International studio (34.1908)

The Lay Figure

THE LAY FIGURE: ON AN
ERROR IN POLICY.
“ I have done something this year that
will make people sit up,” said the Popular Painter;
“something, I flatter myself, that everyone will be
talking about in a week or two.”
“ You don’t mean to say that you have painted a
good picture at last,” laughed the Man with the
Red Tie. “ That would be a surprise ! How did
you manage it ? ”
“ I have not painted anything that would please
you,” retorted the Popular Painter. “I have no
wish to commit professional suicide just yet. But
I have got hold of a startling subject, and I have
treated it in a startling way. Wait and see; it
will be one of the successes of the season.”
“Oh, I know these successes of yours,” scoffed
the Man with the Red Tie. “Nasty, blatant
things that simply howl for attention, and hurl
themselves at you from the gallery walls with posi-
tively indecent aggressiveness ! For a moment I
was foolish enough to think you might have
reformed. I apologise. I ought to have known
better.”
“ I believe you are jealous because people like
my work better than yours,” returned the Popular
Painter. “ How can you expect to be popular
when you never do anything to deserve it ? You
have got to meet people half-way if you want them
to take notice of you.”
“You mean that you have got to bring yourself
down to their level if you are going to make any-
thing out of them,” replied the Man with the Red
Tie. “ You may just as well put things plainly
while you are about it; we all know what you
really think.”
“ Well, have I not every reason to think as I
•do?” asked the Popular Painter. “Look at the
results. My pictures have always good places
in the exhibitions, they are always talked about,
they always sell. What more could anyone
want ? ”
“ Does not good art count ? ” asked the Art
Critic.
“Good art! What is good art?” cried the
Popular Painter. “ You are so fond of unneces-
sary distinctions. I say that the only art that
is any good at all is what people want. What
use is there in doing things that no one will
look at ? ”
“ Have you no conscience at all about what
you do ? ” enquired the Man with the Red Tie.
“ Does it never occur to you that you have certain
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responsibilities as an artist which are too important
to be entirely ignored ? ”
“ I recognise no responsibility except to the
clients for whom I work,” returned the Popular
Painter. “ If I have pleased them I have done
enough; no one else has any right to complain.”
“ Oh yes, we are quite within our rights in com-
plaining about you,” broke in the Critic, “because
we feel that your influence is a bad one. You are
a kind of false prophet with a creed based solely on
expediency, and you do a great deal of harm by
teaching people wrong doctrines. Our art exhi-
bitions are tainted by you and your kind, and have
an unwholesome atmosphere which is largely of
your creating.”
“ If my influence is so pernicious, why should I
be so successful and so widely recognised ?” en-
quired the Popular Painter. “ Look how my work
tells in an exhibition—you cannot help seeing it—
surely that is a proof of its power and of its
merits.”
“ By no means,” replied the Critic; “you have
hit on just the one thing about it that shows how
you misunderstand your mission. To make your
work tell in an exhibition, all that is necessary is to
give it an excessive measure of aggressiveness, to
exaggerate everything beyond all bounds of taste
and reason, until your picture shouts down every-
thing within reach of it. Other men think that in
self-defence they must be noisy too, and the result
is a kind of ranting, roaring competition in which
art is entirely forgotten. You admit it yourself
when you talk of making the public sit up with
your startling subject painted in a startling way.
In your view a picture must be startling to have
any chance at all—violent in treatment or theatri-
cally sentimental in subject, or both. You do
not care what your work is like so long as people
talk about it. Is that in the interests of good
art ? ”
“ Then am I not to paint for exhibitions ? ”
asked the Popular Painter.
“ Paint for exhibitions, if you like,” returned the
Critic, “but do not paint these shrieking exhibi-
tion pictures, and do not offend our taste with
silly sentiment or foolish stories. Do good work
for a change, something serious and sincere
which will have a permanent value. It may
not please the sensation-mongers, but it will raise
your reputation among the people who know and
whose opinion really counts. You have adopted
a wrong policy, try something better by way of
variety.”

The Lay Figure.