DOI issue:
No. 237 (December 1912)
DOI article:Garstin, Norman: The art of Harold and Laura Knight
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21158#0208
Harold and Laura Knight
even more, artistic nihilists are not wanting who
deny the right of beauty to reign at all as the
supreme object of the artist’s desire. The Futurist
wants to destroy all continuity of artistic tradi-
tion ; the Post-Impressionist wants to-“ but
man is but an ass if he go about to expound this
dream.”
What then is to be found in all this confusion ?
What moral may one draw from it, and whither
is it moving? Is it well with art or is it stricken
with a babel of madness ? On the whole I should
say that it is well. It is escaping from the house
of bondage, even if it should have forty years of
wandering in the wilderness before it enters the
Promised Land. Tradition and authority have lain
sore upon art; the looming giant figures of the old
heroes had obsessed academic souls all over the
world, and these in their turn held the keys of
failure and success; gradually these keys have
fallen from their hands. The prison-house has
been opened, and small wonder that the prisoners
should make first use of their freedom to plunge
into unlicensed orgies.
These are days when every opinion is assailed,
when the firm foundations of yesterday are the
shifting sands of to-day, and may become the Dead
Sea of to-morrow, when science is called on cease-
lessly to reconsider her verdicts. What, then,
should artists do ? Poor feeble folk! eternally
oscillating between the extremes of irresponsible
caprice and authoritative formulae. Let us try and
get on some sort of ground and look round us.
Art may be said to be a sort of varying point, lying
upon a line somewhere between personal preference
and unpersonal nature. Pushed too near personality
art becomes insanity; set too close to unassimilated
nature it is banality. Here then, in short, are the
Scylla and Charybdis, either of which may wreck
our bark. Imitation of nature is the foundation of
all art, but it must never be regarded as the end.
It is possible to figure to oneself an imitation of
nature so exact and impersonal that it would be
even more, artistic nihilists are not wanting who
deny the right of beauty to reign at all as the
supreme object of the artist’s desire. The Futurist
wants to destroy all continuity of artistic tradi-
tion ; the Post-Impressionist wants to-“ but
man is but an ass if he go about to expound this
dream.”
What then is to be found in all this confusion ?
What moral may one draw from it, and whither
is it moving? Is it well with art or is it stricken
with a babel of madness ? On the whole I should
say that it is well. It is escaping from the house
of bondage, even if it should have forty years of
wandering in the wilderness before it enters the
Promised Land. Tradition and authority have lain
sore upon art; the looming giant figures of the old
heroes had obsessed academic souls all over the
world, and these in their turn held the keys of
failure and success; gradually these keys have
fallen from their hands. The prison-house has
been opened, and small wonder that the prisoners
should make first use of their freedom to plunge
into unlicensed orgies.
These are days when every opinion is assailed,
when the firm foundations of yesterday are the
shifting sands of to-day, and may become the Dead
Sea of to-morrow, when science is called on cease-
lessly to reconsider her verdicts. What, then,
should artists do ? Poor feeble folk! eternally
oscillating between the extremes of irresponsible
caprice and authoritative formulae. Let us try and
get on some sort of ground and look round us.
Art may be said to be a sort of varying point, lying
upon a line somewhere between personal preference
and unpersonal nature. Pushed too near personality
art becomes insanity; set too close to unassimilated
nature it is banality. Here then, in short, are the
Scylla and Charybdis, either of which may wreck
our bark. Imitation of nature is the foundation of
all art, but it must never be regarded as the end.
It is possible to figure to oneself an imitation of
nature so exact and impersonal that it would be