DOI Heft:
No. 166 (January, 1907)
DOI Artikel:The lay figure: on yielding to sentiment
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20716#0398
The Lay Figure
THE LAY FIGURE: ON YIELD-
ING TO SENTIMENT.
"You wiseacres are always complaining
that present-day collectors will not pay decent
prices for modern works of art," said the Practical
Person. "Have you noticed that Millet's pastel
drawing of the Angelus has just been sold to a
private buyer for ^10,000? That is up against
you, is it not ? "
" Not at all, my friend," cried the Man with the
Red Tie; "that little incident in the art market
has not escaped my attention. But I do not find
in it anything exciting or even amusing; it is just
one more proof of the incurable imbecility of the
millionaire who dabbles in art—that is all."
"What in Heaven's name do you want then?"
protested the Practical Person. " Can you never
be consistent? At one moment you are wailing
because modern art is a drug in the market, and
at another you sneer at a collector who is generous
enough to pay an Old-Master price for a piece of
work by a man who is practically of our own
times."
" Precisely! and yet I am not inconsistent,"
replied the Man with the Red Tie. " You forget
one rather important fact, that Millet is no longer
alive, and you forget also that there is a proverb
to the effect that one swallow does not make a
summer. Because a picture by an artist who
died some thirty years ago is sold for an exorbitant
price, and because there is one collector who is
willing to make himself ridiculous by paying this
price, you think I ought to recant all my views
about the neglect of modern art. You put for-
ward this one purchase as a kind of atonement
for the indifference which rich men have been
showing for years past to the best efforts of our
living artists. You suggest that I ought to be
grateful for what looks to me like an act of
sheer folly; and you imply that I have no longer
anything to complain about. I can only say that,
strange as it may appear, I am not in the least of
your opinion."
"You surely do not expect all modern pictures
to be sold for thousands of pounds ? " sneered the
Practical Person. " Millet ranks among the great
masters and his work is valuable; if we had now
other artists as great their work would be valuable
too. Our modern men do not know how to paint
masterpieces."
" There speaks the real commercial mind," broke
in the Art Critic, " the mind that regards money
value as the only proof of merit. What has con-
37?
vinced you that Millet deserves to be placed
among the great masters ? "
"The fact that astute business men all over
the world are ready to pay tens of thousands
for his works," returned the Practical Person;
"that is surely proof enough for any reasonable
being."
" Your astute business men are mostly the veriest
imbeciles in all matters which require artistic dis-
crimination," laughed the Critic, "and can be
wheedled or bullied into the most absurd errors
of taste. If they really understood what they
were doing do you not think they would be
astute enough to know whether an artist was a
master before they paid a master price for his
work ?"
" But if they want a particular man's work they
must pay the market price for it or go without,"
cried the Practical Person.
" If they wanted Millet's work they could have
got plenty of it when he was alive for hundreds
instead of thousands," said the Man with the
Red Tie, " but they did not begin to want it till
they were told they ought to by the people who
had bought it when it was cheap."
"And Millet alive was not less a master than
Millet dead—that is obvious," replied the Critic.
" The fact is that your astute business men are so
many ghouls who like to dig up and feed on dead
artists; and they have a special preference for the
body of a man whom they starved into his grave.
Yet even in their body-snatching excursions they
show a certain peculiarity of temperament. They
are the rankest sentimentalists, and will waste thou-
sands in bolstering up one sentiment by which they
are absorbed. For the sake of this sentiment they
bid one against the other for some possibly quite
unimportant work by a dead man, and the one of
them who comes out on top in the competition
calls the whole world to witness how generous he
is and how readily he will make sacrifices in the
cause of art. He fixes his attention so firmly on
the one and only end he has in view that he fails
utterly to see that the ^10,000 he pays for a
single picture by a dead man would provide him
with a hundred by living artists who are, perhaps,
quite as worthy to be counted as masters. And all
this blindness, all this want of taste, all this
departure from common-sense, must be put down
simply to an absurd sentiment."
" But I thought there was no sentiment in
business," objected the Practical Person.
"The sentiment I mean is vanity," said the
Critic. The Lay Figure.
THE LAY FIGURE: ON YIELD-
ING TO SENTIMENT.
"You wiseacres are always complaining
that present-day collectors will not pay decent
prices for modern works of art," said the Practical
Person. "Have you noticed that Millet's pastel
drawing of the Angelus has just been sold to a
private buyer for ^10,000? That is up against
you, is it not ? "
" Not at all, my friend," cried the Man with the
Red Tie; "that little incident in the art market
has not escaped my attention. But I do not find
in it anything exciting or even amusing; it is just
one more proof of the incurable imbecility of the
millionaire who dabbles in art—that is all."
"What in Heaven's name do you want then?"
protested the Practical Person. " Can you never
be consistent? At one moment you are wailing
because modern art is a drug in the market, and
at another you sneer at a collector who is generous
enough to pay an Old-Master price for a piece of
work by a man who is practically of our own
times."
" Precisely! and yet I am not inconsistent,"
replied the Man with the Red Tie. " You forget
one rather important fact, that Millet is no longer
alive, and you forget also that there is a proverb
to the effect that one swallow does not make a
summer. Because a picture by an artist who
died some thirty years ago is sold for an exorbitant
price, and because there is one collector who is
willing to make himself ridiculous by paying this
price, you think I ought to recant all my views
about the neglect of modern art. You put for-
ward this one purchase as a kind of atonement
for the indifference which rich men have been
showing for years past to the best efforts of our
living artists. You suggest that I ought to be
grateful for what looks to me like an act of
sheer folly; and you imply that I have no longer
anything to complain about. I can only say that,
strange as it may appear, I am not in the least of
your opinion."
"You surely do not expect all modern pictures
to be sold for thousands of pounds ? " sneered the
Practical Person. " Millet ranks among the great
masters and his work is valuable; if we had now
other artists as great their work would be valuable
too. Our modern men do not know how to paint
masterpieces."
" There speaks the real commercial mind," broke
in the Art Critic, " the mind that regards money
value as the only proof of merit. What has con-
37?
vinced you that Millet deserves to be placed
among the great masters ? "
"The fact that astute business men all over
the world are ready to pay tens of thousands
for his works," returned the Practical Person;
"that is surely proof enough for any reasonable
being."
" Your astute business men are mostly the veriest
imbeciles in all matters which require artistic dis-
crimination," laughed the Critic, "and can be
wheedled or bullied into the most absurd errors
of taste. If they really understood what they
were doing do you not think they would be
astute enough to know whether an artist was a
master before they paid a master price for his
work ?"
" But if they want a particular man's work they
must pay the market price for it or go without,"
cried the Practical Person.
" If they wanted Millet's work they could have
got plenty of it when he was alive for hundreds
instead of thousands," said the Man with the
Red Tie, " but they did not begin to want it till
they were told they ought to by the people who
had bought it when it was cheap."
"And Millet alive was not less a master than
Millet dead—that is obvious," replied the Critic.
" The fact is that your astute business men are so
many ghouls who like to dig up and feed on dead
artists; and they have a special preference for the
body of a man whom they starved into his grave.
Yet even in their body-snatching excursions they
show a certain peculiarity of temperament. They
are the rankest sentimentalists, and will waste thou-
sands in bolstering up one sentiment by which they
are absorbed. For the sake of this sentiment they
bid one against the other for some possibly quite
unimportant work by a dead man, and the one of
them who comes out on top in the competition
calls the whole world to witness how generous he
is and how readily he will make sacrifices in the
cause of art. He fixes his attention so firmly on
the one and only end he has in view that he fails
utterly to see that the ^10,000 he pays for a
single picture by a dead man would provide him
with a hundred by living artists who are, perhaps,
quite as worthy to be counted as masters. And all
this blindness, all this want of taste, all this
departure from common-sense, must be put down
simply to an absurd sentiment."
" But I thought there was no sentiment in
business," objected the Practical Person.
"The sentiment I mean is vanity," said the
Critic. The Lay Figure.