Chapter III: Part 3

Yet in contemplating the amount of ability spent on works the very existence of which depends often upon the passing moment, it is impossible not to feel that there is an enormous waste in this direction, both literary and artistic.

It has been said that we grind our potential Shakespeares very small on the mill of the daily press; and in like manner, I suppose, our Michael Angelos may be squandered in magazines and Christmas numbers.

I believe it has been said that in our black and white illustrative work we find our “art of the people.” It may be the modern substitute for it, but I should describe it more as the art of a commercial democracy. It is produced by a special class for special classes, rather than for or by the people, strictly speaking; and, curiously enough, though addressed to a wide public, its existence depends upon its swift conversion into private property. You pay your money and you take your choice.

As art, it is after all questionable compensation for that art of the people which formerly existed in every village, every household, in close connection with every handicraft, however humble; when every carpenter, mason, blacksmith, weaver, or plasterer could give the touch of art to his work; when every gable, every street, had character and beauty of its own, and every church was the shrine of the most beautiful art of the time--common to all who had eyes to see.

What, after all, becomes of this mass of illustrating and printing, hastily conceived and hurriedly carried out--these flying leaves, hot from the press, daily, hourly, weekly, monthly, falling upon a comparatively apathetic public, needing stronger and stronger sensational effects and newer novelties? Their days, indeed, are as grass, for as soon as the breath of popular favour and interest passeth over them they are gone, and the place thereof knoweth them no more.

There being so little beauty and variety or romance in the lives of most of us, and since the mind and the senses must be fed in some way or another, we try to make books and pictures fill the void. The demand increases, and an organised system of supply springs up to meet it, so that our poetry and romance, our sense of art and beauty, is ministered to in the way of business, and made up in large or small parcels, to be had in pounds’ worths or penny-worths across the counter.

All this may be very admirable and convenient, but the most beautiful art is the natural outcome and expression of a rich, varied, heroic, and hopeful contemporary life, its character and beauty depending upon that life, and the unity of its sentiment, just as that of a tree or a flower depends upon the soil from which it springs. By our modern methods we are gradually impoverishing the soil while we are forcing the crops. We are obliterating the beauty of common life, at least in towns, while we are endeavouring to increase and stimulate the production of works of art.

That, surely, is a ruinous system--most uneconomical economics! We shall never make both ends meet.

It is well for those who have leisure and inclination to face the question--whither our post-haste production for profit, whether in art or craft, is carrying us? The world after all is limited in extent, and the ordinary fundamental wants of man are limited also. Sooner or later it may come within the bounds of possibility to calculate almost to a nicety the demands of the world-market. That market is already crowded with competitors, and at the present rate the salesmen, or at least the goods, are too many for the market--too much for the margin of profit ever growing narrower. The result is a glut, a waste, a loss, and incalculable suffering to the producers. Is it possible to contemplate the eternal existence of such a blindfold system? Is it not within the bounds of probability that, when the people--the workers--men and women, really come to their own again, and really govern their own, a system of labour will be organised on a very different basis from that of the present, and on a principle as near as possible to that expressed in the motto: “_From_ each according to his capacity, _to_ each according to his needs”?

It is, at least, on such a belief, and a belief founded on the prospects of the inevitable ultimate break-down of the present system of production and exchange by its own failure to fit the conditions of life, that I base my best hopes both for art and humanity.

I have no wish to return to the fourteenth, or any other century, even if wishes were horses and could carry us back. The world moves slowly; the centuries do their work. I fully recognise that our present conditions are the result of a long chain of evolution, and we are still evolving. The peoples of the world are being drawn closer together, and the interdependence of nations brings such an ideal as I have indicated for the first time in history into the region of possibility. All questions lead us on to, and are absorbed in, one great question--the organisation of labour. When that is solved in the interest of the community, instead of for the profit of individuals, we may look forward to a time when, released from the pressing burden of the anxiety for the means of living, each one, while in his own community, taking his share of the necessary work, having leisure and opportunity, may devote his ability, such as lies in him, or as he may develop, to the practice of art or craftsmanship; the results of which would be, being followed for the pleasure of it, and in the pursuit of beauty or for the expression of thought, Art would be entirely unforced; growing naturally out of the use of the materials, and adaptability to the constructive position, directed by creative thought.

When the highest good becomes truly the good of the community and the service of man--the root and basis of all morality--when instead of grudging and partial acknowledgment it becomes the mainspring of action; and when, freed from narrowing and debasing superstitions, man’s place in nature is understood; when living a life which afforded equal opportunities to all, which, being more simple and natural, would favour the development of the artistic sense, is it possible to doubt that we should see great and beautiful public works and monuments, the result of combined and sympathetic labours, expressing not only the joy of individual artists and craftsmen in the beauty of their work, but the collective spirit of the community, whose guiding principles would be equality of condition and individual freedom, controlled only by considerations of the common good and the fraternal relationship of mankind?

Well, that is something, to my mind, worth looking forward to. It may be a mere outline, but details can be filled in as we complete the design. Whether its realisation be far or near, the important thing for every one, it appears to me, is _to have an ideal_ of some kind. It is of the greatest practical value in life, continually stimulating us to fresh effort; producing wholesome discontent with existing conditions, and filling the mind with aspirations for something better, and the determination to work for it, however infinitesimally each may help to attain it.

We know what it is in our work to have an aim--what a difference it makes, if we are carving a piece of wood, or hammering a piece of metal, if we are seeking to express some particular beauty of line or surface, which all the while dwells in our mind; which we strive to satisfy, but which, whether we succeed or fail, continually leads us to higher and better efforts. It is our aim that makes all the difference in the conduct of art as of life.

It is this, too, which finally settles all questions of style or method, of high art or low, over and above the material we work in, which no artist or craftsman can afford to leave out of account. There is a saying attributed to Goethe, I believe, that the true power of an artist is shown when he works under limitations; and most true it is,--applicable to all art, but especially in association with handicraft, for the whole art of the craftsman lies in his power of working under conditions; and he shows his skill in applying design, and expressing it in different materials in such a way as best to bring out the peculiar beauty and adaptability of those materials, and the fitness of the design to them; by no means endeavouring to imitate in one material what can only properly be done in another, or joining in that aimless masquerade in which the arts lose their identity and character together.

In the midst of decay and dissolution there are signs of new life and movement--the awakening of spring among the dead boughs of winter, the budding of the new shoots from among the faded and fallen leaves. These efforts to revive the handicrafts, to unite the scattered and estranged members of the family of the arts, are full of good augury. Not that such movements alone can solve the questions on which I have touched, except, perhaps, for individuals here and there; but the effort to return to better ways in one direction is sure to lead us on to search out juster ways in another; and in our realisation of the unity of art we may discover the secret of the unity of life, if, indeed, the first is possible before the last.

In the meantime the formation of guilds of workers in art and handicraft must tend to foster the sense of fellowship, sympathy, and co-operation, from the loss of which art and artists have suffered so much. We shall discover by our trials and exercises in various handicrafts what real pleasure and interest can be associated with work; how impossible, indeed, is a healthy existence without interesting work of some kind; and even what is called the drudgery of it--those preparatory stages in work, with the ultimate end in view, become interesting, and fall into their place as a proper part and necessary means to the attainment of that end, and even, perhaps, not unwelcome incidents in the day’s work.

I feel sure we can afford to despise no manner of manual labour, skilled or unskilled. The simplest operation requires some kind of intelligence and adaptability. The stone-breaker on the road will tell you that you have to find out “where to hit them,”--not that any man ought to be condemned to stone-breaking all his life, however. The human frame is the most adaptable thing in nature (as well as in design); its beauty is owing to its adaptability, and depends for its freedom of movement and command of limb upon constant exercise. I see no beauty or desirability in the contemplation of a society divided into two parts--brains and hands--even were it possible, for neither can work well without the other. We must overthrow that false, false notion that work is degrading, and that it must be the object and mark of all superior persons to shift the burden of all manual and useful labour on to the shoulders of a class; that it is at all a creditable thing to be “of no occupation,” or that impossible being “an independent gentleman.”

Here is where we have gone wrong, and there will have to be some considerable changes in the ideals as well as in the realities of existing society before things can be got straight again.

THE PROSPECTS OF ART UNDER SOCIALISM

For the sake of clearness I will commit myself to a definition: firstly of art, which, so far as its meaning can be packed up into the portmanteau of a sentence, might be described as _a form of vital force applied to the expression of Beauty_. This will at any rate sufficiently indicate the point of view from which I regard it. As to socialism I know no better or more portable definition than that of Mr. Belfort Bax, namely, that socialism is _a new view of life upon an economic basis_.

Under the present system of commercial competition every opportunity which seems to afford a chance of gaining a livelihood or a hope of gain stimulates people to activity in all manner of ways. But it is an unwholesome stimulus, especially in its effect upon art and artists; and, as a result, the market is flooded with every kind of catch-penny abomination--pictures or so-called ornaments, and objects of art which could have brought no joy to the maker of them, and can bring no real or lasting pleasure to the user, for whom, perhaps, they but fit the whim of the moment, or are only bought because of the persuasive eloquence of some adroit salesman (under the aforesaid stimulus of gain); and for no better reason than that such things are in fashion.

Now, naturally, there is this characteristic about genuine spontaneous art, that its creation is a pleasurable exercise and excitement. The artist is always anxious to give out what he has--to offer his best to the sight of all men; and so far he is naturally socialistic. Indeed, art itself is essentially a social product, intimately associated with common life, and depending for its vitality upon a co-operation of all workers, upon living traditions and quick and universal sympathies. These are its sunlight and air.

Where the love of art is sincere, given the capacity, all a man would ask would be security of livelihood, with a fair standard of comfort and refinement, and materials to work with. For the rest it would be simply a pleasurable thing to exercise his creative powers for the benefit of the community and the praise he might win.

It would seem, too, that humanity under any system cannot do without art in some form or another, and is always ready to welcome and reward the artist who has the skill to interpret nature, or beautify and refine the life of every day. But no artist, in so far as he is worthy of the name, works consciously for the sake of reward, other than the sympathy and praise of his contemporaries. Modern commercialism does its best to turn him into a man of business, but that was not his natural destiny. Originally one with the constructive workman--the builder, the smith, the carver, the weaver, the potter--he put the touch of art on his work, the refining play of line and pattern, and he saw that it was good, with the pleasure and delight of a craftsman. So use and beauty were one in the old simple days. But we have changed all that. We have put use in one pigeon-hole and beauty in another, and it is only by accident that they get mixed.

Now the severance of the artist and the workman--the craftsman--and the dismemberment, and absorption of the latter to a large extent by machinery, have had results incalculably injurious to art, whatever service they may have been in other ways. As to machinery, it is but a question of adaptation of means to ends, since machinery simply gives extra hands and feet to humanity; useful enough to do heavy and useful drudgery, and works of necessity in a hurry--feed, clothe, and warm, pump and lift weights, for instance--to be the servant and labour-saver of man, in short, but never his master and profit-grinder, as it has become, and certainly never intended to take pleasurable art-work out of his hands, or speciously simulate the workmanship of those hands, and take, with its variety, its interest and beauty away.

It is a curious thing that while every day we are extending our railways and pushing our commerce, making travel easier, and opening up unknown countries to what we are pleased to call the advantages of civilisation,--while we are facilitating methods of getting about on the one hand or the other, we are obliterating those interesting varieties and local distinctions which make travel chiefly interesting; so that while we increase our facilities of travel we remove its inducements as fast as we can--at least from the art point of view.

One of those things the disappearance whereof we deplore is the art of the people--the peasant costume with its embroidery and jewellery, always so full of character and colour, relics of long antiquity and tradition, the odds and ends of which are carefully scraped together and served up to the tourist long after they have ceased to be realities in the life of the people. This native art, found in all unexploited countries, is highly interesting, as showing how naturally a people collectively express their sense of beauty in colour and form, how naturally, with leisure and fairly easy conditions of life, the art instinct asserts itself.

It is on the unquenchable spontaneity of this instinct that I should rely to give new birth to new forms of art, even were all types and conditions of the art of the past destroyed.

After a course of examination at South Kensington of vast multitudes of designs in any and every style under the sun, I could almost bear such a catastrophe with equanimity, since no aspiring designer could then crib Persian or Chinese, mediæval or Greek patterns, spoil them in the translation, and serve them up as original designs.

All the learning and archæology in the world will not fill us with an instinct for art, since art (to recur to our definition), being a form of vital force, must spring from life itself. It depends on realities, and draws its best inspiration from everyday existence. It is bound to reflect the character of that life, and in so doing gives the history of the people and the spirit of the age of which it is the outcome. We have only to consider how much of our knowledge of past ages and races we owe to the relics of ancient art which have been preserved to us; and this brings us to the consideration of another aspect of the importance of art to a community, and one not likely to be overlooked under socialistic conditions--I mean its educational value.

At present I think this is very much neglected. While we crowd our galleries and exhibitions with masses and masses of pictures every year, our public halls and the walls of our schools are left blank for the most part. This seems to suggest that we are thinking more of our shop-windows than of the windows of our minds--especially those of the rising generation. But why should not the capacity of children for receiving ideas through the eye be taken advantage of? Why should not the walls of our schools be pictured with the drama of history? Why should they not be made eloquent with the wonders of the earth by true and emphatic drawings of the life and character of different countries and peoples?

It has been said that the worst drawing conveys a more definite idea of a thing than the best description. Bringing it down, therefore, even to the plainest utilitarian level, the importance of drawing is obvious enough. A socialistic society would, however, not be likely to gauge its value by so narrow a standard, and when the object of education was recognised as the development of the faculties of the individual, with a view to the service of the community and reasonable enjoyment of life, as distinct from the specialising them for a competitive commercial existence, art would surely be recognised as a most important factor in that result and accorded due place.

The greatest works of art have always been public works, whether we think of the temples and statues of classical antiquity, or the cathedrals and churches of the Middle Ages. In the past art has been devoted to the service of religion, whether pagan or Christian. The wealth lavished on churches and pictures and tombs by princes and popes was spent for the most part, at least, on works that all might see and admire; and the fact of this larger appeal of art, and that it has the expression of the deeper feelings and higher aspirations of humanity, increased its dignity, interest, and beauty.

Nowadays artists, as a rule, work for rich men, and devote their talents to beautifying strictly private interiors with every kind of luxury and splendour: working for individual whims and pleasures, however, cannot be as inspiring as working for the community--for the time, for the people--and the feeling that the artist may express its true mind and heart.

Unity of religious belief and sentiment now no longer exists, and art no longer attempts to act as its interpreter. Painters are content to be the familiar illustrators of ordinary life and passing fashion, or the recorders of the superficial facts and phases of nature, and care not for symbolic imagery or ideals. Architecture and applied art, generally speaking, are devoted to the comfort or glorification of well-to-do individuals, or to serve the ends and purposes of trade.

In an epoch when personal comfort and private property seem to be the main objects of existence, at the price of the absence of both at the other end of the scale, this is not surprising, since art is bound to reflect the character of its age.

Now socialism presents a new ideal to humanity. It is a religion and a moral code as well as an economic system. Its true realisation would mean again that unity of public sentiment, but in a far higher degree, and the sympathy of a common humanity freed from the domination of class and the grinding conditions of commercial competition. Such an atmosphere could not but be favourable to art in the highest degree.

Not only would the common property in the beauty of nature not be allowed to be disfigured for the purposes of private gain, but with leisure and security of living it would not be a question, as it is now so often, with the artist or craftsman, hindered, in pursuing his higher aims, and in seeking perfection in his craft, by the cramping consideration that it will not pay.

And what is true of art work is, after all, true of all work. A profit-grinding system must of necessity be against the production of the best in all ways.

Greater simplicity and dignity of life, too, which would naturally result from a juster distribution of wealth, would have its effect on both art and architecture, and would find expression in simpler and sincerer forms of construction and ornament.

If we imagine a truly socialised community--a state of equal condition (not necessarily of mental capacity or other quality) wherein every able-bodied member served the community according to their capacity, it might necessitate a portion of time (determined by the numbers of the community and their necessities) being spent in some form of manual labour. This in itself would be an advantage and physical benefit to each individual; nor so long as enough leisure was secured would mental capacity be likely to suffer, in its true sense, or the art instinct or capacity either--on the contrary. There is nothing, after all, like close intimacy with nature and fact to strengthen the character all round, and clear the mental vision of morbid states; and as for art, like the wrestler, it always gains new vigour every time it touches the ground--the ground of nature and common life.

If your artist would depict the life about him--the drama of men and women--he will be all the stronger if he has mixed with the actors. If he would give man in all his labours and actions, it is good that he should understand those actions and labours--that he should be able himself to ride, swim, row, or drive the plough, and wield the scythe or spade. He would be a stronger man and a better artist: for it is as much what we _know_ and _feel_ as what we _see_ that comes into our work in art. Would he be an artist in any of the handicrafts, let him first be a smith or a carpenter, let him understand the material he would work with, and its capacities; for it is from the workshop that all good traditions in applied design must come.

I have spoken of probabilities and possibilities, and of necessity both enter largely into the consideration of my subject as of any thought of the future construction and condition of society.

Now, while I have the best hopes for art, I do not think it probable that under socialism any one will get labour-values to the extent of £70,000 for a picture, but it would nevertheless be quite possible to get a Raphael.

The type of artist--supposing artists existed as a class or order in a socialist community--most likely to be fostered would, I think, be probably such as that represented by the master craftsmen of the Middle Ages, such as Albert Dürer or Holbein, for instance--men capable of design in all kinds of materials, who could design a building, make the pattern of a jewel or a gown, draw a title-page or paint a portrait. What may be called, in short, the all-round artist would be likely to be more in demand than the specialist more or less fostered under present conditions.

The essence of art is harmony and unity. We have seen how art depends upon life, and is affected by and reflects its character and conditions. Before we can hope to get harmonious art and thought, therefore, we must realise harmony and unity in life.

For myself I am confident, in view of these considerations, that what is good for humanity is good for art. Take care of the pence of healthy life,--the current coin of individual freedom, of political and social equality, of the fraternity of human service and common interests,--and the gold pieces of art, thought, and creative beauty will take care of themselves.

ON THE TEACHING OF ART

The teaching of Art! Well, to begin with, you cannot teach it. You can teach certain methods of drawing and painting, carving, modelling, construction, and what not--you can teach the words, but you cannot give the power of expression in the language.

Of course a man’s ideas on the subject of teaching necessarily depend upon his general views of the purport and scope of art. Is it (1) a mere imitative impulse, a record of the superficial facts of nature in a particular medium? or is it (2) the most subtle and expressive of languages, taking all manner of rich and varied forms in all sorts of materials under the paramount impulse of the search for beauty?

Naturally, our answer to the question, What should be taught, and how to teach it, depends upon our answer to this question. But the greater includes the less, and though one may be biassed by the final definition, as above, it does not follow that the first-named may not have their due place in a course of study.

The question, then, really is, What is the most helpful course of study towards the attainment of that desirable facility and cultivation of the feeling and judgment in the use of those elements and materials towards their ultimate expression of beauty?

And here we have to stop again on our road and ask, What is this quality of beauty, and whence does it come? Without exactly attempting a final or philosophical account of it, we may call it an outcome and efflorescence of human life and energy under happy conditions. It is found in varying degree, and the development of the sensibility to impressions of beauty follows much the same course and stages as those of the senses and the intellect themselves--of the development of man, in short, as a social and reflective animal. As one cannot see colour without light, neither can we expect sensibility to beauty to grow up naturally amid sordid and dull surroundings.

To begin with, then, before we can have this impulse and sensibility towards beauty, it is necessary to create an atmosphere of beauty,--a condition of life where it comes naturally with the colours of dawn and sunset; where it has not to struggle as for very life, as it were, for every breath it draws, or ask itself the why and wherefore of its existence.

Nor is beauty an independent and unrelated quality, but is the result, as we find it in its various manifestations in art, of long ages of growth and co-operative tradition and sympathy.

Seeking beautiful art, organic and related in all its branches, we turn naturally to places and periods of history which are the culminating points in such a growth--to Athens in the Phidian age, to England or France in the mediæval age, to Florence or Venice in the early Renaissance, for instance, rather than to modern London or Paris. Or even limiting ourselves to our own day, we have got to expect far more from the man who has worked from his youth up in an atmosphere of art, even if it is only that of the modern painting studio, than from one of our artisans, trained to some one special function, perhaps, in a process of manufacture, and whose daily vision is bounded by chimney-pots and back-yards.

A pinch of the salt of art and culture, at measured intervals, will never counteract the adverse influence of the daily, hourly surroundings on the eye and the mind. It is useless if one hour of life says “yes,” if all the others say “no” continually.

Our first requirement, then, is a sympathetic, or at least suggestive atmosphere--which means practically a reasonable human life, with fair play for the ideas and senses through the drama of the eye. It ought to be within the reach of all of us, whereas as a matter of fact it is hardly possible for any under the present economic system.

Granting our first condition would go a long way towards solving the next problem--what to teach, for we should then find that art was not separable from life.

Children are never at a loss what to learn or what to teach themselves when they see any manner of interesting work going on. They gather at the door of the village blacksmith, or at the easel of the wayside painter. Demonstration is the one thing needed, primarily. Demonstration, demonstration, always demonstration. This is perhaps at the bottom of the recent strong determination to French methods on the part of our younger painters. You can learn this part of the painting business because you can see it done. You could learn any craft if you saw it done. But it does not follow that there is no painting but impressionism--with M. Monet as its prophet.

Not that I would undervalue any sincere and genuine impulse; only the cultivation of this kind of painting exclusively--that is, the presentment of aspect--specialises a man and differentiates the painter more and more from other artists; and the concentration of public interest on this form of art draws away talent from the other most important branches.

It might be said almost that the modern cabinet or competitive gallery picture, unrelated to anything but itself (and not always that), has destroyed painting as an art of design.

I would therefore rather begin with the constructive side of art. Let a student begin by some knowledge of architectural construction and form. Let him thoroughly understand--both historic and artistic--the connection between art and architecture. Let him become thoroughly imbued with a sense of the essential unity of art, and not, as is now so often the case, be taught to practise some particular technical trick, or be led to suppose that the whole object of his studies is to draw or paint any or every object from the pictorial point of view exclusively. Let the two sides of art be clearly and emphatically put before him--that of Aspect and Adaptation. Let him see that it is one thing to be able to make an accurate presentment of a figure, or any object in its proper light and shade and relief, in relation to its background and surroundings, and quite another to give expression to outline, or to make them into organic pieces of decoration to fit a given space. Then, again, he should perceive how the various media and materials of workmanship naturally determine the character and treatment of his design, while leaving large individual range.

A course of study from this point of view would tend to bring home to the student the wholesome dictum of Goethe, “Art is art, precisely because it is not nature,” even if his very first study failed to convince him of its truth.

The formative capacity and constructive sense may exist in a high degree, without any corresponding power of drawing in the pictorial sense; and considerable proficiency in simpler forms of various handicrafts, such as modelling, wood-carving, and _repoussée_ work, is possible of attainment by quite young people, whereas the perception of certain subtleties in pictorial methods of representation, such as the perspectives, planes, and values, delicacy of modelling, and the highly selective sense which deals with them, is a matter of matured mental capacity, as well as technical experience and practical skill. So that there are natural reasons for a primary training in some forms of handicraft, which, while affording the same scope for artistic feeling, present simpler problems in design and workmanship, and give a tangible foundation from which to start.

In thus giving, in a course of study in art, the first place to architecture and the allied decorative arts, we are only following the historic order of their progress and development. When the arts of the Middle Ages culminated in the work of the great painters of the Renaissance, their work showed how much more than makers of easel pictures they were--architects, decorators, jewellers, calligraphers, embroiderers; so that a picture, apart from its central interest and purpose, was often an illustrated history of contemporary design in such things.

Now, my conclusion is that whereas a purely pictorial training or such a training as is now given with that view, while it often fails to be of much service in enabling a student to paint a picture, quite unfits him for other fields of art quite as important, and leaves him before the simplest problem of design helpless and ignorant; while a training in applied design, or merely in drawing and colouring with that view, and all the forethought and ingenuity it calls forth, would be a good practical education in itself, would be a good preparation for pictorial studies, should the student ultimately devote himself to them.

I should therefore endeavour to teach relatively--to teach everything in relation not only to itself, but to surroundings--designating in relation to its materials and objects--the drawing of form in relation to other forms.

The ordinary ways of teaching drawing, say from the human figure--the Alpha and Omega of all study in art--do not show themselves sufficiently alive to the help that may be gained by comparative anatomy. Study the figure not only in itself, but in relation to the forms of other animals, and draw the analogous parts and structures--bones, joints, muscles--side by side, not only from the comparative anatomist’s point of view, but the artist’s. Study them in life and in action also.

We have recently been told that artists have been fools since the world began in relation to depicting the action of animals; but it was by a gentleman who did not appear to have distinguished between moments of arrested action and the action which is the sum of those moments. Instantaneous photographs of animals in action tell you whereabouts their legs are at a given moment, but it is only when they are put in a consecutive series and turned on a wheel before the eye that they represent action. This is illusion, not art. Now the artist has to represent or to suggest action without actual movement of any kind, and he has generally succeeded, not by arresting the action of the moment, but by giving the sum of consecutive moments, much as the wheel does, but without the illusory trick. His business is to represent, not to imitate.

Art, after all, is not science. Until we all go about with photographic lenses with dry plates in them instead of eyes, we shall, I fear, still be interested in what artists have to say to us about nature and their own minds, whether instantaneous impressions or not.

This is only one of the many questions which rise up at every step, and I know of no system of teaching which adequately deals with them. No doubt our systems of teaching, or attempting to teach, art want overhauling like other systems; and when we are overhauling the system of life itself, it is not wonderful.

I do not, of course, believe in any cast-iron system of education from any point of view. It must be varied according to the individual. It must be made personal and interesting, or it is of little good; and no system, however good, will manufacture artists in anything, any more than the most brilliant talents will do away with the necessity of passionate devotion to work, careful thought, close observation, and constant practice, which produces that rapid and intimate sympathy of eye and hand, and makes them the responsive and fluent interpreters of that selective and imaginative impulse which results in art.

DESIGN IN RELATION TO USE AND MATERIAL

The fundamental importance of design, and its claims to consideration, will hardly be disputed, particularly at a time when the advancement of art in its application or relation to industry is so much sought for. There is not a single thing we use but involves this primal necessity of design in some degree, which has not demanded some exercise of human thought, some measure of ingenuity, some kind of plan, to fit it for its purpose, or to commend itself to our sense of beauty. And here it may be said, although art in this sense is generally termed “applied art,” strictly speaking, all forms of art, properly understood, come under this head, and that there is no such thing as _un_applied art--or, if there is, we may say then it is not art at all.

The gist of the whole matter lies in this application. Design in all its forms is governed by the relative spirit. In making a design, even of the simplest kind, important considerations and questions immediately arise--questions of _scale_, of _treatment_, of _material_, of _position_, of _use_, which finally decide its character; and in the solution of such questions lie at once the business and the success of the designer and craftsman.

Now the first of these considerations is SCALE. This is determined by the size of the object or surface we deal with, its use, and its relation to its surroundings: as the relation of the axe-head to its handle, the unit of a pattern, the height and proportions of a chair--what, in short, we may call architectural considerations. Fitness of scale is of course primarily determined in relation to the scale and proportions of man himself, who is naturally the standard and measure by which all work for the use and pleasure of humanity is finally checked. You would not, for instance, carve colossal heads on chair backs; or, on the other hand, try to make a chimney-pot look like a miniature cathedral spire! These, of course, are extreme instances.

There is a certain natural logic and common sense of proportion which keeps us tolerably straight in these matters, while it allows a sufficiently indefinite margin for individual taste and variety of character.

There exist obvious reasons, as well as natural feeling, in favour of decoration intended to be near the eye, or upon objects to be handled or used, being small in scale and finely worked; and though, in that perpetual readjustment and inventive adaptation in the control of the designer there is always scope for variety, behind all he is conscious of the pressure of relative considerations--of natural law, in fact.

Then we come to the great question of TREATMENT, in which lies folded, as it were, like the flower in the bud, the very virtue and essence of art.

To begin with, the designer, in the application of his art to material and use, has to put away from him the allurements of imitative naturalism, except in so far as they can be made to contribute and be subordinated to the effect and purpose of his work as a whole. He soon perceives the natural cleavage between nature and art--between the accidental picturesqueness of confused detail, broken surface-lights, and shadows, and definite, selected, related, and expressive forms and lines. He may be likened to a child with a handful of wooden letters out of which he has to construct words and sentences. Nature and the history of art is the vast encyclopædia of fact and form and phase out of which the poet and the artist have to choose the materials for their work.

A painter pure and simple is, of course, much less restricted, much less weighted with relative considerations, than the designer, and is at liberty, governed only by the necessary internal relation of his work, to avail himself of effects beyond the scope of the maker of tapestries or mosaics, the painter of glass, or the carver. Yet, curiously enough, in our industrial century the influence of the easel-picture painter has been paramount. He has ridden (I will not say in triumph) over our household furniture, he has trampled on our hearthrugs and carpets, he has left his impress on our napery and antimacassars; his influence, in fact, can be traced from our faience to our fish-slice; and this perhaps because, owing chiefly to industrial and economic conditions, the term art and artist came to be limited to pictorial work and its producer,--since the modern easel-picture painter was until lately the only form of craftsman working independently, and with anything like complete control of his own work.

We are recovering, however, I think. We are realising the difference between pictorial and decorative art, between _imitative_ and _constructive_ design. It will do us no harm, as a corrective to our pictorial excesses, to draw the line very sharply between the two,--to put, metaphorically, the decorative sheep on the one hand, and the pictorial goats on the other. For we must remember there are two sides to art, with distinct aims. They may be characterised as “_aspect_” and “_adaptation_”: the one seeking rather to imitate planes and surfaces, accidental lighting, phases and effects; the other constructive, depending on its beauty, on qualities of line and form and tint, unaffected by accidental conditions, seeking typical rather than individual forms, and ornamental rather than realistic results.

The first necessity in designing is Definition. Hence LINE is all-important. Let the designer, therefore, in the adaptation of his art, lean upon the staff of _line_,--line determinative, line emphatic, line delicate, line expressive, line controlling and uniting. It cannot lead him wrong; it will never deceive him. He will always know where he is weak, and where he is indecisive, where he has hesitated, and where he has been confident. It will be the solid framing of his structure--the bones and marrow of his composition.

In line alone, having regard to all its different degrees of tenuity, the designer possesses a means of expression of considerable force and sympathetic range. It lends itself to the most sensitive and delicate definition in a fine pen, pencil, or silver-point drawing, and it is capable of the utmost strength and architectural solidity, as in the emphatic outlines necessary to express the pattern and bring out the qualities of the material in large mosaic decorations and stained glass; where, too, other considerations come in, as the tesseræ (Fig. 2) of the one, and the lead lines (Fig. 1) and colour scheme in the other.

And here we come to another essential element in designing: we cannot touch what may be called the exigencies of particular materials, or begin to define our cartoon or pattern in line without perceiving the necessity of proceeding upon some kind of system in the treatment of form and detail.

In purely pictorial work, of course, this is not felt to the same degree, though the necessity _is_ present even there, since we cannot work with Nature’s own materials. We cannot dip our brush in liquid sunshine on the one hand, or have the blackness of night upon our palette on the other. We have not her greens or her reds, and gold and blue, in our boxes; we cannot command the full colours of the sunset or the dawn; so that with the most uncompromising realist the result is after all a compromise, a question of translation, adjustment to a scale, and more or less figurative expression. The same as regards minuteness of detail. Do we paint for the eye at such and such a distance, the photographic lens, or the microscope? A little nearer or a little farther, and all the conditions are changed. The fact is, as I have said, _all_ art is conditioned; it is only a question of degree, and it is the successful demonstration and determination of these degrees which mark the difference between one kind of art and another, between one artist and another.

There is of course no absolute determination of rules for all cases. There is nothing absolute in art. _Art is not science._ The way is perpetually open for new experiments, for new expositions, and new adaptations and applications, which makes the pursuit of art in all its forms so peculiarly fascinating, and ever fresh and inspiring.

But to return to the question of System. Now supposing we wanted to make a pattern of a rose for a wall-paper. We might pick one from our garden (if we had one, as indeed every designer ought to have) and sketch it exactly as we found it--a portrait, as near as we could make it, of an individual rose with all its accidental characteristics. Well, we might make an interesting study, certainly, but when we came to apply it we should perceive that it made, however good as a study, a very poor pattern, and its virtue and interest as a drawing would be at once destroyed directly our pictorial rose was repeated--which we should be driven to do. We should practically get the repetition of a more or less shapeless blot, a _formal_ and _regular repetition_ of an _informal and naturalistic drawing_--a contradiction in terms, in fact. Yet it is a thing that has been attempted over and over again. A sentimental public perhaps likes roses, in season and out of season, and considers perhaps that a rose in any material would, if not smell, at least look as sweet. It may be so, but if it be not sweet and clear in line and disposition, and organic as a pattern, its sweetness is wasted on the desert air of false art and taste and failure in decoration.

Therefore it is that the designer, having regard to the conditions of ornamental effect and relation to use and material, proceeds in a very different way. He finds that a certain formalism is an essential condition of his work, seeing that his aim is to adorn a space pleasantly, to construct a pattern that will bear repetition, or rather demand it, as another essential condition of its existence. He finds therefore that typical and abstract forms are of more value for the purpose than accidental ones; that suggestion is better in decoration than naturalistic or pictorial imitation. He would naturally, in taking a rose as his theme, recur to the primitive and fundamental type--to the simple flower as we see it on the parent stem of the wild rose of our hedges (Fig. 3). With such a type as this he could safely make a diaper or simple sprigged arrangement which would be satisfactory as far as it went (Fig. 4).

Nor, let it be observed, is the designer, in following such principles, departing from nature necessarily. Nay, in his way he may be expressing as much natural truth even as the pictorial artist: as we have seen that truth of aspect is one thing, and truth of construction and detail another; while in following the necessities of adaptation to use and material the designer is only carrying out in the region of art the great principle of Nature herself, which rules through all forms of life,--that necessity of adaptation to conditions, which, as we have learned, has led to the endless variety of development in both plant and animal form that we see on every side.

The necessity of plan in designing next makes itself felt, and is of course very important, and capable of almost any degree of extension and complexity, although designs for extension on walls or hangings generally fall into recognisable classes with different variations. Starting with our diaper, square or diagonal, which may be considered the simplest, we may build our pattern upon a great variety of foundations (Fig. 5). But we shall find it necessary to build upon _some_ plan, as a plan is as essential to a pattern as the skeleton to the human figure, though you may eventually conceal it as much as the skeleton is concealed by the human form, or more, by superadded enrichment, detail, and intricacy. How far to go in this way the nature of the material and its uses will generally decide.

As to colour treatment, again, the best decorative effect does not demand the use of heavy shading or relief. The colours should be pure and fair, and the true local colours of all things should be sought, unaffected by accidental lights and shadows, as if we saw everything in an evenly diffused or flat light.

In modelling, or any treatment where the means of expression and ornamental effect is by relief, of course the question is different, though here again the gist of the matter lies in treatment, and there is all the difference in the world between one treatment and another.

Now of course the strictest observance of such principles in designing as I have indicated will not necessarily ensure an interesting pattern, though they would suffice to produce a workable one. Other considerations come in as we advance. Plan involves the consideration of the proportion and relation of our masses, and beauty of silhouette. Draw a figure with a big head, and it at once looks ridiculous (this seems so taken for granted by the many, that comic draughtsmen have subsisted upon it for years), while with a head of the natural proportion it may have grace and dignity. The same principle holds good in ornamental designing, and a beautiful result very largely depends upon a due recognition of the importance of proportions. It does not follow that these proportions are those of nature, as in a naturalistic picture. In a decorative design, to serve our ornamental purpose, one may depart widely from them, as in the relative size of trees and figures and flowers and animals, etc., where there is no approach to naturalistic representation, as in designs for textiles and other things.

The important thing to preserve is the relation of masses, the organic and necessary connection arising out of the constructive necessities. In pattern work _three proportions_ are generally felt desirable. You cannot jump at a bound from large to small, therefore an intermediate scale is useful, as in the illustration (Fig. 6). The masses of the tree and the pot are combined by the forms of the birds, and further, by the thin stems and leaves behind.

Silhouette, again, is a very important consideration in designing. It is a very good practice to block out one’s design in silhouette in the first instance, as this will afford the best test of the relations and proportions of its masses possible, and of its variety. One does not seek to arrange a figure exactly symmetrically (as at A, Fig. 7), except under very formal conditions. That at B is felt to be a more agreeable treatment. The more variety in contour, the more beauty we get.

The best practice in effective and ornamental use of silhouette is to be found in designing patterns for stencilling, where everything depends upon it. You block out a pattern in flat colour--light on dark, or dark on light--in such a way that it is capable of being cut out of a sheet of card or zinc without breaking, so that by painting over the perforated part, which is the pattern, it is transferred to any ground you desire. Fig. 8 shows two sketches of stencil patterns; the halves to repeat.

Another important consideration in designing is the adequate filling of the space for which your design is intended.