-ope — for lucre and nothing else — is graduUy dawning upon the public of the world, and, when its nefarious and ndfaste raison d'etre is once fully grasped. Modernism in art will be swept into the street !

Nevertheless, we find the fiend of the Art for Art’s saike

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technique, in the world of poetry, as in the other arts. For example: In “French Portraits,” quoted in “The Poetry Journal,” of August, 1917, Vance Thompson says:

In my appreciation of Mallarme I have said that verse, like music, is an art which the technically ignorant person cannot under- stand. The aesthetic satisfaction one derives from an art is in exact proportion to one’s knowledge of that art’s technique.

The last statement is untrue and worthy of Gautier, whose “art for art’s sake” “Emaux et Camees” are little poems, and as empty of emotion-stirring power as dead seashells. They may give some dilettanti “aesthetic satisfaction”; but, to do nothing but that, is the aim only of trivial, drivelling artists. Great poems, not only give us “aesthetic satisfaction” (a new- fangled expression) , but also emotional joy and exaltation, and to enjoy great poems one needs to know nothing about the “technique” of poem-budding. Mallarme, a French writer, was a drivelling devotee of the dogma that poetry needs '‘ob- scurity,” who said:

The charm of poetry lies in our having to guess its meaning; in poetry there should always be a puzzle.

This, in face of the fact that Herbert Spencer has conclu- sively shown that clarity, to insure quickness of comprehension by the reader, is the sine qua non of all good style in any art, above all in poetry! Most of Mallarme’s poem.s are incompre- hensible drivel. In fact, in France the cult of “puzzling ob- scurity,” in versification, was so great that, for decades, since 1850, we had all sorts of “schools” of poetry, such as the Parnassians, Symbolists, Decadents, Magi, etc., etc. The character of the work of aU of the disciples of these schools, which were all Modernistic, was fitly characterized by Rene Doumic, in “Les Jeunes”:

It is the weariness of life, contempt for the present epoch, regret for another age, seen through the illusion of art; a taste for para- dox, a desire to be singular, a sentimental aspiration for simplicity, an infantine adoration of the marvellous; a sickly tendency towards revery, a shattered condition of nerves; and, above all, the exas- perated demand of sensuality.

Nature has not invested the poet with the right to be “puzzling ” and obscure. If he has a message for mankind, then she expects him to deliver it in a form so clear and emc

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tioning, that all men of a given race can quickly understand the message, and be exalted. If he has no exalting message, then if he “carries on,” he dwindles to the condition of a mere “ entertainer,” a status not to be despised, but not meriting for him the supreme privilege of sitting at the head of the table, at the banquet of the World.

That charlatanistic, ultra-artificial hater of nature, and semi-lunatic, Baudelaire, whose weird talent is mistaken for genius, seems to have been the father of vers libre. Here is one of his “little poems” written, perhaps, about 1850:

The Stranger

‘ ‘ Whom dost thou love best, say, enigmatical man, thy father, thy mother, thy brother, or thy sister? ”

“ I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.”

“Thy friends?”

“You there use an expression the meaning of which till now re- mains unknown to me.”

“Thy country?”

“ I ignore in what latitude it is situated.”

“Beauty?”

“ I would gladly love her, goddess and immortal.”

“Gold?”

“ I hate it as you hate God.”

“Then what do you love, extraordinary stranger? ”

“ I love the clouds . . . the clouds that pass down there . . . the marv'ellous clouds!”

Why should Americans imitate such trash? It is no thing but an attempt at “technical stunting” in versification, or word-juggling, utterly empty, and devoid of aU emotion-stir- ring and spiritually stimulating qualities; a siUy, sodden, sorry trade !

The hectic pursuit of such a puerile object as a peculiar per- sonal manner, which inevitably can have but a passing vogue before shunting the artist on towards oblivion, is no longer merely nauseating: it is soul-depressing, and what is true of poetry is true of sculpture and painting.

It is saddening to think that so many men who, because of their real talents and dexterity — as finger-workmen — could surely have become truly great artists, whom their people would have delighted to love and crown with glory, had they

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been bom with sufficient creative imagination and poetic feeling to force them to seek the universal, instead of the merely in- dividual; enduring perfection, instead of ephemeral cleverness; sublime beauty, instead of a piffling, personal peculiarity of expression, which they mistakenly called “style” even though devoid of noble ideas and lifting feeling, which are the very foundations of all styles of distinction. When we look at the careers of such clever men as Manet, Degas, Rodin, etc., who, in spite of their present manufactured notoriety, are slowly but surely travelling towards a nebulous obscurity, as far as the cultured public across the ages is concerned, whatever may be said to the contrary by a few merely cleveristic craftsmen and a few critics whose judgments are totally warped by a childish overworship of mere style and personal manner in art, one deeply regrets the waste of effort which they represent.

What tragic short-sightedness men like these show, in failing to see the profound truth in what Emerson says :

That is the best part of each writer which has nothing private in it. That is the best part of each which he does not know, that which flowed out of his constitution, and not from his too active invention; that which in the study of a single artist you might not easily find, but in the study of many you would abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man, in that early Hellenic world, that I would know. The name and circum- stance of Phidias, however convenient for history, embarrasses when we come to higher criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at that moment wrought. (Italics are ours.)

That is to say: the best part in any work of art is the imper- sonal style part, the part supplied by the race, and builded up by many men, and not the personal contribution of any single artist, tending always to modify a style out of existence.

Does the public patronize an Orator because he talks with a peculiar kind of an accent ? No ! Does it applaud an Opera Singer because the “timbre” of her voice has an “individual- ity” of sound, instead of an exquisite quality and power ? No ! Why then patronize a painter, or a poet, or a sculptor, because he has barnacled his painting, or rhyming, or carving, with some ridiculous ting-a-ling accent, or odor, of “originality,”

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dug up out of the tra-la-la, cryptic depths of his artificialized soul and by which he, in his feverish ego-hallucination, has detached himself from his fellows, by flouting the immutable law: that universality of appeal can only be achieved through the manifestation of the general and the Beautiful; through the stern limitation of the particular and the grotesque ?

And why should the public give more than one moment of consideration to any man, dabbling in any art, who, though he remain verbally silent, makes his work, by implication at least, cry aloud:

The public be damned !

instead of taking the whole great public for his audience and striving, in all sincerity, to lift it above the petty, the merely peculiar, up to the poetic, above the commonplace, by which alone real style, plus an agreeable manner, can be achieved ?

The fact is; any Style gives to any work of art a certain kind of distinction, because that lifts it, and makes us feel that it is above the commonplace and the crassly real of truth. But, there flows into every man’s work a subtle something, not specially striven for, and which we might call a subsidiary- distinction, which is felt, but is difficult to point out, and which constitutes the main element of his true and native individuality.

Thus, we seem to sense, in the works of Phidias and Veronese, a something aristocratic, which crept into their work unconsciously, because tdiey imperiously felt in an aristocratic way; in Titian and Praxitelles we sense refinement; in Rubens and Donatello, force and voluptuousness; in Poussin and Jean Goujon, elegance; in Sansovino and Fra Angelico, etheriality; in Michael Angelo and Raphael, mystery; in Leonardo and Rude, clarity.

But we do not think that any man can pound into his works that mysterious thing called “personal accent,” if he lacks distinct personality as a man. If it does not flow into his work unconsciously, unstriven for, any so-called “personal accent” will be a false one, and will soon be felt by the dis- cerning public as a sham personalism, a fabricated individual- ity, and will then act as a boomerang to the artist and kick him for all his pains. For the gods hate sham ! And it is not re- corded in history that Munchausen succeeded in flying over the mountains by pulling at his own boot-straps!

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All this confusion about what is style, and the value of style in a work of art, came about through a slow growth of a con- fusion of ideas as to which part of a work should be regarded as the style-part and which part as the manner-part ; which part is the universal part, and which the personal part; and which part is the most important.

Thus, Victor Hugo said:

Style is the form of the beautiftil.

What he meant was, that style is the form in which ideal beauty is clothed. Thus agreeing with Chas. Blanc, who said;

But beyond these divers styles, which manifest various shadings in the manner of feeling, there is something general and absolute which we call — style. Just as a particular style is the stamp of such or such a man, style, in itself, is the impression on Nature of human thought. From this high point of view, style expresses the totality of the traditions, which the masters have transmitted to us, from age to age; and, epitomizing the various classic manners of envisaging Beauty, style signifies beauty itself.

The Holland school lacked style, because it lacked beauty. The schools of Italy had grand styles, personified by Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Titian, Corregio. But the Greeks alone, having arrived at the apogee of their genius, attained, for a moment, under Pericles, to the style par excellence, to the absolute style, to that impersonal style and, so, to the sublime, in which were fused the highest characteristics of beauty; divine amalgam of sweetness and power, of dignity and ardor, of majesty and grace. Winckelmann said profoundly: “Perfect beauty is like pure water, it has no par- ticular flavor.” Thus, in the sculptures on the Parthenon, the per- sonality of the sculptor is effaced, so much so, that they are less the work of a single artist than the creations of art itself, because Phidias, instead of animating them with his own particular soul, passed through them the breath of the universal soul. (Italics are ours.)

This will give the Reader a clear sense of what is meant by the general style, the impersonal style, the grand style, and the universal element in style. And it will indicate that outside of this, there is no style, that this grand. Absolute style excludes aU peculiar personal qualities.

But, Madame de Sevigne said ;

Everyone has his style.

By this she meant that everyone has, not his style, but his

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manner — peculiar to himself. And BufEon, we repeat, coined the celebrated phrase :

Style is of the man himself.

By which he evidently meant, the personal manner of a given man, and which is true of every markedly personal style, like that of Victor Hugo. To the ego-maniacs, who hun- ger to invent a peculiar personal manner, and mistake that for real style, Buffon here seems to bolster up their point of view. But we repeat, he said elsewhere in his famous essay: ‘ ‘ Style is nothing other than the order and movement which we put into our thoughts.” If, however, you have no thoughts, of universal social value, to which to give “order and movement,” why bother about mere style ?

For style, in itself, as a mere dress, means nothing, without valuable thoughts. Empty style, unless it clothes and embel- lishes great thoughts, is like a fine dress— worthless, unless it envelops and beautifies a fine woman. Hence, de Maistre said:

Style is but an accent !

The true way, therefore, to look at style is: that it is a fusion of universal elements of style, plus individual elements of manner; of impersonal and personal qualities. It is a mixture of those elements which the race has supplied and of elements an artist has contributed, to modify a style, by his manner.

But it is safe to say that the more the individual element is subordinated, up to a certain point at least, to the universal, the grander will be, not only his style, but his manner.

We are happily sustained in this point of view by Mr. Brownell, in his article on “Style,” in the May, 1924, Scrib- ner's Magazine:

For, how the artist subjectively handles, or neglects, the objec- tive elements of style is his style. Obviously we use the word in two senses, and it has thus a certain ambiguity which, in discussion of the general subject, it is useful to avoid. Ambiguity of language is perhaps the subtlest among the foes of clearness, and in this case it is an especial source of error, because the same word is used not only for two different, but for two antithetical, ideas, at least, for one of general and the other of particular application. A num- ber of years ago, accordingly, in writing on French art in which the objective and impersonal element is so prominent, and having necessarily to distinguish between the two, I ventured, with a sense

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of tentativeness and temerity combined, and solely for the pur- pose of analysis, to substitute for “style” used in the subjective and personal sense the word “manner.” One always suspects the value of an invention of one’s own, however; the chances are so enormously in favor of its having long before been tried and found wanting, or of the need of it being less real than fancied. So that it may be easily understood how agreeable it was quite recently to come across Sainte-Beuve’s use of the word in substantially the same sense; one had so much rather be right than original! — hav- ing incidentally rather a better chance, in so wishing, of being original into the bargain. Of course, one reserves the word “man- ner” largely for purposes of analysis, and to designate one of the two elements of which an individual’s style is composed — that is, if it repays analysis — the other being the objective and exterior ele- ment of style which his manner modifies into what we call his style. Only, in speaking of his style it should be borne in mind that it is thus composite. The matter is important, for this reason, that dwelling exclusively on the purely individual factor in any work of art, obscures the universal element. In the long run the universal element is subordinated, and inevitably styleless style — that is, pure Maimer, merely native, untaught, uninspired, des- titute of any not-ourselves ideal — ^usurps its place. This, in fact, is what today has largely taken place.

One reason for it, singularly enough, is the wide-spread popu- larity enjoyed by an incidental remark of Buffon himself. His; “Style is the man” has made the tour of the world and altogether eclipsed his forgotten definition. Epigrams sometimes turn out thankless children, and Buffon would have thought this one sharper than a serpent’s tooth.

Thus we are justified in denying the truth of Chateau- briand’s epigram; “A book lives only by virtue of its style.” Above all, if he meant, as he probably did, its personal manner. No work of art lives because of its style alone, or manner alone.

Homer, without a wonderful story, and a compendium of Greek mythology, would have been forgotten long ago. So would the Bible. Of course, their fine style enriches their stories. But it is the socially valuable contents of those books which make them immortal; it is the gold in the chest, not the chest, that is the all-important thing!

On the other hand, we cannot follow Sedaine when he says:

Style is nothing, or it is but a trivial matter.

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For Beranger was right when he said;

To neglect style, is a proof that we do not sufficiently love the ideas which we would have others adopt.

And this is true of all the arts.

In short, what every artist should do when creating a seri- ous work of art is, to study what he should not include in his style; and reflect long upon how he can best make humanity accept his conceptions, ideas, and sentiments, so they will be everlastingly thrilling and ennobling to his fellow-men — “not for an age, but for all time.”

But, to do that, he must so aggrandise himself, by charging his soul with altruism, that he will become fundamentally a gentleman, a real person, one who stands out from the mass, because, by divine birth, and through having been crucibled by life, he stands as a real, worth-while individual, having some- thing to say, worthy of any style!

If he is a real individual person, his individuality will radi- ate out of and beyond himself into his work of art, as surely as does the perfume from the rose; and it will be a true, a priceless individuality, powerfully aiding in immortalizing his emotions.

Therefore, why chase after a. false “individuality,” one not native to the artist, and thus lose the truly inborn “personal accent” such as an artist would give to his work, and do this by forgetting all about it; above all, why do this by making a senseless, acrid war upon the universal element in style, an ele- ment which, if incarnated in a work, will eternally preserve the “individual accent” of the artist, as fascinating, when ac- cidental, as is a fly entombed in a piece of beautiful amber !

Veron remarked :

All style that is chased after, is called manner. Manner ages; style never!

Moreover, how true is it, as Pascal said:

When we see a natural, non-acquired, style, one is wholly aston- ished and delighted; for, while we expected to meet only an author we find — a man!

In order to allure readers to reflect over this matter, we repeat :

STYLE, IN ART, IS A MATTER OF FUNDAMENTAL COMPOSITION, AN ARRANGEMENT OF LINES, MASSES, COLORS; OF WORDS, SOUNDS, AND MOVE-

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MENTS— INDICATING A DEPARTURE FROM THE TRUTH OF NATURE AND FROM THE COMMON- PLACE.

MANNER, IN ART, IS A MATTER OF SURFACE, TECHNICAL EXECUTION— INDICATING A DE- PARTURE FROM THE TRUTH OF NATURE AND THE COMMONPLACE.

Style has often been confounded with Idealism. In fact there is no term so vague as Idealism. No satisfactory definition of the word has ever been made ; because since Plato and Aristotle wrote, hundreds of writers on Metaphysics and Philosophy have handled the subject of Idealism in Life and Art, and so enmeshed and obscured the matter, that it is of no practical use for the layman to wade through the oceans of speculative and transcendental writing on the subject.

Style is a departure from the truth of nature and the com- monplace, either in the copying or representation of form and in the composition of lines, by adding to or taking away something from the form, or, by changing the direction or the proportion of lines. It is the poetization of form and line. But Idealism is a departure from the commonplace in subject and idea — it is the poetization, the spiritualization of subject, thought and spirit. Therefore, as both style and idealism are produced by a de- parture from the commonplace — by poetization — they are often confoimded, though they are fimdamentally distinct.

But, as neither style nor beauty are all of art, but only parts of art, so, idealism and realism are but parts of art.

Reahsm in art, as commonly understood, means the copying or imitating, slavishly, of any object, scene, action, or drama in nature.

In a large sense, there is no such thing as Realism in truly great art, there is only Idealism, which is but the realization of some kind of an Idea, or Ideal created by the artist. There- fore, no complete, great work of art can be categorized as a piece of realism in all its parts. Every human work, from a wedding cake to a cathedral, is a work of Idealism — in a sense — because it expresses some idea, or conception.

Then why all this talk about Realism? Because there are some human works which do come imder the category of, commonly called, imitative realism. For instance: such por-

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traits as those of Denner, Fig. 73, in which he aimed to copy every wrinkle and even the hairs on the face, one by one, as if the portrait had been photographed in colors. Further: such idealless, meaningless productions as the exact imitation of a squatty frog, such as we find in Japanese art (or industry?), or the exact imitation in still-life paintings of bottles, swords, etc., imitated so exactly as to deceive the eye, and arranged without any idea of beauty of line, or having any idea back of it. Such works are exponents of the lowest realism.

Then there is another kind of Realism, which might be called Idealistic-Realism. For example: “The Coronation of the Virgin” by Van Eyck, now in the Louvre, Fig. 104. Here we see an ideal subject or story, vreU composed, superbly “painted,” with remarkable atmospheric truth and charming color, but in which everything is imitated with a truth to na- ture rarely equalled. The picture is ideal as to composition, and realistic in its execution. The artist imagined — created — nothing, except the composition. As regards all the parts of the composition, he slavishly copied, as closely as he could, not an ideal, heavenly Madonna and heavenly Child but an every- day woman, one that he, perhaps, thought beautiful and so he copied her exactly as she was. He did not select for his model a beautiful child, but one that is not beautiful. Nor did he ex- press any poetic or spiritual state of mind or mode of feeling, in any of the figures. Hence, this picture of Van Eyck is ideal in composition but realistic in its execution. And, since there is a class of art works which are Idealistic, both in conception and execution, this work must be classed as Realistic art, because it is realistic in every element but one — composition.

Van Eyck, no doubt, thought that Imitation is the real es- sence and final test of a work of art. Most likely he had never heard of the word Ideal, seeing that he lived in Flanders, a mat- ter of fact country, and at the beginning of the art of oil painting.

An example of pure idealism in art is offered by the superb head of the “Jupiter Otricoli,” Fig. 27. As no man ever saw Jupiter, this subject is absolutely removed from the common- place experience of our life and of nature. It is only the Ideal, called up or created by the sculptor, of a possible Jupiter ; hence it is pure idealism. It is not a copying of any human head.

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It is a pure Creation. This magnificent head may have sug- gested to Plato his theory of “Realism.”

As an example of a less abstract, but still pure idealization we have the “Venus de Mho.” Fig. 75. What a contrast to the “Venus de Medici”! Fig. 74. The latter is so human — the other is super-human. All the forms and proportions of the “Venus de Medici” are natural, while all those of “Venus de Mho” are supra-natural.

Now, this idealism is the most powerful force in all art, because it arouses in us a sense of haunting Mystery and so forces us to ask questions, and to wonder and infinitely won- der! It lifts us toward the empyrean, toward the infinite, away from daily nature, from the earth and our commonplace experience. Hence it stirs our highest emotions: Delight and Awe, and gives us the loftiest and most spiritual pleasure we can experience. And the more deeply a work of art stirs these highest emotions in more and more people, and the longer it does so, the greater the work of art.

This kind of idealism was at the foundation of all great Greek and Renaissance art.

But there is now in vogue a so-called modernistic idealism. This consists first, of the choice of the most commonplace, even ugly and ignoble subjects; and second, of carrying them out in forms idealized or stylized downwards, and thus uglified below the ugly in nature. This is called the “deformation of the form.” It is a vulgarization and brutalization of form, ac- cording to an arbitrary, fanciful and bizarre system of exag- geration, modification or substitution of details, with the aim of obtaining so-called “intensity of expression.” Above all it consists of an “individual” or “peculiar” kind of treatment, which will single the work out as the peculiar work of such and such an artist, recognizable at first sight — and in utter indiffer- ence to, or defiance of — Beauty, as that is imderstood and felt by aU normal people. The chief exponent of this sort of ideal- ism was Rodin.

The search for perfection and beauty, as mankind imder- stands these words, is not necessary in this new, latter day “Modernistic idealism.” On the contrary, not only does it not exclude the representation of the bizarre, the mystic, the ugly or the horrible, but it rather leans towards them.

BY Epstein.

BY M.^vrer,

Fig. 76.

A “Hoo-Hoo”?

A lunatic concoction, worthy only of an Eskimo gone crazy. (See Appendix.)

i *•-

Fig. 78. by John Slo\n.

The Mosaic Law ix Mosaics.

Looks like a cross-eyed bulldog.

Fig. 77.

The Woolwokth Building,

Architecture on a “Jamboree.”

Fig. 79. BY Dobson.

Torso in Wood

Example in wood of symbolic sadistic human muti- lation in “abstract” art. A savage would disown it.

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The followers of this decadent idealism, claim that every man has a right to his own idealism; that an artist must first of all be “personal,” “individual” and even “pectdiar,” and therefore can do whatsoever he pleases in the direction of realizing “his idea,” be it noble or ignoble; that an artist can change the proportions and the construction and the form of natural objects to suit his own taste and idealize (stylize) the things in nature, up or down, as he pleases, to the degree that an expression of his “personal” conceptions may require.

That realism has produced many fine, though uninspiring things, momentarily appealing merely to the curiosity of the ever curious mind, cannot be questioned. But it has produced few, if any, truly beautiful or poetic works, such as call forth and retain for a long time the love of mankind — by emotioning the soul.

To quote Sainte-Beuve, acknowledged to be one of the greatest critics of the 19th Century:

If, in remembrance of all these questions of reality and realism, you desire, absolutely, from me a more general conclusion and a broader significance, I would not refuse to express all my thought, and I would say again: “Reality — thou art the basis of life, and as such, even with thy asperities, even with thy rudenesses, thou attractest serious minds and thou hast for them a charm. And yet, in the long run and all alone, thou wilt end by imperceptibly repell- ing and satiating; for thou art too often flat, vulgar and tiresome. It is already sufficient to meet thee at every step in life; but in art at least we wish — even in always finding and feeling thee present or near — to be occupied with something else than thee. Yes! thou hast need at all times of being renewed and refreshed, to be sea- soned in some way, under pain of depressing and perhaps of weary- ing, as being too ordinary. Thou hast need at least to possess and to add to thy merits that imitative genius so perfect, so animated, so delicate that it becomes like a creation and a magic in its own terms, that marvellous use of means and processes of art which, without display or parading, breathes or shines in each detail as well as in the ensemble. In one word, thou hast need of Style.

Thou hast need also, if possible, of sentiment, a nook of sym- pathy, a moral ray, to penetrate and to enlighten thee, were it only by some crevice or some opening — otherwise thou wilt soon leave us cold, indifferent — and, human as we are, since we carry ourselves with us everywhere, and since we never quit ourselves, we become weary in not finding in thee our share and our place.

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Thou hast need also, and therein lies the great triumph, thou hast need, while being observed and respected, of a something — I do not know what — to complete thee and to finish thee, to rectify without falsifying thee, to lift thee without making thee quit the earth; to give thee as much soul as thou canst possess without ceasing to be natural, and which leaves thee recognizable to all, but more luminous than ordinarily in life, more adorable and more beautiful; in fine — thou hast need of the Ideal.

CHAPTER VI

ABSTRACTION VS. REPRESENTATION

One would suppose that the foregoing chapter, would be superfluous, since it expresses nothing but ideas that are so axiomatic, if not obvious, that to state them at all seems tanta- mount to insulting the intelligence of a person of average cul- ture. But the Reader will soon see that it was necessary to re-state those ideas and at length, even at the risk of boring him.

For, we are, today, face to face with another new, and a more revolutionary, theory of art which, if not proven to be false, will alter our entire outlook on life, and rapidly topsy- turvey our social structure.

The fimdamental idea of this strange new “theory” of art is: that there should be absolutely no representation by means of imitation however limited in any work of art, that representation in art should disappear, and be supplanted by abstraction: thus revolutionizing the entire point of view held by mankind since the denizens of the caves of Dordogne represented their animal compeers, on the bones that re- mained after the animals were eaten !

These abstractionist jestheticians claim: that there is no such thing as vm-personal style; that there is only personal style, and only personal idealism; that all the elements of past styles, which have succeeded and grown out of each other, as the rose does from the bud, are mere rubbish; and that only personal “creations,” absolutely detached from the past, in the form, in idea, intention and spirit, and totally different from anything that ever went before, in heaven or on earth, are the only kinds of things which should be considered as art, or should have any value, and all others to be thrown in the fire, forgetting the truth in the remark of Ampdre:

Absolute originality is impossible.

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“Abstract art" is the name given to the “creations” pro- duced according to this new philosophy. We give eight ex- amples of such art, Figs. 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83. Examine them carefully, and prayerfully. Reader. Here we have “style” and “idealism” — a departure from Nature with a vengeance !

Nothing proves more conclusively, than do these speci- mens of “abstract art” how inevitably a class of men wiU drift, on and on, towards a precipice and rush over it, into a pit of insanity, if they follow, unreasoningly to the end, a stream of tendency, started by a false philosophy, based on a false point of Anew, and on a misconception of the real sense of an epi- gram, made by a great man of the past.

The basis of this revolutionary theory was publicly stated by one of its exponents thus :

“Art Begins Where Nature Ends." That’s why our aim is, not to reproduce nature in a photographic manner, though we admit the indispensabUity of sttidying it. I teach you how to find the es- sential elements of painting and sculpture. Only after careful analysis of each separate element and in accordance with the in- dividuality of each student we begin to realize creation.

This looks like impudent charlatanism, since no one, ever, advocated the reproduction of nature, “in a photographic man- ner!”

One would suppose that, a camera can give an accurate report of the drawing and color and feeling of life and as the human eye sees an object, or a living body, even when stand- ing still. But it cannot. The reasons would be too technical and long to give here. But, how could an artist ever photo- graph an historical incident of the past? He could never pose and photograph ten men, so as to make a successful picture. Even so simple a picture, as Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna,” Fig. 103, with only three main figiures, could never be posed by models, and which, when photographed, in colors even, would not begin to render the beauty of line of the composition. And how about the supra-hmnan spiritual expression, on all the faces? These must be imagined by the artist, no human model could offer them to him: to copy and imitate. Raphael had to see those qualities in his imagination, and then express them unthout models, direct. And that, is direct and true

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“creation,” such as no abstractionist could ever reach, with all the movie cameras on earth !

This absurd idea that “art begins where natirre ends” is based upon the general idea underlying all great art, that na- ture should not be stupidly copied, with all her imperfections, but should be idealized. But, that never did mean that we should depart from nature so far as to lose sight of her entirely, and fall into the un-natural. It means that we should de- commonplace, even such art of the past which, because of its very greatness, has become commonplace; that we should ignore the petty elements of any individual model to arrive at the “type,” at that perfect type, of every species of thing, which, when perfect, and truly typical, is beautiful, made beauti- ful not by grotesque-ing the fimdamental elements of the hiunan body or of anything in nature, but by eliminating such individual, petty details which make any individual thing untypical, and which, if too marked, will make an individual ugly, like Rodin’s “Man with a Broken Nose,” Fig. 120.

Goethe was largely responsible for this craze of “abstract art,” for he said:

Art is called art, because it is not nature.

He should have added: “it is nature plus something we call divine.” Had he said that, he would, perhaps, have spared the world cargoes of waste in all the arts. But his own works, which are surely individual creations, show that, what he really meant by his remark was, what Bacon meant, when he said:

Art is man added to Nature.

that is : the personality of one man, added to the universality of nature, in his aspiration to perfect, to ennoble, to beautify, to grandify nature, m order to realize a heaven-inspired ideal of nature made more perfect.

We trust the Reader will bear with us, since this matter is all-important just now. We will first trace the evolution of this “abstract art” and then show its fallacy:

As far as we know, Plato and Aristotle were the first to write about art. Forward from their time, there was, we re- peat, but one broad stream of art, on which floated many artists, of all kinds, in the eight arts, and having all sorts of in- dividuality. And these artists, across the centuries, had but one purpose : to find an ever more perfect Beauty.

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Originality, individuality, personality, were never their aim. Their final aim was ever, beauty ; beauty, plus original- ity of course, but beauty above all. K, before wasting time over a conception, they realized that it was not beautiful, or if they could not make of it what they felt nearly everyone would regard as a beautiful composition, they discarded the com- position. If some artists did produce certain works which we, today, do not regard as beautiful it was because these were limited or warped artists. They, at least nearly always, aimed at beauty, as the highest goal an artist could set for himself.

This spirit, this ideal of beauty, dominated the world of art down to about 1865. This must be fixed in the mind of the Reader.

But, about 1865, we repeat, was promulgated an entirely new theory of art by the artists who preached “Impression- ism,” and the commercial art-dealers and critics, who combined with them to advertise it, for lucre, of course. This new and revolutionary theory, will be foimd stated on pages 35 to 40 of “The History of Impressionism,” by Camille Mauclair, 1904. It may be summed up thus:

The pursuit of the beautiful in art is an antique fad; the artist should not seek beauty; but, choosing any subject, noble or ig- noble, should express its character in a personal technique.

Says Mauclair:

This fact, of the substitution of character for beauty, is the essen- tial of the movement of the Impressionists.

He says also:

The suppression of nobility inherent in such subjects as were handled, was destined to have, as a consequence, the placing of the technical merit of the painter into the first rank, for the evolution of his glory. (Italics are his.)

That is: while in all past ages the object to be sought by all painters was Beauty, henceforth the object should be merely the “technical merit” of the painter, and no matter what the subject. Not glorious pictures, was to be the goal of a painter, but mere painting, and of a peculiar and personal kind and for his glory!

This is the most impudent, insulting, and subversive slogan ever flaunted in the face of God, Nature, and the great men of the past.

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The Reader will of himself see what a violent and revolu- tionary somersault this new philosophy represented in the his- tory of art. Never before had any such anarchistic theory been launched by any school or class of artists. But, strange as it may seem, the spirit of the time was such that this new doctrine soon made such conquests among artists of all kinds and critics, in France, the centre of art, that the hitherto single broad stream, we repeat, of art, ever flowing on towards Beauty as a goal, was split into two streams: one pursuing the even tenor of its way, the other veering off towards the mysterious im- known, but, today, called “Abstract” art, of which, we re- peat, examples are given in Figs. 76 to 83.

What were the causes of that split in the French art world? To tell the whole story would take a volume in itself. We can but give a rapid sketch of the origin, and temporary popvdar- ity, of this strange anarchistic movement, coincident with the political movement, both in France and in Europe, towards radicalism and revolution:

The French are the modern Greeks. Victor Hugo even made that claim, when he said:

Who says Gaul, says Greece; for the Attic salt and Gallic jest have, at bottom, the same flavor.

And, just as in Greece there was the ever-present spirit of traditionalism, of the Spartans, and of noveUy 4 sm, of the Athe- nians, and which were ever at war, so, in Paris at least, we have a constant oscillation between conservatism and radical- ism. The social danger of this lack of stability the Athe- nians recognized when they carved on their Treasury Temple, at Delphi, the words .

Nothing to excess !

And the French leaders of thought also were conscious of that danger when they coined the maxim:

Cherchez le juste milieu !

Seek the middle path: do not go to extremes! No other modern people manifest so passionate a yearning for Novelty as do the French. The cause is both temperamental and economic. But the most potent cause of the modern French Novelty-mania has been economic. How this?

In 1851 was held a world Exposition of art and industry, in the Crystal Palace, London. There France showed her su-

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periority in “Art applied to Industry,” as well as in so-called “Fine Art!” This was so marked, that the other nations of Europe soon copied the methods of France, and instituted “In- dustrial-art” schools; because they saw that the basis of the success of French foreign commerce was her prestige for the taste, and novelty, plus beauty, of her manufactures. So they imitated, not only the methods, but many of the models of the French. Inevitably, this drove the French to ever-renewed efforts to invent new Novelties; and soon they affixed to many of their productions the slogan, “Nouveautes de Paris” (“Novelties of Paris”), which, by degrees, developed a perfect craze for novelties. This craze, we repeat, finally found ex- pression in that high-priest of Novelty, the poet Baudelaire :

O Death, old Captain, it is time, raise the anchor!

We are bored by this country, O Death! Make ready!

Though the sky and the sea are black as ink.

Our hearts, which you know, are full of sunshine !

Pour out your poison, to cheer us!

So much does this fire burn our brain, that we wish

To plunge to the bottom of the abyss. Hell or Heaven, does it matter?

To the depths of the unknown, to find something New!

In fact, Baudelaire himself was a novelty, such as had not appeared in France since Rabelais’s time; a mixture of good and evil; the prophet of artificiality, who hated “nature and her daily sunsets” and which, according to him, “imitated art, and did it badly.” In fact, it is true, as Huneker said, that, when Baudelaire appeared: “A new spirit was born.”

For he is undoubtedly the real father, as much as any one man could be, of Modernism and its step-child. Abstraction, in art.

But, to his credit it must be said, he never ceased to insist on the beautiful, in the modern. That is to say: he insisted that every age, be it ever so modern, or new, had a beauty of its own, and that this beauty must never be lost sight of, in the expression and representation of the new and modern. Baude- laire was not at all wrong in that. Where he was wrong was, that he spurned all morality, as a negligible element in art. Did he not say:

Genius pardons everything!

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Also he gave a great impetus to the use of charlatanism, against which Voltaire warned his fellow-Parisians two hun- dred years before Baudelaire wrote to Theophile Gautier ;

A little charlatanism is permitted to genius ; it even looks well ; it is like the rouge on a pretty woman’s face — a new inspiration to the mind.

Also, he practiced charlatanism, in his poems and conduct. And, being a very fine craftsman in versifying and extremely clever as a “causeur,” he “attracted most of the young literary and aesthetic blades of his day,” and became a powerful propagandist for the New, the Novel, moral or immoral, no matter, so long as it had beauty, artificiality, and personal Style or Manner.

Now, the chase after novelty became more and more fierce, throughout Etmope; and, as there is a limit to everything, except time and space, there came a moment when a new novelty, plus beauty, seemed impossible. Hence, since the Paris business men were — sink or swim — bound to maintain their prestige for novelty, invention, originality, even at the ex- pense of throwing in the discard the elements of beauty and of elegance, the hitherto fundamental corner-stone of all French art, some artists produced novelties in disregard of the beauti- ful. Originality now became the principal thing to be sought, and in all the arts, among a certain number of artists, and among such penny-a-line critics on the press who, like leeches, live off of the artists. Soon the number of the beauty-scorning artists increased, until they formed a small, but vociferous, im- organized party, which included Manet, Degas, Zola, Mir- beau, Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, Rodin, Legros, Mallarmg, VTiistler, etc., etc.

This was about 1861. About this time also appeared a new propaganda for the subtle doctrine; “It is necessary to be up to date!” if you want to be in the “smart set!” It is very important. Reader, that you remember this.

Also, in the public art discussions, began to appear arguments against the never-before-assaulted doctrine of the pursuit of beauty, as the first aim of an artist. This discussion, in favor of reducing beauty to second importance in art, finally came to a focus in France in the “.Esthetics” of Eugene Veron, an ably written book, from this new point of view, though false

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in some of its conclusions. The crux of his book is found on pages 108-109. In speaking of the evolution of Decorative art, he says :

During the same period, the arts of design either simply imi- tate visible realities, or seek those combinations of lines and colors which most strongly please the eye. It is, properly speaking, deco- rative art, and which is alone worthy of being defined as the search for the beautiful; but to include all art in this definition is a grave error.

Expressive art, which is veritably modern art, is based largely on sympathy. It depicts the emotions, sentiments, and character- istics of things. It manifests, in an artistic form, this particular interest which man has for man. The beautiful is then secondary. The aim of art is man himself; it is the study of his accidental or permanent feelings, of his virtues or his vices. It is this which dis- tinguishes the modern drama and novel and which attaches these two kinds to the highest branch of art. (Italics ours.)

Nothing more false, more casuistic has ever been set down in a serious work on aesthetics!

To explode this whole argument we need only recall to the reader, that the study of man and all his “accidental and permanent feelings,” and their expression and representation, have been the aim of all the artists of the world since the Egyptian artists of the First Dynasty, or before at least 5000 B.C., carved and painted on the walls of temples and palaces every phase of life. And, in his “Laokoon,” Lessing says:

It is true the propensity to this wanton boasting, united to fair abilities, not ennobled by exalted subjects, is too natural for even the Greeks not to have had their Pauson and their Pyricus. They had them, but they rendered them strict justice. Pauson, who kept below the beautiful in common nature, whose low taste loved to portray aU that is faulty and ugly in the human form, lived in the most contemptible poverty. And Pyricus, who painted barber’s rooms, dirty workshops, apes, and kitchen-herbs, with all the in- dustry of a Dutch artist, acquired the surname of Rhyparographer, or “Dirt-painter.”

During the Renaisssance, many licentious works of art were produced, even Michael Angelo having ascribed to him a cer- tain “Leda.” And what about the vtdgarities of Goya, of Teniers, of Van Ostade; the brutalities of Jordaens; of the

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“libertinage” of Boucher, Fragonard; and the vicious “little Masters,” of the end of the i8th century, in France? More- over, did the depicting of fundamentally reprehensible sub- jects— vicious subjects, if the rigid moralist will so have it — ■ prevent the artists of the past from expressing those subjects in a form and spirit of beauty? How about the Greek ‘ ‘ Venus Callipygus,” in Naples; Michael Angelo’s (?) “Leda”; Gior- gione’s “Venus Asleep”; and many more we could name?

To say that “the representation of the virtues and vices” of man, because they are depicted by “modem art,” justifies any set of artists or sestheticians in reducing to a second place the search for the beautiful, is either fantastic stupidity or self-interested charlatanism.

Well, in 1863 a number of these rebels against the doctrine of the beautiful at all hazards sent their works to the Paris Salon, and were promptly refused, not because of any fanatical opposition to their manner of painting, as has been hypocriti- cally advanced, but just because the artists did relegate the search for the beautiful to a second or third place, and had elevated to first place the choice of a banal or vicious subject and its handling in a vulgar or licentious spirit, plus its mere painting in a new fangled manner, and which was flatly against all the traditions of even French art, not to speak of the great art of Italy, Spam, and Greece, of the whole past in fact.

The refusal, by the Jury of the Salon, of these unbeautiful works, even though they were painted in a “clever” manner, made these artists now coalesce into a more compact body, which soon took on the nature of an art-party, each member of which, however different his personal aim, had one aim in common, to shout for “Liberty in art!” — a sham cry, really meaning, license in art !

So they, and their henchmen on the press, raised a row against the Academy, and Napoleon III, the usurper, having troubles enough not to wish to have any more, ordered a comer, in the Salon building, set aside for the exhibition of these rejected works. This then was called “The Salon of the Rejected.”

From now on, these men may be designated as the modern- istic art party.

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These “refused” men were not called “Impressionists” until foiu: years later. But, says Mauclair:

From this hour began the movement [that is the “modernistic” movement]. But the name “Impressionism” dates from the Salon of 1867, where a “Sunset,” by Monet, entitled “Impressions," raised a scandal. Thenceforth were called “impressionists” the painters who painted more or less in that manner, and, by exten- sion, en bloc, the independents who surrounded Manet.

This party now opened a war on the “Society of French Artists,” which dominated the Salon and all French art, and the first step was to dub it the “Academy,” its members “academi- cians,” and their kind of art works “academic” art. Hence- forth all rational, beautiful, morally clean, poetic, and socially valuable art was ridiculed more and more fiercely as ‘ ‘ academic, ’ ’ until the term became a favorite and handy epithet of insult.

From now on, only novelty, plus indifference to beauty, became commonplace. And, the law of gravitation always operating, when a body once begins to slump and descend downhill, in a few years novelty, plus the ugly, made its ap- pearance. In fact, already in 1864, Rodin had sent his very ugly head, “The Man With a Broken Nose” to the Salon, Fig. 120, and was also promptly refused, because it also vulgarly flouted beauty. Even though it was “modelled” very skill- fully, merely sldlLful modelling did not yet “get across,” and past the Jtuy, in France!

At first, the modernists did not make much headway, the Academy and its supporters being well intrenched in the French art world and having still the entire governmental art-ma- chine and the art politicians back of it.

But the Franco-Prussian War came on, and France, alas! was defeated! This altered the whole trend of affairs; above all, it actually halted the “modernistic” art movement; it halted also the drift towards extreme radicalism, even to revo- lution, in politics, even the powerfid reaction against Napoleon III which had been in progress for some years.

Now, however, France needed unity, at aU hazards. And, so, the French people rose up, like one man; and, electrified by one universal and imifying national emotion, resolved to drop all internal factionalism, to present a imited front to the •nemy , and prove to the world that France still lived !

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The result was : the Academy was immensely fortified in its position; again dominated completely the art movement, and held it within conservative, but still progressive, lines, and did this for twenty years, during which France produced the larg- est crop of truly great art ever produced by any people during the same length of time, with the possible exception of the last quarter of the fifteenth century in Italy.

But, the Republic, which was, in 1871, re-established by the democrats, did not satisfy the Bonapartists, nor the other monarchists parties, and these began to imdermine it. In this they had the secret sympathy of aU the Academies in France. For these did not believe that a Republic, streaked with com- munism and radicalism of all shades, and quarrelling among themselves, would foster the arts, as had the aristocratic regimes of the past. In this they were correct, as the present state of art in France proves.

The Republican politicians, well aware of the secret hostil- ity of the Academy, naturally sympathized with those artists who called themselves “Artistes Moderne’’ and who, like themselves, hated, and worked against, the Academy, and who bellowed for “Liberty in art!” — which had never been threatened, since the end of the Egyptian Empire.

What they wanted was, not liberty, but license in art, the liberty to propagandize, to corrupt French public opinion, to a point where it would tolerate any kind of art, however ugly or immoral : so long as it would be original, personal, and up-to- date, or ‘ ‘ Modeme ’ ’ as they called it. The antagonism, therefore, between the Academy and Modernists became more and more acute, as the fight between the Monarchists and Republicans became more intense.

In 1874 the “ Impressionists ” held their first “independent” exhibition, in a private room. In this exhibition was a picture by Cezanne. One writer says that he was counted among the “impressionists,” but that, in a profound sense, he was the first of the “Po5/-Impressionists.” This Cezanne was later, by the modernists, made their standard-bearer, for painting. We will give our opinion of him in a later chapter.

But, strange to say. Impressionism, as an “ism,” died! How was it possible that the dogmas which the adepts of that cult proclaimed so vociferously and in such a rage of finality

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covild, within ten years, have been declared false by their suc- cessors, the “Post-Impressionists”? It was because the modernists had become semi-insane with the disease “Novelty- itis,” contracted in the chase, not for beautiful originality, but any sort of noveltj’’, preferably the ugly, even the sadistic sort of originality !

Henceforth, the art world was destined to be bombarded with a new fad about once a year; as an anonymous writer lately remarked, “40 Fads in 40 years.”

But, in 1877, occurred a memorable thing: Rodin sent his statue “The Age of Brass” to the Salon. It is, perhaps, the most realistic statue ever made in France.

It must not be forgotten that, however insanely “abstract” may be the “idealism” into which the latest modernists have fallen, the first “modernists,” the “impressionists,” in their first manifestos, and also in their works, proclaimed themselves crass “realists,” having as their main object: the rendering of the exact character of every object in any pictirre or statue, and “the substitution of character for classic beauty,” according to their historian Mauclair. This pursuit of unpoetic, bald realism, is conspicuously shown in the works of Manet, Degas, Zola, Rodin, Mirbeau, etc.

But, up to the moment when Rodin sent his realistic statue “The Age of Brass” to the Salon, there had been no such bold, sudden, revolt shown against the hitherto prevalent devotion, in one form or another, to the classic idealism, which showed itseK in the exclusion of commonplace, everyday subjects, and, then, in a suppression of more or less petty details, in the modelling of the hiunan figure, either in pictxrres or statues. Against this, ages-old, neo-classicism, Rodin’s statue was a defiance, a challenge. It amounted to telling the so-called “academicians” that their whole point of view was false and puerile. It was as if any of his subjects had questioned the dignity of the Kaiser. One can easily see that such a statue, so surprisingly realistic, shouting defiance against all custom in art, must have made a sensation among the neo-classic Jtuy, when it first considered it. However, they accepted the statue and placed it, because its lines and forms were the most graceful that Rodin ever exhibited before, or after, and so could not be called ugly.

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Rodin reaUy “stooped to conquer” in this statue, because, after that, his works were always more or less ugly. By ac- cepting this statue, in spite of its revolutionary modelling and attention to petty details, the Jury, which the modernists had derided as “fossilized academicians,” proved that they were not opposed to new ideas or methods, provided the net result was not degenerating ugliness. Thus they gave the lie to their calumniators and proved that they were not enemies to the new. For they could easily have rejected it, being all powerful.

But one fool Juryman, ajter the statue was placed, said: “The figure looks like a plaster cast from life.” Then pan- demonium broke loose !

Well, every sculptor knows that such a thing as casting an entire human being in plaster is impossible, without killing the man ! Any part of a living body may be readily cast in plaster, but not an entire human body, at one time.

But this casual, idiotic, remark of that Juryman put Rodin “on the map”! It also gave an immense notoriety and im- petus to the whole modernistic movement. For the foolish remark was passed on to Rodin, who was a bull-necked fighter, and he and his cronies instantly saw their chance to raise a vast, self-advertising row in the press. So they jumped at it, and “worked it as one would a gold mine”!

In this they were aided by a fortunate political event.

A conspiracy having been finally hatched to restore the Empire, and engineered by the Due de Broglie and President MacMahon, it came to a head in this same spring of 1877. But this coup d'etat failed ! The artists in the Academy, being ac- cused of having sympathized with this movement, could not exculpate themselves.

Naturally, the radical politicians decided to destroy the Academy, or at least shear it of its powers and of its dominance over the art-machine of France. But the streak of traditional- ism, so strong in all Frenchmen, made this slow work. A machi- avellian campaign had to be inaugurated, to arouse the entire nation against the “unrepublican Academy.” Therefore, if the opposition to the Academy, and aU it stood for, had been strong before, it now became doubly fierce, since the radicals in the Government, now more firmly in the saddle than ever, openly leaned towards the revolutionary modernists in art, who sided

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with them, of course, and who already had their own press tmder control.

Hence, it can easily be seen, that whatever disturbance these modernists might make against the Academy, however unjust or foolish or crooked, it would help the politicians who were fighting the political reaction, and one can easily see why these were eager to help the modernist artists in their row against the Salon Jury, one of whose members had, idiotically, accused Rodin of having exhibited a plaster cast of a living model, instead of a statue modelled with his own hands. How this recalls the war of the Bolshevists against the “intelligent- sia” of Russia!

The upshot was a demand by Rodin and his party for an “investigation committee” — made upon the Government if you please ! — to prove that Rodin did not cast his living model in plaster, but actually did model that statue with his fingers! And, since France has an Under Secretary of State for Fine Arts — usually a powerful politician; and, since all the radical and revolutionary politicians had drifted to the side of the modernistic art party, the commission was, of course, ap- pointed, and made a report, absolving Rodin of the odium of having sent to the Salon, as his handiwork, a plaster cast of a living model. But this report not being emphatic enough, the radico-modernistic party, and their henchmen on the press, howled for a second committee ! This was also appointed, and headed by the great sculptor Paul Dubois. It reported again that Rodin was not guilty of a fraud.

The Reader will easily see that this sham fight for his repu- tation, was a charlatanistic clap-trap game, played only to obtain notoriety for Rodin and his cronies, and the movement back of him. However: “It did the trick!” It put Rodin on the map, and vastly increased the momentum of the modernistic movement. The details, we repeat, would make a volume, and of most amusing reading, and reveal the charlatanistic methods used in the Paris art world to manufacture reputations for this or that thing, or man, or party. Also, it would give a most disheartening picture of the power of the cynical press, and of its dishonesty and hypocrisy in “making” and “unmak- ing” men. How it would drive home to the minds of millions the pessimistic words of Shakespeare :

Christ Bkakinc. thh Cross.

JusLm of Nassau, surromleiinK tln' keys of Ihe city of Uretla to the Marquis of Hpvuol.v. Nolo, how many of the fif^urc's are looking out of the picture, lusteail of at Justin an«l Spinola, showing a lack of t onvfrfient e of effe> Is, and af concentration. See Fig. 88.

Pig. 88. nv David.

The CoKONATioN of Josephine.

In Louvre Museum.

A fine exaniiilc of the convergence of cfTeets m comi>()sition, all eyes being centred on Napole«>n and what he is doing. Thus it would

occur in real life.

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All that glisters is not gold,

Often have you heard that told:

Gilded tombs do worms infold.

It certainly would tend to make men pause before consent- ing to the apotheosis of such men as Rodin, about whom more anon, who now became, by the force of events, the real leader of the modernists and the inspirer of their methods.

A year later, Whistler, also one of the early modernists, played the same “Game of getting on the map” by suing Ruskin for having implied in a public criticism that he was a cheeky “coxcomb” for asking a thousand pounds for his “Nocturne in Black and Gold.” It was Barnumesque char- latanism, and self-advertisement.

The war was now on in earnest. Ridicule, the most terrible weapon one can use in France, was the means chosen to “down ” the Academy. Bougereau, one of the greatest artists, as a composer, France has produced, was the first to be lam- pooned ; then came the rest of them : Ger6me, Cabanel, Boulan- ger, Lefebvre; even dead and gone Ingres, and Delaroche, not to exclude Gros and Gericault, the real fathers of the truly Modern movement in art, not to mention the sculptors.

In this campaign, they were aided by Turquet, the Under Secretary of State for Fine Arts, a “Red” Republican politi- cian, and by all his henchmen on the press, which was strongly “Radical.” And, since the immense art establishment in France has always been a governmental machine, the Reader can imagine the intensity of the struggle for power and place, that then ensued in the French art world. For, it was a war to the knife, between conservative “liberalism” and Republican “radicalism,” which some competent historian will some day dramatize into an intensely interesting story.

The acquisition, by the modernists, of the support of the Government art-machine and of the radical press, accounts for the success of their movement. For, in France, it is always: ‘ ‘ Le Roi est mort ! — Vive le Roi ! ” And the smaU-fry press, as a rule, ajBBliates with that faction which is in power. Hence, newspapers, magazines, books, and half-baked asstheticians were used to ridicule the Academy; and the word “academic” was elevated, we repeat, to the dignity of an insulting and be- littling epithet, used to deaden any work of art which did not

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show a radical departure from the traditional spirit of French art: grandeur of style, impersonal beauty, and modestly per- sonal execution.

As the attacking press was supported by the government, and, as usual, made the loudest noise, it had a profound reper- cussion in all foreign countries; and, as charlatanism and a de- mand for “One sensation a day," as Emile Girardin, the crea- tor of the great “Petit Journal,” once said, naturally breed writers to supply the moloch-demands of magazines and the Simday papers for sensations, or something that wiU be ‘ ‘ interesting, ' ’ no matter how false, these furnished the press-pab- ulum and noise which, by degrees, bewildered the people enough to induce them to at least examine this new kind of art. And, by and by, enough morons were entrapped, like flies on fly- paper, and influenced to tolerate it, even to buy it, on the theory of Pope:

Vice is a monster, of such horrid mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face.

We first endure, then pity, then embrace!

At first, the small-fry “critics,” in search of sensations, were won over in many countries. But, by and by, some of those writers who really know how to write, who pose as serious critics, whose books would be valuable, if based on a sound point of view and on a common-sense philosophy of life and of art, also ranged themselves with the modernists against the Academy and what it stood for, no doubt hypnotized by the noise and fanfare of the Paris claque, hired or allured by the “Radical” politicians to protagonize this new art movement. All of which did not prevent the Academy from keeping on the even tenor of its way, even though shorn of its power of doling out commissions to those artists who leaned towards it.

But the public will now understand the ba^ic reason why the Academy is insulted, and all rational, representative, art is reviled as “academic” art, by certain art writers: it was poli- tics, and big-business! Politics and business always going hand in hand in France, they both wanted the ever new, the ever original, no matter even if ugly, even immoral. Have not women been appearing naked on the Paris stage for the last five years! In fact, they needed this flood of mere novelty to

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enable them to hold their own in the markets of the world, against their powerful European competitors, who constantly imitated them. It was economic pressure, which was at the basis of the movement. For France lives by commerce, as well as does England and Germany. To maintain her own in commerce, she has but one weapon, originality and novelty of design, in order to maintain her prestige, now nearly five cen- turies old, as the Art Centre of the world, above all in the world of Decorative and Industrial art. This explains the temporary success of this modernistic art movement.

The modernists had now achieved their aim: the substitu- tion of license “in artistry” for a rational liberty in art. And with a bewildering rapidity there sprung up all sorts of “lead- ers” of little movements and fads, each a little more revolution- ary than the other, each inspired by the essence of the modern- istic movement: the parading of individual technique and “personal” mannerism, instead of the creation of beauty.

Henceforth the devolution towards degradation and in- sanity was inevitable. It could have been prophesied. It was predicted.

Gradually, as one fad displaced the other, some of which died still-bom, modernism slowly veered away from the original bold, vulgar “realism” of the founders of modernism, Manet, Degas, Zola, Rodin, Mirbeau, etc., toward a “new idealism” that is, away from the realities of truth in art and life. The public had become tired of this so-called, but false, realism. For, after realistic “impressionism,” came the much less real post-impressionism; and then came the still less real “neo- impressionism.” Then came “cubism”; then “futurism.” Then came the weirdest avalanche of increasingly unreal and insane “isms,” during which the painters and sculptors ran a sack-race with the dressmakers of the Rue de la Paix to see which could invent the greatest quantity of novelties — ^never mind about their sanity — and all to be “put over” on the gul- lible rich morons of the art world, by the most cunning and cynical propaganda ever imagined; by an international associa- tion of rotarian boosters and self -advertisers.

This veering away, step by step, from the real to their “ideal,” gradually reached the absolutely unreal and fantastic forms of “abstract” art, illustrated in Figs. 76 to 83, in which

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all semblance to htiman, or natural, forms has disappeared, and the contemplation of which will force any normal man to say: “Either those artists are crazy, or I am!”

Now, if such works of art as these were merely produced, offered to view and for sale, and disappeared — as do women’s hats — there would be no need for this book. But they are de- fended, even “boosted,” and not only by either honestly con- vinced even though mentally degenerated book-makers, or by bimco-writerS; hireable by anybody, to write anything for money, but the so-called serious press gives, not only space, but a left-handed support to the “aesthetics,” as well as to the products, of this latest fad of “abstract” art. This would not be so reprehensible and so dangerous socially if, in the propa- ganda in favor of this newest aberration, they did not try to undermine the foundations of all sane, healthy, and enduring art, by saying that “representation” has no place in art, even ideal- ized art; that sanely stylized “representation” is totally imde- sirable; and that creation in art means that the abstraction from the truth of nature should be so extreme that a man is made to look like a wheelbarrow and a woman hke a monkey- wrench ! And this topsy-txirveying is defended by such glib, metaphysical-bunco reasoning, so plausibly done, so well cal- culated to capture the nouveau-riches morons in the art world, and so many of them as to become dangerous, that we feel it a duty to once for all show the fallacy of the doctrine that repre- sentation should not be the basis of all art, especially since the speculators, who have loaded up a stock of this art junk, are now making herculean efforts to force our museums to buy more and more of these aberrations, to show to future generations the “Zeitgeist,” the spirit of the age, which prevailed in the world, from 1865 onward!

The reader can easily see how any such “liberality” by our museums would boost the prices of this art trash, and give it a prestige that would enable the speculators in this art, dealers, critics, artists, and lay-coUectors, to cash in heavily on the goods they bought originally for a song.

What is the basis of life? Let us see if we can briefly ar- rive at it, and the laws that govern life, as far as Science and Philosophy have been able to indicate them.

We live in New York City, in the Borough of Queens, which

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makes local rules or laws. These laws are close to us. Man- hattan Borough makes laws, for the whole city. These are farther away from us. Albany makes laws for the State. These are stiU farther away from us. Congress makes laws for the Nation, which are still farther away; and the Constitution of the United States contains the laws farthest away from us.

The same separation of laws holds good among the Laws of Nature. In his great work, “First Principles,” which has not been successfully controverted, as a whole, Herbert Spencer has shown that the objective Universe is made up of Matter, Motion, and Force. All three dynamically act upon each other. Eternal Matter is eternally kept in motion by the eternal Per- sistence of Force. That is the deepest law of nature. The next, nearest, law is: that Matter is kept in motion eternally, from a state of homogeneity towards a state of heterogeneity, and then again towards a state of homogeneity, in endless transformation. The next nearest law to us is: that all pro- gression from one state to another is by repetition, each electron, atom, cell, and living body reproducing itself. The next near- est law is: that this repetition is governed by two other laws, the Law of the Continuity of Effects and the Law of Differentia- tion, the two working ever parallel with each other, and by which Nature, on the one hand, maintains the Type of every living organism, and, on the other hand, insures a very slow, gradual, but certain Variation in the type, always on, towards a greater heterogeneity, away from the simple to the complex. For proofs of this, we can recommend the Reader to the works of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Von Baer, Spencer, etc.

The next law of nature, the one closest to us of the great laws of Nature, is : that this progression from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from unity to variety, from the simple to the complex, is carried on, in our Social Structure, by the Law of Imitation. This law is followed by the vast majority of in- dividuals and nations in the almost complete majority of their actions.

According to this tyrannous law, a child grows only by imi- tating its parents, and this is true of all animal life : the imita- tion being both conscious and unconscious. Also, young nations imitate older ones, preferably their immediate pro- genitor nations, and this not only in fundamental, but also in

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superficial matters. We, Americans, have copied our laws from England and France; we copy the fashions of England for our men, and those of Paris for our women. We imitate the commercial methods of England, and the Art methods of F ranee.

This tendency towards Social imitation is so great, that it dominates and shapes the life of aU our people. Is it not won- derful to consider that, in a period of seventy-five years, 6o,- 000,000 Japanese have almost completely topsy-turvied much of their social life, through imitating America and Europe?

However, while this Law of Imitation is the most compelling in the social structiue of mankind, it is affected by another force : the Law of Invention, and which modifies constantly the greater Law of Imitation.

Nature hates all hurrying. AU revolutions are execrated by nature. Therefore, no revolution, which comes by som- ersaulting, ever did or wUl endure, or ever did or wiU hurry along real progress. Nature says to man :

“Little boy, if you want real, solid progress, walk, and grow; do not race, and explode! Hurry is vmdignified, borders on the grotesque and the ugly, and my chief aim, throughout my Universe, is Order and Beauty.”

Hence, most men are content to merely imitate. That was already observed by the great Chinese philosopher Meh-ti, who lived in the fifth century B.C. and said:

Such is the power of imitation that a single generation might suffice to change a people’s customs.

Therefore, only here and there has a man an accidental gift of a super-allowance of energy, enough to force him to think, to invent : in order to improve on the old of the past.

But all invention, aU innovations, are held suspect by all men and opposed, until they become convinced that the tolerance and imitation of these inventions are socially beneficent. As soon as men’s intuitions teU them that an innovation tends to sap the very fotmdations of their social structure, they wiU freeze out quietly, or crush out violently, that innovation. Notice the opposition to the teaching of the doctrine of Evolu- tion in some colleges and legislatures of this covmtry and the war upon it made by some of our churches. Why? Because they fear — ^no doubt mistakenly — that the doctrine tends to sap our social structiue.

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Says the French philosopher Gabriel Tarde, in his great work, “The Laws of Imitation (Henry Holt) :

Every advance in knowledge tends to strengthen the convic- tion that all resemblance is due to repetition. (Italics his.)

He says further :

Taine sums up the thought of the most eminent physiologists, when he happily remarks that the brain is a repeating organ for the senses, and is itself made up of elements which repeat one another.

All resemblances of Social origin in society are the direct fruit of the various forms of imitation; Custom-imitation, or fashion- imitation; sympathy-imitation or obedience-imitation; precept- imitation or educational-imitation; naive-imitation or deliberate imitation, etc.

But, as a proof of the depth which is reached by the action of imitation in man’s heart, we see people aping one another every- where, even in their fights.

The birth of society began when one man copied another.

He then quotes Maudsley :

It cannot be too clearly apprehended that there is a sort of innate tendency to mimicry in the nervous system. (“Mental Pathology.’’)

And he continues:

The supreme law of imitation seems to be its tendency towards indefinite progression. This immanent and immense kind of am- bition is the soul of the universe.

Finally, Tarde says;

To sum up; — to the question which I began by asking: What is society? I have answered; Society is imitation.

Now, do the men who rail at representation in art, which can only be accomplished by a relative imitation, hope to switch mankind around, suddenly or in a hundred generations, away from this all governing law in our social evolution ? Silly dream !

What is imitation but the very basis of representation? In art, representation means : to present anew. But how will you present anything anew unless you imitate it, more or less closely, at least closely enough to give it a recognizable likeness: so that, if you paint something and call it “an apple,’’ it will look like an apple and not like a snow-ball? Representation does not mean “photographing in color.” No one of sense ever said it did; and the lugging in of the bugaboo, “we must not seek to copy nature like a photograph,” is a “scare-crow,”

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hypocritically set up by the ‘ ‘ abstractionist ’ ’ charlatans, in order to give them a chance to knock it down, with much disgusting casuistry, if they are as serious as they pretend to be. On the contrary, the basic “Law of Imitation,” which dominates social progress, requires that the imitation should not be an absolute one. Being a compound, of imitation and invention, the Law de- mands sufficient imitation to make the apple recognizable by all mankind, as a portrait of an apple ; but, in addition, some inven- tion. This for the sake of progression. But the amount of invention must be very small, so as not to make the pro- gression too obvious or shockingly rapid. For, while every rose leaf is so much of a rose leaf, that all the billions of them look alike, yet no two of them are totally alike. They are different enough to ensure progress, towards a new species of flower per- haps thousands of years hence. For, we repeat, nature abhors aU shocks, revolutions, tangental or angular movements. So do mankind. Easy stages, curves, and imdulatory move- ments, are ever preferred in all progress, be it in fashions, philosophies, religions, or arts. So shy are mankind of all new ideas, that Edison lately said, in substance, that it takes ten years to get the public to adopt a new idea, no matter how sound; the instinct of self-preservation being back of that hesi- tancy. To quote Tarde once more:

Society is either invention or imitation.

This tendency to imitate is so universal, whether in the ant or elephant, and so powerful, that the higher members of a tribe, with superior insight, will not follow a new initiative in anything, if they think they see in it a tendency that, if logically followed, will lead to social disaster.

Now, towards social disaster points the whole theory of the ‘ ‘ abstractionists ’ ’ in their yelling for ‘ ‘ creation , ’ ’ devoid of all imitation. All the more will abstract art usher in social dis- aster, imless extirpated, when it masquerades under false colors: when it presents an vmknown object, a creation so new that its like has never been seen, and hence is imrecognizable, and calls the strange thing — a “Woman” 1 It does not look like a woman, does not re-present a woman, hence masquerades tmder a false title, which makes it a lie ! And, as the instinct of self-preserva- tion makes us ever yearn for truth, for security’s sake, our every instinct goes against this fraud in art.

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Hence, for a man to button-hole you and lead you to an “abstract” object, like Fig. 7, and tell you it is a portrait of the Princess Bonaparte, or such a contraption as Fig. 6 and tell you it represents a “King and a Queen,” that places him at once among the insane, or worse : the bunco-men of the world.

Now, the effort made by the originators of this abstract art, and the self-interested art dealers and critics, who help them in the business of boosting it, is either a mark of insanity or of moral corruption, or of both. And this is evil enough — because the art is symbolic sadism incarnate !

But, when they hire men to xmdermine the natural processes of reasoning of their fellow-men, by ridiculing the practice of a relatively natural representation, and insult the public for pre- ferring sane representation in art to “ boom ” their own imbecile abstract “creations,” then their sorry trade becomes a crime. For it tends to bewilder men; and bewilderment is the first step towards social anarchy, which is never progress but always retrogression: it being easily demonstrable that we progress faster by evolution than by revolution.

Besides, this fimdamental tendency to imitate, which also makes us find pleasure at the sight of anything well imitated in art, as Aristotle already noted, there is the profound cosmic tendency in every living thing in nature, not only to imitate, but to find pleasure in the very act of imitating, above all when we find we have the talent to objectively imitate anything, well enough to elicit the praises of those who have less talent for imitation but admire fine imitations of things. Also, this is the reason why all those men who have not been falsely told that the main thing in art is the personal manner displayed by the artist, admire so much all close imitation of anything.

Imitation is, in fact, in one way or another, the first source of intellectual pleasure, and the first source of pleasure apart from the beauty of lines and colors, in any work of art. For it must not be forgotten : all personal style is an artificial thing, and appeals very strongly only to such men as have been specially trained or misled to seek and to applaud only such styles.

Hence, if you take imitation out of art entirely, by abstract- ing yourself and your art from nature, imtil there is no more natime left in it, you destroy all chances of men seeing and ad-

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miring good or perfect imitation, and you offer to them things they -will never be able to comprehend: because they do not recognize them, not having ever seen them before, even in their dreams. Figs. 76 to 83.

The second source of intellectual pleasure is recognition, which mental act gives us great pleasure at suddenly meeting a friend, or anything we have not seen for a long time. Also, when we see a work of art, and it forces us to say : ‘ ‘ By Jove ! Isn’t that lifelike!” it is the emotion of surprise, and quick recognition, which gives us pleasure. Hence, this second in- tellectual pleasure would be impossible without imitation of a natural thing.

Nietzsche said:

We might venture the following hypotheses upon the processes of the aesthetic sense: if one thinks of the primitive germ of the artistic sense, and if one inquires what are the different kinds of pleasure generated by the first manifestations of art, as for in- stance among the savage tribes, we find first of all the pleasure of understanding what another man wishes to say.

A third intellectual pleasure is the act of suddenly recalling a past experience, or feeling, or emotion, or place. Hence, a work of art, poem, picture, statue, or drama, which arouses in us such pleasant recollections, gives us pleasure. But such recol- lections would be impossible without something in nature having been imitated sufficiently close to arouse our recollec- tion.

A fourth source of intellectual pleasure is analysis. As mere children, we love to tear to pieces a clock, to see how the works work; and, as we grow older, we love to untangle all sorts of skeins of problems, in politics, religion, and art, even cross- word puzzles. Hence, one of the pleasures of a work of art is a chance to compare and to analyze to what extent the artist has been true to nattue. But, if you destroy all imitation, you destroy one of the great pleasures we experience in works of art, by making it impossible to make comparisons and analyses.

A fifth source of intellectual pleasure is the chance to render judgments. When , finally, we have analyzed a work of art, and have come to a judgment, we find real pleasure in ex- pressing that judgment, either to ourselves silently, or to a friend, or to the world openly. But, if you go away so far

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2II

from imitation that we have no longer a basis for applying any sort of staitdard of judgment, but present to us a thing, the like of which we have never seen, you rob us of the pleasure we all find in the very acts of rendering judgments, by making such mental acts impossible.

Finally, a sixth, and most important, source of intellectual pleasure is Sympathy, which all works of representative art arouse. Through imitation alone can you render a work of art a living thing, of human significance. And life attracts life. One living thing aggrandizes every other living thing, through sympathy. It is that which makes representative art the most powerful, social, binding force in the world. Veron felt that strongly when, in his “Esthetics,” he said:

There is one thing which strikes and attaches to each other the minds of men, even more than all the combinations of lines, sounds, movements, colors, etc., and that is life, which comprises and sur- passes all the rest; life, which is the last and most complete expres- sion of unity enlivened by variety, and which adds to it activity and progressive development, without coimting this other advantage, and which is immense, that of being like each other and, through that, arousing in us an instinctive sympathy.

But this socially binding power can be generated only by such art in which life is imitated, enough to make it living and, by that, recognizable by all men. Another proof of the binding power of representative art is given by Veron, when he says:

Because most of the plastic works of art are based on reality, some imagine that our admiration is for the fidelity of the imitation, whilst, in truth, that which strikes and attracts us is the artistic power of the imitator.

and it is through that he wins, not only our admiration, but our profound sympathy and love. Because he makes us share in his beautiful dreams, or conveys to us his delight-giving emo- tions, which conveyance is possible only by means of language, of forms, words, and sounds, such as w'e can, not only compre- hend, but imderstand quickly, and which is possible only through at least naturalistic imitation.

Finally, while the first fimction of rational style is to depart from nature and the commonplace, its final function is, not to gradually annihilate life, by ever more and more abstracting, taking away, the elements of life, but to enhance and ennoble it. Style has for its function the accentuation of life, thus mak-

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ing it more lifelike. Good style adds to a work of art just enough of abstract form to force into activity our imagination, which then becomes aroused, and so, makes us grasp more pro- foundly and tenaciously the significance of life in art.

Hence, just as soon as any artist goes beyond suggestive accentuation, on towards excessive stylization, by ever more abstraction, he then passes beyond the ‘ ‘ dead fine ’ ’ which sepa- rates the sane from the insane in art. For it must be obvious that, if an artist, gifted with an extraordinary or bizarre im- agination, allows himself to handle ideas, or facts, that are strange and weird, or so new that they are unintelligible to the great public of his time, no matter how great his “genius,” he will disappear, in obscurity. For, to quote Veron once more:

The poet can have no effect on his generation except on the condition that he reflects some of the ideas, habits, sentiments, and aspirations which animate his time. His great privilege, then, is to give to them a higher, a more complete, and more vibrant expres- sion, in which his contemporaries recognize their own emotions, ele- vated by one or several degrees.

Needless to say, that what is true of the poet is true of every artist, an artist being veritably an artist only by virtue of being a poet.

And let the abstractionists never forget that V6ron was the first, and most friendly jesthetician who supported the early modernistic movement : before it slid into the bog of lunatic “abstractionism. ’ ’

In short: Nature is bent on endtuing; and every nation wishes to endure, and to create works of art that will endure.

To endure, movement is essential, because monotonous stagnation ends in death. Hence, eternal change is natin-e’s law. But viable change is possible only by repeating the old. This can only be done through imitation plus a slight difference, a slight departing from that which is imitated. This slight de- parture from nature, or the commonplace, in our imitating it, is style. This is absolutely necessary, to prevent unpleasant monotony in life and art. This kind of imitation of nature, with only a slight departure from the exact truth, and which is called sane style, is what is meant by rational representation.

And this rational representation, giving as it does infinite

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scope for true originality, personality, and creation, is the very basis of all rational and enduring art, such as every people yearns to have its poetic artists produce, to the pleasurable self-contemplation and glorification of a nation.

“Abstract,” inscrutable, incomprehensible, art, therefore, is naught but the product of artists who have gone mad, or who have turned charlatans, and are engaged in “putting over” on the public such “creations” as appeal only to abnormal morons or to spectdative, gambling collectors of exotic, weird, patho- logical things; a class of men of whom there is, imfortunately, always a sufficient number, in the insanity breeding metropo- lises of the world, from Paris to Tokio and from Peking to New York, and who, sooner or later, imload their collected “crea- tions” on other collectors, irntd they end by finding house- room with some dealer in “junk,” along with desiccated heads from Peru; dried starfish from China; and rotting mummies from the Nile; and, finally, pass out into oblivion!

If these pathological artists, and their foxy exploiters, would content themselves with saying that their “creations” are only mere “creations,” mere time-killing pastimes, mere experiments in a loafing game of hide-and-seek fad-ism, fit only for childish distraction, like the stunts of clog-dancing and acrobatting one sees in vaudeville shows; if they were satisfied to call their “stimts,” let us say, “A dream in form,” or “A study in values,” or “A combination of lines,” or even follow Whistler, and say, “A S3miphony in color” — no one could object. But, when they call a hodge-podge of forms and lines, “The King and Queen”; or a kaleidoscopic mass of colors, “The Crucifixion”; or a pot-pourri of cacophonic words and sounds, “A Wedding March,” and, so, sail under false colors — this joined to a vicious, cynical ridiculing, as “aca- demic,” all rational art — and do this, at least in the fervent hope of making money by bewildering the plain citizen, then they degenerate into destroyers of art and sappers of civilization. Figs. 76 to 83.

All of the foregoing is so obvious, that it would be wrong to burden the Reader to go through it, were it not that some absurd aestheticians, who have had some vogue of late, have, with pontifical pretension, proclaimed the weird doctrine:

Representation is not art at all.

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As was said by two English writers, both of whom seem to us to be naught but commercial fakers, mere outsiders, and collectors of abstract art junk, which they cimningly laud to the skies in their books, to raise the prices of their stuff, in order to sell it at a vast profit to the gullible nouveaux-riches, and who, hke Spanish bulls, are running amuck in the art world. These and their blind followers have done enormous harm to art.

We wonder what would be thought of these by Flaubert, who said:

Art is a representation.

This is so obvious that an editorial writer in the New York “Times” of January lo, 1925, said, sarcastically:

The rebels in art of today are quite right in striving to go back to the primitive vision. What they forget, however, is that when the primitive artist drew an elephant or a reindeer the a nimals could be easily recognized as such.

The whole theory of the function of art, and of the artist, is expressed in a few sentences, quoted by Eckermann in his “ Con- versations with Goethe”:

Goethe, who tells us that with him “every idea rapidly changed itself into an image,” was asked what idea he meant to embody in his “Faust”:

“As if I knew myself and could inform them! From heaven, through the world, to hell, would be something; but this is no idea, only a course of action. ... It was, in short, not in my line, as a poet, to strain to embody anything abstract. I received in my mind impressions and those of a sensuous, animated, charm- ing, varied, hvmdredfold, kind, just as a lively imagination pre- sented them, and I had, as a poet, nothing more to do than artis- tically to rovmd them off and elaborate such views and impressions, and, by means of lively representation, so to bring them forward, that others might receive the same impression in hearing or reading nty representation of them.” (Italics ours.)

In short, common-sense declares that it is impossible to produce a living, enduring, work of art, without a relatively faithful representation !

The Reader will often hear certain artists, also certain news- paper “critics,” say:

The public knows nothing about art !

This usually comes from some empty-headed “technicians,"

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who respect nothing in a work of art except color, and the ‘ ‘ per- sonal” manner in which it is applied to canvas, and to whom ‘ ‘ technique ’ ’ alone is ‘ ‘ art ’ ’ !

Let us console the public by saying: it knows just as well what is great art, and better than the majority of yotmgsters who today parade as “artists,” but who regard nothing as “art” except the latest one of the forty or fifty fads of the technique brigade, invented during the last generation.

Of course, the public knows nothing about these fads of “paint-stunting.” Why should it? They are all too puerile to worry about, outside of an art-school.

Take the fifty greatest painters that ever lived and, while the technique of each one will be different — we mean in their seriates pictures — the difference will be so slight, in their brush work, as to be totally negligible as an art element.

Wherein they differ greatly is, in the choice of a subject, its conception, composition, expression, and drawing; in the spirit and style of their work. And we maintain that, as to those high elements of art, the cultured public is often a better judge than the majority of the mere painters. And this holds true of those sculptors who are mere “touters” for empty clever- ness and “technique” in sculpture, men devoid of a lofty point of view and, very often, but fabricators of petty trinkets, in all sizes, instead of lifting, emotion-stirring works, made, not to parade the cleverness of a “technician,” but rather to glorify their coimtry.

AS TO CHARLATANISM

A Charlatan is a person who, “by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain” — and usually of a pretentious, pontifical kind — advertises himself into notoriety, in order the better to dispose of his wares, industrial, artistic or social, even to swindle the public.

The genus charlatan is as old as man, and will thrive while man remains as he is. For, the immortal Bamum, the prince of American charlatans, when once chided for his comic hum- buggery, is reported to have answered:

“My dear sir, there is a ‘sucker’ bom every minute, they all hate the bald tmth, and actually love to be htunbugged!”

The great Voltaire already said:

“It is at Paris, in our immense city,

In great minds and fools always fertile,

My dear friends, that we must guard ourselves —

Against charlatans who inimdate the city.”

The cynical Heine remarked: “Charlatanism is a weapon, which is not despised by the greatest men.”

And the great dramatist, Eugene Scribe, once exclaimed :

“You talk of charlatanism? Why, every one uses it in Paris. It is approved, it is accepted, and is current coin.

Many very able men, from the gloomy Cagliostro to the festive Whistler, have resorted to charlatanism, the easier to dispose of their wares. Therefore, it behooves the public to be ever on its guard — above all in matters of art, and in aU the fine arts — to prevent a combination of: cunning artist, dealer, and critic, from “putting over” on them, in the name of great art, ephemeral productions which can never endure.

An fsnrnplf of chihlish Kick of < lcurn«*s-. in the symlmlizmK of a subject. Tnstea'I of huinan beings falling inio an ahj’ss, we have .1 h<)(3K‘‘-p<>‘iir‘* '>f angels, aini huniati l>i‘iu^»s ch.inKO<l into sca-monsters. Hence, utterly inelTecI ive to arouse thi* emotion (jf terror. See Fl^^. <;o

SiSTiNE Chapel, Rome.

An example of clear and powerful symbolizing. While Bosch shows us. Fig. 89. sea- monsters falling into the abyss, Angelo shows us human beings falling. Far more effective in shuddering the human soul.

PART II

A STANDARD OF MEASUREMENT OF WORKS OF ART

217

AS TO CLEVERNESS

The New Standard Dictionary thus defines Cleverness;

Adroit, bright, dexterous, expert, ingenious, quick, skillful, smart, talented.

Cleverness is useful in everything, sufficient for nothing.

Amiel.

Be clever! Be clever, for ever more be clever! ! Be not too clever! ! ! Anon.

It’s clever — but is it Art ? Kipling.

Clever men are good, but not the best. Goethe.

Great art is rarely clever and clever art is rarely great.

Anon.

A merely clever work of art can never rise to greatness, or arouse the love of mankind, if it fails to lift the majority of a race above merely intellectual surprises, or commonplace emotions. Anon.

CHAPTER VII

A STANDARD OF ART MEASUREMENT

Section One Conception in Art

Appeared in the February, 1917, issue of “The Art World”

In his “Philosophy of Art,” a collection of lectures delivered at the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris, Taine opens thus his chap- ter on “Kinds and Degrees of the Ideal”:

Among the ideas that artists express in their works are there some that are superior to others? Can one indicate one character that is worth more than another? Is there for each object an ideal form, outside of which all must be deviation or error? Can one discover a principle of subordination which assigns different ranks to differ- ent works of art ?

At first view, one is tempted to say no; the definition of art that we have found seems to bar the route to such a research; it leads us to believe that works of art are all on the same level, and that the field is open to arbitrary judgment. . . .Yet, neverthe- less, in the imaginary world, as well as in the real world, there are different ranks, because there are different values. The public and the connoisseurs assign their ranks to some and estimate the value of others. We have done nothing else during the last five years, in our survey of the schools of Italy, of the Low Countries and of Greece. We have always, and at each step, passed judgment. Without knowing it, we had in our hand an instrument for measur- ing. Other men do as we are doing, and in criticism, as elsewhere, there are certain settled rules.

Every one recognizes today that certain poets, like Dante and Shakespeare, certain composers like Mozart and Beethoven, occupy the highest place in their art. We accord it to Goethe among all the writers of our century. Among the Flemish no one disputes the place of Rubens; among the Dutch none questions the place of Rembrandt; among the Germans that of Durer, and among the

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Venetians that of Titian are not challenged. Three artists of the Italian Renaissance : Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Raphael rise, by unanimous consent, above all the others. (Italics are ours.)

And Charles Dudley Warner said in his “Fashions in Litera- ture”:

If there is a standard of literary excellence — ^as there is of all beauty — and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual world is to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the natural — it is certainly possible to ascertain whether a new production con- forms, and how far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art.

As this book by Mr. Warner was published with a preface by so careful a writer as H. W. Mabie, in which he approves Warner’s position, we feel safe in saying : It is possible to give a MEASURE or YARDSTICK, to speak plainly, by means of which any cultured layman can, after more or less study, as- sign to any work of art its proper rank in the hierarchy of Art. We shall attempt to give such a yard-stick or standard in the following formula : —

The highest Standard of Art Valuation is: POWER OF EXPRESSION; and the elements of art expression are Six: CONCEPTION, COMPOSITION, EXPRESSION; DRAW- ING, COLOR, TECHNIQUE; and that is the Greatest work of art, in which these six elements of expression are displayed in the highest degree. Of these six elements of the art-pro- cess, the first three make up the thought-side, the ideal and spiritual side, of a work of art; the other three elements, make up the manual side, the craftsmanship and artistry side of a work of art.

Now, when we contemplate a work of art, the first thing we should do is: to estimate the social importance and beneficence of the Subject chosen. We rate all art subjects in the following order of their social importance and nobility : Religious, Ethi- cal, Allegorical, Historical, Important Portraits, Genre or Con- temporary Life, Landscapes and Marines, Still-Life. For, it is evident that the effect of the operation upon society of the spirit and form of Michael Angelo’s “Creation,” is far more po- tent and beneficent than the operation of a “Dutch Tap Room Scene” by Teniers.

Having decided on the social value of the subject of the work

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of art, the next thing we should do is to decide whether the con- ception of the subject is high or low, commonplace or original, beautiful or ugly, weak or forceful.

Let us consider the first and highest element of art power: Conception.

As we said before, it makes no difference how poor the craftsmanship of any work of art: it is always a work of art. But, no work of art can enter the category of Great Art at all, unless its “technique,” its finger- workmanship, is of a high order. An artist aiming at enduring Fame — as he should — must first of all be a good workman before daring to talk, preach or rhapsodize in art. Before this first-class workmanship is arrived at, his drawing, modeling, values and surface manipu- lation — personal or impersonal — must be of a high order of truth and of at least relative exactitude to nature. When, in his school of training, the artist has acquired suflScient command of the grammar, syntax and laws of the Art- Language in which he proposes to talk to mankind, to amuse, to delight or to inspire it; when he is a first-class workman, then the element of the conception of a subject becomes of the first concern, as the most important in a work of art.

At the outset we will note : all art is Decorative. That is to say : It ornaments or decorates the object or person or space to which it is applied. And all art is also Expressive, either of an idea or of the temperament of the artist, or of the spirit of the epoch in which he worked. But, as some works are made purely to ornament something, and others purely to express an idea, all art may broadly be divided into two great categories — Decorative and Expressive art.

Let us deal here with expressive art alone, that in which ideas, sentiments, stories, etc., are expressed. Let us say the subject chosen for representation by a number of artists is “The Last Supper.” How shall the artist conceive the sub- ject, its character, its tone, its expression?

First comes the question of Originality of conception. Be- cause those deepest laws of our natiure “The Desire to Persist” and “The Desire for the Better” require Change, Novelty and Freshness. It is this need of change which is at the base of all human progress. It results from the capacity of men for get- ting tired of even the most perfect things of their time, if

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forced to live with those things only and always, without ever coming in contact with new things, whether superior or inferior, to serve as a contrast and point a comparison. Therefore, originality of conception is the first important thing to be considered in works of art. Everything else being equal, that is the greatest work of art which is the most original. This is fundamental.

But, while originality is the first thing to be considered in the conception of a work of art, the ultimate and most impor- tant thing, in the conception, is not originality — but Beauty: the originality being only a means for arriving at beauty.

This is what the modernist in art — your “individualist” d Voutrance — cannot understand or refuses to sanction.

It is true , as Rollin Ly nd Hartt says in ‘ ‘ The People at Play ’ ’ :

The people crave three things: a chance to wonder, a chance to shudder and a chance to be scared out of their wits.

But, while this is true, they do not want the shocks, except for the piirpose of varying the, generally preferred, monotony of their lives, the stability of which requires prolonged periods of placidity, as far as it is possible to establish them. Your rabid modernistic artist and critic, knowing the need of these occasional shocks and of originality — which is always a shock — stupidly imagines that people want such shocks all the time and at all hazard; and that the uglier and more disgusting these shocks, this originality, may be, especially in art, the more they wiU be appreciated !

Therein Hes the fimdamental error of the whole modernist movement, and is the basic cause of the ocean of art-trash which has been inflicted upon a disgusted public during the last generation. This modernist craze for originality came at the end of the greatest and most productive art epoch that France or the world has seen since the Renaissance, an epoch at the end of which people saw so many masterpieces of art that they became tired of perfect and beautiful work and, for a change, tolerated imperfect and ugly things — just as most men, after a long period of abstinence and goodness, crave a cup of indul- gence and a dash of wickedness. This same thing occurred soon after the Pericleian period in Greece and after the Ren- aissance in Italy.

What the human soul really thirsts for, is not so much origi-

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nality as— Beauty. If to Beauty is added Originality, so much the better. But above all we must have Beauty. And the artist or epoch in art which forgets this fundmental law, is in full decadence.

There have been epochs in which originality of all sorts was under a ban. Lombroso, in his book on “Genius,” gives many instances going to prove that men of genius, in their old age, become particularly resentful of the new, while, in their youth, they may have been revolutionary opponents of the old. This senescence is not only true of individuals but of the race as a whole. There are certain epochs, in which the majority of men think that the world is of age, and that nothing better than what then exists can be imagined. This was true of the an- cien regime in France, in which an effort was made for a stable and durable perfection when, as Mr. Irving Babbitt, in his “On Being Original,” says;

Social custom so entwined itself about the whole nature of Frenchmen of the old regime that it finally became almost as hard for him as we may suppose it is for a Chinaman to disengage his originality from the coils of custom. The very word “original” was often used as a term of ridicule and disparagement. . . . “When it is desired to turn any one to ridicule” writes Boursault about this same time “he is said to be an original sans copie." Anything in literature or art that departed from the conventional type was pronounced “monstrous.” La Harpe applies this epithet to the Divine Comedy and points out how inferior the occasional felicities of this “absurd and shapeless rhapsody” are to the correct beauties of a true epic like Voltaire’s “Henriade.”

When such a conventionalizing into fossilism comes to a head, then a Revolution announces itself, such as the French Revolution of 1793 in government, and the Romantic Revolu- tion of 1830 in art. Let us not, therefore, join the class whose brain-fibre and soul-structure becomes semi-fossilized. Let us welcome the new and original. But let us be reasonably sure, that we are welcoming something that is truly original and not crazy, before we give way to the onslaught of those who imagine they are original when, in reality, they are only bizarre and ugly. It is true, as Mr. Babbitt says :

The attempt of the neo-Classicists to tyrannize over originality and restrict the creative impulse in the name of the type was bound, in the long run, to provoke a reaction.

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It did bring the reaction. But have we not gone too far in the other direction? We agree entirely with J. A. Symonds when he says:

It may be added that the liberal culture of the sort described goes far toward emandpating men from the vanity which aims at originality in and out of season. . . . For it is better to repeat all things, if true, than to improvise new things, if they are not true (or not beautiful) .

In short, one truly beautiful thing in art, however conven- tional, is worth a cargo of ugly things, however original.

The modernists who have ushered in the decadence of Eu- ropean art, forget that to be original in art is easy; but to be original and fine is difficult and rare indeed ! Especially is thip true of marked originality. For, fundamentally, every work of art, like every human being, no matter how apparently con- ventional, is truly original; nature has taken care of that since no two rose-leaves are alike.

Let us repeat : while it is very easy to be original it is diffi- cult to be original — ^and fine ! Why is this ? Mr. Babbitt gives us the reason;

Genuine originality is so immensely difficult, because it imposes the task of achieving work that is of general human truth and at the same time intensely individual. Perhaps the best examples of this union of qualities are found in Greek art. The original man for the Greek was the one who could create in the very act of imitat- ing the past. Greek literature at its best is to a remarkable degree a creative imitation of Homer.

In fine, originality is extremely difficult to achieve; it is ex- tremely rare; it never comes by striving for it, but as a gift from nature, and comes unsought. It is never entirely de- tached from the past ; it is a combination of the original and the commonplace, of the Personal and Impersonal, of the Individ- ual and Universal.

Extreme originality, however desirable it may be, is not necessary to make a work of art great. While the originality of a work of art must be taken into consideration in the judging or the creating thereof, it is of secondary importance to the beautiftd, be this beauty Picturesque, Graceful or Sublime; this beauty finally resulting not from any one art-element, but from all the elements involved.

The second element to be considered in the Conception of a

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great work of art is: The beneficent character, of the idea, story, or subject of the conception. That is : not only should the sub- ject be a noble one, but its tone of execution, from expression to technique, should be noble also. The so-called modernist artists, occupied solely with their absurd little technical artistic dodgers, which they throw off with a hop, skip and a jump, ridicule the idea, not only of a noble subject, but of any sub- ject at all in a work of art. Whistler was one of these. In “The Red Rag” he says:

Why should not I call my works “symphonies,” “arrange- ments,” “harmonies,” “nocturnes”? I know that many good people think my nomenclature funny and myself “eccentric” — yes, “eccentric” is the adjective they find for me.

My picture of a “harmony in grey and gold” is an illustration of my meaning. It is a snow scene with a single black figure and a lighted tavern. I care nothing for the past, present or future of the black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. All that I know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of my picture. Now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp.

Had Whistler stopped here, it would have been well — or had he said something like this :

I do not care what people say about my theories or my work; it may be only clever color-juggling and trivial in purpose; but it is my own stuff and the only kind I can produce and it pleases me to produce it. I leave it as it is to posterity, to judge me and my work.

But, when he waves the “Red Rag,” and says:

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be sup- posed to tell. ... As Music is the poetry of sound, so is paint- ing the poetry of sight, and the subject matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color, when he says this, he gets on dangerous ground.

This shifty sentence may be approved when applied to a mere Decorative panel, but it is utterly false and deceiving when applied to an Expressive work of art. This is bad enough, as it asserts that “technique” and mere “painting” is always art — is alone art — instead of being only one side of it.

But, when he goes further and reels off the following ho becomes grotesque :

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Art should be independent of all clap-trap, should stand alone and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotion entirely foreign to it — as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it, jind that is why I insist on calling my work “arrangements” and “harmonies.”

This is indeed the veriest clap-trap of a charlatan, bent on making a market for his own wares by humbugging people with fine ambiguous phrases, whose sophistry they cannot stop to analyze.

Were these only the fugitive exclamations, of stray, dis- gruntled hours, one would say nothing. But in his lecture “Ten O’clock,” a serious, self -defending lecture, and propa- ganda of his art philosophy — serious, though in a form full of synical wit — ^he says, in speaking of Tintoretto, Veronese, and Velasquez :

No reformers were these great men, no improvers of the ways of others. . . . In all this, their world was completely severed from that of their fellow-creatures with whom sentiment is mistaken for poetry and for whom there is no perfect work that caimot be explained by the benefit conferred on themselves.

Hiunanity takes the place of art, and God’s creations are excused by their usefiilness.

Hence it is that nobility of action in this light is hopelessly linked with the merit of the work that portrays it. . . . So we have come to hear of the painting that elevates and of the duty of the painter — of the picture that is full of thought and of the panel that merely decorates.

From this it is evident that it never dawned on Whistler that it is fine thought alone that lifts human craftsmanship, artistry, into the domain of truly great art.

George Moore — also one of the charlatan high priests of modernism — says :

“Les Palais Nomades” is a really beautiful book and it is free from all the faults that make an absolute and supreme enjoy- ment of great poetry an impossibility. For it is in the first place free from those pests and parasites of artistic works — ^ideas. . . . Gus- tave Kahn took counsel of the past, and he has successfully avoided everything that even a hostile critic might be tempted to term an idea, and for this I am grateful.

We can pardon the absurd point of view of this literary

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mountebank when we reflect that, on page 27 of his book “The Confessions of a Young Man,” he confessed:

I was not dissipated but I loved the abnormal.

All this would not be so serious if this philosophy had not made great headway in our own America.

In a recent New York paper appeared the following:

The death of Jean Georges Vibert, the French painter, ter- minated a career illustrating to perfection the vogue which a purely literary manifestation in art may sometimes obtain. It is possible that in his youth, or for that matter even in his maturity, Vibert may have wished to achieve work in which the painter’s painting would win the applause of his fellows. It is never safe to assume that the merely popular artist has never had a kindling emotion or a high ambition {sic). But so far as we know Vibert was content all his life long to produce painted anecdotes in which the anecdote was always the main thing.

In the first place this phrase ends with an untruth. In Vibert’s pictures the anecdote was not always the main thing. For, nearly all of his pictures show internal evidence that he strove always to paint as well as the best painters on earth. He always made a great effort to reach the highest watermark of merely skilled craftsmanship; and that he often reached this, close to the best of the world, is sure. When he did not it was because he could not. Certainly for fine drawing, true values, and a complete expression of thought, some of his works are marvellous. He had the true artist’s eye, to express some fine or interesting or comic thought, with the utmost possible technical power, and ever in the modem realistic feeling. That the great public bought many of his works and the price of them is constantly rising, is a proof of his sincerity.

But how childish to speak of the “high ambition,” to please the artists, when scarcely two artists think alike and most of them are jealous of the technical skill of their fellows! also, in view of the obvious fact today: that if a man pushes his in- dividuality to an extreme he will have a vogue only for a few years, and then be a back number! Do you suppose Homer ever thought of writing “poet’s poetry” or Shakespeare “Dramatist’s Drama,” or Beethoven “Musicians’ Music,” just to dazzle a few ‘ ‘ fellow-artists ” ? Did they not rather try to conquer immortality by enthralling a world?

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To offset these gibes, made by clever jugglers in paint against those who insist on ideas, thoughts and sentiment in art, let me quote mostly from the great French writers of the past centuries. Said Diderot :

Every piece of sculpture or painting should be the expression of a great maxim, a lesson for the spectator; without this it is mute.

In the preface to Renan’s “Morals and Criticism,” page xviii, we find the following :

All the refinements of the world are not worth one good senti- ment, even if badly expressed.

But the vaudevillians may say: “Diderot was brilliant and erratic and must have been in a cloud when he talked as above; and Renan was an ex-priest and a professional moralist.”

So then, let us go to a scientific critic, Taine. He says:

To this scale of physical values corresponds, step by step, a scale of plastic values. Everything else being equal, according as the character handled in a painting or a statue is more or less important, that painting or that statue is more or less beautiful.

. . . The concordance is therefore complete, and the characters (types) bring with themselves into a work of art the value which they have already in nature; according as they possess, in them- selves, a value more or less great, they communicate to the work a value more or less great. . . . We now understand why the hierarchy of art repeats their hierarchy. At the summit of nature are the sovereign powers which master the others; at the summit of art are the masterpieces which surpass the others; the two tops are on a level and the sovereign powers of nature are expressed by the masterpieces of art. ...

We have considered types according as they are more or less important; we are now going to consider those types according to their being more or less beneficent. . . . Let us begin with moral man and with the work of art by which he is expressed. It is manifest that the characteristics by which he is endowed are more or less beneficent or maleficent or mixed. ... We must now see this man in his group. What is the disposition which renders his life beneficent for the society in which he is comprised? We know the interior faculties which are useful to him himself; where is the interior spring which will render him useful to others.

There is one which is unique: it is the faculty of loving; for, to love is to have for one’s aim the happiness of another, to sub- ordinate one’s self to him, to work and to devote oneself to his good.

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You will recognize there the beneficent type par excellence; it is visibly the highest of all in the scale we are constructing. . . .

Such is the double scale by which are classified, at once, the types of things and the values of works of art. According as the types are more important or beneficent, they occupy a higher place, and put into a higher rank the works of art by which they are expressed.

But, lest these festive modernists should say: Taine is al- ready vieux jeu, let us come down to a later date. Is Arsene Alexandre, the “Boulevardier,” sufficiently “modern” for our vaudevillians? And is the Figaro of Paris sufficiently cynical and demi-mondain to satisfy our “up-to-daters” — since it is not in the class of “hysterical moral forces” of the w’orld?

Well, in the “Figaro” of April 30th, 1908, we find a notice of the Salon des Champs Elysees by Alexandre. It is headed “Ideas and Works of Art,” and rims:

This year the Soci^te des Artistes Frangais has replaced ideas by a whitewashing of its walls with a new tone, and works of art are replaced by carpets in all its halls. It is neither through a spirit of chagrin nor of malevolence that we make this statement. We do not find any pleasure in making it, while, on the contrary, it would be a joy to be able to become enthusiastic over some noble ideas, to acclaim some great works truly new. But how can the critic feel enthusiasm when the artists either seem to be fatigued or ashamed to express ideas? Why should we play the r61e of deceivers or make the public play that role in taking for works of art a lot of things that are journeyman productions?

We regret, therefore, to say that the Salon is poor in beautiful works and extremely poor in beautiful ideas. Can we attribute this to lassitude ? Surely not. Never were there more painters nor more people knowing how to “paint’ well, in the literal sense of the word, if not with great refinement. But also never, it seems, did there exist a greater laziness of thought among artists, answering perhaps to a laziness of taste in the public. They are satisfied with the first spectacle that they meet, and they reproduce it with a sort of neutral cleverness. And those who do not imitate the others repeat themselves.

We must therefore conclude that, because of their living in their studios, and not in their brains or hearts, because of despising — and why? — pure thoughts and living emotions, which alone will always be, whatever may be said to the contrary, the inspirers of truly beautiful works of art, the artists, retaining a prestige poorly

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justified, have become for the most part not carriers of light but traders of images — and even a small number of images and always the same. Skepticism, — that which the old education called “human respect,” — ^has killed or bridled in most of them their lofty flights, until they have fallen into great errors. The necessities of living, which is besides badly understood, have killed this beautiful pro- fession.

And we have arrived at this point, that the painters of today are, above all, people who fail to grasp the possibilities of all the good opportunities. They have a chance of decorating public edi- fices, and for a society which will renew itself; and they acquit themselves of this task by spreading, in a commonplace language, a lot of conventions — not even traditions — which mean absolutely nothing!

And beyond that? They have the chance of being able to seize a scene and to relate it, with means far more striking and far more complete than mere words. They have this exceptional fortune, not possessed by either the poet or the musician or any one, of being able to suggest by a few spots all the enchantment and intoxication which light and air can give! And they offer what? Always the same Spaniards, always the same markets of Brittany, always the same Fisherman of the studio, always the same land- scapes, repeated after the same models, patented and medaled. Does this not spell the decadence of art? (Italics are ours.)

As the “Figaro” is a paper supporting the Aristocracy and the Academy, the modem scoffers at ideas may say that Alex- andre is nothing but a newspaper critic, prejudiced against the modem philosophy of “individualism” in art. So, let us finally quote again from Veron, who made a bitter fight against the so-called “fossilism” of the old Academic Art of his day, one who may be said to be the real father of modern Individual- ism, in aesthetics, and the best friend that mere “technicians” ever had. Says he, among other things:

From this point of view, the choice of a subject is far from being so much a matter of indifference as a certain number of critics affect to believe. The choice of a subject that an artist makes, enables us at least to judge of the force of his intellectual power, which is already a matter of importance, if it is true, as we believe, that the value of the work of art depends in a large degree on this: that it reveals the personality of the artist.

You must even admit that, through the just reaction against the ratiocinative and literary criticism, which has always been dom-

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inant with us since Diderot, and which often considers in a work of art less the truly artistic qualities than the extrinsic merits of the subject and the composition, we have arrived at an advertisement of a superb disdain for all sides of art which demand the inter- vention of reason and reflexion. The painter makes a glory of despising all that is not purely pictorial. Line and color! — all the rest is worthless !

It is an error, or at least a dangerous exaggeration. It has ruined a good number of artists who, in virtue of this fine theory, concluded that genius consisted in separating oneself from reason, seeing that reason is not a faculty specially artistic, artists who, in consequence, decided to be guided only by their fantasy. . . . Since painting consists essentially in the use of lines and color, it is altogether natural that all subjects should present themselves to the imagination of the painter under the appearance of lines r.nd colors; we may even say that, if he is a painter, it is precisely because he has a mind made in such a fashion that things do appear to him under this aspect, and it is because of this that they strike him and appeal to him.

Shall we say, however, that, looked at thus, there could be nothing else? Those lines and colors, must they be so empty of thought and ideas that it would be impossible for other men to dis- cover something else? That is an exaggeration against which we must protect ourselves.

In spite of a few illustrious exceptions, like those which I have mentioned, who were able to make up for their defects in ideas by a prodigious virtuosity, it remains nevertheless true that the doc- trine of Art for Art’s Sake, applied to painting and music, produces results necessarily inferior to those which presuppose the interven- tion of the intelligence. And what we have said before, contains the explanation of this inferiority.

We could bring many more quotations from old and young, dead and living Frenchmen, to prove that, in France, the best thinkers, and those who have French welfare at heart, not only do not teach that ideas and lofty sentiments are out of date and undesirable in art, but that, on the contrary, ideas and emotion of a noble order are really all that make Art great and respectable !

The third important element in the conception of a subject is — expressive force. That is to say; Shall the work be powerfully and dramatically expressive, or merely mildly and decoratively expressive?

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For example: “The Last Supper,” painted by Raphael, is the least expressive of the possibilities of the subject, the least dramatic, the least stirring of the emotions; Ghirlandajo’s is more expressive; Tintoretto’s still more; Del Sarto’s still more; and Leonardo’s most of all, and makes all the others take a lower rank — in force of expression.

Now, these three elements: of the way of conceiving of a subject: originality, beneficence of character and expressive force, must be considered at the very beginning of the artist’s travail, in his effort to produce a great work of art on a given subject. And upon this depends the measure of his suc- cess — ^asstuning that he has perfect command of the means of artistic expression.

When he has those three elements determined upon, he be- gins the real labor of expressing his subject — by means of com- position, expression, drawing, color and technique.

We will treat of Composition in oiu: next chapter.

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CHAPTER VIII

A STANDARD OF ART MEASUREMENT

Section Two Composition

Appeared in the March, igip, issue of "The Art World"

In the last chapter we discussed the first of the six elements of art power, conception; that is — the high or low plane on which a subject, once chosen, may be conceived. We said, in substance, that no work of art can enter the category of great art, unless it is technically of a high order, unless its craftsman- ship indicates that its author was an accomplished workman; but that then, when the workmanship of the work reveals a first class craftsman, if the drawing, movement and surface- technique, are of a high order, then the question of the relative dignity and nobility of the subject and the elevation of the spirit in which the subject is conceived, become the most impor- tant ; and that, once the subject, and the conception of how it shotdd be expressed, is established, the artist, in all the arts, begins the real work of expressing the subject. We also said that, while originality, beneficence, and expressive power, should be the first care in the conceiving of a subject, the high- est and tdtimate object in every work, intended to be a great work of art, is not originality, but beauty. This beauty may be either picturesque and amusing, graceful and delight -giving, or sublime and exalting, in varying degrees.

Now, this beauty, whatever be its nature, depends prin- cipally upon the composition, which let us now discuss :

Composition is the second element of art power. It is a subject that has given rise to much dispute among artists and critics; and, to please these, one might be tempted to go into

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the theme extensively. But, as we are writing principally for layman alone we shall notice only the salient and most impor- tant phases of the subject.

Most of the beauty of the work of art, we repeat, results from its composition — of lines, forms and colors. That is: a given subject may be rendered with a wonderful amount of ex- pression and painting-skill, and yet be devoid of emotion-stir- ring beauty. Now, this beauty depends mostly upon the arrangement of its lines. Some men say No! it depends upon color. Says John C. van Dyke ;

As a matter of fact there is no such thing in nature as line. Objects may appear in strong relief when seen against the opposing backgrounds, or they may be so blended as to be almost imper- ceptible; they may have a round edge, a square edge or a flat edge; but the supposed line is nothing more than the distinction between different colors. A human hand resting across the front of a black coat may appear to have its sharp outline; but this is because of the contrast between the coloring of the flesh and the coloring of the cloth.

This is strange thinking! For, while it is true that there are few lines upon the surface of objects in nature, it is not true that there are no such lines. A horse’s mane is full of lines, so is a striped tulip, so is a leaf and the hollow of a man’s hand.

But it is true, that what we call lines in nature are, as a rule, only the contours or edges of forms. But then, to represent these forms in art, lines are absolutely necessary. Van Dyke recognizes this also, for he continues;

Still, we need not push that point too far, for, in the art of paint- ing, line may be said to have a real existence, and its correct draw- ing is certainly of importance. But then (he continues) the state- ment that this is primary and all other features secondary or sub- ordinate to it is only one of those extravagant assertions which occasionally emanate from partisan lips.

This is more strange thinking. For it is absolutely true: that, in all objective art, the line is King, as we said before, and that aU else is positively of secondary importance compared to it.

The proof of this is : that oiu* enjoyment of a great picture is scarcely less in a good etching or a good engraving, of a painted picture, than in the picture itself. The additional enjoyment that we get from the beauty of the color is so small that it needs hardly to be quarrelled over. Especially is this true of

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such pale and unobtrusive, almost spiritual, color as we find in the “Sistine Madonna,” as it appears in the Dresden Gallery. The color there is so very delicate and unobtrusive that the pic- ture is, at first, a great disappointment, since popular copies, made of it, are highly colored. And we do not get over this disappointment until we realize that, with marvellous intui- tion, and in order to bring out the God-hood of the Christ- Child, and the semi-divinity and spirituality of the Madonna, Raphael subdued his color — spiritualized i1) — so as to re- duce the sensuous element to a minimum, so as to invest the whole atmosphere of the picture with a spiritual quality. See Fig. 103. That this was his object, seems to be unde- niable. For any one who ever has seen the wonderful rich- ness and brilliancy of color in his “Sposalizio,” in Milan, and other pictures of Raphael we could mention, wUl admit, that he was one of the greatest “colorists” of all time — when the subject required, or allowed, of his letting him- self loose in color. The same is true of many other great paintings.

Per contra, in the photographs of the modern color-orgies of MonticeUi, Monet, and of the other impressionists, we lose the enjoyment their color gives to such an extent that, as pic- tures, they cease to exist for us, because of the lack of agree- ableness of line composition. They may have beauty of color but they lack beauty of pattern.

Finally, in a statue, which depends entirely upon the fine lines of its contour for its beauty, color plays no r61e at all, and if introduced, actually materializes it, by diminishing its spiritual- ity.

And, what of the beauty of the colorless “art-photograph” and lithograph of nature’s beauties, in which we have only pat- terns of lines and masses of light and shade? The fact is, without lines in a work of art, all would be a mere fog — ^and a fog takes on form only, when enclosed in lines or patterns of lines. The eye the line, it cannot follow a fog. With a line, we can guide the eyes at will; we can amusingly jostle the eyes hither and thither; we can delightfully cradle them and we can lift them to awe-inspiring heaven. The line controls the eye — ^by directing it. Van Dyke himself admits this on page 39 of his “Art for Art’s Sake”; and destroys his whole

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theory of the relative value of Line and Color, when, on page 202 of this same book, he says:

Painting is not unlike the drama in this respect. The attention is caught by the converging lines, lights and colors, and is directed to- ward one point of interest.

Only lines can direct! The power of color to do this is, after all, so small that it is almost a negligible quantity. Hence the remark of one of the defenders of line in the Paris ficole des Beaux- Arts: “Line is absolute, color is relative,” quoted and questioned by Van Dyke, is absolutely true.

Of course, in a painting of a basket of fish or of onions, which are painted only to show an iridescent brilliance of color, line becomes less supreme in importance, above all when the painter is bent on making merely a “painter’s painting” and not on making an effective and impressive composition. The line is, of course, secondary when Monet paints a fantastic, badly drawn riot of color and calls it: “Cathedral of Rouen” — a color orgy, but a trivial work of art.

There are Laws of composition, and there are Rules. Laws on ftmdamentaL rules are superficial.

To lay down a lot of petty rules on composition, is not our purpose. The reader will find a mass of entertaining talk on that subject in the text books on composition. Moreoever, most of the petty rules of composition can be violated, by a man of genius, who may, notwithstanding, produce a fine thing. But if a man wishes to produce a really great and de- fectless work of art, he wiU have to obey certain fundamental laws. Let us discuss ten of these laws.

The First law of composition is this: If we wish to make a Picturesque work of art we must introduce a lot of angular lines and masses, accompanied by a certain disorder which — because the angular lines shock and jostle about the eye — arouse in us emotions bordering on Mirth of various degrees.

The Second law is : If we wish to produce a Graceful work, we must use a lot of serpentine lines, accompanied by Order. The graceful lines, stir oxir emotions of delight, by cradling our eyes back and forth, in a pleasing, delight-giving way.

The Third law is: If we wish to produce a Sublime or monu- mental work of art, we must use pyramidal lines and masses, accompanied by Order. The chief power of the Sub-

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lime is to emotion us into a state of awe, our highest possible emotion. This depends, we repeat, principally upon the arrangement of the lines and masses in a pyramidal or triangular manner. This arrangement, at first draws the eyes rapidly, from the lower angles of the pyramid up to its apex, and finally, they are forced up beyond the apex into the Infinite. It is this up- ward projecting power of a pyramidal mass, which gives to a work, so arranged, that monumental quality which we find in a sublime mountain, like the Matterhorn, and which lifts us heavenward, whether we will or no. It dominates us. Color can only help this lifting power, but, alone, cannot so affect us.

Besides, this pyramidal design, in addition to the power of lifting the mind to the apex of the pyramid and forcing it be- yond the triangle, has another quality: that of attracting the mind back to its apex, no matter in what other direction the mind may wish to wander. Hence, whenever this pyramidal- ization is omitted in a picture, the mind wanders about, aim- lessly, in a sort of maze, which is the reverse of awe-inspiring or high-emotion-stirring.

For a complete exposition of these three laws, see our chap- ter on “What is Beauty? ” A fine example of the effect, of the omission of the pyramidalization we spoke of is: Breughel’s picture of “Christ Bearing the Cross” Fig. 85. Here we observe an absence of all triangulation, and therefore also of concentration of interest. The result is : that we are merely in- tellectually interested in certain parts of the picture. It does not vigorously stir your emotions, to a high degree of delight, or awe. We wander about in the pictiure, as in an auction house ; we are not compelled to do anything, we are not dominated, as we always are by a pyramidal mass or moimtain, and we love the domination of a reposeful power.

In this picture the composition is very childish. It is a puzzle. When our boy saw this picture he asked : ‘ ‘ But where is Christ and the Cross? ” This work has some fine color in it, and some clever painting, but it is certainly not a sublime crea- tion. Its ineffectiveness, is due entirely to its lack of concen- tration of interest.

The Fourth law is: Unity of Subject. That is — there must not be two or more pictures, or subjects, in one work. In Memling’s “Passion” Fig. 86 we have an example of Jour-

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teen pictures in one. It is a mere citrio. Because the mind, affronted by so many pictures, with such a Macaroni of small figures, has its attention, instead of focussed and economized, so scattered, that it wanders about in a jungle, and the soul is not lifted and emotioned, because the picture, being more like a puzzling panorama, turns the most solemn epic in history into an almost comic performance.

The Fifth law is: Concentration of Effects. That is: every work of art, to be a success, must have a central point of interest. Whatever helps to direct the eye to that central point of inter- est, is good; and whatever tends to draw the mind away from that central point, is bad, and must be suppressed. The cen- tral point of every single statue is the face, and the central point of every composition of several figures is the main figure.

A brilliant example of the violation of this law, is furnished by Velasquez’s “Sturender of Breda ” Fig. 87. Here we have a scene, in which a very important act is being performed : Justin Nassau, the defender of Breda, is surrendering the keys of the city to the Marquis of Spinola, the Spanish general. On one side, are the Spaniards and on the other, the Dutch generals. This act is so important, that it is certain that the curiosity, innate in human nature, would have forced every spectator at that scene, to rivet his eyes on the two central figures; occasion and action were too important for this not to have occurred. But, what did Velasquez do? He put twenty-two spectators in the picture, only six of whom may be said to be looking, even in the direction, of the main actors in the drama ! and only four of them look directly at the centre of interest, while three of these four are in profile and in shadow. So that, in reality, only one man of the whole twenty-two, is looking intently at the main actors in the great drama !

Hence, as a composition, it is faulty. Most of the men, in- stead of looking at General Spinola and listening to what he is saying, as would surely have occurred in real life, are looking out of the pictture as if being photographed; as if afraid of fail- ing to have their faces, with their best expression, in the pic- ture. The result is, that Spinola, the victor, and main object in the picture, to celebrate whom the picture was painted, does not at all dominate the scene, to the degree that a great work of art demands. This purpose, as Taine truly says in his

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definition of art, is; to “manifest some essential or salient, therefore important, idea, more clearly and more completely than do real objects.” Velasquez did not manifest Spinola and Justin more completely than they would have appeared in real life. On the contrary, he made them even less manifest, less prominent, than they must have appeared in real life. In fact, we must almost seek for the main actors in the picture. Hence, the whole composition, and point of view, are faulty — even if Velasquez intended the rest of the heads to be merely portraits.

Since the reader may think us narrow, in quoting this law, as laid down by Taine, we will quote the same thing from Van Dyke;

Perhaps the most reasonable of all the laws of composition is the oldest of them all ; the law of special prominence, which requires the predominance of one or more leading objects at the expense of all the other objects in the picture.

Velasquez’s composition is original and bold, and the paint- ing, as painting, very fine. But, this scattering of the specta- tor’s attention, in all directions, away from the centre of inter- est and dominating motive of the picture, is a defect so great that it takes the picture out of the category of perfectly com- posed works of art. For it destroys one of the fundamental aims of all truly great composition in art — repose, and unity.

What saves the picture, is the splendid group in the centre, which can best be appreciated by laying a piece of paper across both ends of the picture, so as to cut off the disturbing ele- ments. The Castilian benignancy with which Spinola puts his hand on Justin’s shoulder, in refusing to accept the keys of the city, and leans forward, as if to say to a brave fellow-soldier, whom he has been ordered by his king to defeat, at the chess game of war; “I am sorry, old fellow, that I have won; but I trust we will still be good friends,” is a masterpiece of expres- sion, and in this respect one of the greatest pieces of work Velasquez ever did. Had he not marred his picture by ignor- ing the law ; of convergence of lines and effects, he would have produced one of the world’s greatest masterpieces.

Turn now to the “Coronation of Napoleon,” Fig. 88, an immense picture, with many heads, by David, not nearly so clever a “painter” as Velasquez, but a much greater composer.

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even though he is foolishly derided by modernist critics. Notice how easily Napoleon dominates the crowd, how every- thing is made subordinate to him. Notice too, that every face and every glance in the immense throng, is directed to Na- poleon, as he crowns Josephine. This is^ exactly what would happen in real life. The “painting” in this picture, is not nearly as brilliant and clever as in Velasquez’s picture ; but how much more truly is the subject expressed than in the ‘ ‘ Siurender of Breda.” As “paint,” it is inferior to Velasquez’s, but as emotion-stirring art, it is superior, since the painting in the pictiure is adequate for the purpose in view, and the composi- tion, drawing and expression are fine.

Since the object of every work of art — poem, statue or painting — is : to express some dominant idea, in the most effec- tive manner possible, it follows : that whatsoever in a work of art helps this dominance and attraction of the main idea, is good, and whatsoever hinders that dominating attractive power, is bad. That is the main and ftmdamental law of all successful composition.

The Sixth law is: balance of masses. This law demands that there should be a balance of masses throughout a work of art, so that no part of the picture or statue or poem or drama be without interest. This also for — repose.

The Seventh law is: clearness of meaning. In merely imitative or decorative art, clearness is rarely lacking; but, where obscurity is apt to enter is, in illustrative 'and allegoric, above all in symbolic art. When an artist aims to symbolize something, and does it in forms and attitudes and groupings so strange and imclear, that no one can read the symbol, the whole work becomes meaningless. When we talk in Runic rhymes, the hearer becomes at first anxious, then bewildered, and finally exasperated. This is so obvious, that it is amazing that some modernistic artists, especially in painting and sculp- ture, produce works which are, and will ever be, beyond the comprehension of even the most cultured people, unless an en- cyclopaedic explanation be tacked on each group or figure. And even then the symbolism is not satisfactory, or even true, to any one but the artist who made it — ^who, therefore, forever remains misunderstood, and his work worthy only of the scrap- pile, as far as the public is concerned.

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As an illustration of our meaning; look at the work of the early Flemish painter Bosch, Fig. 89. What a strange hodge- podge of angels and sea animals it is ! At first view it looks like a nightmare. But, if we have the time to study it, we will find that it is the “Fall of the Damned.” Here the condemned sinners are first changed into sea monsters and then chased about by angels and the subject, in Bosch’s hands, becomes an absurdity.

Now look at Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgment,” Fig. 90 where we have practically the same idea— the “Fall of the Damned” expressed on one side. Notice how orderly the composition is, in spite of the number of figures. Notice the attitude of horror and despair of the really falling figures and, above all, the air of grandeur and tragedy permeating the whole picture. Angelo shows us human figures falling into hell, after being rejected by Christ. Bosch shows us men changed into fish, octopuses, frogs, etc., utterly missing his chance to portray the horror in the souls of the damned, and so, utterly failing to stir the emotions of fear in the breasts of his contempo- raries. The significance of the story thus becomes so cryptic that, when it is finally made out, it no longer emotions us. We see here an indication of the infantile state of mind of some of the Dutch artists of that epoch, whilst Angelo’s is a higher in- tellectual performance and also reflects the high degree of men- tal culture of the Italians of his epoch. Bosch’s picture shows a coloring which is perhaps charming as a whole, but it is bad composition, bad thinking, bad arrangement, and bad drawing.

Clarity of symbolism is of supreme importance in a work of art, and is almost entirely the result of composition.

The Eighth law is; Simplicity. Simplicity does not mean having few objects in a work of art, but it means the exclusion of ever3rthing unnecessary, beyond the adequate expression of the main idea of the subject. That obtained, every additional element is a diluting element, which weakens the force of the expression. For example; If we examine a picture of “The Last Supper” by Leonardo, Fig. 97, we will see the simplicity and power of the whole scene, and the utter absence of every- thing not needed to express the subject. Then, if we look at Tintoretto’s picture of the same subject, Fig. 95, we see how he has over-crowded it with figures in the background, angels

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in the air, conflicting figiires in the foreground, a cat climbing into a basket, and different utensils scattered about in a helter- skelter fashion. And what is taking place? Are they eating ? Are they disputing? One man seems to be surprised by the angel imder the ceiling and the other not. The whole thing is a jumble of figures and stuff, complex in motive and utterly inef- fective, as compared with Leonardo’s picture. Fig. 97.

The Ninth great law is: Proportion. Should a man when drawing a human body use a human model, and then copy that model exactly? That would do, if he could always get a PERFECT model to serve his purpose. But, where can a man get a model to serve his purpose of making a head like the “Jupiter Otricoli?” Evidently, to realize a Jupiter or a god- head, he must depart from Nature, by changing the propor- tion of an eye or a nose or a chin or a neck. Or, in the case of the lithe, elegant body of Apollo, or of the really superhtunan goddess, the “Venus de Milo,” he would have to change the length of certain parts of the body — ^make them longer than his model would give them, or trim off the hip, or calf, or feet.

Now, how much should an artist be allowed to change the proportions of line, mass, form, color, etc. ? Evidently to the extent needed to realize and express the chief characteristics of the personage or subject that he wishes to express, and with sufficient force to make us feel that thus might Hercules have looked; thus Moses might have spoken. But such considera- tions belong entirely to ideal art. On this fine sense of the proper proportions, in all things, depends, finally, aU the Style and most of the Beauty and expression of any work of art.

Style, as we said before, is a departure from nature. But if any departure from exact nature is overdone, it shocks us, and while it may startle us, it is not beautiful. We admire a Moderate amount of disproportion, but we do not want an overexaggerated disproportion. To change proportions, with- out shocking us, is the secret of aU good proportion and of all good style.

The Tenth law is ; Harmony. By harmony, the entire com- position is brought into a happy relation of parts — of lines, masses, colors, light and shade, — so that nothing shocks, how- ever strong or brilliant the work may be, in color or composition. Then everything is in the right place, in tone and in “value.”

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These Ten Laws may be called the “Ten Commandments of Composition.” As they are followed, or violated, the result will be great, or trivial. The more perfectly these ten com- mandments are followed, the more surely will it result in pro- ducing that higher charm — repose.

That is the great secret of the perennial charm of nearly all of Raphael’s works. Even his “Transfiguration,” Fig. 136, though all the figures are in motion, is full of a serene re- pose. The result is that, though we may see it a thousand times, it never tires or annoys us. This is also true of the “Sistine Madonna,’’ and others we could mention.

Of course, when we are face to face with only charming, or amusing, or interesting things, which enter into the class of the picturesque and the trivial, with which Modernistic art is mostly concerned, be they glad or sad, comic or tragic, genre or historical, merely portraits or landscapes, in which mere “brush-work” is aimed at, then there is neither law nor rule to be mentioned or discussed.

CHAPTER IX

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Section Three Expression

Appeared in the April 1917, issue of “The Art World”

We now come to the consideration of the third element of art power— Expression.

All art may be roughly divided into Decorative and Ex- pressive. Decorative art concerns itself principally with the expression of sensuous Beauty alone. Expressive art concerns itself with the expression of sensuous beauty — ^plus Ideas, Sentiments, Feelings, etc.

A truly accomplished artist, when he has chosen his subject for an expressive work of art, which usually involves figures, always expresses three things :

First, he expresses those actions or emotions which each and every figure in his composition is supposed to express, both in the movement of the body and in the expression of the features. For instance : if a man is going to express Pride in a stg,tue, he should not end by expressing Contempt, as there is a profoimd difference between pride and contempt. If the total action of the subject demands the expression of pride, that alone should be expressed. We caU this expressiveness of the individual figures Primary expression. This primary expres- sion is consciously and deliberately produced.

Second, the great artist will express in a work, as a whole, not only the requisite expression on the faces of the individual figures, but the spirit of the action or thought which the entire picture is supposed to express, like the picture of “Peace,” by Puvis de Chavannes, in the Museum at Amiens, illustrated in the March number of the magazine. Fig. 91, in which each

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figtire expresses peace, but in which the work, as a whole, also expresses peace: through its composition, tone of color, light and shade, its idealism of form, or its style. We call this ex- pressiveness of the work, as a whole. Secondary expression. This may be consciously or unconsciously produced.

Third, in every one of his works, the artist — if he be true to himself and does not imitate either some master or the preva- lent style and manner of his epoch — will express himself, his temperament, the fundamental quality of his soul, be it fine or coarse, noble or base. He will do this unconsciously, at any rate. But he may also do this consciously and deliberately — by inventing a so-called “temperamental manner.’’ This we call Tertiary expression. And, if the artist, we repeat, is true to his own intuitions, he will execute that composition with a personal flavor different from that of any man on earth, because every tree, animal or man has a particular type or char- acter of its own, that separates him, or it, from other in- dividuals.

Now, when an artist aims to express any subject, the main thing to do is : to render its essential characteristic. Silk has a “character’’ of its own. There are endless ways of painting silk, and we care not how different one way of painting it is from others. The essential thing in painting silk is: to make us feel that the painted silk has the essential characteristics of all silk, so that we instantly know that it represents, not wool, but silk. The same is true of an Oak. When an artist paints an oak tree, the needful thing for us is : not his peculiar way of putting on paint, but the essential character of that tree, as an oak, so that we can tell what kind of a tree we are looking at in his work.

The same thing is true of a character in history, like Jesus. Jesus had a character of his own ; and when we paint Jesus we should, above all things, paint that character with perfect truth — ^both in its physical and spiritual aspects — if we can. Supposing we had no early Byzantine portraits of Jesus, of the fifth century, like those of Ravenna, which represent Him as tradition said he looked, the artist would have to construct, in his imagination, an adequate portrait — adequate to truly express the Essential Character of Jesus, to such a degree at least that the world would be satisfied that such expression is

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truly adequate; and the power of the artist would be measured exactly by the power with which he expressed the essential characteristics of Jesus.

Tradition, had informed the Byzantine artist that Jesus wore medium long hair, divided in the middle, and a medium long beard ; that His nose was straight or faintly aquiline. His eyes rather large, and His skin of a dark brown color. These physical characteristics the Byzantine ^ist showed. But, in the Ravenna mosaics, the spiritual characteristics caimot even be guessed — ^they are so inadequately expressed. Thou- sands of men, from the unknown artists of Ravenna down to Leonardo, a period of about a thousand years, made repre- sentations of Jesus; but none, before Leonardo, ever expressed adequately the essential character of Jesus — ^his physical power, his intellectual elevation, his superhuman personality and, in addition to this, the spiritual mood, which the world feels was the mood Jesus ought to have been in and probably was in, when he said; “Verdy! one of you will betray me this night!” See Fig. 92. This is a pastel, a study by Leonardo, for his “Last Supper,” in Milan. To make a head as expressive as this, takes a larger and higher combination of mental and spiritual factdties than to simply paint a man having the physi- cal characteristics of Jesus, as shown in the inexpressive Ravenna portraits. Hence, the high rank, as an art power, that we must accord to the power of adequately expressing anything, above all, spiritual things !

Again, five of the greatest artists of the Renaissance chose to represent the “Last Supper,” viz.: Ghirlandajo, Raphael, Leonardo, Del Sarto, and Tintoretto. When we analyze the pictures by these five, we find that Ghirlandajo, Raphael and Tintoretto missed absolutely the depicting of the main thing which the portrayal of the story demands — ^the outburst of mingled horror and anger that the words of Jesus must have caused. Ghirlandajo, Fig. 93, and Raphael, Fig. 94, show a peaceful, quiet and absolutely insignificant diimer. Nothing is really “happening.” Tintoretto, Fig. 95, shows a boister- ous repast where nothing significant or dramatic is happening. But in Del Sarto’s picture. Fig. 96, we see that he grasped the true sense of the subject of the “Last Supper,” that is — to represent the tumult that followed the declaration of Jesus!

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But Del Sarto’s work is inferior to Leonardo’s, Fig. 97, because the expression of that, which was required to be ex- pressed by the demands of the subject and the highest art, namely the essential character of Jesus and of the disciples as individuals — and of their probable action under the provocative declaration of Jesus — is not only less adequately expressed than in the work by Leonardo, but is entirely inadequate.

To begin with, the head and personality of Jesus is not only not superhuman, it is even weak, while Leonardo’s is strong and superhuman. Secondly, Jesus in Del Sarto’s picture is so unseparate from the disciples that, in a manner, he is merged with the crowd, and so does not dominate the whole scene, to the extent that a complete expression of the subject demands. See how beautifully Leonardo has separated Christ from the disciples! Fig. 97. He has divided them into four separate groups, thus leaving Him a central pyramidal figure, and mak- ing of Him not only the center of the picture but the dominant note, toward which the spectator’s eye returns at all times, in spite of the variety of things that tend to draw the eye to other parts of the picture. This drawing back and forward of the eyes, produces the cradling motion, which we have already de- scribed in our chapter on Beauty, and which lies at the basis of all sensuous beauty. Third, the consternation that Leonardo expressed, with extraordinary adequacy, is lacking in Del Sarto’s picture, which does not represent a dramatic explosion, but merely a gentle intellectual perturbation. Moreover, in Leonardo’s picture, we see such a complete fusion of all the elements into a unified whole — such a marvelous expression of the varied emotions, characters and even personalities, of the different disciples, as indicated by the New Testament — that those who are familiar with the latter can identify the different persons. Thus we have such a wonderful grouping, and move- ment, in each figure and in the whole, that we axe forced to feel, there is nothing to be added or to be taken away, or to be changed. It is finished!

These reasons, not to speak of others — such as the lack in Del Sarto’s picture of the superhuman quality which we look for in the apostles, sanctified and sublimated as they are sup- posed to have become by years of contact with the Son of God; the less happy composition, and the introduction of the two

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disturbing and unnecessary figures in the upper windows — make Del Sarto’s picture, even though it is superior to Ghirl- andajo’s, Raphael’s and Tintoretto’s, still far inferior to that of Leonardo. The rendering of the subject of the “Last Sup- per,’’ by Leonardo’s competitors, scarcely rises higher than “literary illustration,” while Leonardo’s moimts to the level of a great, living, dramatic picture.

All of which again proves that, for a great artist, when him- self greatly emotioned, there is no such thing as a “literary sub- ject.” When he is not exalted and brought to a high emo- tional, creative pitch, in spite of any technical skill — even that of Ghirlandajo, Raphael and Tintoretto combined — ^he can produce nothing but a mediocre work of art. And the world for these reasons has set its seal on the classification we have made.

In Milan, every child knows where to find the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where the mutilated but still won- drous fresco of Leonardo is now jealously guarded by the State; but in Rovezzano, a suburb of Florence, we had to ask several people where to find the fresco by Del Sarto in the church of San Salvi.

What makes the difference in the value of these pictures? Why does Leonardo grandly triumph over aU his competitors, four of them among the greatest artists of all time, and lift him- self here, in this one picture — the greatest work he ever pro- duced — to the equal of the greatest artist the world ever saw? — power of expression, adequate expression of the salient charac- teristics demanded to be expressed by a complete rendering of the possibilities of the subject !

Taine says;

Thus the purpose of a work of art is to render the Essential Char- acter, or at least an important characteristic of the subject, to make it as dominating and also as visible as possible; and, for that, the artist prunes the traits which hide and obscure the characteristic, chooses those which manifest it, corrects those in which it is changed, and reconstructs those in which it is annulled.

And then he gives his definition of a work of Art thus :

The work of art has for its aim the manifestation of some essen- tial or salient character and, therefore, some important idea, more clearly and more completely than they are manifested by real

The j'ri-atost of all “Last Sxippcis/' .in«l one* of the si\ greatest pietnies in the worhl. Profoundly expressing the words of Tesus:

“Verily one of you will betray me this night*”

An example of such perfect and exact drawing, that one does not think of it as drawing. A great work of art, by a much maligned but great artist.

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objects. It accomplishes this by employing an assemblage of parts, bound together, of which it systematically modifies the relations. In the three imitative arts: sculpture, painting and poetry, these ensembles correspond to real objects.

While this is no “definition” of art at all, it is a masterly definition of the process, by which great art is arrived at or pro- duced.

To make this stdl more clear, and to show how an artist, by a systematic modification of the relation of parts, as Taine says, creates a great and expressive work of art, let us refer to the matter of expression of Motion and Emotion.

In his “Meaning of Pictures” John C. Van Dyke says:

A modern athlete in the gymnasium is a very different athlete from those that writhe upon the celling of the Sistine Chapel. Did not Michael Angelo’s imagination see the model abnormally and thus persuade his hand to emphasize all the powerful attributes? The running horse, as seen by the instantaneous camera, is no doubt accurate enough in all respects, save the sense of motion. But he does not run. The camera arrests his flight, holds him poised in air momentarily. But Fromentin’s imagination, as shown in his pictures, saw the horse running, saw him distorted, drawn out in body from head to tail. You know, from the report of the camera, again, how human beings faU through the air, in jumping, diving, plunging; but what a different report you get from Tintoretto’s fall of the damned in his “Last Judgment”! There is a tremendous rain of elongated bodies falling from heaven to hell. The exaggeration of the imagination is here most apparent. But the result is wonderfully effective. We are made to feel that the bodies are really falling.

This is what we call Expression, not camera copying, which is impotent to represent for us the sense of motion, this is the adequate expression of motion, the imagination having called up elongated bodies and so placed them and drawn them, in a slightly exaggerated form, that they convey to us, because of this slight exaggeration, a feeling of motion in the bodies. This is what Taine means by “systematic modification of the rela- tions of parts.” To get the motion, it may be needful to elon- gate the bodies while leaving the rest of the frame exactly as in nature, or it may require a slight lengthening of the legs, while leaving the rest of the body as in nature. When the modifica- tion is done to such a degree merely : that we are aware only of

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the motion, and not of the modifications, we call it adequate em- phasis. When, however, the modification is made to such a degree, that we notice it, the effect of true motion is not reached and we then call it Exaggeration.

This is what we caU Expression in art : to press out, to bring to a clearer view, the things in nature, or in our conceptions and ideas. What is true of life and boddy motion is true of thought and soul emotion. The facial movements, by which we express our spiritual emotions, can not be adequately caught and repre- sented by the camera, as photographs of simulations of the emotions such as rage, hate, joy and laughter, prove. Only a great artist, can so wisely emphasize in a work of art the move- ments of our facial muscles as to make the human face ade- quately express the emotions of the soul. That is why a great work of art will always be superior to the most skilful photo- graph.

So far we have dealt only with Primary Expression, with that phase, namely, by which it is easy to see what ideas or emo- tions the artist aimed to express: by direct methods of drawing and modeling, in the bodies and faces of his figures.

Let us now speak of Secondary Expression, of the expres- sion of a work as a whole, through its General Tone and char- acter and the spirit that radiates from it. This is, usually, not perceived in a work upon a first inspection of it, whether the work be in poetry, music, painting or sculpture.

When we carefully look at the “Sistine Madonna,” by Raphael, we notice: not only do the faces of the Madonna and of the Christ chUd look spiritual and supra-human, but all the figures have a something spiritual and supra-human about them; in addition thereto: the whole atmosphere of the picture has something super-mundane about it. Independent of its parts, the picture as a whole seems to radiate spirituality. This cumulative and general expression of the entire work, as dis- tinguished from the partial and particular expression of the parts of the work, we call Secondary Expression, Fig. 103.

In his really interesting book just mentioned “The Mean- ing of Pictures,” Mr. Van Dyke has a chapter on ‘‘Pictorial Poetry,” in which he admirably suggests this element of second- ary expression : of spirit, character and feeling, by the suggestion an artist may make of things that can not be expressed in the

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parts of a work, either in words, sound or paint. He shows that, in reading Shakespeare’s “Lear,” for example, we feel a whole world of sadness that seems to fill the spaces between the lines, and to ooze out of the very type and pervade the whole play. And so, from Fra Angelico’s conventionally drawn and often primitively colored angels, there radiates a sense, an aroma of religious feeling which we feel more than we see in them, when compared with more ambitious pictures. And about Wagner’s music he says:

Consider once again Wagner’s “ Gotterdammerung ” ! How would it be possible to tell with musical notes all the tragic power that lies in that opera? What he did was: to summon up a roman- tic mood of mind by contemplating the theme in his imagination, and then to suggest by the choice of motives and orchestration the immense passion of the story. By following the orchestration rather than the individual singers — ^that is the whole rather than the parts — you can feel in the different motifs the poetry of that heroic age, the glorious achievements, the sad passing, the mournful sun- set, the fading into oblivion of those who ruled the beautiful world. If you cannot /ee/ the mystery of the sadness, the splendor of it all, I am afraid it argues some want of music and romance in your soul, rather than a want of poetry in the opera.

The feeling is there; it is the last thing perhaps to be recognized by the student of music, and yet it is the one thing above all others that has made Wagner a great poet. He could suggest more than he could describe, and because he suggests and does not describe, is one reason why he is, at first, so difficult to understand.

We have quoted this entire page because it is one of the best things in a good book. And it puts into clear language what we mean by Secondary in contradistinction to Primary Expression.

Now as to Tertiary Expression. After the Conscious ex- pression by the artist : of the essential characteristics of parts of a picture and of the picture as a whole, comes the unconscious expression — of the Personality or Character of the artist him- sehf, as an essential part of a great work of art. And here we come again to the great question of “individualism.”

Let us say, first of all, that we are not opposed to “In- dividuality” in art, since it is an integral part of aU truly great art. But we shall try to show its rational limits. We have a lot of photographers today, who combine science and taste

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to such a degree, as to almost justify that contradiction in terms : art-photographers. Suppose one of these photographers were to find a suitable hall, and place in it a table, and seat round it thirteen of the greatest actors in the world, and have them act out that explosion of feeling in the “Last Supper,” which, logically, must have followed the declaration of Jesus: “Verily, I say unto you, one of you will this night betray me!” and then photograph them. The effect, perhaps, would be, a very interesting photograph. But it would be utterly mechan- ical, utterly inadequate as an expression and, in addition, it would lack that human quality which tells us, it was made by the hand of man. And it would not be a record of the activity of the intellectual faculties of some one great man.

Not only do we fiee monotony — because it kiUs — but we seek novelty and surprises, as often as possible. Even a dis- agreeable surprise is relished, retrospectively, when we return to an agreeable condition. But, nothing gives us so much joy as a truly agreeable surprise. That is the secret of our love of beautiful art. In the first place: we are sixrprised by the beauty and power of a work of art, then by its originality. Finally, when we have drunk sufficiently of this surprising beauty, we get an additional joy in marveling, over the extra- ordinary combination of artistic faculties which enabled the artist to produce it. But we do not concern ourselves about this until after we have been surprised and emotioned by the work itself !

Veron made a great mistake when he said :

If we give ourselves the trouble to analyze the exclamations and criticisms of the crowd which visits the museiims on Sunday, we will recognize that, at bottom, and in spite of the forms of their judgment, that which they admire or censure is truly not the more of less exactitude of the imitation, but the greater or less talent they attribute to the authors of these representations. The picture or statue is nothing but the point of departure, and the opportunity for their being emotioned, and this admiration can always be resumed in this: “What talent it must have taken to produce such a work of art!” and the following: “We can dig and analyze all we like, at the bottom of this admiration we will find nothing else. Whether we wish it or not, that which we praise is not the work, but the workman.”

A little reflection will convince that this is an excitation to

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mediocre artists, to all artists in fact, to principally aim to ex- press their “personality” as craftsmen instead of creative poets in art. Later, as we shall see, he expressed ideas totally at variance with this idea. We deny this idea.

In the first place this is not true. We never begin to think about the artist of any work, we repeat, until after we have been conquered, by the work itself ; and second, it is not true that the only thing which we praise is the workman, and not the work. The fact is, most people of the great public do not think of the artist at all, at first, nor of his talent. To them, a work of art is at first an utterly impersonal affair. It is only long after they have been charmed or captivated by the work, that they become interested in the true personality of the artist, or his methods of working, or his character as a man. We love to discover, that the man who made a great work of art, which we love, was a great man, at least at the moment when he was dominated so completely by his subject as to have become a docile tool in the hands of some mysterious power which worked through him. Hence, we often pardon the fail- ings of men of genius — even though we should not — in the presence of those works which they engendered, in moments of exalted emotion and creative activity. When then we learn that the artist was consistently a decent, manly man, as were Titian, Raphael and Michael Angelo, with no radical vices, we make of them our spiritual companions and love them more and more. But, let it not be forgotten, that the most impor- tant thing to express in'a work of great art is the essential and salient characteristics of the subject or idea; and that, if we also care to see it expressed in a personal manner, that personal manner, whether it be modest or striking, must first of all be genuine, and it must be original with the artist ; for the imitat- ing of any other artist in style or manner is not great art at aU and is a hypocritical act !

Finally, this tertiary expression, of the “accent,” of the “per- sonality” of an artist, should enter into his work uncon- sciously. He should not be so eagerly bent on stamping his personality on his works, as to induce him to choose even an ugly subject or an immoral one: merely as a pretext for express- ing, in a flamboyant way, his personality or manner and so, fall into an absurd extreme, which perhaps, at first, is the result

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merely of impetuosity, but is, finally, resolved into a new philosophy of art, as has been the case with the modernists and their followers, in their “deformation of the form.” For, by attracting attention only to the tertiary expression, of the per- sonality of the artist and his tricks of technique, the artist draws his spectator away from the essential thing in any work of art— the adequate primary expression of the salient and es- sential characteristic of the subject of that work, and of the secondary or total expression of the work as a whole, and so produces a negation of great art.

We will close this chapter by once more quoting from the individualistic Veron. In speaking of the evolution of the different phases of poetic art he says;

These collective products of the race naturally bear the char- acteristics and the sentiments of the race. It is still impersonal art in the sense that it belongs to no poet in particular, it is national art.

After that, is born a new art, or rather a new form of art, which is that of Modem times. Art then becomes self-conscious and above all distinguishes itself from the earlier art. The personality of the artist accentuates itself more and more, and sometimes becomes so exaggerated as to be the very negation of art itself, until it arrives at the fatiguing vanity which substitutes, for the expression of sincere and spontaneous feeling, the selfish preoccupation of the poet long- ing for “success.”

In fact it is not impossible that an artist, born with a disordered and maladive imagination, puts himself thereby beyond the pale of normal conditions and condemns himself, at once, to be misunder- stood by the public. Impressions too personal, eccentricities of feeling, bizarreries of processes and of execution, without taking away the intrinsic value of the inspiration of the work, can impress upon it a character so strong and peculiar that it becomes impos- sible to estimate its merits. The exaggeration of the best qualities changes them into defects. Personality, which, when added to imitation, makes of it a work of art, transforms it into a puzzle — when it is pushed to the extreme of bizarrerie. (Italics are ours.)

Here we see V6ron reversed himself. As shown above he was the champion of “individualism,” and in this chapter he is opposed to it, as a distinct aim in art.

The main thing, for an artist, working in “expressive” art, is : to “get it over to the public,” as they say in the theater. The

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dramatist is as much concerned with “parading his "person- ality” before the public as a poet, painter or sculptor, but he never obtrudes it, when he stages his play, between the public and his drama. He hides behind the curtain until he has “put over to the public” the emotions, either of laughter or tears, with which he wishes to arouse the audience to the pitch that will force it to call him before the curtain. To “get it over the footlights” he will suppress everything in his play that is not as clear as crystal and easily understandable, in order to “economize the attention,” as Herbert Spencer says, of the audience. When any peculiarities of language or action were not clear and quick-acting on the emotions of his cook — -(to whom he read most of his plays first) — they were suppressed by Moliere. That suppression did not denude his immortal comedies of his real personality.

What is true of the drama is true of poetry. Homer is read universally, because of the clarity and lack of exaggerated “personality” in his work. We need no “Homer Clubs” to expound the “ Iliad.” But Browning so forced the “personal note” as to engender Browning Clubs — now about all dead — to explain him and his works. Hence, most of those works of his which needed explaining are disappearing down the wind and will be forgotten as time goes on, and by-and-by we will have expurgated editions of his poems.

Why should not the same law hold good in sculpture and painting? The painter who is so ego-maniacal as to care more for the parading of his “personality” and “temperament” than the stirring of the emotions of the public, by expressing his subject, should never go beyond the purely decorative arts. There, is the proper field for “showing off” his clever “chic,” artistry and “technique,” his novelty of invention and pecu- liarity of manner. In purely Decorative art, we rather welcome such an exhibition of variety and self-revelation. But in Ex- pressive art, we must have the chosen subject so respected, and so adequately expressed, so devoid of ail peculiarities of lan- guage, of form, or technique, that we do not think of those things — until after we have been truly emotioned by the work.

So many artists, early in life, become lost and so obsessed with the foolish idea that the manifestation of a personal tech- nique is the first and main thing in art, that they never learn

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that the fundamental law of aU great and enduring arc is; ‘ ‘ Suppress your ego ! ’ ’

Every artist, is already an art personality — merely by virtue of having enough love for art to devote the energies of his life to it ; for, it is a path in which there is small chance of gain, as compared with other avenues of activity. And, as nature never makes two men exactly alike, by virtue of that law alone, he is already an originality, a personality; and the more true he is to himself, the more will he accentuate that personality.

And the best way for an artist, in expressive art, to lose this individuality is : to constantly think about it ; while to for- get it, is not only the best way of preserving it, but of enlarging it and stamping it on his work. Jesus said; “He that loseth his life shall find it.” Hence, the best way for an artist to in- crease the evidence of his being a truly strong and markedly original personality is: to think only of one thing : to make the most original, the noblest and the most beautiful work of art he can, out of every subject he dares to handle; not to please the critics or dilettanti, or to sell his stuff ; nor to get the ap- plause of his fellow artist for a few years — all of which he should ignore — but to delight the public, to lift us to the sub- lime, or to lead mankind upward, if ever so little, across the ages! Not by self-seeking and the using of his fellow-men-as a means to notoriety, but by self-forgetting and grandly serv- ing the race will he reach a durable place in the hearts of man- kind, the only ambition worthy of a real man !

Thus, his personality will ooze out of him into his work, tui- consciously, and then radiate from his work like the perfume of a rose, and the loftier his aim, the nobler he becomes in soul, the more skilful he becomes in the using of his tools, the more will that personal “touch,” individual manner, and originality of style become striking and be expressed in all his work. As Renan said:

The qualities which make good writers are the same as those which make good Saints. Self-love and the anxiety to .shine are capital defects, be it a question of religious morality or be it a ques- tion of elocution. Forgetting oneself, the contempt of mere suc- cess, are the rules for salvation in all kinds of art.

Finally — though it shoxdd be hardly needed — we will say:

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an artist must not go to the other extreme. When an artist thinks too much of his “thought,” idea or sentiment; is too mueh bent on expressing and on driving home the importance of his religious or social sermon, to the neglect of the six elements of art power that we are considering, he falls into the bog of incomplete art, like that of Hogarth and Blake in England; or Orcagna and Giotto in Italy, Wierz of Belgium, of Cornelius of Bavaria and of most of the early Flemish and Dutch artists. If we must choose between a thoughtless decoration, full of su- preme artistic power and beauty, and an uncouth, childish, weak expression of supreme spirituality, we will choose the former and so will the world, in the long run — provided the decoration is clean in spirit. For, in art, goodness and truth without Power and Beauty, have no value of any kind. While many works become sacred alone through their Beauty.

See the incompleteness of expression of the subject, in the “Last Supper,” by Giotto, Fig. 98. Compared with that of Leonardo, painted about 175 years later, it falls far short of the possibilities offered by the subject, although superior to the work by Tintoretto, Fig. 95.

But, while this is true, it is more true that something be- sides mere Form must be expressed. “For the essence of all artistic beauty is Expression, which cannot be when there is really nothing to be expressed.” And therefore the third ele- ment of art power — Expression, is the most important of all. That is to say — other things being equal, that is the greatest work of art in which we find the most adequate and profound Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Expression.

CHAPTER X

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Section Four Drawing

Appeared in the May, IQ17, issue of “The Art World”

The fourth most important element of Art power is — Drawing. This may appear a contradiction, but it is not.

Whenever a charlatan in the world of art wishes to adopt some fresh “pose,” or “put over” on the public some new and weird “ism,” for the sake of exploiting the public, to make money, he will choose some element of art and say that it is the cornerstone and foundation of all art and beat the big bass drum to advertise it, into acceptance by the weak-minded. One will say that color is more important than drawing; another that the showing of the blue undertone in shadows or “broken color,” is the most vital; another that the deformation of the form” or stylization is the essential thing. One will say “in- terpretation” is the main thing; another that imitation is all that there is to art.

The question whether, in the presentation, in any work of art, of objects in nature, the artist should imitate, stylize, or interpret, is childish. For he should do neither of these ex- clusively and do all of them inclusively.

We cannot represent or express anything without more or less imitating the form of the thing represented or expressed. The question is — how closeiy should we imitate? The answer is: Closely enough to show that the man or animal or tree represented is a living man, animal or tree. In other words — in the presentation of a tramp or a king we must use as much imitation, stylization and interpretation as is necessary to ade-

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quately express the idea and essential character of a living tramp or king. To do this — in a manner that will appeal to normal mankind across the centuries, — we should perhaps need about 95 per cent, imitation, 3 per cent, stylization and 2 per cent, interpretation.

We care nothing for your charlatanistic “interpretation” of a tree. When you show us a picture of a tree, and tell us that it represents an oak tree, before buying your picture, we want to feel that it is an oak tree and not any old kind of a tree. And, when you do render the essential character of the oak, we do not care what peculiar kind of “technique” or brush work you used. For, if we buy your picture, we will feel that we have our money’s worth, in having a living repre- sentation of a living thing in nature, and be happy in not having been buncoed by your palming off on us a nondescript thing that looks more like an ill-used feather-duster than an oak. That is to say; imitation — not absolute but sufficient — is the fundamental element in all art. Now, to imitate anything we must resort to drawing.

From the standpoint of execution, of the rendering of an idea, in a work of art, drawing is of the first importance. But, from the standpoint of the function of a work of art, i. e., the stirring of human emotion, it is of less importance than Con- ception, Composition and Expression. Because the beauty of a work depends upon the elevation of the conception, the beauty of its composition and the profundity of the expression. Nothing is of importance until these three elements have been decided upon. Therefore, drawing comes after these in im- portance, as an art power. But then, when the execution of the work begins, drawing becomes of the first importance. This is what many “color cranks” deny.

An artist, speaking of another artist, who is known as a “colorist” of the “Impressionistic” school, said;

It does look as though some day the esteemed and sincerely S5mipathetic layman may reach the other, more delectable, point of view; that realm of enchantment, where all other delights in painting fade away, and one at last realizes that COLOR — is the all in all, the Alpha and Omega of art.

Nothing more fatuous than this statement.

In opposition to this the eminent French writer Charles

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Blanc, said: “Drawing is superior to color — because with draw- ing we can express, without color, all otu: thought.” The pro- position is so self-evident that it is amazing that any man who has given the question any study should doubt it for a moment. And Ingres, was entirely correct when he said:

Le Dessin c'est la probite de Part. Drawing is the integrity of art. Because, without correct drawing it is impossible to profoundly express anything in art — be it movement in a body, or emotion on a face, or expression in a hand.

There is no thought or idea that cannot be expressed in black and white with a lead-pencil. The addition of color is absolutely unessential. Though, of course, it is an additional beauty. Hence the talk of the superiority of color over draw- ing is childish.

There are, in painting, two ways of drawing : Ftrst, to make an outline drawing, and then fill in the outline with paint. This was the usual way of drawing followed by the early Italian masters — Cimabue, Giotto, etc. We see an example of this in a head by Melozzo da Forli, Fig. 99. Notice the en- circling line about the head of the Angel. This has the effect of holding the mind from quickly going aroxmd and back of the form. It is unnatural, because we do not see that in nature. But Melozzo ’s way of drawing was the way in which the early, incomplete artists would naturally draw, because we love to make lines of limitation, maps of things; we seek definitions and precision. Hence we do admire, at least momentarily, all excellent and precise limitation. But artists discovered, later, that precise limitations could be obtained without hard out- line drawing.

There are, generally speaking, three different ways of mak- ing a line: — First, over-detailed and finicky; second, over- simple and blocky; third, broad and rational — in which details are subordinated to the ensemble, as the general character of the work may demand. For instance, such a beautiful little figure as Bouguereau’s “Cupid Captive”, Fig. lOO, requires correct drawing of the whole body, with exquisite detail; while a large fresco by Michsel Angelo like his “Creation”, see Pig. loi, requires a kind of drawing in which details are subordinate to the large silhouette. The main thing in either case is that the drawing shotild be of such a character that it will not attract

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special attention to itself. This is done by exactitude of draw- ing — not mechanical drawing — first of the whole figure and then of the details.

As we said before, while there are lines in nature, we see but few, and what we call lines are, generally, only the contours of objects, or the limits between spots of color. But nature seems to hate straight lines, nearly as much as she does a vacuum, al- ways seeking the curve. So we see few straight lines in nature, and when we do, we see them broken. Examine the edge of a razor with a microscope, and you will find the line like a saw’s teeth — broken. The straight lines of a pine-tree’s trunk, are broken by the projecting branches. Therefore, we do not see rigid, sharp lines in nature — ^all is softened. We see sharp edges only in things mechanically made by man. Hence, in all art, too many straight lines and too much sharpness of line, should be avoided, by unnoticeably breaking the lines; if this is not done, then lines will become more hard and insistent than in nature, and so attract too much attention to themselves, as lines. Per contra, if the line is broken awkwardly or care- lessly or coarsely, so that we notice the breaking, that again attracts attention to itself and so, again, is bad.

For example, some of the drawing in de Chavannes’s fresco, in the Pantheon at Paris, notably the boots of the peasant to the left, Fig. 102, these forms are so blocky or woodeny, that they look as if they had been hewn with an axe. This kind of drawing, is a blemish on a masterpiece of figure and color composition. Why he, who had so finely drawn his figures in his splendid decorations “Peace’ and “War,” at Amiens, should draw this one in so “primitive” a manner is a mystery.

If now you examine Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna”, Fig. 103, you will find drawing that harmonizes with the subject, and that does not draw attention to itself, by any peculiarity.

In a painting, we should scarcely be aware that a figure is drawn at all. It should rather appear to have been simply colored, so that, instead of the mind, being hemmed in by a confining line, it should play over the surface and easily slip around the form. That is the best kind of drawing, because it aids instead of hindering the effective expression of the main idea of the work. Such drawing as this, is so difficult, that

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few men master it completely. Most of the drawing, of even some of the greatest colorists, is defective, either in the general outline or in details. We can pick out such faults in the works of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Titian. Therefore, because drawing is so difficult, many artists — ^because impatient of reaching their effects in the expression of ideas— slur their drawing, and pay more attention to color. Drawing has thus gradually come to be looked upon by many cheap artists as of secondary importance. This is aU upside down !

All men love correct drawing. This love is based on two foundation faculties of the soul’s love of imitation and of pre- cision. Not only does the child grow by imitating its parents and fellows, but it spends much surplus energy in a lively ad- miration for anything well imitated, and things can only be imitated by drawing them. After imitation, we love pre- cision. Moreover the precision, the clearness, hence obvious- ness, of all the forms of Classic art, is the very cause of its triumph across so many centuries. Says Ruskin :

Speaking with strict propriety, therefore, we should call a man a great painter only as he excels in precision and force, in the lan- guage of lines, and a great versifier is he who excels in precision and force in the language of words.

But, while we admire closely imitated things, we do not love them for long, vmless they also radiate poetry; because they lack that kind of mystery, which we actually do like, which is needful in great art, and which we may caU — transparent mystery or obvious mystery. We like this transparent mys- tery very much, as we do the silver light of the moon or the in- cense-laden light of a cathedral, through which we can see, and beneath which we know are forms of precision. We love these half-mysteries because they create in us states of revery, in which we easily stray off into dreamland and the faraway castles in Spain, there to find rest and recreation ; but above all because these half-mysteries suggest to us, the larger mysteries of the tmiverse, into which we are fascinated to project oiu- selves, to be cradled on the infinite deeps of Space and Time — the most alluring mysteries of aU.

But we never for a moment forget the need of the strength and force rmderlying all precision, which always appears to us as a manifestation of intellectual power. That is why we love

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a fine piece of cabinet work, an exquisite Japanese lacquer box, or a Parthenon, in which the lines and joints and edges arc so fine and sharp and precise as to rouse us to marvel how men could possibly work with such wonderful precision. Most of our enjoyment of painting — as mere painting — depends on our love of precision. Take Whistler’s paintings as an example. Since most of them have little beauty of composition, their chief charm is precision of values. To produce his “tone- harmonies,” or values, required rare precision of eye and hand.

We believe Velasquez was the greatest truthful “painter” of the single figure, that the world ever saw — from the stand- point of realism. His figures seem to live and move, even though shown standing stdl. How did he do that — by color? No! It was by drawing. For Velasquez, drawing was of the first importance. Says Beruette, a Spanish artist, whose book on “Velasquez” had the honor of a laudatory preface by Bon- nat, the French painter ;

The “Water Seller of Seville,” the “Buffoons,” and the “Tramps” which he painted, reveal a tendency towards the anal- ogous processes of the classic idealization, they reveal the tendency of the master, aiming to lift himself from the realistic interpretation of individuals, to the expression of the characteristics of the spe- cies or types. Velasquez would not have been able to reach so high a point of idealization if he had not been such an accom- plished draftsman. That is his most salient faculty. We have already made the remark in the presence of every one of his master- pieces — his drawing is always irreproachable. And this quality, which is so difficult and takes so long to acquire, was, so to speak, innate with him.

And again ;

What is it, therefore, that constitutes the essence of his genius? It is, first of all, the constant perfection of his drawing.

Velasquez was not a great “colorist.” Says Beruette;

We cannot include Velasquez among the great colorists, in the strict sense of the word.

An eminent Spanish critic, Sanchez, has said:

Velasquez would be very much less great than he is in reality, if he had the color of Rubens. The color of Rubens is conventional, and the main characteristic of Velasquez, that which constitutes the essence of his genius, that by which he is superior to all other painters, is his sincerity. This remark might be applied to the

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color of other masters beside Rubens, who shine by the brilliance and intensity of their color. Velasquez never had an exuberant palette; he employed only the colors needed to obtain those grad- uated tones where are combined all those shades of gray. And thus he arrived, thanks to the finesse with which he established the relation between the diSerent values, at harmonies of a supreme distinction. It is on account of this quality, rather than on accovmt of his famous “naturalism,” that Velasquez must, to-day, be re- garded as the most original of painters; it is this quaUty which gives him his great influence over contemporary art.

If we reflect upon the foregoing, especially after a long study of his works in the Prado Museum at Madrid, we will con- clude, that the reason why Velasquez was not exuberant in color, like Rubens and some great Italian artists, was; because he had discovered that he did not have the power to handle the riotous color-schemes of Titian, Raphael, Giorgione, and, at the same time, obtain his exactitude of values. As he sought truth, reality rather than poetry, he never succeeded in any of his religious pictures, except in his “The Crucifixion,” a single figure. As complexity of composition of line and of color- scheme is an obstacle to getting exactitude of Values and of Drawing, he reduced his palette to the utmost simplicity and sacrificed brilliance of color to drawing.

But, while his work is wonderful, from the point of view of exactness, it is sometimes imbeautiful, from the non-painter’s point of view. The Salon Carre in the Louvre “sings” with color, the main gallery in the Pitti Palace, and the Tribuna of the Uffizi, in Florence are veritable oratorios of color, warm, stimulating, and lifting in power, while the great Velasquez gal- lery in the Prado of Madrid is a somewhat cold collection of wonderful grays. But, after some days of admiration by the intellect, these leave the soul cold, immoved. Therefore, take from Velasquez’s work his marvellous drawing — his works will fall to a second place in short order.

Per contra, what keeps Delacroix’s fresco of “Apollo” in the Louvre from being in the highest class of art ? Its weakness of drawing. Had Velasquez or Tiepolo drawn the figures, it would be one of the world’s greatest masterpieces of decoration. This weakness of drawing is noticeable in nearly all of Dela- croix’s work. It is the one blight upon it. But it is enough

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modelling by “stippling.” At the proper focal point, from which the picture should be seen, this stippling so melts together that we do not see any technique at all, do not notice any stippling and are not bothered by any brushmarks. Y et she lives.
Shall all painters imitate this manner? No! Painters should never imitate. They should study aU technical pro- cesses but ignore all of them — and be themselves! In Fig. 108, we have a head of “Philip IV” by Velasquez, also a living por- trait. Here we see some touches of paint, put on by one touch of the brush, with a sureness of having the exact color needed that is startling to those who know the full significance of this dexterity.
This is called premier coup — first stroke-painting. That is ; putting on the exact color as to tint, tonal value, and texture, and never touching it again. It is the dexterity required to do this — at one stroke — which so many men emulate and for which they foolishly sacrifice everything else that makes paint- ing at all honorable.
But here we do notice brushwork, yet only to a modest de- gree. It is not so obtrusive as to offensively attract and ab- sorb our attention. Velasquez would have scorned to strive for mere brushmark effects — for the sake of those effects. When he had the likeness, the color, the character — in fine the life in the subject he portrayed — he stopped. Because that is all he wanted! Now, today, the knight of the brush, like Don Quixote, flourishes his brush, for the shadow instead of the sub- stance, and we have egotistic self-parading technique and brushmarks, but no life !
Finally, Fig. 109, we have “The Witch” by Frans Hals, a ‘ ‘ slapped-in ’ ’ sketch, showing lusty brushmarks galore. It is so eloquent of mere brushmarks and paint juggling, that we know that it is nothing but a sketch, since his more serious works are almost completely free from such slap-dash tech- nique. And yet, many “boys who paint” have photographs of this sketch on their studio walls, and they look up to it with a sigh and a prayer that the Almighty will enable them, this side of Paradise, to do some “stimt” as clever as that! Go to any annual exhibition, and you will find a number of painters who have patiently emulated this “Witch ” by Hals, or some equally clever, slap-dash thing, in works commonly conceived, faultily

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composed, and poorly drawn, just to parade, each a different kind, of clever dexterity, one that is only gained in years of striving and often by tears, which slap-dashery they haughtily call “My art!” — ^works that lack profound expression because few men are able, at premier coup slap-dash painting, to model a face so completely as to obtain both very clever technique and also profundity of expression. And such depth of expres- sion as we find in Leonardo’s “Christ” and Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna,” is not possible except through a slow modelling, with a relatively smooth surface painting.
But the most pitiable of the painter “technicians” is the one who, seemingly, does not paint with a brush or even with a palette-knife, but appears to paint with n small trowel, and executes his technical “stunt” by laying on, with admirable, but siUy, patience, small and large dabs of paint, some of which stand out half an inch from the canvas, so that — from the logical focal-point, from which the work should be seen — it looks more like a mass of cracked-straw glued on, and painted over, than a painting. It is true, that, if one retires back- wards fifty feet, this hodge-podge of paints melts together, and seems hke a painted unit. But, that is too far away from the pictime to make it useful in a museum, much less in a private house. It may be more difficult to do this than for a cow to jump over the moon, but scarcely of more use to mankind — being merely a curio in “technique” !
It is reaUy pathetic to see such misapplication of good energy. These men have entirely lost sight of the fundamental aim that alone makes all art admirable — the creation of works beautiful in design and noble in spirit, as well as clever in technique. Each case is a comic tragedy!
No one objects to the making of clever sketches, they al- ways have and always will be made; no one objects to clever biUiard playing or jig-dancing; these all have a place in the scheme of things; but, when painters, of little attainment, rail at great artists and belittle splendid and endiuing works of art, to the bewilderment of the public, only because the works in question are not “techniqued” and slap-dashed to suit them, it is time to insist that cleverness of technique, however admirable, is after all a matter of tertiary consideration in a great work of art.

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Addendxjm
The elevation, by the French art world, of mere personal technique and personal manner of execution, to a higher place than nobility of style and beauty of composition, was the result of a reaction among the Romanticists (1810-1850) against the growing indifference, among many, to perfection of technical execution, because they leaned towards the absurd feeling that, if the subject was fine, technical execution was more or less negligible. Victor Hugo, noting this, laid stress on the need of perfection of technique, above all in its higher sense: involving fine drawing and profound characterisation, be it in a painting, statue or a drama, and, one day, casually latmched the slogan :
“Art for Art!”
This was taken up by the partisans of finished technical- execution, who started a stream of tendency which ran again to the other extreme — of indifference to subject, and of neg- lecting everything but technique, and in all the arts. Finally, Thfeophile Gautier, the high-priest of Art for Art’s Sake, when bitterly attacked, defined this movement thus:
Art for Art’s Sake means, for its adepts, the pursuit of pure beauty — without any other consideration.
On the surface, this seems like a pure pearl of thought. But we shall see, that it laid the foimdation and started a tendency towards the very negation of beauty in art, instead of its creation, and that, fimdamentally, this definition was a poison plant. For, according to Gautier and his followers, “pure beauty” meant not beauty of composition but “beauty of tech- nique” and they taught, that artist, in all the arts, should practise and preach: First: That art has nothing to do with morals in any manner; That an artist may handle any sub- ject, moral, un-moral, or immoral ; and, so long as he expressed that subject with fine and personal technique, or “artistry,” all is well ! Second : That an artist must rejrain from attempt- ing, in any mann er, to shape the conduct of his fellow men, so much so that, in 1866, Flaubert, an Art for Art’s Sake novelist, wrote to George Sand:
I feel an invincible repulsion to putting on paper an5rthing from my heart. I find that a romancer has not the right to express his opinion on anything whatsoever.

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Well, Flaubert, like Baudelaire, belonged to tnat class of geniuses called “demi-fous” by Doctor J. Grasset, the French alienist. How different was Victor Hugo, who tried to shape the life of his people through his romances and poems ! Result ? Flaubert remained a mere wall-flower, while Hugo overthrew the usurper Napoleon!
In other words, according to Gautier : an artist must detach himself, on pain of being called a “duffer,” from all his fellow- men, like a humming bird; be among men but not of them; sipping all the honey his fellow-men sweat for, but having no concern with their cares, troubles, and sufferings; indifferent to contributing his share to the common good: to make this earth a more glorious place to live in! That was equivalent to saying: an artist should be nothing but a parasite, living off his fellows, who are to plow, to dig, to strain and sigh, so that he might disport himself, at their expense, making mean- ingless poem-lettes, Hke Gautier’s own “Enamels and Cam- eos,” a collection of verses as empty of true poetry as dead sea-shells, and which no one reads a second time; or making meaningless, even if refined, “Noctiumes,” like Whistler’s; or licentious “knock-outs,” like Manet; or trivial color-orgies, like Monet; or deformed neurotic statuettes, like Rodin’s. In addition to Gautier’s definition of “Art for Art’s Sake,” Whistler had the impudence to say:
Art (he meant skillful “artistry,” technical dexterity), should be independent of all clap-trap, should stand alone and should appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriot- ism, and the like.
And, speaking of Tintoretto, Veronese, and Velasquez:
No reformers were these great men, no improvers of the ways of others . . . In all this their world was completely severed from that of their fellow-creatures, with whom sentiment is mistaken for poetry.
We will not be too hard on poor “Jimmy,” for his childish flouting of all altruistic sentiments in art. For, he at least, did refrain from producing any im-moral pictimes, among his batch of mostly clever, “exquisite,” trifles. But, how about thac immoral, shallow charlatan, George Moore, gifted with simian nimbleness and a certain literary artistry? Here is

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what he said in his art-for-art’s-sake' fever, and worship of clever “bibelots” of art:
“ Les Palais Nomades” is really a beautiful book, and it is free from all the faults that make an absolute and supreme enjoyment of poetry impossible. For it is, in the first place, free from those pests and parasites of artistic work — ideas. . . . Gustave Kahn took counsel of the past and he has successfully avoided everything that even a hostile critic might be tempted to term an idea, and for this I am grateful. (“ Confessions of a Young Man,” page 230).
We would pardon this infantile gabble of Moore — even though all the truly great works of poetry, from Homer’s “Iliad” to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” live mainly because of their ideas, had he not written, at least one story — ^he may have written more, that is criminally immoral, which has done a deal of harm among our adolescent girls, and which ought to be suppressed, even though it is written with undeniable “art for art’s sake” literary charm, merely as mere writing. And when will our “intelligentsia” on the press, begin kicking an artist out of the world of art: when he uses his talent only for clever, even charming, manipulation of words and phrases simply to promulgate immoral and socially sapping stories?
The logical consequences of this stream of tendency to under- mine the morals of our yoimg women have now arrived. In a recent “Conversation” in [a a New York newspaper, over Manet’s “Breakfast on the Grass,” Fig. 112, a female “critic” contributed this:
Manet’s reputation, as a great painter and landmark in his- tory, calls for no defense of him. (His now declining reputation as a mere painter was never attacked.) But this woman continued: With his morals likewise we should have little to do. . . . If a few of Manet’s pictures offended the ephemeral morality of the middle class of his day, let us not forget to give honor where honor is due and cannot be withheld.
What shall we call a woman, posing as an art critic, and using the words: “middle class morality,” as if there were more than one kind of morality ! Space prevents our quoting more female contemptuous indifference to morality, the highest safe- guard of the well being of the weaker sex, and whose repre- sentatives so blatantly proclaim that they are the “spiritual sex,” some of whom would do well to read Otto Weinniger’s “Sex and Character.”

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But the “fine fleur” of feminine leaning towards the physical Hedonism, which rendered Alexandria the open lupanar of the antique world, we find in this story, printed in a recent clever book on the conception of art, by a genial American, whom we do not wish to wound because of his error. ■ In trying to cotm- teract against the absurdly extreme theory of Tolstoy: that a work of art, is not a work of art : unless it is positively religious, and makes a tmiversal religious appeal, even to a mass of igno- rant moujicks, he goes to the other pitiable extreme by say- ing, page 64:
In defending the writer of “ What is Art” (Tolstoy) from the hailstorm of criticisms which rained about him, his translator, Aylmer Maude, while straightening many a crooked place and setting forth Tolstoy’s evident intention in much clearer and more cleverly chosen phrases than the author, stumbles into a pitfafi which he himself prepared, in striving to justify morality as a prime necessity of art. (But which nobody but Tolstoy ever did!)
He says that, in company with a lady artist, a maiden lady of refinement, he looked over a print collection, published by private subscription, depicting men and women in varied situations in one of the cabinets of a restaurant. The pictures were admirably executed, but owing to their shocking suggestion he could not look at them without ill effects. “But my companion (who prided herself on being an artist) remarked, with conscious superiority, that, from an artist’s point of view, the subject was of no consequence. The pictures being well executed, were artistic, and therefore worthy of her attention and study. Morality, she declared, had nothing to do with art.
The lady was right (declared this author), for, with her educa- tion as an artist, her vision was trained to look almost entirely for the (esthetic expression of the work.
In short, she realized, what has escaped both Tolstoy and his defender, namely, that art is not a thing; it is a way! [Italics ours.)
What a socially-rotten point of view this is ! And this is the ^^Art for Arts Sake ’ theory today: That art consists of artistry, craftsmanship,” “techmque,” and that grandeur of ideas, beauty of composition, and profundity of expression, are negligible quantities in a work of art, and which, we believe, we have exploded, in our chapter on “What is Art.” But, this lecherous aesthetic ’ theory, still dominates certain her-

A STANDARD OF ART MEASUREMENT

maphrodites, artists and critics, in the world of art, male- women and female-men, who, even today, empest our news- paper and magazines with their immoral and destructive theory. And it fills one with wonder! For, when Baudelaire, certainly not a saint, had seen the effects, of the insane twist- ing out of shape, by Gautier and his followers, of Victor Hugo’s well-meant slogan, he, in one of his clairvoyant moments, wrote:
The puerile theory of Art for Art’s Sake, by its exclusion of all Ethics, even of passion, was of necessity sterile! It put itself into flagrant contradiction with the spirit of humanity. In the name of those higher principles, which constitutes universal life, we have the right to declare it guilty of heterodoxy!”
Omitting the fulminations against this theory, by George Sand, Veron, Guyau, Swinburne, and scores of others that we could quote, we will cite only a paragraph in “La Plume,’’ Paris, 1900, by André Veidaux:
Art for Art’s Sake, is an aberration of ideologues, mystified by themselves. It is vicious selfishness, spoliating the common patrimony; it is the fossilization of the intelligence, of fecund joy, of the hygiene of criticism. It is no longer pride, it is dementia, it is megalomania. It is no longer individualism, whether liberating or not, nor of the “Ivory Tower”; it is petrifaction. And, then, it does not exist, neither less objectively nor more subjectively than a scarecrow, or than the sawdust in a doll !
But the most scathing condemnation of the whole theory came from Victor Hugo himself, who coined the phrase “Art for Art’s Sake.” In his majestic book on “Shakespeare,” he tells this story:
We have just now recalled a saying, become most famous: “Art for Art.” Let us, once for all, explain ourselves on this question.
If faith can be placed in an affirmation, very general and very often repeated (we believe honestly), these words: “Art for Art,” would have been written by the author of this book himself. Writ- ten? Never! You may read from the first to the last line all that we have published; you will not find those words. It is the oppo- site which is written throughout oiu: works, in our entire life, we insist on it.
As for those words, in themselves, how far are they real? Here is the fact, which several of our contemporaries remember as well PS we do:

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One day, thirty-five years ago, in a discussion between critics and poets on Voltaire’s tragedies, the author of this book threw out this suggestion: “ This Tragedy is not a tragedy. It is not men who live, it is sentences which speak in it. Rather a hundred times. Art for Art! ” This remark, turned (doubtless involuntarily) from its true sense, to serve the needs of discussion, has since taken, to the great surprise of him who uttered it, the proportion of a for- mula. It is an opinion, limited to Alzire and to the “ Orpheline de la Chine,” and incontestable in that restricted application, which has been turned into a perfect declaration of principles and an axiom, to inscribe on the banner of art !
This point settled, let us go on.
Between two verses, the one by Pindar, deifying a coachman, or glorifying the brass nails of the wheel of a chariot, the other by Archilochus, so powerful that, after having read it, Jeffreys would leave off his career of crimes and would hang himself on the gal- lows prepared by him for honest people — between these two verses, of equal beauty, I prefer that of Archilochus.
And elsewhere, Victor Hugo, being a confirmed altruist in art, cried out;
Away with yovur “Art for Art,” and give me art, for Humanity!
How the casual remark of Hugo was distorted and deformed, and then adopted as an art-guide, in the French world of art, and scattered among the art morons of the world, is a mystery which may some day be cleared up.
Civilisation, rises and falls in grandem with the rise and fall of the nobility and power of women and the art they inspire their men to create. Without a spiritual woman, to inspire him to act loftily, man is a poor two-legged animal indeed, a mere im-creative encumbrance of the earth. A western mining-camp, made up only of men, is but a masculine sty. It begins its transfiguration only then when invaded by a comely woman with a soul that radiates spirituality. All historians testify, that Rome became, and remained, moral, and hence powerful, as long as its women were loyal to the state, and lifting to the men. But that, when they lost their spirituality, the men became carnal and Rome went glimmer- ing to ruin !
Like women, works of art may be divided into three classes : those which inspire men, to climb up, out of the hog-wallows; those that are negative and ineffective; and those which de-

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base men towards the gutter. Women of the first class we adore; those of the second class we neglect; those of third class — no matter how beautiful — we ostracize, because we have learned that they are a danger to the state. When the superficial beauty of a woman but hides the soul of a harlot, she is the most potent of social poisons. Why should it be dif- ferent with works of art that are technically, hence superfi- cially, fascinating, but spiritually rotten ?
Will the artists of America now cease their mistaken cackle, get back to common -sense, and remember: that technique is but one element of the complicated process of creating a work of art, and, finally, the least important, and that the more “personal” the technique, and the farther away from the truth of nature, the more insane and therefore the less endur- ing it is? And, the less enduring a work of art, the more of energy and of the people’s money it required to produce it, the more it will be a social waste, which is a social misdemeanor !
And this is all the more heinous when we realize, that the art, and the social spirit, which this vicious theory engendered, has helped powerfully to trivialize and to debase the entire outlook on life of the majority of the people of today. Because, when the artists — who should in reality lead the world and upward — degenerated in spirit, the world of art soon fell to a par with the outside world; and when, later, the “art for art’s sake” movement developed into the still worse “modern- istic” movement, which was based upon the contemptuous negation of spiritual beauty in art, and to produce which — from “Post-Impressionism” to “Personal-Expressionism” — required but the ability of a child, or of a lunatic, (See Appen- dix), we soon had, in the world of art, as many psychopathic morons, both male and female, neurotic impostors and crooks, as we have in the outside world. For these misfits, filtered into the upper world of art from the imderworld, only because of the apotheosis of incompetence and abstract idiocy in art, by the modernistic prophets and critics, and those who hired them to do their nefarious work, and which dishonors the press as deeply in this coimtry as in Europe, and which accelerates the tendency, always latent in the race, toward pessimistic indiffer- ence, spiritual fatigue, and then towards a cumulative hedonism such as withered the vitality of once imperial Greece and Rome.

PROPOSITIONS

In all the arts, the craving for parading one’s cleverness, as a technician, to the exclusion of all aspiration towards nobly ex- pressing and lifting ones fellow men, has kept many an artist of real talent, as a craftsman, from becoming truly great as an artist, and a benefactor of mankind.
The yearning for naught but self-expression is a disease, whose chief elements are abnormal vanity and patent ego-mania; and, when this malady is raised to a cult, by topsy-turvied writers and others, in the place of the cult of humanity-expression, it becomes an obstacle to the creation of the highest art and a menace to the state.
Since all nature is bent upon self-expression, every man is born with a distinct “personality,” different from every other. But the expression of a commonplace, vicious, or degenerate personality, be it ever so cleverly done, should be frowned upon by all leaders in the world of art.
It is only such forceful personalities which are rare and fine by birth, and not by fabrication, which should be expressed, in order not to clutter up the world of art with worthless, even degenerating rubbish.
Cleverness in artistry, should ever be encouraged, but not to the detriment of the creation of truly great works of art. For, as Goethe said:
“Clever men are good, but not the best.”

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PART III
APPLICATION OF FIRST PRINCIPLES AND OF A STANDARD OF MEASUREMENT

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MORALITY IN ART

Morality does not judge technique, but it is the final judge of art. Brunetiere.
A licentious picture or statue is, perhaps, more dangerous than a bad book. Diderot.
The perfection of the physical beauty of a work of art is al- ways in proportion to its moral beauty. Lamenais.
Lurking behind this limited and deplorable view, is the false theory of that art, which claims that it should be naught but “amusing” in the lightest and shallowest sense.
Richard Burton.
We refuse to admit that art of the highest kind may not ally itself with moral or religious passion, with the ethics or the politics of a nation or an age. Swinburne.

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FOREWORD TO CHAPTER XIII
Having, in Part I, stated the first principles which dom- inate all art, and presented, in Part II, a Standard of Measure- ment — a yardstick — by which any work of art can be judged, which standard we did not invent, but which grew slowly during the ages past, and which we merely gathered and codi- fied, in six short essays, for convenience sake, we will now demonstrate how to apply that standard, by analyzing ex- amples of such works, in painting and sculpture, as appear, to us, to be great, or merely clever, or trivial, or degenerate.
To do this, we will have to play the r61e of critic, a part usually played by men outside of the art professions, men who have mainly a literary acquaintance with art, never having practiced any of the arts.
Some of these, are men who, in college or out of it, imbibed the idea that art criticism is needful to art production, and the saving of the world !
This is a grotesque fallacy. For before the advent of cheap printing and the Press, “art critics” did not exist; and, be- fore they were ever heard of, the greatest art the world has ever seen, or, perhaps, ever will see, was produced. More- over, since the coming of “professional art critics,” art has declined, and the art world has become an art-asylum, in which bedlam has raged, and increased with the increase of the tribe of critics, who have become a nuisance to artists and a byword to the layman, because of the many-hued and also grotesque flags under which they parade through the world of art, bewildering all but those who are able to sort out the grain from the chaff, the truth from the trash, in their some- times gay, sometimes lugubrious, lucubrations.
It is safe to say that it is principally these professional, career-chasing, newspaper critics, who failed, and then became
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“press-hacks,” who are mainly responsible for the bewildering anarchy of today in the art world, which is a queer place, indeed, compared to the Elysium, depicted with such charm by Paul Heyse, in his “In Paradise,” a picture of the world of art of two generations ago.
The result is, the professional art critic, “the outsider” in the world of art, is no longer welcome. For he has lost his crown !
If now, we ourselves, an “insider” in the art world, assmne the r 61 e of critic, it is not to enroll ourselves in that discredited profession, but merely to help to clean out the augean comers in the art world, and to contribute our share to helping other artists to lead the world back to common-sense in art.
The chapters which foUow were all written for “The Art World” Magazine, which was organized not to make money, but, we repeat, to deal a body-blow to degeneracy in art. They were written imder pressure, and may contain many a strident note, which is sometimes useful, when a voice must be lifted in the wilderness, where is heard only the conglom- erate noise of bluejays, jackdaws and fish-hawks!
We shall do very little correcting or amplifying of these essays, even though they may contain repetitions. But, in revising them, we will be mindful of the sage lines of Huxley:
The development of exact natural knowledge, in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such; to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regard the value of authority as neither greater nor less than as much as it can prove itself to be worth.
The modem spirit, is not the spirit “which always denies,” delighting only in destruction; still less is it that which builds castles in the air rather than not construct; it is the spirit which works and will work “without haste and without rest,” gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its bams, and devouring error with unquenchable fire.

CHAPTER XIII

ANALYSIS OF WORKS OF ART
A GREAT WORK OF ART “A Visit” by Geoffroy Appeared in the January, 1917, issue of " The Art World ”

We have already explained, how the modernists came to rail at all ideal works of art, such as poetic, historical, or re- ligious works, and dubbed them “academic”; and how there came to be, back of that party, a political necessity of the radical and “Red” politicians of Paris; and how these came to support the modernist movement.
We begin our analysis of works of art with "'A Visit,” a masterpiece, by Geoffroy, of Paris, an artist who is classed among the once anti-academic artists simply because he was neither a “romanticist” or a “classicist.” He was a conserva- tive, truly Modern, artist, not a “modernist.”
But, at the time this picture was produced, it was hailed, by the modernists, as an evidence of the capitulation of the so-called “academic” artists; because they sanctioned its placing in the Luxembourg Museum by the state. But, carried away, headlong, on the stream of tendency, towards that festive goal, dementia, which they had initiated, they, today, call this truly great work of art “academic,” though there is absolutely nothing academic about it.
They do this because the work shows no sadistic mutilation, or absurd “deformation,” of the form, or incomprehensible style, or arrangement, such as has gradually, step by step, appeared in aU modernistic art, which is today totally different from the modernistic art of twenty years ago.
When we challenge their change of point of view, we receive

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the reply that we are “ignorant”; ignorant of this and of that. It is a reply easy to make, either by a sincere dupe of an ego- maniacal artist, or by a cynical, charlatan art-dealer, or his hired critic, when they are cornered in a discussion.
We speak of this now to warn the lay-reader that this insult of “ignorance” will always be flung at him when he questions the taste of these men. It is only a professional man, acquaint- ed with the evolution of the modernism of today, and who knows the tricks of the propagandists of this art-pest, who is able to halt them.
We are well aware of and repeat Emerson’s remark :
Nerve us with incessant affirmations. Don’t bark against the bad, but chant the beauties of the good.
This is one of his ‘ ‘ suggestive ’ ’ half-truths. For, we cannot build a new house, on the place where stands a rotten one, un- less we bark at it enough to show its worthlessness, and clearly enough to all men to justify our destro5dng it, to clear the ground, to enable us to build, on the place it encumbers, a new and better one.
We shall be guided entirely by this destructive-constructive spirit. We shall begin by re-stating:
Our Creed
The logical Standard of Art Measurement for a sure evalu- ation of Works of Art is based: on rare examples of the highest manifestations of the Six Elements of Art Power.
That is to say; The Greatest work of Art in the World is that one in which we see manifested;
First: A Subject, which is socially the most beneficent, of interest to the greatest number of people, and the noblest in Conception ;
Second: In which the Composition is the most sublime;
Third: In which the Expression — on the faces of the figures, in the details, and in the work as a whole — expresses profoundly that which the work is supposed to express;
Fourth : In which the Drawing of all forms is the most true and effective in rendering Life, above all, — ideal Life;
Fifth: In which the Color is the most varied and rich;
Sixth: In which the siurface Technique is the most vigorous, appropriate and un-offensively individual; the whole work

I^<n; VRic Mxtsi'I’m.
An ideal I lilting' (me t*. the realms (jf poetry, and used as an «“\euM- by Manet to justify his Iicenlious
]m tine" “ Hieakfast (ill the tirass.’' Sieh'iit. 112

HY ManICT.
JikKAKKAST ON THE CjKASs.
ed to shock the Paris puhlic. It dal this so successfully th.it it was rcjccic<l in the Salon, of 1863, by a jury of Frenchmen.

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of such a Quality, and so co-ordinated, as to insure a Style, at once Personal yet Universal, in which a Subject is Expressed with the greatest Completeness and Harmony: so as to stir the highest emotions of the largest number of cultured people for the longest period of time.
We consider a work of art Great or Trivial in ratio of the degree to which it measures up to this Standard.
Judged by this standard the picture we offer, Fig. no, “A Visit” by Geoffroy, of Paris, is a great work of art.
Moreover, it is a most convenient work to show the dif- ference between a Modern and a Modernistic work of art.
Modern art dates back beyond 1804, as far as its roots are concerned, but it is usually dated from that year, because Baron Gros turned his back on the Classic school of France, by painting his large picture of “Napoleon Visiting His Pest- Stricken Soldiers at Jaffa,” thus choosing a strictly modem subject instead of a classic one, and thereby nearly breaking the heart of his master, David, who had begged him to relin- quish his project and to choose a subject, of universal signi- ficance, from History.
Modernistic art, on the other hand, begins to date from the day, about 1835, when Delacroix announced, that beauty of color is more important in art than beauty of line, or fine drawing.
As a consequence, his own greatest weakness was: a slip- shod drawing, now and then, in many of his pictures. And, as he became celebrated in spite of his occasional bad drawing, there followed a slow but sure stream of tendency to pooh-pooh fine drawing, until today the continuation of that tendency has resulted in this — that the modernistic artists have lost even the notion of beauty of line and of form.
That is the first fundamental difference between Modem and Modernistic art.
This picture by Geoffroy is a modern, not a modernistic picture. It is modem, because it represents a modem every- day subject, even a commonplace subject, conceived and com- posed in a modem way, and is painted in a modem technique. It represents a poor workman paying a visit to his sick little son in one of the hospitals of Paris. That and nothing more. On account of its many angles, it is not a very beautiful pic-

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ture, in composition, and it is entirely devoid of any style — because it in no wise departs from the truth of nature, so realistic and true it is in every way.
It is not a large picture, scarcely more than two feet by three. And yet it is a great and enduring work of art. Why?
First: The artist could easily have taken the subject, “A Visit” and conceived it in a commonplace, decorative manner, even made out of it a comic thing. But, he chose to make it a solemn thing, and one so universally appealing to the heart of mankind, that the picture has a tremendous lifting and socially binding power.
Second : While the picture can scarcely be said to be com- posed, its composition — though not very beautiful — is so per- fect, that we do not think even of any desire to change the arrangement in any way.
Third: But here we come to its wonderful power — its drawing. This is so truthful yet so unostentatious that the two main figures, the father and the boy, are alive. Fullness of life in any work of art, can be achieved only by fine drawing of the form, and here we have that fullness of life.
Note the marvellous expression on the face of the boy, and in the entire body of the father. There’s no more sweet, tear-compelling, pathetic child-face in the entire reign of art of the world! See the dear boy, sick and white unto death, struggling to deceive his father with a faint smile, as if saying to him: “I am glad to see you, papa.”
Then note the loving father, with what an anxious, heavy heart he looks at his beloved sick boy, Oh, so white and weak, as he notes the advance-signs that the angels will probably soon gather-in his dearly beloved child. The whole scene is so heartrending, that it is impossible for a normal father to look long at this picture in the Luxembourg Museum without a mounting sob in his throat.
Wlien we reflect that this profound expression of paternal anxiety and love is obtained through the body, the poise of the head, and only a fraction of the face visible, we are amazed. Then one is soon convinced that there are scarcely any pictures in the world which surpass this truly satisfying and deeply emotion-stirring picture, in profundity of truth and charm of expression.

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It is this marvelous expressiveness of the two figures, which will insure to this work of Geoffroy a life, and a love, as long as the canvas lasts.
We need not speak much of the color — it is mostly white and very sober as a color-scheme.
And, as for the last element of art power, its manner of painting, or technique, it is so simple, so straightforward, so im-egotistic in its personal quality, so devoid of all puerile tricks of painting, so unostentatious, and yet so clever in its effective refinement, that it is worthy of Velasquez.
The eye cannot wander away from the faces of the father and the child, such is the concentration of effects. Thus, we are held captive, by the force of the composition and the utter absence of any peculiarity or “stunting ” in the painting. And the more we look, the more we are emotioned and captivated by the poetic pathos of the story. It is this completeness of the telling of the story in this amazing work, that makes it truly great and immortal.
The man who effaced himself so completely in order to make this, his spiritual message in paint, more and more effective, produced here a work of the highest social import. It dignifies French Art and the French nation, and is proof that in France the truly modem artists, of the higher class, have in their ranks great men, who refuse to abdicate their position — that Art ; is a religion, a sacred religion, which should never be soiled by anything savoring of the meretricious, the vulgar and the immoral.
A Clever Work of Art — “The Concert” by Giorgione
We now present our readers, in Fig. m, a reproduction of “The Concert,” by Giorgione.
This celebrated picture has served, more than any other we can recall, to condone the making of immoral pictures, and other works of art, by sensation-mongering artists. Notably, in the mind of Manet, did it serve to justify him in painting his licentious picture “Lunch on the Grass” of which we give a reproduction. Fig. 112.
It may shock many to hear, that “The Concert” is not an entirely great work of art, and that it really belongs in the class of the merely clever works, or to the class of the only almost

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great. This is because, to be entirely great, a work of art must not be defective in any of the six elements of art-power mentioned in our creed as above.
The work falls short of greatness in conception, in expression and in drawing.
It scores heavily in composition, which is extremely beauti- ful, and in color — the beauty of which must be seen in the orig- inal in the Louvre to be appreciated. We will not discuss its surface technique, which may please some and not others, and is too imimportant to be quarrelled about.
As a conception it is trivial. It is called “The Concert”; but, since the musicians have all ceased playing, it would better be called “The Intermezzo.”
As for expression, it aims at nothing in particular, and the faces tell us nothing. There is no drama !
But its chief defect is the bad drawing of the form of the seated woman. Her right foot, is very badly drawn, and the whole body is poorly constructed. There are other trivial defects in drawing. Besides this, the woman is too fat and, therefore, out of harmony with the rest of the poetry with which the picture is filled. Since correct drawing and purity, and elegance of form are the very foimdations of all greatness in any work of art, any slouchiness in this direction is unpar- donable. And that Giorgione knew how to draw remarkably well is proven in his “Sleeping Venus” in the Dresden Gallery. Therefore, we are compelled to put this work in the class of “clever” works by great artists.
But, what will immortalize it, is: its entrancing beauty of line and pattern composition and color-scheme, which lifts it into the realm of poetry, and makes it so fine that one is be- guiled to say: “Well! you are so nearly great that, because you are so lovely, we wiU just push you into the class of the entirely great.”
Why any artist should ever justify, by this picture, any immorality in his own work, as for example Manet did in his vulgarly realistic “Lunch on the Grass,” Fig. 112, with its insidious suggestion of licentiousness, because in this picture we also have two nude women, passes imderstanding.
In this picture, the action takes place in the open air, near a dwelling house, by the side of a public highway and a public

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well. So open is it, that a shepherd and his flock pass by, as everybody would do who walked abroad. This openness, indicates that everything in the picture is in the pastoral land of poetry, in the heroic ages when, as once in Greece, every one went either nude or half nude.
Here the mind is not forced to ask questions in morals. In Manet’s picture, however, the mind cannot escape asking such questions, nor fail to see, instanter, that the relation between the couples represented in his picture is a questionable one and socially evil — whatever Bohemian artists, of the ‘ ‘ Cafe du Chat Noir,” may say about “naturalism” so strenuously preached by Zola.
The fact that the two men, in this picture, wear Renaissance costumes, does not disturb the poetic atmosphere of this pic- ture, nor arouse one glimmer of suspicion as to its moral intent as, on the other hand, Manet’s work does. Hence, the work is absolutely moral in intention and in spirit and effect.
Finally, since it is superlatively beautiful, and lifts us into the realm of poetic delight, it is doubly a moral work, because it is in harmony with the supreme law, laid down for all artists — “Go and create the Beautiful!” and nothing can exceed the intellectual and moral blindness of poor Manet, and of Duret his eulogizer, when they justify his, only moderately beautiful, but licentiously suggestive work — through the precedent of this picture of Giorgione because, in an entirely different spirit. Giorgione used two women who, though nude, are not naked, the one indeed having a face of exquisite and ideal beauty, while Manet’s woman — evidently a portrait — is, to say the least, coarse.
All the casuistry in the world will not prevent the sane public from seeing that the spirit in w^hich Giorgione worked, was entirely more lofty than that which actuated Manet. As Goethe said; “The spirit in which we act is the main matter, for spirit alone can transform action.”
Giorgione’s picture is simply a piece of poetry — poetry of line, poetry of color, poetry of spirit. It tells us nothing definite, it is true, like the “Sistine Madonna” of Raphael, and therefore, is not in that highest class of poetic works. But, like Poe’s “Raven” w'hich, imlike Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Um” also tells us nothing definite, but is of immortal poetic

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charm, because of its lifting beauty, so this picture of Giorgione has a deathless poetic attraction which will forever make it, if not worshiped, at least cherished by all mankind.
A Degenerate Work of Art “ Lunch on the Grass ” — by Manet
Manet’s “Lunch on the Grass” of which we give a repro- duction, Fig. 1 12, must be put into the class of degenerate works of art, and for the following reasons:
Civilization means — a getting away from the animal.
To do this we must travel towards the Ideal, the spiritual.
To get away from the animal, man must reverence some- thing — either God or the Beautiful.
The worship by man of the one or the other, if done in aU simplicity and sincerity, will bring him not only spiritual but material salvation.
Therefore, a sincere, beauty-loving priest and a sincere, beauty-loving artist, are both lieutenants of the Almighty. The one in the world of Religion and the other in the world of Art.
Both the priest and the artist, when true to their mission, will regard their particular world as sacred.
The first command in the world of Religion is; “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!” and the first command in the world of Art is: “Thou shalt not defile thy temple!” Manet and his clique of artists, forgot this first commandment nailed on the temple of Art. Hence, their tears!
This pictirre of Manet, is neither beautifid nor ugly. And, singular to say, it is flatly “academic” and conventional in its composition — and he so hated and fought the “Academy”!
There are some clever and some clumsy painting and drawing in it.
But, what puts it in the class of degenerate art is its — vulgarity. It is that which takes it out of the class of refined art. The picture is not indecent, but it is more insidiously immoral than if it were, because it is not nude, but naked, and coarsely so.
The picture explains itself. Two couples, evidently free lovers, have rowed in a boat to a sylvan spot in a forest. While the two women bathe in the stream and disport them-

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selves nakedly before these men, they look on and afterwards have their lunch. And, while one of the men pretends to talk, two others of the party are represented as if posing for their portraits, the woman being particularly self-conscious in her look. Moreover, she is plain to coarseness.
If a good citizen should happen to run onto such a scene suddenly, by mistake, he would be shocked stiff. Why should he not be doubly shocked when such a scene, violating all the conventions of society, and implying a whole story of illicit social relation, is publicly exhibited, in the shape of a painting in a great art exhibition, to which the public of the world is invited, in full confidence of finding here nothing suggestive of immorality and to which a father takes his unsuspecting wife and adolescent daughters and sons?
Would it not be shocking: if he and his family were not shocked? Would not the failture to rebuke this work, be a tacit condoning by the plain citizen of all illicit social relation, and a proclamation to all men; — Go, rim riot, wallow in sen- suality in the open forest to your heart’s content, “After us the deluge!’’ as the Pompadour said?
Is not the picture a distinct invitation to retrograde, back towards animality, from which mankind has worked its way through so much pain and tears?
That is exactly the view the plain French people took of it, and the Jury of the Salon of 1863 promptly refused it. But in that year the Modernistic party, of which Manet was — in painting — the standard-bearer, raised such a row against the many rejections of works by the Jury, that Napoleon III felt constrained to accede to their demand for a place of exhibition, right next to the official Salon and this was called “Salon of the Refused.’’ Of this we find in the biography of Manet, by Duret, a collector, the following account :
“The Lunch on the Grass,” by its size, occupied a large place in this “Salon of the Refused,” so that it was seen nearly as well as it would have been in the official salon. Also it attracted attention, but in a violent fashion, in arousing a veritable clamor of reproba- tion. Because it differed really, in technical processes (?), in choice of subject and in aesthetics from all the traditions held then for good and worthy of praise. ... If the “Lunch on the Grass” shocked, by its system of coloration and its technical processes, (?)

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it aroused a still greater indignation, if it was possible, by the choice of subject and the manner in which the personages were handled. At that epoch, in fact, there was not only a manner of painting that the public, after the artists, had accepted and regarded alone as good, there existed also an entire system of assthetics in the studios and of which the public was a partisan. They honored what was called the Ideal. They conceived great art as belonging to a sphere regarded as elevated, embracing historical and religious painting, the representation of classic antiquity and mythology. It was only this form of art which seemed pure and of a noble charac- ter in which the artists, critics and public were interested. . . . This grand art had become the object of a national cult. It was an honor for France to perpetuate it. France there showed her superiority over the other nations which, in this sort of art, were inferior to her and remained backward. Thus the love of tradi- tions, the pursuit of what was called the Ideal, anxiety for national glory, combined to make of this art the object of a unanimous respect.
Manet, however, by the choice and the treatment of his subject had attacked all the sentiments that the others respected, he had flouted the grand art, honor of the nation. . . . That is to say — for the public there was here a defi, a veritable provocation, an audacious display of what all reprobated as crass realism.
As if there had not been enough causes for arousing the indig- nation against the picture, it offended against decency in the eyes of the public.
No better testimony, than this, from Duret himself, could be found to prove that, even though a portion of the artists of the time were corrupt, the heart of the plain French citizen was morally sovmd, then as always.
It is a credit to France that, no matter how corrupt may have been the Imperial Court and its satellites, in all fields of art and politics, the great middle-class, which is too often lampooned by the Bohemian artists and critics, was quick to scent the evil tendency of this large and pretentious work of Manet, and to protest against it, because it would not support the Bohemians of that epoch in their mental divagations and moral tergiversations.
It was not Manet’s new system of '‘painting” which shocked the public, but the insidious suggestions of licentious- ness in his pictxire. The clique of artists Manet cronied with, wanted a revolution in art and he, a Norman, stubborn, red-

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headed fighter, in easy circumstances, his father being a prom- inent judge and a man of influence, undertook the lead in the preconcerted campaign of — shocking the public out of its devotion to noble and ideal art. And then he had the stupid- ity to expect that same public to take him to its heart and call him good and great !
Duret continues:
The idea of thus associating in an open air scene a nude woman by the side of two men in clothes came to him from the Venetians. It was the “Concert” of Giorgione, in the Museum of the Louvre — see Fig. iii — in which two nude women are shown with two men in clothes, in a landscape which had suggested to him his com- bination, and it was in good faith (?) that he asked, when he was violently attacked, why he was blamed for doing that for which none reproached Giorgione. But, in the eyes of the public, between the nudes of Manet and that of the Venetians of the Renaissance, there was an abyss. The one was, or was believed, idealized, the other was ptire realism, and as such offended decency. This nude woman had thus added, a superaddition, to the other elements of reprobation which was presented by the “Lunch on the Grass.”
Thus is Manet condemned by his own defender. For this sentence of Duret’s proves one of two things, either his defense of Manet is a cynical piece of hypocrisy, which he hoped the public would swallow, or that his moral obliquity is so pro- found, that he cannot see that Manet’s action was pure and simple social rebellion and his picttu-e a morally degenerate work of art, because: he attempted, at one sudden and fell swoop, to force down the public’s throat the idea that a realistic representation, and even in the form of portraits, of two, not nude but naked women, picnicking on the grass with two men, with whom they had evidently questionable relations, was a legitimate thing to do in the world of art. If we assume that Duret is an honest man, he is to be pitied that he cannot see that the picture is fimdamen tally licentious — in spirit, whether painted by Manet or Giorgione, even though it is not actually indecent.
Giorgione’s picture “The Concert,” reproduced in Pig. iii, is charged with an entirely different spirit. The landscape is entrancmgly beautiful; the shepherd and his troop passing by show that the group of musicians had gathered together on a knoll, by the side of a public highway, as if it had been then

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the fashion, like in Greece of old, or in some mythical land, for women to go half nude.
The whole is pervaded with an idyllic poetic spirit. It is at least refined, while Manet’s is vulgar, and vulgarity is, in Art, the sin against the Holy Ghost!
In Manet’s picture the scene takes place in the seclusion and secrecy of a deep forest, which makes the action surprising, while in Giorgione’s all is open and aboveboard and on a road- side, in full view of people living in the surrounding houses and of passers by.
Giorgione’s work is un-moral it is true, because it does not pretend to didacticize, but Manet’s is immoral, because it is gross!
That Duret could not see this, accuses Duret.
When women in this epoch loU about the seashore in bathing costumes, showing nearly their entire body, no one thinks anything of it — because it has become, by slow degrees, a convention, and is tolerated, as long as women do not, in gesture, do anything that is suggestive; but, should they appear thus appareled in Fifth Avenue, in broad daylight, they would be arrested as violators of public decency.
Manet, in spurning this morally binding convention, violated the fundamental moral law which holds the civilized world together, created a picture the tendency of whose spirit is to counteract the striving of mankind to get away from the animal. Thus he defiled the sacred temple in the world of art, compromised his fellow artists, and he was forced to pay the penalty he richly deserved.
Says Duret in conclusion:
Therefore, the picture excited an immense raillery, it became in its way the most celebrated picture of the two Salons. It pro- cured for its author a noisy notoriety. Manet became on the spot the most talked-of painter of Paris. He had counted on the can- vas to bring him fame. He succeeded much more than he had hoped, his name was on every lip. But the kind of reputation which he had won was, however, not the sort after which he had longed. He had thought that the originality of his forms and spirit, reunited in one large work, would bring to him, with the attention of the public, the recognition of his talent ; that he would be regarded as a master from the start; that he would be hailed as an innovator, and that he woxdd thus enter the path to success

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and public favor. What really came to him was a reputation for being a rebel and an eccentric. He became known as a reprobate. Thus there was established between the public and himself a pro- found separation, which was destined to keep him, during his whole life, in a perpetual battle.
Was anything else to be expected, above all when we reflect that his “Nana” was even more licentious, and his “Olympia” the most vulgarly naked nude ever forced into the Louvre Museum?
Poor Manet! a man of profound promise but a perpetual disappointment. As Gerdme truthfully said:
‘ ‘ Manet might have produced great works of art, but never did produce any.”
None of his works have any poetic charm, all are either coarse or offensively vulgar. There is one exception, which we have here, in the Metropolitan Museum. While on the one hand we have his “Christ,” an atrociously stupid creation, nearby we have his little “Sword-bearer” which, in subject, color, painting and spirit, is a perfectly charming gem, and probably the only really lovable work Manet ever created!
When we contemplate that work and think what Manet could have done with his really fine talent, had his soul been attuned to winning a place in the hearts of mankind, by serving it, by lifting it to realms of grand beauty — no matter in what style or whaf manner of painting — instead of bulldozing his fellowmen with his coarse or vulgar would-be-pagan creations, one’s heart sinks within one and makes us pity him.
But he was the crony of a band of talented individuals, all of them mentally warped and morally twisted, and denatured by the corruption in the air at the time, called forth by the low ideals among the modernist artists of the Second Empire, until morals in art were spvuned. They and their works were expressive of their age.
Therefore, about the only pictures of Manet, for which the public will care, after the speculative dealers and interested critics will cease to make noise about him, in order to boost the price of his remaining imsold works, will probably be his ‘ ‘ Bon Bock” — a good glass of beer — and the little “Sword-bearer” — ^trivial baggage indeed for a man with which to go down the corridors of time and about whom so much noise has been made.

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Manet might have become a great artist, but moral myopia doomed him to remain in the ranks of trivial though clever craftsmen.
No doubt the coryphees of Manet, of today, will look upon us as a “Victorian prude.” If so, we may be permitted to say to them: Your souls are so im-aesthetic, that they hark back, for your view point, to the jungle. For, as Darwin said:
The hatred of indecency, which appears to us so natural as to be thought innate — is a modern virtue.
And imfortunately indecency — in all the arts — has become so profitable to many artists in Paris, that they have found the most casuistic and corrupting arguments to condone it, even to brag about it, even to raising it to a private cult !
No one objects to mere cleverness in itself, in its place, and to the extent to which it is useftil in art. But modernism, besides its inherited vice of ignoring morality, to the extent often of open pornography, has ended in the gradual enthrone- ment of mere Cleverness, in place of Perfection, in craftsman- ship and expression.
What is Cleverness? It always involves more or less dexterity, brilliancy, insxifficiency and a certain amoimt of the impudence of the self-parading showman.
All art involves a parading of self. Why? Because all art is self-expression, a “showing off,” of our ability to do. This egotistic urge, is in reality, the foundation of civiliza- tion, without which we would never have had, and we soon would cease to have, any human progress. Therefore, self- parading, in itself, should always be encouraged and not deprecated.
But, in life, above all in art, there are two kinds of self- parading, of showing what we can do, a dignified kind, in which an artist tries to create a great work of art that will, in some way, beneficently affect the race, and wiU yet so hide the tricks and processes by which he achieved his results, that men may attribute his work to half a dozen or more artists, other than himself ; and then there is a silly kind, in which the artist shows a more or less impudent contempt for his fellows and is mainly bent, like a braggadocio, on showing off his “bag of tricks” and proving, with more or less strutting, that he is more “smart,” “dexterous,” and “nimble” than anyone else

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in his chosen field of activity, no matter whether the result is great or trivial, usually the latter.
The great artist is mainly interested in his work, and wants to produce and show great results; the clever artist is mainly interested in himself, and cares more about showing-off him- self, in action. The great artist will say, “Do not look at me, look at my work!” The clever artist will say, “Look at me, ain’t I clever?” The great artist is more or less a revealer, or teacher, even a preacher if you will; the clever artist is more or less of a vaudevillian showman.
A great work of art radiates a sense of sufficiency, which makes the spectator feel that it is complete; that thus it, of necessity, had to be; that nothing could be added or taken away, to make it more perfect in its technical execution, or more unified and profound in its spiritual expression. On the contrary, a clever work, however admirably dexterous, always suggests that, here and there, is a shortcoming, or an over- doing; an insufficiency, an incompleteness, be it voluntary, from impudent carelessness, or involuntary, from lack of ability to go farther.
Also, a great work of art is apt to make us serious; arouse in us more or less strong reverential emotions; appeal more to the sotd; while a clever work is apt to make us smile, with emotions of more or less mirthfulness, and appeal more to our intellec- tual faculties. We therefore define cleverness as follows:
Cleverness in art means: a more or less impudent manifesta- tion of dexterity and virtuosity, accompanied by a certain insuffi- ciency in technical execution, or spiritual expression, and appealing to our sense of humor.
A clever work of art is one which reveals that it might have become great, had the author not stopped short of perfection in his work, leaving the details more or less unfinished and unrealized, either through laziness, lack of time, or the false idea that incomplete forms are “suggestive,” stimulate the mind, and, therefore, are more emotioning to the soul than such forms as are completely and perfectly finished, and that such faces, in which a certain expression is cleverly suggested, are more impressive than such faces whose intended expres- sions are profoundly realized.
This false idea that there is a superior power of ‘ ‘ suggestion ’ ’

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inherent in unrealized forms is the underlying vice of modernis- tic art, in both its extreme and its moderate manifestations; in the imperfect representative art, and in the art called “abstract art.”
We deny that vmrealized, incompletely finished, forms are more emotioning than highly finished forms and forms com- pletely realized. We assert that that dogma is a fake! Let us examine this matter:
A discussion of unrealized cleverness of form brings up the matter of Style and Manner in art, which two things, radically different from each other, are generally confounded, as are Beauty and Art.
Now, style in art, is, we repeat, a matter of fundamental composition. Manner is a matter of superficial execution. Example: We have one original French Gothic style; but we have Gothic in the manner of the Spanish, Italian, and English Gothic. Fundamentally, they are aU Gothic in style; but the superficial details in these later examples of Gothic, being executed in a manner differing from that in the original French Gothic, they remain Gothic, but that difference in details makes them Spanish, Italian, and English Gothic,
In every case, style in art means a departtire from the exact truth of nature or from that which has become common- place, either by adding to nature, or by taking away from her, or by a rearrangement of her compositions. That is why Bacon said: “Art is man added to nature,” and why Goethe said; “Art is called art because it is not nature.” That is, style means an idealization of nature’s lines, colors, and detailed forms.
The question at once arises: why should we depart from nature? Leaving architecture and all abstract decorative forms out of the discussion, why should we idealize nature’s forms in a statue or painting? The answer of the wise stylist is, because Natvue rarely furnishes us examples of extraordinary and astonishingly beautiful compositions of lines and colors in landscapes, and stiff rarer, perfection of detail in the human form. It is well known that not one woman in five hundred has a body which, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet is, when carved or painted, felt to be perfect, by the ma- jority of refined artists and critics, as to beauty of form. One

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may have a wonderfully beautiful head but scrawny arms; another beautiful arms but an ugly head and face; one may have beautiful proportions and lines in her body, but details that are too strongly accentuated and, so, attract the eye away from the head and face which are the most important parts of any painted or carved human figure.
In all countries art began by imitation, at first crudely, because barbarians could not do better, and also because they tried to make their gods superhuman, or terrible. Later, as they advanced, the imitation was more close, and this defeated the aim to make their gods and heroes appear superhiunan. We see this illustrated in Greek art. In the tympanum of the temple of .^gma they had reached a surprising degree of truthful imitation in the figures, but they lack the heroic, or superhuman something which the artists could have expressed, perhaps, had they tried.
But, they found that any detail, which attracted too much attention to itself, militated against a imified impressiveness and penetrating power of the figure as a whole; they found that the simplification, to a certain degree, of the small details, accentuated the grandeur and sublimity of their sculptured and painted gods and heroes. Therefore, in the Parthenon sculptures, which were no doubt made by a guild of sculptors, dominated by the great Phidias, they adopted a system of simplifying details, of stylizing them, or of idealizing the forms. How?
Examine a plaster cast of a hand or knee or a foot, it will reveal a lot of small forms, veins, lines, and skin peculiarities, that belong to one person only and are not fotmd in any other. Such petty details, entirely personal with one model, and slightly different in another, when meticulously copied, held their gods down to the human, the earthly plane. Therefore, to lift them above this human place, they suppressed all these petty lines, veins, and corrugations of skin, and copied only such forms as were not peculiar to one human model, but were found in all, or most human models. That is, they generalized, stylized these details of form, especially in the hands, feet, knees, and in the head. This was the origin, in sculpture, of style, a departing from the exact, petty, unserviceable truths of nature.

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Then they noticed that certain men were more impressive, as men, because their proportions were different from others, and they sought out the most impressive proportions, for their gods and heroes. And, to make their gods and heroes more or less superhtiman, that is, above the commonplace human, they slightly accentuated, but never exaggerated, certain of these proportions. This was also a stylization. This is what we call the perfectionment of nature by stylization, or idealization or a poetization of forms and proportions, by a departing from commonplace nature, or by adding man to nature.
Then they found that, by taking a perfect head from one human model; perfect arms from another; torso, legs, feet from others, they arrived at a perfect altogether, above all when they could not always find a perfect Phryne to serve as a model. For that reason Plato said, the artist imitates the perfect forms of things that he has seen in a previous life in Heaven.
Now, whenever the Greek wanted to make a comic thing, he reversed the process and accentuated certain petty details, which he suppressed when he made his reverential gods and heroes.
The question soon arose: How /ar should we depart from nature in our stylization, idealization, to reach, and not go beyond, a possible perfection? The decisions they made, as we have found by examining the statues that came down to us from the Parthenon and elsewhere, were highly praised by the most enlightened Greeks and travellers, like Pliny and others ; and, across the centuries, have aroused the admiration of the ablest artists and critics.
If we examine these closely, we will find that the Greeks suppressed very few details, but they simplified them by taking away the plaster-cast, puny, petty, lines and skin details, and did it with such marvellous skill, patience, and love of the fundamental truths of the structure of every knee-cap, finger, and toe, that — in their best works — they are unsurpassable in perfection and completeness of realization of the essentials of the human form. Nothing is overlooked, nothing is neglected, nothing is slouched. Take a plaster cast of the most perfect female foot today, compare it with a foot of the statue of the “Venus de Medicis,” and you will not find a single small form

1 nu>st (Ir.iniatu’ wmks <.f aiL «>f llir i<)th Cfiittiry. Tt is slc.idily iiictfasinK' tho in liny hnnian '-ola’antN' aniony "lien. Now in the I'att* (f.illciy, L*in(lcin. A Mr. Ht-ll rl.imis this is not a work of ait at aU!

L-MimpU* of C o^aniie’h imnuTous “Bathers” tanvases. Badly drawn, meaningless, and ulUiIy silly.

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in any of the five toes, that has been forgotten or neglected. The only difference you will find will be in the manner of executing the superficial epidermis, or skin envelope, that covers the toes and foot. There you will find, in the Venus’s foot, a simplification, but a simplification so restrained, delicate and refined, that the foot is not a dead foot, but a superhuman foot, not the foot of a mere human model but of a goddess, realizing our highest ideal of perfection. That is why Michael Angelo, the greatest all-roimd artist that ever lived and whose admiration for Greek art was tmbounded, said :
“Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.”
That is what is called rational stylization, or idealization, or poetization of the human form. Such idealization transports a statue, or a painting of a human figure, into another world and thus lifts us up into that higher world, and, so, arouses in us a poetic state of emotional exaltation; of seriousness, of reverence, and awe, the degree depending on the beauty of composition of line and color ; the bulk of the figure ; the lofti- ness of the subject; nobility of the action represented, and completeness of spiritual or facial expression.
Now, anything less than that perfection of stylization of the form, means a drift towards Cleverness, towards the im- perfect, the unrealized in form, and in spiritual expression.
Example: In the Luxembourg garden, in Paris, stands a bronze “Dancing Faun,” by the sculptor Lequesne. It represents a life-size Farm dancing on a skin full of wine, and blowing a pipe. The subject is a trivial one. But, by the choice of an extraordinarily beautiful model, or by a superbly noble idealization, worthy of the heyday of Greek art, and an astonishing perfection of detail, he invested the work, not only with a pulsating life, but an ideal life; the movement, con- struction, and details being so perfect that no part of the figure arouses in us a question as to why this or that was made so, or so, or was left unfinished, or was exaggerated; we feel instantly that the thing is perfect in its smallest details and, hence, we receive a powerful, imified, single impression of a living thing in action, caught at a moment when the combination of lines and forms, light and shade, rippled with melody, which makes the figure sing, as it were, and gives him who is sensitive to such melody of line and form an emotion of pime delight, and

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thus lifts him into a realm of poetry. Every time he sees it he is allured to linger, and praise the creator of so perfect a work of art, rivalling the finest Greek work that has come down to us. Thus we are justified in calling this a great work of art.
Now, any departure from such perfection in detail is a descent towards Cleverness. Example: Happening to visit a friend, we saw a “Dancing Faun,” by an American sculptor, a bronze figure, about eighteen inches high. The composition is quite as good as the one by Lequesne, in the Luxembourg garden ; the movement is perhaps as true. The lady of the house asked : ‘ ‘ What do you think of that ? ” We replied : “ It is very clever.” “Only clever?” she queried. “Yes! Only clever.” “Why, I think it great!” she reposted.
We then explained that the details, throughout the body, above all in the feet, hands, and head, and the expression in the face, were left in a sketchy and, hence, imperfect state. “But I like that sketchiness,” replied the lady. “I find it amusing. I hke the dexterous way in which he went just so far and no further. To me it is suggestive, and so interests my mind. It is done in a painterish way.”
Why did this interest her mind? Because she was born with an insatiable hunger for laughter and the amusing, and with a complete indifference to the poetic and the sublime? The serious, the reverential, the awe-inspiring bores her. Whatever is humorous, witty, “cute,” dexterous, interests her; she loves to play cards, loves “smart” society; and is amused with aU trivialities, provided they scintillate.
Before the large and perfect “Dancing Faun” of Lequesne, we who know become serious, and feel even a certain awe; are even impelled to exclaim, “Isn’t that simply great, isn’t that superb!” Our soul is lifted into an exalted emotional state, into the region of poetic feeling.
Before the small, imperfect, but clever, “Dancing Faun,” of Mrs. X., the average layman loses seriousness, smiles, and says; “Well, isn’t that clever, isn’t that brilliant!” with an admiration tinged with hmnor. He may note the imperfec- tion of detail. If, then, he is ignorant of the perfection to which it might have been carried, in detail, and the layman usually is thus ignorant, he lets it go at that. But, by the

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man who knows the marvellous perfection of detail in tlie statue of the same subject by Lequesne, in the Luxembourg garden, these imperfections are not condoned, they are de- plored, because he feels how much more fine and great this smaller statue might have become if the details had been carefully carried to the utmost possible finish. So, he cannot give it any higher praise, than to say: “It is very Clever!”
To him, the making of such an imperfect statuette, calling it a sketch, and keeping it in his studio by the sculptor, would be proper; but, to cast it in bronze, and sell it in the market, savors of a triviality of spirit bordering on the impudent, as if he might have said, if urged by a friend to carry it to a perfect finish: “Oh, that’s good enough for the morons! They don’t know any better ! Why should I spend a month or two finish- ing off the details? They know I could do it. It’s amusing as it is. It will sell just as well as it would if highly finished. Perhaps even better, by Jove!”
This reasoning may be applied to the imperfectly drawn fat woman in Giorgione’s “Concert” we have spoken of on an earlier page.
Perhaps Mrs. X. never heard of Angelo’s remark; “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle!” But, to perfect such trifles, takes an immense amount of time, energy and in- finite patience. And your commercial artist, indifferent to immortality, and preferring temporary notoriety, plus cash, will not expend the needful energy to perfect his work, and will even rail at the other man who spares neither time nor patience to reach perfection; above all when he finds his im- perfect, though clever, statuette does, actually, sell very well, more on accoimt of the amusing subject than because of its perfection in modelling.
Should now the seller of bronzes meet with a criticism of the lack of perfection in the finish of this “Faun,” he would stop at no false argument to convince the customer that such imperfection is a manifestation of “personal style,” or “tem- perament,” and that “those are the qualities which really alone render a work of art great.” And the “clever” sculptor will not hesitate to do the same.
It is by this hypocritical propaganda, by art sellers, that cleverness in art, by degrees, supersedes greatness, and that

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the spread of a taste for the best in art is retarded in this country.
Manet’s work is full of such impudent cleverness, which appeals to all those who have a vaudeville soul and who have scant reverence for real greatness.
In short, Manet was one of that group who started the modernistic movement, all of whom began well, then became smitten with the malady of personal advertisement, drifted in- to the merely clever, then into the trivial and then into the sex-perverted and the degenerate, as we shall see.

CHAPTER XIV

ANALYSIS OF WORKS OF ART
K GREAT WORK OF ART
“The Doctor”
BY Luke Fildes, R.A.
Appeared in January, igi8, issue of “ The Art World ”
When this truly modern picture, Fig. 113, now in the Tate Gallery in London, was painted, Luke Fildes worked better than he knew. It is one of the most universally popular pic- tiues painted in the latter half of the 19th Century. Thousands of reproductions have been sold, in all parts of the world, engravings large and small, plain and colored photographs of all sizes, in fact by every kind of known translation. It is foimd in the houses of the rich and poor, the highly cultured and those making no pretense to culture. Many who are easily stirred by pathos or poetry, have wept before it; others, not so easily emotioned, have been exalted by it to new resolves of duty and a broader sympathy for humanity. Many times one has heard people of all degrees of culture and feeling say "It is wonderful!” In short it meets the final condition of Taine — that a great work of art must appeal, to both the high and low, the learned and unlearned. So that here we have a brilliant proof of what we have been trying to make the public see: there are endless ways of conceiving a given subject, on a lofty or commonplace plane.
As has been stated before : Art is not style, nor technique, nor form, nor drawing, nor color, nor ideas; it is a combination of all these elements.
We repeat: we are a combination of body, mind and soul; we experience physical, mental and spiritual emotions; our first desire after we do experience an emotion is to communi-
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cate that emotion to our fellow-men; art begins when we ex- press an emotion, no matter how crude the form of the expres- sion may be, but a work of art becomes great and immortal, in ratio to the loftiness of our emotion, and the enduring power with which the work of art keeps on rousing that emotion in others, and across the ages — be it a drama, a picture, a statue, a poem, a temple or an oratorio. Therefore, we must judge works of art by the following definition;
Every human work, made in any language, with the purpose of expressing or stirring human emotion, is a work of art; and a work of art is great in ratio to its power of stirring the highest emo- tions of the largest number of cultured people for the longest period of time.
The subject under discussion is “The Doctor.” What an every-day subject! We are so used to seeing the doctor do his diurnal chores in his rounds that we have become blunted to his lofty mission, his frequent self-sacrifice, often his heroic ministrations in tight places, full of personal danger, not seldom at the expense of his own life. In fact, some of us have become so dulled to the mission of the doctor, that he is now and then the subject of comic pictures, witness Ter Borch’s “The Doctor,” or Hogarth’s picture of the same subject.
In this picture, Fildes has conceived the subject on the highest plane ever reached by any artists who ever handled the subject — on the epic plane — showing phases of human suffer- ing and sympathy which lend to life at once a dark and a generous color. Every string of solemnity in the gamut of life is being played upon here, and with dramatic intensity.
How completely the picture tells its story! The beautiful child of the farmer is sick — so sick that the mother, seeing the perplexity on the face of the great-hearted doctor, realizes that her beloved darling is in imminent danger and, overcome by her fears, gives way to a wave of maternal emotion and seeks surcease in tears.
The strong, fine farmer, affeetionately puts his hand on her shoulder with a reassuring touch while scanning the face of the doctor, who is trying to penetrate the veil of the child’s mysterious condition, searching in his mind for a remedy — or as if waiting for a suggestion from a higher power that might direct him to the best method of saving the child.

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Having fixed the plane of his conception, notice the splendid types he has chosen — the magnificent head of the strong and vigorous physician who would inspire confidence in the sick room of a king; the characteristic English farmer; the truly beautiful child; we feel that the hidden face even of the sorrow- ing mother must be beautiful. These selections are aU a matter of the conceiving of the subject of the story, on a lofty plane of thought. But how beautifully it has been told!
Having conceived his subject on a lofty plane he composes it perfectly. In fact it is monumental. Let the student draw a line from the farmer’s head to the head of the doctor and then to his hand, then to the left-hand corner of the pictiue and he will have one side of a triangle ; then draw another line from the farmer’s head to the handle of the pitcher and to the right-hand corner, and he will have a second line of a triangle — the floor line making the base of his triangle, or pyramid. Again, the doctor’s head is the apex of another pyramid. It is this double-pyramidization, which gives the work that monu- mental character. In fact, there are five pyramidal masses. It is these that heave, or lift, the mind upward. Yet this pyramidization, is so skillfully concealed that only the experts in composition note it.
Then through all these pyramidal lines, which lift the mind, we have smaller curved and graceful lines — the following of which cradle the eyes and mind, back and forth, in a pleasur- able manner; and then the bench and the square window give just enough angular lines to jostle the eyes and mind. So that here Fildes has used all three elements of beauty of line- composition — ^angular, curved and pyramidal.
The rabid modernist will say: “Yes, these are all conven- tional accessories.’’ Of course they are. But there is a decree of nature, that only, by the use of these three elements of line-beauty, can an artist make a really beautiful composi- tion — albeit he must do it with infinite skill, as Fildes has here done, so as not to make it too obvious.
Having composed his work montunentally, how consum- mately he has expressed in each face and in each body, that which the drama admitted of being expressed! How intently and sympathetically the doctor seeks a clew to save the life of that child, even though it is only the child of a poor farmer.

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How astonishingly the artist has rendered the sickness of the child even though she be asleep! In fact, the drawing and rendering of the child is one of the great masterpieces of skill of the 19th Century — equalled only by that other masterpiece in the Luxembourg — the sick child in Geofiroy’s “A Visit,” See Fig. lio.
Then, note the stern self-control of the father as he “stands by” his beloved wife to support her soul in the hour of trial. He is majestic in his simple devotion to the stricken wife. And, last but not least, study the profound dejection and surrender to her heartache of the poor mother! Nobody ever did express soul suffering more completely than has Pildes on this small piece of canvas. All this intense drama is rein- forced by the profound expression with which the light from the lamp and from the window, and every scrap and object, is painted. Finally, notice the expression of aU the hands !
In short, it is a triumph of the power of adequate expression, in face and of form, line and movement. All this has been achieved by a drawing so perfect, a color so appropriate — but it must be seen in the Tate Gallery to be appreciated — a technique so effective, yet so modestly personal, as to be rmiversal in its appeal, without missing the “personal” note. No “individualistic,” ego-maniacal, technical stvmts here of drawing or painting ! All is simple, powerful, lifting and poetic in the highest degree.
Then, what a social sermon — in what was never intended to be a sermon! We have the whole range of human love — affectionate love of mother for her child, loyalty of the husband to the wife and the great-hearted sympathy of a powerful man for a helpless child; all at the close of day, with perilous night stealing on, more dreaded by the wise mother than the morn- ing; and that no doubt makes her ask herself: “Will she survive the witching hour when life’s energy nms low?” So that we are justified in saying, this is one of the greatest works of art created during the Nineteenth Century and as immortal as the canvas upon which it is painted.
It is such works as this that English artists produce, now and then — which, in the mass of mediocre English art, are apt to be passed over by mediocre critics, dulled by the general commonplaceness of output; but this is true of the mass of out-

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put in every nation, even France, but there it has always one redeeming quality ; cleverness — even when spiritually common.
A Degenerate Work of Art “ The Bathers ”
BY Cezanne See Fig. 114
Having read our praise of Luke Fildes’s work, would the reader expect to find a writer capable of saying — it is not art at all? But, as Napoleon said “The unexpected always happens.”
A supra-pretentious assthetician, named Clive Bell says, in his “Art,” the most ambitious book yet written, to bolster up the movement called Modernism, above all that branch of it called Post-Impressionism :
Of course “The Doctor” is not a work of art. In it, form is not used as an object of emotion but as a means of suggesting emo- tions. . . . Not being a work of art “The Doctor” has none of the immense ethical value possessed by aU objects that provoke assthetic pleasure. (Italics are ours.)
Such a verdict is simply stupefying to a normal man.
For the guidance of those readers who are not expert from long experience in catching the “joker” in any book, above all in art-books, issued by financially interested European art dealers, and by publishers and writers in the world of art, who are often associated with them in the delightful game of fouling the waters by methods of the cuttle-fish, in order to unload their wares on the public — we will say : the joker in this book is foimd in the first chapter “The .(Esthetic Hypothesis,” written in the most cryptic pseudo-erudite style, with intent, no doubt, to becloud the reader. Why an “hypothesis” at all in so simple a thing as art? Why not a clear definition, seeing that everything, of which we have a really clear notion, can be defined? But, throughout this book, there is not one clear sentence, as to the fimdamentals. No definitions, no explanations, the reader is left in the air as to his real meaning about every basic thing.
On page 6, with exquisite effrontery, Mr. Bell says:
The starting point for all systems of aesthetics must be the per- sonal experience of a peculiar emotion. . . . This emotion is called (esthetic emotion; and if we can discover some quality common and

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peculiar to all objects that provoke it, we shall have solved what I take to be the central problem of cesthetics.
T his is the first “joker” in Mr. Bell’s book. And it is a mere “fake”!
For, there is no such thing as a separate and “peculiar” kind of emotion, distinct from plain, every-day emotion, and which can be specially designated by the term “cesthetic emo- tion.” Nature knows nothing about (esthetic emotion. She has made us capable of eproving only three categories of really agreeable emotions, and in various degree of intensity: — Mirth, from a smile to hilarious laughter; Delight, simple or rap- turous; Awe, from mere w'onder to ecstasy. The antithetical emotions, such as sadness, disgust and contempt, we need not discuss here.
The pleasurable emotions we eprove, are aroused in us by all sorts of objects and scenes in nature, and by the various phases of life, as well as by works of art which represent them. The face of a beautiful girl will arouse in us far more delight than an imtruthftil, “post-impressionistic,” over-stylized rep- resentation of it; to arouse in us the same degree of delight, we must see an imitation of it more exact than is possible with mere paint. But, even if so exact an imitation were possible, the emotion it would arouse in us would be the same, simple emotion of delight aroused in us by the natural face of the girl. It would not be a sophisticated (Esthetic emotion.
Again, should a sculptor show to a man his finished marble statue of a graceful nude woman, having by its side his living model and holding the pose, for a comparison between the two, the emotion the living model would arouse in the man, would be different from the emotion the statue would arouse. But, while the living model might arouse in the man an emo- tion of delight — plus love, and the statue an emotion of delight — minus love, in neither case could the emotion be an (Esthetic emotion. In both cases it would be simple, delight, deep or superficial.
A representation of Shakespeare’s Ghost Scene, in “Ham- let,” will not arouse a higher degree, or different sort, of an emotion of awe, than would be aroused by that same occur- rence in real life. In both cases, it would be merely awe, not Shakespearean awe, not (Esthetic awe, nor any other pecu-

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liar kind of awe. It would be the only kind of awe that nature made us capable of eproving.
Therefore, there is no such thing as (Esthetic emotion, different from simple emotion. Hence, Mr. Bell’s “mental bug’’ of “sesthetic emotion” is either a foolish freak of his mind or a fatuous fake, concocted to serve as the corner-stone of a book, written to boost modernistic art, and, perhaps, to serve as a raft to float himself into the lime-light as a new, esoteric art critic, to supersede Taine, Sainte-Beuve, and Scherer; and to astonish the world!
Did he mean to convey that, when natural forms are stylized in art, we eprove a different sort of emotion from those which natural forms arouse in us? If so, he is so egregiously mis- taken, that his rushing into print — with the casuistic insolence which he manifested in his book — places him among either the bumptious semi-lunatics or the commercial charlatans. In either case, it reads him out of court as a respectable sestheti- cian, and makes his book worthless, in spite of the fact that some of the morons among our “Intelligentsia” have “fallen” for it. Why? Because they lacked the power of analysis and of discrimination, and a wise Chinaman said truly:
“ He who loses the power of discrimination, loses all.”
This proves that the power to analyze is, in the last analysis, more important than the power to create. For, if we have not that power we are inevitably led astray, a herd of blind, led by the blind. It was the loss of the power to analyze clearly and get out of her metaphysical fog, conjured up by the hair- splitting philosophers, who out-platoed Plato, which, finally, ended the career of creative Greece and Rome, and will seal our own doom, unless we are careful and save ourselves from that moronism which makes even many of our intelligentsia easy victims of any sort of propaganda, when preached with smooth cleverness, and backed up by the hypnotic power of the pontifical audacity of a Cagliostro, or his imitators.
Our Readers can ^ord to despise Mr. Bell’s Joker number one!
On page 7 he says :
For either all works of visual art have some common quality, or when we speak of “works of art” we gibber. . . . There must be some quality without which a work of art cannot exist ; possess-

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ing which, in the least degree, no work is altogethei worthless. What is this quaUty? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke aesthetic emotion? What quality is common to Santa Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto’s frescoes at Padua and the master- pieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesco and Cezanne? Only one answer seems possible — significant form; “significant form” is the one quality common to all works of visual art. (Italics are ours.)
This is the second, and most dangerous, joker in the book.
If you swallow these baits, reader, you are lost! But, lu ckil y for art, not only does Mr. Bell nowhere explain what he means by “significant form,” but the whole statement is absolutely false and a Mephistophic trap, cunningly fabricated and enunciated to catch the unwary — a clear “fake”!
Who did ever agree to these two grotesque assumptions? Certainly no writers of any authority. They are Mr. Bell’s own ipse-dixits, issued with aU the imperturbable cheek, characteristic of the Cagliostros of the ages, in the expectation that the world is foolish enough to swallow this bait, as the fat carps at Fontainebleau swallow anything that is thrown to them. Cmmingly enough he, nowhere in his book, clearly explains what he means by “significant form,” and this in itself is sufficiently significant — either of an intention to be- cloud the issue, or of the fact that Mr. Bell does not size up to his first paragraph:
He who would elaborate a plausible theory of aesthetics must possess two qualities — ^artistic sensibility and a turn for clear thinking.
If the Reader will now turn to Fig. 25, by the maniac Picasso, he will realize what Mr. Bell means by “significant form.” But we warn him only the initiates of the cult of sym- bolic sadism in art will readily divine its real and vicious symbolism.
As we painftilly wade through this book, we finally grasp that, perhaps, by “significant form” Mr. Bell really means significant or peculiar style; but that word does not once occur in his book. If he does not mean that, he means mere moon- shine. But, assuming that he does mean style : style is not the common quality of all art, nor is “significant form,” whatever that might be. There are many works of art that have no

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style whatever. Others have much style. Some have a imiversal style, others a purely personal style. But, in any event, to make style the basis of a definition of art is silly, or a charlatan’s attempt to throw things topsy-turvy in the ancient art world of common-sense.
If some one should today preach: “Copper, and not gold, is the basis of a doUar!” because copper enters into the making of a gold dollar, the Government would call in an alienist.
To preach that style, or “significant form,” is the one common quality of works of art, and that such works of art as have not this peculiar style are rubbish; and to make style, or “significant form,” the basis of a system of aesthetics, also calls for an alienist — or if not that, then the ostracism we give to all charlatans.
In aU things, majorities rule. And the vast majority of thinkers, from Plato down, have long ago agreed that the basis of aU art is : the expression, and the stirring, of human emotion. Delsarte put the matter in a nutshell when he said :
Art is an emotion, passed through thought, and fixed in form.
And it makes no difference what the emotion is or what the form is. A child, trying to express an emotion, no matter how crude, creates a work of art. It may be a childish work of art, but it is a work of art nevertheless, and the only difference between a childish work of art, and the greatest work of art, is, that, in the greatest work of art the greatest emotion is expressed in the greatest manner.
This is so axiomatic, that the attempt of Mr. Bell and his fellows to allure the world, cunningly, to shift the basis of art, and to accept his impudent dictum, that “significant form” or style is the basis of art, would be exasperating were it not so screamingly foolish and funny. The reader who reaches the bottom of page 8 in Mr. Bell’s volume, may as well throw the book in the ash-barrel, for he will only wade through a mass of more or less mushy, insolent and anarchistic twaddle, and at the end have met with not one constructive idea.
But, to show that Mr. Bell, in November, 1913, when he signed the “Preface” of his book, “Art,” was acting either as an assinine assthetician, or as a “spoofing charlatan,” let us say, the above was written in December, 1917; but, in this month’s “Vanity Fair” magazine, July 1924, we find an article

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by Mr. Bell, “There is an Art in Drinking a Cup of Tea,” in which he says :
Every act of existence may be a work of art, at this rate. You can speak, walk, dress, get into a carriage, drink a cup of tea, or shut the door with, or without, style. [Here he speaks of Style!] And is not the difference aesthetic? Have we, at last, reached the very root of the matter? Well, here at any rate, is a theory of art which is as good as another. [The language of a bunco-man!] I, myself, once put one forward which was not much worse than most. I held, if I remember right, that art consisted in creating forms [this old “significant form’’] which move us aesthetically; and I sug- gested that certain forms did move us aesthetically, because, per- haps, they expressed something, I hardly know what. (Italics ours.)
Reader, think of a man coming out in a book and pompously talking about “something, I hardly knew what” 1 ! ! “It is to laugh!” as the French say. But he finally confesses:
Art is style, and style is the man. Agreed. But what is it in the man that makes him express himself, not merely adequately, but stylishly? If style is art, what is an artist? One who expresses himself stylishly. And what is style? The way in which an artist expresses himself.
In the above he confesses that what he really meant, all along, was, not “significant form,” but style! But, to say that “style is the man,” is as old as Buffon; and to say, “style is art,” is as old as Bacon. This explodes number two of Mr. Bell’s “Jokers.” Besides, Briffon did not say. “Style Is the man. ’ ’ He did say . “ Le style c’est de I’homme mgme. ’ ’ That is: “Style is Of the man himself.” That is to say: style is that part of a work of art that a man puts in of his own personality. But his real definition of style is as follows:
Style is none other than the order and movement one gives to one’s thoughts.
and which we have analyzed in our chapter on “Style.”
It would be doing this aesthetic joker and mountebank too much honor to notice him even so much, were it not that he did succeed in captivating a lot of morons, and we will finish our job of exposing him, to enlighten his poor victims.
But to expose further this “aesthetician,” who is either a Irmatic or a fraud, we will analyze his book in which, for sup- port of himself, he now and then drags in Mr. Roger Fry — another pretentious art prophet and twisted soul, lost in a

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jungle of auto-deceptions, easily up-gobbled half-truths, and exploded notions, floating round in the Modernistic Bohemia, like the algse and rotting wrecks in that fabulous aquatic maze the Sargasso Sea.
According to Mr. Bell, works of art are such as have “Sig- nificant Form.” Those which have not his “significant form” are not works of art, according to him. Why? Because:
They leave untouched our (Esthetic emotions — because it is not their forms, but the ideas or information suggested or conveyed by these forms, that affect us.
And, according to him, works of art should not “suggest ideas or information.” Yet, the suggestion and representation of ideas, has been the main object of every expressive artist since time began !
Moreover, according to Mr. Bell, representation — that is, the naturalistic and rational representation of an idea, in naturalistic forms— is taboo in “Art.” Ignoring Shake- speare’s famous advice to the players in “Hamlet,” he has the ineptitude to say :
The thing that Shakespeare set himself to realize was not a faithful presentation of life. The creation of illusion was not the artistic problem that Shakespeare used as a chaimel for his artistic emotions.
This, in view of the fact that Shakespeare emphatically instructed the players:
To hold, as ’t were, the mirror up to nature!
Further Mr. BeU says:
Representation is not of necessity baneful. . . . Very often, however, representation is a sign of weakness in an artist. . . . Every sacrifice made to representation is something stolen from art.
But we might ask: what is the fimdamental basis of the visual drama? Representation, is it not? Representation of life in all its phases? Take representation out of art, and dramatic art, from .^schylos down, would have to be wiped out as not art at all, but “nasty realism” — as Mr. Bell says good representative art is.
We repeat, according to Mr. Bell, art consists of “signi- ficant form,” “creative form,” “pure form” — “imagined form” — ^that is: all such form as is not realistic, representative or naturalistic, but imagined form, that is: such form as all the

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primitive or savage artists created or bungled into, because they could not do better with the material they had to work with. Such was — ^according to him — the art of the Sumerians, Chaldeans, archaic Greeks, the primitive Byzantines, and primitive Italians down to Cimabue, and then the brutalized and simplified forms of a Matisse, a Cezanne, a Gauguin and the whole crew of Post-Impressionists — far removed from even relatively true natural forms ! Says Mr. BeU :
Very often, I fear the misrepresentation of the primitives must be attributed to what critics call “wilful distortion.” Be that as it may, the point is that, either from want of skill or want of will, primitives neither create illusions, nor make display of extravagant accomplishment, but concentrate their energies on the one thing essential — the creation of form (we should say the bungling of form). Thus they have created the finest works of art that we possess. {Sic.) Again :
Go to Ravenna and you will see the masterpieces of Christian art, the primitives : go to the Tate Gallery or the Luxembourg, and you will see Christan art at its last gasp.
And further:
Though I caimot rate the best Byzantine art of the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth Centuries quite so high as I rate that of the Sixth, I am inclined to hold it superior, not only to an3dhing that was to come, but also to the very finest achievements of the greatest ages of Egypt, Crete and Greece!
And then he goes into raptures over the “significant form” of the malformed and deformed works of Cezanne of which we give a good example in Fig. 114.
But here is what Taine, generally regarded as one of the sanest French minds of the 19th Century, says in his “Philos- ophy of Art ” — the wisest book on art ever written — about these Ravenna mosaics: —
It is not only the history of such or such a great man, which proves for us the necessity of imitating the living model and to keep the eyes fixed on nature; the history of every great school of art, likewise proves it. . . . Between all these examples I will select only two, but which are striking.
The first is the decadence of sculpture apd painting in antiquity. To have a lively impression of this, we need only visit Pompeii and Ravenna. At Pompeii the sctilptures and paintings are of the first centtu^r; at Raveima, the mosaics date from the time of the

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Emperor Justinian. In this interval, of five centuries, art was spoiled in an irremediable fashion, and this decadence came entirely through the forgetting of living nature, etc. (Italics ours.)
But the most neurotic doctrine of this aesthete’s “i®sthetic Hypothesis” and ‘‘Metaphysical Hypothesis” is: that art should be utterly detached from life, and not represent life, nor arouse the emotions of life, but stir only what he, with a new- fangled notion, presumes to call esthetic emotion, whatever that may mean. Hear him :
Art transports us from the world of man's activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. . . . What I have to say is this: the rapt philosopher, and he who contemplates a work of art, inhabits a world with an intense and peculiar significance of its own; that significance is unrelated to the significance of life. In this world the emotions of life find no place. It is a world with emotions of its own. . . . What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? No more than this, I think. The contemplation of pure form leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete detachment from the concerns of life: of so much, speaking for myself, I am sure. . . . And of one thing I am sure. Be they artists or lovers of art, mystics or mathematicians, those who achieve ecstasy are those who have freed themselves from the arrogance of humanity. . . . Because the cBsthetic emotions are outside and above life, it is possible to take refuge in them from life. He who has once lost himself in an ‘‘0 Altitudo!” will not be tempted to overestimate the fussy ex- citements of action. . . . That is why poetry, though it has its raptures, does not transport us to the remote aesthetic beatitude in which, freed from humanity, we are upstayed by a musical and pure visual form. (Italics are ours.)
But nowhere does he explain what is ‘‘ pure visual form.”
That is : this Hegelio-metaphysical, aesthetic Miinchhausen has lifted himself, by the boot-straps of his ‘‘transcendental ratiocination,” to a point of detachment so far above his fellow men and from life, such as all normal men see it, that he has, like a Mandarin of art in his ‘‘Ivory Tower,” reduced all art to his petty piflSe of a conception — ‘‘significant form”!
And the nearest he comes to telling us his idea of “sig- nificant form” is by the following footnote;
When Mr. Okakura, the official editor of The Temple Treasures of /apflK, first came to Europe . . . it was not until he came on to Henri Matisse that he again found himself in the familiar world of pure art!

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And further :
Primarily it is as a period of fertility in good artists that I admire the Post-Impressionist movement.
And further;
Cezanne carried me off my feet before ever I noticed that his strongest characteristic was an insistence on the supremacy of sig- nificant form.
In Figs. 2, 20, 21, 23, 1 15, 1 16, we give six examples of the art of Matisse and in Fig. 1 14 one of Cezanne. They speak for themselves — !
That we are not doing the latter injustice by selecting this work of his we will state that in the sumptuous volume : ‘ ‘ Paul Cezanne,” by Vollard, art dealer of Paris, page 122, will be found a photograph of Cezanne seated before this very picture. Fig. 15. Also we do not give it a skimpy quarter of a page but a fullpage illustration, so that the reader can study this work, one of those which took Mr. Bell “off his feet.” Fig. 114.
Here we have, then, what he calls “significant form ” ! For us it is significant with a vengeance, of Cezanne’s lunacy. For, did any sane artist ever attempt to pass off such deformed forms as artistic or beautiful, or at all human forms?
But Mr. Bell says:
We are familiar with pictures that interest us and excite our admiration, but do not move us as works of art. To this class belongs what I call Descriptive Painting — that is, painting in which forms are used not as objects of emotion but as means of suggesting emotion or conveying information. Portraits of psychological and historical value, topographical works, (does he mean land- scapes?), pictures which tell stories and suggest situations, illus- trations of all sorts, belong to this class. . . . According to my hypothesis, they are not works of art. They leave untouched our (Esthetic emotions because it is not their forms but the ideas or in- formation suggested or conveyed by their forms that affect us. (Italics are ours.)
This is either the metaphysical hypothesis of a madman, or the endeavor of a cynical, commercial charlatan to “put over” on mankind a new “hypothesis” as he calls it— that of “msthetic emotion,” and opposing it to spiritual emotion, and to set himself up as the prophet, of an entirely new basis of art. But nowhere does he tell us what constitutes “aesthetic emo-

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tion” — the basis of his new hypothesis and cornerstone of his system of art valuation.
He goes on to say:
Few pictures are better known or liked than Frith’s “ Paddington Station” : certainly I should be the last to grudge it its popularity. Many weary forty minutes have I whiled away disentangling its fascinating incidents and forging for each an imaginary past and an improbable future. But certain though it is that Frith’s mas- terpiece, or engravings of it, have provided thousands with half- hours of curious and fanciful pleasure, it is not less certain that no one has experienced before it one half-second of (Esthetic rapture — and this although the picture contains several pretty passages of color, and is by no means badly painted. “Paddington Station” is not a work of art; it is an interesting and amusing document, in which line and color are used to recount anecdotes, suggest ideas and indicate the manners and customs of an age: they are not used to provoke sesthetic emotion.
About the middle of the Nineteenth Century art was nearly dead as art can be. The Pre-Raphaelites had the taste to prefer Giotto to Raphael, but the only genuine reason they could give for their preference was that they felt Raphael to be vulgar. The reason was good but not fundamental.
The Seventeenth Century is rich in individual geniuses; but they are individual. Rembrandt, indeed, perhaps the greatest of them all, is a typical ruin of his age. For, except in a few of his later works, his sense of form and design is utterly lost in a mass of rhetoric, romance and chiaroscuro. . . . It is difficult to for- give the Seventeenth Century for what it made of Rembrandt’s genius.
Why this cry? Because Rembrandt was rational and drew and painted close to nature.
Such insolent assumption of superiority might be tolerated, if Mr. Bell would say that some other rational, naturalistic artist pleased him more than Rembrandt, such as Titian or Velasquez. But to trot out the undeveloped, still childish Primitives, who worked during the intellectual night of the Middle Ages, from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Centuries, and say that those artists and the savages of Africa alone produced art, is so exasperating, that it is not possible to treat him with respect.
This “thinker” reminds one of the Parisian distiller who, every now^ and then, would bring out a new^ concoction and say:

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This alone can give you real joy! What you have been experien- cing from other liquors since Adam is not joy but a sham joy — only as yet you do not k now it. Only I and a few adepts can now really taste the joy of this new drink— later, when you have tired of your ancient source of joy, this new source will appeal to you as giving you the only real joy!
For, Mr. Bell says:
It is a pity that cultivated and intelligent men and women cannot be induced to believe that a great gift of assthetic apprecia- tion is at least as rare in visual as in musical art. (But the latter is not rare.) I do not say that they cannot understand art — rather I say that they cannot understand the state of mind of those who understand it best.
And so this new aesthetic pundit lets us gradually know that aU the art, which all the normal thinkers of the world have for thousands of years regarded as great, is to him simply rubbish, and only such art is art, to him, as is archaic or de- generate or abstract and metaphysical and detached from all the concerns of life and utterly unrepresentative of human emotions !
Such a book as this, by Clive Bell, is a pernicious poison. For the inexperienced, and those who do not quickly see the “joker” in any argument or system of thinking, brought forward to defend bad or degrading art, in order to catch the shekels of the crowd, are caught by its specious and pretentious “learning.”
Art which detaches itself from life, has no concern with life or the emotions, hopes and fears and aspirations of men, has no warrant for existence. For, the most perfect art is that, which not only deals with life, but does it the most profoundly, and expresses and represents it the most completely. And all art, like the example by Cezanne we here reproduce, in which the forms are either vmder-realized through awkward incom- petence, or over-realized through sophisticated deformation, are the works either of undeveloped children, or incompetent maniacs, or of cynical charlatans, deliberately bent on bunco- ing the public ; by turning rational form, full of spiritual emo- tions for us normal people, into “significant or imagined form,” full of “ffisthetic emotions” which no one comprehends except the artistic crooks who fabricate it, perhaps to swindle the cunningly bewildered portion of the world.

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This picture by Cezanne which we reproduce, appears to aU normal artists — those who have not been made neurotics by hashish, absinthe or vice — to be a mere sketch. As such, nothing can be said against it. For “a sketch ends where criticism begins!” Moreover, it is a fine example of what the cynical modernists call a “conventional beaux-art composi- tion” — well-balanced and architectonic. But for these Mod- ernists it is not “conventional” — only because Cezanne made it I Had Boulander, or Gerome, two rational and great artists, made it, it would be for Mr. Bell, the Modernist, a despicable “academic convention.” Placed in the hands of a master like Ingres or Holbein or Velasquez, not to speak of Rembrandt, Giorgione and Raphael, it might be made into something really fine. But since, for the Modernists, nothing counts in art except a shrieking, ego-maniacal “individuality,” an unheard- of, stunning, novelty of technique, “significant or imagined” form, Cezanne went just so far in the twisting of his forms, of his heads, tree-trunks and branches, etc., went just so far in his deformation of the form, and then said “Voila! un chef- d'mivre!” and at once the candidates for a sanitarium fell down and worshipped I
The fact is, C6zanne did not know how to draw. In Vol- lard’s book on Cezanne there are scores of drawings — but not one of them is above the skill of one who “never tooked no lessons!” Therefore, since this work is deliberately left badly drawn, in a state suggesting either primitive archaicism or the end-of-an-epoch degeneracy, it is “creative form” and there- fore “ ffisthetically emotioning” — to Mr. Bell, whatever that may mean. To talk of creative composition is common-sense, but to talk of creative form is nonsense, it is only another word for the “deformation of the form.” It is this deformation of natural human forms, when making a statue or a picture, which is the essence and degenerating element of extreme Modernistic art.
Was not Zola, the Frenchman and intimate friend of Paul Cezanne, a better judge of his works than Mr. Clive Bell the Englishman? 'We think so. And Zola said of Cezanne:
Our comrades willingly held him for a Rate (a failure) but I did not cease to tell them: “Paul has the genius of a great painter! Ah! Why was I not a good prophet at that time? My dear big

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Cezanne had the spark. But if he had the genius of a great painter, he did not have the talent to become one. He lost himself too much in his dreams, dreams which did not have their accomplishment. According to his own words he had given himself out to be nursed by Illusions! It gives me too much pain when I think of what he might have been if he had been willing to control his imagination and also to carefully work over his forms because, if one is born a poet, one has to learn to be a good workman.
Everything that Cezanne wrote was unexpected and original, but I did not keep his letters, because I did not for anything in the world want that they might be read by others — ^because of their more or less loose form.
I remember, however, after receiving one of his missives from Provence having said to him : “I like these strange thoughts of yours like young Bohemians with their bizarre glances, their dirty feet and their heads in flowers.” But I could not help adding: “Our sovereign master the Public is more difficult to satisfy. It does not care a snap for princesses dressed in rags. To find grace in its eyes we must not only say something, but we must say it well.” (Ital- ics are ours.)
But Mr. Roger Fry says in the Burlington Magazine of August 1917:
The thought of a Cdzanne having to earn his living is altogether too tragic. But if life spared him in this respect his temperament spared him nothing — ^for this rough, Provengal, country-man had so exasperated a sensibility that the smallest detail of daily life, the barking of a dog, the noise of a lift in a neighboring house, the dread of being touched even by his own son, might produce at any moment a nervous explosion. At such times his first relief was in cursing and swearing, but if this failed, the chances were that his anger vented itself on his pictures — he would cut one to pieces with his palette knife, ov failing that, roll it up and throw it into the stove. (Italics are ours.)
Does not all this tend to prove that Cezanne was crazy? And that Zola sensed this and gradually dropped Cdzanne? For this, Mr. Roger Fry chides Zola, saying of him:
His own practice of literatme led him further and further away from any concern with pure art and he failed to recognize that his own early prophecy of Cezanne’s greatness had come true, simply because he himself had become a popular author and Cezanne had failed of any kind of success. Unfortunately Zola, who had evi- dently lost all real aesthetic feeling, continued to talk about art.

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and worse than that, he had made the hero of “L’Oeuvre” a more or less recognizable portrait of his old friend (Cezanne) :
We repeat, according to this latest pretentious “aestheti- cian,” there is no art unless it is made of “significant form,’’ that is “pure form,’’ that is “creative form,’’ that is “imagined form,” that is “stylized form,” that is — Style! This brings us back to the vicious half-truth of Chateaubriand :
A book lives only by virtue of its style!
— a slogan the foolishness of which we have already shown. Mr. Bell does not mention the word style once in his book — a most significant proof that by “Significant Form” he really means “style” in form, that is: a departure from photographi- cally exact nature, by either taking away from or adding to nature’s forms. But this is not new. Bacon had already said: “Art is man added to nature” By which he meant — style is — man added to nature, with which we agree.
But the question is always, how far shall an artist depart from nature, in his overstylization of form, before we are ■justified in calling him insane?
“Significant form” is not art, style is not art; they are a part of art. Simple art means: the expression of one’s emo- tions ; higher art : the expression of an emotion so as to com- municate that emotion to others; great art means: to express great emotions so grandly that, by this expression, the same emotions will be roused in the greatest number of people across the ages. How to do this is difficult but not mysterious. We have been explaining the process in the last two years and will keep on doing so.
We repeat, the primitive, with an intellect not yet fully developed, incompetently overstylizing his form, through childish awkwardness, is only half-awake intellectually, only half-insane. And the extreme neurotic Modernist, over- sophisticated, and overstylizing his forms — because of over- development of the mind and twisting of his soul — is no longer sane. But when he becomes overexcited through hashish, absinthe or other vices, plus ego-mania, to show off his “personal grace” of style, so that no living soul should mistake him, as he and his “significant and creative form” strut by, then he is in the pathological state which appealed to Mr. Bell and lured him on to say;

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Be they artists or lovers of art, mystics or mathematicians, those who achieve ecstasy are those who have freed themselves from the arrogance of humanity.
— a detachment that smacks of the sanitarium!
All of which proves, we repeat, that Mr. BeU is either a charlatan, or destructively abnormal. For any man is danger- ous, who so completely detaches himself from his fellow-men, their sorrows and joys, hopes and fears and aspirations, as to stand by with pipe in mouth and hands in pocket cleverly ridiculing their efforts to climb out of the social bog, saying :
In a sense all art is anarchical; to take art seriously is to be unable to take seriously the conventions and principles by which societies exist. It may be said with some justice that Post-Im- pressionism is peculiarly anarchical because it challenges so vio- lently the conventional traditions of art and by implication I suppose, the conventional view of life.
Why should artists bother about the fate of hiimanity? If art does not justify itself, esthetic rapture does. . . . Rapture suffices.
To bother much about anything but the present is, we all (Post- Impressionists) agree, beneath the dignity of a healthy human animal.
The one good thing society can do for the artist is to leave him alone. Give him liberty. The more the artist is freed from the pressure of public taste and opinion, from the hope of rewards and the menace of morals, from the fear of absolute starvation or pun- ishment and from the prospect of wealth or popular consideration, the better for him and the better for art, and therefore the better for everyone.
Finally, we come to the crux of the matter as far as Mr. Bell and his Post-Impressionists seem to be concerned:
It is unthinkable that any Government shoidd ever buy what is best in the work of its own age; it is a question how far purchase by the state, even of fine old pictures, is a benefit to art. ... As for contemporary art, official patronage is the surest method of encouraging in it aU that is most stupid and pernicious. ... As I shall hope to show, something might be said for supporting and enriching Galleries and Musemns if only the public attitude towards, and the official conception of, these places could be changed. [Italics are ours.]
That is: Rational art, made in the interest of and inspired by normal society, is pernicious; but Post-Impressionism,

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inspired by abnormal Modernistic artists is holy! Therefore take your normal art out of the public galleries and put our abnormal art in its place! That is as the French say: Ote-toi de Id queje m'y mette!
This is the attitude of the whole gang of futuristic an- archists, who have threatened to burn and dynamite every Museum in Europe, in order to have “a new deal” and to begin all over again, simply to please these hectic, restless, impatient men with an insane desire for setting topsy-turvy the world of art: in order to quickly have something they call “New!”
Those who are ati courant with the secret sadistic significance of modernistic works know perfectly well, that those who are the initiated in the “cult,” understand the meaning of certain symbols which are used in them. If the true facts of this meaning were known to those who are led astray by the sophisticated, metaphysical, altitudinizing veroiage of the gesthetic pundits of this whole Futuristic movement, they would pause, and perhaps retrace their steps toward normal ways of thinking and feeling. The police of Europe, familiar with the purlieus and cloaca of their cities, and wdth the por- tentous ravages there of sex-perversion, understand these symbols and suppressed much of this modernistic art — when it went too far. And after this war, much more will certainly be suppressed by an awakened public opinion.
In this book, so full of misstatements as to make the ju- dicious wonder at the moral obliquity of Mr. BeU, he uses much energy in insulting the public by claiming that it knows nothing about art. He caps his system with these edifying sentiments:
Art Schools do nothing but harm, because they must do some- thing. . . . However wicked it may be to try to shock the pub- lic, it is not so wicked as trying to please it. . . . The least the state can do is to protect the people who have something to say that may cause a riot.
This is the language of every anarchist. For the public knows all that the greatest artist knows, about the fimction of art, i.e. : whether a work of art has the power of emotioning either the body, mind or soul of normal hiiman beings. And that is all the public needs to know. It does not need to know anything about the mysteries of technical causes. It knows

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nothing about the technical processes the Creator uses in producing flowers. It needs only to know that flowers do stir our emotions; and it does know perfectly well that, in the last analysis, to the vast majority of people on the globe, the Rose comes nearest to being the most beautiful of all flowers and is generally the first choice of aU men, even though they may be charmed by many others.
The laws of beauty were fixed by nature. They are known and were analyzed in our November 1916 issue. The public need not know these laws. But it is affected by the various kinds of beauty according to these simple laws; and that is all that is necessary. And these laws will dominate art for all time to come, as they have in the past.
Tolstoi was a great story-teUer and an erratic philosopher. But he said a few profoundly true things. One is, in substance; whenever a charlatan or a semi-madman invents a “new art,” he or his protagonists, invent a new “system of aesthetics,” with new definitions and new hypothesis, to justify this new art. The 300-page screed of Mr. BeU, is a striking proof of this implication of Tolstoi.
In conclusion, we may say of Mr. Bell what Carlyle said of Coleridge:
His life had been an abstract thinking and dreaming, idealistic, passed amid the ghosts of defunct bodies and of unborn ones. The moaning sing-song of that theosophico-metaphysical monotony left on you, at last, a very dreary feeling . . . but, in general, you could not call this aimless, cloud-capped, cloud-based, lawlessly meandering htunan discourse of reason by the name of “excellent talk,” but only of “surprising”; and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt’s account of it: “Excellent talker, very — if you let him start from no premises and come to no conclusion. ”
The truth is, I now see, Coleridge’s talk and speculation was the emblem of himself: in it as in him a ray of heavenly inspiration struggled, in a tragically ineffectual degree, with the weakness of flesh and blood ... he preferred to create logical Fata Mor- ganas for himself on this hither side, and laboriously solace himself with these . . . and he had not valiantly grappled with it, he had fled from it; sought refuge in vague day-dreams, hollow com- promises, in opium, in theosophic metaphysics. . . . And so the empyrean element, lying smothered under the terrene, and yet inextinguishable there, made sad writhings.

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For the old Eternal Powers do live forever; nor do their laws know any change, however we in our poor wigs and church-tippets may attempt to read their laws. To steal into Heaven, — ^by the modern method, of sticking ostrich-like your head into fallacies on Earth, equally as by the ancient and by all conceivable methods — ■ is forever forbidden. High-treason is the name of that attempt; and it continues to be punished as such. Strange enough: here once more was a kind of Heaven-scaling Ixion; and to him, as to the old one, the just gods were very stern! The ever-revolving, never-advancing Wheel (of a kind) was his, through life ; and from his Cloud-Juno did not he too procreate strange Centaurs, spec- tral Puseyisms, monstrous illusory Hybrids, and ecclesiastical Chimeras, — which now roam the earth in a very lamentable manner?
Mr. Bell now and then drags in Mr. Roger Pry — for sup- port of himself, in his effort to impose on the public his new system of sesthetic. But Mr. Roger Fry is but another pre- tentious, pontifical art-prophet and a twisted soul — lost in a jungle of auto-deceptions. He forms a sort of Siamese-couple with Mr. Bell. They both admire Cezanne, and all sadistic art. Mr. Fry is also a “collector,” and has written a pundit- book, “Vision and Design,” also “high-brow.” But, if the reader will examine Fig. 26, he wiU see a reproduction of a work of art, illustrated in his book, and forming a part of hts own collections, as he says, and which is for him, by implication, a great work of art. But to us, it is a specimen of art-mutila- tion — again of the head of a woman — so full of sadism, as to be, no doubt, highly appealing to the rank and file among the votaries of the secret cult — of sadism in art !
Was Mr. Fry’s book written to “boost” his own collections, so as to unload them all the easier on the collectors of insane curios in art? Or, is he sincere? If he is, he is certainly a pitiable victim of the plague of sadism in art.
And to think that such minds, either charlatan or aberrated, can worm their way into positions of trust in museums and the public press !
We hear much nonsense about “Variety in Taste. We have disposed of that problem elsewhere. Here, we may notice, en passant, a more interesting problem; the difference in emotionability between two different men, of equal taste and “culture,” and the variability of emotion in the same

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individual. The problem is so profound that we can do no more than indicate it.
In an article in “The Art World,” of August, 1918, we discussed the “Variability of Human Emotion.” We quote the following:
“Our capacity for being emotioned — weak, strong, or variable — is, therefore, a subject which should long ago have enlisted the patient investigation and analysis of clear-headed, simple-speeched psychologists, like James, or Freud, or Nor- dau. To analyze this matter fully would carry us too far. Therefore, we now merely wish to lay the problem on the table before the scientific psychologists and make a few observations.
“The problem is a double one.
“First: Why do certain works of nature and of art highly emotion certain people and leave others more or less cold, people of the same intelligence, of the same social circle and of similar culture?
“Second; Why are we highly emotioned by certain works of nature and of art at a certain epoch in our life, and, at an- other, indifferent to, or repelled by, them?
“This variability of human emotionability is of extreme interest, and its causes and effects of far-reaching significance.
“As an example of the variability of human emotionability, of the difference in capacity of being emotioned by certain things, we relate a story ;
“Two Americans were living in Paris with their families. One was a writer and the other an artist. One night the artist went to the Paris Opera with a fellow-sculptor, a Dutchman, to hear Rossini’s ‘William Tell.’ They sat in the middle of the orchestra where they could hear well. Every seat was taken, since it is one of the most popular operas with the Parisians.
“Rapturous applause greeted the first two acts. Then, finally, came the wonderful overture to third act — ‘The Calm.’ The orchestra, one of the finest in the world, played it with the delicacy and perfection of expression to be expected from graduates of the famous Conservatory of Music of Paris. From the first note supreme silence reigned in the vast audience, not a soimd was heard to break the increasing spell of the music. Finally, at the last note of this marvellous work of

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art, came a burst of applause that shook the hall and revealed the depth of the emotions of the audience.
“The artist took out his handkerchief, to sheepishly wipe away his tears of rapture and saw his neighbor, the Dutch sculptor, do the same. Encouraged to think he was not a simpering fool, he looked about and saw many others doing the same, so profoundly emotioned were they by the music.
“The next evening the artist visited his friend, the writer, and asked: ‘Did you ever hear Rossini’s “William Tell,” at the Opera House here?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘they never play it in New York, and every time it is advertised here, and I go for tickets, they are sold out.’ ‘Will you go if I get seats the next time?’ ‘Yes. Get two seats.’
“The following month two seats were secured and the writer with his wife went, for the first time, to hear this perfect opera.
“The very next night the artist called on his friend and said, ‘Well, what do you think of “William Tell ” ’ ? The writer replied, as if he had heard an ordinary charming piece of music; ‘Why — it’s a — ^pretty opera,’ and the verdict of his wife, a sensitive woman of much musical culture, was the same.
“The artist was astonished, dumbfounded. To him the opera was not ‘pretty’ at all, it was sublime, having lifted him to the highest pinnacle of rapture and to tears. Others in the audience had been similarly emotioned.
“The next day the artist asked himself; ‘Why should you shed tears over that piece of music, while it left X com-
paratively cold? Am I differently constructed from him? He is a man of genius, sensitive as a naked nerve and a pro- foundly sentimental man — when it comes to loving his father, mother, sisters and brothers, even to sacrificing himself for them during fifty years — and loving his own family almost foolishly, a man of force, and of imusual capacity for stirring the emotions of others, either to laughter or tears. Why should I weep over this music and he remain comparatively cold?’
“After long introspection, and analysis of his friend, the artist concluded that, while he was perhaps even more coldly logical and analytical in his mental processes than his friend, the writer, and less able to stir the emotions of an audience

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either by written or spoken word, there was deep down in their souls this ftindamental difference: the artist was bom with a profotinder love of the sublime in both nature and art than his friend, who was born with a keener sense of the ridi- culous, thus making him extraordinarily sensitive to the comic aspects of life and of things, and giving him an ever-present sense of the nearness of the sublime and the ridiculous, and which had engendered in him a habit of frequently making fun of certain things which put the artist into a reverential mood. In other words, when the writer desired to be grave, reverential or tragic, he could be so, but he naturally leaned more toward the comic, while the artist, though instantly responsive to every manifestation of wit or comedy, being in fact a capital audience for the fun-maker, naturally leaned toward the serious and the sublime.
“This difference of emotionability was not a difference of intellect or culture — because both have done things that are considered enduring by the public — it was a temperamental difference, one man leaning more towards the comic, the other more towards the tragic.
“Query: Is the comic and ridiculous in life and art of more importance to mankind, socially, than the tragic or sublime? Is not, in the final analysis, Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ or ‘OtheUo’ more important to us, as a social force, than Moliere’s ‘Pre- cieuses Ridicules’ and ‘Le Depit Amoureux’? If the sublime is more important than the comic, whose judgment, in regard to Rossini’s ‘Overture,’ is of the most importance — that of the writer with a leaning toward the comical, who thought it only ‘pretty,’ and was not profoundly moved, or that of the artist with a leaning toward the serious and who thought it sublime and who was emotioned to tears?
“Here is another phase of the matter : Every once in a while the manufacturers of cloth, and dressmakers, meet and say: ‘Business demands a change of styles’! They announce that the present fashion is no longer beautiful, even though very beautiful, and proclaim a new style. Instantly some of the fashion-pushers among women will begin to loathe the pre- vailing style, not because it is ugly, but because it is no longer ‘in fashion.’ Because, as one fashionable lady said: ‘I would rather be dead than not be in fashion, however ugly the

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fashion.’ Such women do not love and seek beauty in dress, they seek to know, and they admire, what is in fashion. Their emotions are never really stirred by the beauty of the garments they wear, but by the verdict of ‘Mrs. Jones’ as to its up-to- date fashionableness. It is these fashion-mongers who are responsible for the popularity, now and then, of ugly styles in dress, like some of the present, and which are and have been ‘boomed’ by the hired press and magazines.
“The same holds true in art. Some men will invent a new trick in painting, or a new style, and by charlatan adver- tising exploit it — to make money out of it. The fashion- mongers in art will at once look up, fall in line and abandon some beautiful style, or perfect manner of painting, and decry the old and boom the new. Example :
“An old sculptor and a middle-aged painter and a writer went through a museum and passed a great pictirre, fifty years old. The sculptor said: ‘That’s a fine picture!’ ‘Do you think so?’ said the painter, with a quizzical smile, *I thkik it poor. I used to like it ten years ago.’
“This picture is a fine subject, beautifully composed, pro- foundly expressed, very well drawn, of a fine color scheme, and its painting was, in its day, and still is, of a high order, and it is a picture of which thousands of reproductions have been sold to all classes of the public, showing its wide range of popularity. The painter admitted all this and that he had also in the past admired it. Why no longer? Because, as he said — ‘the style of painting has changed.' And as he was a mere painter, and his loves among pictures changed with the change of manners of painting, he had lost interest in this picture.
“The real reason he was no longer emotioned by this great work of art was: because, at heart, he had become a mere painter, had never become a true artist. In reality he cared nothing for Art, but only for one phase of art — ^painting — and only for such painting as had been forced into vogue and was selling, among such speculators and amateurs, who either do not know what is beautiful in art or do not care — so long as they are in the up-to-date, money-making, ‘aesthetic swim.’ What difference does it make to a millionaire if, at the end of twenty years of collecting, he finds his purchases are really not enduring in quality? He either sells them at a loss or gives

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them to a museum. He will at least have enjoyed his notoriety as a man of culture and patron of art.
“As this painter was in art only to make money, he was interested only in studying and admiring such art as would help him to acquire the skill to paint in a manner that was in vogue, and would sell. Later in life, this same painter may again come back, not only to like but to love this very picture which he once admired and now disdains. This wiU happen when he finds that there is something higher in some pictures than merely their manner of painting, and shall have learned to appreciate that something higher.
“Such narrow-minded artists give out verdicts, which simply bewilder the lajnman when he walks with them through a museum — ^he cannot understand why works which arouse his emotions leave such and such an artist cold, nor why suck an artist will eulogize a certain work which to him appears merely a mild daub or an insane sadistic contraption.”
Some Readers, who feel that, in business, “a knock is as good as a boost,” will wonder why we give so much space to exposing this critic, Mr. Bell. The reason is simple. We were bom with altruism enough to find pleasure in warning the public. Also, we find relaxation in helping to stay the spread in America of the plague of Modernism and its twin psychic malady: Symbolic Sadism in art. To contribute our mite, in this campaign, we try to show that the protagonists of these feww-maladies, the sestheticians like Mr. Bell, are either sick in soul, childish in mind, or corrupt in heart.
If Mr. Bell is a sincere admirer of the S3nnbolic sadism in the art works of Picasso, Cezanne & Co., he is but a pitiable victim of a psychic malady, whose existence he has not even divined, but which he is helping, ignorantly, to make epidemic. If he is not a fraud, then he should be pitied for the ramshackle operation of his mind, which geysers forth self-contradictions which are suicidal in the judgment of all who, in gesthetics, “know a hawk from a handsaw,” as Shakespeare has it. But, if he foolishly rushed into the field of art criticism, like a pug- nacious bull into a Spanish arena, with the hope of whittling out for himself a career as a “critic,” a function which, to be well performed, requires, today, a more powerful and finer mental mechanism than any other art; and, if he chose the

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“boosting” of sadistic modernistic art as the easiest way to hjs goal, then we are justified in dubbing him the “Cagliostro of art criticism,” and in executing him accordingly. That he will riposte with cleverness, to “save his face,” is to be ex- pected.
Moreover, Mr. BeU is the typical modernistic aesthetic “ bell-wether,” of England, followed by a flock of misled, un- discriminating morons which, though now dwindling, is still making too much raucous noise. By exposing him, we expose all of his tribe and their unfortunate acol3i;es. And thus we achieve our main purpose: to keep our country from being over-run by a swarm of modernistic “art -bugs” to the detri- ment of American art, to every one of whom we can apply the remark of Tolstoy:
Whenever some artist invents a new fad in art, some ass of a critic will trot out a new system of aesthetics to justify that fad.
Also, he usually will over-reach himself, as did Mr. Bell, by applying, with infantile insolence, the now stale epithet of insult: “academic,” to the fundamental principle of all great works of art, ancient as the hills and as eternal as man him- self:
The True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
ADDENDUM TO CHAPTER XIV
AN EXHIBIT OF C^:ZANNES “A Stupendous Nobody or a Surpassing Genius”
Appeared in the April, 1917, issue of ” The Art World ”
Last month (March, 1917) there was held, at the Arden Galleries in New York, an exhibition of a number of paintings by Cezanne. Speaking of them in the New York Sun, our always amusing but frequently bewildering, James Huneker, asked: “Is he a stupendous nobody or a surpassing genius?”
We have not the slighest hesitancy in saying: he is a stu- pendous nobody!
Let us hear Mr. Himeker:
The critical doctors disagree, — ^an excellent omen for the reputa- tion [he means notoriety] of the man of Provence. We do not dis- cuss a corpse, for though Cezanne died in 1906 he is a living issue among artists and writers. Every exhibition calls forth various comments; fair, unfair, ignorant and seldom just.

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This profound difference of opinion among cultured thinkers in regard to any artist’s works is the surest guarantee that he is an aesthetic dead one. For there is no instance on record where a work of art, as hotly disputed as those of Cezanne have been for twenty years, was not pushed into oblivion through the progressive conquering power of the condemnation of men of common-sense. And the quarrel now raging over Cezanne is over the question whether he was insane or not, and we have not the slightest doubt that the quarrel will be finally ended in the almost universal verdict that he was just plain crazy! This will become more and more apparent as the facts of his life are brought out and studied. Himeker admits as much when he says:
He was personally a crank, in the truest sense of that short, ugly word. When I first saw him, he was a queer, sardonic old gentleman in ill-fitting clothes, with the shrewd, suspicious gaze of a provincial notary, a rare impersonality, I should say.
His photo, Fig. 15, will substantiate this.
Well, no great genius ever was a queer crank. Every great artist who ever lived, was a great man, with his feet on the ground and his soul in the clouds, the two boimd together by stern logic, common-sense and a quick perception of the eternal fitness of things. The greater the genius, the larger the dose of common-sense. Homer, Phidias, Iktinos, Dante, Giotto, Ghi- berti, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Titian, Raphael, Velasquez, Holbein, Cervantes, Murillo, Shakespeare, Milton, Victor Hugo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Veronese, Goethe, were all men of surpassing genius and also of good sense. They were all clear-eyed and vastly practical men; no cranks among these great! Cezanne and his works, being insane, all those who respond to their weird appeal may be suspected of also being taiuted.
Mr. Huneker says further:
The tang of the town is not in Cezanne’s portraits of places. His leaden landscapes do not arouse to spontaneous activity a jaded ret- ina fed on Fortuny, Monticelli or Monet. (See Fig. 17.)
They certainly are “leaden” indeed, and also wooden and dead. What more could be expected of a man who never had any training worthy of the name and who was driven into art merely by vanity, which gradually developed into ego-mania?

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Huneker continues :
He is a primitive, not made like Puvis, but one born to a crabbed simplicity.
Well, what right has any one in the twentieth century to affront mankind with his inept creations just because they are “primitive”? We pardon Cimabue for his “primitiveness,” because he came at the end of an intellectual night and the barbarism of five hundred years. But we cannot pardon, in this age, such childishness as Cezanne manifests. And, as for his “crabbed simplicity,” it is surely “crabbed,” but not simple. It is mere pathological aberration and emptiness. The Parthenon is simple but not empty. It is simple, but far from “primitive.”
Then we learn further:
If you don’t care for his nudes, you may console yourself that there is no disputing tastes with the tasteless. They are uglier than the females of Degas and twice as truthful. (See Fig. 16.)
WeU, as Degas’s females are about the limit of ugliness, Cezanne’s are beyond the limit. And ugliness in art, is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and condemns everything that a man may create, in or out of art. And further on he says :
What’s the use of asking whether he is a sound draughtsman? Huysman spoke of his defective eyesight. But disease boasts its discoveries as well as health. The abnormal vision of Cezanne gave him glimpses of a “reality” denied to other painters.
What a joker Himeker is! He knows as well as any one that sound drawing is the very foundation of any sane, not to speak of great art. Cezanne’s lack of sound drawing condemns his work utterly, and his “abnormal vision” made him see aU things abnormally, crooked, cramped and diseased, as a crank with diseased eyes naturally always will. Here is proof furnished by Huneker himself that Cezanne’s w'orks came by their evidently diseased nature logically and fatally, and when he says:
Had Cezanne the “temperament” that he was always talking about? [His constant talking about it is another sign of intellectual degeneration.] If so, it was not decorative in the rhetorical sense. [It surely does lack decorative beauty, and this lack makes it worthless.]
And then he continues:
An unwear3dng experimenter, he seldom finished a picture.

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All incompetent artists experiment, but never get anywhere. But why inflict on the public an experiment that is not finished? In art the public is only interested in finished things — unless they are labelled "unfinished,” or "sketches,” etc. Why allow an intriguing, speculating dealer, to palm off on the public, as finished works of art, things which are not finished, and do it with deceptive, esoteric, casuistry? That Cezanne’s pic- tures are all unfinished and merely "laid in,” mere starts for pictures that might have become pictures, in the hand of a master, but never would come to anything in the hands of a "stupendous nobody,” is only too evident of the vast majority of his productions. Furthermore we learn;
He has achieved the fundamental structure of Courbet, but his pictures, so say his enemies, are sans composition, sans linear pat- tern, sans personal charm. “Popularity is for dolls,” cried Emerson.
As an answer to all this; in the first place he never achieved any kind of "structure,” much less "fundamental structure.” And as for Emerson’s phrase, when he used it, he referred to such moral cowards as sacrifice their moral and intellectual convictions to be popular, like many of our pussy-footing politicians. Emerson did not refer, in that passage, to aesthetic popularity. But when he did come to that, he also said :
The true artist has the planet for his pedestal, the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes.
Having been merely an adventurer, Cezanne in about ten years more will be as lonely as Simon Stylites on his column. Then his fellow cranks only, suffering from abnormal vision, will be so poor as to do him homage. In short, Huneker’s critique of Cezanne is either a conscious or unconscious, but in any case delicious, piece of satirical and inverted condemnation, flaying his victim under the guise of praise, such as Rene Benjamin gave Rodin, in the Gil Bias of Paris, on September 23rd 1910.
Are there any American dealers, critics a,nd artists who really believe in C4zanne? It is difficult to believe. But if there are, they have all been bamboozled by the Machiavellian and cunning advertising campaign, carried on for years, by the corrupt and speculative art dealers of Paris — ^after they started to exploit the ugliness and moral turpitude of the socM

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misfits who started the '‘modernistic” movement. And the intellectual carps in the American world of art, have simply- done what the foolish carps of Fontainebleau do — swallow anything that visitors throw to them, so eager are they to swallow something, anything, so long as it is a novel thing, and will relieve them of the ‘‘boredom of the ages.” Mr. Huneker throws some light on this phase of the subject when he says:
Then came the brusque apotheosis of 1894 the Autumn Salon, the most revelatory of his unique gifts thus far made. Puvis de Chavannes had a spedal salle, so had Eugene Carriere [these great names and their works were dragged in to lend dignity to the game]. Cezanne was given the place of honor. You may readily fancy the jockeying and official intrigues, coupled with the wire-pulling of interested picture dealers, that went to secure the triumph. [Italics are ours.]
Here we see, shining through the fog, a true light, throwing into relief the cryptic manoeuvres of the dealers and artists, who ran this arch-corrupt ‘‘Autumn Salon” in Paris before the war, all for the purpose of leading the public away from com- mon-sense, truth, beauty and social health, toward insincerity, ugliness, vulgarity and insanity — ^and all for lucre !
That this Cezanne business is, in our country, a bunco game, of some Paris art dealers, trying to unload their stuff here, on ‘‘those savages of America,” is a fair inference that any man of common sense might make. And is the American public going to put a stamp of truth upon the remark of our immortal Barnum — one of the greatest masters of humbug the world ever saw, save Cagliostro, when he said :
There’s a sucker born every minute !
When will our artists so arrange matters so that they will be free to deal with the public without the intermeddling of art dealers and speculators? Because every dealer must make money. And every speculator, is perforce, more or less im- moral. We do not say dishonest. Though it is certain there are many dishonest art dealers in Europe. But a speculator may be so honest as to say frankly and openly, that he -will always try to get something for nothing by giving a fictitious reputation for excellence to a work of art that is inferior — ^by beating the big drum in the press, imtil the work becomes at least unique through having been talked into notoriety.

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Because the “collector” is always with us: he who collects anything, from a whiskey bottle to a bird’s nest, from bonbon boxes to hens’ teeth; and, because the collector is ever in search of the curious and the tmique, no matter how ugly or absurd, some day he will surely buy the unique, notorious thing, if only to amuse his ever-curious visitors. He will even foist it upon a museum, and sometimes by force, as was done by the friends of Manet, when they forced his ridiculous and vulgar “Olympia” into the Louvre, a picture which now dis- honors that great Museum. Nor have we here escaped. For in our Metropolitan Museum we have some Cezannes, and some Rodins, that make us wonder how and why they were “jimmied” into its halls.
When will the public also deal direct with the artist, without the intermeddling efforts of any professional critic, either of a newspaper or a magazine? When will the public rely upon its own instincts and intuitions, uninfluenced by any of the hypo- critical, incomprehensible but high-sounding, even transcen- dental jargon, inflicted upon us by the bribed and shameless “critics” of Europe, who influence our critics here, most of whom fail to see clearly through their game, and, so, throwing into disrepute the whole profession of art criticism? The public shotdd not accept even the criticisms of The Art World without weighing them and being sure they sound true to logic and common-sense and square with its natural instincts of what is sane, moral and beautiful.
In its efforts to judge any work of art, the public will always have one safe guide, just one — Nature! Every work of art begins to be uncommon as soon as it departs from nature, even a little bit. It is true that, to produce great art, an artist must depart from a photographic interpretation of nature in his work. If he does not, he produces simply the obvious and commonplace. This departing from the commonplace of nature in a work of art gives it Style, which a great work of art should have.
But then, the question arises: How far can an artist depart from natiure, for the sake of style? The answer is: He can go up to the line where the style of the composition and the man- ner of the execution begin to obscure the thought or idea that is intended to be expressed by the artist in his work, or where

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the “artistry” becomes so personal, or so strange, that it begins to attract so much attention, that the emotion, which the artist should aim to arouse in the spectator, fails to be aroused. The degenerate artist takes advantage of this principle and says: that he departs from nature for that very reason — to give his work style. But we enter the danger zone which leads to degeneracy and insanity, just as soon as we depart from nature beyond a certain normal line. If then the artist keeps on, on that path, he will surely end in the abyss of the abnormal and monstrous. And, since the thought of the degenerate is deformed, and sometimes corrupt, he suits his style and technique to his thought. And the surest tests of the value of any work of art are : the instincts and common- sense of an uncorrupted and cultured public.
Ah, what an awakening there will be in about ten years or so from now, when this rampant curiosity about Cezanne and other “modernistic” art works and cranks in art, fanned into notoriety by charlatan methods of interested dealers, critics and artists, shall be exhausted!
And we beg most tenderly to suggest, to those few collectors of “cmios, ” who have been hypnotized to invest in any of the forms of modernistic degenerate art (all of which forms can be traced back to either some crank, drug fiend, alcoholic victim or sex pervert) that they unload their curios instanter, and throw them back upon the hands of those Parisian art dealers who first fostered their creation, and this, while these works still command a certain price, however small. For these things, for which now high prices are asked and sometimes paid, by the “intellectual bumpkins,” will certainly prove in ten years to have been “gold-bricks,” and then there will be gnashing of teeth and wailing at the gates — for those who were untrue to their own intuitions and followed, foolishly, the fantastic prophets of an impossible “modernism” which, beginning with the “search for the beautiful in the modern,” as Beaudelaire, the father of modernism, said, ended by the spawning of the grotesquely absurd and the monstrously ugly, to the bewildering of the unknowing and the disgust of the wise.
What a house-cleaning there wiU be in certain museums, and in some private collections of certain spectalators, when the public will have learned that there is an abyss between modem

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and "modernistic” art, and when the words, “modernism” and “up-to-dateness,” will have become nauseating; when it wiU have tired of running about, to see, out of common curiosity only, the “leaden” creations of Cezanne and other modernistic artists!

AFFIRMATIONS
Those “Novelty-maniacs” who, in their feverish chase after mere personal originality, contemn the beautiful in art, usually despise and ridicule every originality but their own, or kindred to their own.
The deluded artists, and their amateur followers, who praise “suggestion” in art — such as results from the imperfection of line and form, are unaware that, in the long run, such “suggestion” becomes irritating, because a half -perfect form incessantly cries aloud: “I might have been made perfect!”
Every mere novelty in art, — when achieved by flouting the beautiful and the sublime in composition — soon tires, and engenders a futile hopping about from novelty to novelty; and, during the last generation, this has been the most potent cause of the ever-increasing neurosis, restlessness, and immor- ality, in the life of the world.

CHAPTER XV

WHY THE DEFORMATION OF THE FORM IN PUBLIC MONUMENTS IS A SOCIAL MENACE
Appeared in the February, 1917, issue of “The Art World"
In the December, 1916, issue a picture by Cezanne was attacked. This was done not because of its color, since color may be regarded as secondary in importance in any picture, however desirable it may be as an added beauty to a finely composed line-pattern and faultless drawing and expression. We attacked it because of its brazen De-formation of the Form.
Whereupon the Boston Transcript of December i8th said:
Such aberrations [as Cezanne’s works] are taken altogether too seriously by the majority of critics, who are afraid of being out of the fashion.
Now, a fashion is something that is not permanent, is but a passing fad. Therefore, we do not mind how much cubistic nonsense and Cezannistic deformation is used, in such art- dodgers as are frankly nothing but caricatures, or are used in commerce, or in the comics of the day. Or, when Weber and Fields, dressed up in cubistic clothing, one as a beer barrel and the other as a bean-pole, make us split our sides with fat laughter, why not ? so long as it is clean, clever, heaven-blessed nonsense ?
But, when a cubistic picture, or a Cezannistic deformation of form, is admitted into the great world exhibitions, of the Paris Salon or our Metropolitan Museum, and lauded as deserv- ing of as much respectful consideration, even of veneration, as sublime works of art, is it not time to take them more seriously and say, and definitely state, why such examples of the deforma- tion of the forms of nature are a social menace?
If we hope to preserve our democracy and help it along towards a higher perfection and prevent ourselves from sliding
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backwards towards slavery, we must above all be loyal to the laws and truths of Nature.
Truth! I cried, though the Heavens crush me in following her. No falsehood, though a celestial lubberland be the price of apostacy! said Carlyle. ‘ ‘ But what truth ? ” cries the cynical pragmatist.
First of all, the truth of material fact, about which there can be no quarrel. Such truths are few, but they are funda- mental — witness: that twice two makes foim, and three and two do not make nine.
Then there are such spiritual truths as are supported by fact, and this applies to art in a direct manner.
Whether we believe in the anthropomorphic god of the Jews, the Mohammedans or the Hindoos, or in the Force back of the pheitomena of nature, preconized by Spencer, Tyndal and Huxley, we are compelled to recognize the operation of a Cosmic Urge or Volition. This Cosmic Urge is ever busy — indicating to us the path we should follow. And, so long as we follow these indications, we walk in safety toward our ordained goal, perfection; when we ignore them, through re- bellion or stupidity, we fall back into the pit of deformation and animality.
Now, the supreme indication that Nature gives us is — that she is eternally striving to perfect the type, of every kind of thing she had created. Solomon sensed this and therefore said;
He hath made all things beautiful in His time.
Nature is always beautiful and never wrong — but only then when her handiwork is perfect; and she is never right and her handiwork is always ugly, when her work is imperfect, be the cause what it may. Who determines that perfection ? Nature herself. How? By so fashioning us that only the perfect types of Beauty can move our souls tmiversally.
Now, we see types of perfect beauty persistently followed, in all art, from the days of the Parthenon down. Most of them were established in that apogee of Greek Culture from B.c. 600 to B.c. 400. Diuing that epoch of two hundred years, the most rational social structure the world ever saw was organized, and the bodies of both men and women, under those free conditions, reached a perfection of form such as the Creator could applaud, and this in spite of some faulty living.

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The Olympian, Isthmian and other games and the philos- ophy of life based on ntsden agdn — “nothing in excess” — were contributing causes. Hence, the Greek artists fixed in marble, terra-cotta and bronze, types showing such perfectly beautiful heads, arms, torsos, legs and feet, that Plato affirmed, they were merely copies of perfect types seen by the artists in a previous existence in Heaven. Those types dominated every art epoch down to about i860, when the “modernistic art party” rebelled against the intuitions of mankind and the fiat of the Creator: “Seek ye the beautiful, even as I seek it!”
And it came to pass that they said :
The search for the beautiful is an antique fad. The artist should not seek beauty, but, choosing any subject, noble or ignoble, he should express its character and in a personal technique.
Thus they became rebels against both nature and the finest instincts implanted in the soul of mankind.
Now, we know that there have been throughout history streams of tendency," and that, when a snowball begins to roll down hill, it becomes larger and larger and more menacing, unless checked. Thus, the initial negation of the beautiful grew and grew, until it became a “stream of tendency” in the world of art. Finally, Rodin, sent forth the slogan: “Nature is always beautiful!” thus flying in the face of the fact that Nature, when imperfect, is often very ugly and repellent. Be- sides, this remark is childish; for, if everything in nature were beautiful, man would never have invented the word “Ugly.” Not satisfied with this he coined another slogan:
The deformation of the true in view of the reinforcement of ex- pression. [Camille Mauclair, in “La Plume,” 1900, page 22].
Rodin knew how to violate the truth [Leon Rio tor, in “La Plume,” 1900, page 78]. “I then set myself the task of finding a method of logical exaggeration.” [Reported by O. de Kozmutza in Burr McIntosh’s Magazine.]
What was the effect of this philosophy upon Rodin’s work? In 1864 he sent to the Paris Salon his “Man with the Broken Nose,” in an epoch when men stiU insisted upon seeking the perfect and beautiful in form and on avoiding the ugly. See Fig. 120. It was rejected. Why not? In the first place: in its technique it looks like a crass imitation of the antique and could easily be mistaken for an antique find; and then, it

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violates the fundamental law, that always has governed the world of art: “Flee the ugly!” That the finger- workmanship was extremely “clever,” was admitted.
An examination of the head of Puvis de Chavanne, Fig. 12 1, shows that, as a mere finger-workman, as a mere modeller, Rodin has had some equals but no superiors. No one ever did any modelling- with more marvellous finesse than what we see in the forms of the face of that bust, though the mutilation of the drapery is childish — sadism.
But modelling is not art. It is mere skill — only a part of art. And skillful workmanship of any kind, devoid of beauty of design, thought and spirit, is devoid of lasting value. There- fore, millions have asked why Rodin did not use his great talent, as a mere modeller, to some real purpose, and produce some grand, even sublime works.
While finger-workmanship, in skillfully copying a deformed face, in a classic technique, is art, of course, it is a kind of art that is by mankind felt to be subversive of the fundamental reason for there being any art at all, which, at that epoch, 1864, meant the creating, according to Aristotle, or the imitating, according to Plato, of perfect forms.
To what extent an artist shall be allowed to depart from nature and deform the perfect forms of the Creator, before he becomes a social menace, has become a very pertinent question.
Before Rodin, all artists indulged in modification of the form. Lessing, in his “Laocoon,” gives us a fine essay on this matter; but no great artist ever went beyond modest accentua- tion of the/orw. Even Michael Angelo did not exaggerate. The first man who dared to deform the form was Bandinelli, Michael Angelo’s rival, in his “Hercules and Cacus,” in the Piazza at Florence. But it has worked as a cumulative condemnation of Bandinelli. It was lampooned when unveiled by Michael Angelo, and the crowd called it a “sack of melons,” etc. ; almost raised a riot, and it is ridiculed today. It is kept in place simply as an historical curiosity, and as a warning,
Rodin was the first modern man to go from modification to accentuation, and from accentuation to exaggeration, and finall y end in the morass of deformation of the form !
And for what purpose? To produce the beautiful.^ Evi- dently not. Then why? No one knows! Bouyer wrote:

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It is the affirmation of the contemporary me. . . . The ro- manticism of Stendhal had foreseen this crisis in plastic art, which would seek to go “beyond” the antique, or at least to create life, through form, in a totally different manner.
That is to say, the fundamental motive of Rodin — according to most of the critics who wrote him into celebrity — was: not to create the beautiful, but to be more expressive than the Greeks — by departing from the forms of nature. It was a profound mistake, as time will prove.
The epoch, between i860 and 1870, was the culmination of the entirely egotistic romantic movement, ending in a feverish ego-mania, which bred artists who were only bent on “the affirmation of the me,” my style, not your style, not everybody’s style, not the grand imiversal style of the Greeks and Italians.
Now, of course, every work of art should have style, which means a departure from nature. For, as Goethe truthfully said:
Art is called art, precisely because it is not nature.
But Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, said :
Hold, as ’t were, the mirror up to nature.
That is: since a mirror never reflects exactly that which it does reflect, we should not strive to mechanically copy nature, but depart from it; but, as we value our soul, not to depart too far, if we wish normal mankind not to punish us by sending our work to oblivion. All art-practice, all art-history, and the instincts of the human soul, even the fiat of heaven is : Do not slavishly follow nature in art, but do not degrade it into repellent ugliness, by tortuously deforming the beauty of the forms so painfully realized by the Cosmic Urge. Consciously or un- consciously Rodin violated this command.
Rebuffed at the Salon of 1864, with his ugly “Man with the Broken Nose,” he came again, in 1877, with his beautiful “Age of Bronze,” which will live, though, according to report, he now calls it “cold!” It was received by the Jury, but by one fool juryman it was called a “cast from nature"! This served the modernistic party as a pretext for raising a bedlam row, which brought Rodin into prominence and the favor of M. Turquet, a radical politician, then Under-Secretary-of- State for Fine Arts, and soon after brought him commissions

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galore, in the procuring of which he was aided by all the other rebellious artists who clamored for “liberty in art!” Then, no doubt because he felt secure at last, after years of poverty and drudgery for others, which may account for his abnormal aesthetic philosophy, he began in reality his practice of the "deformation of the form
First came his ugly statue of “Saint John,” Fig. 122, an almost literal copy of the deformed body of a degenerate type of peasant, from Calabria, who worked as a model in Paris. On this clumsy body, with gnarled and deformed feet, Rodin put an ideal head, utterly out of harmony with the body and called it, apparently as an afterthought, “Saint John.” It was laughed at by the majority of the public and artists, but bought by Turquet, for the Luxembourg Museum.
Now, had Rodin confined himself to deforming the form in his ideal sculpttue only, no one would have ever done more than laugh at him, and he would not now be such an over- advertised man. But he carried his deformation-theory into public, monumental sculpture also. But, a public monument is erected to honor a national hero or a beloved citizen. It is supposed to be a uniting social force, to bind the citizens in a common tribute. To do this, it must appeal to all normal citizens: and these expect at least a sane representation of their hero, with a rational amount of truth, and showing the man at his best.
Public monuments are not erected just to give some swell- headed ego-maniac of a sculptor a chance to exhibit his private, new fangled “deformation of the form,” or personal extrava- gance in stuface modelling, in order to have himself gabbled about in the sensation-hungry newspapers, by a sensation- hunting, ignorant, perhaps hired, press-hack, male or female.
But Rodin, instead of confining himself to his private “ideal” sculpture, grasped the first chance he had to make a public monument, like a fool rushing in, where angels fear to tread! and at once, exploited his degenerating theory of the "deformation of the form!"
What was the result? Even according to his most inept eulogists, in every case where he erected a public monument, a fierce civic quarrel resulted, ending even in riots, as was the case in Florence, when Bandinelli erected his group of “Her-

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cules and Cacus,” the first specimen, in the history of art, of the deformation of the form.
Hence we wonder how it was possible to obtain the four commissions he ever did receive for public monuments. But the morons in the crowd are ever governed in their admiration by the extravagant novelty of a thing, the noise made about it in the press, and the great price paid for it. And, unhappily, there are too many of such morons for the continued health of society, even in the ranks of our pretentious “intelligentsia.”
Besides, Rodin had, now, back of him a set of shameless political healers of the radical and “red” type, more powerful, in and out of the press, than the conservative statesmen of that day, and bent more on the spreading of chaos and the overthrow of “Bourgois Society” and “capitalistic civiliza- tion,” than on properly apotheosizing a national hero. We have had similar cases here, in America, where politicians foisted upon the people execrable and socially-dividing, public monuments which are an insult to the hero monumented and a source of destructive hatred and rage among the people.
First came his “Claude Lorrain,” erected in 1892. It shows a miserable little shrimp of a man, with zigzag legs and a head too big, utterly silly, as an interpretation of the genius of the greatest landscape painter the world ever saw. It raised so much opposition, that it divided the city of Nancy into opposite parties.
Dissatisfaction spread to the local authorities, who talked of nothing less than displacing the monument, as we get the report from Lawton, one of Rodin’s inept eulogiz- ers. Then came the “Burgesses of Calais,” made to express, and record, the suffering of the eminent citizens when they surrendered to Edward III, a group that utterly defeats itself, by the ugly deformation of the forms in every one of the six figures composing that unfortimate moniiment.
How many men — gone daft with the silly idea that “per- sonal style” is everything in art — ^have been allured to call this group “strong,” when it is only brutal? Fig. 123. Note the coarse and over-deformed hands and key ; note the enormous feet, which are no longer human in their gnarled and bestial deformity; note that the whole man looks more like a cave-man with a Neanderthal skull, instead of a leading citizen of Calais.

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The result is, that, while modest accentuation would have aided Rodin’s hope of moving men, his excessive over-de- formation immediately arouses their questioning wonder and rebellion and his noble purpose — of stirring human emotion — if he had that purpose— is defeated by the brutality which results from forcing the note of a false theory of aesthetic philosophy.
What took place in Calais when this creation was set up? We are told that the citizens split and quarrelled so mightily, that civil strife was feared. And today there are still many who regard the erection of this work as a calamity, to such an extent does it divide the people — instead of uniting it. Instead of peace, joy and glory following the erection of this group, they have had quarrel, anger and shame !
When the “Sarmiento” monument was erected at Buenos Aires in 1899, the same thing happened. And it was bound to happen. The whole statue of the man, in conception and composition, is so overexaggerated that it is exasperating, as a portrait, however much it may please those fadists who hunger for extreme stylization of form. It occasioned great rage in the city, divided the people, the majority of whom ridiculed it, but were prevented by force, from pulling it down.
Finally, he came out with his latest specimen of the “de- formation of the form”: in his “Balzac.” Max Nordau'said, in his “Art and Artists,” as to this statue:
Rodin has overstepped, in his Balzac Memorial, which he first exhibited in 1898, the very extensive limits within which his silly aberrations might have been borne. Master Shallow, who tolerates much, could not tolerate this work, and broke down under its crushing exaction. When the public saw this provocative monstros- ity, it broke out into that uncontrollable laughter, whereby the outraged intelligence of mankind revenges itself, with primitive force, for restraints that it has long suffered in silence. In the face of this result, the Committee of the French Union of Authors, which had commissioned the Balzac memorial, resolved unani- mously to decline it. In vain the Condottieri [the “modernists”] who had usurped supremacy in art criticism, by the most unscru- pulous methods of conspiracy, violence and oppression, made des- perate efforts to maintain themselves. They were powerless ag ains t the armed rising of sensible people, who had at last come to them- selves. Their tyranny was vanquished, and they were swept away.

As first it had two “Voices” inspirinj? the poet. These were ahatKloncd. N'uw, the clumsily
modelled statue, in marhle, <IiSKracM*s the ganlcn of the Palais Royal, I^ans.

Fig. 132. BY Rodin.
Eve in De^pmk.
So C\LLED.
This ent^raving shouM have been placed on the following page. If the rea-kr will turn to Fig. 131, he will see that the model for this atrocious statue originally was one of tw'O figures, roughly sketched by Rodin, thus exhibited, and abandoned on the advice of friends. See Fig. 133 for profile.

If the reader will pause to examine the group opposite, Fig. 131, he will note the

W m-: R !•: A HD u 1 s Unknown.

In LiTXEMHoDKt; Museum.

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They might still talk all sorts of twaddle about the stupidity of the masses, and, in impotent rage, hiss at the victors the well-known shibboleths: “Philistine,” “Provincial,” etc.; but this final, faint- hearted, nagging, sank unheard in the unanimous cry of scorn from public opinion. . . .
Rodin worked at this wretched piece of work for ten whole years. First he read all Balzac’s works; then he made a journey to Touraine and spent months there, so as to absorb the human envir- onment from which Balzac took so many of his models and to be- come permeated with the feelings and impressions with which Balzac may have satiated himself when composing — ^all this to make a human figure which was to be the likeness of a man whom many people now living have known in the flesh. After these pre- liminary studies, Rodin finally proceeded to form his Balzac. His head was to be “a synthesis of his works,” his physiognomy was to be summed up “in an eye that looks on the Comedie Humaine, and in an upper lip that is airled in contempt for humanity.” So said Rodin himself, in several interviews which were published at the time when his statue was exhibited. He was then merely re- peating what the twaddlers of Montmartre had chattered to him. It would be easy to make jests about this inflammation of the brain, but it is not worth even cheap raillery. It is quite enough to establish, soberly and drily, that Rodin, like a child or an idiot, aimed at something impossible. Sculpture cannot furnish any “synthesis of Balzac’s works.” Nature herself cannot, in the sense that Balzac himself, when he was alive, did not synthesize his works in his externals, in his physiognomy. He had perhaps the head of a man of mark, but there was assuredly nothing in his face to show that he had written the “Physiology of Marriage,” and not written “La Chartreuse de Panne” (Stendahl). Rodin imagined that a portrait-statue coidd quite alone merely by its own means, supply the place of a biography and a psychological and literary characterization of the person represented. This patent lunacy, was necessarily bound to end, as it has ended, in a mad caricature.
We give an illustration of Balzac himself, Figure 124, and a photograph of the ‘ ‘ Balzac ” statue, in Figure 125. The reader will see that the form has been so deformed, that it no longer has any semblance to a human being. It is in fact so mon- strous, that it is fascinating. It demonstrates the fascination of monstrosities. We doubt if Rodin has ever become con- scious of the enormity of his mistake in trying to express the entire Comedie Humaine in one statue. Perhaps, since his

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friend, Henri Rochefort, said to him that "it could not be done," he may be beginning to change his mind.
Thus we see that, in every case, deformation of the form has brought on a large or small civil strife, in every country where a public monument, by Rodin, has been allowed to be erected.
Now, all social division is a social menace. But when this division is on so basic a matter as a public monument, it becomes a disheartening division. Why? Because in a public monument, the public does not want, and it should not want, the expression of theories of art, personal to any artist — theories more or less esoteric and incomprehensible. What the public wants, and should want, is: the expression, by the help of the artist, of its own sentiments and aspirations. And the greatest artist is he who expresses, not himself, but hu- manity; not his artistic whims, but that which humanity wishes to have expressed for itself — because it cannot express it except through the medium of its gifted artists, whom, for that very purpose, it willingly supports. But then, it wishes to have its ideals expressed in forms of beauty, such as will surely express, and stir, its emotions, so that individually and collectively it can contemplate itself in the spiritual mirror held up by the artist, in the creation of which it feels its sub- conscious share. When a monument does that, then alone is it a masterpiece !
The idea, that it is easier to express human emotion and to stir mankind, by a deformation of the form, above all in a public monument, is silly. In practice, it can at most amuse the intellect of a few, who lean towards the abnormal, and then only for a short while, after which the practice will fill even those with ennui. For, art means this — to stir human emotion and not to titillate the brain. And, to inflict on the patient public what it, by instinct, regards as an atrocity, based on the “deformation of form,” just to amuse the intellects of a few artistic mandarins in the individualistic corner of the world of art, is to assassinate a golden opportunity, that might have been used by some artist, in harmony with a normal majority, for creating a real emotion-stirring and socially-binding monu- ment.
If a sculptor wishes to howl to the world:

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Look at me, I have an individuality different from any ever seen!
let him do it, in his private work, and then take the conse- quences— like the Teutonic ward-heeler;
ShentlemensI I vent to a bolitical meetin de oder nite, und I tchompet on a dable, und I said: Shentlemens, I am here! Veil, by chimmeny, in five segonds I vasn’t dere; I vas flyin ouwit by der vindow !
Royal Cortissoz says in his admirable book “Art and Common-Sense
In fact Rodin’s career as a spoilt child of fortune makes a story by itself. An article in Le Temps not long ago represented him as saying that on a visit that he had made to Rome he was scrupulously left alone by the members of the French diplomatic circle there and the people of the Villa Medicis (the French art school at Rome) in which neglect he saw an official condemnation of his work. These people represented the upper classes of culture of France and were all opposed to Rodin’s philosophy and work.
Cortissoz continues:
However this may be, , . . you positively stumble upon his sculpture in the Luxembourg, there are so many of them in that museum.
This represents the tritunph of the “modernistic ” art party, through the help of certain radical politicians in the Paris parliament, of which party Rodin has been one of the leaders.
This abysmal difference of opinion again represents civic division. And lately Parliament voted to accept Rodin’s gift, of his remaining plaster-casts, etc., but against the solid opposition and vote of the Socialist members.
Now, history proves that, whenever there has occtured such fierce division of opinion about works of art as there has been for twenty years about Rodin’s work, time will surely condemn it: witness Bandinelli’s sculpture, after he had descended to the deformation of the form, through stupidity. Can Rodin’s deformation — made, let us hope, only through an error — escape the same fate? Hardly!
A daily increasing number of thinkers are now agreeing with Cortissoz when he says:
Never was an artist kept more devotedly in the public eye. The sentimentalists have risen en masse to declare his fame, and it is perhaps no wonder that he is today one of the most fashion-

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able makers of portraits In tbe world and the object of a cult. Neither is it surprising that he has become a little oracular in his sayings and a little complacent in his work.
What does it all amount to, and how are we really to regard this man of genius, [ ?], who is also the hero of a preposterous re- clame? It is indispensable, at the outset, to lay hold of the fact that the genius is there, or at all events was there when Rodin was in his prime. Nor is there anything at all esoteric or baffling about it. His hierophants, of course, would have it that there is some- thing about him grand, gloomy and peculiar, and quite beyond the scope of ordinary canons of appreciation. They are the people who, in an earlier generation, would have stupefied themselves making guesses at the Correggiosity of Correggio. Now they occupy them- selves with the Rodinesquerie of Rodin. Of this it is enough to say that “there ain’t no sich thing.” Rodin is not a mystic, thinking profound thoughts, and embodying them in puzzling forms. . . .
What is it that first wakes a doubt? It is that these large con- tours in Rodin’s art spell not so much style as manner. . . .
Whither does it all tend? The genius, who preserves undimmed an authentic inspiration, is constructive while he plays, and pro- duces, one after the other, organic fabrics of design. By those works of his you know him for the great creative artist. The lesser man does not fail us in quantity, nor is he necessarily without a cer- tain passing charm, but he remains inchoate and capricious, and by his works you know him, not for the great creative artist, but for the diffusive, unstable “temperament.” Rodin began by suggest- ing that he might, perhaps, range himself in the first category, and there are among his earlier works pieces so fine, that it is idle to imagine their ever falling Into oblivion. But for years, he has been unmistakably the man of the smaller gift, consummate in his ex- ploitation of that gift, but none the less a man on the wrong track.
Rodin’s obvious handicap has been : the quality of his mind and imagination. His is a profoundly sensuous art, sensuous to the core; and, while he has been attacking high erected themes, these have not, on his own confession, really mattered to him; it has been enough for him to caress in his marble or bronze a living form. And all the time he had been betrayed by his immense technical resource. It is a byword among sculptors that Rodin, as a modeller, takes their breath away. His is a fatal facility, if ever an artist had that affliction. . . .
There is a burning life in Rodin’s nudities. But it is a life invoked through mechanical skill, and through a very earthy pas-

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sion, if through passion at all. It is perhaps the most conclusive of all testimonies to the truth of this impression, that there is no one above the ruck in modern sculpture who is less haunting than Rodin. We observe his work with interest and enjosnnent, but it leaves no mark.
That seems perhaps a risky thing to say of the man who bulks so largely, not only in French but in other museums; who has had so many imitators aU over the world, and has stimulated such a horde of eulogists to unceasing effort. When one has accounted for all the ignorance and sentimentality that have gone to the promotion of the Rodin legend, one is still confronted by a body of opinion, among artists as well as among laymen, which is bound to command respect. It is still permissible to believe, however, that Rodin has been vastly overrated, that his great merits lie within clearly defined and, on the whole, rather narrow boimdaries, and that, when the imitators and the paneg3nnsts have gone down the wind, they will be accompanied by a considerable number of his works. [Italics ours.]
That having been the effect upon the works of Rodin, of his mistaken philosophy of the deformation of form, what was the effect on his followers and inevitable imitators, as a result of the “stream of tendency” that his theories and his artificial success engendered?
Deformation, ever more and more pronoimced, became the order of the day in the “Modernistic” Bailiwick in the world of art until, finally, we get to the insane, in a “Venus,” by Van Dongen, Figure 126, which was exhibited in the galleries of various dealers in European cities. Need we make any com- ment upon that degenerate atrocity? And yet it was lauded as a fine thing by a prominent critic in Paris !
Finally, we arrive at the bottomless pit of imbecility, in sculpture, in the “Familial Life,” by Archipencko shown in the International Exhibition, held here a few years ago. Figure 127. This also was extoUed at the time by a few aberrated fanatics of “modernity in art” and believers in the deformation of the form. When such things as these are seriously acclaimed as great art, by would-be sane critics, is it not time to ask “Whither are we drifting?”
To what extent Rodin has created division of feeling, and aroused hate, in his own France, is shown by the following story:

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In its issue of July ist, 1910, the Gil Bias, one of the oldest journals of Paris, published one of a series of six articles on “The Parasites of Art!” in which it spoke of Rodin as a “swindler of the public,” a “manufacturer of odds and ends,” etc.
Within a short time, something happened in the business vitals of the Gil Bias. For, in its issue of September 23d, 1910, appeared an article, with flaring headlines, announcing that there would be held, in the drawing-room of the Gil Bias, an exhibition of the sketches and drawings of Rodin! This was written by the same man who wrote the other article. It is a masterpiece of pretending to “eat crow,” by apologizing, while in reality not doing so at all. Rodin was plastered over with praise. And, on October the 17th, 1910, the exhibition was held, in the Salon of the Gil Bias, and was attended by Dujar- din-Beaumetz, then the Under-Secretary of State for Fine Arts, evidently for the purpose of making the rebuke to the Gil Bias thorough, and as a warning to other newspapers, not to attack the “Hero of the modernistic art party!”
Fancy our Commissioner of Education, at Washington, lending himself to Saint-Gaudens, in order to force the Washing- ton Era to “eat crow,” by attending an exhibition of his drawings and sketches, held in the parlors of that newspaper — because one of its writers had told what he thought to be the truth !
Here is conclusive proof of the dominant r61e that the radical and “Red” politicians play in the Paris world of art, and also of the great “political puU” that Rodin, who be- longed to their party, had acquired, through the help of his brother-in-law, Mirbeau, also a “Red” politician and journal- ist, and a fiery supporter of the whole modernistic art party and movement, and an active “booster” of Rodin, and who helped powerfully to “manufacture” his enormous reputation.
There are those who look upon Rodin’s extreme eroticisms as an “apotheosis of love” ; others regard it as crass licentious- ness. Some regard his deformation of the form as grand and “significant style”; others as a brutalization and a violation of the law established by nature, that, in art, man should honor the Creator, by respecting the exquisite forms of the human body which He has realized in man — when the type is perfect.

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And the abyss between these opposing forces will never be bridged.
Knowing the constitution of the human mind and soul as we do, and judged by the experience of the past, we can now safely predict immortality for the following works of Rodin: Busts, of “Puvis de Chavanne,” “Madame Vicuna,” the sculptor “Dalou,” the etcher “Legros” and a few others; the statue of “The Age of Bronze”; the group “Springtime” and the bas relief “Apollo,” on the Sarmiento pedestal, at Buenos Aires. These will live, because they are either natural or dis- tinguished, or charming, besides being extremely skillful in their craftsmanship, which is alw’ays alluring and, in these cases, has no offensive deformation of the form about it.
All of the remainder of his works will, it is safe to say, never find a place in the hearts of mankind, either because they are ugly, or licentious, or brutal, or because of their “individualistic” excessivism, of one kind or another. Some of them will appeal to some people, as a roast pheasant of an excessively gamey taste might appeal, but would repel normal people. But these works will ever be quarrelled about to such an extent, that they will gradually weary the majority of even such people as now applaud them because of their individualistic novelty and excess. Because of this, they will, by degrees, be slowly but surely shoved aside more and more, until they are finally either destroyed or forgotten or ignored, in some corner of a museum, and used there to point the moral — that a false point of view, relentlessly pursued will inevitably end in oblivion.
The “Rodin Noise,” will never be understood by the American public until it knows that, when, in 1877, his statue “The Age of Bronze” was accused by one idiotic juryman of having been “cast in plaster,” from life — a thing so utterly impossible, as every sane sculptor knows, as to raise a haw- haw at its very mention — the absurd penny-a-line critics of Paris — obsessed with the silly idea that skillf;:! modelling alone is high art; and, ever on the alert to be the first to note the appearance of a new talent, so as to proclaim their own astute- ness — lost their heads instanter and became hysterical, all the more since Rodin had once suffered privations as an assistant to others. Sympathy intensified the hysteria ! It also blinded

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them to the fact that skillful modelling is only a part of art. So, they slopped over, as is common in Paris, the home of exces- sivism. And, so, they put Rodin on a pedestal, no doubt to his own stupefaction, as a new and wonderful “revelation,” which was to rejuvenate and glorify French sculpture!
The “modernistic” art party, then crystallizing, quickly made the most of this accusation of the foolish juryman, raised a row against the Jury and the Academy, and bawled all the louder for “Liberty in Art!” and for so-called “freedom from academic oppression,” which oppression never did exist — except that the academicians obtained all the best com- missions, which the modernists wanted. So, Rodin really became, by the very force of events, the standard bearer of the modernistic art party.
Later on, the boosters of Rodin were hypnotized to make the egregious error of mistaking his “deformation of the form” for a new and a “grand style”; many of them being obsessed by the absurdity that “a work of art lives only by virtue of its style,” as foolish Chateaubriand said, and they haded this excessive style as an immensely significant and sublime appari- tion in the world of art. Rodin, cunning fox that his priva- tions seemed to have made of him, then assumed that pontifi- cal air, so becoming to the prophet from the heights of a new aesthetic revelation. He has been accused, of having thrown over his acolytes the mystic “kibosh,” to intensify their aber- ration, imtil they came to regard him as the holy Mohammed of sculpture. How he must laugh now, in his halcyon days of success, and with riches pontifically gathered in, as, in his Chateau at Meudon, he reflects over the ease with which un- cultured morons are stampeded, by a false philosophy of any kind, so long as it is promulgated with glittering and cryptic salaams !
The high priests of the Rodin Cult, have also talked loudly about the “science of modelling” proclaimed by him. But every sculptor knows there is no such thing. There is abso- lutely no such mystery about modelling, in clay or marble, as there is in painting in elusive colors. Every sculptor knows that the surfaces of hiunan forms are made up of small planes, dove-tailed into each other, by delicate gradations, and that he is the best modeller who has the sharpest eyes and percep-

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tion to see those planes, and the steadiness of nerves and patience to model them. That is all there is to it.
Moreover, Science has no open place in art. If used at all it must be covered up. Because art is not a matter of science, but wholly one of the expression, or the stirring, of human emotion.
The acolytes of Rodin also talk about his using this deep science of modelling for “the intensity of the expression of life.” But the public does not care a fig for intensity of expression of life — if the life as expressed is ugly, deformed or vulgar. If the life expressed is not beautiful and ecstasizing, but debased and depressing, as many of Rodin’s expressions are — away with them to the art morgue !
How all this cryptic talk, of the boosters of Rodin, about the “science of modelling” smacks of the mystic nonsense by which that festive charlatan Cagliostro hypnotized Paris over a hundred years ago !
When Julio Romano who, also like Rodin, had been an assistant to others — to Raphael — ^received, after the latter’s death, the commission to decorate the palace at Mantua, he painted a lot of grotesque giants, etc. Many, at the time, hailed these as great advances in art. Even Michael Angelo, in his old age, praised them to HoUanda of Portugal. Neither Michael Angelo, nor the rest of the artists of that epoch, could see that Romano’s works were really part of the beginning of the decadence which marks the death of the Renaissance.
If ever the words of Beaumarchais:
We must laugh at it in order not to weep! can be justly used, it is when we contemplate this sheep-like panic and “bell-wetherism,” as Carlyle calls the disposition of the tmthinking people to break their necks to rush along with the loudest bawlers who proclaim, that this or that and so-and- so, is “up to date!”
The craze to appear bored at everything a few years old, is a disease injected into our life by Satan ; it has become dis- tinctly prevalent since 1850. It is this excessive, diseased htmger, to escape ennui, which generated Baudelaire, and modernistic art, and caused the apotheosis of the Rodin novelty.
This apotheosis was largely helped along by women.

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Women should know, above all, that erotic suggestiveness in art, and vulgarity of form, vulgarized social forms and maimers, are the greatest dangers, not only to civilization but to their own happiness on earth. In self-defense, they should be the first to condemn all licentiousness in art. Yet women, not only condoned Rodin’s eroticisms, but maudlingly proclaimed them as either the pardonable slips of “genius” or a manifes- tation of the transfiguration of sensuality into spirituality! Others gloated over his suggestive creations because of the subjective erotic satisfactions they derived from them.
When one notices the number of women who prostrate themselves before the erotic altar of Rodin, one begins to find it difficult to combat successfully the woman despisers, and the terrible indictments of the sex by Weininger. One woman “art writer” wrote us, under December 20th, 1916:
If Rodin has developed his art as no other sculptor since Buona- rotti, if among his masterpieces of beauty and lyric poetry in marble there are some ugly subjects or even obscene drawings, it is simply that the great artist has seen all sides of life, knowing that beauty by itself cannot fill out the whole of any expression of human nature. . . .
As to immorality, perversion, excess on the part of modern artists, taking Rodin as their master, let us acknowledge very clearly that here is a vigorous old man in full vigor and in posses- sion of all his faculties after a life of such hard work and hardships that most other workmen would have succumbed long ago. Not only this, but in his old age this genius is producing work far more spiritual than any by the Academicians.
Among the “Moderns” there are some loose livers or moral perverts. But I beg you to take me among any collection of people who are all perfect.
This woman is morally so myopic that she cannot see that, while the public need not concern itself with the private lives of artists, be they moral perverts or saints, it is the absolute right of the public to flagellate every expression, in art, of licentiousness, vulgarity, deformity and degeneracy. If an artist wishes privately to make his studio a lupanar, that is his affair. But let him not, publicly, defile the Temple in the World of Art !
What is the lesson of the Rodin romance for us in America? This: that Rodin is the last man on earth Americans should

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imitate, or tolerate, in spirit or form, above all in any public monument. For, as sure as they do, they will engender civic strife and hate. If any sculptor wishes to imitate him in his private work, that is his affair. He will learn, let us hope before it is too late, the truth of Emerson’s remark: “Imita- tion is suicide.”

ADDENDUM
In 1903, while serving as the first Director of Sculpture for the St. Louis World’s Fair, we had occasion to visit Saint- Gaudens, the greatest all-round sculptor America has produced. This was at Cornish, Vermont, where we remained two days discussing the affairs of the Exposition, etc. Towards the end of our stay, Saint-Gaudens asked :
“What do you think of Rodin?”
“Well,” we replied, “since you are an older man and a greater sculptor than I am, let me ask you: What do you think of him, since you are of French stock, by birth?”
To oiu surprise he said, with angry eyes and set jaw:
“Rodin is the curse of modem art!”
“And somewhat of a charlatan?” we asked.
“The very Cagliostro of art!” he replied.
And then he riddled Rodin’s “theories" of art, so childishly gobbled up by the morons and so cunningly exploited by the political henchmen, of Paris, of those, behind the scenes, who were really using Rodin, and pushing him forward, for secret political piuposes of their own and of which he, no doubt, was ignorant.
Saint-Gaudens asserted that Rodin was the most un- French artist that ever appeared in the history of French art, and regarded him as the very incarnation of vulgarity, bm- tality, and the sans-culottes spirit of the French Terror of 1789, and said that he was ruinmg French art and degrading French life. And Saint-Gaudens certainly cannot be regarded as an enemy of France.
Therefore, how are we to accotmt for the apparition of this weird, deformed, Hunchback-of-Notre-Dame-spirit, in the ev- olution of French art, one who has done so much harm in the social and the art world?
Victor Hugo was right when he said ;

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Lyons is the capital of France, but Paris is the capital of the World!
Paris is the centre of everything on earth: art; original ideas; novelties; good; evil; high ideality; low animality — the best and worst of everything. That is : it is the Dr.- Jekyll- and-Mr. -Hyde-city of the world! Why this is so we need not now inquire.
Now, the struggle between slavery and tyranny, between democracy and aristocracy, Christian communism and Roman individualism, has been going on in Paris, more fiercely and persistently than in any other city of Europe.
Since the 15th century, the city has more and more divided itself into two parts, the old Latin part which, when it expanded at all, did so towards the south and east; and the modem quarter, which expanded north of the Seine and westward. Since the 1 5th century, most of the aristocracy have intrenched themselves in the west of the city.
If the Reader will look at his map of Paris, and follow south the Boulevard Strassburg, the Rue Turbigo, to the Rue du Louvre; cross the bridge of the “Pont des Arts,” follow the Rue de Seine to the Place Saint-Germain de Pr6s, and follow the Rue de Rennes to the Boulevard Raspail, and then south to the walls of the city, he will have divided the city into two sections — east and west. These two sections grew thus, by the fact that, when a man acquires wealth and power, he moves away to a better and larger section than that in which he trafficked for money. And this movement is always west, following the setting sun, when it is possible to move west.
The eastern section of Paris has always been regarded as the home of the “popolo,” the proletariat, the poor, the miser- able, the sans-culottes, that is, those without breeches, the ragamuffins, the vulgarians, the riff-raff and scum of Paris. And this element has ever been at war with the well-to-do, “white-collar people” — the bourgoisie and aristocracy — seek- ing liberty more and more, for which, when conducted by evo- lutionary methods, even the wise aristocrats did not blame them. So that the east hated the west; and, since the days of the “Terror,” of 1789, the west has feared the east, because, since that social cataclysm, the proletariat, the radicals, the communists, and the “Reds,” have, though in an oscillating

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manner it is true, come to the top, until today the Radical element ndes France. And with this rise of the radical prole- tariat, there has been a steady, barometric rise of vulgarity, licentiousness and open immorality until, we repeat, naked women parade on the public stages of Paris, to the squint-eyed delectation of the lecherous peeping-toms of the world !
If the Reader will look at his map of Paris again, he will find, at the very centre of the old Latin Quarter, a small street: la rue de I’Arbalete. It is in the very centre of the Quartier Mouffetard, the lowest slum of Paris. In this street, Rodin was bom, in 1840, and lived there until he was about ten years old. Hence, on the theory of the Catholic Church:
Let us have the care of a child until it is seven years old, and we care not who has it afterwards.
And on the theory of Emile de Girardin, a contemporary of Rodin, who said:
The habits of a people are fatally engendered by the milieu in which it is bom and in which it lives,
it is fair to assume that the vulgarity which then still per- vaded that quarter, and the spirit of rebellion against all that is elegant, refined, and aristocratic, with which the very atmosphere was redolent, and which broke into a destructive flame and fury in 1871 , when the commune tried to bum Paris, and which was inhaled by Rodin as a boy; — it is fair to assume that the revolutionary impressions he received during those early years, coupled with the ubiquitous vulgarity in which he moved, should have remained fixed in the soul of Rodin, and determined his entire point of view : of violent revolution- ary rebellion against all social, and political, and artistic laws and traditions.
To what extent he, in 1871, at the age of 31, was mixed up in the ferocious cmelty of the Communists, who tried to lay Paris in ashes, we do not know. We know that his friend, Dalou, a far greater sculptor than Rodin, was made curator of the Louvre by the “Red” commune; and that Cotirbet di- rected the pulling down of the splendid Vendome Column, and that both had to fly from Paris when the Commune was conquered, and both were later highly favored — along with the other revolutionary artists : painters, poets, and literati — by the “Red” politicians, who sneaked into power along with

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the moderate Radicals and opportunists who really restored order in the city.
This sans culottes point of view, which radiates from all of Rodin’s work and embraces revolution, hatred for aU that is refined, elegant, and aristocratic, and pleasure in all that is coarse, vulgar, libertine, and ugly, was only intensified in Rodin by the rejection, in the Salon of 1864, by the no doubt both hated and feared aristocratic Jury, of his ugly bust, “Man With a Broken Nose,” his first offering, cleverly modelled but devoid of all taste and sense of beauty, except a so-called “beauty of modelling” w'hich is worse than useless, unless displayed in connection with beauty of design, of form, and of spirit, something his boosters cannot understand, being, like him, warped on the matter of surface manner of modelling, which they ignorantly call “style,” but which cleverness is of no more importance than clever billiard playing, expertness in which is just as rare and amusing as the modelling dexter- ity of even a Rodin.
So deeply was this penchant in Rodin toward the ugly, the brutal, and the deformed, totally revolutionary in art, that every one of his “creations!” was progressively vulgar and brutal, after the elegant “Age of Brass,” which he made ele- gant only to make sure that the aristocratic, and elegance- loving, Jury woidd not refuse his work on the score of un- French, brutal ugliness. Proving that he knew quite well what aristocratic beauty is, and that he went to the ugly through malice aforethought, urged on by an inherited proletarian “Red” hatred of the aristocratic, in all its forms, social and artistic, and that he had a cunning flair that, by going con- trary to all traditions in art, held sacred since the days of Phidias, he would single himself out and force himself into the limelight by arousing violent discussion about himself.
In short, as one penetrates beneath the smdace, one sees clearly the origins of Rodin’s spirit and how he became the real incarnation, in art, of the detestable, ferocious, and degrading revolutionary “Reds,” who, since 1789, have divided France into two political and social camps, which, like oil and water, will never mix, and which party, through the Under Secretary of State for Pine Arts, Turquet, a “Red,” really “made” Rodin by bringing to his support all the “Red” newspaper

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men and book-producers in their revolution-scheming ranks.
No man of sense will deny that the whole career of Rodin and his art-output is revolutionary and tending down- ward to sans-culoUism and the gutter. And, as one visits his “Museiun,” at Meudon, one can see at a glance the great num- ber of mutilated fragments of the human form, torsos without limbs, and limbs without torsos, showing conclusively that the spirit of symbolic sadism, the finding joy in the mutilating of the human body in art, of which Krafft-Ebing speaks, was alive in Rodin to a degree never revealed before by any sculp- tor in history, and indicating an abnormal mind, which the stupid morons call “genius,” reminding one of a remark of George Eliot :
The baser part of the multitude delight in degradation, apart from any hatred; it is the satire they best understand.
Americans must never forget, what they have often been told by others, that Paris is “The Great Procuress of the World.” For a thousand years its “Merchants of Pleasure” have been the leaders in inventing cunning means of seducing people to buy! buy! ! buy! !! — of everything, from foolish, fat fish to flaming, female flesh. Imitated though they ever were by aU the world, they always kept the lead, thanks to a flexible conscience and a nimble genius for entertaining the “bored-to-death” portion of the world. And the Roman motto; “Caveat Emptor!” (“let the buyer beware!”) has ever been their guiding rule. Hence, all the world flocks to Paris, above all such as are “bored” and “tired.” So, Paris is full of what the French call “ Ennuiards,” who suffer from the malady called “ennui-itis,” or “Novelty-Fever”; who think life is not worth living unless each breakfast brings to them a new sensation !
Such people accepted, and re-echoed over the world, all the miserable drivel about Rodin’s works that was groimd out and exposed in the partisan “Red” press of Paris, aU bent on tearing up, by the roots, of the aristocratic traditions of France : in manners, religion and art. And, as each Rodinesque sensa- tion appeared, each more audacious than its predecessor in its ugliness and sadistic mutilation of the human form, these ennuiards said, Bravo! And, so, by degrees, they lowered both Rodin and themselves.

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In his exhibition of drawings, held October 19, 1908, in the Galleries Devambez, in Paris, he showed the most libidi- nous set of drawings ever exposed to an invited public, in which there were at least two that were frankly porno- graphic and for which show he was, by both French and for- eign people, called “beast,” “monster,” “vulgar charlatan,” “sadist,” etc.
But a pretentious “critic,” hired to write the eulogistic “Foreword” in the catalogue, said;
Here is a new series of drawings by Rodin. Some people wish to see in these, as in Rodin’s modelled works, something else than he has put into them. These drawings suggest to some people pro- digious commentaries, of incomprehending imaginations; they see “a million of things among them”; they provoke in them, gay, blockheaded, sarcasms; dith3n‘ambic indignation, buffoon panto- mimes — all groundless.
Here are bold, truthful images . . .
A nude model moves, dresses, undresses in the studio; runs, jumps, gesticulates, laughs; girls lying down, slender, nervous, l3dng on a divan or on the floor. It happens sometimes that these instinctive creatures make us think of the heroines of Berguin and Baudelaire, or of the priestesses of the lie of Lesbos.
Rodin does not ask of them to be chaste, but to live before his eyes.
No morality, no virtue: — ^those are “things for society.” Rodin is not charged with the duty of catechizing his contemporaries. [ ! ! !]
Another writer, in “Le Journal,” of October 26, 1908, says of these drawings, so contemned by the public, even of toler- ant Paris:
One cannot find in these hundred and fifty sketches and draw- ings of Rodin a single note seen before. They are daring, devoid of virtue or morality; the priestess of Lesbos elbows the vicious girl from Montmartre; all of which is indicated with one stroke, but by the hand of a master.
Other reporters said things about these drawings that are here unprintable.
We have spoken of Rodin's evil eroticism before. It amounted really to sex-perversion. At the Paris exposition of 1900, he had a special, private pavilion for his own works, thanks to his political “pull.” In speaking of this, the nainter, Albert Besnard, said of Rodin:

Drawing by Louis Morin.

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This sculptor, unique in our time, the creator of forms and the evoker of ideas that have caused the present generation to thrill with either admiration or rage.
Only too true! And, of this show, Rodin’s eulogistic biog- rapher, Lawton, says;
The bulk of the subjects were those that mingled the sexes. The “ Dalliance of the Sexes,” was represented by a certain number; the “Hostility of Sexes,” by another. “Woman as the Tempter,” and “Man as the Tempted,” had also their portrayal. In one small group the woman, high above the man, embraced him as a helpless prey; in another, the man resisted but weakly, while the woman wound herself around him; in another it was a siren bearing a youth into the water.
Lawton, also an incipient sadist, gives, without a twinge, a long list from the “Dryad with a Faun” to “The Kiss.” Then he chides a San Francisco lady for having written :
Rodin is the greatest man of his day and generation, and he is the most degraded example of the decadence of French art. He is animated by the most lofty motives and his work is simply co- chonerie (piggishness), no more, no less. He has founded a school, and he is dragging sculpture from its pedestal and trampling it in the mud.
But is this verdict not justified by what Lawton himself has said, and then by the following, written by a woman, seem- ingly one of his pupils, a Miss R P , and which was
published in a would-be “smart” New York magazine, in its January, 1917, issue, and which collapsed soon after:
There is ample evidence of Rodin’s most earthly qualities; and, in what is known as “The Inner Chamber,” a studio in the Hotel de Biron [his studio], one finds the most sincere expressions of the real Rodin. This “Inner Chamber,” which sensitive ladies, were they permitted to enter, would call the “ Chamber of Horrors,” contains walls covered with drawings and figures in clay, marble and bronze, representing phases of life which exist, though con- demned by the modern world. ... If displayed to the world today, the contents of the “Inner Chamber” would be insulted by a protest against pruriency; but future generations, with their widened points of view, will turn to these revelations of the artist, Rodin, as the most significant and epochal momunents to his cool, quiet, and interior genius.
In 1893 we were in Chicago, and called at the Chicago Exposition office of Halsey C. Ives, then Director of the Art

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Department. We there saw a small marble group, so openly pornographic, that we expressed our astonishment. Mr. Ives smiled and said: “Isn’t it weird that Rodin and the Paris Jiuy [then under the dominion of the ‘Red’ politicians] should for a moment think that the American public would stand for the exhibition here of that immoral work? ’’
It was not put on exhibition! But query: Why was it sent at all? Was it to raise a storm of protest and, thus, advertise Rodin, and help along the spread of the “Red’’ chaos in our intellectual world?
We see in all these facts one of the reasons why Saint- Gaudens called Rodin “The Curse of Modem Art.” Also we find in aU this a justification for that fine American painter, George de Forrest Bmsh, saying, in his lecture in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, in December, 1921, as reported by the “Public Ledger”:
Rodin was one of the most outrageous brutes and degenerates that ever lived! Rodin had a clever hand. He could do certain small bits, but he was incapable of sustained effort. It is well known that he had several commissions from the French Govern- ment which he could not execute. He had no ideas, he hadn’t power. His life was the most degraded. That is plainly indi- cated in his work. Why can’t people see this? Go and look at the corridor, full of his work, at the Metropolitan Museiun. “The Hand of God.” Forsooth!
Yes! Why will people not see that? But Hume, in his “Essays, Moral and Political,” says of the morons of the world :
Such Indolence and Incapacity is there in the Generality of Mankind, that they are apt to receive a Man for whatever he has a mind to put himself off for; and admit his over-bearing Airs as Proofs of that Merit which he assmnes to himself. . . . No- thing carries a Man thro’ the World like a genuine, natiural im- pudence.
And did not Emerson say:
The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power?
We repeat, no one who knows what modelling means, denies that Rodin had a rare “clevemess-of-hand” and was one of the most skillful mere finger-workmen of the 19th cen- tury, and that he had a tremendous energy, and that there could have been produced a score more of magnificent master-

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pieces, full of splendid ideas if he could have been chained down to work under the direction of that far greater artist than Rodin ever was, Dalou, author of those great works, “Mirabeau defying Dreux-Breze,” “The Triumph of the Republic,” and “The Triumph of Silenus,” etc.; a man who not only knew how to “model" about as well as Rodin but who, in addition, was a real thinker and composer and a fine stylist, and who should have been raised to be the standard bearer of “Modem” sculpture by the French art-politicians, and would have been, but for the fact that he would not have been serviceable as a tool for the “Reds,” not having been sufficiently “modernistic,” not at all sadistic, and not revolutionary in art.
The worst fact of Rodin’s career is this : that he resorted so impudently to charlatanism. In this he was an apt disciple of the semi-lunatic, Beaudelaire, who wrote to Theophile Gautier :
A little charlatanism is permitted to genius. It even looks well; it is like the rouge on a pretty woman’s face, a new inspiration to the mind.
Charlatanism consists in mystifying and btmcoing the public, by every and any trick not forbidden by the police, no matter how strange the trick, so it makes the public think the mystifier is the greatest of “saints,” or the greatest of “gen- iuses.” And never was there such a mystifier as Rodin, using everything, from trick photographs which threw a false and “mystic ” light over his works, to talking like a pundit, through a hired writer.
And, no sooner had Rodin become Vice-President of the “National Society of Artists,” than he had the effrontery to re- serve as his own place the best place in the rottmda of the Grand Palais, and where, at the annual Salon, he exhibited anything he liked without being challenged by any jury! On this spot, he exhibited all sorts of ‘ ‘ stunts ” : in plaster, marble, or bronze ; fragments; torsos without heads, arms or legs, often chopped into with a hatchet; decapitated, twisted, gnarled things, often brutal, sometimes refined, crazy and sane things, some- times hideous and weird, and often sadistic in their mutilation of the human form, until, midst the storm of hisses of the con- servative people and the hallelujahs of his “Red” supporters, the public became completely bewildered.

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But these thin gs made him talked about, and that meant notoriety, noise, and profit, from the speculative, bored morons, busy loafing and spending money. Some of these “creations” made people laugh and call him an idiot; some made the public gasp and gnash its teeth and call him a “monstrous beast”!
The late Hamilton W. Mabie wrote in the “Outlook” of July, 1911;
One of the tragedies of life is: the moral disqualification of men of great intellectual possibilities of leadership in the moral struggle, which is incomparably the most important thing in the world. It is the age-old tragedy of selling a divine birthright for a mess of pottage; of sacrificing a great career for some lower and easier success.
Had Rodin not been the inheritor of the sadism of the Terror of 1789, and, so, become the incarnation of the immoral sans-cullottism of the “Reds,” who were the final cause of the spread and temporary success of the modernistic art move- ment; had his intellectual and spiritual equipment been on a par with his manual dexterity, he could really have earned the title of the French Michael Angelo. As it is, it belongs, among the modems, to Dalou, if to any one.
What he could have done in the line of drawing, had he been bom with an aristocratic soul, or had he remained normal, we can see by the dry-point etching he made when 41 years old, see Fig. 128; what he palmed off — and sold — as “drawings” later, when he had become demented, we see in Fig. 129.
The fact is, Rodin, like nearly all of modernistic extremists, became crazy in his later years, thanks to his sadistic mutila- tion of the human form, nature’s masterpiece, and to his dehb- erate pursuit of the deformed and ugly. Then Nature avenged herself !
This penchant towards going to extremes is more prevalent among the Parisians especially, than among the denizens of any other city since Athens, one of whose philosophers coined the phrase: “Meyden Agan” (nothing to excess). Likewise, some early Frenchmen, noting this tendency of his Parisians, like their congeners of Athens, to slop-over in their laudation of anyone who, by no matter what sensation, lifts them out of their usual boredom, soimded the slogan:
Cherchez le juste milieu !

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Seek the golden mean ! But, no doubt, Rodin foimd great fun in life in following the injunction of that terrifying “Red,” Dan ton, who aroused the sans culottes of 1783 with his:
De I’audace, encore de I’audace, toujours de I’audace!
Luckily, France as a whole is the home of common-sense, and acts as a check on Paris; and, when its overexcited, neu- rotic “crazy” men coruscate too brilliantly, and foolishly enough to disturb the equanimity of the rest of the nation, then a few solid men rise to the surface and, like our police on Fifth Avenue stopping the onrush of the selfish chauffeurs, they blow a whistle, lift a virile hand, and calmly say :
En voila assez ! [Enough of that !]
And then Paris gets back to earth again and to work, and to common-sense — until the next Mardi Gras!
That is now slowly happening: Paris is going back to san- ity again 1
And, so, the steady creation of sane and great art there will go on and soon again win for France that high consideration which she has, temporarily, lost in the minds of the finer people of the world. She will do this in spite of the degenerate mod- ernists who boosted Rodin to be their leader. For the whirl- igig of time brings many revenges. Reaction follows action. And, when his self-interested corybants, who acclaimed Rodin “Master,” are gone, and the “Reds” will have found other “tools,” he will be subjected, in the absence of all press reclame, to the calm, disinterested, judgment of mankind; and then, he will surely find his true level.
And, we prophesy that, then, people will be amazed that so many of the over-stylized, trashy, things that he fabricated ever fotmd their way into public museums. Then his entire, truly artistic, baggage will be reduced to not much more than one figure or two ; one group, a half-dozen busts, and perhaps one or two bas-reliefs.
But that the vast majority of Rodin’s works, even those forced into Museums, are destined for oblivion, as far as the affections of mankind are concerned, is certain. This is assured by the violence of the opposition to them, in all parts of the world, among the cultured and common-sense public.
For while the public sometimes merely neglects an artist, even for two hundred years, and then puts him on a pedestal —

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as it did with Velasquez, who was never attacked — ^when an artist has been as bitterly assailed as was Rodin, his doom is sealed !
Moreover, there is one adamantine law : a work of art that evokes only the '‘intellectual interest” of a few is a dead one! For a work lives, not by its style, or mere manner, but only by virtue of the degree to which it forces the public to say, with genuine emotion: “Isn’t that beautiful!” Because, the artist who is not loved may exist, but he does not live! And few men, when he is gone, and his political or social “pull” with him, will lift a finger to prevent Time from devouring his work.
Besides, it can be easily proven that Rodin was Gothic and not French. He was a Parisian freak, a sans culottes waif, an accident, unique and alone. And, while the “Red” poli- ticians of Paris forced him to be accredited as “the first of French sculptors,” the real French people have always repudi- ated him : because your true Frenchman hates the vulgar and the inelegant, and he does this by instinct, because French genius is a compound of the Gallic and the Greek.
Rodin tried ferociously, by all sorts of loop-the-loop somer- saulting in his sculpture, to prove that he had “personality.” But he had no real personahty. His was a fictitious, strawman personality: held aloft by main strength and awkwardness. For, it is true as fimile Faguet, that delightful French author, said, in his book, “On Reading Nietzsche” :
Consequently the artist is as impersonal as possible. He is also, and consequently, as personal as possible. Beyond personal art and impersonal art, there lies true art. The artist is impersonal in this sense, that his voluntary personality does not obtrude and must not enter into his work, and because, as Nietzsche admirably put it, “the author must be silent when his work begins to speak.” He is personal precisely because, if his voluntary personality does not intervene, his real personality, his temperamental personality fills his work. [Italics ours.]
Finally, speaking of Rodin, Max Nordau, that keen intel- ligence, said, in “Art and Artists” :
The only two eternal sovuces of (great) art are, and will be, the feeling for nature and personality. Fidelity to nattire and hon- esty produce living creatures. Unnaturalness and affectation are marks of decay. ... If the practiced eye, however, recognizes, in the peculiarity, either a cnuming imitation or a cold-blooded, in-

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tentional oddity, then one may confidently pronounce the death sentence, for it contains in itself no germ whatever of develop- ment. . . .
A great philosophical doctrine is deducible from these facts. All development — including that of art, which is a part of nature and a part of human nature, and obeys the common laws of nature — all development is constant, and will be diverted from its logical course by no power. Its great procession always goes through a main street, and sudden turnings aside branch off only into blind alleys. Extreme forms (such as Rodin’s) have no stability; they remain individual monstrosities without issue; ... as things are, it is the iron law of development, which no living thing can escape.
This is the voice of common-sense. But this will be objected to by the morons, both in the “crowd” as well as by some critics among the “intelligentsia,” by those who are afflicted with a tendency towards ego-mania, which makes them prone to regard “the expression of one’s personality” as the Alpha and Omega of an artist’s function, a malady which made the early modernists, of whom Rodin was one, launch their calam- itous slogan, which we repeat again;
The pursuit of beauty is an antique fad; the artist should not seek beauty; but, choosing any subject, noble or ignoble, he should express its character in a personal technique.
People thus afflicted with mental and spiritual strabismus, will naturally look upon “o personal manner,” or “style,” as the sine qua non of what they call “art.” These wiU, no doubt, object to these verdicts.
Also those American artists who have studied in Paris and have been weak enough to allow themselves to be sufficiently corrupted to accept the socially sapping dogma that “art has nothing to do with morality,” and who think they must be loyal enough to the Paris art-world to swallow all of its fan- tastic vagaries, mental and immoral, and who resent even the most just criticisms of its moral transgressions, even if made by the most high-minded citizens of France itself — these will also protest against these judgments, even though they are echoed in the four corners of the earth !
But we feel sure that the laymen of common-sense in America, who know how reputations are manufactured, not only in Paris but all over Europe, will, ultimately, come to the same conclusion.

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Charlatanism is the practice of ascribing virtues and fine qualities to a thing, such as that thing does not possess, and doing it either with the open frank brass-band methods of a Barnum, or the subterranean sly, serpentine methods of a Cagliostro, and for the purpose of bamboozling men to accept things, of whose real value they are ignorant. Unfortunately, as Heine said:
Charlatanism is a weapon, not despised by even the greatest men.
By this he meant, that it is possible to be a charlatan even in the advocacy of the good and the beautiful. For, as Bulwer Lytton said:
The ignorant and servile vulgar must be blinded — to attain their proper good; they would not believe a maxim — ^they rever- ence an oracle!
The evil charlatan is the one who, knowing the vast number of morons among men (47% of our recruits during the Great War were found to possess intellects not above those of boys of thirteen), cynically decides to impose on those morons and to put over on them such things — stocks and bonds, or Seventh- day-adventism, or Mormonism, or new fangled bunco meta- physico-aestheticism — such as a little common-sense, which, of course, the morons do not possess, would suffice to declare “ shady” or insane.
For only a man who could penetrate behind the scenes — as we did, and by accident, and thus could see how the strings were pulled in the fantastic “Rodin Punch and Judy” art- comedy — could entirely escape being brought to the verge of losing his power of discriminating between the real and the fake, in Rodin and his works.
We know that many of those who have been hypnotized by the “Rodin noise,” and who preen themselves on being “believers,” wiU regret to hear these things said. And many will prefer not to be disillusioned.
But if there are any among our Readers, who have fol- lowed us thus far, who wish to be enlightened as to the extent that use was made of mystic charlatan tricks, by Rodin and the coryphees he had hypnotized to swing out incense for him, in the Chapel erected for him by his modernistic followers, and by those who used him for politico-commercial piuposes,

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let them now examine Fig. 131, showing the original composi- tion, in the plaster, of his lumpy, chumpy, and detestable mon- ument to Victor Hugo, which now disgraces the small garden of the Palais Royal, in Paris, created by the great Richelieu. He will there observe two strange, distorted figures, back of the poet. These were originally called “The Voices” — pre- sumably to symbolize the forces that inspired the poet — a good conception, but so grotesquely executed, that even his most acrobatic boosters had to rebel against them as child- ish. So they were discarded by Rodin. But he did expose the statue alone, in the Salon, where we saw Frenchmen looking at it sadly, and asking each other; “Has he gone crazy?” Nevertheless, he and his friends had enough “pull,” with the “Red” art -politicians, to enable him to carve the figure in marble, and set it up in the Palais Royal— to the mournful inner lamentations of the best minds in France.
Now, did Rodin then and there destroy these maniacal, discarded, “Voices”? Not he! Ah! no! He had a “vision”! He saw a chance for fat booty — by putting one of these mon- sters into “ginooine” marble, and then unloading it on some one of the “faithful,” preferably some secretly despised “for- eign savage,” who had gulped down, as would a carp, the Rodin propaganda, so skillfully and shamefully “tom-tommed,” by the ‘ ‘ Red ’ ’ art-politicians, throughout the world of art , via Paris.
So, instead of dumping this discarded “Voice” — this wart in plaster — into the Seine, Rodin turned it over to some cheap workman and let him loose, to do his worst in carving it into a stray block of marble, with the appalling residt we see in Figs. 131, 132, 133. Study them, Reader!
For, while, in the original plaster-group. Fig. 131, this in- sane thing was one of the “Voices,” in the butchered marble Fig- I 33 > if became: “Eve in Despair”! Nothing is difficult to a demi-god! Give a thing a different name and, presto! an abstract “Voice” becomes a concrete “Eve”! How Bar- num would enjoy this story, were he among the living! Rodin did this trick with a number of his works.
America, the land where art-gullibles swarm, where art gold-bricks are as easily sold as hot chestnuts in the Tuiler- ies gardens, was at once visioned by Rodin as the ready mar- ket for this, his final, “masterpiece” in symbolic sadism.

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The game of unloading it on some American art-moron was no doubt helped along by that silly American “Society” woman, who once was so servile, and so proud, to be privi- leged to stand on Rodin’s door-mat, as a leading, hypnotized, “touter” for the “great man,” then housed in the Hotel Biron, by the help of the “Red” politicians and press of Paris.
And the late Senator Colt became the ensnared victim! But he soon unloaded it on the Metropolitan Museum, where for some years it was a stench in the nostrils of all sane people, until it was finally forced out again by ridicule, and auctioned off by the American Art Association, for the paltry sum of $ 2 goo — the value of the brute marble in it !
That it was at all possible to unload this art-abomination on America without arousing the entire fraternity of our “critics” to a violent revolt against it, should fill them with shame, their only excuse being the sad truth that, in view of the number of morons, who will even sympathize with a sneak-thief and a gun-man if he is attacked in court, “a knock is often as good as a boost,” and hence they prefer to ignore a wart in art — in the hope that it will be ridiculed to death, by others than themselves!
To show to what an extent most artists tend towards fool- ishly regarding mere craftsmanship — mere modelling and painting — as art, we will give extracts from Mr. Kenyon Cox’s essay on “Rodin,” in his “Painters and Sculptors,” in which he speaks with high approval of Rodin’s figure, “Danaide.”
We will preface these extracts with the statement that, as we have shown in Chapter I, all mere craftsmanship, however excellent, is, in the final analysis, not art, but mere manual skill; that manual dexterity — artistry — when unaccompanied by fine conception, beautiful composition, and profimdity of expression, of some definite idea, sentiment, or emotion, can never be called great art since what is called “decorative” art will never be called great imless the composition of the work is beautiful; and a beautiful composition, or design, or pattern, even if modelled or painted with but second-class skill, or artis- try, will be eternally more emotion-stirring than an ugly design, be it modelled or painted with the utmost degree of manual dexterity.
What nonsense to talk about beauty of modelling or paint-

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ing, detached from beauty of form, beauty of line-composition, and beauty of color-scheme ? As we said in our chapter, “What is beauty,” there is no beauty in any work of art apart from its composition, either of line, form, or color. The most skillful passage of painting, by Velasquez or Vermeer, is meaningless beside the noble composition of the “Sistine Madonna,” by Raphael, or the “Martyrdom of Saint George,” by Veronese, in both of which the mere “painting” is inferior to that of Velas- quez or Vermeer. There is such a thing as melodious, beau- tiful color; but such color is only obtained through a skillful composition and mixing of various kinds of color — on the artist’s palette. Thus only did Velasquez find his marvellous pearl-greys, rose-greys, and silver-greys. The absurd color- maniacs rhapsodize over such color passages, even when foimd on a representation of a pigsty, and turn up their noses at Titian’s marvellous “Assumption,” because it lacks such dilettante “painting.”
And why talk about “beauty of modelling” when there is no such thing? There is such a thing as skillful modelling, which becomes a source of beauty only in ratio of the beauty of the form and line which is realized through skillful model- ling. A man speaks as a moron when he says: “That’s a beautifully modelled statue,” when he really means: “That’s a beautiful statue — skillfully modelled.” There is a sharp dis- tinction between the two expressions, though the myopic moron may say: “That is a distinction without a difference.” And the more vulgar the idea expressed, and the more ugly the design, or composition, the less worthy of eulogy is the work of art, however excellent the finger-workmanship displayed in its execution.
We believe that this point of view will become axiomatic when the present rebellion against nobility of thought and beauty of design— the first revolt of this nature in the history of art — will have subsided.
Now Figure 134 illustrates Rodin’s figirre “Danaide,” a name given to the fifty daughters of King Danaus, and who — all but one — killed the forty-nine husbands forced upon them, for which they were thrown into Tartarus, and compelled to eter- nally fill a barrel without a bottom; evidently a Greek nature- myth, dealing with rain.

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We feel that, since Rodin’s death, dispassionate analysis of this work is placing it, like most of his other works, in the category of useless, vulgar, and execrable works of art, no matter how marvellous the mere modelling of the surfaces — of muscles, bones, gristle, fat, etc., which compose a human body.
In the first place: why go to a mythology four thousand years old, at least, for a subject worthy of an artist’s expending painful labor upon, and so obscure and mystical that not one spectator in fifty thousand ever heard of it, or knows the mean- ing of “Danaide”; why select so esoteric a subject, and then, in addition, compose it in so outlandish and vulgar a manner? The average spectator, when he first sees this figure, is puzzled over it; and, when he goes to an encyclopaedia and finds the meaning of “Danaide,” and returns to the figure, he is still puzzled to know what it means. Finally, it may dawn upon him that, perhaps, the figure represents one of the forty-nine sisters striking bottom in Tartarus, into which they were thrown. But, then, the possibility of the spectator being stirred by any other emotion than that of mere, flat surprise, is gone, and all that is left him to do is to admire the merely skillful modelling of the figure, in which the sculptor merely parades his empty craftsmanship and perhaps his ego-maniacal “personal artistry,” which is not enough to evoke the lasting love of mankind.
Because it is utterly impossible for us to be emotioned to either mirth, delight, or awe, by any work of art that puzzles us. In order that a work of art may quickly emotion us, its meaning, intent, and final expression must be, at least, so clear that we grasp it at the first impact; and every question it raises in the mind, as a whole, or by any of its parts, destroys, by so much, its power of stirring in us of any but the nega- tive emotion of mere surprise.
When will foolish artists learn, and cherish, this truth? Those artists, or critics, who deny this truth are mere tech- nique-fadists, or crooked aesthetic theorists, propagandists for some new-fangled aesthetic fad.
Second: this “Danaide” is not only ugly, as a design, but it is positively vulgar. Study it, Reader. No great Greek, or Renaissance sculptor would have been childish enough to

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waste one hour on a conception so repulsive, on a composition so ugly, and a work so utterly meaningless and useless to man- kind; except for the charlatan purpose of “shocking the plain citizen” — so as to put himself in the limelight, even at the expense of public contempt, as did Manet, with his “Olympia,” etc. The mere fact that Rodin could conceive such an idea, and waste upon it the intense study and labor he must have expended on this “wart in marble,” proves that he had be- come, not simply “different” from other sculptors, but that he must — at that time — have been already semi-insane. All the more is this implied by the fact that this “Danaide” is one of the best pieces of Rodin’s mere craftsmanship — as a mere modeller.
But, had any other sculptor dared to send this work to the great Salon in Paris, it would have been rejected instanter. But Rodin, supported by the Bolshevistic modernists and pol- iticians of that day, with whom he and his fellow-rebels con- sorted, had sufficient political “pull” to force it into the Lux- embourg Museum, against the protest of the finer minds in the French art world !
Yea, verily! — “By their works ye shall know them.”
While no better modelling can be done than Rodin did in this figure — though just as good was often done before, and since — it is yet, perhaps, the most ignoble work ever forced upon the public by a French artist: not in a “personal tech- nique” — because he himself did not touch the carving in the marble — that carving which Mr. Cox ecstasizes over. For Paris sculptors almost never touch a work in marble — after it has been carved by a clever carver, who sometimes is him- self a first-class sculptor but a poor politician, and, so, cannot “pull down” commissions, and hence must carve for others, as Escoula carved that finest of all of Rodin’s busts, “Madame Vicima,” also in the Luxembourg, into which Rodin was able to ‘ ‘ jimmy ’ ’ sixteen of his works ( !) by the power of the ‘ ‘ Reds ’ ’ in the governmental machine which dominates the whole French art world, and which then supported Rodin and his cronies.
It is possible that the Reader, who, like ourselves, would much prefer to praise than to blame, may regard our opinion of this work as the result of “prejudice.” Should he make that

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error, let him study Fig. 135, a caricature from the “Coiar- rier Frangais,” one of the leading journals of Paris, of March 17, 1901, by Louis Morin, reproduced from the comic paper, “Revue des Quat’ Saisons,” published, we believe, as a pro- test, and as a rebuke to the Ministry of Fine Arts for having allowed Rodin and his Red politicians to force this work into the respectable confines of the Luxembourg Musemn. There was no title to this caricature. It did not refer to Rodin. It was aU the more effective in widening the breach, then already existing, between the aristocratic, elegant, and conservative art forces of France and the vulgar sans culottes, anarchistic modernists, of whom Rodin was then the standard-bearer. This drawing is the most sarcastic indictment we have ever seen, not only of this “Danaide,” but of the entire output of works by Rodin; and Americans may be sure it is sustained by a vast majority of the refined and thinking French people, who will, some day, again come into their own in the govern- ment of the country.
Now, there is absolutely no reason why any critic should waste more than five lines in speaking of this work, above all in a laudatory fashion. But here are some of the things that Mr. Kenyon Cox said about it, and this in face of the execra- tion showered upon this work by the most refined minds of Paris:
The figure is a slight one, and the attitude, which is not without a strange grace of its own [sic], throws into strong relief the bony structure of the pelvis, the shoulder blades, the vertebrae. One feels that it was chosen mainly for that purpose [truly so], and, in face of the result, one does not resent the fact.
Well, we are one of many who do resent the fact, in spite of the result ! What does any normal man care about an ugly parading of the “scientific modelling” of shoulder blades, pelvis, and vertebrae? He goes on:
It is a fragment, a thing made to be seen near at hand, to be walked around, to be looked at from a hundred points of view to be almost handled. It is not necessary that it should make pretense to monumental composition or decorative fitness — ^its beauty is intrinsic. It is a piece of pure sculpture, of modell- ing, as I have said, and such modelling has scarce been seen elsewhere, unless in one or two of the greatest of those figures which we associate with the name of Phidias. . . . Such discrimina-

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tion of hard and soft, of bone and muscle and flesh and skin, such sense of stress and tension where the tissues are tightly drawn over the framework beneath, such sense of weight where they drag away from it — all this is beyond description as it is beyond praise. In the presence of such a work one half understands how its author could refer, almost contemptuously, to the great Michael Angelo as to one who “used to do a little anatomy evenings, and used his chisel next day without a model.”
This is full of pure “bunk.” For we could have taken Mr. Cox to the Louvre, and shown him a score of pieces of modelling just as fine as in this “Danaide.” We could show him some done since this was made; for the reason that that kind of modelling has since been so eulogized, and so foolishly, by the coryphees of Rodin and his boosters. If only very little of such sort of modelling had been done before Rodin, it was because the great men of the past despised such meticiilous attention to the rendering, in a work of art, of the differences between bone and gristle and flesh. Fancy Michael Angelo, or Phidias, paying a hectic attention to such super-trashy details in the carrying out of any of their sublime compositions !
Most young artists do that once, but not twice — after they have shown they are able also to do it. And if Mr. Cox had been a competent critic of sculpture or of modelling, he would have rapped Rodin on the knuckles for his belittling of the great Angelo, by reminding him that, in the “Pieta” — which Angelo created at twenty-four — he carved a dead “Christ” which, for finesse of distinction between flesh, bone, and muscle is as profovmdly “expressive” as anything Rodin ever did. But, having done it once, having “won his spurs,” as a mere modeller, he did not care to spend his whole life in mere “tech- niqueing” in marble, above all in such puerile subjects as this “Danaide” of Rodin.
But since the modernistic trumpeters in the hired, or polit- ically “bulldozed,” press of Paris have so blatantly eulogized such trivial slave-labor, as is needed to show the difference between bone and gristle in a marble statue, and mainly be- cause it was revelled in by Rodin — their standard-bearer in social rebellion and aesthetic revolution — they stimulated the eruption into the art world of a host of Rodin imitators; and these having been deluded to believe that such meticulous

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modelling is the sine qua non of greatness in sculpture — above all since this “Danaide” of Rodin was hoisted into the Luxembourg, thus now glorifying this formerly despised “sci- entific” modelling — his followers have frequently exposed, in the Salon, works as skillfully, and meticulously modelled, and carved, as that in this shrimp in marble, of Rodin, or in any other of his statues.
But these imitators have scarcely been noticed, even in the Paris press, for their so ‘ ‘ marvellous modelling ’ ’ ! Why not ? Because they did not have the “pull” on the art-politicians of Paris, as Rodin did have; to again tell why and how, would waste space.
Mr. Cox quoted considerably from the Paris critic, Camille Mauclair, a ridiculous, little reporter and upstart “critic,” probably in the pay of the modernistic art party, and who, no doubt, influenced the mental processes of Mr. Cox, who ecstasized over this worthless piece of well-worked marble more enthusiastically than he did over any of Rodin’s other figures; and this largely, we suspect, because Mauclair and other modernistic “critics” beguiled him to do so, but mainly because, as we said before, he entirely overestimated the im- portance of mere craftsmanship, mere artistry, mere finger- dexterity in art, even when wasted on a senseless, useless, vulgar conception and composition. But this worship of mere unimaginative, really mechanical, skill became childish in these remarks:
We should be able to do complete justice to the perfection of the fragments without being worried by the artists' defective sense of design. It is not for nothing that Rodin has always been willing to exhibit his work in bits ... to show things without heads, or arms, and to act himself the role of Time or of the barbarian invader. The bits are all that really interest him, and their more or less successful combination is a matter of indifference when it is not a nuisance. [Italics ours.]
This condoning of Rodin’s shameful indifference to beauty of design, shows to what a degree some artists will go daft on the mere technical side of art! And, as long as this state of mind lasts, it is useless for us to expect the art world to pro- duce many really great works of art. For, the most important element in any work of art is its design. Mr. Cox knew that.

Fig. 136A. BY VELAbQUEZ.

The Maids of Honor,
In M.^drid Museum
Not the pulure, but the mobt skillful painting m the T.\orM.

An example of a nu<le made ehastc and eharniinj» by the introduction of the i>oetie nleal element of ('ujnd lellin^f \V*iuis a troul)lni>' set ret. A maslerjnece of art istic dijilomaey on Titian’s jiarl , for the mind is so attrai te<l by the <‘arnest ftU'es of \'enns and ( 'iiijul that \\ e forj^ct all about the jilelhonc nudity cjf Venus. A merely tlevrr wo*'k

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stated it often in conversation with us; and showed it in his own fine works. Hence, his failing to flagellate Rodin for his contemptuous indifference to beauty of design, even asking us to condone it, because of his “scientific” modelling of surfaces in fragments, is to us, incomprehensible, above all in view of what he said in his other book, Artist and Public:
But design is something more than the essential quality of mural decoration — it is the common basis of all the arts, the essential thing in art itself. (Italics ours.)
Such self-contradiction in a critic and artist is nothing less than disheartening.
It is difficult to understand how Mr. Cox, who created some of our most noble mural decorations, could have allowed the Rodin ‘ ‘ touters ” to so walk away with his judgment, and allure him to think that, in sculpture, a mere “bit,” a “fragment,” a meaningless, headless, torso, could be interesting enough, to the public, to warrant him in writing about it at aU.
But he shows his complete ignorance of Rodin’s charlatan- ism and trickery, and his own childish reliance on Camille Mauclair’s lucubrations about Rodin, as well as of those of other “boosters” of this “modem Michael Angelo,” in the following foolish remarks :
To put it, as nearly as possible, into a word, from a realistic sculptor Rodin has gradually become an impressionistic sculptor. The evolution which, in the art of painting, began with Courbet and ended with Monet — two men of considerable physical as well as moral resemblance to Rodin — has, in the art of sculpture, taken place in the work of one man.
The evolution is: the transference of interest from objects to the light that falls upon them, and Rodin has, apparently, attempt- ed something altogether new in sculpture, the carving in marble of an atmosphere [5fc], and the rendering, not so much of the actual forms of the hiunan body, as of luminosity.
This is pure nonsense ! Rodin had a special private photog- rapher. With him he used to work, with draperies and light- manipulations, to invest his figures, in the photographs, with a certain mystic Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro and painteresque air, a certain shadowy weirdness. This completely captivated the unthinking women; and the morons among men — who are morons because they never stop to think before blurting out their admiration, and using adjectives based on nothing

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real. With these, his photographs had an enormous success. It was a commercial trick of Rodin’s, worthy of Bamiun, and fruitful of many shekels! For, we have no hesitancy in saying that, when Rodin’s figures were exposed in the simple light of day, they did not show a trace of any such “atmosphere” or “luminosity,” of which poor, misguided Mr. Cox speaks, nor of any sort of mysterious quality of light. He would not have said that had he remembered what the great Leonardo da Vinci said:
The sculptor cannot represent transparent or luminous things.
The real reason Mr. Cox “slopped over” in the matter of the technical excellencies of this “Danaide,” is, because, like many other artists, he had a terrific struggle to master the mere technique of painting " — ^though fine composition and fine drawing came easy to him. He was, in fact, one of the most powerful draughtsmen the country has produced. And hence, he had never lost a profound reverence for mere “tech- nique,” in every field of art, and was liable to rhapsodize over mere “painting,” even in works utterly opposed to his own, often forgetting that, while every one of the six elements of art creation — conception, composition, expression, drawing, color, and technique — must never be neglected if we wish to attain real greatness in art, yet, of the six elements the least important is technique, since the output of Fra Angelico, a poor technician compared with David Teniers, is vastly more important to mankind, than the output of Teniers. Of course, this will be denied by a man who could write :
Technique is the Alpha and the Omega of art! And those who are not interested in technique, are not interested in art.
But this outburst simply proves to what silly extremes the wild “technicians” wiU go.
Only lack of space prevents us from noticing other Amer- ican victims of the Machiavellian propaganda of the revolu- tionary art philosophy, inspired by the “Red” movement in Europe, and broadcasted so skillfully by the modernistic art party, beginning about i860, and which has won over a number of Americans, otherwise very intelligent people — but caught off their guard, because ill-informed of the secret manoeuvres of the Bolshevistic art-politicians of Paris.
We can find no record of Degas having been mixed-up in

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the art-politics of Paris. But, that Manet, the first leader of the modernists, and Rodin, the final standard bearer of the party, were deeply in politics may be learned by those wishing to know, by a thoughtful perusal of: “L’ Impressionism, son Histoire, son Esthetique, ses Maitres,” by Camille Mauclair, 1904; “Histoire de Edouard Manet et de son CEuvre,” by Theodore Duret, 1906; and “Edouard Manet,” by Antonin Proust, 1913.
As for Rodin, we have but to remember ; that his brother- in-law, Octave Mirbeau, was, not only a bellicose writer of Novels, Dramas, and a Journalist, but a fiery “booster” and defender of Rodin, in the press, and in his preface to “Auguste Rodin et son CEuvre,” in the 1900 Edition of “La Plume,” also that he was a “radical” politician, and, of course, affiliated with the more or less revolutionary Radicals, Socialists and “Reds” in French politics, and which are more mixed-up in art matters in France than are politicians in any other coim- try, and have dominated the whole vast machine, such as is the Bureau of Fine Arts in France, since 1875.
Rodin doomed most of his Works to an ultimate oblivion, because he ignored the truth that, by instinct, men will not, for a long time, endure in their presence the deformed and the ugly, and because he flouted the warnings contained in the remarks of three of the outstanding men of his own time and race. The first warning was by one of the greatest critics of the 19th century, Sainte-Beuve, who said:
We must never deviate from a certain spirit of Beauty which is conformable to our race, to our education, and to our ciHlization.
The second warning he ignored was that of one of the greatest French philosophers and aestheticians, Victor Cousin who said:
The basis of true Beauty, as of true virtue, as of true genius is— force. Spread over that force a ray of sunshine, elegance, and delicacy and there you have beauty.
Michael Angelo demonstrated that, in his four great fig- ures, on the Medici tombs, in Florence.
The third warning Rodin ignored was by Theophile Gautier ;
That which has been executed with any other intention than to satisfy the eternal laws of Beauty, cannot hope to have any value in the future.

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He also ignored the warning contained in the remark of one greater than any of these Frenchmen, Goethe, who said ;
Beauty is at once the ultimate and highest aim of art !
And poor Rodin, never thought of beauty, nor of anything else, in his art, as far as we are able to see, than of the express- ing of his “personality,” and of the smashing of all French traditions in art, which means also all classic and rational traditions, and for the purpose — one suspects this at least — of assuring to all artists, not only the utmost “liberty in art,” but all the license the police would permit, thus revenging himself on the Academy, because its members rejected, in the Salon of 1864, his ugly “Man With a Broken Nose”!
Though we lunched at the same table with Rodin a score of times — in the little Cafe “Chez Binet,” in Paris, we never had even the beginning of a quarrel with him. And if we make this analysis of his work it is not to injure his reputation, ’twere futile! — for time will do that more effectively than we can, for “time at last makes all things even.” Our sole aim is to discredit the use of charlatanism in art, by opening the eyes of the public to its very free use in the world of art — and in all the arts — so as to sharpen the attention of the public, and to urge it to use more discrimination when it finds itself forced to estimate certain works of art, because heralded with so much brass-band noise in the press of the world, nearly always paid for, in some way or another, by one person or another, and most of it utterly inept and dishonest.
Rodin, and his modernist cronies, were not alone in being smitten with the furious ego-mania; to think and proclaim that, because a sculptor, by hook or by crook — frequently by crook — obtains a commission to make a public monument, then becomes a demi-god and supreme over the public in the matter! There are such topsy-turvied morpns among American sculptors, men who have learned how to model, but never learned how to think straight. Here is a pronuncia- mento from one of the most notorious of sculptors, of New York which appeared in New York American of October 17, 1922, to this effect;
The arts of our nation should be as free as the religions in oiu nation. When Citizens, or a committee, make choice of an artist and place an order in his hands, the creation and conception shoidd

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rest entirely with the artist. No work leaves the studio of a con- scientious sculptor that is not, in his estimation, a work that will be an addition to the art history of our nation.
Well, how about a “conscientious,” but semi-demented or totally insane artist? How about Rodin’s “Balzac” which as we have seen, was howled down, and the commission taken from him and given to Palguiere, because it was simply crazy in its impossible symbolism? How about Bandinelli (1493- 1560), a “conscientious” artist also, and of great talent, but who, in his group: “Hercules and Cacus,” went astray and so grotesqued the two figures, that Michael Angelo called it “a sack of mellons” and it raised such a riot of disapproval that, but for the protection of Alexander de Medicis, then master of Florence, it would have been destroyed at its imveil- ing, in 1534? Both Bandinelli and Rodin had become semi- insane at the epochs when they “created” their weird statues, they both suffered from hydrocephalic ego-mania; and both, having back of them the reigning political powers, fancied they could foist on the “plaiin citizen” any old “experiment,” or art -junk !
The New York sculptor continued in his proclamation, quoted from above ;
For the public to accept such a work, give it a cursory glance, and then subject it to criticism, without a thought as to the inspira- tion that creates the work, is wrong and a hindrance of great art. We should not be biased in otu artistic views any more than in our religious views.
Well, did he, as the spokesman of perhaps others, sculptors and painters, who think as he does, expect to “get away” with, his fantastic gospel; of the autocracy of a “conscien- tious” artist — simply because he is “conscientious”? Rodin had that point of view. As a result, he inflicted on Calais, his “Burgers of Calais”; on Nancy, his “Claude Lorrain”; and on Buenos-Aires, his “Sarmiento” monument, all of which ended in near-riots, at their tmveiling, so enraged against them were many people in those cities. But, we repeat, when Rodin tried the same game, in Paris, with his “Balzac,” he was laughed down, and his star began to set, and is setting still!
No! A public monument is not a “private snap,” as Presi- dent Cleveland said. A public monument, is a public avenue

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for the public expression of public emotions, feelings, and sentiments. Therefore, the sculptor of a public monument is nothing but an instrument, used by the public to express it- self, collectively. He is but the servant of the public, just as is the President of the United States. If he serves the public in a manner to give it lasting joy, he will get his reward in a lasting admiration, even love, as a creative and poetic artist. He will have thus achieved, not merely a vulgar passing noto- riety, but a sacred Fame, as enduring as his bronze! On the other hand, if he serves the public badly, he will receive the condemnation of the public and infamous ridicule: in propor- tion to the maniacal degree of his egotism.
A public monument, be it in bronze or paint, is no place for the exposition of an artist’s private fads or “experiments” in “originality,” “personality,” “individuality.” Let him manifest those in his private works, in which alone he is mas- ter and free. When, however, he tackles the problem of beautifying a pubUc square, or a public hall, his first duty is: to consult the wishes of the public, through its responsible representatives. Even then, should he fail — even after her- culean and “conscientious” efforts — to satisfy public feeling, he should not complain, but rather help, if the public growls and destroys his work, and even tries another artist, and again and again, imtil the public is satisfied.
Any sculptor, or painter, who finds this point of view irk- some, should never accept a public commission, but should confine himself, absolutely, to his private works, in which he can skirt-dance” with “experiments,” and “self-expression- ism, on a private pedestal, to his heart’s content, and accord- ing to his theory of “Liberty in Art” which, of course, involves also the liberty of the public to laugh at his work, even destroy it violates the requirement of public decency and hopes. The ego-maniacs, among the artists, oppose this theory, we know. But we have suflScient respect for the public good to openly condemn their point of view, especially, since many of them have too much “genius” and not enough culture and common sense.
Every work of art, should be looked at : as a sacred result of the creative spirit of man. And, as Nature, or God, cre- ates trivial men, compared with great men, human works of

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art have varying values, some being great, some trivial indeed. But, in appraising a work of art, it is the sacred duty of every good citizen to be perfectly honest, and to look at the work with monastic detachment, totally apart from, the personality of the author of the work. That is the only way one can be a true friend to an artist: by telling him the grim truth, as to how his work impresses one. That is the only way in which we can help an artist, who is liable to go astray at any time : under the fierce, catapultic, pressure of a creative impulse; it is the only way to help him escape making a bad blunder and, as Shakespeare said: “writing himself down an ass!”
Also, that is the only way we have of saving a sacred, pub- lic square, or hall, from being desecrated by a distressing, vitiating, monstrosity in bronze, or paint, and demanding its removal: to malce place for a new one, better calculated to unify the citizens in a common feeling of admiration instead of dividing them by a mixed feeling of liking and hatred for the monument. For, a displeasing public monument, is merely an encumbering piece of stone or bronze, while it should be the expression, in form, of the highest public loves and gratitudes for the heroes who have served us well, and also of our aspira- tions for ever nobler ends in life. Therefore, all statuary, all mural paintings, and public monuments, of all sorts, that are offensive and irritating to the majority of citizens, should not only be destroyed, but replaced by better works, and at public expense — to adequately express that which the failures failed to properly express. They should be destroyed: because they are socially dis-imiting instead of imiting and, therefore, anarchy-breeding. In a public statue a sculptor should be as impersonal as possible in the rendering of form. For, it can be proven: that deformation of the form brings on deforma- tion of the mind, then deformation of the soul, and, then, deformation of society. That is why it is a social menace. It is certain, that there is an intimate connection between the sadistic mutilation and deformation of the feet of Chinese women and the degradation of China. All forms of Sadism, mean — death!

CHAPTER XVI

ANALYSIS OF WORKS OF ART Raphael’s “Transfiguration”
Not the greatest “painting,” but the greatest Picture in the World —
Figure 136
Appeared in the October, igi6, issue of “The Art World"
The “Transfiguration” of Raphael has, by a majority of the cultured men and competent judges of the last five hundred years, been voted to be: not the greatest piece of painting or pigment application, but the greatest Picture in the world painted in oil.
Because, First : While it is true that Christianity no longer dominates the world, we must remember that five hundred years ago, it was the most dominant and also beneficent force on earth. Hence, for the world of five hundred years ago, no higher subject nor one more beneficent could have been chosen by Raphael than one helping to illiistrate the sublimity of the mission of Christ. Therefore, for him, the “Transfiguration” was an essentially beneficent and sublime subject — since the effect of the picture was, and still is, to lift to a lofty emotional plane all who then believed, and still believe, in the divinity of Christ and the sublimity of His career on earth, a faith shap- ing their philosophy of life and their daily conduct and so, doing a profotmdly effective social service.
Now, this subject was handled by a number of artists, before and after Raphael’s time, but not one of them Con- ceived the subject on so high a plane and in so lofty a spirit. Compared with Raphael’s conception, all the others seem trivial — in spirit and execution. Hence, he wins out in the First element of Art Power; loftiness of conception of a be- neficent subject.
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Second: no other “Transfiguration” — in fact, no other pic- ture in the world — ^is so skillfully, scientifically and sublimely Composed.
The public must hold fast to the fact, that the Beauty of any work of art depends, primarily and above all, on the beauty: of the Pattern of the Lines of its Composition.
There are three kinds of lines of beauty: Angular or Pic- turesque lines: arousing in us emotions of Mirth; Serpentine or Graceful lines : arousing our emotions of Delight ; and Pyram- idal or Sublime lines : arousing our emotions of Awe.
All beautiful Patterns on earth, or in art, are composed of some combination of these three kinds of lines, and the public must never allow itself to be placed in doubt of this for a mo- ment, by anything any self-interested artists or critics may say, no matter who they are.
The more angular the lines in any work of art the more Picturesque it is; the more serpentine the lines, the more Grace- ful; the more pyramidal, the more Sublime. The five greatest altar pictures in the world are aU pyramidalized in their com- position. It is this which gives the composition that Lifting power. It is this which tends to arouse in us emotions of Awe — as does a sublime motmtain, or the pyramids of Egypt. When this pyramidalization is skillfully veiled as it is in this work of Raphael, and, in addition, is interspersed with graceful lines, which always tend to arouse in us emotions of Delight, we have a combination of two elements of beauty, a compo- sition which arouses in us a complex emotion of Delight and Awe — the highest we are capable of.
Note how successfvilly this combination was made by Raphael in this composition. Moreover, to make the com- position still more moving, the apex of the Pyramid is formed by a Circle. Now, no form of line has more power to hold the mind captive than a circle. The result is in this picture that, not only is the attention forced upward by the pyramid- alization, but, once there, the circle, of which the head of Christ is the apex, holds the mind spinning around the circle and forces it, recurrently, to focus itself on the transfigured, spiritualized and deified head of the Saviour.
This invention of Raphael is the boldest in the history of art, and was copied later by Titian and others. Therefore,

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taking it all in all, this is the most wonderful Composition ever made by man, and the picture wins out in the Second element of Art Power: Composition.
Third: not one of the artists of the world who handled this subject, has produced a w'ork in which the Primary expres- sion, that is, the expression on the faces of the various figures and of the details, is so profoimdly expressive of that which they are supposed to express: of surprise, bewilderment, im- ploring, directing, etc. Moreover, no painter has expressed to a profounder degree the physical and spiritual power of Christ. And, then, the Secondary expression, i.e., that which radiates from the work as a whole, is so lifting and spiritual that no other “Transfiguration” can compare with it: from the standpoint of Expression. Nor does any other picture on earth radiate the same sublime spirituality unless we except Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna.” A volume could be written on this sub- ject. So Raphael wins out in the Third Element of Art Power : Expression.
Fourth : there are various kinds of Drawing : so extremely exact as to be photographic, and so inexact as to be childish. The best drawing is that which is just exact enough — to escape being noticed — as drawing. And this is also the most diffi- cult to do. No better drawing can be done than Raphael has done in this picture. So he wins out in the Fourth element of Art Power: Drawing.
Fifth : some men who cannot draw, but have a color-sense, have gone so far away as to say that Color is the main thing in all the arts. This is stupid. For the greatest pictures in the world make a powerful appeal to us in a photograph — without color; but one can so dispose the finest color in the world as to leave us absolutely cold. Moreover Raphael who — in his “Sposalizio” — proved he was a master-colorist, so modified the brilliancy of color in his “Sistine Madonna” that, when we first see it, in Dresden, it disappoints us. But, when we learn, that it was done to enhance the spirituality of the pic- ture, we see how secondary color is in any work of art. Never- theless, in this picture, Raphael invented one of the most delight-arousing color-schemes in the world. So, it wins out in the Fifth element of Art Power : Color.
Sixth: here we come to the source of most of the quarrels

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in the world of Art — in poetry, in drama, painting, etc., most of which are childish; we refer to the question of — “Tech- nique.”
By Technique, in painting, we usually mean the surface manner of putting on paint.
Now, there are as many diflEerent manners of “painting” as there are painters. No two painters paint exactly alike. But, most painters paint very nearly alike, in every epoch or “school” of painting. For example: it is difficult for men, not in the profession, to see the difference between the manner of painting of Titian and Raphael. In their epoch men did not think of “technique” as we do to-day. They used mostly brushes to paint. To-day, men use brushes, spatulas, tooth- brushes, naUs, pocket-knives, rasps, sandpaper, pumice-stone, their fingers, and any old thing, to arrive at a certain Quality in the surface of the paint. Most pictures painted thus, are painted so, primarily, to show what a clever technician the painter is. It is really beyond a certain point merely a chil- dren’s game, in most cases.
The best technique to be used, for the purpose of express- ing a definite and sublime conception, in the most powerful and effective way, is that technique, which does not in any way attract attention to itself — as Paint. The moment a painter invites you to look at his work by exposing it in a public place, for the exhibition in his work of mere technique or cleverness of painting skill, and song-and-dance vaudevillian tricks of “painting,” he becomes an impertinent mountebank, in ratio of the dignity or sublimity and tmiversally important nature of the subject he handles. In other words, technical “stunting,” which may be perfectly proper in a trivial picture of a chicken- coop — and frankly made only to parade the vaudeville clever- ness of the artist, as a mere skirt-dancer in paint— would be insolently inappropriate in a picture of so sublime a subject as the “Transfiguration.” In such a picture, the less the technique attracts the mind of the spectator away from the sublimity of the composition and of the Thought aimed to be expressed, the better. The perfect craftsman in paint, will always suit his technique to the subject he paints. Raphael did this in every one of his works, above all in this one. His tech- nical manner is entirely his own, different to a certain extent

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from that of all his contemporaries, but this difference is so restrained, it is so imobtrusive, that one does not think of stunts in technique in presence of the picture. Yet it is powerfully expressive of life, and of ideal life. And this is as it should be. So, he wins out in the Sixth element of Art Power : Technique.
The total result is : that this picture, as a whole, is pervaded with so fine a Quality, so noble a Style, and so complete a Harmony between all the elements, that one never passes by it in the Vatican without taking a look at this wonderful work. It could serve as the basis for a complete treatise on the art of Picture painting.
When the spectator, who is not foolishly prejudiced against all religious pictures, or the painter who is not a fanatical opponent of every manner of painting but the one he particu- larly admires, first sees this work, he is, inevitably, emotioned to a high pitch. Unforttinately, familiarity with anything dulls our capacity for being emotioned by it. Hence, it is wise to get away for a while from oiu: greatest pictures, as well as from our best wives, now and then, to restore our capacity of being emotioned by them.
In regard to this picture. Prof. W. H. Harris, formerly United States Commissioner of Education, and one of the greatest scholars of his generation, said :
It may be safely affirmed that there is scarcely a picture in existence in which the individualities are more strongly marked by internal, essential characteristics.
Above there is no figure to be mistaken. Christ floats toward the source of all light, the invisible Father, by whom all is made visible. On the right Moses appears in strong contrast to Elias on the left, the former the law-giver, the latter the spontaneous, fiery, eagle-eyed prophet. On the mountain top are the three disciples. One recognizes on the right hand John, gracefully bending his face down from the overpowering light, while on the left James hides his face in his humility; but Peter, the bold one, is fain to gaze directly on the splendor. He turns his face up in the act, but is, as on another occasion, mistaken in his estimate of his own endurance and is obliged to cover his eyes involuntarily with his hand.
Below, on the mount, are two opposed groups. On the right, coming from the hamlet in the distance, is the family group, of which a demoniac boy forms the center. They, without doubt.

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saw Christ pass on His way to this solitude, and at length con- cluded to follow Him and test His might, which had been noised abroad in that region. It is easy to see the relationship of the whole group. First, the boy actually possessed, a maniac; then his father, holding and restraining him, a man predisposed to insanity. Kneeling at the right of the boy is his mother, whose fair Grecian face has become haggard with the trials she has en- dured from her son. Just beyond her is her brother, and in the shade of the mountain is her father. In the foreground is her sister. Back of the father is seen an uncle, on the father’s side, of the demoniac boy, whose features and gestures show him to be affected with the family trait. Near him is seen the face of the father’s sister, also a weak-minded person. The whole group, at the right, are supplicating the nine disciples in the most earnest manner for relief. The disciples, grouped on the left, are full of sympathy, but their looks tell plainly that they can do nothing. By their gestures they seem to be saying that the Master, He who can heal the boy, is up on the mountain.
This picture, the last that Raphael painted, was carried in the procession bearing his body to the tomb. It was then pro- nounced the greatest of Pictures, and succeeding generations have but endorsed the estimate.
“The Maids of Honor” by Velasquez
The Cleverest Painting in the World See Fig. 136 A
We admit that it is with great works of art as with great kings; most people are overawed by them. There is in the very magnificence and elevated station of a king, in the cold sublimity of a movmtain range and in the solemnity of a great Cathedral, a certain warding-offness. Hence, w^hile we are ineluctably compelled to go to see them, now and then, we are satisfied to visit them only now and then. Climbing a very cold mountain is always energy-consuming. Hence, we prefer to stroll on the comfortable paths of the warm, easily undulating valley. And, during each spiritual exaltation, we soon yearn for our daily rotmd of quiet enjoyment of emotions of Mirth and Delight — rather than those of Awe. We cannot always live with the gods. That is why many men, w’hen very yoimg, will adore, platonically, for a while, a queenly, intellectual woman — and then suddenly run off and marry a nez retrousse charming little doll.

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Moreover, intellectual emotions take precedence over spiritual exaltations and nothing so arouses our intellectual emotions as Cleverness: that is — dexterity, agility, sureness of eye and touch, in any activity. Nothing is more astonishing and admirable than the mere sureness of touch of a boss miller as he puts his hand in a grinding-box, takes a pinch of flour, and says; “That is XXX fine,” or any other of twenty brands — simply by rubbing the flotir between his thumb and fore- finger, while to us, with no “genius” for such a trick, every brand feels alike.
Hence the immortality of our admiration for masterly billiard playing, juggling, Paderewski’s finger gymnastics, or the virtuosity of a painter, as shown in a talent for obtaining the utmost possible results, in the mere painting of “values,” or correct tones, with the least apparent effort. But it is a negative admiration, of the mind, for a skill which is neither agreeable nor disagreeable to the soul.
But there are some men, in whom the love of the sublime is so rudimentary and the love of the comic so active, that they are incapable of feeling any high, tear-compelling emotions, and so they cannot comprehend why others should adore Michael Angelo, Milton and Beethoven. These also prefer wit to sentiment, and only such works of art as appeal mainly to the mind, and stir principally the intellectual emotions. Hence they admire only Clever, Intellectual art. And they naturally condemn all spirituality. They are a mediocre class — either evoluting or devoluting.
To such, a picture like Raphael's “Transfiguration” is pure ‘ ‘ punk.” Especially if they are devoid of even an atavistic leaning toward faith in a God and look askance with malice at all religious belief. And there are more of such in the world to-day than ever before. And some are blatant cynics.
The opinions of such people are absolutely worthless as to the real value, to mankind, of any work of art — except on questions of degrees of dexterity or of cleverness of Craftsman- ship. They are incapable of passing judgment on the Social value of any work of art. They cannot comprehend the idea of — socially beneficent art. Read Whistler’s “The Red Rag” or his ‘ ‘ Ten o’ Clock.” Cleverness in art is their Idol.
Now, the most clever, dextrous, skilful canvas in the world.

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the greatest piece of mere “painting,” is Velasquez’ “Maids of Honor” in the Prado Museum at Madrid, to which no photo- graph can do justice. When Theophile Gautier first saw this painting he exclaimed: “But where is the picture?” So won- derfully true to nature it is, in the most difficult thing to do in painting — atmosphere! Fig. 136A.
The Dutch painter Vermeer, in one or two of his small canvases, approached, if he did not equal, this picture by Velasquez, in atmospheric effects. But, what in Vermeer’s small pictures is already astonishing, is doubly so in this pic- ture by Velasquez, because of its being about six times the size of those of Vermeer.
Never did any painter manifest so prodigious a display of skill with brush and color!
The picture represents Velasquez at work, painting the portrait of the King and Queen of Spain — who are reflected in the mirror on the wall — surroimded by dwarfs, a dog, and maids of honor, installed in the Court to amuse the mentally dull rulers. Before the painting itself, one feels allured to walk into it, so true is the feeling of air, of atmosphere before one. It is astounding ! And this is made all the more tmforget- able when we examine the work closely and see, not the patient niggling of a German Denner, working years on a head to make a photograph in color, but, instead, free and bold brush strokes, by which Velasquez put on his colors with such absolute truth of tone, or “values,” that we are amazed at the sureness of vision and of touch in mixing and applying color, and all done with an appearance of such effortless legerdemain, that we ask ourselves, did a man or a demigod do this painting? Hence our first impulse is one of imstinted admiration for this one supreme manifestation on earth of human skill and cleverness; one that can serve as a text-book in the world's school of “paint- ing,” and for all time.
But, if we are not painters, our admiration soon grows cold. For, as we wander about in the painting, and find there nothing but a portrait of Velasquez at work, and a lot of meaningless figures and a dog, and a man going out of the back door, we ask ourselves; Why do it?
In Composition, the work has just enough angular lines in it, which shock the muscles of the eye, to suffice to

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neutralize and negative the few graceful lines it possesses; the color scheme is also negative and leaves one cold ; so that it cannot be called Beautiful in line, color or mass dis- tribution. It is neither agreeable nor disagreeable. Being negative, we neither like nor dislike it — as a thing. Hence, it arouses only our negative emotion of astonishment, caused by our perception of the unique skill in painting its — ^Atmos- phere.
Then we ask: But why paint-over so large a canvas, about seven by eleven feet, to present a subject which is so trivial, without significance or beauty, with nothing to arouse a single sensuous or spiritual emotion, and in the color and spirit of which we feel the depressing soul of drab, dry and already decaying Spain? The only thing that gives it any interest, apart from painted atmosphere, is the fact that it is a self-portrait of Velasquez, and when we perceive that here is the supreme work for arousing in us what modernistic babblers call, “intellectualized emotions,” a work painted by Velas- quez of himself with accessories, only in order to give him a chance to show how truly he was the greatest wizard of the brush in the world — we gradually grow cold toward the work.
But it has also a value as a self-revelation : of the fact that Velasquez was a self-centered man with a soul as matter-of- fact as the Escurial, in which he spent most of his life, sur- rounded by hard, prideful, cold, cynical Spanish kings and grandees, utterly devoid of any hunger for the love of their neighbors, and bent only upon ruthlessly exploiting and de- grading the people under their tyrannous heels.
It is certain that Velasquez, as the painter of truth pure and simple, earned his Spanish sobriquet: “II Pintor del Verdad.” But, by the side of such lofty emotion-stirring artists as Leo- nardo, Raphael, and Titian, he was a second-rate man. This was the verdict of the cultured world of his own day, and his work appealed so feebly to the public of his time — except as portraits — that, after his death, he was soon forgotten and for two hundred years. From this entombment of indifference, he was resurrected about 1850 by a number of artists — who had turned toward the worship of mere dexterity and technical cleverness. And he is still being forgotten — by the public. But he wiU henceforth be unforgetable to those artists, who

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have seen his work and are in search of vaudeville virtuoso tricks in painting. For them he must ever remain the prince of Clever Craftsmen.
Bochini relates that one day Velasquez, replying to Sal- vator Rosa, who had asked his opinion of Raphael, said:
If I can express freely and sincerely my private opinion of him, I admit I do not like him. It is at Venice where one finds good and great painting; it is the first school in the world, and Titian is the one who carries the banner.
This is perfectly true from the standpoint of sensuous paint- ing, but not of emotion-stirring Pictures. But Velasquez, because incapable of comprehending the spiritual, Hellenic Beauty of Raphael’s work, never painted a single work that ever set a human soul into a flutter, outside of the ranks of the mere “painters,” or those whose worship of mere technical dexterity blinds them to the value of everything of spiritual or social import to mankind.
Raphael was also clever as a technician, but not quite as clever as Velasquez. But he was filled with the milk of human kindness and, so, strove, and succeeded so completely in stir- ring the highest emotions of his fellow-men and lifting them to high states of ecstasy, that he was not only admired but loved in his own day, and has been so more and more ever since, by priest, prince and peasant, as time went on. Unlike Velasquez, he never suffered an eclipse. This is the verdict of the ctdtured world for whom works of art are made.
But the public must be warned that, today, the devotees of the various cults of mere brush-cleverness, among the paint- ers, in search of painting tricks, and still in the mere technique- adoring stage, pooh-pooh Raphael and all his tribe and all who admire him, and will call this work of Velasquez a sublime masterpiece — simply because they are ecstasized with merely negative astonishment — as feUow craftsmen are prone to be over all fine craftsmanship, even though expended on the most abject of subjects. They would be equally emotioned had Velasquez painted the reeking dump-pile that Ruskin so clev- erly described.
But, when they at last mount higher, and find that great craftsmanship, though supremely necessary and admirable, is, after all, merely a means to a higher end — the stirring of posi-

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tive emotions of either Mirth, Delight, or Awe, not merely the astonishing of mankind — they also join the cultured world in its judgment that, after all is said, this work of Velasquez is but the supreme example of Dilettantism, of art pursued merely for self -amusement or an egotistic, even cynical, parad- ing of one’s dexterity.
Do we despise clean cleverness? Far from it. For it must always remain the source of much of our intellectual de- light. But we claim that, like “fancy handwriting,’’ paraded by some “chirographic sharks,” as the schoolboys call the men who write visiting cards at a country fair, mere cleverness — as an end — is a game worthy only of children or of mechan- ical dullards. Nor are we opposed to that dilettante cleverness which consists in a morally and intellectually optimistic ama- teur practising any art, for his private amusement, provided he does not try to drag the public to pay money to visit his amateur creations under the plea that cleverness is the highest thing in art : for, the private dilettante helps the development in the community of an atmosphere of art. But the preten- tious dilettantism of a Flaubert, atheistic, pessimistic, neurotic despiser of his fellow-men, chiselling the phrases of a vapid “Madame Bovary” with infinite pains, just to give them an air of cleverness and only to siurprise and amuse a dilettante clique who, like Chinese mandarins, retire to their “Ivory Towers,” to intoxicate themselves with opiirni pride in the fewness of their few, such dilettantism is of far less importance in the scheme of things, and less respectable, than “ping- pong,” of hilarious memory. For, as that profound apostle of common-sense, Amiel, said: “Cleverness is useful in every- thing — suflScient for nothing!”
Luckily Velasquez painted two other self-revealing pic- tures: “The Crucifixion,” and “The Surrender of Breda,” sometimes called the “Lances,” the latter a huge canvas and also of consummate skill in painting. These show that had he been properly encouraged by his entourage, and not been crushed by the depressing environment of the gloomy Escur- ial and the dreadful Court of Spain of his day; had he been at liberty to finish his days in Italy, when he first went there, and had he there had his soul transfigured by the kindly color and spiritixality of that land of poetry he, with his prodigious

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intellectual gifts, might have become the hero who could have stemmed the decline of the Renaissance.
For, while in his “Lances” he violated one fvmdamental law of great composition: concentration of effects, yet, in the central figures in that picture, showing the Marquis of Spinola graciously receiving the keys of the city of Breda from the defeated Justin of Nassau, Velasquez showed how expres- sive of fine feeling he could be, when he himself was truly emotioned, which seems to have been rare ; and in his one truly successful religious picture, of Christ alone on the cross, he, as well as any one before him, expressed the pathos of — “It Is Finished!”
That he either did not care to travel further, on that high path, of stirring the highest emotions of mankind, or was, more probably, prevented from doing so by his hard masters, and held down to painting portraits of dwarfs, court fools, dogs and degenerate royalty, is one of the tragedies of the art world.
Raphael has for five hundred years been called the “Prince of Painters.” This is an error. The real prince of “painters” was Velasquez, but Raphael was the Prince of Artists!
A Trivial Work of Art Titian’s “The Secret”
{See Fig . 137)
This is a trivial work of art. Why? Because it is a nude? No!
We are absolutely in favor of the Nude in art, because the human figtue must ever be the noblest and most effective means of human self-expression. And we ourselves are fortu- nate in having a life-size nude marble “Evening” in the Met- ropolitan Museum. Therefore, the more the better : provided. First : that the mere nakedness and fleshliness be poetized out of the nakedness — which is often more disgusting than allur- ing; and provided: Second: and above, all, that in composi- tion, movement and intention — the work does not, in any degree whatsoever, deliberately aim to arouse the physical passions of any observer.
The human body, in its perfect state, is the most beauti- ful object in nature. There is a perfection of proportion be- tween the weight and size of a man and woman which, when reached in nature- approaches the ideal the most poetic men

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in art have created. But this is rare indeed. In the matter of the female form the finest proportions were established by Cleomenes, in the statue of which the “Venus de Medici” is a copy, and by Pradier, in his “Three Graces.” And these are of infinite delicacy and grace. These are not Naked figures. They are poetized, spiritualized Nudes. And the lines and the forms of these rouse in normal people only emotions of serene Delight — Tolstoy to the contrary notwithstanding; and, we repeat, abnormal people do not coimt in a discussion of art. The “Venus de Milo,” is also of ideal proportions, but just sufficiently more “buxom” to give the impression of Grace — plus Power. This makes her the most majestic of all the god- desses; and, when we first see her in the Louvre, she lifts us to a plane bordering on the sublime. Moreover, the body is the house of the soul. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason why it should not be represented — if poetized to perfection — in art.
Per contra, to represent it — especially the body of a woman — in its imperfection, or decay, except in a medical book, is an assthetic and social crime. Because in art, as well as in life, the highest interests of the race demand, the idealization of woman. If we do not idealize her in art, we drag down art. If we do not idealize her in life, we degrade life. And all the casuistic tergiversations to the contrary, by low-minded and shrimp-souled artists, who, for any reason, represent a woman merely naked, or in a degraded attitude, will not avail against these truths. A work of art which violates this law, is destined straight toward ultimate death — in the estimation of mankind, even though encysted by some social “hocus-pocus pull” into some foolishly directed art Museum.
There is absolutely nothing imclean about this pictvtre by Titian. Venus is busily listening to the story of Cupid as he pours his secret into her ear — a charming subject. And the composition is beautiful, the color superb. Then, what is the matter with it ? Much! See Fig. 137.
Titian had a weakness for plethora in woman — he loved the planturesgue. And nearly all his pictures of women are buxom. When draped, this is all right. When undraped, it is all wrong. Because when a woman’s body becomes fleshy towards fatness she becomes unpoetic, and progressively imper-

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feet — away from the Ideal, and she should never be thus rep- resented in art that is expected to endure in the esteem of man- kind. And in this picture he went to excess and made Venus so well-padded with embonpoint, that he reduced the goddess to a naked, earthly woman. By dragging the goddess from Olympus to the earth: .he trivialized a stiblime subject. He made a lofty thing — common. And, in art, at least, this should not be done. If he had reverently painted, and even slightly idealized, a beautiful, nude young girl, and called it simply: “Spring,” he would, perhaps, have poetized an ordinary sub- ject and, in so far as he did so, would have lifted us above crass reality. -That is the rdle of a great Artist. But in this picture, no doubt painted for some sensuous, royal lubber of his day, he frankly reversed the process and appealed to the senses, not exactly to the immoral — because there is here not even the budding of an impure gesture in movement. In fact, Titian very skillfully chastened his fleshy Venus: by forcing the mind away from a steady contemplation of her body by the serious way she listens to Cupid’s telling his troubling secret. But he dragged the goddess downjfrom Elysium to the earth earthy. Instead of idealizing his model he de-ideal- ized ’his goddess — materialized her, and, so. Trivialized a sublime poetic subject.
How different is his nude in his own — “Sacred and Profane Love.” How graceful and merely nude the beautiful body! — the whole work lifting us to the plane of serene delight where dwell the gods! And because of this spiritual poetic quality this picture has often been ascribed to Giorgione, a more poetic artist than Titian.
To take a subject capable of being conceived on a lofty plane, and to conceive it on a common, carnal plane, is to trivialize it — no matter how great, or by whom, the craftsman- ship displayed. And, however one may pardon this in life, in art that is: “The sin against the Holy Ghost!” Titian in this work was guilty of this sin. That is why it is trivial.
A Degenerate Work of Art “Woman Making Her Toilet”
BY Degas {See Fig . 138)
A cosmic urge is pushing man slowly, painfully but surely

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to evolute away from the animal. That is Civilization. But, oh, brothers! how we do hate to leave “the flesh pots of Egypt!” Even the best of us are still sufficiently Dr.-Jekyll- and-Mr.-Hyde men, not to throw away the key to our bou- doir, even when we do obey that never-sleeping luge — and go to the Temple. Why do we go to the Temple at all? Because we know, deep down, that Tophet lies the other way! Most of us follow the Archangel, only because we fear to follow Satan.
But, on the road that leads to our destined end, there are many stragglers, who follow, from fear of being left in soli- tude, but who cuss the leaders far ahead for not halting to give them a chance — to tread the “primrose path of daUiance.” It is these stragglers who will buy such works as this “Woman Making Her Toilet,” by Degas, Fig. 138.
This is a distinctly degenerate work. Why? Even Degas knows that to represent woman in art, in any other than an idealized way, is a deliberate going counter to this current of civilization — away from the animal. Then why will he make, exhibit and sell so brutal a thing as this pastel drawing?
This work violates in a high degree the highest examples of the Six Elements of Art Power: it is a disgusting subject; conceived on a degraded plane; it is ugly in composition; it expresses nothing; it is badly drawn; it is ugly in color; and has not even the redeeming feature of technical cleverness. The total resxilt is — immoral. It is not openly pornographic, like some of the “modernistic” bestial works, but it is suggestive, and, therefore, appeals to the sexual and alcoholic degenerates, and to those whom these have convinced that this work man- ifests — a “personal individualistic technical touch!” and point of view.
The only thing that can be said, of this screed in pastel is: that, while in form it is bad, it is not so insane as the forms in the works of that other modernistic, overadvertised, degener- ate — Cezanne. Otherwise it has not one redeeming feature and at first one is amazed that so degenerate a piece of “strumpet art” could find a buyer — even though made by an artist with so “manufactm-ed” a reputation as that of Degas.
Then why will he — who in his early manhood proved that, as a craftsman, he was once capable of exquisite things — make and sell such an artistic wart — redolent with the moral effluvia

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of the cabarets and rat-holes of the Quartier Breda and the Place Pigalle? The answer is, first: that, though once a nor- mal producer of things decent and fine — he gradually became a degenerate; and, second, because enough bar-room souled men and women still exist in the ranks of our public to crave such things as this by Degas: to stimulate their jaded nerves to furnish them with physical sensations of a low order, people sufficiently coarse in fibre to find such a thing an actual stim- ulus, while to refined people it acts like a moral assafoetida. And Degas, being “a hater of sloppy altruism,” according to one of his eulogizers, and a follower of the Pompadour, with her: “After us the deluge!” is not above satisfying, either for popularity with his “modernistic” cronies, or for money, the demands: created by the corrupt dealers in such semi- lupanar creations.
What a combination to hoodwink the Archangel: Degas, the moral rimts of the world, and the mephistophelian dealers in — “Objets d’Art”!

ADDENDUM
Degas, Manet, and Rodin form a trinity. It is a trinity which has been, and will remain, the curse of modem art — judged from the standpoint of truly great art, art that is so- cially serviceable, because inspiring and lifting the human soul above the commonplace, the vxdgar and indecent.
Of covirse, if you. Reader, have adopted the “Art for Art’s sake” point of view — that art has nothing to do with morals; that, no matter how morally rotten a work of art is, it is worthy of reverence and public display in our museums, provided it is well executed — you might as well escape further irritation by stopping right here. If, however, you believe that the “Art for Art’s sake” doctrine is vicious and socially disintegrating, you will find what follows illuminating.
Lombroso has shown that genius and semi-insanity are frequently connected, like Siamese twins, in certain individuals, so that, now one side of the man, one twin, talks and acts, then the other twin-side. These are “Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.- Hyde” men. They are never truly great men. They are never more than merely cleveristic men.
Ego-mania is always the soul-substance of such men.

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Nearly all of them have a contempt for their fellow-men, even a down-right hatred of humanity. Why they do not quit the earth and mankind, early in life, before they do their depressing, degenerative work, is one of Nature’s mysteries.
How any man will feverishly spend his life, from his twen- tieth to his eightieth year, in producing works of art, in poetry, literature, painting, or sculptture, the direct tendency of which is to weaken his feUow-men, to debase them, to animalize them, and then still hope to exact the esteem of mankind, is one of the weird paradoxes which Providence permits to arise, to tantalize us, and, perhaps, to spur us on to an unceasing, greater self-discipline, so as to never lose our grip on our ever-needful self-control, in order that we shall not slip back into tophet, by losing what we have so painfully won. To be lecherous, even pornographic, during sixty years of self-expression in art, and still hope to be apotheosized for such a career, is, to us, conclusive proof of abnormality and semi-insanity.
That such a class of men should be allowed to appear on earth, is depressing and disheartening. For it makes life, for aU the leaders of men, an almost sisyphean labor, since what the beneficent altruists succeed in building up, the vicious individualists nearly completely destroy. To this class be- longed Degas, Manet, and Rodin. Let us see if we can verify these strong statements in the case of Degas, as we have al- ready done in the case of the other two of this pernicious trio.
What does the bulk of the works of Degas deal with? It deals either with commonplace, or low, or vulgar, or vicious life: a few portraits; then, modistes, and washer-women; horse-races, and cabarets; ballet-girls of the Opera, and sing- ers at Cafes-Concerts; dives and their inmates ; and ugly nude women at their intimate toilet; and even pedicures, caring for the feet of luxurious women! — ninety per cent of which are utterly unworthy of a great man. Degas did not produce many paintings. He modelled a great deal, the whole product of which efforts, if made by some tmheralded sculptor, would be thrown into the ash cans of Paris. But he did an enormous number of drawings, in various mediums, many in pastel.
As one goes through the books, where are illustrated these drawings, one closes them Avith a feeling of astonishment and weariness at the total absence of even one drawing the effect

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of which can possibly be to lift any human soul above the crassest, most commonplace materialism and vulgarity. There is not a single poetic note in all that prodigious production !
Degas died September 26, 1917. In 1919, two years later, Paul Lafond published his biography of the artist and a eulogy of his works, which seems to radio the news that the book was written to order for the art-dealers who had taken charge of the effects left by Degas, in his studio, and for which heavy “boosting” Lafond was well paid, all of which was easily recouped when the stuff was imloaded on the bamboozled public.
Before the publication of this well-timed eulogy, the dealers, who for years had handled and exploited the works of Degas, had had time to arrange and pay, in one way or another, for a miraculously shrewd propaganda, in favor of these posthu- mous works, made up, not only of some of his real fine things, but of a mess of his atrocities. Lafond in his inept eulogy says :
In 1886, Degas exposed, with Durand-Ruel, a series of pastels of Nudes, of women bathing themselves; sponging, washing, drying, wiping themselves; combing themselves or having themselves combed. These were, besides, not the first of his that had been seen; he had already shown, among other works of the same kind, a “Woman Stepping Out of a Bath-tub,” at the Exhibition of the “Impressionists," in 1874. These nudes raised a scandal, though there was nothing obscene about them.
The fact that "these nudes raised a scandal ” — and in Paris — proves that they must have been scandalous indeed, when tolerant Paris finds them scandalous; and also it proves that Degas belonged to the “gutter-snipe” class of artists, who are a stench in the nostrils of the finer minds in France; who are powerless to prevent such evU artists from forcing themselves into the limelight so long as a rotten sort of “democracy,” a hash of the lowest social strata of the capitals of Europe, pre- vails, by mere force of imbecility and numbers, with a blud- geon in one hand and a vote in the other!
Lafond continues:
The artist became angry, when people spoke of the impropriety of those subjects, which he declared to be on the contrary abso- lutely chaste, and he was right. In his entire works there was not a single intention to be equivocal. He explained to G. jMoore one day that these nudes represented nothing but decent women, who

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are not aware that they are being looked at; who believe they have drawn tight their bath-room curtains, and who are occupied in giving themselves hygienic attentions, as such; in a word, as if they had been surprised or peeped at, through the keyhole of their bath-rooms, and that those nudes have no relation to commonly seen theatrical nudes. . . .
Must we say that, for us, in art, there are no noble subjects, no vulgar subjects? There is — or there is not — ^art. It is merely a question of painting, nothing more.
What a disheartening moral terpitude these paragraphs reveal!
And this is the essence of the Art for Art’s sake gospel !
Then he describes some of these nudes thus :
There is first of all, a woman squatted in a “tub” seen from the back; she steadies herself, with an extended arm, on the bottom of the zinc basin; the left arm turns backward on the shoulder and presses a big sponge, from which the water descends down along the loins. . . .
The most of these women, seen (by Degas) with an implacable and cruel lucidity, and deteriorated by our civilization, are charm- less; common; with heavy short legs; without curves or fine lines; with flesh that is wrinkled, chapped, blueish, goose-fleshed by the water into which they have stepped and by the air; the hands red and vulgar, the feet deformed by shoes; the waists cramped by corsets; hips distorted by petticoats, girdles, and the rest. . . .
The bodies of these women, soft and flabby, sink-down, run- over, and squat; the muscles bulge; the limbs are dislocated; the torsos give way; the legs bend inward; the arms inverted; the hips raised up by the various movements during the toilet and the intimate ablutions. . . .
Without any charm, devoid of grace, these women testify to the raw truth, which we could almost call hostile to and vengeful of the sex.
Wliy such sex-hatred? Did Degas become also a sex-per- vert and a victim of sadism? These works at least arouse such a suspicion. Why produce them?
One would suppose, from such meticulous descriptions, that the critic was describing the “Jupiter” of Phidias, or St. Peter’s Church, instead of a worthless mass of vulgar drawings. Think of the moral degeneracy of a writer who, while posing as a “guide” to the public, in matters of art, will engender such revolting propaganda ! He goes on :

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To these nudes we must add a series of “Pedicures” giving their attention to young girls or young women, enveloped in their plushy bath-robes; extended on sofas or big chairs; in bath-rooms, or in cabinets of the toilet, etc., etc.
Thus he describes many more subjects of naked women, seen in the intimacies of their bath-rooms, where they are sup- posed to be safe from all observations by peeping-toms!
All this does not trouble M. Lafond, nor the art-dealers who perhaps hired him to do this dirty writing to eulogize the rotten stuff of Degas; all of which proves, beyond chal- lenge, that Degas, who started well, had become, if not a sex- pervert, at least a moral degenerate and semi-insane.
And all this insane eulogy was done simply because the vile critic saw, or thought he saw, some technical excellence — which nobody but he and Degas or his coryphees saw — in this technical rubbish, but which, now, many pretend to see, because Lafond, the critic, and the dealers, followed by that other charlatan, and perhaps hired, critic, Meier-Graefe, said it is to be seen in these bestial drawings, excrescences of an art environment that is rotten to the core!
It is amazing to read, in a pretentious, pontifical book, such proof of a complete moral collapse, on the part of Degas, the critic, and the dealers who foisted this art-offal on the public. We repeat the word — oSal! Por, among the 1523 things, sold after his death, in the Petit Galleries in Paris, about one- third represented ugly-faced, ugly-formed, ugly-postured, naked women, in the intimacies of the most sacred and pri- vate acts of the toilet, not one of which could, by any possi- bility, be called beautiful or even well drawn, or have the slight- est excuse for existence, except as a pretext to have enabled Degas to show that he could draw, not in his first and best manner, but in his new-fangled though ugly way! Nothing but an insane, sadistic furor could have induced him to make so prodigal a waste of time and energy on such vulgar and futile subjects.
Degas, for fifty years, hated nearly every body and every thing: the Salon; the Academy; his fellow artists; publicity; recognition of every kind; and nearly every manifestation of art — ^but his own. According to his biographers, he hated humanity, and despised the age and civilization he lived in.

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He was the incarnation of pessimism and cynicism. His chief delight seemed to have been to act as the scalpel revealer of the secrets of the feminine bath-tub; the ugliness and vulgar- ity of the behind-the-scenes among the ballet-girls of the Opera; the ridiculousness of pedicures at work on women’s toes ; the awkwardness of washer- women. All this with a raw cruel fidelity to the actual; so that, as Max Lieberman, a Ger- man critic, said:
The first impression created by the pictures of Degas, is that created by a snapshot photograph.
In the true sense, his best works are absolutely devoid of style: since in their fierce reality, they are so real as to be almost better than photographic. We refer to his earlier and finest works. They have scarcely even a distinct manner. So that they could be ascribed to half a dozen well-known painters. As for a noble style— he became incapable, after 1865, of understanding its meaning. Or he spurned it, through his creole perversity!
Says Lafond of his work:
It has nothing theoretic about it, nothing systematic; it never goes to stylization; that is to say, to the abandonment of nature.
He was, in fact, a living art-photo-machine until he degen- erated into a slipshod “technician.” And like the writer Huys- mans, of whom Huneker said:
He was an aristocrat, who descended into the gutter, there to analyze the various stratifications of filth.
How paradoxical it is, therefore, to read, at the end of La- fond’s biography, that Degas, the hater of mankind, had strongly wished to have a museum organized to house and preserve his own works and certain pictmes he had acquired! Says that critic :
Since he did not succeed in foimding the museum of which he had dreamed, we must hope that a day will come — and it will be only justice — ^when the works of Degas will obtain a gallery apart in the Louvre Museum. There, our sons and grandsons, by their admiration, will revenge Degas for the indifference of most of his contemporaries.
What a vain hope ! It is to laugh — ^almost to weep !
That a few of his earlier works, and such as he made while he was still completely sane, will find their way into the Louvre may be safely predicted. But it is certain that the vast major-

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ity will either be swept to the art morgue, where the execrable, but technically able, flotsam and jetsam, the refuse of the art world’s activities, are finally landed, or, like the wrecks among the seaweed, find oblivion in the Sargasso Sea.
For, while the world, now and then, like a barometer, slumps down morally, it always rises again, and then it always, in fits of execration, destroys those idols and gewgaws which it feels once helped it, at the price of much suffering and shame, to abandon that path which alone leads away from the ani- mal and the ugly, toward the spiritual and the beautiful, ever onward towards a higher perfection: a secret yearning for which Nature has implanted deep down in the most private recesses of the human soul.
What a colossal tragedy is represented by this trinity of Dantesque failures; Degas, Manet, Rodin! All three were endowed with great technical skill, all started well; and yet, not one of them produced a single work of art great enough, beautiful enough, to allure the enduring love of mankind! If all of their works were wiped off the earth, no normal man would heave a sigh or shed a tear!
The art dealers and the art-politicians of Paris, now that they are on the defensive, talk a lot about the “sincerity” of these modernists, whom we call either maniacs or charlatans. Well, none more sincere than the insane man ! If those artists are not insincere charlatans, then they are sincere maniacs, and the more sincere the more maniacal.
As it is possible that the public may regard the foregoing as the mushy vaporings of a dreamy, long-haired, idealist, instead of a scientific thinker, we will say:
Mr. Albert Edward Wiggam, addressing his new and fine book, “The New Decalogue of Science,” to “The Statesman in the White House,” says:
The eighth commandment of science to statesmanship is: the duty of art.
Your Excellency may imagine that art should be the last con- cern of the biologist, and not at all the concern of the statesman. It should be one of the deepest concerns of both. For the biologist is engaged in unmasking the causes of evolution, and you are engaged, either consciously or unconsciously, in applying them. And art is the herald of the march of evolution itself. Biology has

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suddenly given to art a new and incalculable significance. It is highly probable that the very face and form of chfilized man have changed under its influence, because art sets up new ideals in marriage selection. And these ideals are thus transmitted in li\’ing flesh and blood to the offspring. Heretofore art has been for the dreamer’s joy. It must, from this hour, take its place among the potent agencies of man's organic process.
Art is the very flowering of the whole evolutionary process, simply because it is the flowering of the human spirit. It exists only in man — the highest level to which evolution has attained. But its biological value lies in the fact — that it is man’s highest and deepest criticism of himself. It is the final interpretation to himself, of his own passions, hopes, fears, vices, virtues, foolishness, wisdom, defects, beauty — his bodily and mental potentialities. It teaches him what is good and what is bad within him. It lifts him to new critical levels of all the values of his bodily and spirittml life. It inspires him to his loftiest deeds, and fills him with a new and glorious fear of wrong. It lifts before him the highest possible objectives of ethics, and gives concreteness and immediacy to his religious longings. It takes the chaos, the haphazard, the m§lde of his daily life and sets it before him in ordered simplicity, symmetry, and perspective. It touches his world with new adventure, teaches him to guard the heart with a new wisdom, gives new trends to thought and destiny. It leads the dejected soul forever anew to the still and holy altars of beauty and passion, gives an ever- freshening lilt and joy to the moral struggle, and stamps new con- ceptions of life, character, and destiny upon the imagination of mankind.
If, then, art be all this, and we know it is and vastly more, it must have some meaning in that evolutionary process by which a spirit, capable of setting in critical perspective its own existence, came to be. . . .
Art is the Ark of the Covenant, in which all ideals of beauty and excellence are carried before the race. Science deals with matter and energy, but art deals with life. Four-fifths of life are not in the realm of science. They are probably the best four-fifths. They lie in the field of beauty, art, imagination, dream. And it is only when art can give men beautiful dreams that they will progress in mind and person toward that “sweet fulfillment of the flesh’’ — ^beauty. For art, as nothing else, sets up rich ideals of mate-selection between man and woman. It teaches men and women what is and what is not beautiful, what to select and what to reject in each other. And mate-selection between man and

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woman is the supreme cause of racial glory and decline. Art abso- lutely creates for us our ideals of human beauty and inner excellence. And our ideals of beauty and inner excellence determine the basis of all evolution, mate-selection. Beauty is thus nature’s flaming banner of her own evolution.
And if, as we have seen, ideals of physical beauty can, through marriage selection, change the faces of men, so can moral beauty, by the same process, change the minds and hearts of men.
Art is thus man’s highest contribution to the evolutionary process. (Italics are ours.)
In face of the above lofty exposition, made by a biologist, one “with his feet on the ground,’’ and not by an ox-eyed artist, or a “minion of the church,’’ showing the beneficent role art always did play — up to 1865 at least — and stiU can play in the evolution of man, how abject, puerile, and even suicidal is the morality-despising gospel of “Art for Art’s Sake,’’ hav- ing as its logical fruit a pathetic mass of art works, in all the arts, above all in literature, reeking with sodomic eroticism, leprous ugliness, and social poison!
And who were the high-priests of this maniacal art-cult? They were Gautier, Manet, Rodin, Degas, and that grotesque charlatan, George Moore! ’Twere funny, were it not so tragic and fraught with such corrosive consequences, not only for society, but for those artists themselves, and for the entire world of art !
For the net result of the stream of tendency started and fostered by those “birds of evil’’ has been the bewilderment and disgust of the public, so that the Easel Picture, w^hich used to be the most usual avenue for the artist’s self-expression, and for his contributing his share to the idealizing of life, has fallen into such disgrace that the public is now — at least in America — encouraging the architects of domestic architecture to ignore the mere existence of easel pictures, and to so “pannelling” the walls of dwelling houses, as to make the hanging on them of pictures worse than absurd.
Thus, all the artists, who once created fine easel pictures, are being harmed and will surely be crowded to the wall, if this new fad of picturesless homes spreads over the country. Then, we will more and more have homes devoid of such art through which the owner expressed his own soul; we will have mere

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lodging houses, beggared in spiritual suggestion to both the inhabitants and their visitors, in which life will be reduced to that materiality and carnal boredom, which preceded, and ushered in, the fall of imperial Rome!

As a contrast to the works of these “birds of evil,” we illustrate two of the greatest pictures since the Renaissance: “The Deca- dence of the Romans,” by Couture, in the Louvre, and “Marriage,” by Boulanger, a decoration in the Mayor’s palace, of the XIII Arrondissement of Paris. Both are large pictures, and they radi- ate civic ideals of the highest import to the race.
In Couture’s work, Fig. 139, we see depicted an orgy of Roman nobles, dining the reign of Emperor Vitellius — the fat man reclin- ing on the left — who helped actively to accelerate the fall of Rome. Between the columns are vitalized statues of great men, Csesar, Augustus, Germanicus, Galba, and Othon, who made Rome power- ful, and look down on this orgy of their descendants with aston- ishment and chagrin, while a poet and a philosopher contemplate the spectacle with sorrow and pain.
This is, no doubt, the greatest ethical picture ever painted. When first exhibited, in 1847, it had a great European success. But, though it is worthy of Veronese at his best, the “Reds” in art, have so viciously insulted it, as an “academic machine,” that today it is under a cloud ! Showing the power of dishonest propa- ganda. Couture had his revenge on the “Modernists” v/ho, in his declining years, hounded him and his masterpieces, when he painted his biting satire: “Art Modeme,” Fig. 140, showing an Ape, sitting on a classic bust, also dubbed “academic,” and fever- ishly painting a candle and stick. It speaks for itself.
Boulanger, in his “Marriage,” Figs. 141-142, a picture about 30 feet long, gave to mankind the loftiest sermon on the sacredness of true marriage. It will repay studying. But, note the spirit- uality and poetry that radiate from the bride and groom, as if they had announced, amidst the rejoicing and pomp, that they had dedicated their lives, not merely to selfishness, but also to the greater glory of the State.
The woman, with flowers in her apron, in Fig. 141, is a portrait of Boulanger’s wife; the figures on the right. Fig. 142, are of great artists of the epoch, 1860-1900, and the last man on the right, is Boulanger himself. And, Reader, the “Modernists,” with gnash- ing teeth, call this inspiring work an “academic crust,” and, were it not that the finest minds in France do it reverence, we would say: Poor France!
A good copy, in marble, should be made of this masterpiece, and placed in the Metropolitan Museum, as a permanent inspira- tion to America.

In thu Mayorahty of the* XIII Arrondissoinent of Pans. The nj'ht hand portion of IhiuIanKer’s inaHnificent tlm-oralion, see I'l^- ' d'lie nuin hoMiiiR the book is Guilleannie, thi* Stulptor; tlnnl man, profiU*, is Flandnn, who d(H’orate<l St.-( rermain-ilc-Pu'*s; ne\t to him come ('alsinel, (n'rAine, and Haudry the painters. The man with the Indian-hke hea<l i-. Gamier, architect of the Opera House; the last man to the nnht is Boulaiu^er himself.

CHAPTER XVII
THE GOSPEL OF UGLINESS
BY “ MEPHISTOPHELES ”
Appeared in the March, IQIJ, issue oj “ The Art World"
The readers of The Art World may ask why I have chosen this channel of commrmication to the public instead of one of the publications devoted to my propaganda of degen- erate art.
You probably know that I am an aristocrat. Formerly I moved in the highest circles and was entitled to a seat at the council of the Gods. As the result of a misunderstanding I was eliminated from the coimcil. Owing to former associa- tions I prefer good society, not always attainable among my propagandists. In fact I must confess to a certain measure of loathing for the unclean instruments I have heretofore employed.
Confiding in you, I will say that in this talk on art I am teUing you the truth — impossible as it may seem! I can tell the truth when it suits my purpose. Of course I am known as the greatest liar in the universe, having been named “Father of Lies.” Consequently, when I wish to impress the people in a way opposite the truth, I tell them the truth.
Many years ago there lived and sang in German a trouba- dour named Goethe. That was before Germany became obsessed with science. There were poets and musicians who sang of Loreleis and Rhine maidens and of a hero called Siegfried. This troubadour became interested in one of my adventures and wove it into a song quite as notable in some ways as Homer’s story of Ulysses. This adventure was my journey with Faust. As the story rtms, one eventful evening
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I appeared to Faust as a travelling scholar. He asked that I explain myself. I answered thus:
I am the spirit that denies
And justly so : for all things from the Void
Called forth, deserve to be destroyed.
’Twere better, then, were naught created.
Thus, all which you as Sin have rated —
Destruction — aught with Evil blent —
That is my proper element.
This is my creed and expresses in a concrete form my philos- ophy.
In my negation of the material world and my aversion to beauty and my worship of ugliness I move within a closed circle to a point of contact with Buddha and St. Francis. Note also that my chant expresses a sinister pessimism, which is one of my chief characteristics. Indeed, it were better that the human brood were never created than to be forever build- ing card-houses to be knocked down, as they are doing now in Europe. However, as it is not possible to extinguish the race, I will aim to destroy the one thing that more than aU else makes life attractive and worth living on this planet. I will negate beauty and establish the gospel of ugliness.
As the supreme exponent of negation I can only exist through opposition to the divine order of truth and beauty. Therefore I will exercise aU my powers to disturb the cosmic harmony. In past time my efforts to involve the world in total discord have failed, but at present, for the first time in history, I have almost arrived at a complete realization of my cherished ideals in the destruction of life and art — the world-wide negation of beauty and consequent worship of ugliness.
I am minded to transport myself to a peak in the Alps, and, viewing therefrom the slaughter and ruin of the nations, congratulate myself with a fiendish chuckle on my triumph over the three grand obsessions of the human race: religion, philosophy and science. In fact never before have I felt so powerful and so encouraged to press on to the attainment of absolute negation. I no longer masquerade as scholar, pro- fessor or priest, but stride over the world as Utilitaria, smiting the fair land of Europe with war and famine, and America

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with greed and Stygian ugliness. Thus, denying the cosmic trend toward beauty, I advance toward the ideal ugliness.
You mortals are on the wrong track; in the past you have looked for salvation to transcendentalism and philosophy, and now science. AU three have failed you. But there is a cer- tain cult which you have never fairly tried, at least not in modem times — the Cult of Beauty.
Being a generous devil and feeling measurably sure of success, I will amuse myself by telling you the secret of this cult, knowing perfectly well that you will not believe a word that I say. What I refer to is; the ideal of beauty which is the basic volition of your Cosmos or God.
Every object of material growth in the universe is perfect and beautiful in its varying scale of development — imless mutilated or disorganized by some one of the powers I employ to negate the divine order. The most elementary forms of life, dragged up from the bottom of the sea, are quickened through the Cosmic Volition toward beauty into balanced masses and rhythmic lines, and this volition continues in its ceaseless quest for beauty throughout the entire scale of creation upward to man.
This cosmic urge toward the ideal beauty is the voice of your God, uttering itself through matter in a definite trend or stream of tendency. And this is the one trend or stream of tendency throughout the kingdom of nature that you can prove to exist by actual demonstration — without any resort whatsoever to religion, philosophy or science. Such a demon- stration forms also an impregnable standard of beauty. For all normal products of the creative mind are based upon the laws of proportion, rhythm and equilibriiun, rising in their quality of beauty in the ratio that they involve these fimda- mental laws.
Also this cult of the ideal beauty would furnish you with a workable definition of Morals, which you do not possess at the present time. That which makes for a realization of this ideal is moral, whatever presents an obstacle to its attainment is immoral.
Whenever I employ the agencies of negation, such as disease or violence, to disturb the normal development of nature, its character is at once changed to abnormal. The

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balanced masses become unbalanced, their proportion and rhythm at once become disorganized. Instead of beauty and harmony there is discord and ugliness.
You may ask why this element of negation is always present. I will tell you. It means conflict, without which the imiverse would sink into the stagnation of monotony which is death. Life means perpetual conflict with death. Whenever one of my agencies of negation disttubs the normal creative volition, whether in a human being or in a painting, it means death. My mission is to create disorder, and as Rusldn truly says: “Death is the consummation of disorder.”
As the supreme Spirit of Negation, I am at perpetual war with the creative cosmos. I win victories, but do not win the war.
The pestilent Greeks, with their ideal of beauty, have given me more trouble than all other races of mankind. Their ideal will not down. Roman brutality and materialism were to some extent leavened by this ideal and it almost triumphed ; but my importation of Oriental luxmy and vice, together with the stagnation induced by ill-used wealth, paralyzed the Greek cult in Rome and destroyed it.
The breaking up of the Roman Empire completed what I thought to be a permanent success for my programme, but I discerned signs of a revival of the Greek cidt which might have developed into an organized power to build a new civiliza- tion on the ruins of Rome.
Fortunately this menace to my plans was averted by the world becoming obsessed by progressive transcendentalism — with its consciousness of guilt. This consciousness of guilt, in the transcendental ascetic, is bom of a belief that his spirit is imprisoned in the flesh — first physically and further mentally — hy everything that makes the material world attractive. Therefore his first duty is to resist and deny the natural world. Buddha taught his disciples “that all beings were entangled m a web of passions; tossed upon the raging billows of a sea of ever- renewing existences; whirling in a vortex of endless miseries; tormented incessantly by the stings of concupiscence; sunk in a dark abyss of ignorance; the wretched victims of an illusory, imsubstantial and tmreal world.”
And he further says “that sentient existence is attached

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to matter. Matter is attached to moral evil. Moral evil is a thing to be extingmshed. Therefore sentient existence is a thing to be extinguished.”
Thus, according to the Buddhist ascetic, a man can only liberate his soul by purging himself of all desire for existence, on the material plane.
To do this, the first step is a negation of beauty; as beauty, aside from the instinct for procreation, is the most pow^erful element of attraction in the material world. Thus the exces- sive transcendentalist finds his salvation in ugliness. The Hindoo fanatic mutilates himself on a bed of spikes and the Christian ascetic flagellates himself to purge away all desire for material existence. Both are tortured by a consciousness of the guilt and shame of souls held captive in the flesh by their original sin. To the transcendental ascetic removal from aU contact with matter is the ultimate hope. The very body itself becomes an object of disgust.
Buddha lost no opportunity to despise the body. He said to his disciples in the Buddhist scriptures: to despise the body, to regard it as a mere illusion without reality and sub- ject to destruction; not only that it was like foam on the ocean and like a flame trembling in the wind; but that it was a mere receptacle of filth, a worm bred upon the dimghill full of dis- gusting secretions, a drain filled with offensive refuse, pro- ducing aU kinds of pains and diseases, and being nothing but a cause for dissatisfaction and aversion. Therefore the uglier and more repulsive a human being, the more his aversion to the material life and the consequent added impulse toward Nirvana.
My object then is to create in the human being my First form of Negation; — An aversion to his own kind. This object is perfectly attained the moment the human being, through his environments, costumes and the destruction of health, becomes ugly.
It is not possible at this period to hypnotize western men and women to the extent of making them mutilate themselves like the Hindoos or the early Christians, but I have prompted them to attain the acme of ugliness in their dress, combined with an intense monotony and commonplaceness of their daily lives, to the extent that they regard the Greek Hermes

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as on an exact level, so far as actual appearance goes, with a degenerate cabaret dancer on Broadway.
The French Revolution with its worship of philosophy and the doctrine of “Liberte, Egalite, Fratemite” worked this change, and here we have the strange spectacle of a philosophy denying the whole fabric of revealed religion, meeting on a common grovmd the very transcendentalism it denies.
The patriots of the French Revolution invented the present costume which is a perfect corollary of scientific industrialism. Thus they vmwittingly, urged on by me, inaugurated the greatest cycle of negation of beauty in the world’s history.
I pride myself that transcendental obsession, in its different forms of excess! vism, is my greatest achievement in my efforts to enslave and ruin the human race. So long as I can induce men and women to occupy themselves about the many varieties of occultism, spiritualism and transcendental speculation about the future, so long will they neglect the problems of the present and leave them unsolved. They stumble along and fall into the ditch I have digged for them, when the secret of the magic of the only true occultism lies open before them. The Greeks arrived at the only true occidtism — in their ideal of Beauty. There is more true occultism in the Venus de Milo or the Jupiter Otricoli than in all the seated Buddhas and sculptured Saints in the round world. There is more expres- sion of the real soul of the xmiverse in the ruins of the Parthenon than in all other architecture in existence, for in the Parthenon, and not in the Pyramids or in the Cathedrals, is buried the secret of the universe, the solution of the Sphinx’s riddle, the secret of the healing of the nations through Beauty, through harmony and peace without monotony.
The Second gruesome power in my sinister triad is the negation of — the Commonplace. Here I enter the domain of comedy! I crack jokes with Bottom and Snug-the- Joiner and whistle a rovmdelay with Marsyas, giving all hail to these jolly folk. At last they have come to their own.
In America my cult of the commonplace has, for the first time in history, attained the absolute. To some extent this is owing to my not being hampered by the historic environ- ments and traditions of the Old World, but chiefly to the immolation of the people on Scientific Industrialism which.

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besides creating an environment of extreme ugliness, offers such rewards in material wealth and power that it seduces the best minds away from the arts and so leaves painting and sculpture and art criticism and poetry, with some noticeable exceptions, to the mental and moral deficients of the race. Scientific Industrialism with its monstrous environment in- duces a mechanical volition that passes for existence. From the resultant inferno of monotony you attempt to escape by invoking the jugglery of science to produce electric vaudeville, canned music and mental debaucheries in moving picture shows.
In the country your landscapes are polluted with a ghastly array of sign boards, proclaiming in strident color and line the glory of quack medicines and department stores. In the towns the windows contain posters. Every vacant space on walls or fence is covered with hideous pictorial abortions summoning people to spend money. The Elevated Railway and Subway stations are filled with figures of gigantic size wrestling in the throes of rheumatism or cholera morbus, or infants of elephantine proportions reaching for baby food. Inside the cars are rows of advertising signs in violent tones and harsh contrasts, the hard lines and flint-edged letters harassing your nerves like a knife thrust.
When night falls other horrors are forthcoming. When you enter Broadway at Columbus Circle you might well exclaim with Dante when he traversed my Inferno: “The banners of Hell’s Monarch do come forth toward me.’’ Flung out on the sable ciutain of the night are gouts and jets of electric flame gashing and seaming the sky with frantic voci- ferations. The elemental forces evoked in the service of Mammon issue in symbols of noise, that, with strident dis- cord, summon the four comers of the globe to the traffic in chewing gum, chorus girls and automobiles.
You see then how the reign of science has become one of my chief powers in creating an environment of negation. I attach the greatest importance to the effect of environment, especially on the minds of children. One of my pet hobbies is the colored sheets in the Sunday supplements. These con- tain the very acme of a hideous negation of form and color, combined with a low vulgarity and degradation of the English

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language. The effect of these villainous illustrations and the accompanying slang on the minds of the yoimg is far-reaching and permanent, and prepare their receptive minds for another phase of my propaganda later on.
Another feature that pleases me is that on the adjoining pages of the Simday newspapers may be found columns of emascvilated homilies about morality, efl&ciency and fervid exhortations to temperance. Such influences as I have indicated also have a baleful prenatal effect on unborn children, in an ever-increasing ratio in succeeding generations, resulting in a subconscious negation of form and color that is obviously reflected in some of the current exhibitions of painting and sculpture.
Taken as a whole, the salient characteristic of many of the art exhibitions is that they are stupid and ugly. So far they are not obscenely vulgar as are often the exhibitions of neurotic art in Europe, but they are deadly commonplace and dull. Some of the work of this kind is well done, the artists meeting the requirements of a mechanical technique, evidencing what one writer aptly terms the “thoroughness of mediocrity.” But my cult of the commonplace and ugly has so lowered your standard of art that shoals of mediocre minds have taken up painting and scxxlpture — many of them of the mental calibre of imskilled laborers, without the intelligence to become skilled mechanics, electricians or engineers. They might be useful in the avocations of simple labor as dish-washers and ditch- diggers, but they have turned to the arts with exactly the same results that followed the efforts of the players before Theseus in “The Mid-Summer Night’s Dream” — with tbis difference, that Starveling and Snug and Bottom were taken as a huge joke by Theseus and his Court, whereas the present Starvelings and Snugs and Bottoms are taken seriously and almost dominate the whole fabric of aesthetics in America.
Then I have reversed the old Greek fable of Marsyas — Marsyas, a relative of mine, an uncouth, commonplace Satyr who attempted to compete in poetry with Apollo, the God of Art and Light. Being vanquished, Marsyas was condemned by Apollo to be flayed alive for his impudence and failure, notwithstanding the verdict of the jury in the favor of Marsyas.
At present you will note the complete reversal of the ancient

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fable. Marsyas now flays Apollo. Marsyas has now come into his own; in fact some of the current art exhibits on Fifth Avenue might aptly be termed “The Revenge of Marsyas.”
The Third form of my triad of Negations is to be found in the peculiar manifestation of the “modernistic” neurotic cult of art expressed chiefly through the medium of sculpture, painting and poetry. My partiality for this special cult is the proof of my aesthetic taste. Its propaganda has steadily developed since the days of Baudelaire, who was the prophet of the cult. I have seen it grow in Paris, spread to London, Berlin and other centres of taste and culture in Europe, and am encouraged to believe that my cult of degenerate art may soon get a foothold in America.
You may have observed that the French have been the torch bearers in aesthetic culture in modem times. What the Greeks were in the fifth century before Christ and the Italians in the sixteenth century, the French were in the nineteenth century. They possess the plastic instinct or sense of form in a much higher degree than any other modem race. They were the leaders and teachers of the nations in aesthetic ideals. I pride myself that it is no small triumph to have hatched my cult of sexual degeneracy expressed through the arts on this “modernistic” altar of the Temple of Art.
In the war of 1870 the French nation threw oS the incubus of Napoleon’s coirupt regime, thus gaining a greater victory than if they had vanquished the Germans. Then in the seven- ties and eighties they developed a cycle of art equal in splen- dor of achievement to the Italian Renaissance in both sculp- ture and painting. But during that time, in subterranean ways, my propaganda went on. Step by step I have gained, to the extent that now in the capitals of Europe my modern- istic cult is organized. The nature of my propaganda is put forth in editions de luxe and my pamphlets and art dodgers have reached even to America. Sexual neurosis or perver- sion has existed in all historical periods, but the present is the first time in history that it developed an organized cult in letters and the plastic arts. My devotees of this cult all agree on one point, irrespective of their different trends; they all unite by tmanimous consent in a common worship of ugliness. Their test or standard of highest excellence in art is to achieve

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the intensest possible negation of form and proportion, and the greatest conceivable ugliness, coupled with symbolic sugges- tions of sexomania in pictures, statuary or alleged poetry. There is a well-defined cabalistic code of sign language em- ployed, where initiates can understand and experience the sensations conveyed.
It is well understood by alienists that many people who have an insane diathesis may live and die normally, if during their lifetime no specific condition arises that fans the latent spark of insanity into flame. The same may be said of those who have a dormant tendency toward sex perversion. Ordi- narily the police prevent developments of conditions favorable to this tendency, but the degenerates have seized upon the arts as a medium for the expression of their peculiar mania; instead of making indecent exposures in the public parks and thereby receiving a term in the penitentiary, they effect their purpose by exhibiting their art works in the public art galleries and in alleged poetry — and are lauded and eulogized by some of the art critics in the capitals of Europe! The effect of these exhibitions upon the youth of the country may well be imag- ined. Through the public exhibitions of their tmclean symbols the degenerates present the conditions for spreading their cult among the young of both sexes.
The stigmata of degeneracy in modernistic art are most easily detected in the treatment of the nude. The nude human figure, wrought to a fine design with plastic power, marks the highest achievement in art. Likewise the blasphemous degra- dation of the nude figure, seen in the abominations perpetuated by European degenerates, marks the lowest stage of impotence and debasements in the arts.
The foimdation of any right existence of aesthetic culture must rest upon a basis of correct appreciation of the power and beauty of the nude human figure. The public exhibitions of the atrocious and vulgar travesties of the nude by modern- istic art degenerates of Europe can only create disgust and loathing in the minds of normal people and so operate to repel and prevent the advaince of correct aesthetic taste, thus play- ing directly into the hands of prudery and Puritanism.
The unfortvmate victims of pathological sex-perversion can also be known by their preferences in art. In addition to

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their partiality lor the neurotic cults they affect a taste for rude carvings of aboriginal races, especially if they suggest a certain obscene symbolism, imited with a strain of devil- worship. They are fascinated by the union of the demoniacal and the obscene, which is one of my salient characteristics — as indicated in the account of my journey through the classic Walpurgis Night with Faust.
In the success of my modem propaganda of degeneracy in the capitals of Europe I owe much to the newspapers. In the days of Baudelaire and Verlaine a large number of people read books of poetry or philosophy. Now aU that is changed. Most of the people read only the daily papers. In many of these my agents of propaganda operate, disguised as art critics, eulogiz- ing the works and exhibits of neurotic art. It has been ob- served in Berlin and Paris that some of these critics are pos- sessed of a sinister pessimism akin to my own.
This is often allied to a pathological diathesis towards sex- perversion. Consequently there is a voluntary response by these desperadoes of morbid sexomania to the works of sex perverts. These writers on art effect a strident clamor for modernistic art. They have, thanks to my prompting, gained a foothold in some respectable journals in Paris and London. I am looking forward xo the time when I may be equally suc- cessful in some of your American papers. It may not be pos- sible to accomplish this in America, for, once your people are aroused and made to clearly imderstand the significance and meaning of the neurotic cults in art they will reject all attempts to transplant from Europe to America a pornographic cult from my centres of propaganda in Paris and London. Still, I will not be discouraged. I am quite certain that there are dealers who may be converted to my ideals, and you may yet see exhibitions on Fifth Avenue that will vie with those of Paris and London in presenting to your people, both yoimg and old, examples of the symbolism of my cult of indecency.
Observers of some of the exhibitions of degenerate art in Europe have remarked on the peculiar character of many of the people who haimt such exhibitions. Also the effect of the pictures and statues on the young and old of both sexes — the subtle effect of the unclean symbols on some receptive mind, of a first sensation that digs deep into the secret recesses of the

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soul, releasing therefrom some atavistic monster that other- wise would have slept on imaroused.
You see I pursue my ideal through all the changes of the world’s panorama, using my powers of negation to foil the plan of the cosmic volition. I would reduce the world to the condition of the Witch’s Walpurgis Night on the Brocken, when I revealed to Faust my ideal of the ugly, the vulgar and the abominable, like the witch’s dance in “Tam O’Shanter:” the shapes arose of murder, disease, abortion and suffering. I was here in my element and reigned supreme in my kingdom of negation.
But according to my compact with Faust, I had to go with him through the classic Walpurgis Night wherein I was to be tortured by a vision of the Greek ideal beauty. As we moved on, the forms of ancient art were revealed, through which Faust advanced toward his ideal beauty and I toward my ideal ugliness. In the Archaic art of the Egyptians and the Assy- rians and the primitive art of Greece, with its griffins and cen- taurs, Faust discerned the struggle of art to rise from the animal to the human form, giving a prophesy of the future ideal beauty. He was exalted and stimulated to pursue this ideal.
On myself, who was forced by my compact to journey with him through these realms of the antique, the effect was exactly the reverse. I saw in the part-bestial forms of the sphinxes and griffins a beginning of the realization of my ideal of ugli- ness and experienced a partial relief from the agony of contem- plating the pure Greek forms; and I soliloquized thus;
And as among these fires I wander, aimless,
I find myself so strange, so disconcerted:
Quite naked most, a few are only shirted —
The Griffins insolent, the Sphinxes shameless.
And what not all, with pinions and with tresses,
Before, behind, upon one’s eyesight presses!
Indecency, ’tis true, is our ideal.
But the Antique is too alive and real.
One must with modem thought the thing bemaster.
And in the fashion variously o’erplaster:
Disgusting race ! Yet I, perforce, must meet them And as new guest with due decorum greet them.

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As we moved on through the world of antique art each one foimd something to his taste. Then we came to a most amaz- ing revelation of the power of the Greek imagination. As we advanced, Faust toward his ideal of beauty, I toward my ideal ugliness, we came to the Sirens with their sharp talons. We saw Lilith, the female Vampire of the Hebrews; the Lamiae, the witches of the Greek imagination; Empusa, the cannibal witch with one cloven foot who called me cousin. I acknowl- edged the relationship and admired her deformity. We passed others symbolic of nature and the elements, and finally arrived at the place of the Phorkyads, of the three grey sisters. They each had in common but one eye and one tooth, which they used alternately. They dwelt at the uttermost ends of the earth where neither sun nor moon beheld them. They rep- resent the climax of all which the Greek imagination has created of the horrible and repulsive. I was consequently ravished with delight. I had found the ideal ugliness.
As I, myself the embodiment of ugliness, stood before these daughters of chaos, I broke into song :
... I something see, and am dtunbfounded!
Proud as I am, I must confess the truth:
I’ve never seen their like in sooth —
Worse than our hags, an Ugliness unbounded!
How can the Deadly Sins then ever be Found ugly in the least degree.
When one this triple dread shall see?
We would not suffer them to dwell Even at the dreariest door of Hell ;
They stir, they seem to scent my coming;
Like vampire-bats they’re squeaking, twittering, humming.
I then addressed them:
Most honored Dame ! Approaching, by your leave,
Grant that your triple blessing I receive.
I come, though still unknown, yet, be it stated.
If I mistake not, distantly related.
Old, reverend Gods already did I see;
To Ops and Rhea have I bowed the knee;
The Parcas even — ^your sisters — ^yesterday Or day before, they came across my way;
And yet the like of you ne’er met my sight:
Silent am I, and ravished with delight.

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I am amazed no poet has the sense To sing your praises ! — Say, how can it be That we no pictures of your beauty see?
Should not, through you, the chisel strive to wean us From shapes like those of Juno, Pallas, Venus?
My prayer has been answered by the modernistic degen- erates in Art.
The astoimding revelation to me was the range of the Greek mind invoking the absolute in the two opposite poles of the ideals of beauty and ugliness. I who had striven with all my powers and that of the fallen angels for the ideal of ugli- ness was now confronted with a creation that eclipsed our utmost efforts. Here in the remotest ends of the earth, in eternal blackness of darkness, the Greek imagination placed the symbol of absolute negation, even as they had approached the ideal of absolute beauty, thus reaching the limit of the two opposing powers.
But they kept their ideal of ugliness chained in perpetual darkness. No expression in their art ever betrayed its exist- ence, but this monster of negation stood on the threshold of every Greek imagination. Jupiter, Apollo and the Venus de Milo had gazed into the horror of it — on all the faces of their Gods and Heroes there is a trace of the haunting terror of that contact. You cannot imagine one of those visages of divine beauty breaking into a smile. With unfathomable, eternal repose they register their condemnation of ugliness and the triumph of their ideal beauty.

CHAPTER XVIir

INDEPENDENCE IN ART AND THE “ SALON DES IND^PENDANTS” IN PARIS AND NEW YORK
Appeared in the May, 1Q17, issue of “ The Art World”
When Mme. Roland at the foot of the guillotine cried “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!” she uttered a profound truth applicable both to the political and artistic worlds.
When, at the birth of Modern art, through the rebellion in 1804 of Baron Gros, Gericault and others, against the “tyranny” of David and the classic school, certain artists launched the cry “Liberty in Art!” which became the slogan of the romantic movement, little did they dream that the “stream of tendency” which they started would widen out and end in that mad-house barracks called “Le Salon des Independants,” a quarter of a mile long, built of cheap slats, canvas and sawdust, winding its way like a fakir’s fair along the banks of the Seine and filled with now sende, now weird, now monstrous art creations. Thither the common-sense Frenchmen go only to laugh, as they do at their annual “Foire aux Jambons” or “Ham-Fair,” where one munches and laughs at aU sorts of sausages made from all sorts of meats, from goat’s to mule’s meat !
The origin of the Salon of the Independents goes back to the “Salon of the Refused” of 1863, when the Jury of that year unceremoniously kicked out the works of a number of artists who had ceased to be simply Modern and had become “modernistic,” which means — -romantic art run to seed. True, their modernisticness-ness-ness was only slight compared with the joyous modernistism of today. But still they were not “independents” then, they were rejected beggars for medals and honors, who had raised such a row because their
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works has been thrown out as unfit for even exhibition — and more unfit for ribbons and medals which they so yearned for. Napoleon III, then feeling his throne shaky, to placate these rioters, ordered the Fine Arts Department to give them at least a place in which they could exhibit their works, and in the same building which housed the official Salon. This has been known since as the “Salon of the Refused.” It was the last one of these independent Salons until a certain number of other disgruntled artists rebelled against the oflficial Salon, seceded and organized a new one, and abolished the system of giving medals; but they raised a no less effective barrier against incompetent or insane art by electing to their num- ber only such artists as agreed with them; they allowed only such to exhibit. They called this the “National Salon,” and this is now as much despised by the license-loving “modern- ists” as was the old official Salon. These two Salons were housed in the magnificent Fine Arts Palace, on the Champs Elys6es.
Shortly after this, a gnawing hunger “to get into the lime- light” took possession of thousands who, by virtue of incom- petence could go only so far in art, but yearned nevertheless to exhibit their more-or-less childish or over-radical creations, somewhere, somehow. This effervescence of egotism, finally crystallized in the opening of the “Salon of the Independents” — ^with no jury, no medals and free for all and welcome!
It was really a joke, played on the whole world, by the jocose and delightftd Parisian leaders of French commerce, bent on keeping Paris the center of the world of art at all hazards, because Germany was making herculean efforts to transfer this center to Berlin. If successful, that would have been injurious to French commerce, and these Parisians are past masters in the application of the philosophy of our own Barnum — that every man loves to be humbugged at least once in his life — if only to know how it feels — ^and each one in his turn! Did not Emerson say:
The finished man of the world should have tasted of every apple at least once.
It is safe to say the world never saw such a ham-fair of aesthetic monstrosities. And all Paris shed tears of laughter, for weeks, and all the world came to see this new cuttle-fish in

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This proves conclusively that the Paris world of art never was united on modernistic art; that, on the contrary it was execrated by a large number of Frenchmen.

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the world of art. The joke was such a haw-haw success, it created so much talk, that it hugely advertised Paris — like the “Moulin Rouge,” in the Place Pigalle, which every bright Frenchman avoids, as a frightful bore, but votes to keep up, in order to allure the dollars and shillings out of the pockets of the curious Englishmen and Americans. We cannot blame the Paris merchants for this clever business, because they did only that which other merchants in other large centers did. But it is wise, for a proper valuation of the art works exposed in these ginger-bread fairs, to know the hocus-pocus at the bottom of it all.
So this independent Salon was kept up as a mere adver- tising scheme. Did not Eugene Scribe say :
Charlatanism ? Why, everybody uses it in Paris; it is approved, it is received, it is current coin!
After a year or two there came on the scene the shrewd and O, so suave, Paris art dealer! He also scented that there was “all kinds of money” in this new aesthetic cuttle-fish — above all because it lent itself to muddying the waters, and to all sorts of “ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,” as our dear Bret Harte said of his “heathen Chinee.” How these delectable gentry worked the game, we will tell in a future article. For the present we will content ourselves by relating an incident that once more lifted Paris to the upper air of joy — it was so fimny. It took place in 1910.
At that time there lived a comic journal The Fantasia. The managers conceived the idea of exposing the fathomless idiocy of at least some professional newspaper art critics, who — ^for pay of course — ^boosted, by hypocritical laudations, the gro- tesque trash ei ..ibited in the “Independent Salon,” among whose exhibitors there were — ^according to one Paris journal which had investigated the social status of the exhibitors — Tramps, Bungmen. Cobblers, Barbers, Coachmen. Police- men, Street-sweepers, Thieves, Sirens of the street, etc., among others who were in “high society” and, as mere cynical dilet- tanti, tried to dispel their boredom by fabricating these jokes, sending them to the exhibition, and seeing Paris laugh with themselves. The scheme of the Fantasia worked, and Paris had its laugh and quoted to the shocked, dignified portion of the citizens the delicious remark of Beaumarchais :

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We must laugh at it in order not to weep.
But we shall let the story tell itself by giving a translation of an article from the Paris L' Illustration of April 2nd, 1910, and also offer the illustrations which accompany that article:
A Hoax at the Salon of the Independents, Paris
In his Courrier de Paris last week our collaborator Henri Lavedan unveiled to us the black conspiracy fomented by his friend “The Groucher,” viz.: to make ready against the coming spring, once and for all, one of those beffas at the show of the “Independents” — which has just opened its twenty-sixth annual salon at the Cours- la-Reine — one of those beffas or vile hoaxes which are epoch-making in the history of enterprises the best fortified against ridicule !
WeU, the black-bilious Placide is overtaken, surpassed — so much so, that if one did not know his character, one might think that M. Lavedan had been in the secret all along: the beffa has just been practised by the giddy journal Fantasia with complete success, and, what is better, is registered, legalized and attested by the proper papers.
Some weeks ago certain newspapers received an incendiary manifesto proclaiming the .(Esthetics of the Excessive School.
It was signed by the sonorous but hitherto unknown name of Joachim-Raphael Boronali.
“Excess in everything is a power,” said he, “the only power. The sun is never too hot, the sky too green, the distant sea too red, the darkness too thickly obscure. . , . Let us ravage the absurd museums of art; let us trample on the infamous routine works of the makers of candy-boxes! . . . No more lines, no more wab- bling, no more mastership — 'but dazzlement, rich redness!!”
Less than eight days later at the Salon des Inddpendants the people who go crazy over originality, the good snobs (using the English word) whom the most childish audacities enchant when they are spread to catch their eye, turned their attention fixedly upon a stunning canvas on which the reds, greens and blues screamed one against the other at the top of their voices — freed from every rule, escaped from every line — in perfect illustration of the manifesto uttered by Joachim-Raphael Boronali!
It was signed by this same ultramontane name and called itself very poetically: “And the Sun Sank to his Sleep upon the Adriatic Sea.” See Fig. 143. On the other hand it did not explode so entirely without all measure in the midst of so many other merciless daubs.
Alas, alas! Those who admired it did not notice that Boronali

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was nothing but (yet very transparently) the anagram of Aliboron ! (This word is used by Rabelais in the sense of an ass and a fool.)
Now the masterpiece of painting which had moved certain souls easily fired by enthusiasm was really and truly painted ... by a donkey ! — ^not only by a donkey, but with his tail ! ! See Fig. 143.
The jolly photograph reproduced above shows the Artist at work in the midst of a group of young men and women, the artists who had conceived, in order to protest against the excessive eclecti- cism and exclusiveness of the Ind^pendants, the plan of this laugh- able farce, and succeeded to the full in putting it through. And the affidavit drawn by Lawyer Brionne at the request of Fantasia stating that he saw the intelligent donkey, weU known to the deni- zens of the Butte Montmartre, hard at work on the canvas, permits of no attempt at denial of the fact. See Fig. 144.
Can we nourish the hope at least that the adventure shall save us from the Excessivist School, and deliver us from the priests, pontiffs and scatterers of incense? . . .
The writer saw the canvas illustrated here, Fig. 145, in the Independent Salon of that year, also some of the foolsome laudatory notices of it in certain Paris newspapers, which unfortunately have been lost, but in which this picture was called a “masterpiece,” etc.
We wonder, will this practical joke, which was actually played upon the Paris critics, open the eyes of the American public to the doubtful value of much of the newspaper criti- cisms published in Europe and also here? And wiU our public learn from the brief history here given of the Paris Independ- ent Salon — which the organizers of the New York Independ- ent Exhibition are so proud to refer to as their “parent Salon” and which they say has so “high a standing” — that the basis of the whole Independent Salon of Paris is mere vaudeville business — coupled with every degree of charlatanism ever practised in history? If they will only remember these things when they go to the Independent show here, they will at least laugh all the more heartily when they find that they have not been quite so much humbugged as the organizers expect will be the case.
This New York show, is nothing but a money-making, song-and-dance Bamum circus.
Here we see spread out what seem like miles and acres of stuff, most of it inept trash, childish, vulgar and ugly in

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thought, design and execution; some of it clearly bearing the stigmata of the peculiar kind of moral depravity which can easily be traced to that band of epicureans in vice of the Second Empire, and their immediate disciples, of which Baude- laire and Oscar Wilde were the shining lights, works that have secret, cryptic and highly suggestive meanings to the initiated of the cenacle of the “modernistic” art-prophets and protag- onists of every form and “ism” of esthetic insanity, from cubism to futurism, in which are sounded the abysmal depths of intellectual degeneracy.
There are said to be 2,500 works. Among them are cer- tainly not more than fifty which, from any point of view, are worthy of more than a second glance. And there are certainly not more than half a dozen which, technically, are even above the mediocre, and those were mostly contributed by men who exhibit at the exhibitions of the National Academy. There are a few transcripts of scenes in nature which, if painted by a competent craftsman, would make beautiful pictures, but because of their technical stupidity are heart-breaking ex- amples of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. A lot of female nudes are so ugly and disgusting that the fair sex would be pardoned for sacking the whole exhibition !
Nothing could more clearly prove that the National Acad- emy of Design in New York is not only not too strict, but not strict enough in the rejection of works of art. Nor could a more convincing proof be given of the absolute need of a jury to establish and maintain a standard which a work must reach before it can pass the portal of the temple of art — even of mediocre art — when judged by the great works of the past.
Finally, it is painful to see with what hypocrisy the charla- tans in the “modernistic” art party drag in the names of great men like Ingres, to whom in one breath they contemptuously refer as “academic” — without even knowing the true mean- ing of the term — and then, when they wish to bolster up their nefarious shows, drag in his name by quoting something the meaning of which they twist out of all semblance to the real meaning attached to the remark when it was made !
Shades of Ingres! Were he here, he would imitate Jesus — would belabor with a cat-o-nine-tails and chase out the vile

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By J. Q. a. Ward.

George Washington.

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Fig. 148. HY C. French.
Dkath ANI> the S( M.PTtti;.
On Milmoke Monument, Auburn ('icmeiery, HosroN.
Ihe noblest piece, of poetry in sculpture, made by an American, and one of the greatest ideal works of the lyth century, A plaster copy of this is in the Metujpolitan Museum.

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money-changers and art fakirb who defile the Temple of Art!
This circus of hobo-art, is truly an affront to the American people and a calamitous onslaught on the taste of ottr people and their common-sense canons of judgment. Hence, wander- ing through its mazes while we ridicule the show, a depression steals over us when we come out while reflecting upon the seeds of aesthetic bewilderment sown broadcast by this con- glomeration of art atrocities, whose hideous vulgarity cannot be wiped out by the baker’s dozen of worthy things, most of which have been exhibited elsewhere.
What a noise its promoters have made about this affair! Yet if there ever were “much ado about nothing,’’ as Shake- speare says, and “a mountain in labor to bring forth a mouse,’’ as the Latin has it, this Independent Exhibition bears away the palm. Independence is a fine thing, but when it degener- ates into license, it is a blight.
Let us hope that the few competent artists, who have been so misled as to join this “galley” of artistic free-booters, will never again lend their names to bolster up what seems to be nothing but a sensational scheme to advertise a few people anxious either to get into the limelight or more easily sell their wares.
Everybody in the world is an artist. Even a child making mud pies is an artist in embryo. But, great artists are rare. They do not grow on vines like tomatoes. And, besides being bom to the purple, they must fight hard during a whole life- time, to overcome the many obstacles that the incompetent never stumount, which lie in the path between a himger for notoriety and the achieving of real fame — by the creation of a great work of art. Great artists need not exhibit in any freak “Salon of the Independents.”
Juries, and the giving of recompenses in art exhibitions, against which these hypocritical Independents rad, are pro- foundly good things when properly managed. They become evil only when mismanaged. And all that is needful is to rem- edy the abuses of the system — of this we will speak at a later date.

CHAPTER XIX

EXAMPLES OF NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS
This chapter was prepared for publication in “ The Art World” shortly before that Magazine was discontinued.
The sctilptors of America have produced a number of works of which Americans can be proud, many that are medi- ocre — as are many of Greece, Italy, and France — but not one of which they need be ashamed.
We cannot give a complete review of American works of art but we will notice a few of the real masterpieces.
The greatest all-round artist, among the sculptors of America, was incontestably Saint-Gaudens. For dignity of thought and feeling, displayed in the variety of problems he handled, for refinement of style plus vigor and life, obtained without any exaggeration at any time, and considering the number of works he created, he stands first in American sculpture.
The most powerful portrait sculptor of America was J. Q. A. Ward. What he lacked in grace, he made up in power and liv- ing reality. And, taking it for all in all — dignity of subject, nobility of conception of the subject, appropriateness for its place, searching synthesis of character and living quality, — we regard his "Washington,” at Wall and Nassau Streets, New York City, as the greatest standing portrait statue in the United States.
The most poetic sculptor, of today, among us is Daniel C. French. All sculptors are more or less poets. But no Ameri- can sculptor has created a work quite so powerful — ^as an evoker of poetic emotion in the souls of the majority — as French’s “Death and the Sculptor.”
In Fig. 146 we reproduce Saint-Gaudens ’s "Shaw Monu- ment,” located on the edge of “Boston Common.”
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NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS 463

This is, no doubt, the greatest ideal war-memorial erected in this country. One could write a chapter on that work alone. It shows Col. Shaw, doing, with calm determination, z duty that someone had to perform, but one that was obnox- ious, in 1863, to most white officers — that of leading regiments of Negroes, to fight their former masters.
Col. Shaw sits his horse as if he and his horse were one, and as if he realized the grim fate that awaited him. Likewise, the black soldiers are marching along with so free and firm a stride, and with faces so calm, yet determined, as to suggest a body of men who had seen their impending death, and had found quiet and peace in a decision to go to their fate with calm serenity, as befits men whose faith in a future and love of their kind, had nerved them to make the supreme sacrifice without regret and without stint.
It is altogether heroic and sublime in spirit, and nerving to highest patriotic feeling in time of peace as well as in war.
All this is enhanced by the half-shadowy figure of “Amer- ica,” floating over the men and onward, symbolic of the thought of immortal glory those soldiers no doubt must have sensed would be their meed — rafter their work and sacrifice for their fellow-men should be done.
It is impossible for an emotional being to thoughtfully sur- vey this magnificent work, in which so many difficult techni- cal problems were handsomely solved, without being, on first view at least, highly emotioned.
No work is totally perfect. So this has one or two faults. But we will not speak of them here.
Among Saint-Gaudens’s other splendid works are: “Lin- coln,” in Chicago; “Farragut,” in New York; “Sherman,” also in New York City, the “Victory” of which is wrapped in a piece of drapery as fine as any made since that on the “Nike of Samothrace”; the superb “Pxuitan,” in Springfield, Mass.; “The Schiff Children,” in the Metropolitan Museum; and the solemn figure of “Eternal Silence,” on the Adams tomb, in Washington.
And how he must have despised modernistic art! The basis of that art is “self-expression” and of “personality”; and this is done today, as easily as chewing gum, by a lot of intellectual and moral morons who have absolutely nothing

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to express that is sane, nor a “personality” that amounts to as much as that of a “philosophic hobo.” We have already told how Saint-Gaudens came to explode with:
Rodin is the curse of modem art!
As this may have been read "cum grano salts,” we are happy to be confirmed, in a measure, by Saint-Gaudens ’s son, Homer, in an article printed in “The Art News” of New York, November 8, 1924:
Homer Saint-Gaudens Explains the Art Ideals of His Father Pittsburgh. — The early struggles, the long apprenticeship, and the days of accomplishments and triumphs of Augustus Saint- Gaudens were told to an audience in the lecture hall of the Carnegie Institute by Homer Saint-Gaudens, director of fine arts.
“Nowadays,” said the speaker, “they say that the real reason of art is to express the personality of the artist. We are being driven into an orgy of ‘ self-expression ’ and ‘ personality.’ Whether we enjoy or understand it seems immaterial.
“Saint-Gaudens believed in ‘personality’ and in ‘self-expres- sion’ as a valuable part of art, but not to the exclusion of every- thing else. Self-expression to him meant explaining oneself to others. The act was not completed until the world about the self- expressionist understood him. Otherwise the result might be self, but it certainly was not expression. And what good are un- expressed selves? Insane asylums are full of them.
“ To Saint-Gaudens, the artist was the interpreter of beauty in the world. A work of art, was the artist’s vision of his subject, colored by the light of his imagination, and expressed in symbols which conveyed to his public what he had seen, in terms that would make them see and believe and revel in it in a like manner.
“These symbols had a gradual development; amplified and enriched and clarified by the ‘great patterns,’ but with their fun- damentals persistent and uncorrupted. To throw away these fundamentals, or to distort the natural growth of these symbols, in any mad chase after so-called truth or novelty, was not cal- culated to liberate the senses, but to plunge them into darkness. Saint-Gaudens never said all this, of course. As a matter of fact, such an analytical and dogmatic statement woxdd have made him suggest that we go play golf. Like most other really fine artists, he was rarely articulate except in his own medium.” (Italics ours.)
If we now turn to Fig. 147 and coldly examine Ward’s “Washington,” we will finally come to the conclusion that, taking it aU in all, it is the noblest portrait statue in the coun-

NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS 465

try, above all if we apply our Standard of Measurement; Conception of a subject; its Composition; its Expression; its Drawing; Color, and Technique.
We have, no doubt, had men in America with more ‘ ‘ brains ’ ’ than Washington ; but we have had no man since, of a greater character. And how true is Emerson’s remark:
Character is higher than intellect; for character enables us to live as well as to think.
Without Washington’s sublime character, the Revolu- tionary War would have been a failure. As a subject and problem, therefore, for a work of art, — in portrait sciilpture — Ward could not have had one more difficult or sublime. So, he scores in the first element of art-power — conception.
He wins out in the second element — composition. For there is no more dignified, or monumental, composition, of a portrait statue in the United States; the only one that ap- proaches it is Saint-Gaudens’s “Lincoln,” in Chicago. Not only is the statue made majestic, as a mass, by its colossal size and its pyramidal lines, but its austerity is most skill- fully softened by graceful lines, thus making it a figure com- bining both power and grace.
But where Ward triumphs over most competitors, in this statue, is in the third element of art-power — expression.
Where the statue now stands, once stood the small City Hall, on the balcony of which Washington took the oath of office, as President of the United States. Ward has repre- sented him as if taking the oath of office. And never in the history of art did any sculptor make a statue in which, to a more profoimd degree, the man represented is made to:
Suit the action to the word, as Shakespeare advised his players to do.
For, as one notes back of him the “fasces” — symbol of the Republic — ^protectively covered by half of his greatcoat; and, as one looks into the inspired face of that statue of Washington, and notes the calm power of the gesture of the right arm and hand, as he takes the solemn oath by which he swears to defend the State and to watch over the happiness of his people; as one senses the serene courage and confidence- inspired determination which radiates from the entire man, with the left hand threateningly on the half hidden, but ever

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present, sword : one feels, more than before any other portrait of Washington, that he was in truth the six-foot-four Father, and protector, of his country, and a feeling comes over one, every time one calmly surveys that statue, that the country is safe, as long as that great man in bronze stands on that sacred spot !
As for the fourth element of art-power, drawing, by which, in sculpture, we mean the construction, drawing, and model- ling of a human body into such life as to be apparently capable of moving, the statue is as perfect as could be wished; one feels that it is only necessary to touch a button to see Wash- ington walk off his pedestal and rush to take command of the army.
As for the fifth element of art-power, color, by which we sculptors do not mean yellow, blue, and red, etc., but agree- able masses of light and shade, as the sunlight falls upon a statue; as to color, we repeat, there is none more admirable in any portrait statue in this country.
Finally, as to the sixth element of art-power, technique, or manner of surface modelling, we call it: an impersonal- personal manner. That is to say: there is a departure from the cold smoothness of the “boder-iron surface” of the statues of the epoch of 1830-1860, Ward did pay attention to the matter of vibrant texture on the surfaces of his statue, but he showed so much restraint, that it is scarcely noticeable to any but those “technique cranks” to whom an “amusing” piece of surface modelling is the alpha and omega of the art of sculpture.
So that the statue has a dignified, heroic styh, and a manner so little personal as to be immune to being quarrelled over, a manner that is, we repeat, so impersonal as to be called uni- versal and classical, and yet sufficiently personal to make it attributable to Ward, and to his epoch, by those experts of the future to whom such an unimportant matter may be of some historical value. And this is as it should be — in all statuary which is made in the hope of appealing to the appreciation of men across the ages.
Therefore, taking this statue all in all, not only is it the finest standing statue of Washington ever made by anyone, but it is the greatest portrait statue in America.

NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS 467

Another masterpiece of Ward’s is the “Beecher” statue, in Brooklyn. It is alive! His statue of “Greeley,” in City Hall garden, New York City, is a triumph of characterization, and technically without superior in the country. His “Puri- tan,” in Central Park, is not as impressive as the magnificent “Puritan” by Saint-Gaudens; but, looked at from another angle, it follows close behind. Its pedestal is not the best, and it is badly placed — ^as most statues in New York are, to the disgrace of the business men and artists of the city.
As a piece of merely living bronze. Ward’s “Dodge,” in Herald Square, has never been surpassed. But it is perhaps Ward’s least pleasing statue. Nature had its revenge on Dodge, for having been a subject imworthy of so large a monu- ment and occupying so conspicuous a place. And the black granite of the pedestal and exhedra, back of it, gives the whole spot a dark, lugubrious air. The statue should be removed to the Y. M. C. A. reception room, where alone it belongs, and a statue of some more heroic and inspiring public personal- ity put in its place.
Finally, Ward’s equestrian statue of “General Thomas,” in Washington, ranks among the ten finest equestrian statues made during the 19th century.
“Death and the Sculptor,” by Daniel C. French, Fig. 148, is, without question, in our mind at least, the most poetic piece of ideal sculpture American art has produced. It is in American sculpture what Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” is in Amer- ican poetry. It immortalizes the tomb of the yoimg sculptor — too soon “called home” — Martin Milmore, in Auburn Cemetery, near Boston. A plaster copy of it is in the Metro- politan Museum.
As one studies this work, showing the angel of death carry- ing out orders from that other world “from which no traveller returns,” and gently hfting the eager hand of the youth, at work on a mysterious sphinx — symbol of the fathomlessness of life, time, and space — ^and as we note the surprise and bud- ding anxiety on the face of the yotmg sculptor, one cannot, when one stumbles on this noble work for the first time, fail to be highly emotioned.
We know of no religious work, Greek or modern, in sculp- ture or painting, in which is represented an angel of death

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of such solemn majesty, super-earthliness, yet hope-inspiring kindliness. And there is no more supple, virile figure of a yoimg man in American sculpture.
In this work, French has won out in all the six elements of art power. He has used all the elements of beauty in line- composition, angular, serpentine, and pyramidal, with con- stunmate skill. He has triumphed over the difficult technical problem, of modelling two apparently round figures in more or less relief — the difficulty of which even sculptors do not sur- mise until they tackle such a problem — ending, in short, in creating the most sublime work of purely ideal and poet-feel- ing-evoking sculpture so far created by an American and, from that standpoint, equal to the best created anywhere since the days of the Greeks.
French has been perhaps the most prolific sculptor of the coimtry. He has not one bad, or common, work in his record, though he has been, like all of us, uneven. But we are not going to single out the best from the many works bearing his name.
These three works, which we have discussed, superficially, and illustrated, are the three high-water marks in the history of American sculptiure — of a public kind — that is, of such sculpture in which it is intended to celebrate socially benefi- cent characters, or virtues, or sentiments, and to inspire our fellow-men with lofty resolves and noble decisions in the inter- est of our country and of humanity.
As for equestrian statues: the noblest one in America is that of “Washington.” in Union Square, here in New York, by Henry Kirke Brown, showing Washington blessing his army. Only such sculptors as have wrestled with the problem of making an equestrian group, fifteen feet high, can appreci- ate to the full the degree of success attained in this work. But we still feel that it would be more appreciated, by the average man, had Brown not simplified the details in the horse quite as much as he has, probably the result of having modelled it in plaster instead of in clay.
The full majesty of the statue will never be apparent until it is placed on a finer pedestal and in the centre of a redesigned and made-over Union Square, and the group placed so as to face south, looking down Broadway.

Fig. 150.

BY John' Rogers.

Checkers Up at the Farm.
From the standpoint of profound expression, and effective story telling, this is a truly masterly creation, and makes ridiculous all those who ridiculed the Rogers groups.

NOBLE WORKS OP ART BY AMERICANS 469

From the standpoint of beauty of the horse, and fine line- composition, the handsomest equestrian group in the coim- try is the “Washington” by Ball, in Boston, also a master- piece. Ball’s statue of “Eve” is also one of the finest crea- tions of American ideal art.
Also, let us recall the virile, small groups, of historic cowboy and Indian life, on the plains, by Remington, who was more of a sculptor than a painter.
Among the works of the younger men, large and small, we will mention Weinmann’s “War Monument,” in Balti- more, showing a blacksmith donning the imiform of a Union soldier in answer to the call of his state and of America. Very handsome. He is also the author of one of the grandest groups conceived by any American sculptor: “The Passing of the Red Man.” It was temporarily enlarged, in plaster, as a dec- oration of the St. Louis World’s Fair, and then destroyed. We have repeatedly urged Weinmann to enlarge the working model to its final size and have it cast in bronze. It would immortalize him, Weinmann has made a number of strong portrait statues and handsome medals, also the design for one of our silver dollars.
One of the strongest pieces of sculpture by an American, is Barnard’s “Two Natures,” in the Metropolitan Museiam, regarded merely as a piece of construction and skillful model- ling. His “Pan,” on the Columbia College green, is also a handsome piece of work.
Niehaus did a powerful piece of work, when he modelled his heroic bronze nude “Roman with a Strigil,” in the Met- ropolitan Museum. He is the author of a number of high- class portrait statues, among them ‘ ‘ President Garfield, ” “ Gov- ernor Allen ” of Ohio, and ‘ ‘ Paul Jones,” all in Washington.
It is a profound pity that the magnificent fountain made by MacMonnies, for the Chicago World’s Fair could not have been preserved. It would pay Chicago to have MacMonnies remodel that splendid decoration, with suitable accessories, as near as possible to those which surrounded the main group in Chicago. No world’s fair ever had a more inspiring decorative foimtain than that ; though, if it ever again is rebuilt, we would like to see the figure of “Columbia,” on her throne, a trifle more mature, not quite so girlish.

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MacMonnies’s “Bacchante” has been well advertised, and is a charming thing, and a masterpiece of supple construction of a most difficult subject to handle. He has done a number of charming smaller works. His statue of “Strannahan,” in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, is also a splendid portrait statue.
One of the finest works of ideal sculpture, in the Metropol- itan Museum, is Bartlett’s “Bear Tamer.”
When MacNeil made his “Sun. Vow,” in the Metropolitan Musexxm, “he worked better than he knew.” Judged from the standpoint of completeness and profimdity of expression of that which a given subject offers to an artist to express, this group of Indians — a little son being taught by his father how to shoot an arrow into the sun, and to make a sacred vow — is simply a masterpiece. No more expressive face was ever modelled by an American sculptor, than that of that Indian father watching the boy’s arrow in its upward flight (see Fig.
149).
The finest things that Lorado Taft, of Chicago, did were his two high relief decorations on either side of the portal of the “Agricidtural Building,” at the Chicago World’s Fair. They were full of poetry-evoking loveliness, highly sparkling with decorative charm. And it is an indictment of the lack of enterprise of the Chicago business men, that they did not give Taft a commission to remodel those two reliefs in bronze. It is not yet too late to do this, and to add to Chicago an addi- tional asset, in the shape of two charming works of art.
It is sad indeed that E. C. Potter could not have left behind him more than one piece of charming sculpture, such as his “Yoimg Pan Asleep.” We throw this slight bouquet to Pot- ter here, in memoriam of our school-days in Paris, “ when we were all so happy and so poor” !
The finest statue Herbert Adams has done, in our estima- tion, is his portrait of the Physicist “Henry,” in the rotimda of the Library of Congress, in Washington; and his most charming woman’s portrait, is the marble bust of “Mrs. Adams,” in the Metropolitan Museum,
George E. Bissell has to his credit three fine works: statue of “Watts,” in Trinity Churchyard, New York; “De Pey- ster,” in “Bowling Green,” New York; and “Chancellor Kent,” in the rotunda of the Library of Congress, Washington.

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Henry Hering’s “Bust of Saint-Gaudens” is a masterpiece of portraiture.
There have been a number of statues made of “Nathan Hale.” Without making any comparisons, we regard as the finest of them the one by Karl Gerhart; that is, from the standpoint of the profound expression — ^in the face and in the gesture of hands and body — of the heroic remark Hale filing into the faces of his executioners, at the foot of the gallows;
I regret I have only one life to give for my country !
And by which defiant remark he triumphed — even in death. This statue is most unfortunately placed — in a dark corridor, in the Capitol Building, at Hartford, a disgrace to the city, an injury to Gerhart, and a loss of honor to Nathan Hale; because it is seen there only in a distorting light, and thus is utterly impotent to emotion the average beholder. It should at once be given the place of honor in the Morgan Museum, in Hartford; better stdl, in a smaU chapel, built for it specially, in which the light will come from above, not from below, as is the case now.
We cannot go into detail with every piece of sculpture in the country worthy of mention. But we take special delight in saying, that there is no sculptor in America today who could duplicate Rogers’s groups: “Going to the Parson”; “Checkers up at the Farm” Fig. 150; “Goingfor the Doctor,” etc. But the finest in the lot was “The Charity Patient.” It is simply a masterpiece, because of its noble conception and composition; but, above all, the superb heart-touching ex- pression of sickness on the face of the child, motherly anxiety on the face and in the attitude of the poor mother, and the profound sympathy on the noble face of the benevo- lent old doctor. We are sorry we cannot obtain a good photograph of it.
For purely decorative sculpture there is no more charming work than Martini’s two, so-caUed, “Stair-case Railings,” in the entrance hall of the Library of Congress, at Washington, decorated with different kinds of children, or cupids, etc., more than rivalling the dancing cupids of Donatello, in the Duomo, in Florence, and with two draped female lamp- supporters, each holding aloft a cluster of electric lights, and worthy of Jean Goujon himself.

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Not to forget : Olin L. Warner. Among a number of fine things he did his “Students, Young and Aged,” two spandrel figures, are among the finest things in the Library of Congress and in American sculpture. Warner unfortunately died too early, by an accident.
All these works of sculpture radiate a certain something, a spirit of cleanliness, of refinement, plus power, that is dis- tinctly American, and still prevalent here.
Therefore, let our business men and laymen, and such women as claim to be our spiritual superiors, stand on guard, and give no public recognition to any chaos-breeding art, either by letting it into our museums, or allowing any artist to besmirch the walls of our schools with it, or to vulgarize a single hall of any public building. Thus they will protect them- selves and their children against the most insidious social poison that has ever been disseminated by any group of artists in the entire history of art.
Apropos of admitting foreign pictures to America. One of the most pernicious half-truths, also half -lies, is the silly old saw: “Art knows no country !” That is, no matter whence a work comes, nor how vulgar its spirit, if its “artistry,” its craftsmanship, is good, or clever, it is sanctified! We are utterly opposed to this vicious doctrine. It was brought to this country about 1870, by a lot of thoughtless American artists, since called “The Silly Squad,” and who were more bent on aggrandizing themselves than their country’s welfare, and who expected to achieve their aim by “boosting” the out- put of the art schools of Europe, where they had studied and won a few prizes and ribbons, and who did this boosting with- out any discrimination, because they were infected by the false notion of Coleridge: “Art is not a thing — it is a way!”
A limatic idea, and which led poor Chase to say:
Don’t talk to me of poetic subjects ! There are no such things. Velasquez could have painted a sublime masterpiece out of a yellow dog with a tin can tied to his tail.
And which of course agreed with his crony Whistler’s phi- losophy. The eSect of this attitude of mind was wholly evil. For it fostered the enormous influx of foreign art to the detri- ment of our own, since inost of that which did come here was second-class, or commercial, even fraudulent; not to mention

Pig. isr. by John H. Pry.
The Reader.
The finest piece of nude painting, of the rendering of pulsating life by means of paint, and of the poetization of an ordinary subject, by an American artist.

Fig. 152, Courtesy Metropolitan Museum.
Portrait of Mr. Marquand.
BY Sargent.
An example of marvelous skill in "premier-coup” painting, m some respects the cleverest work of Sargent, some think the most skillful painter of the 19th century.

AliiN.
HY Eastman Johnson.
The most dramatic ii.eee of portraiture ever painted liy an American artist. One of the masterpieies of the loth
tentury.

In tiik C'nuKrii ok ihk Am knsion, N. ^ The greatest rWi«ious picture painted in the lyth century. Must 1

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473

the detestable and spiritually rotten modernistic imbecilities. It has hamstrung the expansion of our own, distinctly Amer- ican, school of art. This vicious art-gospel was egged-on and backed-up by a machiavellian propaganda, organized by the art-politicians and dealers of Europe, and abetted by the “silly squad” of American artists aforesaid, against oirr own art, and in favor of Paris, Mimich, and Dusseldorf art. Our own art, beginning with the splendid “Hudson River School,” was incessantly “damned with faint praise,” or worse, and by fine winks of the eye and sly gestures of respectful derision, which say nothing but mean so much, like a shoulder-shrug, which will becloud the reputation of a lady. Paris art was pronounced “the greatest in the world,” which was not true, being merely more cleveristic, but reflecting a vaudevillian state of mind, at least since 1900, when French artists began to decline, and to cease the production of truly great art which tendency has now come to its full fruition, in a sad sterility, marked by a silly jazz-ism that would pain the soul of the giants of French art, of the entire nineteenth century, from David and Rude to Puvis de Chavannes and Dalou, in painting and in sculpture, were they alive.
We should welcome all truly great foreign art, with open arms. But when it comes to mediocre or degenerate foreign art, we should aU say — No! For it is only when art is truly great, that it may be said: “Art knows no cotmtry !" and that foreign art can be useful to us.
When Benjamin Constant was in this country, some twenty years ago, he was so surprised by the great qualities in our “Hudson River School,” and the works of Cole, Durant, Kensett, Hart, Casilear, Wyant and Innes, that he said:
Your students have no need of going abroad to study. Your own artists can teach them everything of value that we know — espe- cially in landscape-painting.
That we do not create many works of art in painting the figure, especially the nude, is true; and that is the fault of the indecency of so many highly clever foreign nudes, to which the American soul is, by nature, utterly opposed. Hence, while the wise know that no real advance in civilization can come, now, without a “Federation of the World,” when it comes to foreign pictures, not better than our own, in crafts-

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manship, and inferior, in spirit — then we become as intensely “Nationalistic” as the most rabid isolationist. Therefore, one of the strange phenomena of the last generation has been the servile praise of all foreign art and a contemptuous patronizing of American art by the critics of our own press. Though this is not true of all. One would say that, in matters of business, our press, generally, has a contempt for the for- eign press; but that, in matters of art, it has looked upon all the press critics of Paris as divinely inspired oracles of wisdom and truth, not knowing that in Paris the artists treat them with the utmost contempt, placing them in the same cate- gory as the Cafe-gargons who dole out beer and absinthe on the Boulevards. This elevation and sanctification of the Paris art critic into an oracle has been deliberately fostered by the cunning art-politicians of Paris, until the American press seems to be suffering from the latest disease, which we diagnose as Oracle-itis, i.e., a blind worship of some sham oracle in the world of art, such as can be found posing and palaver- ing, like a mystic Buddha, in nearly every Cafe in the Place Pigale of Paris, and on the “Boul Miche,” in the Latin Quar- ter. Rodin was the prince of mystic pundits. A score of times we sat opposite him, Itmching at Madame Binet’s; and, with his dark, slouch hat; dark, long coat, long, red beard; and silence — even though arotmd the table chatted such sculptors as Dalou, Aube, Gardet, Vernier, Loisseau, Charpentier, etc. — he assumed a Buddha-like reticence and ponderosity that was often commented on, after he had gone away — ^hke a sphinx, or Hindoo swami.
Well, brothers, let us not scoff at it. It works! Cagliostro, by this method, had the elite of France at his feet, from 1784 to 1789. But, he died in prison all the same, as a crook of the first order! But this system, of charlatan posing as a prophet, works; the swarming morons will always assure its working. Therefore, we suggest that our newpaper proprietors demote their art-“ critics” to mere art-REPORTERS; making them describe art, and the more the merrier, but forbidding them to express any opinion for or against any work of art what- soever. Let them do that in art magazines, where they will do less damage than they do now through the daily press.
To contribute our share towards creating a reaction against

NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS 475

this Oracle-itis, and towards justice for our own artists, and to show the falsity of the propaganda against them, and the state of mind it has created in our country, is one of the main reasons for this book, and why “The Art World” magazine was started. Hence, we make bold to say, that the spirit that has always pervaded American art, especially since 1875, is nobler than that permeating most art produced abroad, above all on the continent of Europe. It is more puritanical, but also less puerile. And, while few very able Americans go into art or science as a career, because of their limited remuneration, and thanks to the almost total indifference to art of Otar governments, both state and national, yet we have produced a few artists who are equal to the best of Europe, even technically speaking. And we have already referred to a few of our greatest in sculpture, and we will now refer to a few in painting;
To create the illusion of life, at least once in his career, has ever been the first ambition of every great artist. To do that he must imitate what he sees, not only an object, or a scene, but the atmosphere that surrounds and permeates the object, or scene, in nature. To do that, successfully, with merely a few colors and a brush, is so difficult, it requires the activity of so many faculties of a man, and at once, an energy of will and concentration so great, that, when the trick has been superbly done, the man who does it becomes re- nowned, as a mere craftsman, among the artists at least. Hence, when an artist does the trick once, he usually “lays back on his oars” and does not again care to expend the same energy necessary to achieve the same result. For, to make a continuous over-draught on his nervous energy would drive him to madness; or use him up early, as it did Raphael and Velasquez. Michael Angelo never again reached the tech- nical skill he displayed in his “Moses.” The “Mona Lisa” is Leonardo’s greatest technical triumph. Holbein never surpassed his “Geo. Gisse,” in Berlin, Fig. 84-a. The supreme achievement of Velasquez in the painting of objects and the atmosphere they were surrotmded with, is his “Las Meninas,” Fig. 105. And, so, we might review the careers of all artists of the past, renowned as great craftsmen.
Some artists prefer to always remain mere craftsmen — not

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being bom poets, or great composers. Others, having a crea- tive imagination, like Raphael and Veronese, prefer to serve as poets and great decorators. Hence, having proven, once at least, that they could reach the highest degree of imitative power: to produce the illusion of real life, they laid that aim aside, and thenceforth strove to create beautiful representa- tions of ideal life, plus as much real life as they felt necessary to create the illusion of ideal, but still naturalistic and possible, life. When they had created a number of such works, then some of them began to relax, and to play with their tools, and to make “experiments,” some of which are brilliant and others dull failures, compared with their previous achievements. Thus, nearly all great painters have shown three distinct manners or periods: the first realistic; the second idealistic; and the third experimental. That is true of Raphael, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Holbein, El Greco, etc. It is true also of man y modem artists, Whistler, Rodin, Corot, etc. Since figure- painting is considered more difficult than landscape-painting, we will begin with considering some American figure-painters:
John Heming Fry is essentially a figure-painter. He has produced a number of beautifully composed works, in color and line, and poetic in feeling. We will not discuss those here. We will only discuss his highest reach in mere craftsmanship: in the creation of the illusion of real life, bathed in atmos- phere, without any “stylistic” adjvmcts. We refer to his “Reader,” his masterpiece, as mere imitative painting. Fig. 15 1, done, no doubt, to show what he could do, as a mere craftsman, since that appeals to most artists as the final test, of an artist having learned “his trade,” “son m6tier,” as the French say. Unfortunately, no photo of the picture can give a trae report of its lifelike quality, and also of its mystery. To appreciate that, it must be seen, and more than once. Because no camera can reproduce the palpitating life in healthy human flesh, whether the photo is made from the hrnnan body, or from a painting of it. This fact is one other proof of the hypocrisy, or Itmacy, of the gabble of the “abstractionists” about the futility of imitating natiure — ^because, as they say, “a camera can do it better”! It is a lie and they know it. No camera ever did or ever will reproduce, as well as a power- ful painter can, the transparence of the skin of a woman’s

Till-: UsKs OF Wealth.

PiO. 136. AFTbR A Wood Enokamno. liv Timothy Cole.
The Connoisseur.
BY Harry W. "Watrous.
The original painting is only half again larger than the engraving. A marvelous work, the equal
of Meissonier at his best.

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body, and the glowing beauty of color imdemeath — when she is in perfect health. But, in this life-size picture, Mr. Fry has done that thing, and better than any other painter dur- ing the last generation, not even excepting Henner or Bou- gereau. We are now speaking only of this one picture. True, it is a simple thing, no effort having been made towards creat- ing a complicated composition. We are not now speaking about composition. We are speaking distinctly about mere painting, technique, craftsmanship, about the “supreme im- portance” of which the shallow “techniquesters” are always pouring out their twaddle. Well, here, in this piece of pure painting, Mr. Fry has “got them all beaten to a frazzle”! Nor have we any hesitation in proclaiming it the highest water-mark ever reached by any American painter in pure flesh-painting. As such, it is a miracle of technical skill, and a representation of what the normal man sees and feels, of the mystery, the beauty of color, the feeling of pulsating life, when in the presence of a living, full-blooded, vigorous, htunan body, especially of a woman. The only other artist who ever suggested this mystery of life, plus the ambient atmosphere round about it, was the Dutch Vermeer; see his “Woman Opening a Casemate,” in the Metropolitan Museum. We find a similar, poetic, quality in some of the portraits of Gilbert Stuart. Whether Mr. Fry could have maintained such tri- umphant technical skill indefinitely, and on a larger scale — as did Velasquez, in his “Las Meninas” — is an open ques- tion. But, if a man’s place, in the hierarchy of American painters, depends on the one and only highest piece of flesh painting, then to Mr. Fry must be accorded the highest place, for this, his “Reader,” which must, we repeat, be seen — and more than once — and studied, to be fully appreciated, as a piece of fine painting. It is supremely personal, yet so free from egomaniacal “stunting in paint,” that it is also su- premely impersonal, like the “Mona Lisa” of Leonardo, with which it could hold its own, for living quality, if placed by its side. If Mr. Fry never again reached this height of artistry in paint, it is because he sets more importance on a beautiful composition and profundity of thought-expression, than on mere excellence of technical skill. His work is almost unknown in America, as he rarely exhibits. But, some day.

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these will be given to the public in a proper setting, and then the public will be able to judge. There are other American painters who deserve to be mentioned as capable painters of the nude, among them Mr. George de Forest Brush, and Mr. Albert Pike Lucas.
We repeat, there are two manners of painting; one imper- sonal, described by Whistler: “A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disap- peared.” In this he simply echoed Baudelaire, at whose feet Whistler used to sit, according to Himeker, and, coming from the “Father of Modem Art,” it should have some force even with the modernists. Baudelaire said: “The less the work- man lets himself be seen in his work of art, and the more its intention is pure and clear, the more are we charmed.”
In this he makes a plea for the impersonal in artistry.
Then there is a second, a personal manner of painting, also sponsored by Baudelaire who, in defending Corot’s man- ner of “premier-coup” painting, said: “Good people! who do not know . . . that the value of a clever touch, of impor- tance and well placed, is enormous.” And this is no contra- diction, since he believed, as we do, in an impersonal-personal craftsmanship or technique. But this remark, about the value of the “touch” helped along, powerfully, the then new tendency, towards novelty in '‘technical” painting and Clever- ness.
Of the latter school John S. Sargent was the most dexterous exponent during the nineteenth century. And it must not be forgotten that Sargent always remained an American, his most important decorative works being in this country. But Sargent’s high-water mark as an exponent of “the touch" in painting, that is, in so-called “premier-coup” painting, i.e., putting on the right bit of color, of the right tone, right value, in the right and final place — and never touching it again — is to be seen in his “Marquand Portrait,” in the Metropolitan Museum, Fig. 152. That it is also a miracle of skill and dex- terity, is conceded by all, and it has never been stupassed, even by Velasquez. But the total effect is not so pleasing as is the effect in some others of his works, in which this aston- ishing cleverness is less insisted on, and in which he is less personal and “touchy.” If the reader will go to the Metropol-

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itan Museum, and study this portrait of Marquand by Sar- gent — as mere painting — and then recall that Mr. Clive Bell, the self-created English “critic” and pseudo-oracle of the modernistic school, said, in the “New Republic,” according to the “American Art News” of May 23, 1925: “Sargent was neither a great artist nor a great painter,” and then goes on to belittle him, compared with Lawrence, he will, perhaps, begin to agree with us; that there is really a standing cabal of sham oracles of art criticism in Europe, bent on politely ridiculing America as the Nazareth, when it comes to any form of art.
In Eastman Johnson’s double portrait of “Two Men,” Fig. 153, in the Metropolitan Museiim, we come to another order of works, involving more than mere “artistry.” Study it Reader ! We regard this as the greatest work, of its kind, pro- duced anywhere in the nineteenth century, for the illusion of life, and showing two figures in action, in actual conversation. We do not propose to go into details. But the two men seem actually to live; and one seems to just have uttered the last word of a sentence, and the other to be profotmdly awake to it. One can almost hear and follow the conversation. For power of drawing, life, atmosphere in the room, grace of com- position, and an indefinable charm, it has never been surpassed since Velasquez. It is also an example of the superiority of the impersonal-personal method. There are no “touches," no egotistic parading of “my cleverness.” Johnson is there, but behind the canvas, not in front, even in the form of a thin wraith. So, score one more for America!
Leaving the domain of mere artistry and portraiture, let us take up something higher; social-service decoration, also involving the human figure.
A painter or modeller who makes only portraits can never be classed among the greatest artists. He may be one of the greatest mere painters or modellers, but great pictures and STATUES require more than mere painting and modelling, however cleverly done. Shakespeare was the greatest of dramatists, not because he depicted with wonderful truth iso- lated characters, as Velasquez did 'in painting, but because he imagined and presented sublime PICTURES of life of the high- est and most endiuing emotion-stirring power.
Mural decoration may be divided into two categories:

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Religious and Civic. Since the highest function of an artist is to lift ovur soul, up, up, as far as possible toward the sublkn- est heights; and, as Heaven is more supernal than the earth, religious decoration has been placed above civic decoration, though it take as much genius to be a great civic decorator as it does to be a great religious decorator. But let us follow the conventional feeling :
John La Farge was not a consummate “technical” painter; he never produced one piece of work as lifelike as Fry’s “Read- er,” or Sargent’s “Marquand,” because he was indifferent, or too indolent, or too frail to be able to expend the nerve-force needed for such achievements. And his fame will always rest on a few superb, glass church-windows, and on this one great religious decoration, “The Ascension,” in the Church at Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, New York, Fig. 154. This also must be seen, and studied, to fathom the real power of the work. It speaks for itself; needs no detailed analysis. Of comse, it recalls the upper part of Raphael’s great com- position “The Transfiguration,” Fig. 136, but it was merely a hint to La Farge to make a truly original work — along old lines. That said, the Reader may be sure that, as a religious decoration, nothing finer has been produced, anywhere, since the Renaissance, than this “Ascension” of La Farge.
In civic decoration, the highest place, in American achieve- ment, must be accorded to Edwin H. Blashfield. And, not only that, but he is, no doubt, the greatest civic decorator liv- ing today, in the world. His work has been immense, and we will not expatiate upon it. To be appreciated it must be seen, from his sublime decoration in the Wisconsin Capitol, to his graceful: “The Uses of Wealth,” in the Citizens Bank of Cleveland, Ohio, of which we give an illustration, and it will repay the study of the Reader, Fig. 155. No finer example can be foimd in American work, of what we mean by “Grace- ful Beauty.” We could deliver an evening’s lectirre on this work alone. Notice that the persons are all distinctly Amer- ican types, and all beautiful, and all individual. What finer proof, that, to be realistic and true, an artist need not select ugly, deformed, and repellent types, for a stimulating social- service work of art! For there are as beautiful faces among our shop-girls, as among the aristocracy, and as handsome

NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS 481

men among our workmen, as there are among the Kings of the earth. The artist need only have soul enough to see, and select, them — to typify or symbolize any virtue, or occupation, high or low. Notice how clear-cut every form is, in this poetic pictiue, without its being “hard.” How clearly the story is told ; how realistically, and yet not brutally, every form is ren- dered; how Raphaelesque, yet individual, every line! If, then, we add a color-scheme full of exquisite harmony, we have a work which alone would preserve the author in the affections of his people. It is not only American art, in form and spirit, but it is a truly great work of art. And it helps, along with his other superb works, to easily place Blashfield by the side of the great civic decorators of the past, Veronese and Chavannes. Other fine mural paintings by Americans are to be found in the Appellate Court, notably by Kenyon Coxe, Edward Simmons and Howard Walker. And so there is no need for our going to England for mural paintings, really inferior to the best produced in this covmtry. Let us not forget C. Y. Turner and W. L. Dodge.
Coming now to bigness, in petto, to works recalling those of Meissonier, let the Reader examine “The Connoisseiur,” by Harry W. Watrous, from a marvellous wood-engraving, by Timothy Cole, one of the frontispieces of “The Art World,” Fig. 156. The picture is not more than 8 x 10 inches in size, yet the man in it looks as if he were life size, and very much alive. To produce such an effect — on so small a canvas — requires the greatest skill in drawing, of drawing even better than can do a camera, which is never true in its reports. Meis- sonier never did a more skilful piece of work than this picture by Watrous ; and, were he aFrenchman, the critics would have made himfamouslong ago. But, being active in ‘ ‘ Nazarene-America, ” which it is the fashion to belittle with faint-praise, Watrous is hardly known to the public, except to a few discriminating artists. He will, like many others that have gone before, have to sanctify his works by dying ! Then he will come into his own.
Another great masterpiece, in a small space, is “The Chess Players,” by Thomas Eakins, in the Metropolitan Museum. Reader, hunt it up , and study it closely. The only reason why we do not reproduce it is, because no photo begins to do it justice.
Cattle painting is more difficult than pure landscape paint-

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ing, because it requires more careful drawing of the forms in movement. William H. Howe is imdoubtedly the most power- ful cattle-painter this country has produced. His great pic- ture, “The Truants,” Fig. 157, will hold its own with the best produced during the last generation : from the standpoint of the feelmg of life, of true cattle-nature, of originality and force of composition, and of the expression of vagabond- ing by a “bunch” of cattle. For solidity of drawing, and ren- dering in color of the forms and texture of hides, etc., it has never been surpassed. And Troyon and Van Mark surpass Howe only because they added to their equal knowledge of cattle forms, such dramatic landscapes and color schemes, that they Hfted themselves to the position of the poets of the cattle world. But Howe won enough medals in Europe, plus the “Legion of Honor,” in France, to entitle him to the high- est place among American cattle painters.
With George Inness, American Landscape-art reached its highest point, as mere painting, not as composition. We give a reproduction of his “Peace,” in the Metropolitan Museum, Fig. 158, generally regarded as his masterpiece, but about which even artists differ. Inness, also had three manners: realistic, semi-realistic, like this “Peace,” and — late in life — more and more “impressionistic,” his middle period being his best. And the variety of “techniques” he displayed is so great, that there are many of his pictures that would be de- nied as his, but for an indescribable poetic and temperamental something that pervades all his work, from first to last. When we contemplate the output of Inness, its surpassing variety and its beauty, from the picturesque to the sublime, we cannot help being amazed at the energy and lofty spirit of the man. Need we say more ?
Asher B. Durand may well be called the “Claude Lorrain of America.” His two large poetic, ideal, landscapes, in the gallery of the Academy of Design School, “The Morning of Life” and “The Evening of Life,” are two of the sublimest laxidscsc^-compositions made since Claude’s famous picture, “Landscape,” in the London National Gallery, that is, dur- ing the last four hundred years. We illustrate his “Evening of Life,” Fig. 159. Reader, compare this with Claude’s world- famous work. Fig. 49. It speaks for itself. It needs np com-

NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS 483

ment. It radiates the feeling of the evening of day, and also the evening of life, and suggests that the destiny of the soul is to go to a sublimer sphere than this earth. And to think that the technique-shrimps, in the world of art, of today, ridicule this, and the other great works of the “Hudson River” school, as “painting-punk” — ^because we do not find any “indi- vidualistic,” “personal” chunks of paint hanging off the can- vases here and there! To notice at length the other giants of this school: Hart, Wyant, Frederic E. Church, Johnson, Casi- lear, Kensett, Bricher, etc., would take us too far afield.
When Frederick Oakes Sylvester died, a few years ago, while still a young man, America lost one of its greatest poet- artists. Unhappily it is true, as Napoleon said: “If you wish to be remembered you must make a noise, and the more noise you make the longer you will be remembered.” Sylvester did not live long enough to produce enough works, nor have the chance to exhibit in a Paris Salon the great works he did cre- ate; and these were made in St. Louis, which, by many, is regarded as being somewhat backward — as far as aesthetic culture goes. But there are enough saving souls in St. Louis to have appreciated Sylvester’s work, and to have commissioned him to ennoble the business-men’s “Noon-Day Club” there with two very large and magnificent decorative pictures of the Mississippi River. But his loveliest work is his fine deco- rative-landscape, “As the Sowing the Reaping,” now buried away in Decatur, 111 ., Fig. 160. We regard this as the noblest, most poetic, purely landscape TwarcZ-decoration ever pro- duced in America, or, for that matter, in the world — during the present century! Bold, but true, praise. The work, about twenty feet long, represents a view across the Mississippi from Sylvester’s doorstep, over into the Illinois plain. It needs no comment. It is redolent with a poetic spirit, rarely found in landscape art of a purely decorative character. Sylvester also published a voliune of poems, “The Great River,” in which he poured out his love for the Mississippi, and other appreci- ations of life, and of a refinement and charm, that place him among the finest souls the American world of art has harbored.
We have had our ears bombarded for a generation, with lau- dations of the “light” and “sunshine” to be found in the “Im- pressionist” pictures, especially in those by Monet. Well,

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W. L. Picknell, an American, has so far out-distanced Monet, as a painter of light and sunlight, and by straight-away old- fashioned painting, without resorting to the technical tricks of the Monet school, and which Monet himself has now discarded, that Monet is not in the running! If the Reader -vrill visit the Corcoran Gallery, in Washington, — after seeing the best of Monet’s work — and study “The Road to Concameau,” Fig. 161, he will see the greatest triumph, over the difficul- ties of painting light, ever achieved in painting. Not even Claude Lorrain came so close to painting real sunlight, which no one ever did succeed in actually imitating, and no one ever will — ^because human pigment will always prove insufficient for it. The only other man who even approached Picknell as a painter of sunlight, was Velasquez, in his “Comer of the Villa Borghese,” in the Prado Museum, in Madrid. Neither of these picttires are “beautiful” in line. But, as realistic rendering, in paint, of sunlight, they are the highest flights of mankind. And we predict that no one will ever carry this imitation fur- ther than did our own Picknell.
We cannot devote more space to painting. But we have said enough to convince those Readers who are not infected with the propaganda of the modernists, both Emopean and American, against our “academic” art, as they insultingly call it, that, in eleven different fields of painting, Americans have reached, either a higher level than any other artists dur- ing the last centiuy and a quarter, or close to the highest. And that should be glory enough to save the American “school” of art from the eyebrow-raising, and the shoulder-shrugging, aimed at the belittling of American art and artists, by those for whom the epithet “academic ” is the chief insult they launch when they wish to be the most bitter, an epithet they use like parrots, without knowing that it was the “Red” modernists of Paris who took a commonplace noim, used to designate a student’s drawing, and raised it to a slogan, to serve to oust out of power, and grab the art-commissions from, the great French artists, whose shoes they were unworthy to tie. More- over, this idea, that there is such a thing as “academic” art, is a Fake! There is no such species of art! Works of art are either mdimentary or great; good or bad; primitive or per- fected; nattualistic or sadistic. And the single opinion of no

BY InN’ESS
A marvellous example of graceful poetic beauty in landscape painting, full of serpentine lines. ( Icnerulh- regarded as Inness s masterpiece,
and of his middle and best period.

NOBLE WORKS OF ART BY AMERICANS 485

one critic on earth, in regard to any work of art, is of the slight- est value except in so far as it reflects the opinions of the vast majority of sane eind cultured people across the centimes.
How exasperating is this evil-bird-befouling of our own nest by the shallow art “critics” of our own press who, while “boosting” the degenerate art of Paris and Berlin, speak of our own “mediocrity,” and with contempt! These “hyenas of the press,” as our friend Vezin recently dubbed them, in the Herald-Tribune, ought to be relegated to Dahomey, there to riot among the Negro art, about which they, so lovingly, perorate. And so we agree with Whistler ;
No! let there be no critics! they are not a “necessary evil,” but an evil quite unnecessary, though an evil certainly.
This holds good of nearly every newspaper critic in the world. To critics, as sane as Taine, Sainte-Beuve and Scherer, let us give a tentative ear of respect; to the others it should be “cum granis sails!”
The present, 1925, spring Academy exhibition — the cen- tenary of the Academy — ^is of a higher average than the aver- age found in the Paris Salons of today. But the New York Press critics either spoke of it with “damning faint praise,” or open sneers. There was one exception: the Herald-Tribune, of April 5, 1925, did tell the truth:
A good average is maintained. Remarkable works are absent. The first impression is in no wise thrilling. On the other hand, as you go over the collection more and more, you are struck by the number of things that do, after all, detach themselves, in one way or another, from the ruck; and, in the long run, you are particularly conscious of the manner in which a second query is answered. It is that which relates to the broad spirit of American art. Has it suffered any disintegration from the pressure of the so-called “rev- olutionary” tendencies in “modem” painting? Not in the slight- est degree. The American artist who is really representative of our school {and we have a distinct school) goes right on painting with honest, sincere references to authentic principles.
The Academy stands for what is normally characteristic of om own country, and this means, if we are to judge from the present exhibition, that it stands simply for good workmanship. As we have said, there are no remarkable pictures visible. But there are quantities of things that handsomely maintain a high stand- ard. All you have to do is to look for them. (Italics ours.)

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This is the plain truth. As regards mere “craftsmanship,” “artistry,” “finger-workmanship, ”or “technique”we couldhave selected from this exhibition a score of works equal to anything now being produced anywhere in Europe in the same line. Paris, of today, can teach us nothing. Weareofage. We have arrived!
So that the public will be justified in suspecting every critic on the press, male or female, who persistently “knocks” the Academy, as a whole, as an institution, of being in the pay of the dealers in “modernistic,” “contemporary,” or falsely called “modem” art, most of which is degenerate.
Besides, our Academy is the very best we have. Hence, we should by all means sustain it, and encourage and aid it to ever move on, from high to higher, instead of trying to pull it down. This does not mean that our citizens should not buy any of the real masterpieces of foreign art, when truly great. The only point in which the Academy is weak, is in the paint- ing of the Nude; also in the handling of historical subjects. But why? Because the spirit of America is, today, and always has been and wiU be, out of sympathy with the naked and rightly so, because, we repeat, Paris produces so many dis- gusting and indecent nudes — though often extremely clever, as painting, and for that reason all the more demoralizing — that even an imcommonly chaste nude is looked upon askance as a trap of Satan, calculated to cormpt our taste and tmder- mine our love of decency in life and all the arts. Hence, they are not as popular here as in Paris, especially in painting.
And historical pictures are rarely produced because they have been so lampooned by the modernistic artists — ^because they are utterly incompetent to handle them; and our artists are also discouraged from doing so by the Bolshevistic press of the “Red” art-politicians of Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, whose writers are abstirdly echoed here, and who are utterly opposed to the celebration, in art, of any fine historical inci- dents, since these would inevitably recall the deeds of the great men of the past, who were all members of some aristoc- racy, and these “Reds” are insanely bent on rooting out even the memory of the great of the past, for fear the vulgar “proletariat” might develop an aristocratic longing for “the flesh-pots of Egypt,” and the majesty of the civilizations of the aristocratic past.

CHAPTER XX

Conclusion
In taking leave of the great public, we will again remind it of the fundamental fact that, if mankind hopes to escape sliding backward into Tophet, out of which we have climbed with so much pain and tears, it must ever hold before itself the tn ith : that, in life and art, Nature abhors everything and finally covers up everything that is not:
True, Good, and Beautiful.
Moreover, if this great trinity, as old as Plato, were in- scribed on the front of every public building, from a school- house to a cathedral, for a generation or two, it would, we firmly believe, engender in our people such a distaste for the Ugly, that America would soon be on its way to become the leader in the world movement: to transform this earth into a Paradise of Beauty.
We might stop here. But a few more things remain to be said.
Madame de Stael once remarked:
One cannot arrive at great Power — except by following the tendency of one’s century.
That is true for such petty politicians as have not yet learned that every man’s rank, in the hierarchy of men, is sometimes determined by the frequency which he refuses to stoop to conquer. But a statesman, worthy of “a world’s desire,” as Tennyson said, does not follow tendencies — he creates them.
Besides, the lust for Power — ^instead of a hunger for Beauty — ^has been the greatest curse of the world. And even the Jun- kers and Huns of the earth are now seeing more clearly that a nation may conquer by force, but it can triumph only by wisdom.
487

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So that it is dawning upon mankind, that it is more sublime to dominate through the alluring power of Beauty than to tyrannize with brute Power. Men are now asking: Was not diminutive Greece — exponent of aristocratic refinement, ele- gance, and beauty — more respectable than leviathan Rome — incarnation of plebeian vulgarity, clumsiness, and brutality?
Therefore, there is in the aurora of the east a new concep- tion — that of a World Leadership in Esthetic Culture.
Will the statesmen of America, its leaders of thought among business men, assume this new leadership of the world and soon — ^while it is within their grasp? As a mere looker-on — whose cotuse may soon be run — ^we wonder ?
For, America will either have to follow, or lead. And would it not be finer sort of energizing to nobly strive to lead, instead of petulantly trying to keep step, behind some more perspica- cious and forward-looking nation, alert enough to grasp this new ideal of world leadership, and thus triumphing in the realm of sublime beauty-creation, while we lose our chance by myopically mucking about in the bog of materialistic financial manipulation ?
It is not bigness, numbers, or brute force, that makes a nation great; as it is not size, hugeness, or clumsiness that makes a work of art sublime. To carve up the face of a moun- tain is easy enough for any bull-necked workman endowed with more energy than sense; but he only insults the moim- tain unless the result is beautiful and emotion-stirring to men of taste and refinement. Posterity will surely condemn every manifestation of mere brute force, in life as well as in art. We laugh at huge Goliath, while we immortalize in marble his little conqueror, David. It is the deathless beauty alone, of Rheims Cathedral, that will insure its rebuilding, while the thousand-foot Eiffel Tower is already doomed to destruction as an incumbrance on the earth.
It is not in the power of the artists to swing this nation towards this new World Ideal. They can only point it out to those who have the power: the leaders of thought among our business men and laymen — ^not those in politics; for politicians rarely really lead.
It was the business men of France who, since 1850, have really led the French people. And, while it is true that the

Fig. 159. HY A. It. Durand.
The Evening of Life.
A magnificent example of imaginative landscape painting, worthy of Claude Lorrain at his best. Now in Gallery of Academy of Design, New York.

In Library, Dacatur, Ili..
A mural-landscape, about twenty feet long. One of the most poetic and sublime works, of its kind, in the world.

The Road to Concarneait,
In the Corcoran Gallery, \Vasiiin<;ton.

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London Exposition of 1851 did start a stream of tendency towards commercial “Novelty-art,” such as the world never saw before, and landed France in the morass of modernism in art, still, France is seeing the light, and a reaction — back towards great art — ^is beginning.
It is her business men who rule America. And, even though the ship of state must ride on, on the stream of tendency which carries it, it is up to the business men, who hold the helm, to direct the ship either towards the petty or the sub- lime. It is they who really dominate our churches and colleges and press, which are our only avenues for the dissemina- tion of thought, the shaping of taste, and the directing of feel- ing, because they control the economic power, which, in this age, is the basis of everything.
Therefore, will our business men lift up their eyes, and measure up to the potentialities of the hour and of the epoch, and decide that America will not follow, but will lead in art, and do this before a rejuvenated Russia, or a tmited and newly inspired United States of South America, takes the lead; possibilities the wise see looming up in the offing of Time?
Should our business men, through the perusal of this book, perhaps, become somewhat amazed at the condition in one half of the world of art, its moral collapse and intellectual waywardness, they should not too severely condemn the artists. It is they themselves who are to blame. For it is they, not the artists, who dominate. And the state of morals, high or low, in any given epoch, nation, or community, depends entirely and always on the economic pressure exerted by those who rule : emperors, priests, or business men.
Therefore, by all means, Mr. Business man, support at home the American-bom artist; buy his works; sustain him; en- courage him by buying direct from him such works as appeal to your own soul, tminfluenced by any living critic or dealer in art. For while you may be ignorant of the latest “fad” in technique, your instincts as to what is truly beautiful are more sound than those of the majority of artists and critics, who are more or less warped by the fadists of Europe.
Thus the art works that will be encoiiraged by you and created in America will reflect exactly the taste, the real, inner character, and the normal state of feeling of our own

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people, at any given time, as the works of the Renaissance and of the Periclean epochs do the true taste of the business men of the past, then when the powers that ruled werU direct to the artists to buy, and when there were few, if any, dealers in art, and when there were no professional critics, either modest or pretentious, as there are today, trying “to make a living” by selling opinions to the press, at so much per line; now honest enough, now shamefully hypocritical; and opinions usually concocted by some selfish, often demented, clique of foreign artists, dealers, and critics, utterly contemptuous of the well-being of society, and usually hibernating in a questionable section of Paris, London, or Berlin.
There is no need for our Republic to kow-tow to the sans culotte-ism and mob vulgarity of the “imterrified democracy” and “vox populi” — ^before “vox” has been disciplined into an Aristocratic-Democrat, which means a man who, be his other accomplishments what they may, is bom with an instinctive horror of all that is inelegant, unrefined; of shirt-sleeve, collar- less, sovietized, vulgarity; of slovenliness and filth, physical, mental or moral. For when Rome became completely plebeian — it perished!
The public may think we are somewhat hectic in our constant insistence on the supreme need of the Beautiful — even more than mere Goodness and Truth. But Plato and the Greeks already looked upon truth and goodness as mere phases of the Beautiful, so that neither goodness nor truth had, for them, any value whatever apart from Beauty; and they saw that ugly goodness, and ugly truthfulness, were social disasters, to be extirpated at aU hazards. But it is amazing how much the repetition of even a sound idea is needed to force it to become a part of the mental furniture of the general mind.
Early in 1924, Edison, we repeat, gave vent to a feeling of irritation at the slowness with which even a beneficent idea is accepted by the great public, when he said:
It takes about ten years to get the public to accept a new idea, however valuable and sound.
But independent of the exclamation of Solomon the Wise:
He hath made all things beautiful in His time.’

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and the many exhortations in the finest literatures, including the Bible as to the necessity of Beauty — which results only from physical, mental, and moral health — ^let the reader ponder over this paragraph from “The Twilight of the Gods," by Nietzsche:
Nothing is beautiful, except man: all assthetics rest on this naivete, it is their first truth. Let us straightway add the second: nothing is ugly, except degenerating man; the domain of aesthetic judgment is thereby limited. Re-examined physiologically, all that is ugly weakens and afflicts man. It reminds him of deteriora- tion, of danger, and of impotence; he actually suffers loss of power by it. The effect of ugliness can be measured by the dynamometer. Whenever man is depressed he has a sense of the proximity of something “ugly.” His sense of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride, they decrease with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful. In both cases we draw an inference, the premises of which are accumulated in enormous fullness in instinct. The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration; that which reminds us in the remotest manner of degeneracy prompts us to pronounce the verdict, “ugly.” Every indication of exhaus- tion, gravity, age, or lassitude; every kind of constraint, such as cramp or paralysis; and above all the odor, the color, and the like- ness of decomposition or putrefaction, be it utterly attenuated even to a symbol — aU these things call forth a similar reaction, the evaluation “ugly.” A hatred is there excited: whom does man hate there.? There can be no doubt: the decline of his type. The hatred is inspired by the most profound instinct of the species; there is horror, foresight, profundity, and far-reaching vision in it — it is the profoundest of aU hatreds. On account of it, art is pro- found.
Yea! Verily! Bald originality — devoid of beauty — ^is, when fundamentally considered, a social crime, grievous in ratio of the tortured, deformed, and sadistic ugliness boimd up with the originality, or novelty.
Moreover, it is certain that the true artist, who, in all the arts, seeks above all else the beautiful, in conception, form, and spirit, will arrive at originality far more surely than he who, ignoring the supreme need of man for Beauty, seeks only the parading of his “originality”; for his work, in spite of its novelty, or because of its peculiar “personal” character, will only betray the mediocrity of his mind or the pettiness of his soul. Because, as Saint-Simon said;

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The infallible sigjn of a narrow genius is — to aim at originality.
Besides. Byron said:
There is no original writer. One is always a plagiarist of some- one.
And this is true in all the arts. And when we reflect over the remark of Michael Angelo, made some five hundred years ago:
The Ti nman form has been drawn in every conceivable position, must it not appear that, at least today, absolute originality is impossible — ^unless we go to the bizarre and the insane?
And, after all is said, is it not true that the creation of a single thing that is truly beautiful, is worth more than a whole cargo of things that are ugly, be they never so original? But is there anything more stupid than the running after and copy- ing the originality of other people, less virile than we are? Especially in view of the truth contained in the remark of Emerson:
There comes a time in the education of every man, when he realizes that envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide.
We believe that America has been ordained by the Cosmic Volition, to lead the world towards a new Humanism, based on that spiritual Ideality which animated the great creative artists of those three grandest epochs in human history: the epoch in Egypt, when Seti I. built, at Abydos, the finest of the Temples on the Nile; the Periclean epoch, when was created the Parthenon; and the epoch of the Renaissance, which culminated in the Dome of St. Peter’s, and all that it overshadows.
The shape, position, and size of our land — the most for- tunate on earth; ovu climate — none more varied or excellent; the age we live in — none more effervescent; all these elements suggest that here, in this land, there should be engendered a new Cult of the Beautiful — destined to carry the American people, and through them the world, to a higher, more enduring civilization than has so far appeared upon the earth.
What will Americans do?
It is up to them!
It is simply a matter of taste.
For we ourselves are not at all aiming to play the r61e of an Isaiah. We prefer to humbly follow in the footsteps of Shake-

Fig. 162.
Fig. i6.i.
What is It?
“A Ghost from the Beyond,
By a German insane woman.
By a C'rerman insane woman.

“Man of the Future.”
By a German insane woman. Note the polyphemic third eye.

Fig. 165.
“XoAH IN THE World Building.
Below' a w’oman as a maid-servant. By an insane woman.

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493

speare, who urged nothing upon us, but was content merely:
To hold as ’twere, the mirror up to nature!
Content to tell us that things are thus and so, and leaving it entirely to our taste, as to whether we prefer to sublimely burn out or to blandly rot out; whether we will remain callous to the Ugly, or whether we will aspire to the Beautiful, imper- sonal rather than personal. For, as Cass Gilbert, our great architect, said:
The rarest thing in the world is BEAUTY — ^real beauty, in all that word implies — ^and he who achieves beauty, need not concern himself about originality or personality.
We agree thoroughly with Mr. Brownell’s principles of style but not always with the application of them that he makes. But we find great pleasure, and support for our whole point of view — ^as exposed in this book — in the following paragraph, from his latest essay on “Style”:
Nothing melts us like nobility of thought caught up in style. Nobility stirs us more exquisitely than exquisiteness. Imagination, however sympathetic, warms us but superficially compared with the high disinterestedness of personal detachment exhibited in impersonal exaltation. This moves like music that strings the sensibility taut and affirms its capacity for forgetfulness of self. Style, in fine, has a play of interrelations and a sustained rhjrthm, when in combination with adequate substance, that stanch the personal preoccupation of self-pity and stimulate the generous fervor of self-abandonment to the ideal.
Everything we prize is, finally, a matter of taste, be it food, females, or phantoms; be it the philosophy we teach, the religion we preach, or the ideals we reach; and, as those are coarse or fine in quality, do we reveal the rank we have achieved, in the hierarchy of men or of nations.
Therefore, fellow-traveller on this beautiful star, in search of spiritual repose, and surcease from that boredom which, by a law of nature, fatally overwhelms those who are inactive and uncreative, do not grouch or worry; for you can easily find contentment if you will but let your first care be, yotu* Point of View. For that is the main matter, sin(» all education is but a building up of one’s viewpoint. And as that vantage grotmd is deep, and broad, and high, will your mental sweep be wide, your judgments lofty, your satisfactions fine.
To persist, a person or a people must struggle — energize.

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GREAT WORKS OF ART

Action and reaction alone keep the blood of a person, or of a nation, in health-bringing circulation. But, gayety of struggle for a finer quality among men, through all of us working with joy and reasonable leisure towards the making of this earth a Paradise of Beauty — even, if need be, by limiting the number of mankind, in order to aggrandize those that remain — this must ever be a far more vitalizing World Ideal than that of a dantesque, hate-engendering, slavish toil among men, backed up by a silly ambition for mere power, by filling our land, or the earth, full of morons, and necessitating the piling up of more and more gloomy pittsburg-factories, in order to furnish them with fitful doles of shoes and food, ending in the making of this world a foolish desert of ugly pigmies — ^more worthless than a Sahara of spotless sand! Since it is true, as Balzac said:
Beauty is the greatest of human forces !
Should this idea of a Paradise of Beauty on this earth ever become the World Ideal, through the leadership of America, then will the defiances, the aspirations, and the sacrifices of the Fathers of our country be justified, and then America will truly lead the world!
A parting word to our young men and students of art :
Civilisation has come only in response to one basic force: the desire for the appreciation of our neighbor. Therefore, Carlyle said:
The deepest himger of the human soul, is for human recogni- tion.
In the effort to win this, men try to express themselves, in some kind of action or form, and call the attention of men to their acts — or creations. But every such effort is a revela- tion and exploitation of our Ego. Some men are more eager than others for this approbation of their fellows, make more strenuous efforts to win it than do others, who are not modest enough to desire the appreciation of men; are pridefully in- different, even contemptuous of it; and who, in their gham modesty, sit back and call the pursuit of Fame — “egotism!” But the cry of “egotism” is the shibboleth of the hypocritical, the timid, and the weak; it is a club, stuffed with envy, which they use to be-labor the heads of the sincere, the daring, and the strong. It is a childish charge to make towards a man of crea-

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tive energy, and often an explosion of mean envy. For Jesus said: “Let your light so shine!” Also; “Hide not your light under a bushel!” He knew, as every clear- visioned man knows, that, without this urge — falsely called egotism — egging men on to create, for the sake of the recognition, even the love of mankind, nothing of permanent value would ever be created. Men would have remained mere animals, civilisation would never have come.
There is an altruistic egotism, through which a man be- comes a most beneficent social being ; and there is a selfish ego- mania, which makes many a man a destructive scourge. It is entirely a matter of lofty or base intention; one’s reason for energizing; which, when it is withheld from us — often because of a fear of being misunderstood — we are prone to, and often do, misjudge a man. Therefore, to again quote the Chelsea Sage;
Wilt thou know a man by stringing together bead-rolls of what thou namest facts? No! The man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became !
Therefore, let our young men not be afraid to strive — openly — after a world-wide Fame. Let them not be held back from serving, with their art, the highest interests of the race. Let them rather carve out a niche in the hearts of their fellow- men. And, if they wish, truly, to glorify their own country, let them ever remember the exalting lines of Michael Angelo, translated for us by Wordsworth;
Heaven-bom, the soul a heavenward course must hold; Beyond the visible world she soars to seek (For what delights the sense is false and weak)
Ideal Form, the universal motdd.
The wise man, I affirm can find no rest In that which perishes; nor will he lend His heart to aught that doth on time depend.

APPENDIX

POST-ILLUSIONISM AND ART IN THE INSANE
By Theo. B. Hyslop, M.D., C.M. ; F.R.S.Ed. (Late Senior Physician Bethlehem Royal Hospital)
Reprint from the “Nineteenth Century and After"
Of late we have both seen and heard so much of post-impres- sionism in art, and there appears to be so much doubt in the public mind as to the real meaning and significance of the works which have been exhibited and heralded as indicating the approach of a new era in art, that the time seems opportune to discuss the sub- ject of post-illusionism as met with in degeneracy and in the insane.
It would be regarded as presumption and as beyond the legiti- mate province of the writer were he to attempt to criticize the artistic efforts of those who are not in asylums, so the following article will be confined to the consideration of ivhat he has observed with regard to art and degeneration in asylum practise. Indeed, the only criticism with regard to post-impressionism now offered is quoted from an insane person who informed the writer that, in his opinion, only half of the post-impressionistic pictures recently exhibited were worthy of Bedlam, the remainder being, to his subtle perception, but evidences of shamming degeneration or malingering.
The Importance of Being in Earnest
The insan e artist is usually in dead earnest, and beyond what is prompted by his morbid rise in self-consciousness, intense ego- mania, and a desire to express or reflect the workings of his dis- ordered mind, there is, as a general rule, no other or ulterior motive to tempt him to distort or misinterpret the evidence of his senses — i.e., he does not seek to deceive the critic or the public; and, al- though he may be an egomaniac, his artistic efforts are mostly for art’s sake alone, and they merely reflect the character of his own imaginings.
In dealing with the work of an insane artist the positive mani- festations of sensory or motor defects displayed therein do not
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demand our study as much as does the something, caused by disease, which prevents the artist from being able to recognize and correct such defects — i.e., our attention is apt to be arrested by faulty delineation, erroneous perspective, and perverted coloring, but these form only positive symptoms of decadence, and they do not give us in all cases the measure of the negative lesion which may be due to disease. This holds good not only for the insane artist but also for his critic; and, as we shall see presently, both the insane artist and the borderland critic have certain characteris- tics which are peculiar to them.
Degenerates often turn their unhealthy impulses towards art, and not only do they sometimes attain to an extraordinary degree of prominence but they may also be followed by enthusiastic admirers who herald them as creators of new eras in art. The insane depict in line and color their interpretations of nature, and portray the reflections of their minds, as best they are able. Their efforts are usually not only genuine but there is also no wilful suppression of skill in technique, which, were it otherwise, would brand them as impostors. They do not themselves pose as prophets of new eras, and so long as they are in asyliuns and recognized as insane, both they and their works are harmless, inasmuch as they do not make any impression on the unprotected borderland dwellers from whose ranks they otherwise might enroll a large following.
An art exhibition in an asylum excites as many cries of admira- tion as of pity, for here we find much to praise and profit by. Sel- dom is the artistic instinct or technique so far deteriorated as to leave no sense of beauty in line or color, and, as a point of diagnosis, it is to be noted that, where no feature of beauty or workmanship exists in the work of one who is known to have formerly possessed both artistic instinct and skill in technique, the defective character of such work is due either to gross cerebral degeneration (such as we find in general paralysis of the insane or in organic dementia) or to imposture. As a matter of interest, the writer may state that he has never seen such an instance or wilful imposture in art by an insane artist.
Degeneracy in art sometimes takes a fairly definite course. A genius who is also a degenerate may influence the trend of art. His imitators, with their more limited capacities, form a sub-species, and they in their turn transmit in a continuously increasing degree the peculiarities and abnormalities which become ultimately merely evidences of gaps in development, malformations, or infirmities.
The artistic works of lunatics, however, do not always bear evidence of degeneration. The ideas of the paranoiac (or deluded

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person) may be grotesque and fanciful, but the artistic merits shown in his works may be great. Except in conditions of pro- gressive paralytic dementia and of gross cerebral degeneration the evidences of deterioration may be merely manifestations of dis- ordered thought and imagination. All merit is neither obscured nor lost. When, however, no artistic merit is observable to the fully qualified normal critic, it usually means that there never has been any development of the artistic faculty, that the faculty has been lost through disease, or that there has been wilful imposture.
In some forms of progressive mental and physical degeneration (dementia and general paralysis of the insane) there is usually a retrogression or impairment of the highest evolved and latest acquirements. This impairment extends gradually back tmtil the degenerative process affects even the most stable of the bodily and mental functions. In general paralysis the musician loses his power over his fingers, the linguist forgets the languages he has latest acquired, the elocutionist blurs his phrases, and the expert fails in the technique of his handicraft. In artists suffering from general paralysis there is a retrogression, both sensory and motor, of the artistic faculty. Sensation and perception of color, form, and perspective become impaired. There is also loss of the tactile and of the so-called muscular senses so essential to the proper co-ordination of movement. Not only do they suffer from tremor^, but also from failure to co-ordinate the various groups of muscular activities. Hence the executive mechanism becomes defective, faulty, and impotent. This gradual retrogression of the mental and physical functions results ultimately in a pathological return to the crude and rudimentary conditions of barbarism.
In sculpture, as portrayed by the paralytic in his early stages of degeneration, the work may be sensuously charming and excel- lently executed, and the perfection of its form may cover even what may be suggestively pornographic or even immoral. It may be attractive or repellent according to the mental bent of the critic. When, however, the work is prompted by ideas which are repugnant to good taste, and depicted in all its ugliness by a technique devoid of all artistic merit, and stripped of all evidences of those finer co-ordinations and adjustments acquired through education and practise, then the predilection in its favor of any critic is open to the charge of dishonesty or degeneracy.
The intellectually beautiful, consisting as it does of representa- tions, concepts and judgments, with an accompanying tone of feeling elaborated in the subconscious, stands above the merely sensuously beautiful about which there can be but little scope for

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the higher processes of mentation. Insane aesthetics grow en- thusiastic over their own creations, which, to the sane, are absurd or even repulsive. The insane sometimes take glory in the atten- tion they excite, and there appears to be no limit to their eccen- tricities. So long as they are confined in asylums, however, they do not rank as cranks or charlatans, but as degenerates. They do not volimtarily shun the true and the natural as being incompatible with art. It is by reason of their disease that they ignore all contemporary ideals as to what is beautiful, significant, and worthy to be portrayed, and it is thus that free play is given to the workings of their defective minds, and whereby they evolve their absurd crudities, stupid distortions of natural objects, and obscure nebulous productions which, being merely reflections of their own diseased brains, bear no resemblance to anything known to the normal senses or intellect.
POST-ILLUSIONISM
The distorted representations of objects, or partial displace- ments of external facts, are known technically as “illusions.” Their psycho-pathological significance is great, and they may arise in consequence of the fallacy of expectant attention (whereby the image of the expected becomes superimposed on that of the real) through toxic affection of the brain cells (as in alcoholic post- prandial iUusionism) or as the result of faulty memory (paramnesia, distorted memory, whereby post-illusionism or false post-impres- sionism becomes manifest). Post-maniacal iUusionism is almost invariably distorted, and the faulty representations bear little significance except as manifestations of disease.
One psychological (and aesthetical) fact to be noted is that, no matter how whimsical, absmd, perverted, or unreal in its nature or relations an iUusion of the senses may be, it can never be con- structed from data other than those derived primarily from reality. The trouble does not lie with the varied aspects of nature, which feed the mind through the special senses, but with the diseased mind which fails to digest the sensory pabiilum so derived. Nature itself frequently endeavors to treat such mental dyspeptics by its appeal for a simpler diet, and a taste for the perception of objects devoid of aU condiments and the numerous unessential attributes of perception acquired by conventionality and civilization. This craving for what is crude and elementary is nevertheless significant of a return to the primitive conditions of children, and sometimes betrays an atavistic trend towards barbarism. Certain of the insane exemplify this tendency in a marked degree. They lose not only their finer perception of linear dimensions, relative proper-

Fig. i6S. by a German Li'natic.
“At the World’s End.”
Showing an imagination beyond control.

Fig. 169. BY A German Lunatic.
“Despair.”

Dancing over the plain, he holds two heads in his hands, but none on his neck.

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xions and planes in perspective, shades of light and effects of atmos- phere, but also the power of giving adequate expression to what is actually perceived. Thus the pathological process underlying reversion to a primitive type of simulation of barbaric art is fre- quently characteristic of brain degeneration. The works them- selves reveal nature as reflected from distorted mirrors: the mirrors being but the psychical equivalents in consciousness of the morbid activities within the perceptive centres of the brain.
Many insane artists do not see nature as do the sane. The sotil peeps from its dwelling-place devoid of all the conventionalities and harmonies of line and color, and to the normal individual the result is disconcerting and incongruous. Were it not that the condition is pathological, and that disease prevents these unfor- tunates from recognizing things as they really are, we should be tempted to lose our sense of toleration and say to them in parlia- mentary language “enough of this tomfoolery.”
The artistic efforts of the insane, even when atavistic, almost invariably betray some indications either of something lost or of something to be gained — i. e., there is some trace of beauty or of technique left, like the mast to show the wreck. Failure to find any such trace indicates either that the cerebral and mental devolu- tion of the artist is well-nigh complete, or that there is a background of ignorance or deceit.
As cerebral degeneration progresses, the artistic representations become so negative in quality that for any person other than the artist himself they have no meaning and arouse no feelings other than those of pity. The works themselves have neither pictorial nor symbolic value, and their defections can be counterbalanced only by the hidden meanings in the minds of the insane artists themselves.
Sometimes the works are, in their defective drawing and awk- ward stiffness, reminiscent of the old masters; but be it said to the credit of the iilsane, there is seldom any conscious or voluntary withholding of the skill they may have previously acquired. It is, as has been said of the old masters and some modern impressionists, the contrast between the first babbling of a thriving infant and the stammering of a mentally enfeebled gray-beard. This retrogres- sion to first beginnings, and the affectation of simplicity is fre- quently seen in degenerates, and it has been described by Nordau as “painted drivelling or echolalia of the brush.”
Analysts and Synthesists
When rightly prescribed, catharsis, purging, or purification of a system may be beneficial; but the love of wholesale depletion or

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destruction of the products of evolution, without regard to their significance in the trend of life, society, and art, is merely evidence of wanton stupidity. When an artist reduces a composite whole to its component parts he becomes, not a synthesist, but an analyst. He leaves the reconstructive process to the imagination of the critic. He represents light, not in its composite form as perceived by the normal eye, but as dots, blobs, lines and squares of primary colors, leaving the task of synthesis to the imagination of others.
Women take their clothing to pieces with the object of recon- structing the various articles to suit the fashions of the moment. The insane, on the other hand, merely destroy: they do not recon- struct. So it is with some of the degenerate artists who divest themselves of all their acquirements, but are incapable, by reason of disease, of reconstructing a work of any artistic merit. It is easier to destroy than to construct, and the process of dissolution proceeds along the lines of least resistance.
The degenerate may be a genius, and he often is one; but seldom does he open up new paths which lead to true higher development. That hysterics and neurasthenics sometimes swear by him, and imitate his extravagances, goes for little. Glaring colors and extravagant forms have great attractions for hysterical persons. Charcot’s researches into the visual derangements in degeneration and hysteria furnish us with an intelligible explanation of what Nordau terms “impressionists,” “stipplers,” “Mosaists,” “papil- loteurs,” “roaring colorists,” and dyers in grey and faded tints. Their efforts are genuine resixlts of physical disease. Nystagmus (or quivering of the eyeball) is responsible for a want of firmness in outline, and affections of the retina for distorted zigzag lines and for defects in the perception of color. There may be a predilection for neutral-tones or for glaring primaries; this predilection being due to the abnormal condition of the nerves and not to any observ- able aspect of nature.
The psychologist, however, is not in any way deceived by the glaring crudities of those artists who — disowning all factors other than sensations — present their works in the form of gross lines or blobs of primary colors. Acting on their knowledge of the com- plementary qualities of red, blue, and yellow, they present them, not as they perceive them in combination, but as primary reds, blues, and yellows. They utilize their knowledge gained through science to hoodwink themselves into the belief that by representing crude elements of color it becomes easy for others to recombine them into a composite whole. This is known to be a fallacy psychologically, and such pseudo-art productions, instead of reflect-

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ing the realities of the external world, reflect but the pseudo- scientific mental conceptions of the artists. This post-illusionistic resorting to a symbolic suggestion of what is merely known to consciousness is false, and the symbols are as frequently like their objects as the s5nnbol H“0 is like water to the visual sense.
Symbolism and Mysticism in Art
Symbolism is rife in the insane, who undoubtedly do perceive mysterious relations between colors and the sensations of the other senses. So-called secondary sensations, however, although occur- ring in great variety, are never theatrically displayed for the benefit of the public. Sane critics would liken such efforts to those of the decadent Gautier, or of Baudelaire who died of general paralysis of the insane. Symbolism in insane art is sometimes invested with a high significance by the artists themselves. For- timately, however, both they and the public are protected from the vapid and sickly sentimentalism of the borderland critics; i. e., those critics who, in order to arouse curiosity, make a noise with something new and sensational, and, by pandering to the gaping uncritical attitude of the presumably sane, endeavor to raise a market for the disposal of commodities of palpably fictitious value.
Many lunatics are mystics and imagine they perceive unusual relations amongst phenomena. They see signs of mysteries, and they regard ordinary external phenomena as but symbols of some- thing beyond. Their earlier impressions become blurred and indistinct through disordered brain action. Faulty memory and the superposition of distorted former imaginings give to present objective facts a sense of mystery. Thus, a blue color will arouse associations of many things of blue, such as the sea, the sky, a flower, etc., which become merged into the primary percept of blueness and invest it with other meanings or associations. It is, of course, well-nigh impossible to follow the suggestions aroused in the insane mind by a primary impression. The consciousness is befooled and wrecked by will-o’-the-wisps and inexplicable relations between things. Things are seen as through a mist and without recognizable form, and both the insane artist and his degenerate critic forge chaotic meaningless jargon to express what is seen or felt. The pseudo-depth of the mystic is all obscurity. Outlines of objects become obliterated, and everything which has no meaning becomes profound. The step from mysticism to ecstasy is short, and, with failure to suppress the wanderings from the real to the imaginary, there are produced for the onlookers such manifestations of imbecility as can find adequate expression only in pseudo-arti pseudo-music, so-called literature, or in the ravings of the insane.

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The indifferently interpreted, blurred and nebulous, sensory impressions of early general paralysis are sometimes suggestive, not of a renaissance of medieval feeling or of post-impressionism, but of a return to primitive barbarism. Inside asyliuns such a renaissance deludes neither the patients nor their attendants; nor does it provide an excuse for aesthetic snobs to found a fashion meriting little else than laughter, wrath, or contempt.
The works, although pitiable in themselves, are sources of self- congratulation to the artists, who boast freely as to their merits and hidden meanings. They estimate their value according to their own supersensuous imaginings rather than to any mastery of form or beauty of color. The clumsier the technique, the deeper its meaning. Faulty drawing, deficient color, and general artistic incapacity stamp such works as pre-Adamite, eccentric or insane.
In maniacal states there is inability to fix the attention for long. The impressions of the external world as derived through the defec- tively operating senses become still more distorted by disordered consciousness. Hence the faulty representation of external realities and the exhibition of what are manifestly illusions.
When faulty memory is brought into play, the distortions become even more manifest, and the vagaries of the post-illusionists find therein their full expression. The conscious state of a person receiving impressions in the domain of one sense only has been termed “impressionism.” The impressionist pretends to see before him merely masses of color and light in varying qualities and degrees of intensity. In disease, purely optical perceptions may occur without any activity of the highest centers of ideation. This is also one of the first steps towards atavism. The concept is absent, and nothing remains but a simple sense stimulation. The undeveloped or mystically confused thought which exists in savages is fully exemplified in the childish or crazy atavistic anthropo- morphism and symbolism so prevalent among degenerates. A predilection for coarseness in line or color is symptomatic of degen- eration, and obsessional explosions of obscenities, so characteristic of some forms of mental decay, show themselves as “ coprographia ” — t. e., pertaining to lust, filth, or obscenity.
Most paranoiacs (deluded persons), who, as a rule, do not suffer from disorders of their physical or co-ordinate mechanism, present in their artistic works manifestations of genuine and fertile talent. In spite of the evident craziness of their ideas, their technique is usually too skillful to appeal to gaping simpletons as mysteries and revelations of genius. Their critics find in their works but little scope for the employment of words of empty sound

‘'Technically” worthy of Durcr; but insane all the same.

Here is '‘abstraction'’ atul “creatjon" with a vengeance.

Fig. 17O. BY Walter Pach.
“vSlNDAY KiGHT/'
Is this the work of a lunatic, or •>( a charlatan’ Where is Sunday?

Symbolic sadistic mutilation in art. Shows either insanity, or joking with the public.

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505

and devoid of meaning. Asylums do not harbor such puppets, nor do their inmates in their intellectual darkness become the devotees of the snobs of fashion.
The egomaniac has but little sympathy with, or capacity to adapt himself to, nature and hiunanity. His perverted instincts render him anti-social even in matters of art. Real lunatics do not form a league of minds, for the simple reason that they are concerned only with their own individual states and experiences. Some feel a passionate predilection for aU that is hideous and evil, others are all for good.
Egomaniacs in Art
The crude, barbarous splendor of the insane artist’s productions is, as we have seen, often due to optical illusions. Egomaniacs sometimes become decadent, and surprise us by the increasing barbarity of their taste and technique. They banish from their horizon all that is natural and surround themselves by all that is artificial. Sometimes their perceptive powers are wholly inacces- sible to the beauties of nature, or they suffer from a mania for contradiction of, or revolt from, the realities of things. The egomaniac regards himself as the superman; whereas he is often merely a plagiarist or parasite of the lowest grade of atavism. He sometimes becomes a post-illusionist, and subordinates his highest nervous centres and consciousness to the perceptive centres and instinct. Sensations are perceived by him, but they go no further. The primary impressions are reflected in their distorted state. The beautiful things in nature have for him no existence. He himself is the creator of all that is wonderful and good, and the reflections from his turbid mind are, to his own way of thinking, examples of art for art’s sake.
Borderland Imitators, Critics, and Malingerers and Their
Effects on Society
Borderland dwellers, DegenSres Superieurs, or Mattoids, com- prise the hosts of those who follow, what they are foolishly told to believe to be, new eras in art. The insane person differs from the borderland dweller in that his insanity prevents him from adapting himself to, or following, any new fashion in art. They have this in common, however, their revolutionary effects on art may be not only pathetic, as evidences of ignorance and absurdity, but they may also be genuine. One point to be noticed is that borderland dwellers alone are inspired by the diseased ideas of the insane. As is the case with hypnotism, Christian Science, and many other crazes, neither the sane nor the insane are affected by them. The founder and his disciples may be sincere; but, sooner or later, the

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participants of the new doctrine form a rabble of incompetent imitators who lack initiative, and quacks who abuse their member- ship by reason of their greed for money or fame. These latter follow merely the dictates of their pockets and easily prey upon a too gullible public.
Sincere originators have ever been followed by dishonest in- triguers, who invent beauties where none exist. None of these movements herald really new eras, being merely attempts to destroy or suppress the advances and acquirements of the age and endeavors to hark back to the past when the aesthetic sense and skill in technique were but ill-developed.
The insane, however, are emancipated from traditional disci- pline: they have, in fact, a contempt for traditional views of cus- tom. Hence their departure from many of the ideals in art which for thousands of years have become gradually matured and more or less fully established. This departure being neither foolery nor knavery, but merely degeneracy, there gathers round it no con- course of gaping imbeciles greedily seeking for revelations.
In asylum practise, neither mysticism, symbolism, nor any other “ism” finds a foothold for advancement, and inasmuch as lunatics are free from sordid motives they are harmless in their ignorance and segregated in their snobbishness. They do not found so-called intellectual or aesthetic movements and by futile babbling and twaddle seek to propagate what may be, as a matter of fact, nothing else than idiocy or humbug.
To the borderland critic who is ignorant of disease and its symptoms the works of degenerates are sometimes more than mere sources of amusement; they may serve to provide inspiration for his own unbalanced judgment. They are seldom deliberate swindlers who play up as quacks for the ultimate gain of money. The truly insane critic is usually definite and significant in his language, and he seldom seeks to cover his ignorance by volubility in the use of obscure and purposeless words. Such being the case, there is no scope for the promotion of bubble-company swindles in asylums, and there is never any danger of leading the public by the nose.
The pseudo-artist is common in asylums and has aspirations which he is unable to justify; whereas pseudo-art is almost invariably the product of imposture — i. e., in asyliuns pseudo-artists are numerous, but pseudo-art is rare. In the former, their performance is quite unequal to their desire; whereas, in the latter, the works are usually products of deceit. The unbounded egotism of Ixinatics also prevents them from discovering in the works of others beauties in what are evidently the lowest and most repulsive things.

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507

That the works of insane artists may be crude, absurd, or vile matters little, so long as they exert no corrupting influence on society, and so long as society fully appreciates their pathological significance. Unfortunately, however, some creations which emanate from degenerates are revered by the borderland critic, blindly admired by the equally borderland public, and their real natime is not adequately dealt with by the correcting influence of the sane. (Italic ours.)
Moreover, the insane critic is honest in his criticisms, and views the works of his insane comrades of the brush with an honest and fearless eye and judges them from his own mental standpoint. Seldom or never does he conform to the artist’s interpretations of natxxre, and, although he may recognize the artist as being an imbecile or dement, his courage seldom fails him in giving expression to his real convictions. This is characteristic of the insane, who know no fear, who have no conventionality or aesthetic fashion to conform to, and who have no axe to grind. Undoubtedly their intense egotism prevents them from perceiving their own shallow- ness and incompetence, and in asylums individualism pertains as in no other community. Seldom it is that the truly insane — those who have passed the borderland and have become certifiable lunatics — imitate each other in art. Rather do we find imitative tendencies in those who are technically and legally neither sane or insane — i. e., in that enormous class which comprises the “borderland.” Tliis rabble of hysterics, neurasthenics, weaklings and degenerates have nothing of their own to say, but, by means of a superficial and easily acquired dexterity, they imitate and falsify the feeling of masters in all branches of art, and not only do they injure true art but they also tend to vitiate good taste among the majority of mankind.
Among this class are also to be fo\md vast munbers of incom- petent critics who, for reasons best known to themselves, welcome these bunglers of the brush and encourage — although inimical to society — abuses of true art which are in reality but instances of mean childishness and demoralization.
To the physician who has devoted himself to the special study of nervous and mental maladies there is seldom any difficulty in recognizing at a glance the manifestations of shamming degeneracy or of malingering. That there should be malingerers in art is, nevertheless, a question open to discussion. That malingering in art shoffid occur in true degeneracy, apart from hysterical simula- tion, would appear improbable, and certain it is that in asylmn practise there is but little evidence in favor of such a supposition.

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In malingering post-illusionism there is usually some evidence of higher mental activity, as shown by the artists’ knowledge of the theory of color vision, a knowledge of which they freely avail them- selves in order to falsify the objective realities before them.
Stigmata of degeneration are not confined merely to artists and their works. Critics who fall into raptures and exhibit vehe- ment emotions over works which are manifestly ridiculous and degrading are themselves either impostors or degenerates. Ex- cessive emotionalism is a mental stigma of degeneration, and Max Nordau’s criticisms apply very aptly to some critics whose own excitabilities appear to them to be marks of superiority. They believe themselves to be possessed by a peculiar spiritual insight lacking in other mortals, and they are fain to despise the vulgar herd for the dullness and narrowness of their minds.
“The unhappy creature,” says Nordau, “does not suspect that he is conceited about a disease and boasting of a derangement of the mind; and certain silly critics when, through fear of being pronounced deficient in comprehension, they make desperate efforts to share the emotions of a degenerate in regard to some insipid or ridiculous production, or when they praise in exaggerated expres- sions the beauties which the degenerate asserts he finds therein are unconsciously simulating one of the stigmata of semi-insanity.”
The Remedy
The insane art critic never asks himself, “what sort of a bad joke is this? — what does this artist want me to believe?”
Morbid aberrations may serve as casxxal factors in the produc- tion of what is sensual, ugly, and loathsome in art, and without doubt the artists may have been quite genuine and sincere in their efforts; but, inasmuch as our asylmns do not give shelter to all perpetrators of such mockeries or travesties of good taste and morality, it is difficult to suggest a remedy or means whereby they can be suppressed.
The insane art critic, who scribbles incoherent nonsense for his fellow-sufferers, is simply to be pitied and treated as an honest imbecile and not to be punished as a rogue. If he sees hidden meanings in mystically blurred and scarcely recognizable objects, the misfortune, and not the fault, is his, and for what to us may be abominable, ignoble, or laughable he may have some subtle sym- pathy or affection.
The borderland critics, however, must ever run the risk of being classed with rogues or degenerates. How best to treat them is another matter. From motives of humanity, we are prompted to aid in the stxrvival of those who are biologically unfit ; but, with

Fig. 17S. by Covert.
The Temptation' of St, Anthony.
The tempting devils may be hiding in this mess of lumber and junk, but where is Anthony? No doubt this is another, Picasso-mspired, piece of “significant form,” “pure form,” “created form,” so dear to the lunatic abstractionists. See Fig. 16.

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regard to the encouragement, or even toleration, of degenerate art, tfcere may be, with justice, quite another opinion.
Theo. B. Hyslop.
As illustrative of what Dr. Hyslop says in the foregoing article we may add :
In his latest essay on “The Insane and their Work,” pub- lished by A. Kroner, in Leipzig, Dr. R. A. Pfeiffer, Chief Assistant in the Nerve Clinic in the University of Leipzig, clearly reveals that the physicians and philosophers of Ger- many have observed a marked increase in the tendency in the insane to express themselves in screeds and scrawls and “pic- tures ” closely resembling those of all the modernists who have been actively “working” the various fads — about fifty of them — which have been exploited during the last twenty- five years by the modernistic art dealers and artists, their critics, and “touters,” from “Cubism” to “Expressionism,” so popular today in Germany.
He reveals their belief that, since Imitation governs our social and intellectual growth, these insane imitate these fadistic, “abstract,” “personalistic,” “intuitive creations,” because they feel that they are able to do as well as the modern- istic incompetents do; and, as egomania is always strong in case of like likes like !
For we all delight in imitating — if not exactly copying — that which we see highly eulogized, and which seem easy for us to do, be it in dress or in life generally, but stopping short of that which we feel requires special talent and great effort to do, like masterful drawing, either in painting or sculpture; but the more any activity or thing is eulogized the more do we strain to imitate or possess something similar. This is the basis of the tyranny of any fashion or custom. And, as the semi-insane feel that the unnatural, grotesque, and childishly drawn, or modelled, contraptions of the modernists are easy for them to equal, many more of them now, more than ever before, turn to finding svucease from boredom in producing “significant forms,” “created forms,” “pure forms,” intuitively found and fished out of their super-capacious brains, and so much admired and propagandized by Mr. Clive Bell and Mr. Roger Fry, both of England, and their fellow-cranks, or — charlatans?

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Dr. Pfeiffer describes a pathological case of a woman, who gradually went completely insane, and illustrated a number of her “creations,” supposed by her to have been inspired by God and, supposedly, full of “intimations of the great beyond ” ! We reproduce four of these illustrations. Figs. 162-165.
We repeat, according to the Paris “New York Herald,” in an issue somewhere about 1908, an investigation it made into the social status of some of the exhibitors in the “Salon of the Independents,” showed among them all conditions of men: Tramps, Bungmen, Cobblers, Barbers, Coachmen, Policemen, Street-sweepers, Thieves, Rag-pickers, Sirens of the street, and also high society dilettanti, all bent on dispelling deep boredom by essaying stimts in art ! All these were victims of dilettantism, especially stimulated by modernism. #
Dr. Pfeiffer analyzed the case of a German dilettante, a semi-insane big industrialist, who became a patient of his, one who was stricken with the ‘'Jolie de grandeur,” and a victim of Schizophrenzy, with a penchant toward symbolic sadism, which Kraff-Ebing speaks about as increasing in the world. We give four reproductions of his “creations,” Figs. 166-169.
Dr. H. Stadelmann, in his “Psychopathology and Art,” published by Piper & Co., Mimich, 1908, illustrated a number of works of semi-insane and totally mad men — gifted with even considerable “technical ability,” but men who are not “all at home ” in the brain and soul, or afflicted with obstreper- ous egos. We reproduce three of these. Figs. 170-172.
We also reproduce two pathological works of sculpture by the Serbian sculptor Mestrovic and the Polish sculptor Biegas,
Figs. 173-174-
Finally, to show that the psychopathological condition sxists among American artists, victims of the “suggestion” of the semi-maniacs still active in European degenerate circles, we give illustrations of four works, shown in the 1917 “Inde- pendent Exhibition,” and spiritually allied with the insane, in our asylums. Figs. 175-178. We could give many more. These four works are all by American artists; all, we think, are tainted with psychopathic disturbance — or are they influenced by Heine’s remark?
Charlatanism is a weapon not despised by even the greatest men.

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51 1

We truly hope, for the future of American art, that it is the latter. For we would rather see a man play the game of cimning self-advertising than find him really tainted with madness.
That this soul-weakness and spiritual pathology is spreading more and more, thanks to the hired, or demented, sensation- making critics on the public press, from Paris to Pekin, has been, we believe, amply demonstrated in these pages.
Will the American people now wake up, and see to it that, if they piirchase any more modernistic art, as curios and jokes, and in a “sporting” spirit, that they will at least respect their descendants, if not their contemporaries, enough to refuse, sternly, to unload any of this madness-tainted art on our museums? See Fig. 179.
Let them, instead, see to it that, happen what may, the doors of our museums shall, from now on, be forever closed to all the fruits of the revolutionary tendency started in 1860- 1865 by the egomaniacs, sex-perverts, and semi-insane artistic and social rebels, who founded the movement of Modernism in Art, a class of artists to whom alone can be applied the remark of Rousseau ;
Everything is good when it comes from the hand of the Author of Things, all things degenerate in the hands of men.
The “Reds” in Art
Since the preceding chapters were finished we came across the following last article, by John Burroughs, published in the New York “Times,” of April 3, 1921.
It proves that the mental leprosy of sadism, the tendency to mutilate the things that we do, or once did, love, is also ram- pant in so-called “poetry” and “belles-lettres.”
It shows also that we are not the only one who suspects that there is a secret conspiracy among the “Reds” to mis- lead the artists to create chaotic works of art and, through those, to mislead the imthinking into chaos, for mysterious reasons of their own.
We copy the article verbatim:

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Burrough’s Last Article
[Reprinted by courtesy of “Current Opinion,” from the April niunber of that magazine. This is the last article written by the great naturalist before his death on March 29, 1921.]
The Reds of American Literature.
“ A dass of young men, who seem to look upon themselves as revolutionary poets, has arisen about Chicago; they are putting forth the most astonishing stuff, in the name of free verse, that has probably ever appeared anywhere. In a late number of ‘ Current Opinion’ one of them, Carl Sandburg, who, I am told, is their chosen leader, waves his dirty shirt in the face of the public in this fashion:

My shirt is a token and a symbol, more than a lover for sun and rain, my shirt is a signal, and a teller of souls.
I can take off my shirt and tear it, and so make a ripping razzly noise, and the people will say.
Look at him tear his shirt.
I can keep my shirt on.
I can stick around and sing like a little bird and look ’em all in the eye and never be fazed,
I can keep my shirt on.
“ Does not this resemble poetry about as much as a pile of dirty rags resembles silk or broadcloth? The trick of it seems to be to take flat, unimaginative prose and cut it up into lines of varying length and omit the capitals at the beginning of the lines — ‘ shred- ded prose,’ with no kick in it at all. These men are the Reds of literature; they would reverse or destroy all the recognized rules and standards upon which literature is founded. They show what Bolshevism, carried out in the field of poetry, would lead to. One of them, who signs himself H. D. writes thus in ‘The Dial’ on Hellos:

Hellos makes all things right — night brands and chokes, as if destruction broke over furze and stone and crop

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of mjniile-shoot and field-wort destroyed with flakes of iron, the bracken-stems, where tender roots were, sown bright, chaff and waste of darkness to choke and drown.
A curious god to find, yet in the end faithful; bitter, the Kyprian’s feet — ah, flecks of whited clay, great hero, vaunted lord — ah, petals, dust and windfall on the grotmd-queen awaiting queen.
“ What it all means, who can tell? It is as empty of intelligent meaning as a rubbish heap.
“ Yet these men claim to get their charter from Whitman. I do not think that Whitman would be enough interested in them to feel contempt for them. Whitman was a man of tremendous personality, and every line he wrote had a meaning, and his whole work was suffused with a philosophy, as was his body with blood.
“ I have just been skimming through an illustrated book called ‘Noa Noa,’ by a Frenchman, Paul Gaugin, which describes or pretends to describe a visit to Tahiti. There is not much fault to be found with it as a narrative, but the pictures of the natives are atrocious. Many of the figures are distorted, and all of them have a smutty look, as if they had been rubbed with lampblack or coal dust. There is not one simple, honest presentation of the natural O ilman form in it. When the Parisian becomes a degenerate, he is the worst degenerate of all — a refined, perfumed degenerate. A degenerate Englishman may be brutal and coarse, but he could never be guilty of the inane and outrageous things of the Cubists, the Imagists, the Futurists, and all the other ists which the French have turned out. The degenerate Frenchman is like that species of gmilaY or cat brier which looks fresh, shiny and attractive, but which when blooming gives out an odor of a dead rat.
“ Gaugin, one of the prime movers in the new art of perverting nature, as a preliminary step gave up his business, deserted wife a nd children, in fact, broke entirely with civilization, and went off to Tahiti where he took a native wife and lived the primitive life of the natives — a fine preparation for the career of a great artist !
“ These modem verse writers are the Reds of literature. They

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belong to the sam e class of inane, nomous creatures to which the Cubists and Futurists belong. They woidd subvert or destroy all the recognized standards of art and literature by their Bol- shevist methods.
“ There is a picture of a ‘Kneeling Girl’ by one of the Reds in a recent number of ‘The Dial,’ a charcoal sketch apparently. It suggests the attempts of a child. The mouth is a black, smutty hole in the face, the eyes ‘are not mates’ and one of them is merely a black clot. In fact, the whole head seems thrust up into a cloud of charcoal dust. The partly nude body has not one mark of femininity. The body is very long and the legs very short, and the knees as they protrude from under the drapery look like two irregular blocks of wood.
“ To falsify or belie Nature seems to be the sole aim of these creatures. Joseph Pennell says that their trick is so easy that any one can play it, that it is, briefly, the avoidance of difficulties; and that all their pretense that it is a return to primitive art is either bluff or ignorance. He avers that the beginning of the whole crude, preposterous movement was a commercial proposition; that a certain syndicate saw money in making a corner in Van Gogh and Gaugin, and unloaded on a gullible public stuff for twenty- five thousand francs apiece which they had bought for twenty-five francs each, ten years previously, and the deal proving so profitable, they enlisted Cezanne and Matisse later to step into the dead men’s shoes and perpetrate more of the atrocities.”

Time has proven the wisdom of Aristotle’s remark : that no city should have more than 400,000 inhabitants. That is cumulatively true under a competitive civilization. For, as civilization became ever more complex, and the voting major- ity of the morons more huge, in the ever-expanding cities, these cities engendered an ever-growing, degenerate element; and the older and greater the city the larger and more powerful became this vicious htiman detritus. It but proves the con- stant operation of the Law of Generation and of the Law of Degeneration — going on, simultaneously, throughout nattire.
There is always danger of the law of Degeneration obtain- ing the upper-hand in any social environment — unless those acted upon by this law bestir themselves to check it, and to guarantee the supremacy of the law of Generation. This ac- counts for the rise and fall of national and private morals,

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during the different epochs in the birth, growth, decay, and disappearance of various nations of the past, the leaders of which, periodically, became too busy with fosteiing their own private fortunes and thus too indifferent about the gen- eral good. This accounts for the recurrent appearance of stem prophets among the Jews.
The law of Generation was supremely in the saddle in Greece during the Periclean period; but, within fifty years, the law of Degeneration had won the upper hand, and kept it — until Greece disappeared, as a free people. Alexandria, onee the greatest commercial power in the world, and Rome, once the “Mistress of the World,” all went the same way; over- population; the unwieldiness of the city; too many morons, fatigue of the leading men, degeneration and — ruin!
In support of Mr. Burroughs, we could give the opinions of many: leading artists, business men, lawyers, legislators, not to speak of preachers, who have in substance said, what one of the most important editors of America said, as recorded in the N. Y. Times of August li, 1925:
After visiting the Arts and Decoration Exposition in Paris, (a “Modernistic” show) he had arrived at the conclusion that modem French art itias saturated with the Bolshevist influence. At the Spring Salon, where he also saw much of modem treatment in painting and sculpture, he saw a decadent note.
This from a keen business man, one of many expressions of similar opinions we could give from laymen, should wake up our business men, who are the final support of every art movement in America, to look to it that a halt should be called to the spreading over this land of ours of disintegrating mod- ernism in art.
What we have now laid before the Reader, should suggest to him, if he does not wish to be led astray, to investigate this most important subject of insanity among artists, critics, editors of magazines, art dealers, ete. — in order to sharpen his power of making discriminations between the normal and abnormal in art.
Finally, we suggest to the Reader to refleet over this pro-

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foundly important paragraph, from Herbert Spencer’s great “ First Principles” :
Aboriginal men, our tmeducated population, and even most of the so-called educated, think in an extremely indefinite manner. From careless observations, they pass, by careless reasoning, to conclusions of which they do not contemplate the implications — conclusions which they never develop for the purpose of seeing whether they are consistent.
Thus we end this homily, with the injunction, used at the beginning — on the title-page of the Art World, Fig. lo — to recall the Reader to reflect over the full meaning of the wisest slogan of all time, and which the Athenians carved on the marble tympanum of their Treasury temple at sacred Delphi:

MEYDEN AGAN!

Nothing To ExcessI

Fig. a. by Rcckstull.
“Evening.”
My first statue. Honorable mention in Pans Salon of 1888. Grand Gold Medal. Chicago World’s Fair. Now in Metropolitan Museum, Symbolizes the folding up of all nature, at twilight.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

Reverting, now, to the first person pronoun, I will say : It occurred to me that, if the reader has taken the trouble to read thus far, he may do, as I have often done, say to him- self: “Who is this writer, anyway; what has he done as an artist?” It is a natural question, because we are prone to inquire what an artist has done in the world besides merely writing a lot of essays for a magazine. To satisfy that nat- ural curiosity I will give a very brief sketch of my life, followed by illustrations of most of my important works. I do this at the risk of being accused of self-advertising. But such a charge f alls to the ground in view of the fact that no one dtur- ing the last thirty years has done more than I have to adver- tise his fellow sculptors: through the National Sctilptiue Society, fathered and nursed into strength by me ; also through the “Art World” Magazine, which I organized and edited: with the purpose of showing the public what constitutes a great work of art, and also to hold up to the admiration of this country the finest pieces of sculpture, as well as of painting, by American artists.
I was bom in the village of Breitenbach, in Alsace, France, on the 22d of May, 1853. My father emigrated and settled in St. Louis, Mo., in the spring of 1855. There I was raised. As a child I loved to carve. My mother was a devout Chris- tian, so was my father.
I was six years old when my mother died, leaving four children who, under the care of servants, merely “grew up, like Topsy.” At nine years of age, I dreamed of becoming a marble cutter; at fifteen, I wanted to apprentice myself to a marble tomb-stone maker; but my father, who had now des- tined me to become a missionary to the heathen, objected, and began to influence me to think of going to Rochester
5*7

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Theological Seminary. At seventeen, during a “revival,” he pictured to me in such glowing words the glories of Heaven, if I became “converted,” and the horrors of Hell, if I did not, that I decided to make a strenuous effort to become con- verted, an effort of nine months, the most energetic of all my Hfe, during which I implored God constantly, and read the Bible through three times, without feeling any “spirit- ual experience,” imtil, for the third time, I reached the fateful verse, in Matthew xxii., 14: “For many are called but few are chosen. ” “That means you” I said, “you are not chosen ! ”
I reflected long, and then — closed the Bible, and for twenty years.
I then went to Metaphysics and Philosophy, for some light on the subject of; “Whence we came, why we came, and whither are we going?” After ten years of burning of the midnight oil, in reading, I arrived at Herbert Spencer’s point of view: that, while there is a Power back of all phenomena, call it by what name you will, that Power is unknown, inscru- table, and imknowable: and that there is no real conflict between Science and Religion; the conflict being only be- tween the search for Truth, and Dogma. For years after that, I drifted about like a rudderless bark tossed about on an ocean of what seemed a useless life, going from one business to an- other. Finally, I found myself, found my first love: carving and sculpture.
I was much helped in this by Dr. E. B. Thomas, father of Augustus Thomas, the dramatist, who would have become a famous man had he been bom with sufficient vanity to desire Fame, so as to have energized into creative activity his splen- did brain. I had loved him as a friend and second father, before I began to chum with his son Augustus, who is four years younger than I am. We had often wrestled together with problems in philosophy. He admired my capacity for raging at hypocrites and charlatans, and my habit of analyzing all dogmas, and my refusal to have more than a “gambler’s faith” in anything not demonstrable mathematically. One day he said to me :
Fred, why don’t you take up law as a career? You and “ Gus” (his son] would make a fine team. You, with your keen analysis, could work up the cases in the office, and “Gus,” with his “gift

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519

of gab,” covild plead them in court. Think it over, and if you decide to do so, I will get you both into the leading law-office in town.
But, at twenty-two, I despised lawyers. So, I side-stepped that ideal. I had already taken up modelling, as a pastime, and was at work on a small sketch, in clay, of Flaxman’s Homeric drawing, “Penelope Waiting for Ulysses.” When finished I took it to his house to let him see it. He was visibly surprised, thought awhile, and said :
Well, Fred, you astonish me. To be able to do as well as that, without any training whatever, what will you not be able to do, with study and application. I take it all back, what I said about taking up law as a career, and advise you, now, to take up sculp- ture, by all means. For, as for me, I would rather be the author of Michael Angelo’s “Moses” than President of the United States.
This so fired my imagination, that it was the turning point in my life. For it offered me the only ideal that appeared to me worthy of the devotion of a lifetime of struggle. And, shortly after, I entered the night-class in Washington Uni- versity Art School in St. Louis, and soon joined the St. Louis “Sketch Club,” among whose members were Halsey C. Ives, Museum Director; John H. Fry, painter; Howard Kretsch- mar, sculptor; Carl Gutherz, Paul Harney, J. R. Meeker, George S. Snell, W. H. Howe, A. B. Green, and J. M. Tracy, painters; Augustus Thomas, dramatist, etc. Some of these made a name for themselves, some slumped and faded away.
I finally decided to give up business and to go to Paris to study. This was in 1882. I went via England, stopping two months in London and spending ten days at Saltash, near Plymouth, with my old friend George S. Snell, who formerly lived in St. Louis, where he, with Augustus Thomas and my- self, was one of the “Three Guardsmen,” as we called our- selves. He had developed into an artist of great promise and had a studio in Paris. We went to Paris together. Later, Snell settled in New York, but, unfortunately, died during an operation in a hospital. What he failed to do for the honor of his family, his brother, Henry B. Snell, accomplished. He has now been admitted to the walls of the Metropolitan Museum, with a beautiful picture of “Lake Como.” I went to Paris with a very modest ambition. It was my

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friend Snell who presented me to Bonnassieux, the Professor of Sculpture in the Beaux-Art School, who accepted me as a pupil, this before I did any sight-seeing. Then I went to the Salon, to see the sculpture. I had, I repeat, come to Paris with a very modest ambition. I felt I would be happy if I could ever make only one “oxrb-stone” statue with my name on the base. But, when I saw the Salon sculpture, my whole being expanded. I felt I could do as well as most of the works I saw there, and so it did not take me long to decide to return to St. Louis — to raise enough money to en- able me to study three years in Paris. Thus, without even beginning in the Beaux-Arts school, I left Paris at the end of a month and, going via Alsace, to see my birthplace, and down the Rhine and Holland I returned to St. Louis, and went to work once more selling toys and to model nights and Sun- days. At the end of two years, I had risen to be assistant manager of the concern of L. & C. Speck & Co.
Meanwhile, there had been a split in the St. Louis “Sketch Club,” and we organized the “ Salamagundi Sketch Club,” of St. Louis. At each monthly meeting of the Club, one mem- ber was host to all the other members, he furnishing beer and sandwiches, while they each brought in a sketch, of any mate- rial or size, or quality, to illustrate a theme: given out to them a month ahead. This Sketch Club thrived mightily.
And here I cannot refrain from paying a tribute to the great heart of Charles S. Ruckstuhl, of St. Louis, Merchant, a name-sake, though not a close family relation. It was he who, in the final analysis, made my career possible and my life a success. For, at a meeting of the Salamagtmdi Club I brought to the host a clay sketch of the character of “Nick Vedder,” from Washington Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow,” which was much admired. Among those present as guests and lay- members, was Dr. Enno Sander, who said: “The man who made that sketch, should be sent to Paris to study. I will con- tribute $5.00 per month, for three years, to send him there.” My old friend, W. L. Thomas, hearing this, applauded, and got the subscriptions of four others to do likewise, and then urged me to get others, which I did, some for three years, some for less. These were to be repaid in cash, or by a small piece of work.

Fig. C.

BY Rucksiull.

PoRTR.\iT Bust of John Russell \oing.

r~ 1 OraTit while touring the world; first librarian of Library of Congress, "“a;T:iit*:r orrns^ew\th -Herald.” Salon tSpo. Photo from the clay model.

Fig. D. _
BY Ruckstull.
Mercury Te.ysing the Eagle of Jupiter.
The Eagle, when the priests of Apollo had left the temple, before the sacrifice was con- surned, swooped down and tried to devour the sacred victim; and, when Mercury followed and teased him with his caduceus, struck at him with great cries and blows of his wing. Bronze garden decoration, now in Portland Place, St. Louis.

Fig. E. by Ruckstull.
Glory and Immortality.
Figure of Fame, on Soldier Monument, Jamaica, Long Island, N. Y.

Fig. F.

BY RuCKSTULL.

Solon,

The Greek law-giver holding up the law and turning down the sword. Now in the rotunda of the Library of Congress, Washington.

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521

Those who subscribed were: Dr. Enno Sander; Wm. J. Fritsch; Joseph Schnaider; W. J. Gilbert; Dr. I. N. Love; Charles Nagel; Henry Overstoltz, then Mayor of St. Louis; George W. Wright; Dr. J. T. Kent; Ben. Altheimer; Benja- min F. Horn; James E. Yeatman; all of St. Louis.
But the main problem was, how to collect this money, and monthly, and every month! At first W. L. Thomas tmder- took it. But, at the end of the second month, he had to give it up. Finally, my friend, C. S. Ruckstuhl, jumped into the breach, and, during three long years, collected those monthly subscriptions, and often completed the sum needed: by put- ting in his own check, so I could continue my studies! This steady, patient and, as it proved, long drawn-out, and more and more up-hill pull — just to make good his promise, and without which help, and in the nick of time, I could not have “carried on” and succeeded in life — was a manifestation of devotion and loyalty so fine as to dignify hiunan nature and worthy of my expressing, here, my eternal gratitude.
As soon as an agreement was signed, I returned to Paris, in the spring of 1885, much to the regret of my employer Judge Speck, and entered the Acad^mie Julien — the Beaux-Art School having, during my three years’ absence, established the rule : that none over thirty years of age could become a student there, and I had now reached thirty-two!
In the Academic Julien I again met John H. Fry, whom I had known in St. Louis, m a ki ng my first drawing by his side. Since then, he has developed into perhaps the most poetic figure-painter America has produced, though his work is not so well known as some day it will be, because he has rarely exhibited in this coimtry. This is not to be wondered at, since he leans towards the classic, and the painters of today are mostly devotees of the ultra modem, and even “modern- istic,” pursuit of mere technical “slap-dash,” or “premier- coup,” cleveristic painting, with but little sense of poetic composition or fine feeling, or the ambition to arouse poetic emotions in others. Mr. Fry moreover has been a deep stu- dent, especially of .^Esthetics, and is a man of tmusual culttue among artists, and a writer of fine style; all of which makes him somewhat of a recluse, without any hauteur. And, in his quiet way, he has displayed a generosity that is rare indeed.

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And he has exercised a considerable influence on the trend upwards of American art.
I studied hard, drawing imder the great Boulanger and Lefebvxe during the mornings; in the afternoons drawing from the statues in the Louvre Museum, and often, in the night classes of Colarossi, this for one year. Then, for another year, I modelled in clay, privately under Tholenaar, Dampt, and Mercie. I could have become the private pupil of Rodin; but, as his works, all but a few, repelled me by their ugliness and brutal mannerisms, I preferred to be tmder the influence of the refined, poetic Mercie.
In the summer of 1887 I began my first serious statue,
‘ ‘ Evening, ’ ’ and worked on it steadily for nine months, and sent it to the Salon of 1888, and then went on a seven weeks’ trip to Italy. I was then thirty-five and undecided about contin- uing in Sculpture. But, on my return, I found I had won an “Honorable Mention” in the Salon, to my great astonish- ment and joy. This decided me to devote the balance of my Ufe to art, see Fig. A.
I took the plaster statue to St. Louis, exhibited it at the annual “exposition” held there, and began a portrait bust of Mrs. Philipine Espenschied Overstoltz, the wife of the Mayor of St. Louis, who had given me one of the original $5.00 a month subscriptions, but had died in the interim. When the portrait was finished she was so pleased that she offered me the money needed to enable me to return to Paris and put my “Evening” into marble. This gave me an insight into a no- bility of heart I had not before suspected in her, and which time only confirmed more and more.
Having now the money to put my statue into marble, I lost no time in getting back to Paris, in 1889, found a studio, back of the Champs de Mars, and soon was at work carving in the marble my bust of Madame Overstoltz, Fig. B., and set- ting a marble cutter to work roughing out and “pointing up” the marble copy of my plaster statue, “Evening,” and, when he had “pointed up” the figure, I began to finish the carving myself. I also made a bust of John Russell Yoimg, then edi- tor of the “N. Y. Herald” in Paris. Fig. C.
I soon began taking my limches in a small wine-merchant’s shop, presided over by Madame Binet, comer of the Avenue

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de Vaugirard and the old Rue de Foumeau, where I often met the great sculptors Dalou, Aube, Gardet; also Rodin, etc. Thus it was that I became better acquainted with Rodin than any other American artist ever did, he having his studio close by. This was before he had been foisted into the international notoriety he later enjoyed, and at a time when — ^because hav- ing become a leader in the Modernistic art-party — he was more or less ridiculed, both as an artist and a man, by the artists in the quarter where we aU had our studios.
I worked steadily for fifteen months on the carving of my “Evening,” having decided to carve it myself in the marble, which is usually done for the sculptors, after they have mod- elled the statue in clay, and often by men more able, as carvers, than are the sculptors who hire them. When finished, I began a large group: “Mercury Teasing the Eagle of Jupiter,” Fig. D. When both of these works were finished I sent them to the Salon of 1891, in the hope of winning a third class gold medal.
I felt certain of winning a medal on the marble “Evening,” because it was the usual custom to give a Frenchman a medal : if he exhibited, in the improved marble, a statue on which he had previously — on the plaster model — been given, as I had, an “Honorable Mention.” But I failed in this. The reason was this: there had broken out a war between the sculptor- members of the “Societe des Artistes Frangais,” of which war I then knew nothing : one faction insisting on giving med- als to foreign sculptors, as of old, if they deserved them; the other faction, led by Bartholdi, saying: “No! We will not give any more medals to foreign sctdptors, unless we are forced to. We do not want them to come here, give them medals, and thus help them to cut the grass imder our feet!”
Here was a chance for me to win a medal easily, but which, through a feeling of honesty, I threw away. For, had I an- noimced myself simply as having been bom in Alsace, France — and said nothing about my being an American citizen — I would surely have been classed as a Frenchman, and thus won, perhaps even a second class medal, instead of merely a medal of the third class. For, out of a Jury of 27, I received 13 votes for a medal — all from the “Academicians,” so-called, lacking one vote to win the medal. Had I been “foxy,” I

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would not have, needlessly, announced myself as an American citizen. But, I was too proud to take advantage of my advan- tage, preferring to lose rather than to lay myself open to a futiure charge of deceitfully having won my medal — ^by “pos- ing ” as a bom Frenchman. Both the great sculptors Aubd and Gardet, members of the jury, showed me the morning after the according of medals, that they both had me on their lists, of those for whom they had voted for medals, and told me, that their side of the jiuy fought half an hour over my statue against the narrow-minded faction — mostly radicals in politics — ^which, having a majority of one — voted the “Academicians” down, and refused me a medal: simply because I was an American citizen!
Aube and Gardet were also astonished at my announcing, and needlessly, my American citizenship — never before done by any one— which “blatant patriotism,” as they called it, cost me my medal, which, had I received it, would materially have helped me in my career in America, where Salon medals, like “Legion of Honor” ribbons, count for so much, no mat- ter how they are obtained. In the Salon of that year, there were only two medals given to foreign sculptors who, though they deserved them, would not have received them: had not both of them had special, and powerful, influence with ofli- cials able to overcome the opposition, rampant that year, to giving medals to foreigners. But how many stories of injus- tices I could tell! I will relate only one. It is on record, that a French sculptor, seeing himself unjustly treated, wrote the following verse :
II y a trois portes a cet antre :
L’espoir, le d^gout, et la mort!
C’est par la premiere que Ton entre,
Et par la demiere que Ton sort.
A rough translation of which is:
There are three doors to this cavern:
Hope, disgust, and death!
It is by the first that we enter,
And by the last that we exit.
He nailed the lines on the main door, and blew his brains out on the spot !
Well, after the close of that Salon, I returned to Amer-

IJY Rtjckstull.
IMaj. Gen. John P. Hartranet.
The (leneral coiinnR humc and salutinR h.s welcominR people. Now m front of the State Capitol, HarnsburR, Pa. The auth.w in the bacIcKround. Made at St. Leu, near Pans. Photo from the day model.

Pig. H.

Wisdom.

BY RuCKSTULL.

Marble, placed on left of entrance to Appellate Court. Xew York Inscribed with my maxim : Every law not based on -Wisdom, is a menace to the state '

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525

ica, and exhibited my two works of the Salon in the St. Louis annual “Exposition.” I there had such success, that my dear, religious father, for the first time in twenty years, ceased feeling I was on the direct road to the Devil ! I opened a studio in St. Louis, but soon saw that that city was not the place for me to bury myself in, and, so, decided to move to New York.
In the Fall of 1892 I opened a studio in New York. There I exposed “Evening,” in the exhibition of the “Society of American Artists.” From there it was sent to the Chicago World’s Fair, where it received one of the eleven Grand Gold Medals awarded to American sculptors. From there, on the advice of J. Q. A. Ward, I loaned it to the Metropolitan Mus- eum; and, finally in 1921, it was purchased by the Metropol- itan Museum, thanks to the recommendation of Daniel C. French, the sculptor, who succeeded J. Q. A. Ward, as Curator of Sculpture in the Museum.
At that time, 1892, most of the sculptors were generally and openly at war with each other. In fact, there were two camps, one headed by Saint-Gaudens and one by Ward and, in between, were free lances, who fought both camps. Hence, many were not at all in sympathy with the idea of a National Sculpture Society. This made necessary a quiet, patient diplomacy: to get the adhesion of a number inimical to the idea, all being sceptical as to the possibility of making a suc- cess of a society of men then at daggers points. But I per- sisted and, with the help of Chas. deKay, who had a very large acquaintance in the country, we got the sculptors gradually to come in and pull together. Through my harmonizing tactics, and through deKay’s alluring many laymen to join, the soci- ety grew rapidly and became a power. But I wish to record these facts: I had broached the idea of a sculpture society to MacMonnies, Adams, Bissell, Potter, etc., at a lunch in the “Cafe des Arts” in Paris, before my settling in New York. They all doubted the possibility of bringing the sculptors to join such a society because of the existing jealousy among them When, therefore, one day DeKay suggested to me the organiz- ing of such a society, I said: “It can’t be done!” “T^y?” he queried. “Too much jealousy!” I said, “You can’t get Ward, Saint-Gaudens, and Warner to join ! ” He tried it. But they all said no! But to make a long story short, I put the

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reason for such a society on a less commercial basis — when they asked me about the matter. The result was they agreed to let us make the effort — ^and the society was formed.
One day in December, 1894, after a conversation about art, with that talented lady. Miss Emma Lamprecht, whom I had known in Paris, and who afterguards married Colin Camp- bell Cooper, the painter, she suggested that I come to Roches- ter, her home, and deliver a lecture on “How to Judge a Work of Art,” promising to get for me “Power’s Art Hall.” I had never dreamt of lecturing, but I accepted, went on, in January, i 895> delivered the lecture, with lantern slides, and had great success. This was the beginning of a long series of lectures, in many of the Universities, from Boston to Galveston, dur- ing the next thirty years. I had found I could talk, and make people understand by simple language and clear analysis.
In 1893 I made the Jamaica, L. I., “Victory,” for the sol- dier monument erected there. Fig. E. The next work I fin- ished was “Solon,” in bronze, for the Library of Congress, Fig. F.
Early in 1895 we discussed, in the Sculpture Society coimcil, the holding of a large sculpture Salon, in the Vander- bilt Galleries. It was decided to abandon the project. I was voted down, because we did not seem to have enough money. But I refused to despair; and, going over to Short Hills, N. J., I persuaded Mr. Pitcher, of Pitcher and Manda, Florists, to join us with a flower display. I then enlisted the aid of Nathan F. Barrett, of New Rochelle, the big-hearted Landscape- Architect. Then I persuaded Thomas Hastings, the now famous architect, to join us. Together, we three planned an Italian Garden, in the midst of which to exhibit the sculp- ture, Pitcher and Manda contributing a superb display of flowery plants, palms, roses, etc. The show opened in May, 1895* proved to be the finest exhibition of sculpture given anywhere — as far as the garden setting was concerned — and realized fully our aim: to show the possibilities of sculpture as an aid to the beautifying of private homes.
One day, shortly after the organization of the Sculpture Society, there came up the subject of showing the public, by a series of articles in the press, which statues were, in the estimation of the best artists, the good and bad statues, in

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New York City, and why they were good or bad. Some one suggested that I, as the Secretary of the Society, do this work. I suggested Mr. Ward, as President, do it; but he suggested I do it; Saint-Gaudens also said I ought to do it. Reluctantly I did it, more as an educational move than to get in the lime- light. So, I wrote a series of articles for the Art Interchange an art magazine of New York, in which I gave illustrations of about twenty-five statues; and, analyzing them, gave, not merely my own views, but the views prevalent at that time among the artists, as to their goodness and badness. But, as this work, and my incessant “boosting” of the Society brought my name before the public more and more, it aroused the envy and jealousy of a number of the less intelligent mem- bers, some of whom saw to it that I was even attacked in the press, even of Philadelphia.
So I felt it would be best to resign, as Secretary of the Society. But Mr. Ward said: “No, you don’t! You allured me to join this Society, and got me into the presidency, when I was not at all enthusiastic about it. Now you stick! You ought to be president of the Society, not I. As for the press, damn the press!” So I agreed to stick. Then I wanted to resign at the beginning of the third year, but Ward objected again.
Finally, in 1895, I entered a competition for the Equestrian Statue of Gen. John F. Hartranft, for Harrisburg, Penna., and won ! I at once decided, that now the chance had come to get out of the office of the secretaryship, which had become pain- fully irksome to me, because my labors were only half appre- ciated, my motives suspected, and my aims distorted, because of lack of vision in the majority of the members. I told Ward of my decision. “Well,” he said, “you can’t go until you find me another secretary!” I foimd Mr. Barr Ferree, a lay- member, who soon took my place.
One day, my old friend, Augustus Thomas, the dramatist, came to my studio. I told him of my luck in winning the competition for the Hartranft statue, and my despair at not finding in New York a studio large enough in which to make an equestrian statue. He at once invited me to be his guest, on his “farm,” at New Rochelle, thirty minutes from New York, saying; “You can make a shed, out next to the bam, and use

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‘Nora,’ the mare, as a model, and make yotirself at home in the house, and stay until yo\ir working-model is finished, and then go to Paris and make the full-size statue there.”
This generous offer almost paralyzed me. But I finally accepted and was soon in Thomas’s backyard hard at work; and, not being a fast worker, it took me three months to finish the working model.
During this time Frederic Remington, the painter, who lived close by, came over frequently to watch me at work. One day he invited me over to his studio and, while I was there, asked: “Ruck! Do you think I could model?” I replied: “I don’t think so, I know you can, and your first sub- ject should be that drawing of ‘The Bronco Buster.’ It was agreed that I obtain for him a modelling stand, wax and tools, and the result was he soon was at work modelling that sub- ject, of which he sold about 300 copies, in bronze! More- over he made about a dozen other small groups of western life.
Though Thomas and I had been friends since our boyhood days, I never learned to know him as well as I did during the three months of living under his own roof. While he is never devoid of a serious and altruistic aim, he is one of the wittiest men in America; his kindness to his family, even to his broth- ers and sisters, has been extraordinary and his patience, often worthy of a saint, in more ways than one. In short, after a friendship of fifty years, unbroken by a single word of acerbity. I have found him, not only a genius of a high order, but a real man. For, besides his admirable dramas, which are likely to out-endure any so far written by an American, he has shown himself one of the finest orators of this epoch, his oration over the bier of Charles Frohman on the day of his funeral services in the Synagogue, having been a masterpiece which highly emotioned all present; so that the powers that be, in Tammany Hall, urged him to run for Governor of the State, for the U. S. Senate, Congress, etc., all of which he refused. Besides that, he is a writer of fine style; a painter of no mean skill; and a delineator of character in sculpture that puts some of the professionals to shame. In short, if any man in America mer- its the sobriquet — “Admirable Crichton,” it is Augustus Thomas. He could have become great in any one of the arts.

Fig. J.

DY RuCKSTULL.

America Welcoming, the Xation'^.
From nve-font model for a Quacirik'a. Enlarged to thirtj- feet, and placed on the dome of the Government budding, Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, of 1901. Notice vmged cherubs driving the four horses.

Fig. K. by Ruckstlll.
Glory to the Conquered!
Group on Confederate Monument, Baltimore. Symbolizing the dying of the Con- federate Army in the arms of Fame.

Glorious 'tis to wear the crown Of a deserved and pure success.
But he who knows how to fail, has won A crown whose lustre is no less ! ”

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529

if he had chosen to devote to it a lifetime of effort instead of to the Drama.
Having finished the Hartranft model, I returned to New York, and, in December, 1896, was back in Paris, the city ador- able! For there, in the “Capital of the World,” I felt at home, felt it was my “Second Fatherland”! Because, though well aware of its seamy side, I had learned the truth of what Emer- son already had said about it:
So a man who looks at Paris says: If I should be driven from my own home, here, at least, my thoughts can be consoled by the most prodigal amusement and occupation which the human race in ages could contrive and accumulate.
I had in my previous six years of sojourn there, learned that, let a man’s intellectual or spiritual plane be what it might, — hedonism or heroism — there, in Paris, he could find a larger circle to receive him, and commune with him, than in any other city on earth, and that nowhere else could a human being more easily learn to be — either a mollusc or a man !
And, so, I left New York with a gay heart, but against the shrewd coimsel of wise, old Ward, who advised me to huUd a studio in New York; stay there; and quietly “saw wood!” Had I followed his advice — I knew it was wise — I would have been far more wealthy and successful, perhaps, but scarcely have had a life as rich and as happy. For, I was to return again to Paris for two years, and once more for two years, thus making my sojourn in Paris twelve years in all, each filled with joy and rich experience, though losing thereby many chances to make money, and gaining the ill will of all the Bronze foimders, who did not like my having so much art work cast abroad.
During these twelve years of study, and monument mak- ing, in Paris, I came in touch with some of the greatest artists of France, and often discussed problems of art with them, and began the solution of the .Esthetic problems treated in this book. From this, my second sojornn in Paris, I returned in 1897, with my completed model of the Hartranft statue, which was cast in New York in bronze. Fig. G.
In 1899 J- Q- A. Ward, President of the Sculptme Society, Charles R. Lamb, the architect, and lay member of the soci- ety, and myself, persuaded the Tammany City Government to

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set aside $30,000 for the erection of a Triumphal Arch, on Fifth Ave. and 23d St., to honor the home-coming of Admiral Dewey and his fleet. The plans were made by Chas. R. Lamb, and were discussed on board Louis Nixon’s yacht, while steam- ing around New York harbor, with Randolph Guggenheim, Bird S. Coler, then comptroller, and Mr. Nixon. These politi- cians, acted like statesmen, and royally, giving us $30,000 without any string to it, and leaving the entire project to us. We then persuaded the rest of the members of the Sculpture Society to make their models for the statuary on the arch for nothing — ^in the interest of American art.
Mr. Lamb was made the architect, and I the general man- ager. The work was done with tremendous rush and anxiety, since Dewey and his fleet were every day so many miles nearer, and we had begun late; but, in spite of heart-breaking set-backs, a “strike” of the plasterers, etc., it was finished in six weeks! The strain nearly wrecked Lamb and myself. But, on the evening before Dewey passed under it, the Sculp- ture Society had finished one of the finest arches ever erected in the world, as far as we have any record of arches, thanks to Lamb’s splendid design, and the devotion of the sculptors to the purpose of the Society to lift the art of the country up to a higher level. The patriotism shown by all on this work, all without pay, and some expense to each, is worthy of aU praise, and merits recording here.
That this magnificent arch was not re-erected in granite, to be a permanent memorial to oiir sailors, and because of petty politics, will be a blot on the escutcheon of New York City, imtil it is re-erected. It is not too late now, Mr. Lamb still having both the plans and the abihty. My contribution is shown in Fig. W., “The Army” — on the right of the pic- ture. The left group, “The Navy,” was made by Geo. E. Bissell, now ‘ ‘ among the majority I ’ ’ The ‘ ‘ Naval Group, ’ ’ sur- motmting the Arch, was the work of J. Q. A. Ward. The group on the left of the Arch, symbolized “The Triumphal Return,” by Chas. H. Niehaus; the one on the right, by Karl Bitter, symbolized “The Combat”; on the rear of the Arch was “De- parture for the War,” by Philip Martini, and “Peace,” by Daniel C. French. Besides these the following sculptors do- nated models for the work :

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531

HERBERT ADAMS HENRY BAERER JOHN J. BOYLE GEO. T. BREWSTER CASPAR BUBERL H. K. BUSH-BROWN THOS. SHIELDS CLARKE WILLIAM COUPER JOHANNES GELLERT J. S. HARTLEY

RALPH GODDARD C. F. HAMANN F. W. IC-^LTENBERG ISIDORE KONTI CHARLES A. LOPEZ H. A. LUKEMAN FREDERICK MOYNIHAN W. O. PARTRIDGE E. C. POTTER FRANK PACKER

About this time, Mr. James Brown Lord, architect of the Appellate Court Building, 25th and Madison Ave., called me to his office and asked me to work out a scheme for the sculp- ture decoration of that fine building. I did so, choosing all the subjects, making a coherent scheme ; wrote out a thesis, fixing the prices, etc. When Mr. Lord found that the Four- teen Judges of the Court had adopted my scheme, without the change of a comma, he was so elated to have the problem that troubled him most solved for him, that he put the carrying out of the scheme in my hands. There were 17 parcels of sculp- ture. I retained one for myself, and selected 16 sculptors, members of the Sculpture Society, to do the rest, naming a committee of four, to supervise the harmonizing of the differ- ent statues, etc. : Mr. Lord, as Chairman, Daniel C. French, Chas. Niehaus, and myself as secretary. My contribution is shown in Figs. H and I, “Wisdom” and “Force.”
In 1899, again at the suggestion of Chas. R. Lamb, who has always been an active initiator, I wrote to the President of the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, gently chiding him and his Directors, for not having provided money for a sculptur- esque decoration of their buildings, grounds, etc. A corre- spondence followed. The net result was the leading directors came to New York; the Sculpture Society gave them a din- ner; and, after dinner, I had the honor of showing them, by the help of lantern slides, the progressive use of sculpture at every exposition of the world since 1851, held in London; and they went home and quickly set aside $225,000 for sculpttue. Nearly all of this went to the members of the Sculpture Soci- ety; who, by this time, had become convinced of the soundness of my policy of uniting them into a peace-making and art- developing body. But, such is the strangeness of h uman

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nattire, the more Ward, Lamb and I did for them, the more were most of them jealous, and envious of our mere newspaper notoriety, which inevitably came to us — so long as we were active in pro bono work, but which was of no financial bene- fit to us whatever.
I now was badly in need of a rest, so, the following spring, 1900, I went on a delayed wedding trip to Europe, taking with me the commission to make a working model for a “Quad- riga” for the top of the dome of the Government Building, of the Exposition at Buffalo, which I made in Paris, Fig. J. After that I went with my wife to Spain, the Riviera, Egypt, Greece, Italy and back to France, being gone nine months.
In 1891, I made the group, 14 feet high, “Gloria Victis,” for the “Confederate Monument,” at Baltimore, Fig. K., a replica of which was erected at Salisbury, N. C.
In 1902, I was made Director of Sculptme for the World’s Fair, St. Louis, that being my home town, and I having friends there. I elaborated a plan. A committee, composed of J. Q. A. Ward, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Daniel C. French, so highly approved my plans that D. R. Francis, the President of the Fair, full of elation, grabbed the report from Ward’s hands and shouted; “Bully! That strengthens the Fair!” But, shortly after, the conditions out there be- came so irksome to me, that I resigned, after four architects had handed in their resignations.
Then followed the “Defense of the Flag,” Confederate war monument for Little Rock, Figs. L and M. ; “Phoenicia,” for New York Customs House. Then “John C. Calhoun,” for Hall of Fame, Washington, Fig. N. ; equestrian statue of Gen. Wade Hampton, Columbia, S. C., Fig. 0 ; “Woman’s Monument,” Columbia, S. C., Fig. P.; “Soldier Monument,” Petersburg battlefield; “Mclver, ” “Fighting Educator,” Raleigh, N. C.; etc., “Three Partisans Generals” monument, Columbia, S. C.; original sketch for a “Lincoln Apotheosis,” Fig. Q. ; Sublime Gothic Dome, for Lincoln Monument, Fig. R. ; plaster model for a “Lincoln Apotheosis,” Fig. S.; statue of “U. M. Rose,” of Arkansas, now in Hall of Fame, Washington, Fig. T; “Dewey Triumphal Arch,” Fig. U; statue of “Minerva,” for “Battle of Long Island Monu- ment,” Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, Fig. V; complete

Fig. X.

BY RUCKSTULL.

^^ARBLE StATVE OF JOHN C. CalHOUN.
In Hall of Fame, ’Washington, D. C.
In the act of saying: “Gentlemen of the Senate, the Constitution must be obeyed, in order that states rights and the Union may be preserved!"

St aluc of the ( 'leneral jjl.iceil u\ the State House |)ark, at t 'olum^ »ia, S. ( , near u here h<' ts hurieil . “ I 1a M l’ TON Hiuics A Cj \ i N ’
%\rote the PfH‘t of the Uay, at the uiivcihuK.

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533

“Battle of Long Island Monument,” Fig. W; “America Re- members,” part of Civil War Monument at Stafford Springs, Conn., Fig. X; Design for “National Peace Monument,” Fig. Y.
As I said before, in 1914 I was allured to give an address, on “Social Art,” before the men’s “Open Table,” in the National Arts Club, in which I made a strong drive against the un-social, selfish. Modernistic art, and this address, as I said in the preface to this book, led to the creation of the magazine, “ The Art World.”
I must now relate one tragedy in my career as a sculptor. For some years I had had in mind a conception for a monu- ment to Lincoln, of which I had made drawings — Fig. Q being one — and which a few friends had urged me to carry out. I submit this crude drawing, showing changes made in it, to prove that the original composition is mine, and could be carried out by any good modeller — as far as concerned the making of a preliminary “Working Model.” Also, I submit this drawing to stop the mouths of those who, because they help a too busy sculptor, in carrying out a certain work, which they, by themselves, could never conceive, but who talk glibly about sculptor’s “ghosts,” and claim that they did this and that, for Ward, or Saint-Gaudens, or French, etc., a de- spicable kind of self -advertising, and at the same time a calum- niating of the sculptor, whose shoes they are scarcely worthy of tying. Most of these “ghosts,” as they are called, are men who, when left to themselves, never are able to conceive a first-class piece of sculpture, or even carry out the concep- tion, in fine style, could they have the conception handed to them on a gold platter.
When Rodin finished modelling his finest bust, of ‘ ‘ Madame Vicima,” Fig. 130, he had Escoula, a clever sculptor, carve it in the marble. It was soon rumored about that the lest part of that work was done by Escoula. Yet, no one ever did any more realistic modelling than Rodin, when he wanted to, but which he did not always do.
I could give a number of equally irritating stories, involv- ing the “assistants” of Ward, Saint Gaudens, French, etc., and myself. But no assistant ever did anything for me that I did not control, from start to finish, and no man ever com-

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pletely finished a hand or a head for me, or completely carved a marble for me.
For these reasons I do not believe in giving any “assist- ant” any special credit by naming him here. Moreover, if I named one, I would have to name all of them.
It is time someone should expose this evil practice of these moron “ghosts,” who are the “betes noires” of reputable sculptors.
Finally, a grand monument to Lincoln, for New York City, was talked about, while I was editing the Art World. Knowing that the magazine would end, when its main purpose was achieved: the giving a body blow to modernism in art, I longed to make a working model of my conception. Being too busy with writing, I obtained the services of a clever sculptor as a modeller, I seeing him once a week to guide the work according to my drawing. The result was, the group illus- trated in Fig. S.
After exhibiting this model — about 5 feet long — in the show window of the Gorham Jewelry house, on Fifth Ave. and 37th Street, I sent it to the 1920 spring exhibition of^ the Architec- tural League, where it was finely installed. But, since there is a destiny which shapes our end-rough hew them as we may — ^before the doors opened to the public, fire broke out, and destroyed my model, along with the rest of the exhibition !
My conception represents Lincoln on his bier, covered with a great cloth, bordered by eagles, while a palm of glory and a wreath of immortelles rest on his body. Behind stands winged Fame with an expression of content, because of having received another hero on Olympus, while, by her side, stands newly-arrived America, sorrowing for a lost hero, and bearing a crown in her hand. On the front was the date of his death : “April 15, 1865”; oil one of the sides:
That these dead shall not have died in vain.
And on the other side ;
That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.
And on the rear, Stanton’s remark, at the moment of his passing away:
Now he belongs to the Ages !
This group I intended to be twice life size, and in marble, and to be placed beneath a spiritual. Gothic dome, on the

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535

order of the one designed by the great German architect, Schinkel (1781-1841), Fig. R., and about 150 feet high, and to be placed at the southern end of Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. Such a monument, to the great democrat that Lincoln was, would lend a spirituality to our conception of democracy, and a lifting power, that no other monument in America possesses. But, the gods said; “It is not for you to do!’’ Somebody, some day, will do it!
February 13, 1900, the National Sculpture Society held an exhibition, in its rooms, of tentative designs and projects for the embellishment of a number of public squares and places in, and about. New York City. I made a sketch for a “Na- tional Peace Monument,’’ to be 600 feet high, and to be placed on Inwood Hill, with a cog-wheel Hft up from the Hudson River; also zigzag drives up from the river road. Mr. Chas. R. Lamb made a good drawing of this; and, when placed in the Exhibition, it created much discussion. The New York press published a cut of this drawing, along with cuts of some other projects, and I received so many approvals of my idea, from different parts of the country, that my hopes ran so high that some day I would be able to carry out this project, that I gave much study to it, for a number of years. Finally, going to Paris again, to make my Hampton Equestrian Statue, I took Mr. Lamb’s drawing with me and had a more elaborate, 12-foot drawing made by a yoimg student of the Beaux- Arts, who would have received the “Prix de Rome,” in Archi- tecture that year, if he had selfishly refused to let it go to an older man, with his last chance of winning it having arrived. The name of this young genius was J. L. Fougerousse. He was lost in the World War!
We sent the drawing. Fig. Y, to the Salon of 1904, where it received an “Honorable Mention,” which made me all the more eager to see erected this magnificent project — the great- est tower ever erected, to date, to Peace. But alas! “Man proposes, the Lord disposes!” The World War came — and all my hopes went glimmering !
Briefly: the tower was, finally, to be 1,000 feet high; it was to be of rose-colored terra cotta plates, himg about a frame work of steel, and ornamented with bronze statuary. It was to consist of a “foyer,” in the first story; a lecture and

536

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

music hall, in the second story; and, in the column itself, 20 stories, in each one of which should be illustrated, by paint- ings and sculptured reliefs, and dociiments, each century’s progress in peace, during the Christian era, the triumph of peace to be suggested in the foyer, at the base. The whole was to be surmotmted by a huge bronze Corinthian cap, sur- rounded by observation platforms, and in which would be installed a wireless and a weather observatory, etc., the whole to be surmounted by a revolving glass globe, 40 feet in diameter, in which was to be a powerful revolving light, visible a hundred miles at sea. Around the square base, were to be thirty-six statues: of heroes who died for, and helped to further, the cause of peace, etc. ; and, on the large terrace, were to be groups, of America, Asia, Africa and Europe. Finally, at the base of the column, was to be a group, in bronze, 100 feet high, symbolizing: “America Invoking Peace.” Underneath the whole terrace, were to be all sorts of means for refreshments and amusement, a regular village — designed to earn enough to cover the upkeep of the monument.
This would have furnished the chance for the strongest artists of America, sculptors and painters, to show what they could do, in art — parcels being suggested for one hundred or more of our best artists, giving them a chance to help create the sublimest monument, both in size, quality and intent, ever erected in the history of the world.
But, it was not to be ! Life would have been too full had it all come true. I did not have the social pull to put in motion the wheels needed to revolve, to carry out the project, which would have cost about ten millions in all to complete, in all its details. I tried hard, even with the help of the painter, John Alexander, to get Carnegie to get back of the scheme. But, I finally learned, that he was rarely interested in any large project: which he did not originate. And, so, like Leigh Hunt’s Abou Ben Adhem, I sorrowfully:
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.
My name was originally spelt “Ruckstuhl.” I never liked my name, because it always stamped me as an “outsider,” as far as true Americanism was concerned. Hence, when the Lusitania was torpedoed, in cold blood, by the Germans, who thus earned the status of “Huns,” and aroused in me a hor-

Fig. P.

Woman's Monument.

BY RuCKSTULL.

Placed in rear of State House, Columbia, S. C , symbolizing the Genius of the state, and her children, honoring the Southern Woman for her courage and devotion during the Civil War.

Original Pencil Sketch for Lincoln Monument, SEE Pig. vS.
Showing change made in the composition ot the armss.

PjG* After a Drawing by Schixkel.
Sublime Gothic Dome.
Suggested as a fitting temple to house my group, symbolizing the Apotheosis of Lincoln, Fig, S, and also his noble and lifting ideals for the entire American people.

D

y

>

Showing the dead President on his bier, on April i6, 1865; the two figures in the rear symbolizing that Fame has received another Hero, while America sorrows over a lost one. In front, date of his death: April 15, 1865; in rear, Stanton’s remark: “Now he belongs to the ages!’’; on sules, extracts from his Gettysburg address and from his first Inaugural. To be housed by a sublime Gothic dome, etc. See Fig. R.

p,(. ^ BY RuCKSTUI.L.
Liuekty Monument.
Erected Id commctnorate the Hattie of LonK Island. Donated, and placed on the “Battle in (Ireenwuod Cemetery, Brooklyn,
by Chas. M. Higgins. Showing Minerva, the Goddess of War, Wisdom, Poetry, Light, and the Family, consecrating the Altar to Liberty and saluting the Liberty Statue in New York Harbor, seen in the distance. See Fig. V.

Fig. Y.
Design for a National Peace AIonument.
Original sketch and conception by Ruckstull; this drawing made by J. L. Fougerousse, of Paris. Honorable Mention, Paris Salon, 1904. Tower designed to be 1000 feet high.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

537

ror and an undying disgust for everything German, of this generation at least, I resolved the time had arrived to Ameri- canize my name. I did this at once, by dropping the “h” and making it read “Ruckstull,” changing the hateful “stuhl” into an unmeaning “stulL" None so happy over this as my son, Myron, now a student in Brown University, who had been given various unpleasing nicknames, because of that harsh, Germanized name. When my friend Augustus Thomas, learned what I had done, he said, to a group of friends at the Century Club;
“Well! “Ruck” has gone and done it!” “Done what, this time?” said one. Thomas replied:
“He’s dropped an ‘h,’ and raised ‘1!’”
Moreover, it is my belief that every immigrant, who decides to remain in America and raises a family here, owes it to his children to Americanize his name, as soon as possible, so as to truly incorporate his descendants with the American people, and shield him against that ineradicable prejudice, which exists in every people, against every foreigner who, by keep- ing his foreign-jargon name, implies that he is nothing but a stranger who came here to exploit the country. It would take too much space here to refute all the arguments that can be advanced against this advice.
As I said before, I could have become a pupil of Rodin and would have, had I not, by instinct, been opposed to his point of view, i.e.: that the highest aim of an artist should be to invent some original “personal manner in art, preferably an ugly one, and spend his life in exploiting that manner. In other words, I am, by instinct, opposed to all mannerisms, in the modelling and carving of any statue, and done to make it instantly recognizable as the manner of Monsieur So and So, a practice publicly advocated by the modernists when they, about 1865, fltmg to the breeze their “Red Rag,” bearing the “Red” slogan:
The pursuit of Beauty in art is an antique fad; the artist should not seek beauty; but, in choosing any subject, noble or ignoble, he should express its character — in a personal technique.
Originality in Conception and Composition, of course. But mannerism — in surface technique — never! Hence, I strove to produce works, which should be so impersonal: in

538

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their surface manipulation, that, like the finest Greek statues, they could be ascribed to any first-class modeller or carver — as far as modelling or carving went.
As a final illustration of the stupidity of the “Red” slo- gan — quoted above, for the last time, let me say: that, if we were to select those fifty sculptmes which the greatest minds, by a consensus of opinion, regard as the finest works of sculpttare ever created, before 1865, and which the world could least afford to see perish, we would find that none of those show a striking originality or “personality”: in the surface technique or modelling or carving. As far as the surface manner of modelling of those works goes, they look as if they might all have been carved by one school of very competent crafts- men, presided over by one great artist — poet and designer — as was Phidias, who directed the artists who made the sculp- tures of the Parthenon.
Some of the Greek works in such a list of fifty, might have been made today, whilst some of those made today might have been made by Greeks, as far as surface carving goes, even as to composition and spirit.
The reason is: none of those great artists sought any- thing but an adequate, or a perfect, technique. None were egomaniacs enough to parade any peculiar, and deliberately invented “mannerism,” in surface carving. Example: The ‘ Venus de Milo,” as far as surface carving, or the modelling of her drapery, is concerned, might have been modelled by Rude or Dalou, modem French sculptors, so impersonal, so universal, is the manner of the surface modelling. See Fig. 75 - Her beauty and majesty, derive entirely from the line- composition and proportions of the forms: in face and body — her style. And yet, during both the Fran co-Prussian and the World Wars, the French Government felt that, of all the statues in the Louvre, this one could least be spared by the world and so : they walled her up in a crypt imder the walls of the Louvre ! It was a national confession that, be the temporary vagaries of the Paris artists what they might be, deep down in the French soul, there is an active sympathy for the impersonal, the universal: if it ends in majesty and sublime Beauty.
What is trae of sculptures, is true of pictures, as distin- guished from mere ‘painting” stunts. If we were to hang in

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539

one hall the fifty pictures, regarded by the majority of cul- tured people of the world as the greatest pictures now exist- ing, we would find that, as to manner of painting, they would look as if Raphael or Leonardo could have directed their cre- ation. And whatever “personality” crept into the technique of those works; flowed into them, unconsciously. The true per- sonality, of each artist, manifested itself in each, but not so much in the painting of each subject, as in the conception and in the composition of the lines and color-masses, and in the expression of the works. We would see that, while each artist had an unconscious manner, in “writing a page ” with his brush, a natural technical manner, we would nevertheless no- tice that they strove rather to eliminate that personal element in their manner and to achieve an impersonal manner, a man- ner common to all great artists of the past. That is why so many “techniques” of the old masters are so nearly alike.
Today, on the contrary, since 1865, painters have stupidly been insisting on each one making his “hand-writing with the brush” so howlingly different and “personal,” that they should be instantly recognizable as the work of Jones, Brown, or Smith; and, so, we have more and more mere “paintings,” and less and less — ^great pictures. And a study of fifty of such ancient sculptures and fifty pictures, would allure the pub- lic to laugh at the silly, sterile doctrine; that the parading by an artist of his petty “personality,” in the shape of puerile surface technical stvmts, should be the first commandment to be held aloft in the world of art! Geo. Sand must have felt thus when she wrote :
The great aim which we should all piu^ue, is, to kill in us that great evil, “personality,” which consumes us.
After finishing, in New Rochelle, on the “Farm” of my old friend Augustus Thomas, the one-third-size “working model” of my equestrian statue of Gen. John F. Hartranft, now at Harrisburg, Pa., I took it to St. Leu, near Paris, and had a clever French sculptor, Tholenaar, help me in model- ling the full size group, he working on the figure of the General, and I m akin g the horse. When we came to finishing the model- ling he, one day, tried to put a little “mannerism” in the dra- pery. I at once stopped him, and asked: “Why do you do that?” He replied: “Pour y mettre un peu d’esprit.” (To

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put some cleverness into it.) “No, no!” I replied, “what you aim to do is — to put in some, of what you call, ‘style,’ isn’t it?” “Yes,” he replied. “Well,” I said, “all the style I want in this work, is in it already — in the composition. As for details,
I want you to copy nature as she appears, devoid of all ‘es- prit,’ or personal mannerism of any kind.” And thus the work was carried out. If there is now observable any sort of manner in the work, it flowed into it unconsciously. Fig. G.
This illustrates my point of view: — that all serious statu- ary should be devoid of any sort of deliberately invented man- nerism — in order that the idea, the sentiment, or emotion to be conveyed by the work, should penetrate quickly into the soul of the spectator, imchecked by any silly, petty, manner- istic tricks, acting as mere question-marks: as to why the artist did his modelling, or painting, thus or so, and which would most likely be obnoxious to future generations. This is the point of view held by the greatest artists of Periclean Greece and of the Italian Renaissance but opposed, today, by the topsy-turvied modernists.
Since the surface technique of my sculptures is deliberately devoid of all personal manner and looks as though any com- petent sculptor could have modelled them, there is no manner- ism there to criticize, except that a modernistic egomaniac would criticize the Almighty for having made the surface of a rose petal “commonplace,” like Baudelaire, who criticized the daily sunsets as “deadly dull and commonplace and a bore!” Hence, all that remains to criticize is the composition and spirit of my works. These I leave to the public, free to compare them with the same kind, by sane Americans.
I expect to be criticized for much in this book. For, one man will say: “What’s the use of talking of the past, and charging present windmills?” But that is the language of a “pussy-footer.” Another will say: “Forgiveness brings more happiness than condemnation.” That is true. But what James Bryce said is also true:
A chief duty of the Good citizen is: to be angry when anger is called for, and to express his anger in deeds.
And this holds good in the field of art, more than in poli- tics, since art is more important than politics. The question

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE

541

is not whether what we say is harsh, but — is it true ! And, we must always find consolation for any criticism of ourselves in the thought of the Concord Sage:
Success treads on every right step. For, the instinct is sure that prompts a man to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns, that in going down into the secrets of his own mind, he has de- scended into the secrets of all minds.
And again:
When the spirit chooses you for a Scribe, to publish some Com- mandment, if it makes you odious to men, and men odious to you, you shall accept that loathesomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the lamp; the man must solve those questions, though he die!
And now, in taking leave of the public, it pleases me to say: Life, as I grew older, became ever more tolerable and sweet to me: as soon as, like a Butterfly unfolding from its chrysalis, I slowly, and oscillatingly, worked myself, with a backslide now and then, away from purely material, fleshy and un-altruistic aims, and gradually grasped the full mean- ing and majesty of the “^Esthetic Ideal”: that of helping, to the extent of my leisure, by my thought and work, to contrib- ute to the transforming of this world into a Paradise of Beauty.
Before I grasped, and also adopted, this, the highest of all ideals — the Brahmins, and aU their offsprings, to the con- trary notwithstanding — I used to have moments of black pes- simism. But not since I found that ideal, which at once gave to life the glorious aspect of an aurora at sea, on a June morn- ing. Thenceforth, every creative thought seemed rational and worth while, and every sort of altruistic energizing became justified. I also had my “Lost Illusions,” but they were petty ones, and of a superficial kind. For, I have found most nor- mal men only partly selfish, even imder great economic pres- sure, the greatest enemy to the growth of virtue on earth, and have foimd many who were manly and heroic. I found women less intuitive — except in matters of love — and more sympa- thetic generally, than I was, early in life, led to believe, and often more than generous; and I owe them much. And, after all its pro’s and con’s have been philosophically equationed, life remains a sublime experience, in my evolution from a mere germ, to what I hope is an immortal soul, destined for a

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progressive enjoyment of the unimaginable beauty that, it seems certain, must exist in the stellar orbs, vast in numbers and in size, which, in £in endless procession, wing their way through silent, infinite space!
Therefore, as I look back, with imalloyed satisfaction — tempered only with a regret at the silly mistakes I made, in a long life, rich with experiences of all sorts — I can sincerely quote the beautiful lines of my old friend. Will De Ford, of St. Louis:

How fondly memory wanders where the feet no more may tread, Into vistas dim, and haunted by the past’s unquiet dead;
With familiar phantoms trysting, sad to stay, yet loathe to part — • From spots o’er-run by broken, trailing tendrils of the heart!

INDEX

A
Abbey, Henry E., 40 About, Edmund, quoted on Delacroix, 26s
Abstraction in art, 187 n. ; opposes representation, 187; a departure from Nature, 188 ff. ; the evolution of “abstract art,” 189 ff.; French novelty-mania, 191-2, 193: the step- child of modernism, 192; reflation of beauty to second place in art, 193 ff. ; the modernistic art party and the Academy in France, 195 fif.; Rodin's “The Age of Brass,” 198-9; tempo- rary success of the modernists in France, 202, 203; unreal and fantas- tic forms of abstract art, 203 ff.; abstractionist theory of creation, de- void of imitatation, points to social disaster, 208; insanity and moral cor- ruption of the abstractionists, 209, 213; the harm done to art by, 214 Adams, Herbert, sculpture by, 470 .<Esop, his hunchback, 15 iEsthetic culture, world leadership in, 487 ff.
“Age of Brass, The,” of Rodin, 198-9, 373, 383, 390, j j j
Alexandre, Arsine, quoted on decad- ence in art, 229-30
America, cult of the commonplace in, 446 ff. ; admitting foreign pictures to, 472 ff. ; opportunity of its statesmen and business men to assume a world leadership in art and aesthetic cul- ture, 487 ff., 492 ff._
American art, the spirit of, 475: nign level of, 484-6 : should be encouraged by the American business man, 489- 90
American museums, should be closed to modernistic art, 51 1 American sculptors, ego-mama among, 412-3: war among, 525 Americans, examples of noble works of art by, 462 ff.
Architecture, ornament in Greek, 10^ 7; styles in, 153-4: influence of social needs on, 155-^
Aristotle’s theory of art, I37~8 Arnold, Matthew, quoted on civiliza- tion, 8; as a stylist, 164

Art, first principles of, 3 ff. ; hunger for Beauty the creatrice of, 4; the high- est thmg man can produce on earth, 5; next to love, the most important thing on earth, after procural of ma- terial necessities, 6; sex-instinct the origin of, 1 1, 12; sadism and masoch- ism in, 13 ff. : originators of modern- istic movement, 16; arriving at a definition of, 37 ff. ; as a Process and a Product, 41 ff. ; the process defini- tion of, 52-3 : emotion the underl3dng element of, 54, 70 ff., 82; the true definition of, 54-6; building of a complete and sound definition of, 57 ff; the simplest solid definition of, 7^; definition of, given in expert testi- mony before customs authorities, 79; what constitutes a great work of, 79, 80, 81; the three points of view from which it has been de- fined, 82: division of art into cate- gories of trivial, clever, and great, 82 ff . : the most important defimtion of, 89; as a language, 89-90, 92 ; divi- sion into decorative and expressive art, 90-2 : line and color, 102 ff. ; style and manner in, 135 ff. ; Aristotle’s theory of, 137-8; the personal ele- ment in, 140 ff. ; the six elements of a work of art, 146; requirements of a work of art, 166; abstract art, 187 ff. ; the law of imitation in nature and its practice in art, 205 ff. ; the func- tion of art and of the artist, 214; a standard of measurement of works of art, 219 ff. ; the six elements in art expression, 220, 312; conception, the first and highest element, 221 ff. ; decorative and expressive art, 221, 225, 244; choice of subject in con- ception of a work of art, 225-31; composition, the second element in art power, 233 ff.; the ten laws of composition, 236-43; expression the third element in, 244 ff.; drawing the fourth element, 258 ff. ; color as an element in, 270 ff. ; technique the sixth element in, 285 ff. ; women as the inspiration of art, 304-5 ; analyses of works of art, and application of the standards of what constitutes a great work of art, 3H ff.; dever-

543

544

INDEX

Art — {CorUinuei)
ness in art, 324 ff.; deformation in form a social menace, 369 ff. ; further analyses of works of art, 416 ff. ; the nude in art, 427-8; the gospel of ugliness, 441 ff. ; independence in art, 455 ff. ; noble works of art by Ameri- cans, 462 ff. ; opportunity of America and its business men to assume a world leadership in art and aesthetic culture, 487 ff. : d^eneracy in, from the alienist’s standpoint, 497-510; the “Reds” in art, 511-16 Art criticism, impertinence of, when not based on a wdl-defined stauid- ard, 37
Art-critics, responsibility of, for ex- cessive modernistic art creations, 162; incompetency of, 309-10, 485 Art-dealers, infliction of sadistic art works on collectors and museums by, 24; responsibility of, for excessive modernistic art creations, 162; shrewd art dealers of Paris, 457 Art for art’s sake, 173-4, 299 ff., 431, 434> 4391 immoi^ effects of, 301 Art measurement, a standard for, 219 ff., 312-13
Art-terms, definitions of, 39 ff.
“Art World, The,” Magazine, ix, x, xi, xii, 517
Arts, the Fine, see Fine Arts, the Awe, the emotion of, loi, iii ff.
B
Babbitt, Irving, quoted on originality, 223, 224
Bacon, Lord, quoted on truth, 35; sub- stitution of inductive for drfuctive reasoning by, 37; his definition of art, 41-2, 147, 189 Ball, Thomas, sculpture by, 469 Bandinelli, excessivism in departure from natiue by, 158; 372, 413 Barnard, George G., sculpture by, 469 Barrett, Nathan F., 526 Bartlett, Paul W., sculpture by, 470 Baudelaire, C. P., affected with masochism and sadism, 14, 15; one of fountain heads of “Modernism,” 14, 192-3; as the father of vers libre, 175; quoted on art for art’s sake,
303
Beautiful, the, constant creation of, by God, 3; Nature a laboratory for the creation of, 4; truth and goodness mere phases of, 490 Beauty, the longing for, the pro- fotmdest hunger of mankind, 4; ar- riying at a definition of, 93 ff. ; division of, into objective, semi- objective and subjective, 98 ff. ; movement, 99 ff., 108-9; bne and

color, 102 S., 122, 125; size and pro- portion, 107-9; proportioned har- mony of line, 109; all beauty is abso- lute, 109, 1 19, 122; melody the fimdamental essence of, 109-10, 124; sensuous effects of, lio-li; emo- tions of mirth, delight, and awe aroused by picturesque, graceful, and sublime beauty, 1 1 1 ff. ; music, the drama, and poetry, 1 15-17; beauty is a reahty, 119-20; spiritualization of, 12^7; poetic beauty, 127-8: modernistic “beauty of the ugly,” 129-31; Plato’s ideas on, 131-3; a final definition of, 133; perfection of, the purpose of artists, 189-90; rel^ation of, to second place by modernists, 193 ff. ; the most im- portant thing in the conception of a work of art, 222-4; the supreme need for, 490 ff.
Beauty, creation of a Paradise of, on the earth, 3 ff., 487, 494 Bell, Clive, eulogy of sadistic art in writings of, 27; definition of art by, 53; ^orts to bolster up modernism, and in particular post-impressionism, and discussion of his theories, 337- _ 49, 351-5- 360-1
B6nard, Prof., quoted on Aristotle’s theory of art, 137-8 B6ranger, quoted on style, 181 Berkeley, Bishop, quoted on the ma- terial world and on metaphysics, „.33-4
Bible, the, authority of, for beauty as an ideal, 3
Bissell, George E., sculpture by, 470 Blanc, Charles, quoted on style, 178 Blashfield, Edwin H., mural decora- tions by, 480-1
Body of man, discussion of relations with mind and soul, 57 ff.
Bolshevist influence in modem French art, 515
Boronali, the doiikey, hoax of picture “painted ” by, in Paris, 457-9 Bosch, comparison of his “Fall of the Damned” with Michael Angelo’s “Last Judgment,” 241 Boulanger, “Marriage,” by, 440 Brown, Henry Kirke, sculpture by, 468
Brownell, W. C., quoted on style, 138, 167, 170, 179-80, 493 Brush, George de Forrest, quoted on Rodin, 394
Brushwork, 296, 297, 298 Bryant, William Cullen, his “Thana- topsis” as a great poem, 85-6 Buddha, 444, 445
Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, sculpture and decoration at, 531-2 Buffon, quoted in style, 139, 140, 146,

79

INDEX

545

Bulwer L)rtton, quoted on manners,
i66
Bians, Robert, quotation from, show- ing simplicity in style, 165 Burroughs, John, article on “The Reds of American Literature,” 511-14 Byron, Lord, his club-foot, 15
C
Cagliostro, 385
Camera, the, limitations of, 188 Carlyle, quoted on truth, 33; on desire for human recognition, 74, 494; on Coleridge, 354-5; on judging of men, 495
Carr, H. Wildon, attempted explana- tion of Croce’s definition of art, 49 Carrere, Jean, quoted on degenerating influence of Rousseau, Chateau- briand, and other French writers, 18-20
Central Park, New York, the finest city park in the world, 268 Cezanne, an art sadist, 16; some works of, showing his taint with sadism, 23-4; first of the post-impressionists, 197; “The Bathers,” by, a degener- ate work of art, 337, 348-9; CUve Bell quoted on, 346; Vollard’s volume on, 346, 349; Zola quoted on, 349-50; Roger Fry quoted on, 350-1 ; a stupendous nobody, 361; discus- sion of an exhibit of his works, 361- 8 ; deformation of form by, 369 Charlatanism, 216, 400 Chateaubriand, quoted on style, 7, 135 Chavannes, Puvis de, “Peace,” by,
, 244-5
Christ, Michael Angelo s nude, 45 Cicero, quoted on need of definitions, 39
Civilization, 7; definitions of, as a process and a product, 8 Clarity in style, 163-4 Clarke, Sir Purdon, quoted on color and drawing, 267 Cleverness in art, 169, 324 ff.
Cole, Thomas, his four pictures al- legorizing “ The Voyage of Life,”9i-2 Coleridge, definition of art by, 42, 53;
quotation from Carlyle on, 354-5 “Collectors” and degenerate art, 366-7 Color, as one of the bases of beauty, 99; supremacy of line over, 102 ff., 122, 125
Color as an element in art, 270 ff. ; diveigent views on the subject, 270- 2; suitability of, to subject handled, 272-3; correctness of values, 273-6; beauty of color composition, 276-7; quality of color, 277-82; harmony of color, 282; vulgarity in, 283; the most beautiful color work, 284 Color and line, 234-6, 259-to, 271

Color school, excesses of, 265-6
Commonplace, cult of, 446 ff.
Composition in art, 139 ff., 150; the second element in art, 233 ff. ; line and color, 234-6; the ten laws of,
236-43
Conception the first and highest ele- ment in art, 219 ff.; originality in, 221-4; beauty the most important thing in the conception of a work of art, 222-4; the beneficent character of the subject the second element of conception, 225-31; expressive force in, 231-2
Congreve, quoted on beauty, 9
Constant, Benjamin, 473
Coolidge, Calvin, quot^ on the fra- ternal spirit, 6
“Coronation of the Virgin, The,” by Ten Eyck, 183
Cortissoz, Royal, quoted on Rodin, 379-81
Cosmic urge, the, 370, 373
Couture, “The Decadence of the Romans,” by, 440
Cox, Kenyon, quoted on Rodin’s “Denaide,” and discussion of his estimate of the work, 406-10; his own work, 481
Crime, increase of, caused by sadism in art, 22
Croce, Benedetto, discussion of his definition of art, 45-52
Cubism, 203
Cultured man, definition of, 88 D

“Dancing Faun,” Lequesne’s, 329, 330, 331
Dante, 35
Darwin, Charles, 74
David, “ The Coronation of Napoleon,” by. 239-40
“Decadence of the Romans, The,” Couture’s, 440
Definitions of things, fixing of, 38-40
Deformation in form in public monu- ments a social menace, 369 ff.
Degas, an art sadist, 16; “Woman Making Her Toilet,” by, analysis of, as a degenerate work of art, 429-31; the degenerate nature of his works, 431 ff.
Degeneracy, increase of, 9-10, 23; in French literature, Jean Carrere quoted on, 18-20; of the “modernis- tic” neurotic cult, 449 ff. ; in art, treated from an alienist’s stand- point, 497-510
Degeneration, the law of, 514-15
Delacroix, weakness of drawing in his work, 264-5
Delight, the emotion of, iii ff.

546

INDEX

Delsarte, definition of art by, 54, 76:
his theory of man as a “ Trinity,” 57 Del Sarto, his “Last Supper,” 83 Democritus, quoted on truth, 33 “Descent from the Cross, The,” by Rubens, 1 13-15
“Descent from the Cross, The,” by Vicenzo, 1 13-14
Dewey Arch, the, New York, 530-r “Doctor, The,” by Luke Fildes, 77, 333-7
“Doing the Split,” Rodin’s, 23 Donkey Boronali, hoax of picture “painted” by, in Paris, 457-9 Dordogne, prehistoric art in caves of, 187
Drama, the, rousing of emotions by,
1 16
Drawing, the fourth element in art, 258 ff.; more important than color, 259-ho, 262, 271; methods of, 260; precision and force in, 262-3, 266; in sculpture, 266; movement and pro- j portion, 266, 267; refinement in, 269 Dubois, Paul, 200
Durand, Asher B., landscape art of,
482-3
E
Eakins, Thomas, “The Chess Players,” by, 481
Easel picture, the, falling into dis- grace of, 439
Edison, Thomas A., quoted on slow acceptance of new ideas, 490 Effects, concentration of, in composi- tion, 238-40
“Ego,” the, 58-9, 61-4, 97, 98, 494-5 Ego-mania, 17 ff., 75. 170. 43i, 505:
among American sculptors, 412-13 Eiffel Tower, the, 488 Ellis, Havelock, quoted on sex-instinct as origin of art, 1 1 ; definition of art by, 38; quoted on Plotinus and art, 40; quoted on Croce, 52; quoted on metaphysical formulas, 6r Emerson, quoted on natm-e, 6, 17, 72, 91 ; on style, 7; on the true artist, 81 ; on beauty, 98; on impersonal style, 176
Emotion, the underlymg element of aU art, 54-6, 70 ff., 82: arriving at a definition of, 57 ff. : as differentiated from feeling, 64-6; negative and positive emotions, 66; noble and ignoble emotions, 66-7; definition of, 70; pleasurable emotions, 338; varia- bility of, 356-60
England, adoption of modernistic art gospel in, 17
Erasmus, quoted on definitions, 40 Erechtheion, Athens, cap of, 148 Esoteric books, eulogy of sadistic art in, 27-8

Expression, the urge to, 17 Expression, the third element in ar.-, 244 ff. ; expression of actions or enio tions, 244-50; of spirit of the action or thought, 244-5, 250-1; sonality of the artist, 245, 251 ff. “Expressionism,” 21
F
Faure, Elie, quoted on Velasquez, 289, 292, 293-4
Faust, 441, 442, 452, 453 Feeling, as differentiated from emo- tion, 64-6; definition of, 70 Fildes, Luke, his picture, “The Doc- tor," 77; analysis of it, as a great work of art, 333-7
Fine arts, the, what arts are included in, 6
Flaubert, 299, 300 Force in style, 164-6 France, Anatole, ridicule of meta- physicians by, 34
France, ego-mania and modernism in, 170; beginnings of abstract art in, 191 ff. ; novelty-mania in, 191-2, 193: the modernistic art party and the Academy, 195 ff. ; the impressionists,
196, 197; the post-impressionists,
197, 198; attempt to destroy the
Academy, ff. ; Academy shorn of
power but keeps on the even tenor of its way, 202 ; economic pressure the basis of the modernistic move- ment in, 202-3; temporary success of the modernists in, 202, 203; a suc- cession of fads in, 203; elevation of mere personal technique above style and composition in, 299 ff. ; Bol- shevist influence in art of, 515
Franco- Prussian War, influence of, on French art, 196-7
French, Daniel C., great works of art by, 462, 467-8
French Academy, work of, in fixing definitions of French words, 39 French Revolution, the, 223 Freud, quoted on sex-perversion, ii Fiy, John Heming, 521-2; figure paint- ings by, 476-8
Fry, Roger, eulogy of sadistic art in writings of, 27: quoted on C6zanne and on Zola, 350-1; a pretentious art prophet or a victim of sadism,
355 .
Futurism, 203; anarchistic tendencies
of, 353
G
Gaugin, sadism of, 25; 513, 514 Gautier, Thdophile, and art for art’s sake, 299, .’^oo
Generation, the law of, 514-15

INDEX

547

GeoSroy, “A Visit,” by, analysis of, as a great work of art, 311-15 Gerhart, Karl, statue of Nath^ Hale by, 471
German artists, sadistic groups of, 16 Ghirlandajo, his “Last Supper,” 83 Gilbert, Cass, quoted on beauty, 493 Giorgione, his “Venus,” 127, 150-2; “The Concert,” by, analysis of, as a clever work of art, 315-18, 321-2 Girardin, Emile, 202 “Girl Cutter of Augsburg, the,” a sadist, 13
God, the urge to imitate, 3; creation of the Beautiful by, 3, 6; Beauty the vestment and expression of, 93 Goethe, quoted on possession of germ of production, 17; his definition of art, 42, 147, 189: quoted on emotion, 56: on inspiration, 69; on the func- tion of art and the artist, 214 “Grand,” or universal, style, the, 158-
60
Greece, oripnal ideas from, 35 Greek architecture, ornament in, 106- 7
Gros, Baron, 313, 455 Guizot, quoted on civilization, 8; on French civilization, 35
H
Haldane, J. B. S., quoted on psy- chology, 58
Harmony in composition, 242 Harris, Prof. W. H., quoted on Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” 420-1 Harrison, Birge, quoted on technique,
295
Hastings, Thomas, 526 Hedonism, 302, 305; Paris the centre of, 16
Hering, Hen^, sculpture by, 471 Hocking, William Ernest, his defini- tion of an emotion, 64 Holbein, “George Gisse,” by, 296, 475 Holmes, Oliver JVendell, quotation from, showing simplicity in style, 165 Homer, 180; the “Iliad” of, 7 Howe, William H., cattle paintings by, 482
“Hudson River School,” the, 473, 483 Hugo, Victor, 32, 300; quoted on style, 178; on technique, 299; on art for art’s sake, 303-4
Human body, mutilation of, in pic- tures and statues as effect of sadism, 15, 16 fif., 36: sacredness of, 36 Huneker, James, quoted on Cezanne, 361 ff.
Huxley, quoted on knowledge, 310 Hyslop, 'Theo. B., article on“ Post-IUu- sionism and Art in the Insane,” 497
fif.

I
Idealism in art, 150, 151, 152, 182 £F.;
modernistic, 184-5 “Iliad,” the, 7
Imitation, as a law of nature, and its practice in art, 205 ff. ; art began in,
327
Immoral effects of “art for art’s sake ” work, 301
Immorality and crime, increase of, caused by sadism in art, 22 Impressionism, 190, 288 Impressionists, the, 196, 197 Independence in art, 455 ff. “Individualism,” 17; innate vicious- ness of, 20-1; in style, 160-1; in technique, 288
Inness, George, 294; landscape art of, 482
Insane, post-illusionism and art in the, treated from an alienist’s stand- point, 497-510
Intellectual pleasure, the sources of, 209-11
“Intelligentsia,” the so-called, 9, 134;
moral morons among, 16-17 Invention, the law of, 206 Ives, Halsey C., 393
J
“Jack the Ripper,” a sadist, 12 James, Henry, (Quoted on desire for human recogmtion, 74 Johnson, Dr., his definition of art, 42 Johnson, Eastman, paintings by, 479 “Jupiter Otricoli,” the, in the Vatican, 87, 183-4, 242
K
Kaimes, Lord, quoted on emotion and passion, 65
Kant, Immanuel, his “Categorical Imperative,” 38
Krafft-Ebing, cited on sex-perversion, 1 1 ; quoted on sadism and maso- chism, 12, 13, 14
L
La Farge, John, mural decorations by, 480
Lamb, Charles R., case of, with cus- toms authorities involving definition of a work of art, 78-80; architect of Dewey Arch, 530 Lampton, Wm. J., 172 “Landscape in Provence,” Cdzanne’s,
24
“Last Judgment, The,” Michael An- gelo’s, 241
“Last Supper, The,” Leonardo’s, 83, 84, 241-2, 246
“Last Supper, The,” comparison of Leonardo’s and Tintoretto’s, 241-2

548

INDEX

"Last Supper, The,” comparison of the various paintings of, 232, 246-8,
257
Leighton, Sir Frederick, 289-90; defi- nition of art by, 43 ; quotrf on basis of art, 56; quoted on forms of art, 123 Leonardo, his "Last Supper,” 83, 84, 241-2, 246: "Mona Lisa,” by, 296, 475
"Liberty in Art,” 455 Life, creation of the illusion of, first ambition of every great artist, 475-6 Line, supremacy of, over color, 102 ff., 122, 125; and color in composition, 234-6, 259-60, 271; use of angular, serpentine and pyramidal lines, 236- 7; methods of making a line, 260; in nature, 261 Lombroso, 431
London, World’s Exposition of 1851 in, 191-2, 489
Longfellow, Henry W., quoted on knowledge and wisdom, 46 Lord, James Brown, 531 Lorr^, Claude, his "Landscape,” 113 Louis XV, 10
Love, a human energy worthy of reverence, 5: sublimity of marriage founded on, 10
M
MacMonnies, Frederick, sculpture by, 469^70
MacNiel, Herman, sculpture by, 470 Mabie, H. W., 220
"Maids of Honor, The,” by Velas- quez, 274, 276, 277, 293, 475; analysis of, as the cleverest painting in the world, 421-7
Man, discussion of physical, mental and spiritual attributes of, 57 ff., 97-8; desire of, for human recogni- tion and to share his emotions with others, 73-6; the cultured, defini- tion of, 88; as the expression of the beautiful and the ugly, 49 1 “Man with a Broken Nose,” Rodin's, 130, 189, 196, 371, 373, 390 Manet, an art rebel, 16; his "Olym- pia,” 127, 150-2; " Breakfast on the Grass,” by, analysis of, as a degener- ate work of art, and discussion of his other works, 315, 316, 317, 318- 24. 332; the trinity of Degas, Manet and Rodin, 431 ff.
Manner in art, confusion of style with, 136, 326; general and personal, 141 ff.; definition of, 149, 182; analysis of style and, 149 ff. ; not of supreme import, 154; responsibility of specu- lators and critics for the ugly and repellent in art, 162; two manners in painting, 478
Marriage, sublimity of, founded on love. 10

“Marriage,” by Boulanger, 440 Martini, Philip, sculpture by, 471 Masochism, 13, 14
Masses, balance of, in composition, 240 Matisse, sadistic works by, 25 Matterhorn, the, 237 Mauclair, Camille, quoted on expres- sion of personal technique, 31; on impressionism, 190
Meaning, clearness of, in composition, 240-1
Mel!arm6, devotee of dogma of ob- scurity, 174
Melody, in style, 166; in beauty, 109-10 Memory, the, 63
"Mephistopheles,” gospel of ugliness of, 441 ff.
Metaphysicians, the, and ®sthetics, 33- 4; and a definition of beauty, 93-4,
123
Metropolitan Museum, Rodin’s “Eve in Despair” unloaded on, but forced out by ridicule, 402
Michael Angelo, as a guide for the artist, 21-2; his nude “Christ,” 45; departure from nature by, 157; his “Moses,” 170-1, 475; "The Last Judgment,” by, 241 ; his “Pieta,” 266
Mill, John Stuart, his definition of art,
« 42
Mind, discussion of its relations with txxly and soul, 57 ff.
Mirth, the emotion of, iii ff. Mnesicles, the Greek architect, 148 "Modelling, beauty of,” senselessness of the expression, 402-3 Modem art as distinguished from modernistic, 313
“Modernism,” Rousseau and Baude- laire fountain heads of, 14, 192; final roots of, in sex-perversion, 15; in France, 170; abstract art the step- child of, 192; the fundamental error in, 222; Clive Bell’s efforts to bol- ster up, 337 ff.; anarchistic tend- encies of, 353
Modernistic art, originators of, 16; in England, 17; responsibility of specu- lators and critics for excessh-ism in, 162; modem art as distinguished from, 313; degeneracy of, 449 ff. ; American museums should be closed to, 511
Modernistic idealism, 184-5 Modernists, their definition of art, 52-4; relegation of beauty to second place in art by, 193 ff.; works of, refused by Paris Salon, 195; attack of, on Society of French Artists, and “academic” art, iq6 ff.; tempo- rary success of, in France, 202, 203; craze of, for peculiaritv of technioue, ,, 295-6
“Mona Lisa,” Leonardo’s, 296, 475

INDEX

549

Moore, George, on exclusion of ideas from artistic works, 226, 295, 300-1 Moran, Thomas, 154 Morons, munbers and practices of, 9- 10; among the “intelligentsia,” 16- 17: meani^ of the term, 134 “Moses,” Michael Angelo’s, 170-1, 475 Motion, the expression of, 249 Movement, as a basic element of beauty, 99 B., 108-9 Mural decoration, 479 fif.
Music, emotions caused by different kinds of, 1 15-17
N
Napoleon I, 121, 134 Napoleon III, 195, 449, 456 National Academy of Design in New York, 460; exhibition of spring, 1925, quality of, 485 National Sculpture &jciety, vii, 517,
525 ff-
Nature, a laboratory for the creation of beauty, 4; beauty and ugliness in, 96; the three categories of things in, 98; dominated by lines, not color 102; abstractionism a departure from, 188 ff.; the laws of, 205 ff.; preserves only the True, the Good and the Beautiful, 487 Neo-impressionism, 203 Nero, Roman Emperor, parallel to modem sadism in, 28-30 New York City, sky line of, 268 New York Independent Exhibition, the, 459-61
Newspapers, encouragement of sadism in art by, 22; and of the propaganda of d^eneracy, 451
Niehaus, Charles H., sculpture by, 469 Nietzsche, quoted on the processes of the aesthetic sense, 210; on man as the expression of the beautiful and the ugly, 491
Nordau, Max, quoted on style, 155: on Delacroix, 265; on Rodin’s Balzac memorial, 376-7; on Rodin,
39S-9
Novalis, quoted on the hiunan body as a temple, 36
Novelty, the desire for, 70; in a work of art, 166; French novelty-mania in art, 191-2, 193 “Novelty-mania,” 21, 368 Nude, the, in art, 427-8
O
Obscurity in art, 174 ff.
Originality, in a work of art, 166; in conception, 221-4: without beauty a social crime, 491-2

P
Paradise of Beauty, creation of, on the earth, 3 ff., 487, 494 Paris, engendering of s^istic art in, 16; aesthetic degenera^ in, 18; gravitation of human mi^ts to, 32; its influence on the thought of the world, 35; the centre of the best and worst of everything, 388; the com- mune of 1871, 389; going back to sanity in art again, 397; the “Na- tional Salon” in, 456 Paris Salon, refus^ of modernistic works by, 195; "Salon of the Re- jected” in, 195, 455, 456 Pascal, Blaise, quoted on style, 181 Perfection, the ideal of, 8 Personality, expression of the artist’s, 251 ff., 538-40; in technique, 286 ff. Pfeiffer, Dr. R. A., on art of the in- sane, 509-10
Phidias, as a guide for the artist, 21-2 Philosophy, lack of progress in, for a thousand years caused by quarrel over meaning of terms, 40, 94 Photography, limitations of, 188 Picknell, W. L., painter of light and sunlight, 484
Plato, confounding of beauty with art by. 38; definition of beauty by, 82, 94: quoted on beauty, 99, 131, 132, 133; his view of truth and goodness, 490
Plotinus, quoted on art, 40 Poe, Edgar AUan, quoted on his “Eureka” as an art product, 57; example of clever poetry by, 85 Poetry, requirements for beautififl, 117 Poetry, “schools” of, 174 “Portrait of himself,” Cdzanne’s,
23-4
Post-Illusionism and art in the insane treated from an alienist's standpoint, 497-510
Post-impressionism, Clive Bell’s ef- forts to bolster up, 337 ff. Post-impressionists, the, 197, 198 Potter, E. C., sculpture by, 470 Power, the lust for, the greatest curse of the world, 487
Prehistoric art in caves of Dordogne, 187
Premier coup, 297, 298 Press, the, encouragement of sadism in art by, 22
Proportion in composition, 242 Public monuments, deformation in form in, a social menace, 369 ff. ; Rodin’s deformation theory carried into monumental sculpture, 374-8; purpose and requirements of public monuments, 413-14; all offensive ones should be destroyed and re- placed, 415

550

INDEX

Pyramid, the Great, awe inspired by, 1 12
R
Raphael, his “Last Supper,” 83; his style the source of his fame, 141; “Sistine Madonna,” by, 188, 235, 243, 250, 261, 268, 273; “The Trans- figuration,” by, 243; analysis of “The Transfiguration,” as the greatest picture in the world, 416-21; as a technician, 425; the “prince of artists,” 427 Realism, 182 ff.
Recamier, Madame, 12 1 “Red” art-ix)liticians, 484, 486 “Reds,” the, in art, 511-16 Religion, desire for beauty the ultimate support of, 4
Remington, Frederic, sculpture by, 469
Renan, quoted on civilization, 8 Representation in art, 207 fi. ; op- posed by abstractionists, 187 ff. Rheims Cathedral, 488 RicheUeu, Cardinal, creation of French Academy by, 39
Rival, Paul, quoted on Croce's defini- tion of art, 49, 50
Rodin, chief of the art sadists, 16; some works of, showing degeneracy and sadism, 23; his “Man with a Broken Nose,” 130, 189, 196, 371, 373) 390: “The Age of Brass,” 198- 9) 373) 383) 39o: sham fight of, for his reputation, 200, 383-4; deforma- tion of the human body by, in his works, 371 ff. ; his “Saint John,” 374; carries his deformation theory into public monumental sculpture, 374- 8; Royal Cortissoz quoted on, 379- 81 ; effect of his works on his foUow- ers, 381-2, 384-5; immortality of certain of his works, 383; the re- mainder will be forgotten or ignored, 383) 397: apotheosis of, helped along by women, 385-6; eroticism of, 386, 392-4; caJl^ the curse of modem art by Saint-Gaudens, 387; effect of early environment on, 389-90; downward tendency of his art out- put, 391; charlatanism of, 395; crazy m his later years, 396; lus “Eve in Despair,” 401-2; his figure “Denaide,” 402 ff.; Kenyon Cox quoted on the “Denaide,” and dis- cussion of his estimate of it, 406-10; deeply in politics, 41 1 ; doomrf most of his works to oblivion, 411-12; the trinity of D^s, Manet and Rodin, 431 ff. ; the prince of mystic pimdits, „474
Rogers, John, sculpture by, 471 Roland, Mme., 455

Romano, Julio, 385; his “Giants” at Mantua, 45 Romanticists, the, 299 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, affected with masochism, 14, 15; one of fountain heads of “modernism,” 14; Carrie quoted on degenerative influence of, 19-20
Rubens, his “Descent from the Cross,”
113-15
Ruckstuhl, Charles S., 520, 521 Ruckstull, F. W., autobiographical sketch and works of, 517-42 Ruskin, suit of Whistler against, 201; quoted on precision and force in drawing, 262
S
Sacher-Masc>ch,i3 Sade, Marqtus of, 12 Sadism, 12; in art, 13 ff. ; manifesta- tion of, in mutilation of the human body in pictures and statues, 15; its encouragement in the press, 22; in- crease in immorality and crime caused by, 22; immorality and signs of insanity in artists practicing, 25, 26; evil ^ects of sadism in art in America, 26; eulogy of, in esoteric books, 27-8; forms of art that fall in category of, 28; historic parallel to, in Emperor Nero, 28-30; has be- come an original cult, 30; invasion of America by, 31-2
Sainte-Beuve, quoted on realism, 185-6 Saint-Gaudens, his opinion of Rodin, 387 : great works of art by, 462-4 Saint-Gaudens, Homer, quoted on art ideals of Augustus S^t-Gaudens, 464
St. Louis World’s Fair, sculpture and decoration at, 532-3 St. Paul, quot^ on love and the church, 15
St. Peter’s Cathedral at Rome, dome of, 1 14
“Salon des Inddpendants, Le,” 455 ff. “Salon of the Rejected” in Paris Salo^ 195, 455, 456 Sand, George, quoted on personality, 539
Sander, Dr. Enno, 520, 521 Santayana, Prof., quoted on meaning of work of art, 38
Sargent, John S., paintings by, 478-9 Schopenhauer, his conception of man, 57-8
Sculptors of America, 462 ff.
Sculpture, drawing in, 266 “Secret, The,” by Titian, analysis of, as a trivial work of art, 427-9 Self-expression, 71-2 Sdvi^d, Mme., 178 Sex-instinct, the origin of art, ii, 12

INDEX

551

Sex-perversion, 10, 449 S.; spread of, in Europe, il; sadism a form of, 12; perverted modernism has its final roots in, 15
Shakespeare, as a guide for the artist, 21-2
“Shaw Monument,” in Boston, by Saint-Gaudens, 462-3 “Significant form,” 340 ff., 351 Simmons, Edward, 481 Simplicity in composition, 241-2 “Sistine Madonna,” Raphael’s, 188, 235. 243. 250. 261, 268, 273 Snell, George S., 519 Snell, Henry B., 519 Society of French Artists, attack of modernists on, 196
Socrates, insistence of, on definitions of

terms, 39
Solomon, King, quoted on creation of beauty, 10
Soul of man, discussion of its relations with body and mind, 57 fi.
Spencer, Herbert, 58; quoted on progress, 5-6; on style, 7, 163, 164- 5 ; cm the m^e up of the universe, 205: on indefinite thinking and care- less reasoning, 516
Spirit, discussion of body, mind, and, 57 2 -
Spiritual, the use of the term, 8-9
Stadelmann, Dr. H., on art of the in-

sane, 510
Stael, Madame de, quoted on power, 487
Stevens, Alfred, definition of art by, 54 Stevenson, R. D. W., definition of art

by, 43
Stevenson, R. L., quoted on the arts.

103 ; on technique, 292 “Stippling,” 297 . , . ,
Style in art, 135 ft. ; confusion of, with manner, and the effort to define, 136 ff., 326; style a departure from nature, 147, 149-50. 156-8: new fashions in, 147-8; definition of, 149, 181-2; analysis of style and manner, 149 ff.; importance of, 154; a de- parture from the commonplace, 155; the universal, or “grand,” style, 158-60; “individual” style, 160-1; the three fundamental elements in effective style, 162; clarity in, 163-4: force in, 164-6; melody in, 166; epochs in, 167 ff. ; exalting power of impersoni, imiversal style, 171-2; the debasing force of personal over- stylization, 173-4: obscurity in, 174 ff. ; the impersonal, 176; the per- sonal manner, 177 ff.; the true way to look at, 179; often confounded with idealism, 182; idealism and realism, 182 ff.; the functions of style, 211-12; style and cleverness, 326 ff. ; rational stylization, 329

Style in writing, 7 Subconscious mind, the, 59760, 63 Subject, unity of, in composition, 237-8 Suetonius, quoted on Nero, 28-9 “Surrender of Breda,” by Velasquez,
238-9. 293. 426, 427
Sylvester, Frederick Oakes, poet- artist, 483
Sytnonds, J. A., quoted on originality, 224
T
Taft, Lorado, reliefs by, 470 Taine, quot^ on maldng of defini- tions, 39; on art standards, 219- 20, 228-9; on the pu^ose of a work of art, and his d^nition of an art work, 248-9; on the Ravenna mosa- ics, 344-5
Tarde, Gabriel, quoted on mutation, 207, 208
Taste, or appreciation of beauty, is relative, 109, 1 19, 120 ff. ; variety in, 355-60
Technique, 43-4; as an element m art, 285 ff. ; meaning of the term, 285-6; personality in, 286 ff.; the instru- ment for expressing living quality, 291; “texture” of, 291; the true gospel of, 292; variety in, 294; re- quirements of an adequate, 294 ff. ; examples of, 296-7; brushwork, 296, 297, 298; “stippling,” 297: premier coup, 297, 298; cleverness in, 298: elevation of mere personal technique above style and composi- tion by the French art world, 299 ff. ; the least important of the elements of a work of art, 305; evil tendencies of the exaggeration of the personal element in, 305
“Temptation of St. Anthony,” Ce- zanne’s, 24
Tennyson, quoted on lies and truth, 96
Thomas, Augustus, 518, 519, 527, 528, 537
Thomas, Dr. E. B., 518-19 Thomas, W. L., 520, 521 Thompson, Vance, quoted on aesthetic satisfaction, 174
Tintoretto, his “Last Supper,” 83, 241- 2
Titian, the color schemes of, 277; “The Secret,” by, analysis of, as a trivial work of art, 427-9 Tolstoy, his book, “What is Art?”, 37; quoted on art faddists, 41, 53; his definition of art, 44-5, 56; quoted on the activity of art, 72; on beauty, 99
“Transfiguration, The,” R,aphaers, 243; analysis of, as the greatest picture in the world, 416-21 Truth, the battle for, 35-6

552

INDEX

U
Ugliness, the gospel of, 441 ff.
Ugly, the so-caJl^ beauty of the, 129-
31
Ultimate, the, search for, 3
Universal, or “grand,” style, the, 158- 60
Utopianism, 6
V
Van Dyke, John C., quoted on line in nature and art, 234, 236: on laws of composition, 239; on the expression of motion, 249; on expression of spirit, 250-1 ; on color, 271, 273-4
Van Eyck, “The Coronation of the Vugin,” by, 183; invention of oil painting by, 278
Van Gogh, sadism in work of, 25
Veidaux, Andr^, quoted on ^ for art's sake, 303
Velasquez, “Surrender of Breda,” by, 238-9, 293, 426, 427; his power in drawing, 263-4; his “Maids of Honor,” 274, 276, 277, 293, 475: his color compositions, 274-6, 277: the most dexterous manipulator of paint, 288-9; his indifference to technique, 292, 293-4; analysis of his “Maids of Honor” as the clever- est painting in the world, 421-7
“Venus de Medici,” I20, 184, 328
“Venus de Milo,” 121, 184, 245, 538
Veron, quoted on metaphysicians and aesthetics, 34; definition of art by, 54; quot^ on style, 18 1; on evolu- tion of decorative airt, 193-4: on s)rmpathy, 2U; on expression, 212; on choice of subject in art aind de- fects in ideas, 230-1 ; on the cause of the emotions excited by a picture, 252; on personal and impersonal art,
254
Vibert, Jean Georges, character of his work, 227

Vicenzo, his “Descent from the Cross,”
I 13-14
Vollard, Ambroise, Pairis art-dealer, his propaganda for profit on C6- zanne's works, 24
Voltaire, his scorn of metaphysicians, 34; quoted on definition of terms, 39
W
Wagner's music, John C. Van Dyke quoted on, 251 Walker, Howard, 481 “Walking Man,” Rodin's, 23 Walpurgis Night, the, 452-4 Ward, J. Q. A., great works of art by, 462, 464-7
Warner, Charles Dudley, quoted on standards of excellence, 220 Warner, Olin L., sculpture by, 472 Watrous, ' Harry W., “The Con- noisseur,” by, 481
Weinmann, Adolph A., sculpture by, 469
Whistler, quoted on nature, 96; Symonds quoted on his manners and style, 154; suit of, against Ruskin, 201; quotrf on subject matter of his works, 225, 226; his portrait of his mother, 279; quoted on independ- ence of art, 280; on technique, 290; on art for ^’s sake, 300 Wiggam, Albert Edward, quoted on the contribution of art to the evolu- tionary process, 437-9 “Woman Making Her Toilet,” by Degas, analysis of, as a degenerate work of art, 429-31
Women as the inspiration of art, 304-5 Writing, style in, 7
Z
Zola, Emile, foolish definition of art by, 144: quoted on Cezanne, 349-50

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