ART AS A DEVELOPMENT

How Far Does the Combination of Separated Arts Lead to Artistic Excellence

HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL

DIAGHILEFF in his Ballet Russe, with the enthusiasm of a master artist, has assumed the ambitious role of the inventor of a new art form; one that would be the result of a combination of, and commingling of, the six or eight special art forms in which the Russians have achieved distinction. In this we have a bold extension of the principle involved in the construction of the Opera. Wagner proclaimed that Music and Poetry which keep each within the compass of its own art are alike unavailing;—they become effective only when they meet together in a mystical erotic embrace, in the development of the Opera as he conceived it.

That Diaghileff has succeeded in presenting an art form quite unlike anything ever before achieved on the stage may be granted; and many competent critics agree that the impresr sion the audience gains from it is unlike that ever before received in a theatre or opera house. One who is interested in the development of art as a whole, however, always finds himself asking whether what is new is likely to maintain its position in the world of art,—whether it is likely to make a permanent appeal. There are already not a few striking indications that the Ballet Russe is failing to arouse the interest it at first evoked. Is this merely a mark of reaction after the excessive enthusiasm aroused by surprise; or does it mean that this new art form is less significant than at first it appeared to be? It would seem that light may be thrown upon this question, which the serious critic must face, if we consider the manner of development of the Fine Arts in the past.

The forms of beauty that would appeal to the early man must necessarily have been based upon sensational impressions; and he would thus carefully, observe any sensational-perceptual impression that yielded the sense of beauty. As he developed, however, this sense of beauty must soon have stepped beyond dependence upon mere sensational data as such, and must have, become more and more dependent upon the fuller forms of emotion and ideation derived from them. Thus there probably appeared in the very earliest development of art an emphasis of those sources of impression that yielded the greatest breadth of experience; viz., the data derived from the sensations of sight and hearing.

AT first there would be little reason to discriminate between the beauties derived from these two sources; and even among the savages, observed in our day the arts of dancing, acting, and decoration of the person, all of which relate to sight; are found combined with those of song and rudimentary music, romantic oratory, and poetry, all of which relate to hearing.

The special susceptibilities and aptitudes of men must soon, however, have led to the recognition of a distinction between the arts of sight and those of hearing; a distinction that has held as a major one to our day. Among the arts of sight we may mention dancing and acting, ornamental design, architecture, Sculpture, painting, drawing in all its forms, etc., etc., and among the arts of hearing oratory, rhetoric, poetry, singing, and music in general.

It is to be noted, however, that the primal lack of distinction between these great groups of arts has long influenced artistic development. In the Greek Tragedy and Comedy, both groups of arts were combined; and we still encourage such combinational effects in our modem Opera, which, if we may speak broadly, differs from the Greek Drama just referred to mainly in the predominance with us of the musical element which has developed so signally in these later centuries. It is difficult for us, who know only the poem elements of their dramatic performances, to realize how far the Greek audiences were moved by the spectacular effects, and the musical chorus. Aesculus is credited with having written the music for some of his comedies, as the modern Wagner wrote the dramatic accompaniment of his operas. If we may compare great things with small, the representations of their great comedies at least had much the form of the comic operas in our day. The musical chorus and the dancing were important parts of the whole; being interrupted, then as in our time, to permit the audiences to give their full attention to the unaccompanied words and movements of the actors.

WE note, however, a very marked advance in Art from the moment when the early man made the great discovery that the arts of sight could give special forms of delight that could not be given through hearing; and that, on the other hand, the arts of hearings could give other special forms of delight that could not be given through sight. Then it began to appear clear that the arts of hearing and of sight had each a value of its own that could not be as well gained when they were employed in combination. And this discovery was, without doubt, brought about by the fact that special groups of artists with special aptitudes were employed in the different sight and hearing parts of the original combinational art; the artists in the special groups concentrating their attention upon the perfecting of the elements found to have peculiar values in each of these grand divisions. Let us trace the results of this discovery in each of the groups of arts as thus separated, commencing with the arts of sight.

IN the very beginnings of civilization men began to employ crude ornaments, in carvings and color, in the decoration of their weapons and utensils. No very significant art of sight seems to have been developed, however, until they began to build for themselves permanent houses or palaces, and dwelling places or temples for their gods. The noble art of architecture had its inception in the desire to make these buildings beautiful; and this was attempted not only by efforts to give their structures satisfactory proportions, but also by ornamenting them with crude carvings and sculpture, and vivid coloring.

Designing of ornament, painting, sculpture and architecture thus must have at first developed together as one complex art. But as the different portions of this work had to be placed in the hands of different men, special skill in what were looked upon as parts of one art was attained by special craftsmen, and thus we have the beginnings of the separation between the several arts of sight.

Naturally the most important person in the combination of artists employed was the man who determined the form of the structure to which the decoration was to be applied; and he came to be called by the Greeks the head craftsman, or architect ('APXITEKTWN'). And the architects, discovering that the structural forms they created were in the highest degree essential to the beauty of the whole, soon took upon themselves the leadership; and painting and sculpture became arts subsidiary to architecture. The importance of the sculpture on a building was so great, however, that the sculptor soon assumed a measure of independence; and among the Greeks was not infrequently given the direction of the work, thus becoming the architect.

How long this position of interdependence and combination was maintained is evidenced in the fact that the conventions determined by it prevailed among the Greeks even so late as the height of their development. Most of the previous examples of the sculpture of the Greeks have come to us from the decorations of their temples; all of which were also brilliantly colored by the painter, inclusive of the Parthenon at Athens. It has remained for the modern man to become thoroughly convinced that, the real essential beauty of this noble building lay in its structural forms, quite apart from the color and sculpture used to decorate it.

EVENTUALLY, however, the painters and sculptors became clearly appreciative of the fact that their arts, while helpful to architecture, had values all their own; although they may have begun to discern these values before their arts became developed in connection with architecture. Nevertheless sculpture and painting were evidently for a long period closely conjoined as one art, the early sculptor coloring his carvings, and the colorist incising the outlines of his rough figures. That what we now think of as such very separate arts were originally looked upon as one is evidenced in the fact that painting on modeled surfaces, and colored sculpture, remained conventional even to the age of Pericles in Greece. The noble statue of the goddess in the Parthenon, executed by Phidias, the greatest of ancient sculptors, was chryselephantine,—made of gold and ivory,—with probably other colored materials added, in as much as special conventional colors were habitually employed in the representation of the flesh and garments of the different deities.

In all this, however, painting was treated as the handmaiden of sculpture, the latter art having developed in itself with great vigor. But presently, the painter also found that his art had a value all its own which he developed apart from sculpture. And the sculptor, too, found that he was not dependent upon color for the beauty his art could best.express; so that finally painting and sculpture have come to be recognized as completely separate arts.

"THUS the architect, the sculptor, and the painter have come to recognize the fact that each of their arts enables them to display beauties that no other art can give; and that these beauties are emphasized by isolation. And the endeavor thus to emphasize these special beauties has been the greatest force leading to the vigorous development of each of these arts.

A very large part of the monumental works of architecture erected since the great era of building by the Romans have been monochromatic. Although modem architects occasionally seek the aid of painting and sculpture to enhance the beauty of their buildings, they use them very sparingly, for they have learned that they can produce a special beauty that no other art can give; and have found that this can best be emphasized where attention is not distracted by other collateral interests.

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Similarly, and for the same reason, most of the important sculpture executed since the time of the Roman ascendency has also been monochromatic, in bronze or marble. And so it has been with the art of painting; which has so completely given up dependence upon modelling that painters themselves very generally now-a-days object to the modelling of the surfaces on which the painter works. John Sargent's decoration in the Boston Public Library is thus looked upon by many as an archaicism that is dangerously near to being an anachronism.

From this sketch of the differentiation of the principal arts of sight, we are led to perceive the nature of the living force that has pressed on to this development. We cannot stop to consider the various subordinate differentiations within each of these major groups; the diverse styles in architecture; the distinctions between mural decoration and "easel painting"; and that between decorative architectural sculpture and sculpture which is to be isolated; each of which has come to be looked upon almost as a separate art.

FROM this consideration we are led to note that the progress in the development of the several arts of sight has been due to the discovery of some special value that a given art could give that could not be as well given by any other art; and by the emphasis of that value; this in turn leading us to enunciate a general negative critical principle; viz., that an artist does his best work, in any special medium of expression he may choose, when he emphasizes those beautiful qualities which can be better expressed in this medium than in any other.

This principle seems to be the basis of the critical view of Lessing which calls attention to the limitations each artist should accept when he makes choice of a given medium of expression. It accounts for the architectural critic's demand for purity of style; for each of these styles has come into being by the discovery of a certain form of structural beauty, and by the effort to emphasize this form as is not possible, if it is not kept pure from other forms, equally beautiful, but unlike the one with whose value the architect would impress us.

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It accounts for the objection the artist painter feels to the use of body color in aquarelles; for he realizes that he can produce effects through the translucence of water colors that cannot be given by non-transparent color; and feels that the beauties obtained in this manner should be emphasized when he chooses this medium. Sculpture, too, has its diverse forms; the low and high relief, the full modelling in the round, etc.; each of which has its special conventions which have developed because each of these forms brings into emphasis special beauties.

TURNING now to the arts of hearing, we find a similar development which teaches a similar lesson. All animal activities are rhythmical; so it comes about that it is impossible for us to attend to a series of sounds, which are mechanically equalized as to strength and interval of recurrence, without finding ourselves hearing them in the form of rhythms. It is therefore easy for man to acquire the habit of using a rough rhythm in speaking; a habit which would naturally be fostered when it was noted that this rhythmical mode of speech was agreeable.

It may be assumed then that the very earliest language of the rising man must have contained the rhythmical elements that become so significant when emphasized in song. The recounting of his tales of adventure must have been most attractive when expressed in emphasized cadences, and with specially pleasing modifications of the tonal quality of the speaker's voice. Thus it would seem that the original art of hearing was one which combined the rudiments of what has developed into the two quite separate arts of Literature on the one hand, and Music on the other; for we are still able to see the traces of this close relationship of what are now recognized to be two quite diverse arts in the records of the artistic life of the barbarian; and even in later times, as for instance in the poetic songs of the noble Troubadours of France. And the convention which we have seen held so strongly in the Drama of the Greeks, and which is still maintained in the Opera of our own day, tells the same story.

Song, and its crude instrumental accompaniment, however, must at first have been mere handmaidens of rudimentary literature, as language so early became of essential importance to man and was developed rapidly. And Literature, thus gaining more and more, and releasing itself from the gentle fetters by which it was bound by the early conventional accompaniment of rudimentary Music, has developed as we all realize until it has reached a pre-eminent position among the arts, quite apart from song and its derivatives.

Literature developed thus because it came to be recognized that when freed from the encumbrance of early music it was able to emphasize certain values that could not as well be enforced when it was limited to methods of treatment that this music necessitated. And for the same reason Literature presently was differentiated into two great minor arts; viz., Prose and Poetry. Prose writing was found capable of presenting certain types of beauty that could not be given if the writer limited himself to the forms that are necessary to Poetry; and the poet, on the other hand, discovered that the special beauties he could present through his medium were developed best if he limited his themes to subjects that were not easily treated in prose. In this manner conventions have arisen which make us feel it quite natural to present certain themes in poetry that if presented in prose would appear bombastic or sentimental. The words we welcome from the mystic philosophical poet, and the erotic poems of a Sappho, would seem banal if put into prose.

AS we have seen, in the early development of .the art of hearing, song and its instrumental accompaniment became the handmaiden of Literature as it then existed. But, although at first relegated to an inferior place among the arts, it nevertheless held a position of its own, and developed, as we know, into the separate art of Music. This development advanced with slow and halting steps; but finally, in what we know as the Greek scales, one of which after a long struggle became predominant, Music found a language of her own, a language quite diverse from that of rhetoric and poetry, and one that enabled her to bring into prominence beauties that neither the prose writer, nor the poet, could as well express. This newly found language was gradually developed by the emphasis of those forms of beauty that were its own special possession; until, suddenly, within the last four hundred years, Music in Europe has burst into luxuriant flower, very much as the arts of Literature and of Sculpture and Architecture bloomed during the great Greek epoch. In fact, we are today still living in the Golden Age of Music. Our descendants of a thousand years from now are likely to look back with envy upon the age of Bach and Beethoven, very much as we ourselves look back upon the age of Phidias.

NOW surely, if a survey of history teaches us anything, it tells us that the same rule applies to the arts of hearing that we have found applicable to the arts of sight; the rule that an artist renders his best service to his Muse when he attempts to emphasize those special beauties that" can be gained through his chosen art, as they can be in no other way. As architecture, sculpture and painting among the arts of sight have reached their highest excellence where each has aimed to attain its results by speaking in, and perfecting, its own special tongue; so, in my view, it will eventually appear that as music and literature among the arts of hearing have learned to speak in distinct languages each will reach its highest excellence by aiming to speak in, and to perfect its own special tongue. Literature has already won its triumphs by the development of qualities not given in Music. So Music must win its highest triumphs by the development of qualities not given in Literature. As Sculpture and Painting in the arts of sight long clung together, so the diverse arts of hearing, Literature and Music, have long clung together. But as Sculpture and Painting have separated as they have developed, to the advantage of each, so, Literature and Music must, in my view, eventually complete their at present but partial separation, with co-ordinate gain to each.

IF this is true, then "programme music" will eventually appear as an anachronism; and the Opera, which is a heritage from the far distant past, will seem much less significant than it does in our day. As we now look back at the Greek Drama, and, forgetting its accompaniment of music, find in its poetry the basis of its greatness; so some day our descendants will look back at the Opera of our day, and find in its music the main basis of its æesthetic power.

We tend now-a-days to think of Music and Literature as necessarily connected; but we overlook the fact that this has not always so impressed the cultivated man. We forget, for instance, that the connection between Music and Architecture was felt to be so close by Schlegel that he designated the latter as "frozen music"; and that this phrase is one commonly spoken with approval today. We forget, too, that a large number of important writers who have influenced our thought have looked upon Literature and Painting as intrinsically related. Horace spoke of words as poetical colors, and Erasmus Darwin called poetry a process of painting to the eye; to mention two only of those who have held similar views. This notion of the intimate relation between Literature and Painting has indeed prevailed for centuries among a vast number of cultivated men of a civilization diverse from our own.

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OUR written language consists of symbols of sounds. The written language of the Chinese was originally altogether, and is still, to some extent, what is called "pictographic"; each symbol, or letter, having been originally the drawing of the object it was intended to designate. From this it has developed so that in all historic time it has been, and still is, in the main, "ideographic," as we say; each symbol pointing, not to a sound or word, but to an idea. Thus when we look at our printed or written symbols our minds turn to language, and only indirectly to the ideas this language expresses. But when the Chinese look at their written, or rather painted, symbols, their minds at once turn directly to the realm of ideas. Thus it happens that the actual pictorial method adopted by the Chinese writer,—his hand-writing, as we may say,— has become a pictorial art, scarcely differentiated from pictorial art in general. "Painting and writing," says Chou Shun, "are the same art." Thus again it has come to pass that the arts of Literature and of Painting have become just as closely correlated among the Chinese, as the arts of Literature and of Music are today among us of the western civilizations.

INDEED, this bond has become so close that every Chinese picture of the first rank has written on it a poem of high quality, written by the artist himself. A well-known authority tells us that in judging of the merit of a painter the Chinese connoisseur habitually looks first at the poem, and then at the picture; and, if the poem does not satisfy his taste, often refuses to look at the picture, judging that it cannot be worthy of his study. It is as though we, as connoisseurs, habitually studied the librettos of our operas before we listened to the music; and if in any case we found the libretto unsatisfactory, refused to listen to the music at all. What would become of the Opera if we acquired such a habit I leave to the judgment of the reader.

IT becomes clear then how fortuitous is the relation of Poetry to Music, of which we make so much. In fact, as with the Chinese the poem has become dominant over the picture; so we have come to look upon the musical accompaniment of the Greek dramas as utterly insignificant. And that we are tending to subordinate the poem to the music in our Operas is evidenced in the fact that in the majority of the successful operas of our day the literary merit of the "book" is of a low order; it must be so if it is not to distract our attention from the beauty of the allimportant music.

CONSIDER what it means that we English-speaking people make no demand for, in fact rather object to, Grand Opera rendered in English. It surely indicates that we unconsciously recognize that anything that tends to fix our attention upon the literary values of the plot brings aesthetic loss. We find ourselves better off if the words sung are in a tongue so unfamiliar that we are not tempted to follow them, and are thus enabled the better to appreciate the music; a view which is strongly corroborated when we consider how frequently we now hear at our orchestral concerts the music of the operas, without any other of the elements that impress us at their full performances.

BUT one may say: "If you carry this argument to its legitimate conclusion, you must condemn all combinational arts; all story-telling in the graphic arts; all description of natural scenery in poetry, for instance." So let me say, and most emphatically, that I would condemn nothing whatever that yields a powerful sense of beauty; rather do Purge that we should greedily welcome any thing that yields it. It is true, as Sidney Colvin has pointed out, that extreme differentiation of the arts is at times opposed to artistic excellence.

BUT this does not take at all from the validity of the contention above made. It merely tells us that the opposition to excellence of which Mr. Colvin speaks is due to a certain narrowing of our artistic sympathies that goes with too exclusive attention to some one of the differentiated arts; and is not due to the differentiation in itself. And it urges upon us to rejoice, as I am glad to do, in the beauty found in any effective combinations of the already differentiated arts, as in the Opera, and in the "Ballet Russe" under consideration.

ALL that I am asking the reader to note is that the fuller the development of any special art, the more difficult does it become to combine it with any other special art that has highly developed, with a maintenance of that unity of impression that is so important in a work of art if it is to have permanent value.

AND I am asking him to note, further, that this consideration of the differential development of the arts of hearing again brings before us the importance of the general negative critical principle, that an artist does his best work, in any special medium of expression he may choose, when he emphasizes those beautiful qualities which can be better expressed in this medium than in any other.