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Page 33
That art is above nature is no new discovery. [Footnote: Cf.
"Goethe", by Karl Heinemann, 1899, p. 684; also Oscar Wilde, "De
Profundis"; also Delacroix, "My Diary".] New principles do not
fall from heaven, but are logically if indirectly connected with
past and future. What is important to us is the momentary
position of the principle and how best it can be used. It must
not be employed forcibly. But if the artist tunes his soul to
this note, the sound will ring in his work of itself. The
"emancipation" of today must advance on the lines of the inner
need. It is hampered at present by external form, and as that is
thrown aside, there arises as the aim of composition-
construction. The search for constructive form has produced
Cubism, in which natural form is often forcibly subjected to
geometrical construction, a process which tends to hamper the
abstract by the concrete and spoil the concrete by the abstract.
The harmony of the new art demands a more subtle construction
than this, something that appeals less to the eye and more to the
soul. This "concealed construction" may arise from an apparently
fortuitous selection of forms on the canvas. Their external lack
of cohesion is their internal harmony. This haphazard arrangement
of forms may be the future of artistic harmony. Their fundamental
relationship will finally be able to be expressed in mathematical
form, but in terms irregular rather than regular.
VIII. ART AND ARTISTS
The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret
way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence
casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful
strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and
has power to create spiritual atmosphere; and from this inner
standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad
one. If its "form" is bad it means that the form is too feeble in
meaning to call forth corresponding vibrations of the soul.
[Footnote: So-called indecent pictures are either incapable of
causing vibrations of the soul (in which case they are not art)
or they are so capable. In the latter case they are not to be
spurned absolutely, even though at the same time they gratify
what nowadays we are pleased to call the "lower bodily tastes."]
Therefore a picture is not necessarily "well painted" if it
possesses the "values" of which the French so constantly speak.
It is only well painted if its spiritual value is complete and
satisfying. "Good drawing" is drawing that cannot be altered
without destruction of this inner value, quite irrespective of
its correctness as anatomy, botany, or any other science. There
is no question of a violation of natural form, but only of the
need of the artist for such form. Similarly colours are used not
because they are true to nature, but because they are necessary
to the particular picture. In fact, the artist is not only
justified in using, but it is his duty to use only those forms
which fulfil his own need. Absolute freedom, whether from anatomy
or anything of the kind, must be given the artist in his choice
of material. Such spiritual freedom is as necessary in art as it
is in life. [Footnote: This freedom is man's weapon against the
Philistines. It is based on the inner need.]
Note, however, that blind following of scientific precept is less
blameworthy than its blind and purposeless rejection. The former
produces at least an imitation of material objects which may be
of some use.
[Footnote: Plainly, an imitation of nature, if made by the hand
of an artist, is not a pure reproduction. The voice of the soul
will in some degree at least make itself heard. As contrasts one
may quote a landscape of Canaletto and those sadly famous heads
by Denner.--(Alte Pinakothek, Munich.)]
The latter is an artistic betrayal and brings confusion in its
train. The former leaves the spiritual atmosphere empty; the
latter poisons it.
Painting is an art, and art is not vague production, transitory
and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the
improvement and refinement of the human soul--to, in fact, the
raising of the spiritual triangle.
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