ART AND IDEA
Art and Understanding. By. Margaret li.Bulley. (Botsford. J61.) "No theory of art can stand unless it is supported by a philo- sophy of life." With this, the first sentence in Miss Bulley's book, I disagree, and consequently with almost every sentence that follows. Miss ,Bulley is awarc of our difference, and criticises my point of view. The reader rntAt judge between us.
This book is tivided into six parts. In the first-Miss Bulley deals with general themes like Reality and Unreality, Beauty and Ugliness, Morality and Virtue, Tradition and Style, and it is :here that we find her philosophy of life. In the second part she deals with particular aspects of art, such as Medium, Craft, Technique, Function, Subject Matter, Form and Design. The third part is devoted to "The Study and Criticism of Art," the fourth to "Modem Art" and the fifth to a detailed commentary on the 275 excellent illustrations. The sixth part is an appendix in which Miss Bulley indulges to the full her passion for quotation—from Plato and Hermes Trismegistus to Tchehov and Dr. Inge the mystics are marshalled to show• "that truth knows neither time nor place."
Miss Bulley is herself a mystic, and speaks the language of the initiated. True works of art, we arc told, "exist in mind (although their symbols are found in the visible world). They are the ideas or mind-pictures of spiritual man derived from the parent Mind. - They reflect his recognition of the beauty of the real or invisible world." Counterfeit art, on the other hand, confines itself to the world of appearance. " It symbo- lises ignorance, lack of power to reflect true value,-the miscon- ception of a false and material sense of things or subjectivity." According to Miss Bulley, a work of art is only. aIrUe work of art if it embodies or reflects something which `she calls the Idea. This Idea is defined in coundess ways; but most sily as a concept of eternal harmony "thinly or thickly yeiledX1W.•.; a material work of art. For the artist "it always expands as the mind-picture of a thing, as a painting, a piece of siulritiiie, a house, a chair. In this way the artist perceives beauty more distinctly than other men, for he sees it in substantial,- shapely and rhythmic form." "The true artist knows as surely as he knows that .tti.4ce twO are foue t.PiaCht itiqtlilacePtine form here, .another there ; cannot tell you, follows • sonic- , thing, he knows not What:-. But in: seaar as he is true-lei Ills - perception of the Idea he works in the light, and his logic is found within it. We also, understanding the work, know- that " the artist is right for the work is the proof. We acknowledge a determining logic although we cannot isolate it physically, a rightness which springs from a cause which we cannot find in material law."
Miss Bulley's exposition rises to greater heights of mystical exaltation, but I have perhaps given a fair summary of her general theme. Her purpose then becomes to trace, in the individual works of art which she illustrates, the presence or absence of Ides. " Idea" becomes something like-. " It" in the film magazines ; if you haven't got It you are hopeless. Miss Bulley is a past master in the art of assernbling_retaant illustrations (her previous book, Art 'and, Counterfeit, is -the most illuminating..trtatise lone can find for the novice) ; sh excels in contittink .g.O.od work of ait With the work of art which iS....Siutt.ficially so .similar, but just not a work of art. She carries : the ,same method into her new book. • But now, instead. of explaining why one work -of art is good and the other bad, she is content to say that the gnod work of art has got Idea:I do, not for a moment question her aesthetic sensibility ; the good "Wiitits of art lire good and th'e counterfeits are bad. She betrays her Method (and her philosophy) when she begin to discriminate; among.'adniiefedly good works of art, the degree of Idei present. Plates .664* and 68, for example, illustrate respectively-an anonymous Italian drawing of a torso, a study of a boy_ by Ppitcimo, and a drawing by Raphael. To my sistic and.ii,ni...iiitiRed.feie they are all pretty good drawings, and 1fitt*,tyrg.the. anonymous drawing is the most spontaneous and vigo`ibus :Of them all. But in her analysis Mi Bulley finds that 6¢ ." yields to no determining Idea, and, remains a meaningess gesture of the Persmial ego _With' some occasional reference to physical appearance,",v4kereasc. in the Pontormo (a characteristic and delightful sketch of a purr()) "the Idea has been very faintly perceived, but largely lost sight of during material development." In another illustra- tion, a harmless Staffordshire slipware dish is castigated for,: not being impressed with a governing intelligence, for yielding at no point to the Idea !
We must respect Miss Bulley's sincerity, her evident aesthetic sensibility, even her eloquence, but I for one must aeduse. her. of obscuring an issue which is only now, after iears of philo4 sophical and scientific deliberation, becoming clear. Briefly, we had come to the point of agreeing with Plato and Hegel that between the world of art and the world of idea there can be no possible compromise ; as philosophers we had relegated art to a' past phase of human development, but as artists we had reasserted ourselves, declaring that art, as an intuitive mode of apprehension, is its own justification and value, able to dispense with an intellectual metaphysic, secure in its own world of sense and feeling. We recognise intangible and immaterial elements in the work of art, but these we. are content to explain in terms of a positive psychology, or to leave them altogether unexplained, for the final justification of art is simply enjoyment.
HERBERT READ.
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