ART
Standards—II LAST week I suggested that the only scientific basis for judgement of values in works of art was ultimately that of history. In applying a historical standard to a given work of art the critic has to go through a complicated process. His first business will be to analyse the conditions in which the work was produced, to find out what ideas and tendencies it expresses, and with what movements in the history of the time these ideas are associated. Theoretically this knowledge can be obtained by analysis of the work of art itself, but the process of artistic creation is so complex that the critic will move more certainly— and certainly more rapidly—when he has external evidence about the character of the artist, the type of patron for whom he worked and other circumstances of that kind.
A proper analysis of the historical situation whichdominated the production of a painting will first enable the critic to explain why the paintipi is of such and such a kind, why it represents a religious, a Roman or a modem subject, why it is naturalistic, distorted or abstract. But it also gives him a basis. for a first judgement. For the movement which it represents can be judged in historical terms, as historically good or bad. If it was a mdvement based on the practically dominant facts of its time, if it was a movement which aimed at putting to the fullest possible use the resources available at the time, and therefore at producing the maximum material good, it was a historically good movement. If it was obstructing the develop- ment of material prosperity, or cornering that prosperity for a small group and hindering its wider development, then it was historically bad.
On this basis the critic can make a first judgement on his works of art. If a work of art represents a historically good movement, it is historically good, and vice *versa. So, to take an obvious and extreme pair of instances, a Baigneuse of Fragonard which expressed to the full the refined and decadent point of view of the French aristocracy just before the Revolu- tion was historically bad ; whereas the grimly Moralising paintings of David, which set out explicitly the aims of the progressive middle classes in France preparing the Revolution, were historically good.
Now, opponents of this method usually maintain that it stops here ; and, if it did, they would have every reason tci complain. For they could quite properly protest that on this analysis there is no difference between a great inventor like Giotto and an. incompetent follower who tries to express the same ideas.
But, as I have already said, the standard so far applied is only a preliminary. Having discovered what ideas and tendencies a painting expresses, it remains to see how profoundly it expresses them. This can be done partly by the study of the content of the painting, which can reveal whether the artist understood fully the ideas and has set them forth consistently and clearly. But it implies also a far 'more com- plicated formal analysis, by which alone the critic can see what means the artist has used to put his meaning across. To some extent it will be possible in this ,way to demonstrate the superiority of one painter over another closely allied to him and aiming at the same ends, but with less skill and understanding.
On the other hand, this analysis is so complex and our weapons for performing it up till now so poor that the subtler distinction can often not be expressed in words. In this case, however, the critic has another weapon to fall back on. What he cannot necessarily measure out by hard calculation he can sometimes distinguish by instinct, by sensibility. The difference between a Christ by Giotto and one by a competent follower may be too fine for explicit expression—at present— but it may be fairly evident to a great many people.
This does not put personal sensibility as a final test, even in this second stage. Its function is only as a weapon. Moreover, even in this capacity its performance has a certain general validity. For though opinions constantly vary about the relative merits of the great masters (even Michelangelo was despised for almost a century in France), there is a strong agreement that Giotto is better than Taddeo .Gaddi, and Michelangelo than Daniele da Volterra. It looks, therefore, as though the common judgement of sensibility on the relative merits of closely allied artists. may lead us towards some final
Previous page
