(e)(ar)art for art sake its falacy

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Art for Art's Sake: Its Fallacy and Viciousness

Source: The Art World, Vol. 2, No. 2 (May, 1917), pp. 98-102Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25587887.

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IELDIT RIALS

ART FOR ART'S SAKEITS FALLACY AND VICIOUSNESS

W HAT is art for art's sake? TheophileGautier, poet, critic and essayist, defined itas follows: "Art for art's sake means for

its adepts the pursuit of pure beauty-without anyother preoccupation.''

On the surface this seems like a pure flower ofthought. But fundamentally it is a poison plant.Had Gautier said: "Art for art's sake means forits adepts the pursuit of pure beauty, physical, intellectual and spiritual," it would have been a worldsaving benediction; but his definition as it standshas proven a world evil, for it has worked towardthe detachment of art, not only -from life, but thehigher life.

According to Gautier and his followers.,an artist,poet, painter, sculptor, musician, dramatist ornovelist should believe and teach:

First, That art has nothing to do with moralsin any manner. That an artist may choose anysubject, moral, unmoral or immoral, and that solong as he expresses that subject with fine'artistry" all is well.

Second, Art-for-art's-sakists preach that anartist must refrain from attempting in any mannerto shape the conduct of his fellow-men, either by

word or paint or marble or action upon the stage.In other words an artist must detach himself fromhis fellow-men like a hummingbird-be among menbut not of them-sucking all the honey his fellowmen sweat for to lay up, and die for to conserve,but having no concern about their cares, troublesand sufferings, indifferent to contributing his shareto the common good of counsel and of striving to

make this earth less a vale of tears and a moreglorious world to live in.That is equivalent to saying that an artist should

be nothing but a parasite, living off his fellows,who are to plow, to dig, to strain and to sigh so thathe may disport himself at their expense, making

meaningless poems like Gautier's own "Enamelsand Cameos," a collection of verses as empty asdead sea-shells, and which no one reads a secondtime, or making meaningless, even if refined,"Nocturnes" like Whistler's or licentious pictureslike Manet, or trivial color-orgies like Monet, and

deformed neurotic statuettes like Rodin.In addition to Gautier's insolent definition of art

for art's sake Whistler says this: "Art (he meansartistry) should be independent of all claptrap,should stand alone and appeal to the artistic senseof eye or ear without confounding this with emotionsentirely foreign to it as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like." And in speaking of Tintoretto,

Veronese and Velasquez: "No reformers were thesegreat men-no improvers of the ways of others . . .

in all this their world was completely severed fromthat of their fellow-creatures, with whom senti

ment is mistaken for poetry."And says George Moore: "'Les Palais Nomades'

is a really beautiful book and it is free from allthe faults that make an absolute and supremeenjoyment of great poetry impossible. For it isin the first place free from those pests and parasitesof artistic work-ideas. . . . Gustave Kahn tookcounsel of the past and he has successfully avoidedeverything that even a hostile critic might betempted to term an idea, and for this I am grateful " What Moore refers to as "great poetry" isnothing but clever, empty rhyming.

And John C. Vandyke in his book "Art for Art'sSake" says: "The public sneers at the painter forhis lack of ideas and the incensed painter, in tryingto say that art should exist for its own sake, itsown ideas and be judged by its own standards ofcriticism, often lays himself open to ridicule byextravagantly saying, with a quoted companion in arecent number of The Atlantic Monthly: "Anartist has no business to think at all."

According to this all that any "hobo" has to do,to absolve him from thinking, digging or choppingand to permit him to live on the fat of the land,is to paint over his door the cabalistic word"ARTIST" and then he should by divine right befed and clothed like a lily in the field The funda

mental trouble, I fear, even with Mr. Van Dyke, isthat he has also mistaken "artistry" for art.In October 1866 George Sand wrote to Flaubert,

who died of neurosis and who was an art-for-art'ssake romancer: "I heard you say 'Iwrite for onlyten or twelve persons.' One says in careless chatting many things which are the impressions of the

moment; but you were not the only one to saythat. It was the opinion of those who met* at

Magny's on Mondays-it was the theory of thosedays. I protested within myself.

"The twelve persons for whom one writes andwho appreciate you are equal to you or surpass you.It was never necessary for you, in order to beyourself, to read the other eleven. Therefore one

writes for everybody, for every one who has needof being initiated. If one is not understood, oneresigns oneself or begins over. If we are understood, we rejoice and continue. That is the wholesecret of our persevering labor and living for art.

What is art without the heart and soul one poursinto it? A sun which would not project its rayswould give life to nothing."Flaubert answered her as follows: "I feel aninvincible repulsion to putting on paper anythingfrom my heart. I find even that a romancer has

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May 1917 THE ART WORLD 99

not the right to express his opinion on anythingwhatsoever." Here we have the abyss of the emptiness of the art-for-art's-sake theory plainly stated.

What is the result of the promulgation of thisfalse aesthetic theory? A pursuit of mere beautyof form in all the arts by those who are unintelligent enough to swallow this high-sounding theorywithout thinking and who develop a supreme contempt for the quality, above all moral or socialvalue, of the contents or thought which should gointo a great work of art.

The mere beauty of form in a work of art, asin a woman, is a poison. If a woman has onlybeauty and no moral character or lofty purpose,she is nothing more than a parasite. The same istrue of a work of art, no matter how beautiful itis; unless it is at least also beautiful in spirit,chaste and clean in character, it is only an aestheticpoison.

While the slogan "art for art's sake" is modernthe thing is as old as the decadence of Greeceand the Renaissance. As to this listen to theFrench critic Brunetiere: "It is thus that historyproves-that when art is left to itself and seeksits law only in itself, it degenerates rapidly into a

mass of artifices to arouse our sensuality. Thenwe dernand no more of art, it cares for no morethan to please, and at any price and by all means;and, literally, from a mentor or a guide it ischanged into a species of procuress. That is theonly name which fits it when I think of ourEighteenth Century with the romances of Duclosand Crebillon, Jr., and of Laclos; with the sculptureof Clodion and the painting of Boucher and Fragonard and the libertine engravings of so many ofof the "little masters"; with that neurotic furorewhich dishonors not only the poems of Parny butthose even of Andre Chenier. Let us finallyrecognize it-all that which they praise so highly,all this art in all its forms has scarcely been anything less during half a century than a perpetualexcitation to debauchery.

"But the seduction of empty form operatessometimes in a more subtle and more insidiousfashion difficult to comprehend by the artists orthe public, and the disastrous effects are all thegreater because in corrupting the principle of artWe have the appearance of respecting it; for whenwe attribute to mere form an exaggerated importance, or a unique importance, there follows whatan Italian critic, in speaking of the decadence ofItalian art, called 'the indifference to the contents.'

When art arrives there-and it arrives there withfatal ease-it seeks its end in itself or in therealization of 'pure beauty,'-then, I repeat again,not only art and morality are lost but the societyalso which has made of mere artistry an idol.

"Penetrated with this feeling of the 'beautiful,'Italy went so far as to find beauty in crime. TheItalian respected a crime well done, boldly conceived, cleverly executed, audaciously avowed aspossessing merits analogous to those that theyapplauded in works of art. How was that? It wasby separating the inseparable, in disassociating theform from its contents, in carrying the entire meritof thework of art into its execution. As long asthis tendency found its counter-weight in thesympathy of the religious sentiments, of themoralsentiments or of the racial or political feeling,

art produced and endowed the world with masterpieces from the 'Divine Comedy' to the SistineChapel. But as soon as this tendency to respecttechnical execution as the supreme merit of artand to seek its end in itself became pronounced,

we saw the beginning of the decadence of art."This warning to France was written in 1898.Now, it is incontestable that when art is in a state

of decadence, life is in a state of decadence, sinceart is but a reflection of life. When we observeonly a small quantity of art that is corrupt, thereis little corruption in society, but when the quantity of art that is corrupt in spirit is on theincrease, then the corruption of the nation is onthe increase. And when that takes place, artincreasingly affects life for the worse if art iscorrupt. For art is dynamic, affected by and reacting upon life.When scientific agnosticism shook the founda

tions of faith about 1850, and when the destructionof the Second Republic in 1852 by the traitorNapoleon III filled France with a wrave of pessimism and social corruption, art became increasingly"art for art's sake" and corrupt. This was checkedit is true by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870and the art which followed this war was not "artfor art's sake" but altruistic or social, and thegreatest crop of good art that France ever did produce, thanks to the triumph of the moral forces ofFrance. But these forces became fatigued about1895 after twenty years of herculean effort to showto the world that France still lived. Then theimmoral forces-ever present in every individual as

well as in every nation, and ever waiting only forthis moral fatigue to occur in the opponents ofevil-became active and soon became powerfuluntil by 1910 they appeared to have- a supremevogue and art for art's sake and its corrupt flower-the various forms of "modernistic" art, with allits varieties of deformation of the form, intellectualtopsy-turvyism and moral obliquity-all rooted invicious origins, we again repeat, of drug excesses,alcoholic drunkenness and sex perversion, clamoredfor and obtained its "place in the sun "

What is true of France is true of Germany,Austria and England. And the Cosmic Volition,

seeing the universal Saturnalia of corruption in lifeand art, repeated the words of Genesis vi:

Verse 6: "And it repenteth the Lord that he hadmade man on the earth, and it grieved him at hisheart."

Verse 7: "And the Lord said, I will destroyman, whom I have created, from the face, of theearth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing,and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me thatI have made them."

And the Cosmic Volition smote the nations andset them by the ears in a war, of which historydoes not show an example. The beggarly, braggardly, Bohemian "art-for-art-sakist" will poohpooh this. But the wise know.

Will the common-sense American laymen, leadersof thought and of action, take this lesson to heartand heed it?The absurd fallacy of art for art's sake resides inthis,-that its adepts deny that art is a LANGUAGE organized by mankind of the past forcommunicating thought and emotion, at firstmerely

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100 THE ART WORLD May 1917decorative symbolic thought, then religious, thenethical, then social thought, but always thought,ideas and sentiments--capable of shaping the life ofthose acted upon. This was never denied until

about 1860-the moral abyss of the nineteenth century-when through lack of faith in even a cosmicvolition man had fallen to the lowest depths througha deadening pessimism that would dishonor even

Mephisto, and in which we will find the roots ofthis European war.

Therefore to separate thought, idea and sentiment from form, and say with that self-advertiserGeorge Moore that "ideas are the pest of greatpoetry," and to insist that form and artistry inart are supremely respectable only when divorcedfrom ideas, is to insult all the men of genius ofthe past whose art was made great and sublime, notby form alone, not by ideas alone, but by the closeunion of both.

This attempt to divorce ideas from form inart is on a parallel with the attempts to divorcecolor from drawing in a painting-to say thatcolor is superior to drawing-which can betraced back to Delacroix and Baudelaire and theirsupporters at the height of the romantic move

ment in France, men who were over-hungry forsomething NEW in art. These men started thetwo streams of tendency-to divorce ideas fromform and to apotheosize color at the expense ofdrawing, tendencies which have finally ended inthe immoral ideas and the insane drawing andincomprehensible color of the ultra "modernistic"art party, whose art is no longer sane but a negation of all that great art of the past, to conservewhich we build costly palaces.

It is childish to say that color is more importantin a picture than drawing or drawing more important than color. In the great and world-famous

paintings-in which the figures live-we willalways find a close union of both wonderful drawingand magnificent color. And a work of art fallsin the scale of technical greatness in the ratio ofits falling short either in drawing or color or both.

To take any other point of view is contrary tocommon-sense.When we talk of art we do not mean onlydecorative art, like wall-paper or a lady's fan or a

Chinese carpet-we mean expressive art involvingliving figures. To say in expressive art that ideasalone are important is stupid; to say that form aloneis important is idiotic. It is only when both arefine and harmoniously wedded that we have trulyfine art. This is so obvious that to deny it seemslike insanity.

We repeat: art for art's sake, as a thing, is notnew. The Greeks had it in the period of theirsocial degeneracy when Pauson was busy paintingkitchen herbs, barber shops, pigs, etc., for whichhe was called Rhyparographer-"Dirt-Painter." TheItalians had it when after the death of Raphaelart began to decline and Julio Romano painted theabsurd giants in the Palace at Mantua. And Francehad it when in the lowest degeneracy of France,during the Nineteenth Century, Gautier wrote hissilly little thoughtless verses.The viciousness of art for art's sake consists inthis-that its adepts claim:FIRST, that not only have they a right to choosean idealless subject for the purpose of showing

their mastery over form and technique-their "artistry" which no one ever denied them-but theysay that any other kind of art is "literary punk."But the "literary" quality of any work of artdepends not upon the subject, but the way it ishandled. For while "The Last Judgment" of theprimitive Orcagna at Pisa is "literary" the "LastJudgment" by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel is"plastic."

SECOND, art for art's sake is vicious because itsfollowers claim that no matter how immoral a subject may be they have a right to handle it-providedthey act merely as reporters, merely describing thesubject without expressing any opinion of approvalor disapproval of the action portrayed in the subject and interpreted by themselves.

According to this theory it was perfectly properfor Baudelaire to write his "Charogne" and otherloathsome poems and for Huysman to "descend intothe gutter, there to analyse the various stratifications of filth" as Huneker says; "for Rops to etchthings that the French Government will not letthe public see in its great library without a specialpermit" and for Manet to paint his lecherous"Olympia," his "Dandy Watching Nana Dressing"and his "Lunch on the Grass."

In a recent conversation in a newspaper, herein New York, over Manet's "Lunch on the Grass,"one critic in defending Manet contributed this:"Manet's reputation as a great painter and landmark in history calls for no defense of him." (Hewas not attacked as a "Painter," even though hisreputation as a mere painter is now declining.)But the critic continues: "With his morals likewisewe should have little to do.* * * If a few of Manet'spictures offended the ephemeral morality of themiddle classes of this date, let us not forget togive honor where honor is not only due, but cannotbe withheld."

Here we find the art for art's sake theory in fullbloom. Never mind about the social poison in awork so long as its form-its artistry-its pingponging of paint-its shuttle-cocking of brush-workis as clever as clever billiard playingAnother critic said: "As the aesthetic value of awork depends solely upon form, using the word inits broadest sense, to cover outline, arrangement,

color, etc., and this form is the basis of emotionalpleasure in the work of art, what earthly reasonis there for bringing in the story of the pictureand the reasons which lead to its painting, in acriticism thereof? If it gives emotional pleasurewithout any relation to the subject, it is a wasteof breath to consider its licentiousness or the decadent attitude of the painter. It is probably truethat the erotic stimulus is the most potent forgood work in certain men. Should their work becondemned on that account?"

Here we have frankly stated the crass physicalHedonism that rendered Alexandria the moral cesspool of historyAnother morally oblique one rushed in whereangels fear to tread, saying: "A picture could beno more immoral than a piece of wall-paper, beingas wall-paper is merely a decoration. A paintingis simply a rhythm worked out in line, color andform; in the painting in question the figure is nudefor no reason except that a nude figure presentssome interesting and beautiful lines, shading and



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May 1917 THE ART WORLD 101massing.* ** It is this puritanic and Philistineattitude towards art which has already made ofAmerica the laughing-stock of the art world." Thisis the common reply of the morally obtuse in theworld of art, but it is untrue.America is not the "laughing-stock of the artworld" neither in America nor Europe. It is the"laughing-stock" only of the corrupt and degradedportion of the world of art, of those who are doingso much to ruin that beautiful world. "Americanprudery in art" always had the active support ofall the decent people in the world of art, andAmericans can afford to smile at all those degenerates who laugh at them for not following themin their indifference to the moral and aestheticallyugly, and can regard their railing as grotesque asis the contempt of the degraded fox in La Fontaine's delicious fable who, because he had lost histail, railed at his fellow foxes for keeping theirs,by whom he had been pitied for his ridiculousdegradation.

We are on record as publicly preaching a lovefor the nude in art, saying that the human bodyis the masterpiece of the creator; but we refuseto sanction that any artist has a moral or aestheticright to defile the Temple in the world of art bycreating a licentious work. We have only thehighest praise for such nudes as are idealized anddevoid of erotic suggestiveness, and we couldgive examples of such which would offend nobody.

What is exasperating is that these protagonistsof immoral art have the Machiavellian insolenceof the tailless fox aforesaid to ridicule a virilecommon-sense artist who refuses to follow theminto the gutter.

As to the whole art for art's sake theory Swinburne said: "We refuse to admit that art of thehighest kind may not ally itself with moral orreligious passion, with the aesthetics or politics ofa nation or an age"; and George Sand said: "Talentimposes duties. Art for art's sake is a vain word.

Art for the truth, art for the good, art for thebeautiful-that is the religion that I seek."

But the worst condemnation of it is by VictorHugo, who coined the phrase: "Art for Art." Inhis wonderful book on Shakespeare he tells thisstory:

"We have just now recalled a saying becomefamous: 'Art for art.' Let us, once for all, explainourselves on this question."If faith can be placed in an affirmation verygeneral and very often repeated (we believe

honestly) these words: 'Art for art,' would havebeen written by the author of this book himself.Written? Never You may read from the first tothe last line all that we have published; you willnot find these words. It is the opposite which iswritten throughout our works, and, we insist on it,in our entire life.

"As for these words in themselves, how far arethey real? Here is the fact, which several of ourcontemporaries remember as well as we do:

"One day, thirty-five years ago, in a discussionbetween critics and poets on Voltaire's tragedies,the author of this book threw out this suggestion:'This tragedy is not a tragedy. It is not men wholive, it is sentences which speak in it Rather ahundred times 'Art for Art ' " This remark turned(doubtless involuntarily) from its true sense to

serve wants of discussion, has since taken, to thegreat surprize of him who had uttered it, the proportions of a formula. It is this opinion, limitedto Alzire and to the Orpheline de la Chine, andincontestable in that restricted application, which

has been turned into a perfect declaration of principles and an axiom to inscribe on the banner ofart

"This point settled, let us go on:"Between two verses, the one by Pindar, deifyinga coachman or glorifying the brass nails of the

wheel of a chariot, the other by Archilochus, sopowerful that, after having read it, Jeffreys wouldleave off his career of crimes and would hang himself on the gallows prepared by him for honestpeople-between these two verses, of equal beauty,I prefer that of Archilochus." And elsewhere Hugosaid: "Away with art for art's sake and give meart for Humanity's sake " How this chance re

mark of Augo's was twisted and adopted as a sloganin the French world of art is one of those mysteriesthat may some day be cleared up.

It was not the great artists of Greece who saidthat Pauson "the Dirt-Painter" should not painthis pigs and pots and pans. Nor has any greatartist of to-day said that a painter should notpaint a basket of fish or sculp a sleeping rabbit.The great artists of the world did not say thatartists must, perforce, guide and stimulate men tomoral action. But it was the art for art's sakepeople who said: "Art should be independent ofall claptrap, should stand alone without confounding it with emotions entirely foreign to it as devotion, pity, love and the like"-to again quoteWhistler.

As a result the devotees of this cult have failedto produce one great work of art like such trulyart for art's sake works as really are Titian's"Sacred and Profane Love," Velasquez's "Spinners" and Ingres's "Source." And instead of painting at least refined things-such as Whistler dideven though they are empty of lofty contents-theygradually sacrificed even the pursuit of "purebeauty," and art for art's sake became increasinglycoarse, ugly, stupid and vulgar, which in art is thesin against the Holy Ghost.

No reasonable man to-day, in the overtolerantworld, objects to Van Mieris painting his trivial"Fish Sellers," nor to Teniers painting his "Tap

Rooms," nor toMorland producing a charming pieceof color by painting a sty with a pink-skinned pigin it-painted principally as they are to parade theirtechnical skill-so long as their works are morallyclean. On the contrary we rather welcome them,even though the Greeks did call Pauson "DirtPainter" for doing exactly the same things, butcontrary to the highest Greek ideal of his timethe representation only of Gods and Heroes andtheir history.

But what the decent citizens* of the culturedworld do object to is the cynical insolence of thosepartisans of Art for Art's Sake who ridicule as"literary duffers" such artists as, unlike themselves, are both able and willing to do more thanthe "Dirt-Painters," "Dirt Sculptors" and "DirtWriters," and who aim to produce truly great andenduring works which no combine of charlatan artdealers, critics and artists can jugglewith-in thecommercial auction rooms of Europe-by a cam



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102 THE ART WORLD May 1917paign of cunning and insincere boosting in thepress, backed up by the capital of more or lessdishonest speculators in the world of art.The truth is the world is too full of neurosisand inconsequence too much admiration of mereflip and cleverness and as a final consequence too

much ego-mania. And we agree with Ruskin:

"I could show that a nation cannot be affected byany vice or wickedness without expressing it legiblyand forever, either in bad art or by want of art;that there is no national virtue small or great whichis not manifestly expressed in all the art whichcircumstances enable the people possessing thatvirtue to produce."

I INDEPENDENCE IN ART AND THE ""SALON DESINDEPENDANTS" IN PARIS AND NEW YORK

W T HEN Mme. Roland at the foot of the guillotine cried "Oh, Liberty, what crimes arecommitted in thy name " she uttered a profound truth applicable both to the political and

artistic worlds.When, at the birth of Modern art, through therebellion in 1804 of Baron Gros, Gericault and others

against the "tyranny" of David and the classicschool, certain artists launched the cry-"Libertyin Art " which became the slogan of the romantic

IE~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TI-TE "MASTERPIECE" OF TI-IE Ass "BORONALl" APPLAUDED BXYSO"1E OF TILE "MODERNISTIC PERSUASION(See page 105)

movement, little did they dream that the "streamof tendency" which they started would widen outand end in that mad-house barracks called "LeSalon des Independants" a quarter of a mile long,built of cheap slats, canvas and sawdust, winding its way like a fakir's fair along the banks ofthe Seine and filled with now senile, lnow weird,now monstrous art creations. Thither the commonsense Frenchmen go only to laugh, as they do attheir annual "Foire aux Jambons" or "Ham-Fair,"

where one munches and laughs at all sorts ofsausages made from all sorts of meats, from goat'sto mule's meat

The origin of the Salon of the Independents goesback to the "Salon of the Refused" of 1863, whenthe Jury of that year unceremoniously kicked outthe works of a number of artists who had ceased tobe simply Modern and had become "modernistic,"which means-romantic art run to seed. True, their

modernisticness-ness-ness was only slight compared with the joyous modernistism of to-day. Butstill they were not "independents" then, they wererejected beggars for medals and honors who had

raised such a row because their works had beenthrown out as unfit for even exhibition-and moreunfit for ribbons and medals which they so yearnedfor. Napoleon III, then feeling his throne shaky,to placate these rioters, ordered the Fine ArtsDepartment to give them at least a place in whichthey could exhibit their works, and in the samebuilding which housed the official Salon. This hasbeen known since as the "Salon of the Refused."It was the last one of these independent Salonsuntil a certain number of other disgruntled artistsrebelled against the official Salon, seceded andorganized a new one, and abolished the system of


(e)(ar)art for art sake its falacy

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