Chapter V: Part 5

Consider, too, the waste of energy and talent in this unequal struggle for artistic life and recognition--this pictorial lottery, where so many blanks are drawn. Think of the capacities now swallowed up in the tasteless contention of exhibitions, which, properly organised and directed, might co-operate to adorn our streets and public places, our lecture halls and railway stations, left desolate now to another and more hideous form of competition in the clamorous posters of commercialism, which cover our waste walls and hoardings, and crowd upon the weary eye in all their shameless self-assertion and sordid language of the market, shouldering one another in the unspeakable coarseness of colour-bedizenment and graceless superscription.

In spite of our refinement, our care for art, our æstheticism, forsooth! and the lavishly-decorated private interiors of wealth, to this complexion must we come out of doors!

And in the meantime we are so inured and hardened to such disfigurements that we cease to feel their enormity. Nay, we must grow to like them, for are not advertising and bill-sticking an inseparable part of our system? There is no escape. So it is, and so it will be, so long as we allow this selfish, demoralising, and unscrupulous demon of commercialism to tyrannise over and exploit us, ever with its continual cry of “Profit, profit, profit!” Every aspiration will be shouted down as visionary and unpractical; every real attempt to better our disorganised condition will be opposed by the dead weight of vested interests.

It is on record that one of the few living artists, properly called ideal--George Frederick Watts--offered to decorate the hall of the Euston Station with frescoes without charge, if the Company would bear the cost of the materials; and the offer was refused. How can monumental art, which is but decorative art in its highest form, exist in such apathetic conditions? To grow the flower you must not only have the seed, but a favourable soil and climate. It will be written of our age that we squandered the talents of our more original writers and artists upon the newspaper and periodical press. We preferred to be amused with a constant succession of brilliant trivialities and passing sensations, to beholding our best thoughts embodied in enduring and noble forms of art; and it did not seem to signify how many lives might be frittered away--how much energy and talent ground to powder in the process.

But monumental art demands the sympathy of a people bound together by common feelings, interested in the drama of history, and proud of their own struggles and sacrifices for freedom; accustomed to dwell with ennobling thoughts and aspirations, and accustomed to give them free and forcible expression; sensible both of the joy and the tragedy of life, delighting in phantasy and invention, and, above all, in beauty of form and colour. Yet there is nothing in these things but what naturally belongs to humanity.

Can such art be found where the best energies are engrossed in the feverish and unequal race for a more or less precarious existence on the one hand, and on the other made artificial by excess of wealth?--where the aspect of life, whether public or private, is neither simple nor dignified, and where cities become unlovely and inorganic accumulations of bricks and mortar?--where, with an appearance of zeal for art, education, and refinement, and the elevation of the masses, we allow mile after mile of mean or pretentious dwellings to carry the desolation of our unwieldy human warrens farther and farther into the green country, as the capitalist and the jerry-builder join house to house and brickfield to brickfield?

So we are thrown back on economic conditions, which, it is impossible to doubt, are finally responsible for these things, as, indeed, they have always been responsible for the form in which the art of a period is cast. How hopeless it is, for instance, to expect varied and beautiful street architecture with the present system of house tenure and the contract system in building! Here and there a dwelling, with some claims to beauty and distinction--or, at least, individuality--perchance arises from the sordid crowd; but these are the homes of men of wealth and exceptional taste, who build for their own delight, and have secured their ground. Here and there a board-school building relieves the monotony, and seems to point to the possibilities of better things. But the mass of modern London consists of the erections of the speculative builder--miles of absolutely uninteresting house fronts, composed chiefly of the repetition of one pattern, and that of the meanest and most uninventive kind, crowded together--the ready-made packing-cases for civilised humanity which enters in and dwells there. Could these things be were it not for the powers of commercialism, based upon the individual possession of land and capital, with the one object of money gain in their disposal?

But all things are in the grasp of commercialism. Let a band of artists and craftsmen associate together, and, working quietly, make to themselves and all whom it may concern things of beauty and utility for the use and adornment of simple homes. Straightway there is a growing desire for these things as a relief from the dreary monotony of ugliness, or the pretentious luxury of second empire taste. Thereupon commercialism, perceiving a demand, brings out what it calls art-furniture, art-colours, and so forth--the addition of the magic word being supposed to make all the difference--sucks the brains of designers, steals their designs, and devotes them to objects for which they were never intended; deluging the market with strange travesties and tortured misapplications of ill-digested ornament, which overruns everything like an irrepressible weed, until, coming down to its lower forms in the cheap furniture shop, one is tempted to think that, in the matter of taste, our last state is worse than the first.

Thus are all the channels of production fouled. Does not commercialism hold the keys of the kingdom of both art and industry? Everything has to pass through the sieve of profit before it reaches the public; and to keep the huge and wasteful machinery of competitive production and distribution going, even at an ordinary jog-trot, it appears to be necessary in every department of trade to make a vain show of so-called “novelties” every season, whether they are really new and better than the old or not.

But the counts of the indictment against commercialism are not yet filled up. The subject is, indeed, too vast and far-reaching to be adequately treated in the limits of a single paper. Hitherto I have kept very near home, but if we look abroad over the world we shall see the same causes at work, the same deterioration going on. Look at the effects of our rule on the native arts of India, The same process of extinction of the art of the people, of the village crafts, is taking place there as has resulted from the action of commercialism at home. (On this point I cannot refer any one who is desirous to pursue the subject to a more competent authority than Sir George Birdwood.) But all over the East, wherever European influence is in the ascendant, the result is disastrous to the arts, and thus the very sources of ornamental design, beauty of colour, and invention are being sullied and despoiled by the sharp practices and villainous dyes of Western commerce. Even in Japan, where the artistic sense seems instinctive among the people, so that everything touched by them bears its impress, since the results of ages of art labour and exquisite craftsmanship have suddenly been placed within the insatiable grasp of commercialism, there are signs that these riches are becoming exhausted, and the rarer and finer kinds grow scarcer every day. We can no longer expect to be given of the best, and wares are being consciously prepared for the European market. This is but the “retort courteous” for the compliments of Manchester in china-clay and size. We actually hear of proposals to establish schools of design on the British model, the more effectually, I suppose, to drive out those quick, spontaneous, characteristic native methods of art-expression, than which nothing, perhaps, has more refreshed and stimulated the jaded sensibilities of European design. Thus even by contact with a vicious civilisation the natural quickness and intelligence of a race may bring about its own destruction.

Thus, in the fierce and unscrupulous struggle for wealth, one after another, virgin markets are opened, and new peoples exploited by commercial enterprise, which, like a huge steam plane, is passing over the world striving to reduce all art, and with it humanity, to one dull level of commonplace mediocrity, leaving us but of vital and beautiful varieties the relics and shavings. Greedy eyes are now turning to Central Africa. The next act in the commercial drama will probably take place there. Already the rampant explorer, posing as the benefactor of humanity, has gone far and wide, and the representatives of the blessings of civilisation, with the Bible in one hand and the revolver in the other, call on the aborigines to stand and deliver. Wheresoever commercialism sets foot, the curse of gold seems to follow. As regards its effect upon art, it is like the old Greek story of Atalanta’s Race, but with a sinister climax. Milanion, the hunter (representing commercialism), enters for the race, and, carrying the fatal apples of gold, casts them one by one in the path of the fair fleet-footed, whom no competitor could hitherto outstrip. She yields, alas! to the seductive spoils--to the greed of gold--and henceforward her fate is sealed.

But commercialism, which seems now so triumphant, carries the seeds of destruction in its own bosom. The penalty of fast living must sooner or later be paid, by nations and systems as by individuals. Dissolution must inevitably set in. Already there are signs of the beginning of the end. Already men’s thoughts and hopes are turned to that which shall succeed. “The old order changeth, giving place to new.” Meanwhile the only hope, alike for art as for humanity, lies in socialism.

ART AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

To men engaged in strenuous political strife, amid the stress and strain of the fierce war of commercial competition; when the forces of labour are organising themselves and forming in battle array against the fenced strongholds of capitalism; when the air is full of strikes and rumours of strikes; and when in the vicissitudes of such war many of our fellow-citizens can scarcely keep body and soul together, it may seem to some a vain thing to speak of art.

But it all depends upon what we understand by art. Is it the senseless frippery and vulgar bedizenment of plethoric wealth and whirligig fashion, the paint and the patcher to make smooth and fair the outside of society, and to hide the wrinkles and hollows which would tell the truth too plainly? Is it the hireling of pride and ostentation living to please the passing whim or craze--a harlequin in the masquerade, ever ready with catch-penny tricks, driven to the necessity of pleasing, if but for the moment, in order to live? Is it the rarity of the market--the thing measured by fabulous price and sold by its weight in gold, though perhaps its producer may have had a bitter struggle to sell it at any price? Are these what we mean by art? or is it that kind and sympathetic enchantment which takes us out of ourselves; the genius of beauty and harmony which makes fair everything it touches, which knows no class or caste, which speaks a universal language; the friend of freedom and brotherhood, bringing order out of confusion, sweetness out of strength; not a matter of private property, but a common possession; whose price and virtue is not to be counted in, or commanded by, dollars, but lies simply in human and hopeful conditions of the life of a people?--entering into everything we touch and use, in the spade and plough, with their carefully-adapted curves and constructive lines fitting them for their proper work, and through all the simple, homely, and necessary implements of daily life and useful work, as well as in the organic beauty of its more conscious and emphatic decorative adornment, as in the carving or moulding or pattern work of our living-rooms, from the plate or the glass on the table to the picture on the wall.

Such simple and primitive things, often unregarded, have their influence, conscious or unconscious, on the lives of us all, if we have been fortunate in our surroundings, and where hearth and home exist at all, with all those tender and human feelings which gather about them more or less: perhaps even in these days of huge caravansaries with their here-to-day and gone-to-morrow inhabitants, on one side; and on the other, a night’s lodging under a cart or a railway arch, or on the golden pavement of the wealthiest city in the world, with a newspaper for a blanket. A newspaper! It might be an illustrated one too. Cheap art! Cheap indeed--almost as cheap as life itself!

Why, any art which is the outcome in any way of the conditions of such a life as that of which these are some of the outward and visible signs, is surely dear enough! The advocates of cheap art, of art for the homes of the people, are apt to forget that the price of cheap art, like the price of all cheap labour, means the cheapening of human lives. When we talk of bringing art to the homes of the people, it would be well first to see that they had got homes, or homes that they could call their own with any less doubtful security than a week’s rent, or with any time to live in them after ten, twelve, or sixteen or eighteen hours of toil.

I agree with a friend, who, at a congress for the furtherance of art, expressed the opinion that the best decoration he knew of for a hungry home was a flitch of bacon. If the cupboard, like Mother Hubbard’s, is bare, you cannot expect its owners will take much interest in the decoration of its panels.

There is a gaunt and hungry Cerberus which must be satisfied, and before Psyche, the soul of art, can enter, the body must be fed.

The fundamental necessities come first. Feed the body and you nourish the brain also. This seems a simple and obvious physical truth--a truism, in fact; yet it has required a great deal of socialist agitation to bring it home even to the limited degree in which it is beginning to be recognised, as in the case of school children.

The best artists’ materials--the raw materials of art--will be found in simple, natural, and healthy conditions of life; not brutalised by excessive toil or degraded by the scramble for gain, but where honest work is security for such a life, with leisure and freedom, and accessibility to beauty of art and nature for all. So that the claims of art are the claims of human life also, of which, indeed, it is but the ultimate expression.

The splendours of ancient art (even of the Asiatic despotisms of Greece and Rome) were lavished upon public buildings and public monuments, so that it could be seen and enjoyed by all the citizens in common, even the slaves. In the Middle Ages the churches, the great depositories of art in all its forms, were always open for the use and enjoyment of the people. The streets in those days were full of variety and colour, so that at any rate life was full of incident and romance, in spite of tyrannous lords and kings, and though innocent of exhibitions, and penny dreadfuls, and shilling shockers, with which we are fain to fill the void amid the dull husks of commonplace.

Coming to modern times, we see that art, like all other human products, has been affected by the great changes in the economic system--changes in the conditions of production and distribution, and of ownership of land, centralisation and the world-market. It has become more and more a matter of private property and absolute ownership, and we have so dropped out of the habit of putting it to any great extent into our public buildings and monuments that we have very few artists who know how to do it, or who think it worth while to give any time or thought to the subject.

Instead of sublime and noble public buildings, churches, and halls, which all the arts unite to make splendid, we have as a rule very dull or pretentious public offices, dull and respectable churches--essays in architecture masquerading in various styles not native to us--and melancholy images of military, naval, or political idols in smoked bronze, like petrified orators for ever addressing an indifferent public, holding, as if in mockery, the dumb show of a perpetual open-air meeting under the presidency of Nelson in police-prohibited Trafalgar Square!

Under the sway of commercial ideas, instead of taking pride in and enjoying in common what belongs to everybody, the object seems to be to get hold of something that no one else has--some rarity, curiosity, at a fabulous price, or a next-to-nothing bargain, and to make art a thing purely of money or exchangeable value--considering it in the light of a good investment, in fact.

It may be said we have our national museums--storehouses stuffed full of the precious relics and fragments of the times when art was a living and growing thing. Valleys now of dry bones, except to a few students. National, certainly, but the nation as a rule has no time to go and see them in this industrial age, since they are not open on the one day--Sunday--on which the people could go. There are the churches, it is true, but the nation does not go to church--not, at least, to the same one, and the churches are no longer as a rule the depositories of the best art the age can produce. Some, indeed, will have none of it, and as to the old ones, we seem to be doing our best to improve them off the face of the earth altogether.

Again, under the mechanical and wholesale system of production for profit, a specialising of labour and art has taken place, and this has led to the practical extinction of the handicraftsman, and his severance from the artist.

Art may be produced _for_ the people (or to sell to them), but it is no longer produced _by_ the people. Every one has a mill of his own to grind at--working against time at a mostly monotonous occupation to meet an artificial demand, or engaged in stimulating that demand, or compulsorily idle in its absence, under a commercial industrial organisation so sensitive as to be affected by every fluctuation of the market, and wherein every body of workers depends upon every other, yet wherein each commercial unit works in competition with its hand against the hand of every other. So that the natural social bond is ever at war with the artificial and unsocial system--pending that true organisation of labour in which lies the only solution of collective human life.

Since then life for the mass of mankind, by the working of various causes--I will not say by consent--has become for the most part a dull mechanical round of toil, alternating with enforced idleness,--a kind of methodical and orderly lunacy with a few lucid intervals which we call holidays or enjoyment, amusement, diversion, art, and poetry--since humanity must have some kind of diversion, we have created a special class to divert us. As the mediæval lord kept his professional jester to ensure a supply of sparkling and ingenious conversation, so we keep, or allow to starve, our artists, poets, musicians, and actors. Very few of them can afford to do exactly as they like--to be free to give us their very best. That would be too expensive as things go; besides there are the laws of supply and demand (as Lord Salisbury has reminded us). So that we have no higher ideal even for an artist or a poet than that of a shopman behind the counter, supplying wares of various or particular kinds to please his customers; who again perhaps are not demanding what they individually prefer, but what they think they ought to prefer, or what they believe other people--supposed to be authorities--would tell them they ought to prefer. It can hardly be wondered at then that our art should be so often artificial.

But should we be justified in assuming that these influences on art are the result of democracy?

It all depends upon what we understand by democracy, and what sort of a democracy. Our present habits and characteristics are derived from all sorts of sources and influences. Our present society is a huge conglomerate formation with fossils scattered in it,--the relics of living forms of past ages.

We chiefly differ from former societies by having a different class in the ascendant with lower ideals, or rather no particular ideal at all, unless 50 per cent or the subordination of most considerations to cash and comfort can be counted as such.

Commercialism, in short, rules us with a rod of--brass. While nominally and politically _free_, men were really never more dependent; and how can men be free so long as their bread depends on the will or the whim of another, and when they have no claim to a foot of land or a roof over their heads, except on condition of a heavy tax upon their own labour? And even in regard to the security of the continuance of labour itself, and therefore of life, they are no more secure.

And yet we are told this is democracy, and that one man is as good as another--yes, we might add, and a great deal better _off_, too.

What! is our social ladder planted then with its feet in the hell of misery and poverty, its top rising to the false heaven of inane luxury and hypocrisy, and the type of man held up to admiration and imitation who works his way up, over others’ shoulders, from Lazarus to become Dives?

Is this democracy? Is it not rather the old enemy, unscrupulous ambition, without its old excuse, under a new mask of thrift, business habits, respectability--secure in the automatic working of the great rent-collecting and interest-yielding machine, faring sumptuously every day on the labour of others?

And if it is proposed to do something to keep up our democratic character, and to endeavour to shorten the hours of labour of our wage-slaves, to throw them a very trifling crust from the table of life, even advanced Liberal politicians seem to think the world is coming to an end. What! the political clock stopping at eight hours a day! Well, I know that after about only six or seven hours of even interesting and varied work at the easel or the desk one feels rather tired; but fancy eight hours in a coal seam! or at a grinder’s wheel!--eight hours of mechanically repeated momentary actions at the will of a steam engine! The only objections to an eight hours bill appear to me to be that it is not _six_ hours, and that there should be any doubt as to whether, under the present system with “the iron law of wages,” its benefits even then might not be illusory, _taken by themselves_. But no one proposes to do that, I presume?

But if the lot of the wage-labourer be not an enviable one, is the lot of his masters more enviable? We might well envy the physical endurance, patience, and pluck of a miner, or a docker, or a gas stoker, but can any man envy such qualities as have been exhibited on the part of some locking-out masters and profit-grinding companies? Not even willing to fight on fair terms--men dismissed for sticking to their union, the workman’s only weapon against capitalism! But even the life which is the result of the “cash and comfort” ideal is far from desirable, from the purely material point of view. _Cash_ there may be, but the _comfort_ is often illusory; stewed in hot-water-pipe atmosphere as if one was an orchid; stiff and uncomfortable dressing; and rooms in which the absence of taste is as conspicuous as the superfluity of furniture. All manner of formal customs and observances, hardly ever a chance to do something for yourself, and language often used to conceal if not thoughts at least feelings.

Is it in this direction we must look for our democratic ideal of life? Is there anything democratic about it, except that the butler is dressed like his master, a certainly unpicturesque result of democracy.

But it appears to me if democracy can show such social characteristics, it cannot be a democracy really. It must be a sham democracy--a commercial democracy, in fact. There evidently must be distinctions even in democracies, because we even hear of “Tory-democracy,” quite the most peculiar notion. We are evidently dealing, as is usual in commercial matters, with questions of quality, 1st, 2d, 3d, and so on, like grocers’ sugar, or like the classes on a railway--another democratic institution, I suppose.

Whatever our “class,” however, we are all chained to the triumphal car of commercialism, which, in spite of the application of brakes and occasional stoppages, rolls on its iron way round the world. Yet its speed and progress depend upon the constant watchfulness and careful labour of millions--upon stretched sinews and overstrained nerves; and who may count the sacrifices in the lives crushed beneath its remorseless wheels! For all that the progress of the car is absolutely dependent upon the continuance of that labour. What if the labourers were by common and universal consent to throw down their tools some day?

I have often wondered that some of our modern realistic painters do not give us pictures of the actualities of modern industry. Weird scenes from the “black country”--those desolate regions that bloom but in furnace flames; scenes in the mines; at iron works; nail and chain makers--tragic pictures many of them will be; truly historic; eloquent witnesses of the foundations of England’s riches, and what they have cost.

It has always been the custom of a people to perpetuate in art their deeds of arms, to carve and paint their triumphs and victories, but we do not seem particularly proud of the real battles, commercial and industrial, upon which our modern importance has been built, and the toil and waste of human life by which it is sustained.

Yet the man who makes a fortune in business generally thinks it well to spend something in pictures. We do not, however, as a rule, see such subjects in his gallery. Our attention is called to the finished product of civilisation, and it is thought desirable to draw a veil over some of the intermediate processes. But few have the hardihood to invite the skeleton to the feast.

Among the curious developments of latter-day civilisation is the rise of a school of painters who apparently spend their talents in discovering, if they can, the beauty of ugliness--the attraction of repulsion! For instance, I noticed at Paris this summer that there was quite a run on pictures of operations in hospitals. Even over here we have men who quite revel in London smoke and fog, and in the charm of the most ill-favoured spots.

This is no doubt more attributable to competition and picture shows than to democracy, but it is hugging your chains with a vengeance. If our artists are so affected by the ugliness of modern life that they--the supposed apostles of beauty--deliberately prefer an ugly subject to show their skill in treating it, we may perhaps lose our sense of beauty altogether in time. While we can, however, let us insist on the difference.

Art of course has many sides and capacities--as many, perhaps, as democracy. While from one point of view it may be regarded simply as the language of observation and record, and as such, I freely admit, it has an important sphere of usefulness; on the other, by means of figurative embodiment and poetic suggestion it is capable of appealing to and stimulating our highest faculties.

The figurative emblematic form of art has always had a strong hold upon the human mind. We see it under the influence of religious ritual and associated with civil life paramount in the art of past ages; and though under the modern search for naturalism symbolism has practically disappeared from the canvas of the painter, except in some few instances among the more thoughtful and poetic, it still maintains an active and popular life in political cartooning. Every week’s public affairs and public characters are treated in a series of pictorial parables, and appear in every variety of comparison, analogy, and disguise, pointing a satire or a political purpose according to the editorial or proprietorial views of the journal. It is noteworthy that it is always in the expression of the strongest feelings and convictions that the parable or symbolical form is used.

Politics and social questions in our time have largely taken the place which religious faith formerly occupied in the popular mind. They are the only questions in which you can interest the mass of mankind--the only questions, perhaps, on which people get really excited. Accordingly they delight to see the expression of their political or social faith in emphatic, familiar, and yet allegorical form, with a satiric sting in it if possible.

Nothing so forcibly expresses the common current of political opinion, or rather sentiment (or even prejudice), of the dominant sections of society as its political and satiric cartoons. They will be valuable material for the future historian. It is curious, too, how long a symbolic figure once accepted will last. Take the familiar one of John Bull himself. Is he really any longer typical of the comfortable, powerful classes--the financier, the banker--who really rule the roast-beef of old England? Instead of a mixture of semi-agricultural, sporting, and Quaker characteristics, a commercial and semi-oriental cast would now perhaps be nearer the truth. But even he must be prepared to give way to the rising power, the real John Bull--LABOUR. I think more advantage might be taken of this widespread love of parable, symbolic and emblematic art. Something, for instance, might be done in it as an effective means of conveying those fundamental economic truths which are so necessary to realise before we can hope to make real progress.

Illustrations might be given, for instance, of Mr. Ruskin’s parallel--the _Crag_ Baron and the _Bag_ Baron.

The first is the baron of feudal times, with his castle on the crag behind him, and the lances of his armed retainers ready to swoop upon all coming through his territory and levy his blackmail.

The second is the baron of modern commercialism, with his own appropriate scenery behind him--his castles, gaunt factories, and instead of the forest of lances, a forest of chimneys. He rules by the power of the money-bag. His bag is beside him, duly labelled rent, profit, interest--the three great sources of his riches and power. He is only disturbed by reading of the progress of socialism.

Another effective design might be a symbolic representation of the present relations of capital and labour, suggested by the Hindu idea of the universe--namely, that the world is supported upon the back of an elephant, and the elephant stands upon a tortoise.

Even so the world of wealth and leisure rests upon capital (the elephant), which again is supported by labour (the tortoise), which indeed may not stand or go except by the will of the elephant and its rider.

The relation of capital to labour might be further symbolised by the _two_ coins in the elephant’s trunk to _one_ in the mouth of the tortoise. The tortoise naturally looks discontented and resentful, and altogether the position of affairs is insecure--insecure because unnatural and unjust.

An emblem of evolution might be given by means of the design of a plant growing from the root up, putting forth leaves, buds, and finally flowers, with the caterpillar, chrysalis, and final transformation into butterfly, typifying the progress of human society--a spiral progression, but culminating in higher organisation. And so from the course of growth and development in nature the socialist takes hope for the future of humanity, through changing conditions and transitions, and causes ever at work evolving a more humane and just order.

While on the subject of popular symbolism, I noticed a while ago a correspondence on the Lord Mayor’s show. Though we may not approve of its present symbolism or its artistic taste always (and I have always wondered that a tableau representing Wat Tyler, who struck a blow for English freedom and the worker in the fourteenth century, prostrate at the feet of Lord Mayor Walworth was allowed to proceed through the streets of London), still the fact remains that it is the one free, popular, open-air spectacle for the people of London, and a historic relic of great interest; and since it brings people together in good-humoured crowds it cannot be an anti-social function. Much more might be made of it if its organisers were inspired by popular sympathies. It might be at once made more beautiful, more instructive, and more significant, and I should suggest that the money now spent on the banquet might be devoted to improving the show as a popular spectacle; spectacles and processions always will be popular. It is not as if the community--except perhaps the business part--would gain anything by the suppression of the show, whereas the poor would lose what is evidently an excitement and a pleasure.

Few sights are more impressive than the vast processions of workmen marching to the park with their bands and banners on one of those great occasions of demonstration or protest, which become so important and so necessary from time to time. Here, at least, is one of the artistic aspects of democracy which is likely to increase with the growth of true democratic institutions, and which affords in the design of banners and emblems the highest scope for emblematic and decorative art.

Processions as a means of propaganda, too, would be no bad thing. A series of groups illustrating the progress of political liberty and social progress from the earliest times to the present, for instance, or the relations of labour and capital (as in our elephant and tortoise), would afford splendid dramatic and picturesque material, and there are still a sufficiently large number of people who take in more ideas through their eyes than by any other door of the brain luckily.

This fact is at least taken advantage of by the advertising tradesman, not so much from a love of art, but with a view to gain his private ends; and so we allow a perfect epidemic of posters and puffery to pursue us everywhere with their vulgar effrontery and hideous forms and colours, from the streets to the stations, from the platform into the railway carriages, trams, buses, in wearisome iteration; or even to cram themselves impertinently between the leaves of the magazine or book we are reading. Well, we can but hope that posters are not the last word in mural decoration, and that perhaps another generation may think it worth while, instead of throwing away labour and skill in pasting every temporary boarding with flagrant announcements and sensational eye-sores, which must come out of the cost price of the articles puffed, to endeavour to relieve the monotony of our house-fronts with some attempt at beauty of design or colour for its own sake.

I have been dwelling on some of the characteristics of our present transitional state of society. “Now is the winter of our discontent,” but the spring will surely come. The new leaves are ever ready to spring from the shrivelled husk. New ideas, new forces, are at work which are destined to change the face of the earth. We may look either to the past or the future, but it is to the future we must look to realise the true ideal democracy--not a commercial, but a social democracy; the first business of which will be to take care of human life itself, and its conditions; to see that the tree is nourished at the roots before we ask for flower or fruit; to raise the standard of life all round; to make the present extremes of poverty on the one hand and luxury on the other impossible; to set up a new ideal of life--simple, but by no means ascetic, which will provide work, as well as full opportunity for leisure and cultivation of individual abilities; which will aim at the organisation of such a system of labour that the useful work of the community shall never press unduly upon one class; and which will not find it tolerable that the price of the comfort and enjoyment of one class should be the degradation of another. No, let our aim be _the abolition of class_ and the establishment of a truly human society of equals; enough for us if a man is true to his manhood and a woman to her womanhood--and what prouder title or higher praise is possible if we consider this true meaning in all the relations of life?--with full scope for those infinite varieties of talent and character which are sure to assert themselves. Faithful service to the community according to the capacity of each the only compulsion, in exchange for all the possibilities which a full and human life may afford, stimulated by friendly emulation in the true service of man.

Every one who contends for human freedom, for justice, and regulates his actions as far as he is able on the principles of equality and fraternity, which are practically the love of one’s neighbour,--every one who does so, not in an ascetic spirit of sour self-denial, but because he takes his highest happiness in so doing, is helping to realise this ideal, is adding in his own way a stone to the great edifice of human effort and human progress, the spirit of which from remote ages, through persecutions, calumnies, oppressive laws, tyrannies, superstitions, ignorance, through good report and evil report, has led man out of the primal darkness, steadfastly bearing the torch of hope till hope becomes a faith--faith in socialised humanity.

If we are working in this spirit we need not trouble about the fate of art, for if we take care of life, art will take care of itself; it will become the natural and spontaneous expression of such a life, both as its familiar friend and helpmate, and its final crown and aspiration.

IMITATION AND EXPRESSION IN ART

To any one who has put his head beneath the magic cloth of the photographer, and has seen, focussed on the glass screen, a beautiful pre-Raphaelite miniature of nature, the thought must have occurred--if the secret of retaining colours as well as forms in chiaroscuro by photography could be discovered, what would become of modern painting?

But, it may be said, photography is already one of the chief props and ministers of modern painting. As it is, the camera and the dry plate often supplement, if they do not supersede, the sketch-book and the laborious study, and the influence of photography and photographic effect is apparently the paramount influence in contemporary work. Would painting thus lean upon photography if she felt that she was but being led to her own destruction? Very likely not; yet, of necessity, the weaker leans upon the strong, and the object being the imitation of superficial fact, photography is strong where painting is weak.

For the last quarter-century and more, the stream of tendency in art, reflecting that in life and thought, has been setting strongly towards naturalism; and this naturalism (or literalism, as I should prefer to call it) is both the cause of the effect and the effect of the cause. It both acts and re-acts, and certainly its action upon art is one of the most striking signs of the times.

Amid the confusion of critical tongues, the artificial conditions of the market, the absence of public taste, the false values of exhibitions, and the hopeless commercialism upon which they are based, what wonder is it that painters should eagerly seize upon such help as photography can give, to force still further already forced effects. But it is a fatal alliance, and photography must win in the long run in such an unequal race.

Art, like the aged and world-worn sage Faust, ardent for life and enjoyment, snatches eagerly at the promise of renewed youth--the vision of realised nature--held out by the demon, and ignores the consequences.

It is time to ask whether the game is worth the candle? The answer of course depends on our conception of the scope of art; what are its ends and aims? If it is indeed the exclusive pursuit of naturalism or literalism, there is nothing but the prospect of this unequal race with photography, which, in the attainment of fact or of phase, and even in beauty of tone and effect, puts any painting or drawing hopelessly at a distance.

On this course it is clear that art is destined to be finally beaten by science. It may be indeed that art is destined to be absorbed and comprehended in science, for even the hitherto uncontested field of ideal conception is threatened by the results of the composite photograph, and Mr. Galton’s generic images.

Painting would certainly never have been brought to this pass if she had not been parted from the early companion of her way, but she has severed herself from craftsmanship, from ornamental design--nay, generally speaking, from design and invention, too--and given herself body and soul to literal imitation of nature dominated by commercial sentiment and sensation.

Again it may be objected, is not the business of painting then to imitate? I answer, only a part of the business, and only in so far as imitation contributes to expression, whether of beauty, or thought, or story, or phase of nature, in which it ceases to be merely imitation and becomes an art--that of representation. Where would be either use or enduring pleasure in art, if it did not express something besides the mere accidents of superficial fact? As well might the poet deal in nothing but description, or the musician limit himself to reproducing the noises of the farmyard, as the painter be content to ignore invention and design, story and poetic suggestion. In these things the human mind comes into play, and it is these qualities that give life and endurance to art. Nor is there any substitute for them. We cannot get our designing done by machinery, or our thinking by photography. The only known mechanism for these processes is that of the brain itself.

Mere cunning of hand invariably tires, and this is why superficial literal imitation by itself is always so dull. We are bored to death by what is called realism, and can only keep up our interest by a constant succession of novelties; like the audience in a theatre, who tire of a mere scene, an arrangement of properties however real, according to stage realism. On the stage, however, strongly as it reflects the literal tendencies of the day, art may safely go much farther in that direction, as the meaning and expression (to which thought, scenery, and properties may contribute in a high degree) must finally depend upon the dramatic action of the living persons, and these, at least and from the pictorial point of view of the stage, from the very fact that they are alive, can never be overpowered by accessories.

Of course, I admit, as regards painting, apart from any poetic embodiment or abstract treatment, there is the expression of the facts of light and colour, texture and tones, and these--although, with the exception of colour, they can be rendered by photography with an accuracy and completeness quite unapproachable--really would appear to be at present the only qualities, the only facts, the expression of which is worth the attention of the painter. If that is really the case, painting--pending its final extinction by photography--must be content to take an inferior intellectual position among the arts. “Art is art, precisely because it is not nature,” said Goethe, but the modern painter, so far as he is articulate, would render it, “Art is art, precisely because it mocks nature.”

The career of an illustrious contemporary (as shown in a recent collection at the Grosvenor Gallery) illustrates in a remarkable way certain degrees of expressiveness and imitation in painting. It is remarkable, too, as showing that, even when the object in painting is to cast off all convention, and to represent nature without prejudice or prepossession, how, even then, unconsciously, under the influence of passionate feeling striving for expression, the painter develops, as it were, a new convention of his own. The most striking quality about the earlier pictures of Millais is not what was commonly supposed to be the chief characteristic of the pre-Raphaelite school, namely, their unflinching truth to nature, but rather the intellectual force of their poetic and dramatic expression. Comparing the work of the earlier period--say from 1849 to 1856--with the work of the later--say of the last ten years--one may see as totally different aims as are perhaps possible in the work of one man. The close textures, beautiful detail, fine and finished execution, deep though not always harmonious colours, and romantic feeling of the earlier time have in the later work entirely disappeared, and nearly everything is sacrificed to the more superficial facts of full relief, and accidents of lighting, atmosphere, and surface. I do not lay so much stress on the fact that the recent pictures are chiefly portraits in the technical sense (although one certainly does rather resent that personages of mere wealth and fashion should have usurped so much of the painter’s time, and filled so many of his canvases, to the extinction, in great part, of the romantic and dramatic element in his art), for Millais has always been a portrait painter whatever his subject. His one particular idiosyncrasy as an artist has, from the first, consisted in the force and directness of his realisation of nature, which is of the essence of portrayal, or portraiture. He never showed any tendency to idealism in any shape, so far as I am aware, but has always been content to take nature as he found her, without endeavouring, by careful and conscious selection and comparison, to build up types of form, or elaborate schemes of decorative composition and colour. He is not a seer of visions or a dreamer of dreams. Life and circumstance are enough, without reading between the lines. In this directness lie both his strength and his weakness as an artist.

Again, to compare the last with the first, one is struck with a certain flatness of the general effect of the early work, as in the Ophelia, for instance. And to this, no doubt, the multiplicity of careful and beautiful detail contributes, as well as the deep and frank tones of colour afore-mentioned. The impressiveness of the results is dependent upon those qualities--upon this treatment--bound up with them as inseparably as the words of a poet are with his matter and style. When relief, and superficial and accidental facts of light are sought after, the whole feeling changes, and the method with the characteristics expressed. We stand in the common light of day, and talk with the members of Society. Gone is the glow of the romance--the passion and the earnestness of youth, with the beautiful detail, and the even and certain finish of the workmanship. We have to make the best of it, and extract what satisfaction we may from the contemplation of a coarser realism of more obvious facts, including a certain amount of British brutality, a vulgar ostentation of wealth, and the attraction or repulsion of matter-of-fact personalities--these things being expressed by an execution which shows more directness than care, and more force than finish or beauty.

We draw the lesson that with increased facility there is less care, and a coarser literalism takes the place of earnest realism, and while the attention is narrowed to individual and accidental characteristics, there is a notable decline of thought, dramatic power, and decorative effect; depth of colouring has departed with beauty of execution, which are the natural vehicles of the expression of quite different aims.

We are led to the conclusion that the search after a more obvious, literal, and surface imitation of natural fact is followed at the sacrifice of the more refined and delightful qualities, and with the limitation of these comes the limitation of the range of expression. The more of nature,--at least of her more superficial facts,--the less, apparently, of art--the less of the expression of the individual thought of the artist.

If this be a true statement of the tendency of modern painting, let us be satisfied with photography. If we value literal representation solely, and the preservation of superficial facts and effects of surface lighting, photography can give them better and more certainly than any paint--can produce in a moment of time what years of labour could never accomplish. And then, too, the photograph gives us the facts, and, within their limited range, as much force of expression as belongs to facts, without any false sentiment, which is too often the case with the painter. If we can get our facts registered for us with absolute certainty and fidelity, and without individual bias, let us take them and be thankful: but let art give up the struggle for territory over which she can no longer claim exclusive or absolute jurisdiction. Let her rest in her own borders. There is a large and ample domain in which there is no fear of invasion; a fair and beautiful region, peopled with the

Forms more real than living men,

flowered and fruited with the rejuvenescence of the thought of all time; where invention and expression are the familiar friends and counsellors of art, and truth becomes identical with beauty in the large control of design.

But this is the possession of merely Decorative Art--despised and rejected of men; fit only to be lounged upon or trodden under foot: a toy in the hand, not credited with brain or soul, or power of expression, speaking in strange tongues and parables, or at the best a harmless species of lunacy, fed but with the crumbs from the table of the pictorial Dives.

But the race is not always to the swift brush, or the battle to strong colours, and painting is not the only eloquent language of expression in art, although its effects are more obvious and palpable. We have but to think of the means of expression at the command of the architect (unrestricted, that is, by Boards of Works and Building Acts)--even without the aid of sculpture or painting--in the simple but sublime language of proportion, mass, space, and outline. It is true, imitation is not unknown even in architecture, and we live under the shadow of the great historic styles; but in architecture anything like actual imitation of the materials and surfaces in other materials is now universally despised and condemned. It remains, so far as it is an art, a purely expressive one. How emphatically, and with what subtlety, architecture is capable of expressing ideas and principles of construction! and in so doing expresses not only these but the laws of evolution, and the changed temper of peoples, and social conditions in the long result of time, gathering under the shelter of its wings the whole family of arts and crafts which are its offspring.

Sculpture, too, eloquent in its severe limitations, and by reason of them, speaks in the language of pure form. It is true, it has its own equivalents for colour in contrasts of surface and richness of detail, but the attempts to introduce pure imitation, as with the Milanese school of modern Italy, have certainly not elevated the art. Any imitative success has been gained at the price of higher beauty and meaning--of the higher qualities of form, and repose and dignity of expression. I have noticed, too, that in sculpture, where imitation has been the primary object, the effect is curiously false, as in the case of a portrait statue in marble in costume, where the lace and different dress materials are sometimes imitated with surprising dexterity, but only to give an impression not of life but rather of a whitewashed effigy. Clearly, a step farther is called for if imitation is the sole object. We must revise the art of effigy and paint up to the life. Nor, where faithful portraiture is demanded, can there be any reasonable objection.

Interesting as coloured monumental effigies may be, and however undoubted the fact that it was the practice of the ancients to tint their sculpture, it cannot blind us to the more delicate and elevated expression of pure form, which no sculptor, I suppose, would forego as the justest and most eloquent medium for the embodiment of a heroic or poetic theme--or even solely as a means for the expression of the carver’s sense of the decorative effect of light and shadow in relief work.