ARTIST AND PUBLIC ***
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ARTIST AND PUBLIC
AND OTHER ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS
BY KENYON COX
[Illustration: From a photograph by Braun, Clement & Co. Plate 1.--Millet. "The Goose Girl." In the collection of Mme. Saulnier, Bordeaux.]
ARTIST AND PUBLIC
AND OTHER ESSAYS ON ART SUBJECTS
BY KENYON COX
_WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS_
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK MCMXIV
_Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner's Sons Published September, 1914_
TO
J.D.C.
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF UNFAILING KINDNESS THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
PREFACE
In "The Classic Point of View," published three years ago, I endeavored to give a clear and definitive statement of the principles on which all my criticism of art is based. The papers here gathered together, whether earlier or later than that volume, may be considered as the more detailed application of those principles to particular artists, to whole schools and epochs, even, in one case, to the entire history of the arts. The essay on Raphael, for instance, is little else than an illustration of the chapter on "Design"; that on Millet illustrates the three chapters on "The Subject in Art," on "Design," and on "Drawing"; while "Two Ways of Painting" contrasts, in specific instances, the classic with the modern point of view.
But there is another thread connecting these essays, for all of them will be found to have some bearing, more or less direct, upon the subject of the title essay. "The Illusion of Progress" elaborates a point more slightly touched upon in "Artist and Public"; the careers of Raphael and Millet are capital instances of the happy productiveness of an artist in sympathy with his public or of the difficulties, nobly conquered in this case, of an artist without public appreciation; the greatest merit attributed to "The American School" is an abstention from the extravagances of those who would make incomprehensibility a test of greatness. Finally, the work of Saint-Gaudens is a noble example of art fulfilling its social function in expressing and in elevating the ideals of its time and country.
This last essay stands, in some respects, upon a different footing from the others. It deals with the work and the character of a man I knew and loved, it was originally written almost immediately after his death, and it is therefore colored, to some extent, by personal emotion. I have revised it, rearranged it, and added to it, and I trust that this coloring may be found to warm, without falsifying, the picture.
The essay on "The Illusion of Progress" was first printed in "The Century," that on Saint-Gaudens in "The Atlantic Monthly." The others originally appeared in "Scribner's Magazine."
KENYON COX.
Calder House, Croton-on-Hudson, June 6, 1914.
CONTENTS
ESSAY PAGE
I. ARTIST AND PUBLIC 1 II. JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET 44 III. THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS 77 IV. RAPHAEL 99 V. TWO WAYS OF PAINTING 134 VI. THE AMERICAN SCHOOL 149 VII. AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 169
ILLUSTRATIONS
MILLET: 1. "The Goose Girl," _Saulnier Collection, Bordeaux_ _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE 2. "The Sower," _Vanderbilt Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York_ 46 3. "The Gleaners," _The Louvre_ 50 4. "The Spaders" 54 5. "The Potato Planter," _Shaw Collection_ 58 6. "The Grafter," _William Rockefeller Collection_ 62 7. "The New-Born Calf," _Art Institute, Chicago_ 66 8. "The First Steps," 70 9. "The Shepherdess," _Chauchard Collection, Louvre_ 72 10. "Spring," _The Louvre_ 74
RAPHAEL: 11. "Poetry," _The Vatican_ 112 12. "The Judgment of Solomon," _The Vatican_ 114 13. The "Disputa," _The Vatican_ 116 14. "The School of Athens," _The Vatican_ 118 15. "Parnassus," _The Vatican_ 120 16. "Jurisprudence," _The Vatican_ 122 17. "The Mass of Bolsena," _The Vatican_ 124 18. "The Deliverance of Peter," _The Vatican_ 126 19. "The Sibyls," _Santa Maria della Pace, Rome_ 128 20. "Portrait of Tommaso Inghirami," _Gardner Collection_ 130
JOHN S. SARGENT: 21. "The Hermit," _Metropolitan Museum, New York_ 136
TITIAN: 22. "Saint Jerome in the Desert," _Brera Gallery, Milan_ 142
SAINT-GAUDENS: 23. "Plaquette Commemorating Cornish Masque" 182 24. "Amor Caritas" 196 25. "The Butler Children" 206 26. "Sarah Redwood Lee" 208 27. "Farragut," _Madison Square, New York_ 212 28. "Lincoln," _Chicago, Ill._ 214 29. "Deacon Chapin," _Springfield, Mass._ 216 30. "Adams Memorial," _Washington, D.C._ 218 31. "Shaw Memorial," _Boston, Mass._ 220 32. "Sherman," _The Plaza, Central Park, New York_ 224
ARTIST AND PUBLIC
I
ARTIST AND PUBLIC
In the history of art, as in the history of politics and in the history of economics, our modern epoch is marked off from all preceding epochs by one great event, the French Revolution. Fragonard, who survived that Revolution to lose himself in a new and strange world, is the last at the old masters; David, some sixteen years his junior, is the first of the moderns. Now if we look for the most fundamental distinction between our modern art and the art of past times, I believe we shall find it to be this: the art of the past was produced for a public that wanted it and understood it, by artists who understood and sympathized with their public; the art of our time has been, for the most part, produced for a public that did not want it and misunderstood it, by artists who disliked and despised the public for which they worked. When artist and public were united, art was homogeneous and continuous. Since the divorce of artist and public art has been chaotic and convulsive.
That this divorce between the artist and his public--this dislocation of the right and natural relations between them--has taken place is certain. The causes of it are many and deep-lying in our modern civilization, and I can point out only a few of the more obvious ones.
The first of these is the emergence of a new public. The art of past ages had been distinctively an aristocratic art, created for kings and princes, for the free citizens of slave-holding republics, for the spiritual and intellectual aristocracy of the church, or for a luxurious and frivolous nobility. As the aim of the Revolution was the destruction of aristocratic privilege, it is not surprising that a revolutionary like David should have felt it necessary to destroy the traditions of an art created for the aristocracy. In his own art of painting he succeeded so thoroughly that the painters of the next generation found themselves with no traditions at all. They had not only to work for a public of enriched bourgeois or proletarians who had never cared for art, but they had to create over again the art with which they endeavored to interest this public. How could they succeed? The rift between artist and public had begun, and it has been widening ever since.
If the people had had little to do with the major arts of painting and sculpture, there had yet been, all through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a truly popular art--an art of furniture making, of wood-carving, of forging, of pottery. Every craftsman was an artist in his degree, and every artist was but a craftsman of a superior sort. Our machine-making, industrial civilization, intent upon material progress and the satisfaction of material wants, has destroyed this popular art; and at the same time that the artist lost his patronage from above he lost his support from below. He has become a superior person, a sort of demi-gentleman, but he has no longer a splendid nobility to employ him or a world of artist artisans to surround him and understand him.