DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0061
CHAPTER II
THE FESTIVAL, IN ITS RELATION TO THE FORM AND
SPIRIT OF CLASSICAL ART
§ 23. The Festival creates the artist.
The source of art in a condition of ideal excitement in
which the individual is carried out of the circle of his
ordinary existence ; the contagious nature of this excitement
as it is developed and intensified in the festival, and the
consequent stimulus to all forms of artistic production, have
already been briefly indicated.
It was not only that the festival gave new tasks to the
constructive artist in the temporary apparatus and perma-
nent monument, in the recording picture or glorifying
statue, and in all the thousand forms of symbolic or decor-
ative art invoked to aid ; but it called the artist, so to say,
into being, gave him breath and nurture, surrounded him
with exquisite forms and glowing colours, and with every-
thing that could quicken the activity of eye and hand.
Under the forcing atmosphere of the festival the plant of
art shot up apace. Every one was to some extent an
artist, for every one could at any rate move in the rhythmi-
cal cadence of the dance, and could in general accompany
such movement by a rhythmical chant. The dance and
THE FESTIVAL, IN ITS RELATION TO THE FORM AND
SPIRIT OF CLASSICAL ART
§ 23. The Festival creates the artist.
The source of art in a condition of ideal excitement in
which the individual is carried out of the circle of his
ordinary existence ; the contagious nature of this excitement
as it is developed and intensified in the festival, and the
consequent stimulus to all forms of artistic production, have
already been briefly indicated.
It was not only that the festival gave new tasks to the
constructive artist in the temporary apparatus and perma-
nent monument, in the recording picture or glorifying
statue, and in all the thousand forms of symbolic or decor-
ative art invoked to aid ; but it called the artist, so to say,
into being, gave him breath and nurture, surrounded him
with exquisite forms and glowing colours, and with every-
thing that could quicken the activity of eye and hand.
Under the forcing atmosphere of the festival the plant of
art shot up apace. Every one was to some extent an
artist, for every one could at any rate move in the rhythmi-
cal cadence of the dance, and could in general accompany
such movement by a rhythmical chant. The dance and