DOI Heft:
A foreword by the editor
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19430#0010
A FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR
character of these permanent influences, and, if they are not to reduce
him to hopeless incompetence, to understand the way in which they
must affect his aims and his methods. The increased burden of taxation,
by which the spending power of the public is reduced, presses most
heavily upon the hitherto wealthy people who were in the past the art
patrons most considered and catered for, the redistribution of income
gives a larger proportion to the wage-earning section of the community,
and the enhanced cost of production necessitates many practical econo-
mies. The reduction in the surplus funds remaining to the wealthy
people of the older type after the necessaries of life have been purchased
must bring about a corresponding reduction in their demand for high-
priced works of art, and if in course of time a new kind of wealthy class
grows up, it will be with another sort of taste which will have to be edu-
cated and developed.
Really, for some time to come, art will have to be for the multitude and it
must be put on the market at a price which will be within the reach of the
majority. It will have to take a form which will not be beyond the com-
prehension of the ordinary person and which, through the medium of
everyday things, will appeal to the man in the street. That this will in-
volve a degradation of art to a permanently popular level need not be
feared ; the man in the street is not the brainless and inartistic creature
which the shopkeepers, with their dangerous half-knowledge, apparently
assume him to be. More often than not he has a quite clear appreciation
of what is really artistic, and he has a sound instinct for things that are
correct in design and construction and that show a harmonious blending
together of intention, materials, and methods of production. Most cer-
tainly he is worth cultivating; there are in him important possibilities
which no sane artist can ignore.
That, hitherto, he has been wrongly educated can be frankly admitted,
but for this the bulk of the blame must be laid upon the salesman who is
only too ready to accuse the public of want of taste. The idea that florid
and superfluous ornament, plastered over bad work and unsuitable
materials to hide structural defects, has any claim to be accounted artistic
would never have arisen if it had not been for the abysmal ignorance and
the wilful misrepresentation of the salesman. Has he ever troubled him-
self to learn how to distinguish between the freak things which are ex-
travagant, “quaint,” and pseudo-artistic, and those which are worthy
productions of the real artist? Has he ever studied the first principles of
art and discovered that they prescribe fitness for its purpose as a funda-
mental essential in every artistic thing? Has he ever realised that in all
art work soundness of construction and recognition of the possibilities
and limitations of the materials are matters of supreme importance, and
2
character of these permanent influences, and, if they are not to reduce
him to hopeless incompetence, to understand the way in which they
must affect his aims and his methods. The increased burden of taxation,
by which the spending power of the public is reduced, presses most
heavily upon the hitherto wealthy people who were in the past the art
patrons most considered and catered for, the redistribution of income
gives a larger proportion to the wage-earning section of the community,
and the enhanced cost of production necessitates many practical econo-
mies. The reduction in the surplus funds remaining to the wealthy
people of the older type after the necessaries of life have been purchased
must bring about a corresponding reduction in their demand for high-
priced works of art, and if in course of time a new kind of wealthy class
grows up, it will be with another sort of taste which will have to be edu-
cated and developed.
Really, for some time to come, art will have to be for the multitude and it
must be put on the market at a price which will be within the reach of the
majority. It will have to take a form which will not be beyond the com-
prehension of the ordinary person and which, through the medium of
everyday things, will appeal to the man in the street. That this will in-
volve a degradation of art to a permanently popular level need not be
feared ; the man in the street is not the brainless and inartistic creature
which the shopkeepers, with their dangerous half-knowledge, apparently
assume him to be. More often than not he has a quite clear appreciation
of what is really artistic, and he has a sound instinct for things that are
correct in design and construction and that show a harmonious blending
together of intention, materials, and methods of production. Most cer-
tainly he is worth cultivating; there are in him important possibilities
which no sane artist can ignore.
That, hitherto, he has been wrongly educated can be frankly admitted,
but for this the bulk of the blame must be laid upon the salesman who is
only too ready to accuse the public of want of taste. The idea that florid
and superfluous ornament, plastered over bad work and unsuitable
materials to hide structural defects, has any claim to be accounted artistic
would never have arisen if it had not been for the abysmal ignorance and
the wilful misrepresentation of the salesman. Has he ever troubled him-
self to learn how to distinguish between the freak things which are ex-
travagant, “quaint,” and pseudo-artistic, and those which are worthy
productions of the real artist? Has he ever studied the first principles of
art and discovered that they prescribe fitness for its purpose as a funda-
mental essential in every artistic thing? Has he ever realised that in all
art work soundness of construction and recognition of the possibilities
and limitations of the materials are matters of supreme importance, and
2