Art and Morality

Why Many People Believe That Modernist Art is "Decadent" and "Immoral"

D. H. LAWRENCE

EDITOR'S NOTE: Cezanne has probably exercised on the art of the past generation, a greater influence than any other painter. The more critical public, here and in France, were quick to be convinced of his genius, but the public at large, after twenty five years, still remain unconvinced of it. Furthermore, the painters who followed him in the so called "Modernistic" school of art,—Picasso, Derain, Vlaminck, Matisse,—have never attained the approbation of the general public. But there is nothing remarkable about all this. The world—other than the chosen few—has always been slow to accept the work of artists who offer us fresh aesthetic viewpoints. The really incomprehensible feature of the mystery has been, not that the public has failed to approve of the work of the new men but that it has thought it "decadent" and "immoral." As these so called immoral paintings have been chiefly landscapes, still-lifes, and harmless enough portraits, the general public cry of "unclean" has been difficult to understand. In this article, Mr. Lawrence offers an original explanation of this somewhat baffling aesthetic mystery.

IT IS part of the common claptrap that modernist art is "decadent" and "immoral". Behold, everywhere, the new artists are running to put on jazz underwear or to demoralize themselves utterly. They are ashamed to remain plain honest people—like the public, for instance.

The public is always, in these disputes, supposed to be a fount of morality. For myself, I have found that the artists were far more finicky, morally, than the public. Anyhow, what have a water-pitcher, a bottle, and some insecure apples on a crumpled tablecloth, got to do with morality? The old school of artists (the public will tell you) painted apples that were right, that were "nailed down", that were, in short, moral.

Have you noticed that most people, who have not learnt the trick of understanding, and liking modern art, feel a moral repugnance for a painting of, let us say, a few insecure apples by Cezanne, or for any still-life by him, or for nearly all the paintings by the other great modernist artists. They feel, somehow, that this still-life by Cezanne is not right. And, for them, it isn't right.

Yet, how can they feel, as they do, that it is immoral?

The very same design, if it were humanised, and the bottle was a draped nude and the water-pitcher a nude, semi-draped, weeping over the draped one, would instantly become highly moral. Why?

Perhaps from painting, better than from any other art, we can realize the subtlety of the distinction between what is dumbly felt to be moral, and what is felt to be immoral. The moral instinct in the man in the street. But instinct is largely habit. The moral instinct of the man in the street is largely an emotional defense of an old habit.

Yet what can there possibly be, in a Cezanne still-life, to rouse the aggressive moral instinct of the man in the street? What ancient habit in the average man do these poor apples, bottle and water-pitcher succeed in hindering? A bottle and water-pitcher that aren't so very much like a bottle and water-pitcher, apples that aren't very appley, and a tablecloth that's not particularly much of a tablecloth. You might do better yourself, you say. Perhaps! But then, why not simply dismiss the picture as a poor painting? Why this anger, this hostility? This derisive resentment?

A few apples, a pitcher, and a tablecloth can suggest improper behaviour. They don't—not even to a Freudian. If they did, the man in the street would feel much more at home with them. Where, then, docs the immorality come in? Because "come in," it certainly, surely .does.

Because of a very curious habit that civilised man has been forming down the whole course of civilisation, and in which he is now hardboiled. The slowly-formed habit of seeing just as the photographic camera secs.

But you may say that the object reflected on the retina is always photographic. It may be. I doubt it. But whatever the image on the retina may be, it is rarely, even now, the photographic image of the object which is actually taken in by the man who sees the object. He does not, even now, see for himself. He secs what the kodak has taught him to see. And man, try as he may, is not a kodak.

When a child sees a man, what does the child take in, as an impression? Two eyes, a nose, a mouth of teeth, two straight legs, two straight arms; a sort of hieroglyph which the human child has used through all the ages to represent man. At least, the old hieroglyph was still in use when I was a child.

But, is this what the shild actually sees? If you mean by seeing, consciously registering, then this is what the child actually secs. The photographic image may be there all right, upon the retina. But there the child leaves it; outside the door, as it were.

Through many ages mankind has been striving to register the image on the retina as it is: no more glyphs and hieroglyphs. We'll have the real objective reality. And we have succeeded. As soon as we succeed, the kodak is invented, to prove our success. Could lies come out of a black box, into which nothing but light had entered? Impossible; it takes life to tell a lie.

Colour also, which primitive man cannot really see, is now seen by us, and fitted to the spectrum.

Eureka! We have seen it, with our own eyes —and that is assurance enough.

When we see a red cow, we see a red cow in fact. We arc quite sure of it, because the unimpeachable kodak sees exactly the same red cow.

But supposing we had all of us been born blind, and had to get our image of a red cow by touching her, and smelling her, hearing her moo, and "feeling" her. Whatever should we think of her? Whatever sort of image should we have of her, in our dark minds? Something very different, surely?

As vision developed towards the kodak, man's idea of himself developed towards the snapshot. Primitive man simply didn't know what he was: he was always half in the dark. But we have learned to see, and each of us has a complete kodak idea of himself. You take a snap of your sweetheart, in the field among the buttercups, smiling tenderly at the red cow with a calf, and doubtless offering the cow a cabbage-leaf. Awfully nice, and absolutely "real". There is your sweetheart, complete in herself, enjoying a sort of absolute objective reality: complete, perfect, all her surroundings contributing to her; incontestable. She is really "a picture".

This is the habit we have formed: of visualizing everything. Each man to himself is a picture. That is, he is a complete little objective reality, complete in himself, existing by himself, absolutely, in the middle of the picture. All the rest is just setting, background. To every man, to every woman, the universe is just a setting to the absolute little picture of himself, or herself. This has been the development of the conscious ego in man through several thousand years: since the Greek artists first broke the spell of "darkness". Man has learnt to see himself. So now, he is what he sees. He makes himself in his own image. Previously, even in Egypt, men had not learned to see straight. They fumbled in the dark, and didn't quite know where they were, or what they were. Like men in a dark room, they only felt their own existence surging in the darkness of other existences.

We, however, have learned to sec ourselves for what we are, as the sun sees us. The kodak bears witness. We sec as the All-Seeing Eye sees, with the universal vision. And we are what is seen; each man to himself an identity, an isolated absolute, corresponding with a universe of isolated absolutes. A picture! A kodak snap, in a universal film of snaps. The picture, of rue, the me that is seen, is me.

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As soon as we are supremely satisfied about it, somebody starts to upset us. Comes Cezanne with his pitcher and his apples, which are not only not life-like, but are a living lie. The kodak will prove that they are a lie.

The All-Seeing Eye sees with every degree of intensity and in every possible kind of mood; Giotto, Titian, El Greco, Turner, all so different, yet all the true image in the All-Seeing Eye.

This Cezanne still-life, however, ,'s contrary to the All-Seeing Eye. Apples, to the eye of God, could not look like that, nor could a tablecloth, nor could a pitcher. So, it is wrong.

And if apples don't look like that, in any light or circumstance, or under any mood, then they shouldn't be painted like that. "Oh, la-la-la! The apples are just like that, to me," cries Cezanne. "They are like that, no matter what they look like to the kodak. Sometimes they're a sin, sometimes they're a knock on the head, sometimes they're a bellyache, sometimes they're part of a pie, sometimes they're sauce for the goose. And you can't see a bellyache, neither can you see a sin, neither can you see a knock on the head. So, paint the apple in these aspects, and you get—probably, or approximately, a still-life by me."

And this is the immortality in Cezanne: he begins to see more than the All-Seeing Eye of humanity can possibly see, kodak-wise. If you can see in the apple a bellyache and a knock on the head, and paint these in the image, along with its prettiness, then it is the death of the kodak and the movies, and so must be immoral.

The true artist doesn't substitute immorality for morality. On the contrary, he always substitutes a finer morality for a grosser. And as soon as you see a finer morality, the grosser becomes relatively immoral.

Design, in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things; various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.

Let Cezanne's apples go rolling off the table forever. They live by their own laws, in their own ambiente, and not by the law of the kodak—or of man. They are casually related to man. But to those apples, man is by no means the absolute.

A new relationship between ourselves and the universe means a new morality. Once you have tasted the unsteady apples of Cezanne, then the nailed-down apples of the old masters become apples of Sodom. If the Status quo were Paradise, it would indeed be a sin to taste the new apples. But since the status quo is much more prison than Paradise, we can go ahead.