The philosophy of painting; a study of the development of the art from prehistoric to modern times

Preface

PAINTINGS have been catalogued to death. There are enough histories of painting, such as they are; and as for dissertation and criticism, there is no end. It might seem presumptuous, therefore, to write anything further on a subject that has received so much attention from authors and scribblers alike. Perhaps it is. At all events, it has been done, and here it is. A long-winded apology could make it no better; and explanations would not excuse its defects. If it has any merits, they will take care of themselves.

With deference to a polite and tottering old custom, the author announces his purposes in writing the book: They were, first, to sketch the course and progress of the art in an easy perspective; second, to assemble some scattered material which is interesting and convenient to have in small compass; third, to give some results of his own reasoning, and playfully, as it were, to fly the kite of speculation from more or less solid ground ; fourth, to hit some absurdities which have long been shameless bores ; fifth, to correlate some relationships which reveal a tendency strong enough to be called a spirit; and sixth, to suggest vi Preface

some theories which may be proved or disproved by more competent students. A half-dozen reasons, it must be conceded, are sufficient for the perpetration of anything except a crime.

The names of many worthy painters have been omitted ; and very little reference has been made to the particular works of any. The scope of the book is broad, but its method is brief; and its nature does not demand a bibliographic list.

R. H. B.

New York, January, 1916.

Contents

Preface

CHAPTER

I. — Art

Chapter I Art

ART and Nature are imperial terms; they divide the world into two parts. Like other imperial things they are not well defined, — the dividing-line between them is uncertain, unless we accept as true that Nature builds from within outward, principally by a process of division; and that Art assembles, or builds from without, largely by a process of addition, in which, however, there is often a synthetic element. Even so, this is the merest text of the matter.

Man is conscious of a series of nicely adjusted phenomena which take place and interact, so far as he can determine, without any regard to himself. This series of phenomena, of which his being is part but of no special importance, he calls Nature.

He is conscious of another series of phenomena

which take place with peculiar reference to himself.

In this he observes interaction at a minimum,

and reaction upon himself at a maximum. This

i series of phenomena he calls Art. He finds himself in a new world where his importance has become demiurgic. He has achieved a tremendous social triumph. He has created something either directly or indirectly as an agent or means. The evolution of his soul has brought forth what seems to be organic relationships between him and his environment ; and these relationships work like an intelligent machine minting the precious currency of his emotions into a medium necessary not only to his spiritual well-being but for his further development.

Man studies the phenomena called Nature. In various ways and by a multitude of means he makes his inquiries. The only answers which he has ever had to his questions have been his own interpretations of the phenomena that he has studied. For example, his symbolic interpretations or equations of relationships, such as those which exist between numbers, masses, curves, series, densities, velocities, extensions or durations, and harmonies in space, he calls mathematics. This interpretation, having no emotive factor ordinarily apprehensible, is termed pure science.

We interpret the relationships existing between sounds. We assemble sonorous affinities under the sway of harmony; we arrange opposing elements of discord for purposes of contrast and balance according to a physiological requirement of being, — in a word, we marshal the relationships of sound and silence, as it were: of range, pitch,

Art 3

pause, repetition, flow, and quality, so cleverly, and we interpret them so accurately with the mechanical assistance of our own organs and of instruments of our own make, that the result first startles the emotions, then quickly sublimates consciousness itself. This subtle and inscrutable miracle — this mystery of waves at play on unknown shores — relatively so young in creation and yet so intimately bound up in the very heart and core of primitive consciousness, is called music. In music there are powerful emotive factors; therefore we call it Art.

Man studies the drama of light and air. He apprehends some of the relationships existing between tinted shadows called colours in the solar spectrum; he sounds the deeper pools of shadow into which these spectral shadows flow on either side like living streams; he studies form and discovers laws of proportion; he becomes aware of harmony dressed in gay robes or vaguely mellow, and mysterious as the spirit of peace brooding over a still sleeping world. He interprets the things he sees and the world he feels. He takes a handful of clay and models it into a dream or a hope. He chisels delight or despair from a block of stone. With a piece of coal he throws the illusion of three dimensions into the space of two. With coloured earths and stains he imitates, emphasizes, subtracts, and adds. He has idealized something. His emotions enter the process, and he creates. With the meanest of means he has performed another miracle. He has interpreted Nature, or another interpretation of Nature, in terms of his own soul. In this interpretation the emotive factor is dominant. We call his work Art.

We are conscious of an element called beauty. Without pausing to consider how, we are aware that we have contributed something to this element, — and we rejoice in the shining fact. If we reflect, we perceive that things are beautiful by the relationship which they bear us. The most beautiful thing, in some delicate manner, is most closely related to human happiness, to content or satisfaction, to our dre^ams of love or to the aspirations of our hope. The next most beautiful thing, perhaps, is related closely to our intellectualized emotions which thrill with delight at the discovery of some new feeling associated with some age-old experience — some sleeping joy of the past awakened by suggestion — some dear ideal suspended like a twinkling star, prophetic in the heavens of our consciousness. And the next most beautiful thing, lowest in order, is related to the gratification of our senses made keen by longing or desire.

Thus it would seem that Art is an emotive interpretation of environment, a social achievement, a necessary link in the chain of spiritual evolution, a language of the emotions with organic suggestions which fulfil in a measure the functions of words and phrases in speech — a language as vague as sighs, as indefinite as a smile, as eloquent

Art 5

as a look, as unmistakable as tears and laughter — a language capable of various statement : incoherent, prosaic, poetic, and inspired or prophetic. Like a flowering vine it interweaves the consciousness of man with the surrounding phenomena; it beautifies his environment by chastening his vision ; it sweetens his hope by purifying his heart ; and it enlarges his spiritual world by stimulating the growth of his soul. In a word, Art sets fire to the imagination, and the flames are as wings. Thus the sense of being is transported from the meanest of surroundings to the most glorious of realms. Art creates stainless images, suggests harmony, and so inspires us with the melody of conduct that we call it morality.

Chapter II

THE art of a people is the tangible expression of the spirit of a people; it bears witness of things hidden ; it palpitates with immortal longings, and, in some way, it seems to pass the flaming bounds of space and time.

Art belongs to no clique, and it cannot be cornered. It is the living voice for ever clear above "the sounding jargon of the schools." It thrives wherever imagination rises above brute want. It has its beginnings in utilitarian avocations when the sprite of play thrills the finger-tips of the craftsman. Art is then in its concrete stage. As it develops, it becomes ideal and abstract in character and big with a spirit "that gems the starry girdle of the year."

As a medium through which the emotions find expression, art expands and parallels the language of thought ; it takes on broad powers of statement ; it deals with the majesty of life, suggests the mystery of being, and thrills with every tender mood and noble impulse. It uses simple lines, as the letters of a word, with which to spell dignity;

it indicates gaiety with dancing colours, and haunting sadness with the sombre tones lurking where twilight almost kisses night.

As love may be likened to the fragrance and beauty of blossoms smiling on the fringed edges of a plant rooted in the dark and unlovely soil of primordial necessity, so may art be likened to a flower springing from basic needs, and supported by the very earth which nourishes all sociologic growth. The beauty of this flower puts soul into the emotions, spirit into the consciousness of humanity.

Man was emotional before he became rational; up to the present moment he remains far more emotional than he has ever grown to be rational. Art is almost purely emotive both in its expression and its reaction. Its end and aim are not given us to know, — possibly for the reason that it has neither end nor aim. If it has an end, the end must be infinitely remote. If it has an aim, its aim must be to give pleasure to the emotions; at least that must be its proximal purpose, — its more distal aim is veiled with some mystery related to the progress of the soul. With the Greeks, beauty was the aim of all the higher arts. In that "land of lost gods and godlike men," beauty was the broad avenue leading to the stately dome of pleasure.

Life, regarded as a parent-stem, has thrown out many branches. Where or at what period these branches leave the main trunk no one knows; how they are related to one another beneath the bark, no one has ever dared to guess. Is life itself merely a branch? We cannot say. Does life support mind, or mind create life? We do not know. Are all these strange phenomena the merest twigs of a tree that man, since self-consciousness first opened his eyes, has called God? We do not know, and probably never shall; but if this wisdom awaits us, it will only be after consciousness shall have passed through a million cycles called lives, and been sublimated by a million and one interims called deaths.

Perhaps it is futile to wander so far afield. Emotion and reason, after all, may flow as one under the bark of the Tree. How can we tell when we are only vaguely conscious at best of a few small branches which are inextricably intertwined ! Still, for present purposes we must regard them as separate, and treat them as such.

Let us assume that the art of painting is an emotional outlet which is appreciably self-creative possibly by subconscious suggestion; that it is governed by external form and colour which are transmuted into internal design and feeling; that it is subject to selective will in combination, and that it is influenced by the very material used in its technic; that these influences crystallize into canons which are ever in conflict with our aesthetic aspirations, and yet which are always striving, as it were, to serve our aesthetic requirements.

This art, germinated in light, is emotive and ornamental. Its highest mission may be to discover the changeless spirit veiled by mutable forms for ever in flux and flow. Surely, it is neither a stupid missionary nor a wise schoolmaster, — since it has no direct lesson to teach and no proselyting to do; and yet it bears a message as does a symphony or a song; but no more than a lyric was it born to carry a burden.

When painting tries to supplement history it assumes a heavy load, for it usually confuses fact with fiction, and it often obscures truth with fantasy ; when it essays portraiture, it is more than apt to caricature both body and soul, — which is a significant fact, for it points to heights still above the art. When it attempts to tell a story with a moral or to preach a sermon, it at once becomes absurd or drops into some of its late-primitive ideals. The decorative mural painting in fresco and other technic has achieved much, but it is still largely a field of promise. Still, painting persists, with no inconsiderable claim on art, in various illegitimate and uncongenial fields.

Millenniums may yet pass before this art shall find itself engaged wholly with its own problems in its own proper province. For nothing save truth is more persistent than error; and the inertia of habit is slow to yield. As Burke says: "The march of the human mind is slow." Even thousands of years of nobly directed effort may fail to rid painting of the disturbing coteries of freaks piddling in the shallow pools of art. "The little io Painting

foxes spoil the vines, " said Solomon; and someone else, I think it was Plutarch, observed that if you live with a lame man you will learn to limp. Such is human nature ; and after all, the art is not exalted so much by what is done as by that which it would do.

Nevertheless, a thin and straggling line of genuine artists, intelligently seeking the real province of painting, has persevered through the centuries of record. The line has often been broken or obscured; yet it was always capable of re-forming and of re-emerging from the darkness, each time a little fitter for the trail leading to bigger and better things.

"Labour is the price the gods have set upon everything excellent." Serious painters have always laboured patiently for that dexterity, the function of which is the fine expression of an intellectual conception having emotive values capable of giving pleasure through the eye. In their apprenticeship they acquired command of the manipulation of line, mass, and colour; they learned how to interpret the laws of light (and shade) ; that is to say, how to see ; they achieved what Wordsworth called "the vision and the faculty divine"; and the most successful lyric painters discovered the knack of presenting just enough of the spirit of imitation to suggest a probability in the realm of possible nature.

The artist-painter therefore has found it advisable to seize upon some aspect of nature capable of idealization without loss of semblance, or, may I say, capable of sustaining intensified semblance? He has been careful to utilize natural objects which lend themselves gracefully to the exactions of beauty, and through beauty to pleasure, without endangering the effect with the blemish of vacuity. If he uses objects of other arts, architectural for example, he makes them accessories to his own. Above all else, whatever he uses in nature, or in another art, he is careful to invest with an air of symbolism which is vital to his art. He avoids incoherency by the nice care which he bestows upon his symbolism. For if his symbolism is crude he introduces rawness into his work, — something parallel to slang in poetry; if his symbolism is arbitrary, it fails of meaning because the parts, like unknown hieroglyphics unable to sustain the continuous current of emotive expression, seem detached, inharmonious, and are therefore not understood; his work lacks "the living passion symbolled there." If his symbols are exotic and bizarre, they distract the attention and thus detract both from the pleasure of the eye and of the mind. At the same time, if his symbolism is overrealistic, or too exactly imitative, it becomes brutal or too cramped to convey a worthy conception or a deep emotion.

The painter has on all sides, everywhere and at all times, the objects which he may assemble to represent some phase of life or nature well worth depicting. But that which he has within his own soul is of incomparably greater importance to the success of his picture than everything put together on the outside. Since artistic vision is multiphased, the artistic sense within must choose, and judgment, a sentient crystal of experience, must arrange with the greatest care the external objects which he is to symbolize and to weave together logically with the variegated warp peculiar to his art. The only trouble with all this is that God made the countryside, so to speak, while the average painter only happened. Still there is hope in the thought that, as Cowper says, even "a fool must now and then be right by chance."

It was thought by many at one time, and it is still believed by some, that almost anything is a paintable subject if the painter has sufficient mastery of technic, together with an engaging style. Nothing indeed in art is farther from the truth. No degree of technical skill can render a commonplace subject unique, or a contemptible one great. "No treatment," says the author of Erewhon, "can make a repulsive subject less repulsive. It can make a trivial, or even a stupid, subject interesting; but a really bad flaw in a subject cannot be treated out." This is as true of painting as in letters.

A similar truth applies to pictorial anatomy, commonly called composition. As the painter's poetic energy must find outlet through his palette and brush, he observes that structure is as necessary to his art as it is to poetry; that a disjointed or gangling composition by no amount of technical nurture can ever be made to blossom into a fine picture. As well try to make Quasimodo assume the proportional graces of the Belvedere! In making a picture, one must always consider the end. Skill and labour spent on a faulty composition are thrown away in proportion to the fault in structure. And yet the composition, important as it is, occupies a small elemental place compared with the soul of the picture. For no arrangement of faultless attire even on an anatomically perfect corpse — neither pencilling of eyebrow nor painting of cheek — can inspire it with that indefinable expression which emanates only from life. The life — the soul — of a picture must come from the maker of that picture; and that is the solitary reason why we call the master painter a creator.

But neither will it suffice merely for the painter to put life into his work. Life manifests itself differently in different objects. Just as a pastoral spirit is incongruous in a metropolitan scene, so may lively gaiety destroy the artistic value of a tragic picture. The very pose of a figure, if contrary to the spirit of a scene, may entirely ruin a painting so far as its aesthetic worth is concerned. Its very tone is eloquent or blatant, impressive or frivolous. No painter of even mediocre ability would think of scattering, for instance, the woolpack or cumulus clouds over the sky of A Storm when the trees are bent and straining and the voice of the wind is almost audible.

This illustration, it is true, represents only the A B C'sof the art. An infinite number of degrees, subtle and elusive of words, rise above and ever beyond. They cannot be taught because they are inseparable attributes of genius. No one would think of trying to teach, let us say, "the sweet singer of Georgia" how to write a play equal to one of Shakespeare's, nor the "Arizonian 'poetess' of passion" how to compose a Lesbian Sapphic. Outside the advertisement of a "school of correspondence" such a thought would never arise.

Painting is oftener compared with the art of writing than with any other. If the repetition may be risked again, it may be assumed that whoever can write a letter can also write some sort of a book; that whoever can make the letter S can draw a serpent; and that whoever can daub can paint some sort of a picture; but, merely in itself, technical skill in writing is wholly incapable of producing fine literature; and, likewise, the technic of painting is only the means of expressing something; at its higher levels that something is the result of clearer and subtler mental operations dependent upon emotional range not only but upon intellectual grasp of experimental fact. Many can use the language of art, but what some of them say "is only a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The thought that has value above all else in painting is the thought that is pictorially possible not only, but which may be expressed better with the technic of painting than by any other means. This is the kernel of the nut as we modern folk regard it, although we sometimes forget that we are still living in a very remote antiquity.

Truth, as it concerns the painter, is the mastery of a series of relations existing in space; these relations embrace contour, form, colour, and position; we may call them objective. The sense of emphasis is a subjective trait that makes the artistic mastery of these relations possible. Then, the synthetic union of truth and beauty glorifies all these relationships into a harmony which sings a matin-song to the sleeping emotions, thus arousing the soul to intenser life or to a fuller sense of being. And until the painter effects this synthesis of truth and beauty, his many-sided art remains, on one side or another, imperfect.

The development of painting as an art appears to be of an order rigidly logical and climactic to a degree equalled only in mathematics. A representation of the relations of the first two dimensions proceeds primarily from accuracy of position and contour on a plane surface ; then it passes through subtle processes involving emphasis until it extends to action or character. A representation of the third dimension brings into play delicate problems of illusion which vastly complicate the process. The expedients of linear and aerial perspective become necessary. Following the third comes one which may be called the aesthetic dimension. If this is not mastered, then the mastery of the three primary dimensions is only tentatively artistic in that it is barren of the ideals of art, although it may be rich in mechanical grace and attractive in its geometric perfection. ;

Having assumed, for convenience of discourse, other than the three primary dimensions as necessary to the art of painting, it may be permissible to postulate emotional and purely intellectual dimensions. What seems to be overlapping, interweaving, and blending of relations between all these different dimensions, possible to the technic of painting, is really a climactic order, which in time may be reduced to a formula and denoted with symbols similarly to the writing of mathematical formulas.

When the forms and colours of a painting bear to one another ordered relationships, an aesthetic element enters into the arrangement. When the arrangement is so ordered that the forms and colours combine into a whole while yet remaining distinct and in contrast, an added value is given to the pattern which usually enables it to address the emotions.

1 Mere resemblance is not regarded as art, or, at least, when it is so regarded it is classified under the most prosaic and monotonous forms of art. The paradoxical aspect of the matter is that intensified resemblance — the very essence of resemblance ■ — is the most vital element in the higher and more poetic forms of painting. That is to say, resemblance must be intensified with accent and emphasis in order to express character and to reveal what is ordinarily called soul.

The potential beauty of arrangement and pattern for pictorial composition everywhere existent is the source from which artistic inspiration is drawn. And the sole means of drawing this inspiration is through the reciprocal emotional and intellectual powers. The artistic representation of space, and the filling of it with the harmonious relationships of colour and form, of lines, masses, and tones, supported by arrangement, unified by pattern, and convincing in a resemblance which has been intensified by emphasis, all depend upon the mind, which must be able to see adequately, to feel sympathetically, and to execute efficiently. That is the art of painting in a nutshell — and without it painting is no art.

Naturally, technic plays an important part in artistic painting. Without the best technic art cannot rise to its highest levels. It is true that genius may achieve artistic effects of a high order with an inferior technic ; and it is also true that the mediocre cannot accomplish a work of pure art with the most refined technic; yet neither fact is any part of an argument for slighting the best and most efficient technic thus far evolved.

It is possible, of course, for mediocre mentality, having facility in manual manipulation, to produce by chance a work of art. There is always this difference, however, between the accidental good effects of the ungif ted and those of the gifted :

the mediocre cannot, or at least does not, profit by happy accidents; while his gifted brother, subject to the same fortuity, uses his happy accidents as steps to higher effects. Another very noticeable difference is in the ability of the gifted to utilize the work of others both in analytic and synthetic processes. As Emerson says, "in fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. " The accomplishments of predecessors are the building-materials already quarried and hewed for the hands of the genius; while with the ungifted such materials serve no other purposes than those of the copyist.

At the dawn of the seventeenth century the modern art of painting had reached its complete evolution. Not that the art henceforth shall remain static; but with that consummation the attitude of the painter toward nature changed; his conception had broadened to embrace the democratic aspects of the world; and he found himself the master of space in its interminable recessions. He had learned to orient his art with regard to the entirety of his environment rather than to direct his efforts, as previously, toward certain elective parts. Instead of his selective faculties becoming dulled they grew to be more keen, — more artistically acute. He recognized differences in position and in the lighting of objects, all which he treated as accidental rather than as inherent gradations of true artistic value. He apprehended the real universality of beauty, knowing that it was everywhere within reach if one but have the eye, the wisdom, and the patience to seek the vantage-point of vision. He no longer looked for beauty in the things that were merely pretty, but on the contrary he often surprised it in unsuspected places. He knew at last that artistic painting is concerned primarily with things as they seem, and secondarily, if at all, with them as they are; that the artistic relations which combine things in beauty of form and which unite them with the magic of colour and which blend them with the witcheries of tone and which enchant them with all the subtle gradations of light and shade are more important to the pictorial effect than the realities of the things themselves regarded separately. This he understood to be the secret of breadth, in endless variety, of our modern painting; and this secret was first given to the painters of our era by the incomparable Rembrandt. Thus it is that a masterpiece in painting as judged by our modern standards is like a magic mirror which reflects fact, form, and colour not so much by definite statement as by that "judicious unflnish" which transmutes a flat surface into open and airy space.

As I have indicated, art is, among other things, an emotive statement. The Greeks made use of it at their best period to express beauty. On those grounds it has been criticized. That is no basis, however, for a criticism of Greek art. For if that art seems to rise above our present human ideals, — if it seems to be detached from everyday existence, — the fault is in us and not in Greek art. When our civilization shall reach Hellenic heights, our ideals in art will also be to express beauty, and through beauty, by reaction, to arouse a keener feeling of pleasure in a nobler achievement.

Torn as our civilization is by the savagery of war, — menaced as it is by soulless efficiency, — shocked as it is by a powerful, wanton people who are barbarous at heart but whose heads have worn royal crowns of light, — yet, in these early years of the twentieth century, there are millions of human beings who see clearly that an ugly motif has no birthright and no excuse for being, — nothing to recommend it to perpetuity in any field of aesthetics. Taste is no more inclined to admit disgusting subjects in art than in polite society. The drawing-room and the board rightly exclude nastiness however nicely presented. The civilized family circle has its well-known prohibitions. Painting should be, and indeed is, as careful of the sensible proprieties as is society or the fireside.

Chapter III

LIFE is a phenomenon and Art is one of its corollaries. As is notably true of Time and Poetry, neither Art nor Life has ever been satisfactorily defined. Both are so obvious, however, that a definition is unnecessary. The relationship that exists between them is commonly acknowledged, but not always clearly perceived.