The Modern Home
The Picture and the House
BY JOHN ROTHENSTEIN.
IT is not surprising that the question, "What is the best kind of picture for the modem house ? " should continually be asked ; still less, that it should meet with no convincing answer. For it goes to the very heart of one of the most pressing problems of our time : the place of the artist in society. Unless this problem is solved, indeed, that question cannot be answered, and we must suffer indefinitely the present chaos in the arts. This chaos can best be illustrated by contrasting the present with the past. In the past (up to the threshold of the industrial age, thtt is) the artist served two masters—and with consummate success. These were his own aesthetic impulse, and society. The former—the impulse to create harmonies in line, colour and tone, to evolve from these symbols for the ultimate reality that lies behind appear- ance—has remained throughout the ages substantially the same, but the latter has modified its demands as often as its own structure has Changed. The artist, in short, had to satisfy the aesthetic demands of his nature strictly within the limits imposed by his service to society. So in , each successive European civilization the artist has been a public servant. The Greeks, and to a lesser degree the Romans, believed in the power of beauty to influence politics, to make men noble and patriotic. Especially did they believe in the value of loyalty engendered by the common possession of beautiful things. In the classical world, then, the artist was the creator and the guardian of a beneficent civic force. In the mediaeval world he played a different part. Since none gave a tiny caste of scholars was able to read, the artist was entrusted with the propagation of the Faith. And more : it was he who also gave concrete form to the dogmas of the Church. It was through painting and sculpture that the mediaeval world saw Christ and the Saints and Miracles. So profound and so con- vincing indeed was their presentment of Christianity, that to this day, despite our knowledge of history and of the East, when we envisage Christ, it is not a Galilean peasant but Him of Leonardo's Last Supper" whom we see. Compared with the Madonnas of Raphael and- Bottieelli, the Mary of the New Testament is an elusive, shadowy being. When the hegemony of the Church was broken and monarchy sat in her place, the artist's function was to make manifest the glory of the king and thus to foster national consciousness. When monarchy in its turn was supplanted by aristocratic oligarchy, the artist upheld the prestige of the class which now employed him by his exquisite presentment of its most admirable traits ; he established thereby an ideal of sensibility, pride, courage and grace that was of the uttermost value not only to the aris- tocracy itself but to the people as a whole.
DEmocancy AS PATRON The dawn of our era brought with it a radical change in the relations of the artist with society. The artist was faced by an unprecedented situation. For the first time in history he found himself without a patron. Hitherto he had engaged without question in the service of the dominant power of the day, whose representatives knew how to use him to the best advantage. But the industrial and mercantile oligarchy that displaced the aristocracy and ruled in its stead was prejudiced against art, which it deemed a frivolous luxury, inimical to its doctrine that salvation lay in labour for material ends alone. In any case the typical magnate of the early nineteenth century only achieved his position after a lifetime of struggle too hard to allow of the leisure necessary for the cultivation of artistic tastes. -Nor, was the advancing democracy, which increased wages and was turning into a poten- tial patron of the arts, better fitted for such a role. For the introduction of machinery brought about the immediate and complete corruption of popular taste.
FREEDOM OF MODERN ART
The predicament in which the artist found himself by the end of the first quarter of the last century was not the result of chance, but the logical outcome of the tendency on the part of both society and the artist himself to diminish the social function of art. At last it disappeared, and thence- forward art was not indispensable to man. The tendency was progressive. In the mediaeval world the artist was the servant of a universal religion, and his subject, however abstruse or subtle Isis handling of it, gave his work significance in the eyes of the simplest peasant, no matter whence he hailed. The Renaissance, with its revival of classic styles, drew art neater to the scholar, and away from the unlettered layman. The Reformation destroyed the religious subject-matter common to all Christendom. When absolute monarchy succeeded universal church, the artist served a single nation ; at last, when the aristocracy became the sovereign power in the State, he served but a small and exchisive class. It was but a step from the limited social service employment by an
aristocracy entailed to social irresponsibility. For absence cd social responsibility is the dominant characteristic of modern art. The artist of our epoch, being without a patron to u.se him for a social purpose, has, for the first time, been free to devote himself wholly to the rendering of his own imagination. This liberation of art from its age-long association with utilitarian ends, with which the artist, as such, was not concerned, seems to have kindled in it a desire tc free itself from every non-aesthetic association. The charae. teristic art of to-day therefore is an art that has sacrificed all its incidental qualities in order to realize more completely those which are essentially and exclusively its own.
RELATION BETWEEN PRODUCER AND CONSUMER
This-meansthat the painter, for example, no longer attempts to obtain likeness to nature, since that can be done better bv the photographer, nor to tell a story,- as the -novelist's medium is better suited to such a purpose, nor to do anything nave what he can do transcendently : create, that is, harmonies in line, colour and tone. In fine, he is concerned exclusively with the aesthetic side of art. Since he has no patron, he does not know for what kind of environment his painting is destined, so he attempts to make it suitable for a great variety of interiors, or else he gives the matter no thought at all. What he does in either case is likely to be imperfectly adapted to any particular setting. The confusion that reigns in the art world to-day is due more to this want of an intimate relation between producer and consumer than to any other cause. From the social standpoint the artist (who exists to-day in unprecedented numbers) produces blindly and without pur- pose. The public buys blindly, but with suspicion. And its suspicion is justified, for profound aesthetic judgment has become almost as rare as artistic genius itself. In the past, when art was closely associated, by means of a subject-matter imposed from without, with life, the whole world delighted in it. But a passionate love of beauty solely for its own sake, of beauty devoid of human, that is to say extra-aesthetic signi- ficance, is a rare quality ; and I know of no adequate reason for supposing that it has ever been commoner than it is to-day.
How TO BUY PICTURES "I do not know if others are like myself, but I am conscious that I cannot contemplate beauty long," says a character in Mr. Somerset- Maugham's Cakes and Ale. For myself, I believe that by far the greater part of humanity resembles him in that respect. Until, therefore, some movemeat comes into being which will be conscious of the practical value of the arts, and able to impose on them a worthy subject-matter, he who paints pictures and he who buys them can reach no mutual understanding. Pending the birth of such a move- ment, he who desires to have pictures in his house cannot do better than buy those for which he sincerely cares, and eschew fashion ; for in truth a man's taste is reflected not by the best that hangs on his walls (for many a man who never looked at a picture owns a score by the greatest masters) but by the best that moves him.
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