To take an
example: supposing that an idea, common to his race and age, is given
to the artist for treatment; this will be the final end of the work
of art which he produces. But his personal qualities and technical
performance determine the degree of success or failure to which he
attains in presenting that idea and in expressing it with beauty.
Signorelli fails where Perugino excels, in giving adequate and lovely
form to the religious sentiment. Michelangelo is sure of the sublime,
and Raphael of the beautiful.
Art is thus the presentation of the human spirit by the artist to his
fellow-men. The subject-matter of the arts is commensurate with what
man thinks and feels and does. It is as deep as religion, as wide as
life. But what distinguishes art from religion or from life is, that
this subject-matter must assume beautiful form, and must be presented
directly or indirectly to the senses. Art is not the school or the
cathedral, but the playground, the paradise of humanity. It does not
teach, it does not preach. Nothing abstract enters into art's domain.
Truth and goodness are transmuted into beauty there, just as in
science beauty and goodness assume the shape of truth, and in
religion truth and beauty become goodness. The rigid definitions, the
unmistakable laws of science, are not to be found in art. Whatever art
has touched acquires a concrete sensuous embodiment, and thus ideas
presented to the mind in art have lost a portion of their pure
thought-essence.
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