Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No.394, August, 1848. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
by subdivision, and less sure by confusion and uncertainty of aim, until all purpose be lost, in a low satisfaction in mere dexterity and mindless imitation. And what shall stay art in such downward way of decadence? Can a strong impulse be given to it – for there is no strength but the mind's strength? It is not patronage, but purpose, which is wanted. What shall revivify the passion that gave it earnestness, – the sincerity, the trust in itself, the confidence in its own high-mindedness, the sense of the importance of its objects, and the true glory of their pursuit? We have our fears that we are doing much to multiply artists, and degrade art. We distribute patronage in so many streams, by our art-unions, that no full fertilising current is visible. We make a pauperism, and stamp it with the disgrace of the beggarly contribution; we, pauperise the mind too, by the demand for mean productions, and by circulating, as the choicest specimens of British art, engravings which tend utterly to the deterioration of the public taste. Perhaps there is nothing more frightfully injurious in the present state of art, than this ever putting before the public eye things in themselves bad, and mostly bad, where badness is more surely fatal, in purpose. It is far easier for good taste and for good art, in practice, to arise out of a blank, out of nothing, than out of an exuberance of bad examples. These things tend to vitiate the pure. The great daily accumulation of inferior works, low in character, and deficient in artistic knowledge and skill, that are ever thrust before the public eye, are doing much mischief. They are poisoning and vitiating the ground from which taste should spring. We are not educating in art, but against art. We are teaching to admire things which, were it possible to keep what is bad from the public eye, would disgust as soon as seen. And even where the exhibition is in no other respect vicious, it is too often vicious from the total absence of any high purpose. For lack of object, we look to some mere mechanical prettinesses; and by habit learn first to look for, and then to work for, nothing more. When the great men of other days, whose names we have now so constantly in our mouths, dedicated themselves to art, they did it with all their soul. They had the earnestness of a passion; and what they did not, as we should now say, well, technically viewing some of their early works, they did to express some strong and some worthy feeling. And as they advanced in technical skill, still they ever thought a certain dignity and importance were essential to their works. The public mind had not yet felt satiety. But in time the progeny of art multiplied. The trading multitude had to entice purchasers, and to persuade them that their novelties were at least more pleasing, if the aim was not so high. The new lamps were cried up above the old. Thus they first created a bad taste, and then pandered to it. Cold conventionalities took the place of feeling; even beauty was studied more for low sense, than for its moral, and intellectual expression. Art was smothered by her own children. The brood has been too numerous, and the productions as variable as the brood. They who would do great things were they allowed, are not allowed. The lower fascinations have taken possession of the public mind. Patronage runs to the little, and the greatest encouragement is to those who will provide the market with the cheapest, if not the best wares. Artists must live as well as other people. They cannot, if they would, sacrifice themselves to work out great and noble ideas, for which there is no demand; and for this state of things they are themselves in no small degree to blame. It is their own cry for patronage that has raised these art-unions: the patronage has been raised, but who gets it? They (like the national guard in Paris) have been superseded by their own inferior workmen. And what shall remedy all this superfœtation? First, let pains be taken properly to educate in art the public eye, and the public mind. We rejoice to know that, while we are writing, a society is forming, similar to the Cambden Society, for the publication of all important works on art, whether old or original, and for having the finest productions of art engraved, in whatever country they are to be found. As good taste is the object, so care will be taken that nothing of a deteriorating character will be admitted; and works will be produced which, in the present state of general feeling, private speculation would scarcely venture upon. The works will, we are given to understand, chiefly be distributable among the members of the society; but some, thought to be particularly well adapted to give a better direction to the public taste, will be generally purchasable.
This society is of great promise – if it succeeds at all, it will succeed eminently, and we believe it must succeed. It will, we have some hope drive the low, the meaningless things of the day out of the field. We are, as a nation, really ignorant of art. We know it not, as it has been. We want to see the public eye acquainted, through good engravings, with the numerous fine frescos that cannot be generally known in any other way. Whatever tends to the real advancement of art will obtain the solicitous attention of this society.
The Fine Arts Commission affords another means of remedying the evils that are besetting the profession, and through them the public taste. We do not like the Government competition system. We go further – we do not like the Government, we mean the Commission, constituting themselves judges and purveyors. This is not the way to make great men. The man of genius shrinks from the competition system; nay, he fears or doubts the judgment of his judges. Perhaps he feels that he is himself the best judge; and if he has a just confidence in himself, he ought to feel this. He will not like the check of too much dictation as to subjects, composition, or any of the detail. We are persuaded that it would be far wiser, both for the public and for art, that the commissioners should studiously select their man, without competition, not for some one or more pictures, but for a far wider range. There will be still competition enough for proper ambition in the number still to be employed. Raffaelle had the Vatican assigned to him, and that at an early age; so would we gladly see a large portion given to one man, and let the whole be of his one mind, and let him have his assistants if he please. Let him be dominant, and if he has within him a power, it will come out; and it cannot be difficult to find a few men of sense and vigour; and even though they have not as yet shown great powers, it does not follow that they have them not – trust to what they have, and more will grow. But we have some even now capable of performing beautiful works to do honour to the nation. We should rejoice to see their secretary released from the clerkship of his office, and set to work seriously with his hand and his superintending mind. We would impress this upon the consideration of the commissioners as an indisputable truth, that if they select a man of genius, they select one superior to themselves – one who is to teach, not to be taught by them – and one with whose arrangements, after their selection, they should by no means interfere. And supposing the worst, that they have actually made an unfortunate choice – what then? They have made an experiment at no very great cost, and may obliterate whatever is a disgrace. The works of other painters were obliterated in the Sistine Chapel to make room for Michael Angelo. Nor was there any hesitation in destroying the labours of previous artists, and even the suspended operations of his old master, Perugino, that the whole space might be open to the genius of the youth Raffaelle. It is whole, entire responsibility that makes great men. Throw upon the persons you select the whole weight, and thereby give them the benefit of all the glory; and whatever be their powers, you tax them to the utmost. We would have them by no means interfered with, any more than we would cripple the commander of our armies abroad with the petty counsels and restrictions of bureau-manufacture. Nor should they be too strictly limited as to time, nor subjected to the continual questionings of an ungenerous impatience. Let the trust be conferred upon them as an honour which they are to wear and enjoy, not as a notice of their servility, but of their freedom. That trust is less likely to be abused the more generously it is given. To fulfil it then, becomes an ambition; and the daily habit of this higher feeling, by making the given work the all in all of life, renders the men more fit for it. Let the nation, expecting liberality from the "Liberal Arts," bestow it – hold out high rewards, leave the artists in all respects unshackled; and, the intention of a work being approved of, let not the time it is to occupy be in the stipulation. And it would be well to look to the promise of the young as well as actual performances; for the power to do will grow. Of thirty-eight competitors convened at Florence, Lorenzo Ghiberti, only twenty-three years of age, was chosen to execute the celebrated doors; the work occupied forty years of his life. The work is immortal, if human work can be; and obtained this eulogium from Michael Angelo, that "they were worthy of being the gates of Paradise." He conferred honour upon his city, and received such as was worthy the city to bestow. "His labours were justly appreciated, and ably rewarded by his fellow citizens, who, besides granting him whatever he demanded, assigned him a portion of land, and elected him Gonfaloniere, or chief magistrate of the state. His bust was afterwards placed in the baptistery." Was the confidence, the