DOI article:
John Weichsel, Artists and Others
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31335#0026
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Such being the nature of art-activity, art for art’s sake can only mean its
existence for racial self-revelation’s sake, while an exaltation of it to over-
social heights is contrary to its quint-essential purpose. Only a perverted sort
of art will lend itself without protest to an abuse of the kind practised by the
aforementioned aesthetic glutton.
The case just considered may rightly be called extreme, yet it illustrates
the tendency of art when that is understood in a narrow manner. In lesser
degree this effect is discernible all around us, in all sorts of men, addicted to art.
All around us there are men and women who cry with Ibsen, laugh with Shaw,
dream with Maeterlinck, curse with Przybyszewski and think with Gals-
worthy. They are honestly nauseated by Italian music, and speak of Wagner
with condescension, of Strauss with consideration, and find Skryabin and
Schoenberg the only hope of music. They can see the difference between a
dry-point and an aquatint as easily as you and I can tell a pretzel from a
doughnut. They can tell us that Greek art was not at all realistic, that Impres-
sionism is no more It, and that a suspicion of objectivity is sufficient to hope-
lessly doom a work of latest art. That Whistler could put it all over Wilde
in wit. That the father of modern art, Cezanne, was a typical bourgeois, that
Van Gogh has chopped his own ear off in a fit of rage, and that Pisarro was a
Jew. They collect Boardman Robinson’s cartoons and regularly glance at
Caffin’s art-page. They know that John Sloan has hardly a rival in etching
and that Egerton Castle writes four-handed, being married to his collaborator.
They can prove it that there isn’t a single decent art-periodical in this country,
and that they read Stieglitz’s Camera Work, and keep otherwise up to the
scratch in art. . . . Having listened to and lived with these well informed art-
adepts, let us ask in all seriousness: what has art done for these men and wom-
en? What has it done through them for others? Did it make them happier
or better, individually and socially? Did it gratify or ennoble the whole man?
We shall not hesitate long, I know, before admitting to ourselves that a
harmonious elevation to a higher plane of humanity, such as Shaw has formu-
lated as art’s only true purpose, was by no means attained in all those
men and women who have lived for art. Obviously, art is not now in posses-
sion of the elixir of life. In fact, it is not at all unlikely that its nectar has
become virulent in today’s art-atmosphere.
The artists and the others have equally a reason for demanding a revision
of art-values. Both must seek to break down the barriers that now stand be-
tween them. The artists may lead in this by discarding technical and
conventional masks and donning the racial attire of art. Then they will no
longer blind human eyes by technical splendor but enlighten by their works’
vivifying light. Then they will feed our senses with “pictures, musical com-
positions, pleasant houses and gardens, good clothes and fine implements,
poems, fictions, essays, and dramas” for the purpose of opening people’s
mental as well as physical eyes; for speaking to their hearts as well as their
16
existence for racial self-revelation’s sake, while an exaltation of it to over-
social heights is contrary to its quint-essential purpose. Only a perverted sort
of art will lend itself without protest to an abuse of the kind practised by the
aforementioned aesthetic glutton.
The case just considered may rightly be called extreme, yet it illustrates
the tendency of art when that is understood in a narrow manner. In lesser
degree this effect is discernible all around us, in all sorts of men, addicted to art.
All around us there are men and women who cry with Ibsen, laugh with Shaw,
dream with Maeterlinck, curse with Przybyszewski and think with Gals-
worthy. They are honestly nauseated by Italian music, and speak of Wagner
with condescension, of Strauss with consideration, and find Skryabin and
Schoenberg the only hope of music. They can see the difference between a
dry-point and an aquatint as easily as you and I can tell a pretzel from a
doughnut. They can tell us that Greek art was not at all realistic, that Impres-
sionism is no more It, and that a suspicion of objectivity is sufficient to hope-
lessly doom a work of latest art. That Whistler could put it all over Wilde
in wit. That the father of modern art, Cezanne, was a typical bourgeois, that
Van Gogh has chopped his own ear off in a fit of rage, and that Pisarro was a
Jew. They collect Boardman Robinson’s cartoons and regularly glance at
Caffin’s art-page. They know that John Sloan has hardly a rival in etching
and that Egerton Castle writes four-handed, being married to his collaborator.
They can prove it that there isn’t a single decent art-periodical in this country,
and that they read Stieglitz’s Camera Work, and keep otherwise up to the
scratch in art. . . . Having listened to and lived with these well informed art-
adepts, let us ask in all seriousness: what has art done for these men and wom-
en? What has it done through them for others? Did it make them happier
or better, individually and socially? Did it gratify or ennoble the whole man?
We shall not hesitate long, I know, before admitting to ourselves that a
harmonious elevation to a higher plane of humanity, such as Shaw has formu-
lated as art’s only true purpose, was by no means attained in all those
men and women who have lived for art. Obviously, art is not now in posses-
sion of the elixir of life. In fact, it is not at all unlikely that its nectar has
become virulent in today’s art-atmosphere.
The artists and the others have equally a reason for demanding a revision
of art-values. Both must seek to break down the barriers that now stand be-
tween them. The artists may lead in this by discarding technical and
conventional masks and donning the racial attire of art. Then they will no
longer blind human eyes by technical splendor but enlighten by their works’
vivifying light. Then they will feed our senses with “pictures, musical com-
positions, pleasant houses and gardens, good clothes and fine implements,
poems, fictions, essays, and dramas” for the purpose of opening people’s
mental as well as physical eyes; for speaking to their hearts as well as their
16
