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Page 27
We have heard this message, or if it was not expressed in clear words it
surely lingered for a long while in the minds of all those who had a
serious relation to art. It probably still prevails today among many,
even if they appreciate the more ambitious efforts of the
photoplaywrights in the most recent years. The philanthropic pleasure in
the furnishing of cheap entertainment and the recognition that a certain
advance has recently been made seem to alleviate the esthetic situation,
but the core of public opinion remains the same; the moving pictures are
no real art.
And yet all this arguing and all this hasty settling of a most complex
problem is fundamentally wrong. It is based on entirely mistaken ideas
concerning the aims and purposes of art. If those errors were given up
and if the right understanding of the moving pictures were to take hold
of the community, nobody would doubt that the chromo print and the
graphophone and the plaster cast are indeed nothing but inexpensive
substitutes for art with many essential artistic elements left out, and
therefore ultimately unsatisfactory to a truly artistic taste. But
everybody would recognize at the same time that the relation of the
photoplay to the theater is a completely different one and that the
difference counts entirely in favor of the moving pictures. _They are
not and ought never to be imitations of the theater. They can never give
the esthetic values of the theater; but no more can the theater give the
esthetic values of the photoplay._ With the rise of the moving pictures
has come an entirely new independent art which must develop its own life
conditions. The moving pictures would indeed be a complete failure if
that popular theory of art which we suggested were right. But that
theory is wrong from beginning to end, and it must not obstruct the way
to a better insight which recognizes that the stage and the screen are
as fundamentally different as sculpture and painting, or as lyrics and
music. _The drama and the photoplay are two co�rdinated arts, each
perfectly valuable in itself._ The one cannot replace the other; and the
shortcomings of the one as against the other reflect only the fact that
the one has a history of fifteen years while the other has one of five
thousand. This is the thesis which we want to prove, and the first step
to it must be to ask: what is the aim of art if not the imitation of
reality?
But can the claim that art imitates nature or rather that imitation is
the essence of art be upheld if we seriously look over the field of
artistic creations? Would it not involve the expectation that the
artistic value would be the greater, the more the ideal of imitation is
approached? A perfect imitation which looks exactly like the original
would give us the highest art. Yet every page in the history of art
tells us the opposite. We admire the marble statue and we despise as
inartistic the colored wax figures. There is no difficulty in producing
colored wax figures which look so completely like real persons that the
visitor at an exhibit may easily be deceived and may ask information
from the wax man leaning over the railing. On the other hand what a
tremendous distance between reality and the marble statue with its
uniform white surface! It could never deceive us and as an imitation it
would certainly be a failure. Is it different with a painting? Here the
color may be quite similar to the original, but unlike the marble it has
lost its depth and shows us nature on a flat surface. Again we could
never be deceived, and it is not the painter's ambition to make us
believe for a moment that reality is before us. Moreover neither the
sculptor nor the painter gives us less valuable work when they offer us
a bust or a painted head only instead of the whole figure; and yet we
have never seen in reality a human body ending at the chest. We admire a
fine etching hardly less than a painting. Here we have neither the
plastic effect of the sculpture nor the color of the painting. The
essential features of the real model are left out. As an imitation it
would fail disastrously. What is imitated in a lyric poem? Through more
than two thousand years we have appreciated the works of the great
dramatists who had their personages speak in the rhythms of metrical
language. Every iambic verse is a deviation from reality. If they had
tried to imitate nature Antigone and Hamlet would have spoken the prose
of daily life. Does a beautiful arch or dome or tower of a building
imitate any part of reality? Is its architectural value dependent upon
the similarity to nature? Or does the melody or harmony in music offer
an imitation of the surrounding world?
Wherever we examine without prejudice the mental effects of true works
of art in literature or music, in painting or sculpture, in decorative
arts or architecture, we find that the central esthetic value is
directly opposed to the spirit of imitation. A work of art may and must
start from something which awakens in us the interests of reality and
which contains traits of reality, and to that extent it cannot avoid
some imitation. But _it becomes art just in so far as it overcomes
reality, stops imitating and leaves the imitated reality behind it_. It
is artistic just in so far as it does not imitate reality but changes
the world, selects from it special features for new purposes, remodels
the world and is through this truly creative. To imitate the world is a
mechanical process; to transform the world so that it becomes a thing of
beauty is the purpose of art. The highest art may be furthest removed
from reality.
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