Home The Nature and Objective of Aesthetics Art and the Artist The Art Work The Art Work in the Making The Creative Mind Art and the Artist Art and the Layman The Experience of Beauty Beauty in Music Painting The Testimony of the History of Painting The Aesthetic Element in Painting The Aesthetic Experience in Painting Poor Art and Rich Art Poetry	THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN PAINTING If the artistic quality in painting is parallel to that of music, does the same hold for the aesthetic experience in plastic art? In answer to this question we find that artists who have expressed themselves on this point whether directly or indirectly speak of the aesthetic attitude towards a painting as do Gurney and Hanslick about music. Pater expresses himself very definitely that "In its primary aspect, a great picture has no more definite message for us than an accidental play of sunlight and shadow for a moment, on the wall or floor:" while Bell, in distinguishing between the aesthetic and nonaesthetic spectator, writes that "people who can not feel pure aesthetic emotion remember pictures by their subjects; whereas people who can, as often as not, have no idea what the subject of a painting is. They have never noticed the representative element, and so when they discuss pictures they talk about the shapes of forms and the relations and quantities of colors. . . . They are concerned only with lines and colors, their relations and quantities and qualities; but from these they win an emotion more profound and far more sublime than any that can be given by the description of facts and ideas." Roger Fry gives us a very clear-cut account of the difference between the purely aesthetic feeling and "the whole complex of feelings which may and generally do accompany the aesthetic feeling when we regard a work of art," by taking an example of what he means from Raphael's Transfiguration. He writes: It is at once apparent that this picture makes a very complex appeal to the mind and feelings. To those who are familiar with the Gospel story of Christ it brings together in a single composition two different events which occurred simultaneously at different places, the Transfiguration of Christ and the unsuccessful attempt of the Disciples during His absence to heal the lunatic boy. This at once arouses a number of complex ideas about which the intellect and feelings may occupy themselves. Goethe's remark on the picture is instructive from this point of view. "It is remarkable," he says, "that any one has ever ventured to query the essential unity of such a composition. How can the upper part be separated from the lower? The two form one whole. Below the suffering and the needy, above the powerful and helpful--mutually dependent, mutually illustrative." Munch It will be seen at once what an immense complex of feelings interpenetrating and mutually affecting one another such a work sets up in the mind of a Christian spectator, and all this merely by the content of the picture, its subject, the dramatic story it tells. Now if our Christian spectator has also a knowledge of human nature he will be struck by the fact that these figures, especially in the lower group, are all extremely incongruous with any idea he is likely to have formed of the people who surrounded Christ in the Gospel narrative. And according to his prepossessions he is likely to be shocked or pleased to find instead of the poor and unsophisticated peasants and fisher-folk who followed Christ, a number of noble, dignified, and academic gentlemen in improbable garments and purely theatrical poses. Again the representation merely as representation, will set up a number of feelings and perhaps of critical thoughts dependent upon innumerable associated ideas in the spectator's mind. Now all these reactions to the picture are open to any one who has enough understanding of natural form to recognize it when represented adequately. There is no need for him to have any particular sensibility to form as such. Let us now take for our spectator a person highly endowed with the special sensibility to form, who feels the intervals and relations of forms as a musical person feels the intervals and relations of tones, and let us suppose him either completely ignorant of, or indifferent to, the Gospel story. Such a spectator will be likely to be immensely excited by the extraordinary power of co-ordination of many complex masses in a single inevitable whole, by the delicate equilibrium of many directions of line. He will at once feel that the apparent division into two parts is only apparent, that they are co-ordinated by a quite peculiar power of grasping the possible correlations. He will almost certainly be immensely excited and moved, but his emotion will have nothing to do with the emotions which we have discussed hitherto, since in this case we have supposed our spectator to have no clue to them. It is evident then that we have the possibility of infinitely diverse reactions to a work of art. We may imagine, for instance, that our pagan spectator, though entirely unaffected by the story, is yet conscious that the figures represent men, and that their gestures are indicative of certain states of mind and, in consequence, we may suppose that according to an internal bias his emotion is either heightened or hindered by the recognition of their rhetorical insincerity. Or we may suppose him to be so absorbed in purely formal relations as to be indifferent even to this aspect of the design as representation. We may suppose him to be moved by the pure contemplation of the spatial relations of plastic volumes. It is when we have got to this point that we seem to have isolated this extremely elusive aesthetic quality which is the one constant quality of all works of art, and which seems to be independent of all the prepossessions and associations which the spectator brings with him from his past life. Perhaps the most lucid and vivid account of the painter's attitude towards the world is given by Whistler in his Ten O'Clock. He attacks the critic or writer who brings about a misconception of the art of painting by considering it from a literary point of view as a hieroglyph, symbol, or story. Such a point of view, Whistler holds, is a degradation of art, for art is neither science nor morality, but is "selfishly occupied with her own perfection only--having no desire to teach-seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times," as did Rembrandt in the Jew's quarter of Amsterdam, or Tintoret and Paul Veronese among the Venetians or Velasquez at the Court of Philip. No reformers were these great men--no improvers of the ways of others! Their productions alone were their occupation and, filled with the poetry of their science, they required not to alter their surroundings,--for, as the Law of their Art was revealed to them, they saw, in the development of their work, that beauty which, to them was as much a matter of certainty and triumph as is to the astronomer the verification of the result, foreseen with the light given to him alone. In all this, their world was completely severed from that of their fellowcreatures with whom sentiment is mistaken for poetry and for whom there is no perfect work that shall not be explained by the benefit conferred upon themselves. Nor is the painter a botanist or copyist of nature, but "one who sees in her choice selection of brilliant tones and delicate tints, suggestions of future harmonies," and "in the long curve of the narrow leaf, corrected by the straight, tall stem, he learns how grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances sweetness, that elegance shall be the result," who sees "in the citron wing of the pale butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange . . . the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender, saffron pillars, and is taught how the delicate drawing upon the walls shall be traced in tender tones of orpiment, and repeated by the base in notes of graver hue." The painter is the artist whose work surpasses what is called nature, "and the Gods stand by and marvel, and perceive how far away more beautiful is the Venus of Melos than was their own Eve." The nature of the painter's experience of the world about him and the aesthetic quality in a painting constitute the theme of Browning Fra Lippo Lippi. In one section of the poem the painter and the prior are discussing the significance of the painter's art. The painter is speaking: The beauty and the wonder and the power, The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades, Changes, surprises,--and God made it all! --For what? do you feel thankful, aye or no, For this fair town's face, yonder river's line, The mountain round it and the sky above, Much more the figures of man, woman, child, These are the frame to? What's it all about? To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon, Wondered at? oh, this last of course!--you say. But why not do as well as say,--paint these Just as they are, careless what comes of it? God's works--paint any one, and count it crime To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His works Are here already--nature is complete: Suppose you reproduce her--(which you can't) There's no advantage! you must beat her, then." For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted--better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that-- God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now, Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk, And trust me but you should, though! How much more, If I drew higher things with the same truth! That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place, Interpret God to all of you! oh, oh, It makes me mad to see what men shall do And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us, Nor blank--it means intensely, and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink. "Aye, but you don't so instigate to prayer!" Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain It does not say to folks--remember matins, Or, mind you fast next Friday." Why, for this What need of art at all? A skull and bones, Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best, A bell to chime the hour with, does as well. I painted a Saint Laurence six months since At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style: "How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?" I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns-- "Already not one phiz of your three slaves That turn the Deacon off his toasted side, But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content, The pious people have so eased their own When coming to say prayers there in a rage: We get on fast to see the bricks beneath. Expect another job this time next year, For pity and religion grow i' the crowd-- Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!