Art Principles with Special Reference to Painting. Ernest Govett

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СКАЧАТЬ the group to an animal or decorative ornament. An exception must however be made in respect of the sublime reaches of Grecian sculpture in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., owing to an artificial restriction. There is very little of this sculpture to be actually seen, nearly all the more important works being known only from records or variable copies. Considerable observation, comparison, and study, are necessary before one can gain a fair conception of the Grecian ideals, and so they are practically lost to the bulk of the people.

      In fiction it is common knowledge that the greatest works from the point of view of art are always the most popular, as they are invariably the most simple in construction and diction. In considering poetry we must exclude the great epics, as those of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, because where the actions of supernatural persons are described, the sentiments and language employed are so elevated in character, and the images and literary references so numerous, that a certain superior education is required before the sense of the poems can be comprehended. Subject to this artificial restriction, the rule holds entirely good. Shakespeare is at once the greatest and most popular of our poets: Shelley, Byron, and Burns, are as far ahead of Tennyson and Browning in popularity as they are in general beauty and simplicity.

      In music on the other hand the lower forms are the simplest and consequently the most popular. Songs, dance measures, and ditties of various kinds, are enjoyed by the mass of the people in preference to Beethoven and Wagner, a certain cultivation of the aural nerves being necessary for the appreciation of the greater artists. The architect is under the necessity of meeting the ends of utility, but subject to this restriction it is obvious that simplicity must be the keynote to his design, for the highest quality of beauty in his power to produce is grandeur, and this diminishes with an increase in the complexity of his sign combinations. The combination of simplicity with grandeur is the first form of beauty that would be recognized by the immature eye, and consequently in respect of the general test of art excellence, architecture falls into line with the Associated Arts, and not with music.

      From what has been said it will be understood how it is that in the Associated Arts opinion as to the æsthetic value of particular works begins to differ as soon as we leave the recognized masterpieces of the first rank, and why the divergence widens with every step downwards. As the character of the art is lowered so is diminished the number of persons capable of appreciating it. In painting and sculpture this diminution is direct with the increased complexity of the signs used, and indirect according as the character of the signs weakens. In poetry the same rule applies generally, but in the lower forms alliance with the art of music may bring about a variation. Only the very lowest forms of music may be used with the higher forms of poetry because the poet must have the minimum of restriction when dealing with the character and actions of the personages who constitute the principal signs in his work, but as the art descends the musical form becomes of more importance, and the substance more simple. Hence the sensorial beauty of a lyric may be appreciated more quickly than that of a poem which is, in substance, of a much higher order, though the kind of beauty recognized will differ in the two cases. But even in the greatest lyric the musical form is comparatively very simple, its beauty being recognized without special cultivation of the aural nerves: thus, subject to the division of poetry into its natural grades—the two sections where substance and form respectively predominate—the measure of its beauty is the extent to which it is generally appreciated. None of the other Associated Arts may be allied with a second art without crippling it as a fine art, because of the extraordinary limitations forced upon the artist by the alliance; and hence in respect of sculpture, painting, and fiction, there is no exception to the rule that the beauty capable of being produced diminishes strictly with an increase in the complexity of the signs used.

      These facts appear sufficiently to establish what may be called the Law of General Assent in the Associated Arts; that is to say, in the arts of poetry, sculpture, painting, and fiction, the supreme test of the æsthetic value of a work, is general opinion; and a corollary of this is that the smaller the number of persons to whom a work of one of these arts appeals, the weaker is the art therein.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

LIMITATIONS OF THE ASSOCIATED ARTS

       Table of Contents

      The production of beauty in the respective arts—How they differ in scope.

      The Associated Arts have all the same method of producing beauty: they throw pictures on the brain.29 Sensorial or intellectual beauty, or both together, may be exhibited, but in the arts of the painter and sculptor the picture is transferred to the brain through the optic nerves, and is necessarily presented before the intellect can be brought to bear upon the impression. The arts of the poet and the story writer involve the presentation of a picture representing the complete composition, and in addition when the work is lengthy, of a series of pictures each of which strengthens the relief of the general design. The painter and sculptor each presents a complete picture, the meaning of which is immediately determined through the sense of sight, and the extent of the beauty is bounded by what can be recognized by this sense. All the signs necessary to perfect the composition are simultaneously indicated, the artist exhibiting at one blow a full description of what makes up his thing of beauty. But the poet cannot so produce a picture because he presents the parts successively and not simultaneously, and in the most important of all the forms which he represents—that of the human countenance—both beauty and expression have to be defined, and the separate elements are indescribable. Consequently, however, we may combine the features of a countenance as described by the poet, we cannot throw a picture of the whole upon our minds. A particular form of beauty must be presented to the eye before it can be mentally pictured. The poet therefore does not attempt to dovetail his picture of the human form with descriptive details, but relies upon imagery, suggestion, or other artifice, to indicate his meaning in the most rapid way possible.30 The novelist is in the same position as the poet in this respect, except that some of the devices of the latter are denied him.

But although the poet or novelist cannot put together the parts in his description, he may in certain cases present natural beauty to the mind, his scope depending upon the nature of the parts and the extent to which they depend upon each other for the completion of the picture. Where the beauty of the whole rests upon a combination of perfected parts of form only, as in the case of a horse, then the poet is able to present beauty of form notwithstanding that the separate parts are in themselves not beautiful, though the beauty would be that of the type and not of the individual. The beauty of a horse depends upon its possession of a collection of features which have each a particular significance. If we are able to recognize from a description that a horse has qualities of form and action indicating speed, high spirits, proud bearing, and so on, and at the same time has a harmonious symmetry in its general outline, a beautiful animal is thrown on the mind without difficulty. We readily picture the courser described by Shakespeare in his Venus and Adonis as a beautiful horse, but we should not be able to differentiate it from the courser of Mazeppa. Where the parts of the thing described are in themselves beautiful, then the poet may successfully throw on the mind a series of pictures of æsthetic interest. Thus, he may call to the imagination parts of a landscape which are in themselves beautiful scenes, as for instance a deep gorge opening on to a lake, or a flowery valley, though the parts could not be put together on the mind so that the beauty of the whole may be presented.31

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