Art and Work
Art and a Changing Civilization. By Eric Gill. (Lane. 2a. 6d.)
Ma. GILL has written a good deal on the subject of art during the last few years, and always from the same point of view. His new book hammers away at the same old themes, but that does n9t mean that it can be neglected. His style is more forceful than ever, and his ideas have gained in clarity and organization. The present volume appears in a series " on problems of today viewed in the light of the changing ideas and events of modern times." Of all the problems of today, none is more desperate than the one discussed by Mr. Gill. " By our division of the world of making into working men and artists, by our degradation of ordinary labour to the level of the ant-heap and by our setting apart • of painters and sculptors as a specially expensive kind of workmen whose works can only be acquired by the rich, we have done a wholly abnonnal and monstrous thing." Such is Mr. Gill's statement of the problem. Bitt he is not a sentimentalist, and does not propose to remedy matters by a reversion to the social economy of the Middle Ages. Machines, he recognizes, must be accepted. But it is not very clear how the reconciliation between art and industry is to come about. " All things made are works of art—that is the theme of this book." But he will not have it that the man tending a machine is making any- thing ; he is merely a " hand " helping his master to make money.
Mr. Gill's attitude in general is so right, his intellectual rage so justified, and his aesthetic integrity so complete, that in a short review I dislike to raise any objections—to do anything tut cry up the honesty and urgency of this book. But there are two points .in his argument which invite criticism. The first is a question of fact. In common with most people whO for one reason or another regard the Middle Ages as the Golden Age of Art, he attaches great importance to the anonymity of the mediaeval artist. Art in those days, it is said, was net talked about or thought about as a thing other than the job in hand." Every man who made a thing was as much an artist as another, and therefore it was not thought necessary to distinguish one man's work from another's. It is claimed as a fact of great significance that we do not know the names of the architects of the cathedrals, the sculptors and other artists of that time. Actually this is not quite true; a few names have survived. Even today architects' names are not generally known ; they do not sign their works in a con- spicuous place, and what records there are will probably have disappeared in 700 years' time, in spite of our printing machines. As for mediaeval sculptors, in the. absence of a contemporary Press and a literature, their names were not widely published in the modern sense of the term ; but they probably had a verbal publicity, and, in more cases than is realized, they signed their works. I used myself to believe in the anonymity of the mediaeval sculptors, until I found their names carved on the capitals of such typical works as the cloisters at Moissac and San Cugat. Many illuminated manuscripts contain the names of the artists who did the work, and in general the only rational assumption is that the mediaeval artist was as proud of his work as the modern artist. It is merely a question of the relative prevalence of records. But, apart from the question of historical fact, it is surely illogical at one and the same time to hold up for admira- tion the anonymity of the mediaeval artist and then to com- plain that the machine has destroyed the personal quality in modern art. What is admirable in mediaeval art is not its anonymity, but its impersonality, its abstract, hieratic and intellectual qualities—qualities which the machine promises to restore to art.
The second criticism I wish to make is more important. Throughout Mr. Gill's argument there is an equivocation in his use of the word " work." " It was the peculiar achieve- ment of the nineteenth century," writes Mr. Gill, " to separate, in thought and in practice, the idea of work from the idea of art, the activity of the ' workman ' from the activity of the ' artist,' and to make the artist a special person, removed from and exalted above the common nick of beings, a sort of priest, the expert in a mystery, a mystery not of craft or trade unionism but of spiritual remoteness." But there is a sense in which the idea. of work should be separated from the idea of art. Work is really of two distinct kinds. The child who said " First I think and then I draw my think " was wiser than Mr. Gill perceives, because the child first thought, first " prefigured " the thing to be drawn. The maker of standard architectural mouldings, or even of standard bricks, no doubt has an image of the brick in his mind before he begins to make the moulding or the brick ; but it would not be right to dignify this image by the name of thought, nor the moulding or brick (however well made) by the name of art. Indeed, tending a machine for making bricks is surely a job demanding more intelligence and even more " art " than making bricks by hand. Such work, and indeed the great mass of work, is better done by machines. What the machine cannot do is the " thinking part, and what distinguishes the artist from the workman is the ability to " think," a certain faculty which the Germans call Gestalfungsfeihigkeit, but which we, for want of a single word, might call the faculty for plastic configuration—the ability to " think " in plastic images. This is not a normal faculty, but the possession of those abnormal people we call artists. Unless we are clear on that point, we shall never be clear on the most pressing of problems connected with art in the twentieth century—the place of the
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