Studio: international art (22.1901)

Enamelling

acquainted with the full significance of that fact, upon art; and many students are not even aware
He who transforms a common article of daily use that a work of art is a series of emotions made real,
into a thing of beauty discharges the same high to us and reproductive within us by means of an
function as he who is building the greatest temple arrangement, sometimes of harmonious colours,
or painting the finest picture. He is a true artist, tones and forms, sometimes of musical sounds,
that is to say. And yet, somehow, anyhow, he is sometimes of proper words in their proper places,
often slighted, often snubbed, as by that coxcombry Most readers will understand at once what is
of inartistic prejudice wherewith so many painters meant here by the word "emotion." It is not to
try to assert their alleged superiority over other art- be confounded with the psychical freaks sug-
workers. One remarks, too, among those who are gested by the phrase "an emotional person." It is
practising art, either as students, professionals, or simply that assthetic pleasure or pain, or mingled
sincere dilettanti, that the intellectual side of pain and pleasure, aroused within us by the impres-
asstheticism receives not half the attention that it sion of natural phenomena. This impression is
merits. There are some, indeed, who have no received by sensation. In pictorial and plastic
inkling at all of the practical bearings of philosophy art, as in architecture, it is received through the

eyes, by means of the sense of sight; but, when
thus received, it frequently owes much to another
sense. If, for instance, when standing before a
beautiful picture you criticise it aloud, so as to put
a name upon its special graces, the impression
made upon yourself by your spoken
words may not accurately describe,
but it certainly intensifies, the
aesthetic pleasure that moves you
to admiration. As another example,
one different in kind, wherein a great
emotion is intensified by the charm
of words, I give here a short quota-
tion from William Blake, a rare and
golden genius. Blake says :—

" I am asked, on seeing the sun
rise, ' Do I see a little round disc
something like the size and shape of
a guinea ? ' And I answer, 1 Oh no !
I see an innumerable multitude of
the heavenly host singing Holy,
Holy, Holy, is the Lord God
Almighty !'"
Of course, Blake did not mean that he with his
physical eyes saw the heavenly host, and heard
with his physical ears their singing. He meant
that the poetic emotion called into being by the
glory of the sunrise was of such magnitude that he
could not choose but speak of it with a religious
exaltation of spirit, as though the visiting radiance
of the dawn were actually peopled with angels.

Such aesthetical emotions are psychical events,
and every artist who tries honestly in his own way
to give them imaginative expression, like William
Blake, is certain to be individual. None can say
with strict accuracy that he will reveal himself; for,
the " kings' cup" in gold as one element of nature combines with another to

and enamel (xv. century) form a third that is different from either, so an

(In the British Museum) artist's self, his personality, combines both with his

24S