Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

hundred and thirty-three generations, and may continue for as many more. Among the children of Ógi's brain are some he dearly loves, but who will not "sell." There are others whom he despises, but whom he knows the public will acclaim and pay for. "Which shall it be?"

The answers have been as various as the souls of artists. We shall see how through the ages there have been hero artists and martyr artists, men who have produced what they believed to be the best, in the face of obloquy, ridicule, starvation, even the dungeon and the stake. But, manifestly, these conditions are not the most favorable for the birth of masterpieces. To develop an art technique requires decades of practice and study. To feel other persons' emotions intensely and reproduce them according to some coherent plan; to devise new forms, and arrange millions of musical notes or words or molecules of paint in a complex design-all this requires intense and persistent concentration. Men cannot do such work without leisure; neither can they do it while they are despising themselves for doing it. So we may set down the following as one of the fundamental art laws:

The bulk of the successful artists of any time are men in harmony with the spirit of that time, and identified with the powers prevailing.

CHAPTER V

THE LORD'S ANOINTED

Who pays for art? The answer is that at every stage of social development there are certain groups able to pay for certain kinds of art. These groups may be large or small, but they constitute the public for that kind of art, and determine its quality and character; he who pays the piper calls the tune. It should need no stating that RollsRoyce automobiles are not made according to the tastes of rag-pickers and ditch-diggers, nor yet of poets and saints; they are made according to the tastes of people who can afford to pay for Rolls-Royce automobiles. If our thinking about the arts were not so completely twisted by false propaganda, it would seem an axiom to say that the first essential to understanding any art product is to under

stand the public which ordered and paid for that art product.

Some arts, of course, are cheaper than others. Ballads cost nothing; you can make one up and sing it on any street corner. Hence we find the ballad close to the people, simple and human, frequently rebellious. The same thing applies to folk tales and love songs-until men take to printing them in books, after which they develop fancy forms, understandable only to people who have nothing to do with their time except to play with fancy things.

Beginning with the primitive art forms, it would be possible to arrange the arts in an ascending scale of expensiveness, and to show that exactly in proportion to the cost of an art product is its aristocratic spirit, its subservience to ruling class ideals. Of all the art forms thus far devised, the most expensive per capita is the so-called "grand opera"; this grandeur has to be subscribed for in advance by the "diamond horseshoe," and consequently there has never been such a thing as a proletarian grand opera-if you except the "Niebelung Ring," which was so effectively disguised as a fairy story that nobody but Bernard Shaw has been able to decipher its incendiary

message.

Many years ago I was talking with a captain of industry, prominent in New York political life. I spoke of the corruption of the judges, and he contradicted me with a smile. “Our judges are not bought; they are selected." And exactly so it has been with our recognized and successful artists; they have been men who looked up to the ruling classes by instinct, and served their masters gladly and freely. If they did not do so, they paid the penalty by a life of conflict and exile; if they happened to be poor and friendless, they do not even receive the gratitude of posterity, because their dream-children died unborn, and were buried, along with their parents, in graves unknown. "Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest."

It will be our task to study the great art periods one after another, taking the leading artists and showing what they were, what they believed, how they got their livings, and what they did for those who paid them. We shall find that everywhere they were members of their group, sharing the interests and the prejudices, the hates and fears.

the jealousies and loves and admirations of that group. We shall find them subject to all the social stresses and strains of the time, and fighting ardently the battles of their class. For life is never a static thing, it is always changing, always subjecting its victims to new dangers, forcing them to new efforts. Either the ruling class is threatened by the attacks of outside enemies, or else there is a new class arising inside the community. In times of internal order and prosperity, there come luxury and idleness, the degeneration of the tribe; there come all sorts of novelties startling the elders-modernists sapping the old time creeds, and flappers adopting the vices of men.

Such evils must be corrected; such enemies of the tribe must be put down; and in the course of these labors, what chance is there that the ruling classes will fail to make use of their most powerful weapon, that of art? There is simply no chance whatever. Ogi will be called on by his masters; or else he will act of his own impulse-he will lead the crusade, singing the praises of the old time ways, "idealizing" the ancestral heroes, the holy saints and the founding fathers, and pouring ridicule upon the bobbed heads of the flappers. The critics will leap to Ogi's support, hailing him as the Lord's own anointed, a creator of masterpieces, dignified, serene, secure in immortality. This is art, the critics will aver, this is real, genuine, authentic art; while out there in the wilderness somewhere howls a lone gray rebellious wolf, attacking and seeking to devour everything that is beautiful and sacred in life-and the howling of this wolf is not art, it is vile and cheap propaganda.

The critics are certain that the decision is purely a question of aesthetics; and we answer that it is purely a question of class prestige. They are certain that art standards are eternal; and we answer that they are blown about by the winds of politics. Social classes struggle; some lose, and their glory fades, their arts decay; others win, and set new standards, according to their interests. The only permanent factors are the permanent needs of humanity, for justice, brotherhood, wisdom; and the arts stand a chance of immortality, to the extent that they serve such ideals.

CHAPTER VI

ARTIFICIAL CHILDHOOD

The reader who shares the art beliefs now prevalent in the world will be quite certain that the ideas here being expounded are fantastic and absurd. Among those who thus differ is a friend of mine, a very great poet who is patiently reading the manuscript and suffering, both for himself, and for all poets who will follow him. He writes: "There is and should be such a thing as the enjoyment of what we are pleased to term 'pure' beauty." And again: "You must believe either that we have a right to play, in which case the poet-who-doesn't-preach is justified, or believe the contrary, with its corollary of a coming race of solemn scientific monsters."

I do not want to gain an argument by the easy device of omitting everything that does not help me; therefore I take up this friend's contentions. Manifestly an element of play is essential to all art; it is what distinguishes art from other forms of expression, essays, sermons, speeches, mathematical demonstrations. If we do not emphasize this play element, it is not from failure to realize the difference between a work of art and an essay, a sermon, a speech or a mathematical demonstration; it is merely because the play element in art is recognized by everyone, to the exclusion of the element of rational thought and purpose, which is no less essential.

Let us ask: what is play? The answer is: play is nature's device whereby the young train themselves for reality. Two puppies pretending to bite each other's throats, learn to fight without having their throats torn in the process. So all young creatures develop their faculties; and this function is carried right up into modern art products. From many new novels I may learn, without risking the fatal experiment, what will happen to me if I permit the wild beast of lust to get me by the throat. Let us have another principle, to guide us in our analysis:

Art is play, having for its purpose the development of human faculties, and experiment with the possibilities of life.

But notice this distinction. Two puppies, leaping at

each other's throats and dodging away, do not reason about what they are doing; they are guided by instinct. But a modern novelist knows what he is doing; he is thinking ordered thoughts about life, and making a deliberate record thereof. So we have a second principle:

Art is play, to the extent that it is instinctive; it is propaganda when it becomes mature and conscious.

Manifestly, art can never be entirely play, because no human being is entirely instinctive; nor can it be entirely propaganda-if it is to remain art, it must keep the play form. Moreover, the play element must be real, not simply a sham; the work must be a representation of life so skillful that we can pretend to take it for actuality. Wilkie Collins gave his formula for success as a fiction writer: "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait." In other words, make 'em do just what they would have to do, if they were taking part in actual life. This is the one indispensable element: the artist, by whatever trick, must persuade us that this is no trick, but reality.

The function of play in adults has been ably studied in Dr. Patrick's book, "The Psychology of Relaxation." We humans have only recently developed the upper lobes of the brain, and cannot stand using them all the time; it is necessary occasionally to let them rest, and to live in the lower centers; in other words, to go back into childhood and play. To my friend the Poet, who asks if I believe in play, I answer by pointing to my tennis racquet. But what shall we say about adults who play all the time? Modern science has a name for such people; it calls them

morons.

If you are a moron artist, producing for a moron public, it will not avail to argue with you. But we have to inquire: how comes it that the art of morons is glorified and defended as "true" and "pure" art? How comes it that the quality of enjoyment without thought, which is characteristic of puppies and infants, comes to be considered a great quality in adults? In the fields of industry and education, we know that pitiful thing, the mind of a child in the body of a grown man. How comes it that such defective mentality is glorified in the field of art?

The answer is what you will expect from me. There is a class which owns and runs the world, and wishes everything to stay as it is. As one of the functions of

« AnteriorContinuar »