DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0100
so
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
It may be objected that by putting together the excellences
of various models an artist could only produce monsters, since
nature works out each body on a consistent plan.1 This
objection holds good if outward beauties be gathered without
principle, and mechanically copied. But if the artist has
the power to go deeper, to see how nature works, and to enter
into her spirit, he may succeed in producing, not a monster,
but an ideal, free from the accidental defects of the individual
figure. Nature, if one may venture to say so, in individuals
fails fully to reach the perfection at which she aims. The
artist who can recover the pattern according to which she
worked may succeed in embodying it more perfectly in bronze
or marble than nature has embodied it in flesh and blood.
Such an artist would reach in a measure the ideal; and it is thus
that the Greek artist, by a certain artistic intuition, did work.
He was not content with what may be called aesthetic nihilism,
which is willing to copy whatever nature may offer, whether
good or bad. He did not care to perpetuate the mere spon-
taneous variations of the individual, but wished to select only
such variations as were beautiful, and were on the road to
physical perfection.
No doubt physical beauty appealed to the Greeks more than
it does to us. No modern man, certainly no Christian, would
regard beauty of physical construction and outward symmetry
as of equal value with moral beauty, which may be found often
in those of poor, and even deformed, physique. We appreciate
more highly the beauty of the face, especially of the eyes and
the expression, than that of perfect physical development.
But a wise man would say: " This oughtest thou to do, and
not to leave the other undone." Our physical organization is
part of the conditions under which we live. Disease and weak-
ness are evils as well as folly and sin. And we have only to look
round us any day to see how the absurd vagaries of fashion
1 This difficulty occurs to Luciau, Icones, 5.
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
It may be objected that by putting together the excellences
of various models an artist could only produce monsters, since
nature works out each body on a consistent plan.1 This
objection holds good if outward beauties be gathered without
principle, and mechanically copied. But if the artist has
the power to go deeper, to see how nature works, and to enter
into her spirit, he may succeed in producing, not a monster,
but an ideal, free from the accidental defects of the individual
figure. Nature, if one may venture to say so, in individuals
fails fully to reach the perfection at which she aims. The
artist who can recover the pattern according to which she
worked may succeed in embodying it more perfectly in bronze
or marble than nature has embodied it in flesh and blood.
Such an artist would reach in a measure the ideal; and it is thus
that the Greek artist, by a certain artistic intuition, did work.
He was not content with what may be called aesthetic nihilism,
which is willing to copy whatever nature may offer, whether
good or bad. He did not care to perpetuate the mere spon-
taneous variations of the individual, but wished to select only
such variations as were beautiful, and were on the road to
physical perfection.
No doubt physical beauty appealed to the Greeks more than
it does to us. No modern man, certainly no Christian, would
regard beauty of physical construction and outward symmetry
as of equal value with moral beauty, which may be found often
in those of poor, and even deformed, physique. We appreciate
more highly the beauty of the face, especially of the eyes and
the expression, than that of perfect physical development.
But a wise man would say: " This oughtest thou to do, and
not to leave the other undone." Our physical organization is
part of the conditions under which we live. Disease and weak-
ness are evils as well as folly and sin. And we have only to look
round us any day to see how the absurd vagaries of fashion
1 This difficulty occurs to Luciau, Icones, 5.