Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 8))

state that the Greek ideals were a necessary component in our conception
of beauty and truth?
The answer is not far to seek. Sir Joshua realized that he was address-
ing an audience of men and women whose tenacity of character was such
that an idea once rooted was ineradicable. So true is this that even to this
day, when all other peoples are adopting new standards better suited to
express new thoughts, the Englishman is still talking of Phidias, Michael
Angelo and Raphael, and, in his judgment, features and proportions which
are not “regular”—i.e. ,classic—although they may be interesting, are never
beautiful. Rembrandt’s paintings he speaks of as being picturesque and
the picturesque is defined as a " parasite of beauty.” If Reynolds had in-
cluded his third element, the Greek ideals, with his second, and simply called
them “fashions,” he would have given an analysis of a conception of beauty
which would have included the Japanese and Dutch art as well as his own.
For, although the Greek has held sway for hundreds of years over certain
peoples and may for many centuries more, it still remains but a fashion.
How is it in our own country ? What proportion does fashion play in
the make-up of our conception of beauty and truth ? What are the fashions
and what part in the conception does our knowledge of the aspect of nature
play ? And the Greek ideals ?
I think few will question the assertion that fashion in general is a
powerful factor in the life of the average American. We are swayed this
way and that in our customs, manners, dress, habits, thoughts, etc. At first
sight we seem to be merely importers, imitators, and absorbers of European
ideas; generally slaves to fashion, lacking the originality to create our own
standards. But, upon the other hand, our slavery to any particular fashion
is very short-lived. The fashions take more the shape of fads, and even in
the world of painting this is so. For a short period we saw as the Hudson
River school taught us to see; then as one French school showed us the
truth to be, then as another. One day we believe that the shadows in a
sunlit landscape are brown, and the next we swear that they are violet and
purple. Does this continual change of ideals indicate a weakness ? Does it
not rather indicate that we are, in reality, very little the creatures of fashion ?
That we are, as yet, of the mental attitude of the student who is striving
after truths and ideals which are some day to enter into the make-upof his
special conceptions ? And the Greek, of which the English have made such
a point? Have we imitated that? The question hardly needs an answer.
Hunt for it in our architecture, in our painting, in our literature, in our
fashion of dress, where you will, can you find it ? No ! We left it in Europe.
So it would appear that the Greek fashion, Reynolds’sthird element, we
have not. And yet Reynolds makes such a strong point of it and asserts so
frequently in his Discourses that some powerful ideal is necessary upon
which the artist can model his fashions and truths of nature. Plato, before
Reynolds, argued that the beautiful can only be obtained by approaching
nature with a preconceived ideal, though he does not say that this ideal must
be the Greek.

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