Part 2

The Netherlanders, a free people, were the first to know an art other than the traditional one. In Flanders and Holland, writers, and especially painters, began to speak no longer exclusively of God and the saints, the king and the great, but of the humble, obscure, and nameless multitude. _Genre_ painting revived for the first time since ancient days. It told the everyday life of the middle and lower classes, their somewhat gross joys, their somewhat commonplace sorrows; it showed the ale-house and the mill, the sitting-room and the retail shop. This was not edifying, it is true. The philosophy of this art is low; it hardly widens the spiritual horizon, and is of poor comfort amid the narrowness and bitterness of real life. And yet this art was a forerunner. It denoted a turning-point, the beginning of great and important things. One great king, Lewis XIV., was not deceived about it. With the sharpened keen feeling of the mighty for everything that can encroach on their superhuman dignity, he perceived at once that this new art offended against his kingly majesty. How? There are painters who dare to treat of plebeian subjects! What should that mean? Does art perhaps even fancy that it can be other than a continual homage to the greatness and omnipotence of kings? And, with an annihilating wave of his hand, he banished from his august presence these daring little pictures, these democratic works of Teniers, Ostade, Dirk Hals, and Gerard Dow, whilst uttering the historic words: “_Enlevez-moi ces grotesques._”

But time stands not still; development is achieved. Modern democracy appears, and transposes all the conditions of existence of society and its members. Art cannot escape the general revolution. It experiences its influence spiritually and economically; changes its judgment hall and its mart. We do not realise the tremendous meaning of this change. The court that decided as to the worth of the artist and his work was formerly the small circle of possible patrons—princes of the Church, the great, the courtiers. To-day this court is criticism, professional criticism. In earlier times it was enough for the artist to please a few people, perhaps only one individual, if the latter happened to be a magnate. He had not to trouble himself about the crowd; moreover, the crowd followed docilely the lead from above. When Dante said:

“Credete Cimabue nella pintura Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido, Si che la fama di colui oscura;”—

What did _grido_ mean? What was _fama_? It was the opinion of a court, that of Rome or Pisa, perhaps of Ravenna. We must go to Aretino to discover a specimen of an art critic who was neither a Mæcenas like Leo X. or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or even a painter like Vasari, but merely an audacious spirit who arrogated to himself the right of dealing out praise and blame, and conferring glory in the name of something absolutely novel, in the name of public opinion.

From that time it is professional criticism which suggests to the multitude, and imposes on the mighty, its judgment on the artist. But the criticism is disinterested, or at least can be so. It does not expect of the work of art a direct personal advantage, its own glorification, the vindication of its spiritual and material influence. Its measure, therefore, grows larger and broader. It brings to its office philosophical and æsthetic considerations, which the popes and kings could not know when they gave commissions to the artists, their _protégés_. In order to secure success, the artist must now please the critic—many critics—and the latter pass a verdict on him with perceptions, with taste and spiritual prepossessions that very seldom are those of the bishops and great men.

And as the artist has got another tribunal, he also comes before the public under other material and spiritual conditions, and seeks in other ways a market for his work.

In feudal times, as we have seen, the church and palace were the places for works of art. They were seen there under circumstances little favourable for a purely æsthetic appreciation. In the cathedral people were intimidated by the significance of the vast space, the acts of faith, and the perfume of incense; in the castle, by the magnificent garments of the officials, and the weapons of the guard. It was in 1673 that a “Salon,” _i.e._, a regular art-exhibition, was opened in Paris; and besides the “Salon” public museums were opened everywhere, to which every one had access without invitation or introduction. The artist was now quite independent; he could work without waiting for orders. He no more needed, in order to become known, to crave humbly a visit to his possibly poverty-stricken studio. Here was a definite place where he could exhibit his work to thousands of spectators—connoisseurs, judges, possible buyers. From that time he worked with an eye to the great public which was sure not to be lacking at his regular rendezvous. If the professional critic became his judge, the mass of people became his Mæcenas. Universal suffrage has dethroned Church and royalty, and remains the artist’s only patron.

I say expressly—the only. It still happens that the State, _i.e._, a high official, perhaps a monarch, orders works, assigns to the artist the task of adorning churches and palaces, perhaps even public places and walks, or even creating a monument of political import. But who receives these commissions? The artist pointed out by public opinion, _i.e._, the democratic crowd acting under the suggestion of the critics, who also belong to the crowd. The artist who has gained the advantage of an officially favoured position otherwise than by popular acclamation, who owes it to the whim of a ruler, the mere favouritism of a bishop or some other great personage, is nowadays not esteemed, but despised. He may receive some alms in the shape of money; he may collect ridiculous titles and wretched tags of coloured ribbons, but he will be branded with the name of court-artist, and this name excludes him irredeemably from fame.

The literary man in earlier times lived by the favour of a protector, whom alone he had to trouble about pleasing. Nowadays he lives, through newspapers and books, by the public at large. The dramatic poet had, for his productions, only the subsidised theatre, the theatre royal, which imposed on him its regulations. To-day this theatre is insignificant as compared with the free and independent stage, and the poet need know no other care and consideration than that of getting a good grip on his public. Then the artist had nothing to hope for, unless he served religion, the monarchy, or the aristocracy. Now subjects from these spheres have actually become laughing-stocks—_pompiers_, as they are termed with an expression of contempt; and the artist, if he would become rich and famous, must fish for his subjects in other streams of thought. This is so true that there are rulers who, from feeling that art is making itself independent of them, and will no longer serve as the herald of their thoughts, try even to produce works of art, and would impress their works on the admiration of the multitude, which, nevertheless, does not admire.

The great revolution is consequently accomplished; art now works only for the masses. It is still always the State that commissions; it is still always the few rich who buy; but it is really universal suffrage that imposes on them its own inclinations. But we do not believe that that new Mæcenas, the people at large, has other habits of mind or ways of acting than had the Mæcenas of the past. The people too, exactly like the priests and kings of old, demands that art should please and flatter it. But it further demands something else, something more than pleasure and obsequiousness—viz., a high satisfaction, a corrective of an evil of which it is perhaps not clearly conscious, but which, nevertheless, it feels strongly. And I will now try to point out this evil.

One of the most striking phenomena of modern life is specialisation applied to all departments. Every one tills merely a very little bit of field or rather he ploughs only one and the same furrow. This is true of mental craftsmen. It is still more true of handicraftsmen. What existence does such a man lead nowadays? There is no longer one who fabricates an entire chair. One always makes the arms, another the legs, a third the back, a fourth the cane-work. A knife goes through a dozen hands, a needle, I believe, through thirty. In order to attain that extreme skill which competition demands of him and which he must supply, if he would earn his bread, the workman continually repeats the movement, becomes a machine, less than a machine, a tiny part of a machine, a single wheel, a single screw. His being shrivels up, his soul suffers. All development is denied him; all his faculties, except the one he is always employing, become crippled, and disappear. The man gradually sinks almost to the low level of a polypus, which is only an organ of a hydramedusa.

Whence comes the strange fascination that the foremost men of the Italian Renaissance exercise on us? The reason is that they were complete men. All their faculties were fully developed—all that offered a possibility in them was developed to the utmost. Nothing human was alien to them. With marvellous freedom they circumscribed the whole circle of human knowledge and faculties. Then the learned man was an universal scholar; his knowledge was encyclopædic. The poets were at the same time men of action. Men of rank were artists and writers, and the artists were all they wished to be. Michael Angelo painted, modelled, built the cupola of St Peter’s, and wrote charming verses. Benvenuto Cellini handled the spatula as well as the mallet, the crayon as well as the pen, and the sword as well as all these tools. Macchiavelli governed as wonderfully as he wrote, and Leonardo painted the “Last Supper” between a musical composition, a treatise on mechanics, a plan of a fortification, the model of a triumphal car, and the plan of a canal for the purpose of irrigation. Count Castiglione’s “Cortegiano” shows us the ideal of the man at the time of the Renaissance. He was probably the fairest flower ever produced by the human plant. The modern man may envy him; he can never be his peer, but must shrivel up in his narrow corner. Hypertrophy of a single, often subordinate faculty, atrophy of all the rest—such is the lot to which he is ruthlessly condemned. And there is no change possible in respect of it; no herb grown can prove an antidote to that bane. Division of labour gives to the whole advantages too great to be dispensed with out of consideration for the individual. Division of labour is the true condition of all progress, though in this case, as in so many others, progress exacts a heavy, very heavy, price for its services.

Every one is painfully aware of this reverse side of progress; many consciously take themselves to task for it. Why has the madhouse philosophy which extols the superman been able to subjugate spirited youth? Because it meets the longing for a fuller life of the personality. And anarchism? What is the secret that makes it attractive to true consciences and loving hearts? Nothing except that anarchy seems to promise unchecked development of the individuality. In all these nonsensical, wild, and criminal movements there is some little revolt against the pinching and tightening in of the personality entailed by the modern conditions of labour, and this is the ingredient that recruits adherents among those unaccustomed to rigorous examination of their thoughts. And when the workmen demand an eight-hours’ day, what do they want? To find time to go and drink at the public house, to be able to idle, as the ill-wishers who calumniate them assert? No; they want to have a few hours in which to cease to be mechanical tools, in which they may again be men, and participate in the great life of the community.

But by what means can we give back to men what division of labour and specialisation—these irrefragable consequences of contemporary progress—have taken from them? By what means can we remake beings developed from them harmonic? Perhaps in a very distant future science will effect this necessary, demanded, and longed for miracle. Perhaps mankind will once more see these workers who earn their bread during a part of the day by handicraft, and during the rest of the time linger on the highest summits of human thought and knowledge; a Socrates, who is a stonemason; a Spinoza, who polishes spectacle glasses. But, as I have said before, that will be feasible only in a very remote future, for science is not easily accessible; the way leading to it is long and rough, and the full life through science is possible only to men of a higher spiritual development than the average people nowadays.

But if science is no longer the usual companion of the man of the masses, and, unfortunately, will not be so for a long time, art, on the other hand, admits him to familiar intercourse. No tedious initiation is requisite for it, nor any hard labours which the majority cannot perform. It is sufficient to have eyes and ears, and a human heart in one’s breast. After an apprenticeship, which may be very short; after some habituation which one easily acquires by intercourse with beautiful works, almost every one arrives so far that, even if he cannot appreciate the technical and philosophical merits of a work of art with consciousness, yet he can feel its charm and be susceptible of emotions from it.

Art it is, then, which can give to modern humanity what it most needs—the means of attaining the full life. Here lies, unless I am deceived, the greatness, the lofty mission of art in a democratic society which rests on a civilisation, the marks of which, the real condition of which, are severe specialisation and division of labour carried to an extreme.

Art raises man out of industrialism and introduces him to a higher world. In this artist-created world the man who is bundled together stretches himself straight; the shrivelled broadens out; the fraction of a man becomes complete. Here he who belongs to his machine or observation-instrument becomes once more a free man and citizen of the world—a man participating in the life of the community, and enjoying with the rest all the beauties of heaven and earth, all the greatness of heart and soul of the pick of men. Through art a person imprisoned in his daily avocation comes into communion with all civilisation. Here is the paradise to which the astronomer descends from his constellations, to which the miner ascends from his pit, in order to

## participate in the same joys and raptures, to bring to flower whatever

potentialities they possess. The mission of art in society present and future is, in short, to liberate the prisoner of subdivided labour, to restore the dignity of manhood to the being degraded into a little wheel of a machine.

But art, which is to fulfil this new and lofty mission, cannot, manifestly, be conventional art. On this theocracy, monarchy, and aristocracy have stamped the character that suited them. The multitude at the present day find no sort of joy in works which depict to them the bliss of paradise and the torments of hell, which extol some paste-board king with crown and sceptre, which offer for their admiration the greatness of blue-blooded privileged beings. Like the patrons of earlier times, the people, who now represent Mæcenas of old, are interested in art only for themselves. The sources of their emotions in art are the emotions of their own lives. In the work of art that is to attract them, they must find themselves again, but, as formerly the priest and king did, magnified and ennobled. The work of art must show him his own likeness, but a beautiful one; it must raise the people in their own eyes, and teach them to respect themselves.

This the common realism has not comprehended, which broke in on art with a din, and dared to call upon the democracy. The genuine people has never had a mind to realism of this sort, but has always dismissed it roughly. The rough proof of a hateful and tedious reality, such as the pictures of Courbet or Bastien Lepage, has never attracted any but the superfine, and this only, by the well-known psychological law of contrast, whereby an impression that is the exact opposite of the usual impression can impart a pleasurable feeling for a short time. The rich and luxurious like to see works of ugliness and misery; the poor and afflicted do not like them. It is the same in regard to literature. Reluctant protests have frequently become loud, in these socialistic days, against the realism which a party organ offers its readers. The working class do not wish to know anything about this realism which professes to be modern and democratic, yet is, in reality, only wretched and repulsive. It coops them up in the narrowness of their everyday existence, but their wish is to get out of it.

Pictures such as Millet’s, sculptures such as Constantin Meunier’s—works which seek to show the dignity and beauty of the occupations of the masses, which constitute a hallowing of work, an apotheosis of the tragedies and idylls, of all the sweet and bitter emotions of the people’s life—these works, to my thinking, exhibit the type of future art.

Some great genius will, perhaps, find another formula. What one may, however, say for certain is this, that the art of the future will not be realistic in the narrow sense of the word. But it will not be mystical and æsthetic either. The people will never interest themselves in half-tone angels of boundless length, in violet-hued Virgins with lilies in their hands in a conventional bush, in enigmatical, mysterious verses. And esoteric art will never give the people what they need, viz., the liberating ideal. The art of the cultivator of the Ego, the _dilletante_, of the snobs of a Talmi-aristocracy, presumes to demand the future for itself. Is that to be an art of the future, an art of progress? One can only laugh at the notion. The art of the future will be no “little chapel,” but a mighty cathedral, wide enough to admit the whole of mankind. And that will be exactly its vocation: to be the hallowed place wherein mankind will rise again to the childship of God for which religion has educated them in past stages of evolution.

II

SOCIALISTIC ART

CONSTANTIN MEUNIER

Is there a socialistic art? Can such a thing exist? So far as Socialism is an economic and political philosophy it is hardly comprehensible with the means of expression of art. If the plastic arts are to be instructive, they do not amount to more than chill symbols and halting allegories. On the other hand, they are not prevented from digging down to the psychical roots of Socialism, and presenting the fundamental feelings and ultimate intuitions from which it springs. One of these fundamental feelings is pity for the disinherited. One of the ultimate intuitions is that of the dignity of all work done with moral earnestness and entire devotion.

The artist can show us the destitute, to whose presence amidst our civilisation applies more sharply, what the Psalmist[2] asserts of the life of man in general: “And if it has been splendid, it has been toil and labour”—toil and labour without a ray of happiness; severe physical exertion rendered more wretched by sorrow and distress. Such a picture grips our hearts, and urges on us painful questions: is this misery inevitable? Is it cruelly ordained by nature herself or a consequence of faulty institutions, capable of improvement on the part of man? Cannot we introduce into the lot of this ill-used brother something of joy?

And the artist can also show us the worker, not in want and suffering, like the beast of burden, humiliated into the slave of matter, but rather as creating eagerly, proud of displaying his strength, joyful in the conviction of success, regarding his skill as his honour. This aspect fills us with respect, perhaps with admiration. It opens to us the comprehension of the import of the workman, and the lofty reality of his achievement.

In both cases the artist fashions fully from life; he need not exaggerate, he need add nothing; he can confine himself to the plain facts of life. He need not betray any prejudice or any extra-artistic aim. He will, nevertheless, so contrive that one will be able to speak without falsification of his art as of a socialistic one. For his work will put the spectator in the mood in which he will be inclined to hail as progress every transformation which can improve the earthly lot of the worker, and increase his value in the community.

The school of æsthetes, which maintains the principle of art for art’s sake, will, I grant, admit works of this sort as a form of Socialism, indeed, but not as a form of art. I do not belong to this school. I oppose it at all times and everywhere as strongly as I am able. I am convinced that art has a social mission which reaches far beyond mere gratification, that it must necessarily be moral, and, in the highest sense of the word, useful; not useful in the simple way of painted or chiselled aids to intelligence, not moral in the vulgar way of tracts; but moral through stimulating what is most human and noble in our spirit and soul, and useful through educating us to deeper and wider conceptions of phenomena. In one point, however, I agree with the heralds of _l’art pour l’art_—I demand beauty in a work of art; not beauty alone, but beauty in the first place.

In order, then, that we can speak of a Socialistic art, the works that would deserve this designation must not only excite sympathy with the disinherited, and respect for the workman, but they must also arouse æsthetic feeling, they must be beautiful. This claim, of course, excludes no kind of beauty. The tragic is absolutely beautiful. Purification is one of the most powerful æsthetic influences. Truth can be beautiful if essential and expressive. The socialist who would prove himself an artist must possess the lucky gift to see and exhibit beauty in the figures and actions of the class of society for which his heart beats.