The Identification of the Artisan and the Artist

Boston: Adams & Co.

THIS pamphlet consists, in the first place, of the report of a lecture given in 1853 by the late Cardinal Wiseman, to an association of workingmen in Manchester, England, upon “ The Relations of the Arts of Production with the Arts of Design.”His immediate object seems to have been to promote art exhibitions and galleries of art, for the cultivation of the taste of English artisans ; but its general importance consists in its suggestion that in the great ages of classic and mediæval art, the identification of the artisan and artist was an historical fact; which is the explanation of the hitherto unexplained fact, that everything made in those ages was a beautiful thing, exhibiting the individual genius of its maker, even though in the classic ages it was the humblest utensil of culinary art. Whatever is taken out of Pompeii and Herculaneum is found to be a work of art, and is immediately carried to the great museum of Naples, to become the subject of study, and the delight of the eye and mind of all nations ; for the people of that older age had penetrated with their highly developed intellect beyond all that separates men into nations ; and discovered that eternal beauty and truth of form, in which all minds unite and find themselves cultivated by so doing. It is plain that in the adyta of those old pagan temples was accomplished an education of a profoundly artistic character for all the initiated. All human genius was then believed to be the inspiration of some god; and the temples of Apollo and Mercury were unquestionably schools of art. The artisans, being artists, were not of the lower class of society ; and the labor of production had always the dignity of being a religious service, which was, in the Grecian times, not a service of the heart, but of the imaginative intellect. There is a very interesting work by Hay, “ on symmetrical beauty,”in which are analyzed the antique vases, all of which are reduced either to one form, or to three forms combined, or to five forms combined, the curves relating to each other. Those whose curves all belong to one form are of the highest beauty. Hay gives a mathematical appreciation of the generation of each form, and then of their combinations, which shows that the production of beauty by the human hand is no accident, but that a high consciousness of mind guides the cunning hand. The delight which the contemplation of these vases gives is a refining process, and how much more must have been the creation of these forms or these principles !

In the mediæval times, when the revival of classic art met the inspirations of Christian faith, there was another culmination of human genius in art. Then the initiated were instructed by secret religious societies, and in cloisters, where artisan work again became artistic, because the artisans were educated, and their works were acts of faith. Hence the Gothic architecture, and the mixed Gothic and Roman art, which scattered its exquisite works over all Christendom. Nothing is more wonderful to an American contemplating the cathedrals, churches, and chapels of Europe, than the overflow of human genius in these marvellous constructions. Where did the multitudes of artists come from? We hear, before we go abroad, of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and a great host of artists; but when we come to look with our own eyes, we see that there were unnamed thousands and thousands, besides all those we have heard of, whose works are hardly less exquisite than those of the renowned great masters. There is a little chapel on the hill of St. Elmo, In Naples,—opened to the world’s eyes only since the Italian government secularized church property, — which is a perfect gem of art in every particular. The pavement is a most beautiful and elaborate mosaic of marble, the design and work of one monk. The altar and the railing which encloses it in front are all of the most delicate and beautiful Florentine mosaic. Every inch of wall and roof, in each of the six chapels that flank the nave, is equally elaborate. All was the work of the resident monks. This is but one specimen of the ornamentation of very many chapels in convents now for the first time open to the profane world. But everybody knows the enormous quantity of wood and stone work in ecclesiastical buildings, —to say nothing of the gorgeous decoration of palaces and dwellinghouses, especially in Venice. It is not the display of the wealth and power of those who contributed the costly material for these works that makes them interesting to our imagination : but it is the wealth of genius, and a perception of the delight of the artisans who did these things, as artists designing their own works, and thus immortalizing every transient phase of their fancy and thought. It is the religious art which is always the most exquisite; and when we go into the choirs of cathedrals, and see a hundred stalls of which the carved ornamentation does not show two patterns alike, we feel that truly here the curse was taken out of labor ; and that these hewers of wood were no mechanical slavish laborers, to be pitied, but conscious creators of beauty, to be envied for their opportunity of expressing their devotion.

It was only for about three hundred years that the artisans of Europe were artists as well. This identification of the artist and artisan had two good effects. One was the effect on art. It seemed that there should be no mere mechanical work, but that everything should be a work of high art. For he who designed was obliged to execute ; and thus he never transgressed the bounds of possibility, but kept to the sobriety of nature. Our artists only design, they are not disciplined to labor ; and therefore they grow fantastic, and miss a certain high influence upon the mind which comes from the exercise of the hand and body. Whatever gives one-sided activity to a man disturbs the symmetry of his being, and develops the spiritual evil of self-sufficiency, with a contempt for the fellow-man who merely executes his design, as if he were his tool. When the artisan and artist are one, there is a more symmetrical being, and the issue of the activity is a humble selfrespect which is the second and best effect of the identification.

Cardinal Wiseman illustrates his views by a multitude of anecdotes of that era when Raphael was a house-painter, and Michael Angelo a stone-cutter and fortbuilder, and Benvenuto Cellini was a smith who worked all day with his apron on, in a shop on the street, but spent his evenings with princes, instructing them in the principles of beauty by which God created the world.

The Cardinal does not hold out to the workingmen of Manchester any hope, however, that even if the artisan of to-day shall again become an artist, he shall find his social position raised thereby in the modern artificial European society.

But in America there is no reason why this identification, if it can be produced, shall not bring some such result; and this is set forth with a great deal of zeal in the Plea for the Reform of Primary Education, postulated and worked out by Friedrich Froebel, which constitutes the other part of the present pamphlet. It is here shown that this plan of education, which is applied to early infancy, taking children from the age of three, is a training of the body, mind, and heart in harmony, by employing the activity of children in the production of some object within the sphere of the childish thought, for some motive dear to the childish heart; and thus that it begins the education actively, at an age before the mind can be addressed with any abstract truths, preparing the intellectual ground for instruction, by educating children to be practical artists, as it were, at first. In the history of the world, art seems to precede science always.

The thing is certainly worth looking into ; and the American artisan will see in the splendid statement of Cardinal Wiseman good reason to believe that the future holds in store for him a beautiful destiny ; since it is obvious that the same causes will always produce the same effects. The constitution of the country in which the American artisan lives protects his freedom to worship and work artistically, by supporting his right to be educated to the full development of all his powers. Science, too, has come to rescue him from the harder work which depresses the body and moral spirit, and quenches inspiration; it has made slaves of the great insensible forces of nature, and has left man free to do what only man can do, — express his heart and mind by the work of his hands.