Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 14))

parish) can possibly mistake these enthusiasts for anything but Academicians.
The Academic enthusiasm is a wonderful and beautiful thing when it is
young; but it leads to a dull, decrepit age. When Benjamin West first saw
the Apollo Belvedere, he felt unutterable things; but if he had foreseen
the curse that now superseded statue was to bring on later generations of
Academy students he would have smashed it then and there. And a
Whistler nocturne may in course of time become a greater academic nuisance
than ten Apollo Belvederes.
And now enough of sermonizing. Let us have a look at the actual
photographs. ... G. Bernard Shaw.

OF VERITIES AND ILLUSIONS.
III. SELF-EXPRESSION.
IT is accepted, nowadays, almost as an article of faith, that the artist
should express himself in his work. Perhaps it is the natural rebound
of that idea of realism which regarded the artist as an eye gifted with
a superior breadth and penetration of vision, and attached to a mech-
anism capable of precise record. It is, certainly, like this realism
which it has supplanted, symptomatic of an age that is not satisfied to do things,
but must have a theory of conduct and motive to justify the doing; that, in
a word, is self-conscious. And the age in question has lasted already some
hundred years and over, dating from Rousseau and his " social contract,”
and the " glittering generalities ” of Tom Paine, extending through a succes-
sion of word-congested theories even unto the organized systems of our own
day, when persons have found it " helpful” to band themselves into an
association for the promotion of taking walking exercise! Before the nine-
teenth century, men had organized themselves into guilds, or what-not, for
mutual advancement, generally for protection of their business interests; but
until the past hundred years has there ever been a period so beridden with
theories, formulas, and axioms, so absolutely at the mercy of the word-
mongers, whether they were philosophers or quacks ? The result is a jum-
ble of honesty and quackery, of truth and flummery, of verities and illusions,
well-nigh overwhelming. And out of the hurly-burly bobs up this bit of
driftwood—self-expression—and men cling to it as to a spar of safety.
Let us try and look at it for what it is really worth. There must be good
in it, or men would not be drawn to live and work by it. But how much
good, and whether any deception ?
It is unquestionable that the artist, being not a machine but a conscious
agent, must put into his work some portion of himself, some flavor and
coloring of his own idiosyncrasy. But the considerations which arise are :
firstly, is this product of himself a conscious motive; and, secondly, what is
its quality ?
More than that of most artists was Shakespeare’s genius objective.
Into his sonnets he may have consciously poured of his own soul; but the
very conditions under which his plays were written and produced preclude

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