Studio: international art (52.1911)

The Lay Figure

THE LAY FIGURE: ON DOING
THINGS QUICKLY.

" Can you explain to me why so
much stress is always laid upon the advantage
of speed in artistic production ?" said the
Craftsman. " I have much doubt myself
whether the effort to do things quickly is not a
common cause of failure, and whether it is not
the reason why so much bad work is turned out."

" Things done in a hurry are never done
well," quoted the Man with the Red Tie.
" There is something in the old proverb, no
doubt, which supports your case, but, all the
same, I am not prepared to admit that speed in
production is necessarily a cause of bad work."

"If you accept the proverb you cannot make
reservations," retorted the Craftsman. ' Things
are never done well if they are done in a hurry,
therefore bad work is the necessary conse-
quence of speed in production—that is obviously
implied."

" Not necessarily," broke in the Art Critic.
" You are missing the distinction between hurry
and speed. There is another proverb which
applies—more haste, less speed—and you must
take the two sayings together if you want to
argue the question properly."

" By all means," returned the Craftsman.
" It seems to me that both of them illustrate
my point. I contend that it is only by
deliberation, by prolonged study, by slow and
careful execution, that the finest type of artistic
achievement can be made possible. To my
mind the distinction between haste and speed
is one without a difference; speed in produc-
tion is only another name for hasty performance,
and hasty performance is necessarily bad."

" There I am with you entirely," agreed the
Critic ; " for hasty performance I make no apo-
logy because it must have all the defects that
come from want of thought, and from the hurry
that, more than anything else, hampers freedom
of expression. But I insist still upon my dis-
tinction between haste and speed, and one is
a vice in art, but the other is a most com-
mendable virtue which all artists should strive
to acquire."

" Then you do not believe in deliberation ? "
asked the Craftsman. " You do not think that
for fine work deep thought is necessary, and
that only by a process of careful building up
can the real masterpiece be evolved ? "

" Why should we believe in the devices of
the pedant ? " scoffed the Man with the Red
166

Tie. " Your method of working would destroy
all freshness of feeling, all spontaneity and
vitality. Things done that way would be dry
and uninteresting to the last degree; you must
have rapidity of expression if you are going
to say anything worth attention."

" You are both right and wrong," said the
Critic. " Pedantic study and pedantic pro-
cesses lead certainly to dull results ; but careful
deliberation and deep thought are vital essen-
tials in artistic production, and every true artist
will recognise that without them he cannot hope
for success. Yet equally he will recognise that
speed in stating his convictions is necessary, if
his work is to be sufficiently expressive and to
have its proper measure of significance."

" Why should he not be as deliberate in pro-
duction as he is in preparation ? " cried the
Craftsman. " Surely his work will be better
in quality and more consistent in effect if he
keeps to the same method all through."

'' No, I think not," replied the Critic, " be-
cause slow working implies only a half-formed
conviction. The man who deliberates over
methods of expression is usually uncertain of
what he is going to do. He has not made up
his mind beforehand so he hesitates and experi-
ments ; he comes across difficulties he had not
foreseen and he has a struggle to evade or over-
come them. Or he allows all kinds of side
issues to distract his attention from his main
idea because he has not considered them suffi-
ciently in advance. The result is that his work
has a tentative air; it shows the labour that has
been expended upon it and it is over-elabo-
rated here or incomplete there just as it reflects
the helpless waverings of the artist's mind."

" I see now what you mean," said the Crafts-
man. " You wish the artist to come to his
work with his mind fully made up, and you
think that if his mind is made up the more
rapid his expression the more convincing will
be his performance."

" Precisely : you express my meaning admir-
ably," answered the Critic: "and I may say
that it is my sincere belief that every really
successful work of art is rapidly performed.
Its success and its rapidity of production are
both due to the same cause, the most exact and
deliberate preparation. Speed is only objec-
tionable when it degenerates into haste, when it
ceases to be the outpouring of accumulated know-
ledge and becomes either a cloak for laziness
or ignorance or merely hurried fumbling with
half-formed ideas." The LAY figure.