Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 7))

PROS AND CONS.
I. WHAT CONSTITUTES AN “ARTIST”?
AS A text for this short discussion, let me offer the
following from that most stimulating of modern philo-
sophic writers, Nietzsche:
“ Worshippers of forms, of tones, and of words and
just by virtue of that—artists.”
That gives very conclusively, I think, one answer
to the question and one which has my own most
ardent applause.
But for another side let me unearth this from a
seven-year-old article in The Contemporary Review by
an old antagonist of Pictorial Photographers, Joseph Pennell: " Finally,
unless a man can draw with his own unaided hand he is not an artist; he
never has been considered one and he never will be.”
We will not be ungenerous enough to inquire too closely into the
remarkable sort of " artist ” this writer has in mind, who has brushes or
pencils for fingers, since he draws with his own " unaided hand ” ; it is the
sort of loosely expressed description that is natural to a loosely held theory
and an illogical argument. But as the sentence comes from a professional
draughtsman, in the sense in which he evidently means it to be taken it is
worth examining and refuting. It is a good example, moreover, of the
narrowness, conservatism and real ignorance that beset such a specialist.
The study of the quite obvious is always worth while, if only to confirm one
in convictions already attained. The kindest treatment of such statements
is the sudden-death method of carrying them to their logical conclusion and
seeing where they lead us.
If this opposition opinion were true, it seems to me that it would follow
that, however badly equipped, however badly trained, however unseeing,
lacking in vision, however deficient in taste or crude in judgment a man may
be,if only he produce his work by his " own unaided hand,” he is and must be
an artist. On the other hand, it is not only that the man who has the seeing
eye, who can analyze a composition, can discern purity and loveliness of
color, can delight in subtleties of tones, perfection of drawing, etc., etc., but
who is unable physically to put these things down on paper or canvas,
is not and never can or will be considered an artist, but also that he who
uses any other method than the " unaided hand ”—say the camera and lens
—is not entitled to be called an artist. All catholic-minded students will
agree that " any means to an end ” is on the whole good doctrine; and at
any rate it serves as an excuse for asking why this glorification of the means
at the expense of the end ? What is the reason of this apparent jealousy of
new methods ? Why not approve or condemn solely on the ground of good
or bad art without any reference to method? The ancient saying is good,
" the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive ” ; and in art it is surely not
the letter (the method) that maketh alive, as our critic would have it, but