Growth of Conscience in the Decorative Arts

SELF-EXAMINATION has become one of the characteristic instincts of modern civilization. It was not long ago that Carlyle described this instinct as a sort of moral dyspepsia prevailing more or less absolutely in all the grades of society. However this may be, it is true that, unlike our forefathers, we take nothing for granted. The religious passions, the social traits, the manners and customs, which we may have inherited from them, are subjected to analysis and discussion. Reason modifies them, and establishes certain types with which, in the conduct of life, according to our several lights, we seek to establish a conscientious conformity. Concerning art, however, for various reasons which we shall presently consider, there has been, until lately, a reluctance to bring to bear upon it any such reorganizing and revolutionary tendencies.

Hitherto, when those of us who have

been engaged in works of design have undertaken, in the modern spirit, to analyze our motives in any succession of cases, we have found that the standard of excellence by which we would measure our work, the ideal which we would approach, has been, so far as the form at least was concerned, inconstant, and for the most part capricious. These variations of style have not occurred according to any known law. Our art seems to have been in great degree controlled by some power outside of ourselves. We have found it convenient and comfortable to accept the dictates of this power without questioning, and our standard has been set up indifferently in ancient Greece or Rome, in mediæval France, England, or Italy. At one time it has held to some phase of the Renaissance; at another it has been absolute as to its Gothic; " all these by turns and nothing long.” Its caprice has been curious and unaccountable, and not at all in accordance with the modern spirit in other walks of intelligence.

This vacillation of the type which has prevented modern art from developing a style, in the accepted sense of the word, is the natural result of the increase of our knowledge of form and the growth of the archaeological spirit. Unlike any of our predecessors in art, we have been seriously embarrassed by the unbounded range and variety of precedent at our command. There is no phase of historical art which we have not studied; wheresoever and howsoever humanity has expressed itself in forms of art, these forms are at our fingers’ ends, and are ready to seduce us this way or that according to our mood. The mind of the designer is preoccupied by innumerable favorite motifs derived from every side and every era, each associated with some phase of ancient life, and sanctified or sweetened by ancient traditions; each with a value aside from intrinsic picturesqueness, beauty, or quaintness; and all contending for new expression. Whether he has been engaged upon a composition of architecture or upon a composition of decoration, —which also is architecture, or the completion and fulfillment of it, — his energy has been concerned, first, perhaps, with the choice of types agreeably to the caprice or fashion of the moment; next, with the degree of precision with which he is to follow them when chosen; and, finally, — by such reserve of force as might be at his disposal after these exhausting processes,—with the adjustment of his chosen forms to his needs according to his best ingenuity and skill. Under these circumstances, the modern process of design, whether this exact order of proceeding has been followed or not, must be a complicated one, and must differ fundamentally from all which have preceded it. The exact character of this difference it is important for us to understand at the outset, to the end that we may the better comprehend the new and strange conditions under which art is developed in these modern days.

The Greek architect of the time of Pericles had before him a fixed and sacred standard of form. There were probably dim traditions from his Pelasgic ancestors, and from Syria and Egypt. These were the only styles or forms that he knew, and his own had been developed from them into a hieratic system. He had no choice; his strength was not wasted among various ideals; that which he had inherited was a religion to him. The simple cella with a portico or peristyle,— this was all; he had no wants or ambitions beyond this; it satisfied all his conditions of art. But he shared in the intense intellectual activity of his fellowcitizens; his art had been developed in the same atmosphere as the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the drama of Æschylns, Sophocles, and Aristophanes. He was content with nothing but absolute perfection. Undiverted by side issues as to the general form of his temple, undisturbed by any of the complicated conditions of modern life, he was able to concentrate his clear intellect upon the perfection of his details; his sensitiveness to harmony of proportion was refined to the last limits; his feeling for purity of line reached the point of a religion. Hence the subtle swell or entasis in the shaft of his column; hence the eloquence and fitness of the echinus molding by which the supporting and supported members of this order were united. This molding was the gesture of Attic civilization, It coincides with no geometrical form; it is the symbol of strength and sweetness. In each temple it obtained a new form, adjusted to its new conditions, but still in harmony with the pure ideal. It was drawn in the midst of a deep silence, like an act of worship.

In like manner, many centuries subsequent the monkish builders developed the Christian temple in the cloisters of Cluny. All that they knew of style had been developed in a direct line of descent from Gallo-Roman traditions, and they, like the Greek, were undisturbed by any knowledge of conflicting forms. Their art was thus kept in the track of consistent progress, and developed with purity and irresistible force.

So it was with all the intermediate builders. So it was when the Taj Mahal was built in Agra. So it was wherever there grew a pure style. So it was even after the period of the Renaissance. The development of styles continued strong and steady until archaeology began to revive, classify, and make known to the world, as a contribution to history, the various methods and forms which were pursued and invented by old civilizations in the erection of their temples, tombs, and palaces. Then there followed a confusion of tongues which has lasted until our day.

From all this it necessarily follows that the distinctive characteristic of our modern art is the absence of a fixed standard of forms. It is eclectic, and apparently has not encouraged us to reach convictions as to forms or styles. At all events, there are few architects or designers, in this country at least, who are content to confine themselves to the exclusive development of any one particular set of forms, as Gothic, or Romanesque, or Renaissance, and voluntarily to shut themselves off from the rest of their inheritance of beautiful things; and wherever any such exist their neighbors are not so confined. In this particular we do not work together with any characteristic unity of sentiment. All the decorative arts are subjected to the same dissipation of forces. At the same moment we are designing and painting Greek vases: decorating Japanese screens; constructing furniture according to our reminiscences of the Gothic of the Edwards, or of the Renaissance of the Jameses, of Queen Anne, or of the Georges; covering our walls with designs suggested by the stuffs of Florence and of the inexhaustible East, by the brocades of France, by the stamped leather of Venice, with arabesques and conceits from all the styles; and with these we decorate the interiors of houses which on the outside have been inspired originally from traditions of every era of art, as set forth in books, prints, and photographs innumerable.

It is therefore a common reproach against the arts of to-day that they are discursive, without convictions or enthusiasm; that our depth is shallowed in many channels; that we produce many and not great things; that in painting we have no masterpieces like those of Italy in the fifteenth century, or of Flanders in the sixteenth; that in sculpture the ideal of the Greek marbles, though shattered and defiled, is to us absolutely unapproachable, not in execution only, but in comprehension; that in architecture we cannot reproduce the perfection, the purity, and perfect fitness of the Greek forms, the grandeur and extent of those of the Roman empire, the idealism, the enthusiasm, the consistent and powerful development, of the religious works of the thirteenth century, the elegance and refinement and self-control of the Italian masters of the fifteenth century; that in the fictile arts we cannot approach the French and Italian potters of the sixteenth; that in fabrics we are still far excelled by the Orientals, and by the products of mediæval looms; that in furniture, for fertility of design, for perfection of execution, for richness of carving, we are surpassed by the Philibert de I’Ormes, the Le Pautres, the Boules, of France, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by the Gibbons and the Chippendales of England in the eighteenth. In like manner we know that antique gems and intaglios, Etruscan jewels, boxes, fans, and bronzes of Japan, ironmongery of Nuremberg,— these, in their several departments of art, are the despair of modern workmen; that in no respect of art do we exceed our progenitors. It would seem, in fact, as if our knowledge, our ingenuity, our industry, had swamped our art, — as if our art were in a condition, if not of eclipse, certainly of hopeless anarchy, and this while its patrons were apparently never so rich, never so numerous, never so ready.

But over these accumulating and incongruous elements presides the self-conscious spirit of the modern artist. The innocence and naïveté of the older day have gone by, never to return. Our ancestors perhaps " builded better than they knew.” But we can never do a good thing by accident. Each of us, in whatever style he may work, must necessarily impress himself upon his design. We can never be quite lost in the style which we have chosen. A new subjective, personal element has thus been born into art. This self-conscious spirit began to be felt when the necessity of making choice among several types or styles was first imposed upon the artist; this choice implying the idea of self-justification, and giving an added sense of personal responsibility, which has naturally grown with the increase of our knowledge. During the existence of a prevailing or exclusive style, as in any time previous to the middle of the last century, there was far less scope for individuality of expression than now, when the necessity of making choice among many styles and among innumerable motifs constantly recalls the designer to a consciousness of his own resources, and in the new labor imposed upon him of rejecting with discretion compels him to an expression of his own peculiarities of thought and habits of mind, which would have been impossible to a Greek of the time of Pericles, or to a Frenchman of the time of St. Bernard.

Hermogenes and Callicrates, Apollodorus and Vitruvius, Viellard de Honcourt, Robert de Luzarches and William of Wyckham, —each of these concerned himself with the development of a type of form, and carried it on one step further towards perfection. In this type their individuality was lost. They and their brethren are therefore but the shadows of names. Erostratus, the fool, who burnt the temple of Diana at Ephesus, is far better remembered in history than Ctesiphon, the architect, who built it. Ctesiphon, though a great artist, was but the agent of a process of development in style; his work was rather a growth than a creation. But Sir Charles Barry, Alfred Waterhouse, Charles Garnier, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, of our time, built their monuments in the Houses of Parliament at London, the Law Courts at Manchester, the New Opera at Paris, and the Royal Theatre at Berlin; these buildings, and all other conspicuous monuments of modern times, are full of the personality of their authors, because they are rather creations than growths. Even so late as the fifteenth century the Renaissance palaces of Italy, built by Vignola, Scamozzi, Serlio, and Palladio, do not betray the personal characteristics of their designers to the same extent and in the same manner as do the Neo-Grec works of Henri Labrouste in Paris, the modern Gothic of Scott, Burgess, and Street respectively, the modern Greek of the Scotch Thompson in Edinburgh, the “ Queen Anne ” revival of Norman Shaw, and so on through a host oE more or less illustrious contemporaries, most of them changing their styles from time to time according to their moods.

Confused amongst a multiplicity of types, we impress upon our work a certain effect of breathless effort, and overcrowd it with details; our greatest and most difficult virtue, therefore, is reserve of force, self-denial, simplicity, repose. The artists of antiquity found simplicity and repose in mere fidelity to a rigid standard, — a fidelity untempted by the discoveries of archeology, and easy because of the purity and perfection of the type. Their ideal was a divinity; their service to this divinity was worship and obedience. Our ideal is a museum of heterogeneous and beautiful forms, and our service to it is selection, rejection, analysis, discussion, classification, selfdenial. Indeed, the modern artist is not the servant of his ideal; he properly seeks to be its master. Whenever, like a mediaeval artist, he tries to render obedience to the ideal, the very perfection of his knowledge betrays him. However faithful he would be to his selected type of forms, he must needs breathe into it a spirit quite his own. If he would reproduce in his modern work the strong Gothic of the early Cistercian abbeys, he remembers also the refinements of Giotto in the Campanile of Florence. If he would imitate the elegant exuberance of the Ionic in the Treasury of St. Mark, he cannot forget the fine chastisement of invention in the Ionic of the portico of Minerva Pallas. Thus his work is sophisticated by his knowledge. He is like an actor playing a part. He cannot conceal his effort. He is selfconscious.

Thus the modern spirit of self-examination, of which I have spoken, is gradually applied to art. The application of a rule of morality to the arts of design follows naturally, and is in exact harmony with the modern spirit of culture. I desire to treat of this growth of conscientiousness as the quality most characteristic of the art of to-day, — a quality which until now has never made its appearance in the decorative arts, and from which the most happy results may be reasonably anticipated; without which, in fact, these arts will become mere antiquarianism, destitute of soul or inspiration.

Conscientiousness,—this arises from regarding art not as a business, or an amusement, or an accomplishment merely, but as a duty, carrying with it certain moral responsibilities like any other duty. This is a modern idea; it consists in the desire to establish some constant and conscious standard, by the observance of which, in the midst of the enormous and complicated demands made upon the decorative arts in our day, in the midst of the embarrassing accumulation of available and conflicting precedents, in the midst of the new materials, new inventions, new creeds, new manners and customs, constantly presenting themselves, a new art made up of many arts may be formed and kept from anarchy and confusion.

It has been discovered that in every great era of art material has been used according to its natural capacities: by the consistent use of such natural capacities the arts have approached perfection; by their abuse they have inevitably declined. Thus, as regards architecture, in a district which produced granite alone the prevailing style would submit to certain modifications to suit the conditions of the material: the moldings would be few and large, the sculpture broad and simple, depending rather upon outline than upon detail for its effect; in places where the stone was easily worked, the moldings would be more frequent and the carvings more detailed; where the stone was capable of fine finish, there would be a corresponding characteristic of refinement of treatment. Where clay only prevailed, there would arise an architecture distinctively of brick and terra cotta. If the stone of the district was coarse and friable, it, would be used in rough walls, covered with a finish of cement or plaster, which in its turn would create a modification of style priding itself upon its smoothness of surface, its decoration by incisions and fine molding and color. Thus, Egyptian art was an art of granite; the mediaeval arts of France and England were mostly arts of limestones and sandstones of various qualities; the art of Greece was an art of fine marbles; that of North Italy was an art of baked clay; that of Rome, as her monuments were a part of her political system, and were erected all over the Roman world as invariable types of her dominion, was an art of coarse masonry, in whatever material, covered with molded plaster or with thin veneers of marble. In like manner, forms executed in lead were different from forms executed in forged iron. Forms cast in molds were different from forms wrought with the chisel. Forms suggested by the functions and capacity of wood were quite different from any other.

It is no less true, however, as is well known, that in their origins the Greek styles bore reminiscences of the primitive arts. The granite pylons of Egypt recalled the structures of mud and reeds which preceded them; the temples of Greece remembered the wooden frames of the primeval buildings; and the early Gothic of France received its first decorations from hints in Oriental fabrics displayed by the Venetian merchants in the markets of Limoges. But when these styles reached perfection, the materials and their capacity for legitimate expression had been fully developed in each case: granite no longer resembled mud; marble no longer was fashioned into wooden forms; and limestones and sandstones were decorated, not like stuffs, but in such a manner that from a drawing of an ornament one could almost predicate the quality and grain of the material for which it was designed and in which it was executed.

This quality is called truth of material. There is also truth of construction and truth of color. They all are arrayed against imitations, against producing in one material forms invented for another, against concealment of devices of construction; in short, against sham work of any kind. Thus a certain master lays down this dogma: “ A form which admits of no explanation, or which is a mere caprice, cannot be beautiful; and in architecture, certainly, every form which is not inspired by the structure ought therefore to be neglected.”¹

Such doctrines as these have been so often preached in the literature of the times that they have become commonplace. They sufficiently indicate the conscientious tone of public sentiment as regards art, and the designers silently but diligently endeavor to meet the demand for a moral art with all the accepted devices of truthful work. Thus, for example, we have had an era of furniture made according to a dogma of which, for this country, Mr. Eastlake has been fortunate enough to be the prophet; but as the conclusions of the dogma have been too rigid, its requirements too exacting, its illustrations of the principle of truth of material and truth of construction too literal and narrow, its productive power is already exhausted. The designers, failing to produce new effects, retrace their steps and repeat themselves, and finally take refuge in variations and modifications of the style, which are the certain premonitions of transition and change. There are doctrinaires, precisionists, petit maîtres, formalists, in this conscientious movement in the arts as in every other new intellectual activity; they are ready to push the newly discovered principles to conclusions too absolute and mechanical, and to expose our arts to the danger of a recoil. Thus the “ Eastlake furniture,” which excludes curved lines on principle; which makes the manner of construction, the joiners' part of it, more important than the designers’; which elevates the mortise and tenon to the dignity cf art, must in time, by very reason of its great show of honesty, like any other ostentation of morality, pall upon the senses. With our inexhaustible inheritance of forms, in which curved lines do appear, in which the idea of the designer is of more importance than the device of the cabinet maker, we cannot remain long content with such pious exclusions.

But with all this, the conscientious spirit once aroused in art is not likely to be put to sleep again until a great work has been done. The designer would not quiet it if he could, for it gives to his work a new significance and power; it enables him to defend it by saying, “ This composition of lines or of colors I am satisfied with, not merely because it gives me a sensuous gratification; not merely because it recalls this or that motif in some of the chefs-d'œuvre of art; not because it reminds me of certain historic forms rendered precious by traditions and long use; not because it copies nature exactly; but because I know it is right. And why? I have reasoned about it, and can explain it by an appeal to your intellect. It belongs in its place, and accomplishes its object with a directness which could not be reached by mere intuition. It is not a mere matter of taste, concerning which there is no disputing. I cannot do otherwise than I have done and remain true to the conditions of my art. My forms are developed out of the necessities of my problem; they are not chosen because they are beautiful only, but because they are fit. Indeed, they would not be beautiful for my use if they were not fit. I have been taught by experience to distrust my own intuitive fancies and predilections for this or that form, for this or that style; they seduce me from the truth. I have been taught to discipline my resources; to subject them to critical analysis and discussion within my own mind before using them; to lop off what is irrelevant to my theme; to give greater emphasis here; to distract attention there; to harmonize the whole with the especial demands of my subject. I find that these conscientious processes, so far from weakening my fancy, so far from diminishing the interest of my work, in reality make my resources of design more available for my use, and render my compositions far more beautiful than any that I did before I had taught myself to reason, J now know how to be simple; I now know the value of self-denial in art.”

Before the latter half of the nineteenth century such language as this would have been impossible, but now it simply illustrates a common thought of the modern designer undertaking to create works of art; it illustrates a growing spirit in all the decorative arts. The distinctive characteristic of the arts of to-day has been, as I have intimated, vacillation among innumerable and incongruous types. It is evident that no one can invent a new set of forms, conceived on new principles, which shall obliterate the memory of all that archaeology has given us, and therefore that we shall never create that new style which dreamers and idiots have been so long asking for, but never will find. It is equally evident that our resources of precedent will increase with the progress of time. Where, then, are we to look for a remedy for the increasing embarrassment of our knowledge? What can relieve us from an anarchy of forms on the one hand, or from the ignoble domination of a series of unreasonable and capricious fashions on the other?

It seems logical to infer that as in the sciences the accumulation of knowledge never has been regarded as an affliction, so in art the accumulation of precedents from Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, from Egypt and Syria, from the Orientals and Spanish Moors, from mediaeval Christendom, from the masters of the fifteenth century, from the châteaux and palaces of the Renaissance, from the revivals and rehabilitation of all those forms by our many-sided contemporaries, — this abounding wealth should hardly prove an embarrassment to us unless we are unfit to use so precious a heritage.

With this heritage we have tried all sorts of experiments. We have, for example, tried the effect of arbitrary exclusions. The time is not far distant when the world of art was divided into hostile camps, some holding to one set of precedents and regarding all others as misleading and pernicious, the rest considering that safety resided only in the very forms rejected by their competitors, — some for Gothic and some for classic. Twenty years ago two architects could not meet without a quarrel. It was the “ battle of the styles.” We have tried this in architecture and in the other decorative arts, but have found that under such division we have made no progress. We have also, in turn, tried indifference as to the quality of the precedent, and masqueraded now in one dress and now in another, curious only in the perfection and accuracy of our copying; in other words, we have tried pure archæology, and found that it could not satisfy the cravings of the artist to create.

We are now at last beginning to learn that this great inheritance of forms is in fact the legitimate language of our art, copious, rich, suggestive, sufficient to all our moods; valuable to us not for the sake of its own words and expressions and phrases, but because of its usefulness in enabling us the more fully and elegantly to express our own thoughts and the ideas which belong to our time.

To obtain success in the decorative arts, according to this new light, there must now be added to the qualification of the artist a new and hitherto unknown element, that of research and learning. We are compelled to processes of reasoning in design; we are obliged to have thoughts to express, and, in expressing them, not to misuse an old language, not to confine ourselves to this or that dialect, to the peculiar idioms and tricks of expression in this or that author or set of authors, — much less to invent a new language. We design at last with a conscience. Modern art thus allies itself more closely with humanity than ever; it must appeal not to the senses alone, but to the mind and heart. Indeed, so saturated is it with humanity that we apply to it moral terms : we say that it is sincere or insincere, true or false, self-denying or self-indulgent, proud or debased. Or we speak of it as a tiling of the intellect: it is learned or ignorant, profound or superficial, closely-reasoned and logical, or shallow and discursive. Such should be the modern decorative arts, according to the high standard set up by the new culture. In this way, apparently, we are to create an art of the nineteenth century. It is evidently not to continue a mere art of correct revivals, now of this or now of that school, according to an inexplicable fashion. Beneath these superficial excitements there is growing this new sense of responsibility as to the real duties of art.

Thus, in building a modern church, the problem is not satisfied by accommodating a given number of worshipers for a given cost, with due regard for the decent setting forth of given rites in an edifice which is merely an accurate quotation from a given style, a correct reproduction of forms recognized by antiquarians as peculiar to a certain distinctive era of art. It is no longer sufficient that it is good Romanesque or good Gothic of any age or place. This is practical archaeology, perhaps, but not architecture. The matter of accommodation, cost, and rites being the same, the question is, first, as to the most available material; then, what forms are best suited to give this material the most honest and elegant expression possible under the circumstances, adapting these forms to the local conditions of fenestration, exit and entrance, aspect and surroundings. The artist seeks not to invent new forms to meet those conditions; they will come soon enough if needed. There is a venerable and inexhaustible language of old forms; there arc innumerable traditionary details developed out of the experience of mankind in former ages; there are devices of construction developed into shapes associated with the triumphs and trials of Christianity everywhere. With the fullness of this language he utters his thought completely, having in mind only the fairest and aptest expression of his idea. To these processes there are essential, as we have discovered, not learning and research merely, not inventive skill and genius merely, not poetic feeling and fine sympathies merely, but all these combined, together with the usual technical qualities which must form a necessary part of the equipment of the architect. The result is inevitably a work of art,— not a correct reproduction, but essentially a thing unknown before, a veritable contribution to the pleasure and profit of mankind, a step onward. It is of course dependent upon the genius or skill of the artist whether, in using the old forms of expression, he avoids incongruities; and, while it is not of the least consequence whether he commits anachronisms or not, he must see to it that they are not offensive. He may put Greek and Gothic together if he can, but it is necessary to the perfection of his expression that all the details shall be reconciled one to another and made one whole.

The decorative arts, from the highest to the lowest, are decorative in that they are fitted for a fixed place, and in that place related, in either subordination or command, to the effect of other pieces of art. “ All the greatest art in the world,” says Ruskin, “is fitted for a place and subordinated to a purpose. There is no existing highest-order art but is decorative, The best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front; the best painting, the decoration of a room. Raphael’s best doing is merely the wall-coloring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican, and his cartoons were made for tapestries; Correggio’s best doing is the decoration of two small church cupolas at Parma; Michael Angelo’s, of a ceiling in the Pope’s private chapel; Tintoret’s, of a ceiling and side wall belonging to a charitable society at Venice; while Titian and Veronese threw out their noblest thoughts not even on the inside, but on the outside of the common brick and plaster walls of Venice.” So also with the minor decorative arts. Their essential condition of existence is their subordination to a purpose, and therefore the modern standard requires in their design complicated processes of development, similar, though of course in a less absolute degree, to those by which, as we have seen, the most monumental and important results are to be reached.

In the completion of a room for use by the application of color, of fabrics, and of cabinet-work, it would be easy to prove that a perfect result, or rather a result of perfect fitness, the ideal, is obtained, not by masquerading in a foreign dress, or by adopting a prevailing fashion of forms or tints, or by any arbitrary inclusions or exclusions whatsoever, but by a study of the peculiar needs and uses of the room, its aspect, its shape, and its surroundings; by the discovery of the key of color necessary to the case; by the survey of available precedents for motifs and suggestions of form; by the conscientious and intelligent rejection of every fancy which, however dear to us, however fashionable, however picturesque, or original, or graceful, is not essential to the realization of this ideal. We know of innumerable rooms, decorated in innumerable ways, by innumerable devices, under all degrees and varieties of civilizations, ancient and modern, and according to all conditions of living. These are importunate in suggesting ideas to the modern designer. Without the exercise of the virtue of self-denial he is at the mercy of these thronging fancies, and becomes a mere superficial eclectic. This virtue must be a leading characteristic of the new discipline which we are approaching, both in the greater and lesser arts of decoration. The obvious necessity of exercising it, if we would create works of art, is another proof of the intense self-consciousness which we must inject into our work. We cannot decorate a panel in these modern days in any spirit but that of self-consciousness. If this takes the form of complacency in our own skill or knack, confidence in tricks of color or form which we have picked up, imitations of what has constituted other people’s success, we can have no real success of our own. If the selfconsciousness is conscientious; if it rejects the temptations of its own genius and knowledge; if it considers first the function of this especial panel, its position and surroundings, treating it according to the natural capacity of the material,— if of metal, adjusting the form of the decoration so that it may be beaten, chiseled, engraved, or cast into shape; if of clay or plaster, so that the form may be developed by modeling; if of wood, so that it may be carved or painted,— and, whether the composition Is executed in form or color according to these conditions, if this form or color is kept properly subordinate to the rest of the composition, and is content simply to illustrate or decorate the function of the panel as an essential part of a greater whole, we may hope to create a work of art.

Moreover, how has the human mind in previous conditions of life met similar requirements ? Let us take a long, upright panel and consider this point. An Egyptian would have formulated his work according to his religion, and filled his panel with a composition of reeds and lotus dowers, dead with straightness, rigid, precise, hieratic. A Greek would have contented himself with a wild honeysuckle, but would have extracted from it the very essence of beauty, grave, sweet, corrected, and chastened to the last limit of refined expression. A Roman would have chosen the acanthus and the olive, and would have given to them exuberance, vigor, sensuousness, abundance of life and motion, pride, and vainglory. A monastic designer of the twelfth century would have chosen the common leaves and flowers of the wayside, and with worshipful soul and obedient hand would have interpreted nature so that his panel would have been made beautiful with the spirit of the plant. A lay architect of the fourteenth century would have given a consummate image of what such leaves and flowers should be if they had been created for the sake of his panel; their shapes and their motions would have been adjusted to the form of his panel, conventionalized and crowded. A century later, he would have crumpled, twisted, and undercut the leaves with dangerous perfection of craftsmanship, and they would have wandered wanton outside the limits of the panel; strange animals would have been seen chasing one another among the leafage. An architect of the Renaissance would have remembered the Roman work; but the Roman acanthus and olive, under his hands, would have been quickened and refined with new detail, new motion, finer inspiration and invention. They would have received a new impulse of life, a new creation, in the self-conscious spirit of the artist. He would have breathed into them his own personality, so that they would have been, as it were, the signature of his genius. But the art would still have been pagan art; not necessarily exuberant and ostentatious, but subdued to a strict relationship with the borders of the panel, observant of the centre line, illustrated with pedantic conceits of birds, masks, animals, boys, garlands, and pendants. For it was the era of the Renaissance of learning, the era of concetti in literature as well as art. The decorator of the Elizabethan era would have frankly left nature, and covered his panel with armorial bearings and grotesque emblazonments, with accessories of strapwork curled and slashed capriciously. The Saracen would have filled it with his arabesque tangles and pious texts. The Japanese, following immemorial traditions of art, perfected by successive generations working loyally, consummate interpreters of natural forms, would have disregarded any considerations of symmetry, and projected into the field of the panel a spray of natural loafage from some accidental point in the boundary, cutting across a background of irregular horizontal or zigzag bars; a quick flight of birds would stretch their wings across the disk of a white moon, or a stork would stand contemplative upon one leg in the midst of his water reeds, with the sacred Fusiami in the distance, barred with its conventional clouds; and yet the composition would be suited to no other shape or size than that of the long panel for which it was composed.

In the presence of all these crowding images, the modern designer stands asking, “Which shall I choose, what shall I reject, and why? ” They are all his; they are his rightful inheritance, the legitimate language of his art. He not only has all the beautiful things in nature at his command, but he also knows how they have been used by his predecessors; how they have been interpreted and transformed in the service of humanity; how they have been sanctified by old religions, conventionalized and revitalized according to the knowledge, the inspiration, the needs, the opportunities, the emotions of mankind. They have become an expression of humanity, and thus, as we have said, a language of art.

Mr. Ruskin, in a lecture at the Kensington Museum, asserts, with his usual dogmatic force and confidence, “ that no great school of art ever yet existed which had not for primal aim the representation of some natural fact as truly as possible.” Accordingly, he directs his disciples to the minute study of leaf and flower, grasses and pebbles, shells and mosses. He tells them to look into the rock for its crystals, and to look up at the sky for its clouds; to draw them all with delicate care, to carve or paint them with absolute fidelity; for by such processes alone can the secret of decorative art be revealed. All this experience doubtless is excellent, and to a degree indispensable. But how this drawing and carving have been done by our predecessors; how they have interpreted nature according to all the moods and emotions of the human soul, and under all the conditions of life; how they have made it a part of the history of mankind, conventionalized it, in fact, for the uses of art, — this is no less important. The artists who practice design and the theorists who dream of it. naturally disagree. What! cry the latter, must we go to art when we have infinite nature all around us? When the clover and the daisy grow in the clod beneath our feet; when the sagittaria, with its pointed leaves, the water-cress, and the long reeds wave by the river’s brim, and the white lily floats upon its bosom; when the oak leaf arul the acorn help to form the shade in which we repose, — must we go afar to learn how these things were carved by forgotten hands upon the capitals and corbels, in the spandrels and panels and friezes, of sacred buildings, six hundred years ago; or to discover in what way they made beautiful the oaken screens and cabinets in the châteaux of the sixteenth century; or how they were beaten and twisted out of ductile iron in the balconies of Venice, or molded, baked, and colored in the potteries of Palissy and of Sèvres; how they were painted upon the fans or cast on the bronze vases of Japan? On the other band, the artist says, What are we to do with our heritage of forms? Are we to leave them to the antiquaries to label and classify and set up in museums, or are we to abandon them to quacks and pretenders, the spendthrifts of art, to be worn by them as savages wear the costumes of civilization? In any event, they cannot be forgotten. Every day they are made more accessible. The instinct of mankind is to use them, and we must see to it that they are used in a manner consistent with the dignity of art, with far-reaching research, but with self control, self-denial, and conscience.

Thus there are two great books of reference for the artist: the book of nature and the book of art, that is, the book of the interpretation of nature by mankind. If we could close the latter and forget it, and if nature were our only resource, the best of us would perhaps become pre-Raphaelite, and we would peep and botanize in a manner commendable to this great prophet. Much of a certain class of errors might be obliterated from modern art; but our imagination, untrained, undisciplined, without food of immemorial experience, would run into unreasonable excesses. The opportunity and the desire to ornament would not be less, but the available resources would be infinitely impoverished. Our observation of nature would doubtless become quickened, but the element of conscience in art would be deadened, if not destroyed. The decorator would soon perceive that the natural form could not be sculptured upon his capital, or painted upon his ceiling, or woven in his fabric, or burned into his porcelain, for a thousand obvious reasons, without undergoing some process of transformation. The work of conventionalizing these forms would at once begin; but in the absence of instruction and inspiration from all precedent art it would develop slowly, painfully, with barbarous imperfections and childish crudities. Our art would be a strange mixture: there would be, on the one band, an absolute fidelity to natural forms, interpreted with the skill which would result from concentration of thought; and on the other, a more prevalent element of barbarous and illiterate invention, covering the surfaces of things with thoughtless repetitions of detail, like an Indian paddle. We would be relieved from our embarrassments of precedent, indeed, but we would suffer from a new and greater embarrassment of poverty. The embarrassments of our wealth we are now learning to correct by cultivating the ennobling qualities of self-denial and conscientiousness. The embarrassments of poverty could only engender an overworking, and consequently a debasement, of the powers of imagination. Man, with an infinity of thought to express, — for no fate but death could stop the activity of the mind, — would have no competent language with which to express it. He could only utter inarticulate cries, like a child.

Therefore, to say that nature is the only fountain of art is incorrect. Ruskin, illustrating this principle, says, “ If the designer of furniture, of cups and vases, of dress patterns and the like, exercises himself continually in the imitation of natural form in some leading division of his work, then, holding by this stem of life, he may pass down into all kinds of merely geometrical or formal design with perfect safety and with noble results. . . . But once quit bold of this living stem, and set yourself to the designing of ornamentation, either in the ignorant play of your own heartless fancy, as the Indian does, or according to received application of heartless laws, as the modern European does, and there is but one word for you, — death; death of every healthy faculty and of every noble intelligence; incapacity of understanding one great work that man has ever done, or of doing anything that it shall be helpful for him to behold.” 1 There is much more of this very beautiful language, but when we get away from the spell of it and return to facts it seems as if we had been listening to a sort of pantheistic hymn. To go to nature for refreshment and inspiration is always wise; but there is refreshment and inspiration also in the works of man. After God had made the green things of earth and all the animals, the creeping and swimming creatures, he made man, and endowed him with faculties to appreciate, enjoy, and command the rest of the creation. The result was that man immediately began a creation of his own, — a creation of the second order. His materials were not chaos and darkness, but light and nature. The result of this secondary creation is art. To us of the nineteenth century, for whom have been preserved most of the productions of this secondary creation, not by dim tradition but by scientific researches above and beneath the ground far and near, accurately collated, analyzed, and published, — to us, richly endowed as none of our predecessors have been (for literature has only discovered the true art of Greece and Syria, of Japan and India, for example, within the last twenty-five years), this secondary creation stands as the image of the primary creation in the human mind; and the human mind, doubtless, is the masterpiece of the supreme creator. By this agency nature has undergone wonderful transformations; and although the water-lily of Egypt, the 1 Ruskin, The Two Paths, pages 46, 47 acanthus and honeysuckle of Attica, the olive and laurel of Rome, the trefoil, the ivy, the oak, of the Christian builders, the inexhaustible flora of later times, and all the animal creation,from man to insects, by the processes of art have taken new shapes, — although they have been often modeled in “ the light that never was on sea or land,” it is not wise to stigmatize these “old things made new ” as the product of heartless laws, and as a conspiracy against nature. There is, in fact, as much nature in the minds which have thus idealized and conventionalized natural forms as there is in the natural forms themselves; and those minds and all the forms of art in which their thoughts have been embodied can no more be neglected by the modern designer than can the primary creation itself.

This is the thought which. I would enforce. Our present conditions of life must give to art in all its forms certain distinctive characteristics. These conditions require the establishment of principles, and not forms, as standards of excellent work. They make forms the language and not the end of art; and they inculcate the enlargement and enrichment of this language by the study of nature and of all the antecedent arts, to the end that we may express our thought in art as we would in literature, with an elegance, precision, and completeness commensurate with our larger opportunities and our greater resources. Modern design, especially in architecture, has hitherto concerned itself with the parts of speech, and given us exercises in grammar. . Now we are prepared to give to art its true function; to instruct as well as to delight; to appeal to the intellect and heart as well as to the taste; to have larger scope and fuller meaning in all its expressions.

Henry Van Brunt.