The Crown of Wild Olive
of Daedalus,--inlaying,--becomes all the more delightful to us in
external aspect, because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of
a bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and
resistance.
5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the simplest
architecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the timbers in a ship's
stem, and the laying of the stones in a bridge buttress, are similar in
art to the construction of the ploughshare, differing in no essential
point, either in that they deal with other materials, or because, of the
three things produced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it,
another to divide water by advancing through it, and the third to divide
water which advances against it. And again, the buttress of a bridge
differs only from that of a cathedral in having less weight to sustain,
and more to resist. We can find no term in the gradation, from the
ploughshare to the cathedral buttress, at which we can set a logical
distinction.
6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art--one, that of giving
colours to substance; another, that of giving form to it without
question of resistance to force; and the third, that of giving form or
position which will make it capable of such resistance. All the fine
arts are embraced under these three divisions. Do not think that it is
only a logical or scientific affectation to mass them together in this
manner; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical importance to
understand that the painter's faculty, or masterhood over colour, being
as subtle as a musician's over sound, must be looked to for the
government of every operation in which colour is employed; and that, in
the same manner, the appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects
cannot be right, unless under the direction of a true master of that
art. Under the present system, you keep your Academician occupied only
in producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in frames, and smooth
pieces of marble to be placed in niches; while you expect your builder
or constructor to design coloured patterns in stone and brick, and your
china-ware merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can paint
china, but nothing else. By this division of labour, you ruin all the
arts at once. The work of the Academician becomes mean and effeminate,
because he is not used to treat colour on a grand scale and in rough
materials; and your manufactures become base because no well educated
person sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to understand,
not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical necessity, that
wherever beautiful colour is to be arranged, you need a Master of
Painting; and wherever noble form is to be given, a Master of Sculpture;
and wherever complex mechanical force is to be resisted, a Master of
Architecture.
7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet more
important. Any of these three arts may be either imitative of natural
objects or limited to useful appliance. You may either paint a picture
that represents a scene, or your street door, to keep it from rotting;
you may mould a statue, or a plate; build the resemblance of a cluster
of lotus stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Painting and
Sculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely useful; but there
is a great deal of Sculpture--as this crystal ball[108] for instance,
which is not imitative, and a great deal of Architecture which, to some
extent is so, as the so called foils of Gothic apertures; and for many
other reasons you will find it necessary to keep distinction clear in
your minds between the arts--of whatever kind--which are imitative, and
produce a resemblance or image of something which is not present; and
those which are limited to the production of some useful reality, as the
blade of a knife, or the wall of a house. You will perceive also, as we
advance, that sculpture and painting are indeed in this respect only one
art; and that we shall have constantly to speak and think of them as
simply _graphic_, whether with chisel or colour, their principal
function being to make us, in the words of Aristotle, "[Greek:
theoretikoi tou peri ta somata kallous]" (Polit. 8, 3.), "having
capacity and habit of contemplation of the beauty that is in material
things;" while Architecture, and its co-relative arts, are to be
practised under quite other conditions of sentiment.
8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist either in
imitation or mechanical construction, the right judgment of them must
depend on our knowledge of the things they imitate, and forces they
resist: and my function of teaching here would (for instance) so far
resolve itself, either into demonstration that this painting of a
peach,[109] does resemble a peach, or explanation of the way in which
this ploughshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth aside
with least force of thrust. And in both of these methods of study,
though of course your own diligence must be your chief master, to a
certain extent your Professor of Art can always guide you securely, and
can show you, either that the image does truly resemble what it attempts
to resemble, or that the structure is rightly prepared for the service
it has to perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is,
perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Professor to
teach you most, and which, on the contrary, is exactly that about which
you must teach yourselves all that it is essential to learn.
9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible examples of the
union of the graphic and constructive powers,--one of my breakfast
plates. Since all the finely architectural arts, we said, began in the
shaping of the cup and the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the
platter.
Why has it been made round? For two structural reasons: first, that the
greatest holding surface may be gathered into the smallest space; and
secondly, that in being pushed past other things on the table, it may
come into least contact with them.
Next, why has it a rim? For two other structural reasons; first, that it
is convenient to put salt or mustard upon; but secondly and chiefly,
that the plate may be easily laid hold of. The rim is the simplest form
of continuous handle.
Farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to put this
ridge beneath, round the bottom; for as the rim is the simplest possible
form of continuous handle, so this is the simplest form of continuous
leg. And we get the section given beneath the figure for the essential
one of a rightly made platter.
10. Thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian having respect to
conditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. But now, on the
surface of our piece of pottery, here are various bands and spots of
colour which are presumably set there to make it pleasanter to the eye.
Six of the spots, seen closely, you discover are intended to represent
flowers. These then have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the other
properties of the plate have an architectural one, and the first
critical question we have to ask about them is, whether they are like
roses or not. I will anticipate what I have to say in subsequent
lectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be like roses at
all, the liker they can be, the better. Do not suppose, as many people
will tell you, that because this is a common manufactured article, your
roses on it are the better for being ill-painted, or half-painted. If
they had been painted by the same hand that did this peach, the plate
would have been all the better for it; but, as it chanced, there was no
hand such as William Hunt's to paint them, and their graphic power is
not distinguished. In any case, however, that graphic power must have
been subordinate to their effect as pink spots, while the band of
green-blue round the plate's edge, and the spots of gold, pretend to no
graphic power at all, but are meaningless spaces of colour or metal.
Still less have they any mechanical office: they add nowise to the
serviceableness of the plate; and their agreeableness, if they possess
any, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any structural,
character; but on some inherent pleasantness in themselves, either of
mere colours to the eye (as of taste to the tongue), or in the placing
of those colours in relations which obey some mental principle of order,
or physical principle of harmony.
11. These abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, whether in
space, number, or time, and whether of colours or sounds, form what we
may properly term the musical or harmonic element in every art; and the
study of them is an entirely separate science. It is the branch of
art-philosophy to which the word "aesthetics" should be strictly limited,
being the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves are
pleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they represent
nothing, and serve for nothing, their only service _being_ their
pleasantness. Thus it is the province of aesthetics to tell you, (if you
did not know it before,) that the taste and colour of a peach are
pleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascertainable, (and you have any
curiosity to know,) why they are so.
12. The information would, I presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. If
it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which you
disliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information,
and, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. Nearly the
whole study of aesthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless.
Either you like the right things without being recommended to do so, or
if you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by lectures on the laws
of taste. You recollect the story of Thackeray, provoked, as he was
helping himself to strawberries, by a young coxcomb's telling him that
"he never took fruit or sweets." "That" replied, or is said to have
replied, Thackeray, "is because you are a sot, and a glutton." And the
whole science of aesthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by one
passage of Goethe's in the end of the 2nd part of Faust;--the notable
one that follows the song of the Lemures, when the angels enter to
dispute with the fiends for the soul of Faust. They enter
singing--"Pardon to sinners and life to the dust." Mephistopheles hears
them first, and exclaims to his troop, "Discord I hear, and filthy
jingling"--"Mistoene hoere ich; garstiges Geklimper." This, you see, is
the extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host begin
strewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd altogether.
Mephistopheles in vain calls to them--"What do you duck and shrink
for--is that proper hellish behaviour? Stand fast, and let them
strew"--"Was duckt und zuckt ihr; ist das Hellen-brauch? So haltet
stand, und lasst sie streuen." There you have, also, the extreme of bad
taste in sight and smell. And in the whole passage is a brief embodiment
for you of the ultimate fact that all aesthetics depend on the health of
soul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not only through years,
but generations. Only by harmony of both collateral and successive
lives can the great doctrine of the Muses be received which enables men
"[Greek: chairein orthos]," "to have pleasures rightly;" and there is no
other definition of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to the
aesthetic faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created,
seen and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. So much as there
is in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty, and creates none:
what is human in you, in exact proportion to the perfectness of its
humanity, can create it, and receive.