EVERY-DAY ART.*
This is by no means a common-place book. Not that the author can be said to have propounded anything distinctly original with respect to his subject, but he discourses ably on the views which are current among those who have sound and cultivated views. We think it will not only be useful, as teach- ing good lessons on its own subject, Every-day Art, but by suggesting thoughts which might lead the mind to wider inter- ests. The author gives his own subject a sound, useful, common- sense basis, by linking the consideration of it to thoughts which, though far from irrelevant, tend to a more comprehen- sive interest than we might expect from a work with so modest a title. Such sentences as the following are examples of what we mean :—
" 2Esthetic culture is not the high-road to all the virtues, and, indeed, certain of the vices have been known to infest it. Neither, on the other hand, is there any special grace in ugliness. Art is only utterance. It must express something; and the vital question is — What does it express ? The daily association with honest, manly, real work, with graceful fancy, individual character, and refined art, must exert on us an influence less demoralising than the continual contact with falsity, pretence, and affectation. The fact that we may be wholly unconscious of the influence about us does not destroy its effect. The fresh air is tonic, whether we feel it to be so or not, and the germs of disease that emanate from a foal atmosphere are none the less fatal, though our nostrils be not sufficiently delicate to make
us aware of the poison we breathe To-day's interest in decor- ative art may be only a fashion. It is more encouraging to believe that yesterday's apathy was but an episode."
And again :—
• Every-day Art : Short Emoye on the Arts that are not Fine. Bf Lewis Foreman Day. London : B. T. Bataford.
" It is curious to observe how little oorrespondence there is between the progress of civilisation and of taste. Eaoh appears to have gone its own way, quite independently of the other."
We ourselves believe that the great difficulty in all Art matters in this modern life of ours is to maintain originality in Art expression, which is only another word for a natural, spon- taneous expression for an unfeigned delight in beauty, and, in maintaining such originality, not to transgress against a stand- ard which the ordinary education of cultivated people obtains from a more or less superficial acquaintance with the Art of the past. Great power and genius are required in order that an artist should, so to speak, find himself among all the various in- fluences which legacies from the past have left him. Such influences should be as useful servants to his native gifts, and not act the role of masters. Unqualified devotion should be to Nature, and Nature alone. Though the standard works of geniuses of the past ought undoubtedly to enrich, we see that they more often stifle the spontaneity of genuine artistic powers. Like parasites on a tree, they more often injure the healthy growth and spoil its natural beauty than add to its effect. It is probably the complicated conditions of modern culture which sap the earnestness out of many fundamental truths in the right feeling with regard to taste, as well as the grace out of the forms of so much of our social intercourse. We believe that the root of the evil, supeificiality, lies in the fact of artists restraining the real impulse towards creation and expression of genuine feelings, lest the bugbear of the artist's craft the critic, should find weak points. It is fatal to real taste, when the truth is forgotten that such a thing as real taste in human work does not exist till it is stamped by human individuality and prefer- ence. But we have only to remember the early pre-Raphaelite work, to realise how many weak points are at once offered to the critic, if such individuality and preference are made the first law of the artist's craft. Notwithstanding such weak points, there is a flavour about such efforts which, when compared to the work hedged in on every side by the countenance of Academi- cal precedents, is like the early growth of plants when they push in juicy knobs out of the earth in spring, a growth of which arti- ficial flowers never even remind ns.
The chapter on taste headed, " I Know What I Like," is -suggestive of many good ideas, though the argument is not, to our way of thinking, always conclusive. For instance, to the conclusion suggested by the following sentence we demur :— " After all,' says the popular fallacy, it is a matter of taste !' But taste is not a personal matter. It is no more mere preference than judgment is mere opinion. It is as rare as it is supposed to be common. It implies not only artistic feeling and critical power, but their cultivation too." A really true feeling as to what is beautiful arises, we believe, far more from an instinct, from a genius in perceiving and enjoying beauty, than from any result of the critical faculty or any education of the eye. These are essential, when it is a matter of judging whether the art under consideration is right according to the conclusions of certain Academies which have made standards of right and wrong, based on the works of the geniuses of the past. But such standards are not likely to be exhaustive as guides to genius of the present day. At present, the conditions of life seem peculiarly un- favourable for the multiplication of this genius of perceiving and enjoying true beauty. Moreover, the artist has often to trans- plant himself into another atmosphere of taste to that which is fashionable in many respects, before he can develope anything like high art. For instance, in the case of the human form, the eye which has studied and enjoyed the beauty which Nature gave it finds nothing but deformity in the woman's pinched waist and in the man in his modern dress. The aspect of a people is unquestionably the strongest influence on the eye of the artist, for human beings must be the strongest interest in the life of any healthy-minded man ; and when we fill our world with deformities of the human species, as far as the aspect of the human race goes, how can we expect any radical or genuine improvement in matters of taste P This awryness in such a principal matter is the cause, we believe, why the im- provement which has undoubtedly taken place during the last twenty years in decoration, and in the every-day art of which Mr. Day's book is a very worthy and interesting exponent, is still simmering, as it were, on the surface of life, not really becoming ingrained into our national feeling. If beauty were a necessity to us, how could we standthe hideous fashionenlways present in men's costume, and always recurring in women's dress ? If a pretty fashion happens to be adopted for a few months, it is a mere chance that it is pretty, and is quickly changed by the despot- ism of milliners to one as irrational and ugly as it is possible to imagine. If we stand with perfect quiescence such ugliness, beauty is distinctly not a necessity to us. .4.s Mr. Day says :— " How astonishingly crude is the criticism of persons who are, except in Art, cultivated ! They do not even know what an artist means, when he talks of vulgarity in his craft. Coarse language and loud tones, mincing affectation and pretence,. offend them ; but they would be startled to be told that the- brutal workmanship, the crude colours, the mechanical affecta- tion of finish, and the pretentiousness of cheap show, which are to be found broad-cast in their drawing-rooms, are simply vulgar." We believe that anything like a universal awakening to a sense of fitness and reality is quite impossible, while we. allow our eyes to be accustomed to such ugliness and nnfitnes& of form as modern fashion converts the human form into, associated as it is with people whom of necessity we must care for so much more than we do for our walls, our furniture, or our- houses. We think Mr. Day lays too strong a stress on the value of culture in taste. Without an encouragement of those- conditions which inspire an original individual native instinct for beauty, culture will only lie like an idle accomplishment on the outside of our nature. It must always remain like a lan- guage we learn only through a book, and not through the ear ;. never a language we should think in or dream in. Still, to end- our consideration on the chapter on taste as we began, we believe the reader will find it full of suggestiveness ; and as our strongest feeling in Art matters, whether the art under consider- ation be high art or every-day art, is that originality and individuality should be the prominent features, any writing- which suggests thoughts on the subject to be carried farther by the reader's own mind is, we think, essentially useful and in- teresting.
In the chapter " House and Home," there is a satisfactory- stress laid on the truth that the aspect of a home should trans- late the individual taste of its owner ; that not only trouble- must be taken, if the aspect of a home is to add to the culti- vating influences of life, but that that trouble should be taken. more or less by the inhabitant himself, not merely delegated to others whose business it ought to be to carry out individual tastes according to knowledge. Mr. Day goes on to say, if the owner is too busy or idle to do this, he should, at all events, take the trouble to find out the decorator whose taste seems best to agree with his own. Mr. Day,. throughout his book, wisely lays a great stress on the absolute necessity of reticence and modesty in decora- tion, if it is to play its true part in the beautifying and' refining influences of our surroundings. Decorative art must- never try to struggle forward into the prominent, isolated place which is that which a work worthy of being called high art ought to take. Decoration should be like the accompaniment to a melody,—never overpowering or obtrusive, but having a very real, legitimate place, as a harmonising and completing influence. It is interesting to reflect on the influences which the presence or absence of high art has on the quality of the decorative work of a time. Decoration is apt to become obtru- sive in its character, and purely imitative in its quality when- high art ceases to be a spontaneous utterance, and ceases to understand its mission—rather, it may be more truly said, when high art ceases to be created. When the art which is elaborate, and which is not intended to ornament architectural- design or domestic surroundings—in other words, framed' pictures and pedestalled statues—lowers its character from the ideal or dramatic to merely decorative or realistic effects, then we shall nearly always find the decorative feeling- forgetting its own special role, and assuming an imitative character. The times which produce the finest high art will also produce the best decorative art. The wave of Art feeling which passes over certain periods in the civilisation of nations- naturally touches various phases of Art expression, the decorat- ive no less than the poetic and the illustrative. Hence, in our own times we have artists who are great as poet-painters, Watts, Rossetti, and Borne Jones ; and we have a corresponding greatness in decorative genius, such as is shown in the work or the poet William Morris, in furniture, silks, stuffs, and stained glass ; again, by Walter Crane, in pictorial dramatic decoration ;. and again, by William de Morgan, in pottery. The exact aptness shown in the beauty of the work of all these artists to the true aims of their own special lines of art, is the true sign of the touch of inspiration in their genius.
From Mr. Day's book, we should say that his place is that of a perfectly practical mediator between the genius of the actual inventor and those who are in the position of making use of his inventions. His book is a valuable and common- sense exposition on the actual fitting together of things neces- sary in the house of any one wishing his home to be one which shall not only express his own taste, after he has taken the trouble to put thought into the matter, and find out what are his real preferences, but also a home which by its aspect may lead to the cultivation of gentler, purer tastes and more gracious manners. There are numerous illustrations, showing that Mr. Day is an able draughtsman. There is a graceful delicacy in some of the designs for panels which is admirable,—for instance, on p. 29, "Treatment of Medlar ;" p. 52, " Clematis Panel;" p. 81, " Magnolia Panel ;" and p. 183, " Strawberry Panel." In conclusion, we recommend Every-day Art to our readers, as a book which raises its subject out of the common-place, by the honest and genuine taste which the writer displays for all the beauty that is appropriate to the secondary and modest role suitable to house decoration, and by the cultivation and mastery of the teachable qualities of his art which he displays.
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