Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1910 (Heft 29))

this criticism. Of course all true painters love things for themselves; and it
is doubtful whether a painter could perfectly paint a brass or pewter vessel,
if he did not love its surface for itself. But it is a dangerous method, never-
theless; an exclusive study of the resistance an object offers to light, determin-
ing thereby its color and variation of values, is apt to make still-life painters
of the students. They see all things as objects, as surface beauty, without
any virile or spiritual interest.
But the trouble lies not merely in lack of technical education. There are
many who, although continually associated with art, as some of our critics,
lack all the finer sensibilities of appreciation. And, for narrow-mindedness
those scores of petty, academic, pompous little men who aimlessly but persist-
ently cover yards of canvas, have no equal. Art appreciation cannot be
taught. It may be fostered, gradually developed in some naturally responsive
and neglected individual, but even then it will lack freedom and spontaneity.
Appreciation is an individual growth, like art itself, and it necessitates inborn
talent from the start.
For that reason art is by the few and for the few. The more individual
a work of art is, the more precious and free it is apt to be; and at the same
time, as a natural consequence, the more difficult to understand. To hang a
Botticelli reproduction on the wall does not imply true comprehension. Those
people who, like trained dogs, first shrink back in ignorance at some new phase
of art, and then at the command of fashion leap through the paper loops of
approval, degrade art to a sport.
How rarely is the complexity of any human being understood. This
evades analysis even by continual and most intimate associates. A work of
art is equally inaccessible. The true artist possesses first of all the rare faculty
of disengaging the poetical significance from the commonplace act and fact. It
denotes an escape from the strict, hard, vulgar and commonplace in which
most people are satisfied to exist. How then can the multitude, slaves of dark
prejudices, admire his proud disdain of the humdrum artificialities of life, his
frenetic protest against existing civilization. The artist works, travails and
suffers that a few may enjoy the result. It is his extreme generosity and his
extreme selfishness.
Daily existence parodies art. Art does not come and sit down at your
table to share a prosaic meal with you whenever you feel bored with the banali-
ties of life. Enjoyment of art demands superior sensibilities; it is pleasure,
joy, an ideal, a vision, that stays with you, that enriches your life. It is for
those who have the love for beauty and revolt. Oscar Wilde, himself, the
apostle of a socialistic art ideal, says, “to live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist—that is all.” Why, then, should they suddenly awake
from their habitual drowsiness ? Toulouse-Lautrec popular! What a horrid
thought! His grim craftsmanship admired by a brave, industrious, docile
humanity! It will never happen. The range of estheticism may be approached
from many sides. The summits are reached but by the staunchest of hearts.
Only one man climbed Mt. McKinley, and even his veracity is doubted. And
if suddenly the unforeseen should occur, and the majority should actually have

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