Studio: international art (56.1912)

The Lay Figure

THE LAY FIGURE: ON THE
VICE OF OVER-PRODUCTION.

“ What a lazy lot artists are ! ” sighed the
Plain Man. “How they waste their time! Really,

I do not think there is any other class of men which
lacks so lamentably all sense of responsibility, and
evades so persistently the serious obligations of
existence. The artist is by instinct and habit a
loafer, and drifts through life carelessly, leaving
everything to chance.”

“ That is a serious slander on a very sincere and
hard-working body of men,” protested the Man with
the Red Tie. “Artists are quite as conscious of
the obligations of existence as any other type of
worker, and their conscientiousness is beyond
question.”

“ But they work without system,” argued the
Plain Man ; “and they do things by fits and starts.
The want of orderly method makes their production
irregular and their output uncertain—such ways in
any commercial undertaking would rightly be re-
garded as entirely indefensible and would lead to
inevitable disaster.”

“ The artist’s profession has happily not yet sunk
to the level of a commercial undertaking,” returned
the Man with the Red Tie; “ so your argument
does not apply. He works in the way that suits
best the particular conditions of his practice, and
it is ridiculous to call him an idler merely because
he does not keep regular office hours.”

“I would like to say,” broke in the Art Critic,
“ that in my view the real ground of complaint
against artists is not that they are idlers or lazy
loafers, but that they do too much. Whether they
keep regular hours or not is a matter of no im-
portance ; the real point to discuss is whether they
make the best use of their working time.”

“ You say they do too much ! ” cried the Plain
Man. “ That is absurd, because there must always
be waste of time when work is done irregularly and
without system. Every artist could increase his
output by adopting businesslike methods.”

“ And do you think it would be to the artist’s
advantage to increase his output ? ” asked the
Critic. “ I contend that the output of nearly every
artist is already greater than it ought to be, and I
want to see it reduced, not increased.”

“ Then you do not understand the rudiments of
business,” replied the Plain Man. “ The artist is
a producer and there is a certain demand for his
wares, therefore the more of them he can put on
the market the more efficiently will he meet this
demand. Obviously it is to his advantage to be able
34°

to increase his sales by adding to the amount of
his stock-in-trade, and as obviously is it his duty
to choose that method of carrying on his business
which will give him the fullest measure of pro-
duction.”

“ I suppose the quality of his work does not
matter in the least,” exclaimed the Man with the
Red Tie ; “ it is only quantity that counts.”

“ Ah! there you have it,” agreed the Critic.
“ The artist is so constituted that if you systematise
his methods of production or if you encourage him
to work beyond his natural inclination you take
away from his art just what makes it worth having.
My complaint against modern artists is that they
have so far adopted commercial methods that they
are all, or most of them, struggling to do much
more than they are capable of doing, and as a con-
sequence there is an all-round deterioration in the
quality of their work. Over-production is the
curse of the art of our times, and it has brought
into existence a hasty, ill-considered, and incomplete
kind of work which has no right to attention. Our
artists must always be doing something, always
rushing to put new things before the public, and
as they will not allow themselves time to think,
their stuff comes out in a condition of indecent
imperfection that is altogether deplorable.”

“ Do you really mean to say that the quality of
an artist’s work falls off when he produces it
rapidly ? ” asked the Plain Man.

“ Not necessarily,” answered the Critic ; “ but it
is certain to fall off if rapidity of production is gained
by the sacrifice of preliminary thought and of care
in execution.”

“ I cannot see why a man’s work should de-
teriorate simply because by adopting a more orderly
system of working he enables himself to produce
two things in the time he has hitherto given to
one,” protested the Plain Man.

“ Ah! that is because you do not understand
how necessary it is that the artist should give long
and careful consideration to everything he does,”
said the Critic. “The man who has fallen into
the vice of over-production trusts simply to his
manual dexterity to carry him through, and any
hasty idea seems good enough to work on if only
it affords him chances of showing his executive
cleverness. As a result, his art goes on getting
emptier and more superficial until at last it is
hardly worthy of even casual notice. That is what
happens to the artist who tries to do two things in
the time that is barely enough for one.”

“ I am afraid you are right,” sighed the Man
with the Red Tie. Ihe Lay Figure.