Studio: international art (54.1912)

The Lay Figure

THE LAY FIGURE: ON THE
VALUE OF DELIBERATION

" There is a proverb which might, I think,
be quoted rather appositely against many of our
present-day artists," said the Art Critic.

"What is that ? " asked the Man with the Red
Tie.

"More haste, less speed," replied the Critic,
" or, in other words, the greater the hustling, the
less the real progress that is made. Every one seems
to me to-day to be in such a violent hurry to do
something that no one has time to do anything
that is worth doing."

" You are pleased to deal in paradoxes," laughed
the Man with the Red Tie. "Explain yourself;
your cryptic utterances are too much for my under-
standing."

" Well, I mean to suggest that the modern artist,
taking him in the bulk, is possessed with a sort of
feverish desire for production," said the Critic.
" He is under the impression that there is some
particular merit in working against time, and that
the more he rushes his work through, the better
will be the results at which he arrives."

"But, surely, what you call the feverish desire
for production is a sign of the intense interest that
artists take in their work," cried the Young Painter ;
" and surely it makes for progress. If there is no
enthusiasm, how can there be any movement in
art?"

" Enthusiasm ! Yes, that there must be if art is
to be kept alive," returned the Critic; " but I do
not regard haste, or the hustling habit, as in any
way evidence of enthusiasm. More often than not
it is simply the result of mere restlessness, and
sometimes, I believe, it is nothing but a symptom
of laziness."

" Oh ! How can that be? " protested the Young
Painter. " Do you not think that work done in
the white-heat of enthusiasm, with the imagination
stirred to its utmost by the vividness of the first
impression, must be good work ? Do you not
believe in the value of inspiration and in its power
to bring out all that is best in the artist's nature ? "

" And do you really believe that the white-hot
enthusiast can ever be a lazy person ?" added the
Man with the Red Tie.

"Yes, I do," answered the Critic. "Great work
in art often is, and often should be, done at white-
heat ; but in that case the particular high tempera-
ture must have been arrived at by very careful
preliminary stoking of the fires of genius and by
prolonged fanning of the flames which burn in the
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artist's soul. The mind that gets white-hot all of
a sudden does not burn healthily ; it explodes."

"And an explosion is destructive, not construc-
tive," laughed the Man with the Red Tie. " I can
quite see that there is not likely to be much
progress if you blow things to pieces."

" Of course, that is obvious," grumbled the
Young Painter, "but you have not explained how
enthusiasm can possibly be taken as a symptom
of laziness."

" No! that is a perversion of what I really did
say," exclaimed the Critic. "My contention is
that the lazy artist is the one who is most likely
to work in a hurry and to try and excuse himself
for a bad habit by pretending to be enthusiastic."

"But if he is a rapid worker he must be
energetic," argued the Young Painter. " The
lazy man would be slow, deliberate, unprogressive;
he would be a mere dull plodder without ideas
and without initiative."

" Not a bit! " replied the Critic. " It is the
sincere artist who is deliberate, because his
enthusiasm is so great that it induces him to take
a vast amount of preliminary trouble to ensure
that his work shall, when completed, be as near
perfection as it can possibly be made. The lazy
man hurries it through because he has not the
energy to study it properly, and because he is so
anxious to get to the end of it that he cannot wait
to test and perfect his knowledge. He evades his
difficulties ; he does not meet them and conquer
them."

" Surely he struggles with his difficulties in every
piece of work he undertakes," persisted the Young
Painter.

" He struggles ! That just expresses it," agreed
the Critic ; " and his struggle is futile because he
has not prepared himself for it. Now, the really
enthusiastic painter overcomes his difficulties in
the preliminary studies by which he tests his
knowledge of the subject with which he proposes
to deal. These studies are the foundation upon
which he builds his achievement, and the steps by
which he leads up to perfection ; the more careful,
the more deliberate they are the more certainly do
they help him to reach the end at which he is
striving. Their value to him is inestimable
because they make him sure of himself and point
out to him the way in which his enthusiasm can
be made most effective. By their aid he pro-
gresses and reaches ever greater heights of ex-
pression; the hustler never gets any further."

" How old-fashioned you are !" sneered the
Young Painter. The Lay Figure.