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Since
art does not exist in a world of absolutes and its acceptance is
dependent on the character of the acceptor, and since establishment
of a taste is thus not independent of sociological forces that are
not always of a purely intellectual nature, the one and only criterion
for the value of that art which has ultimately triumphed lies in
the permanence of its appeal based on its intelligibility. The reason
is not that the public, which is the ultimate judge, comes usually,
in matters over which it ponders for long, to the right conclusion,
but that art which has maintained its reputation through many centuries
must have passed from one taste-upholding type to another. By its
ability thus to give something to groups of such varied intellectual
structure as usually succeed one another through the centuries in
the leadership in the life of taste, it has shown that it possesses
values that range beyond a definite period and are of universal
human appeal.
On the other hand, the recognition that all art rests fundamentally
on the shoulders of a particular taste-upholding type should strengthen
the critical attitude of the individual and his confidence in himself.
If a new taste appearing anywhere is the expression not by any means
of the spirit of the age but only of the spirit of a particular
group that may fail to represent the spirit of the age, then nothing
is more reasonable than to look closely at this group. At no time,
perhaps, has this warning been more necessary than it is today when
even the educated public has so largely convinced itself of its
immaturity in matters of art and so widely accepted the idea of
the freedom of the art, that is to say, of its own divinely ordained
dependence upon the narrow world of art critics and art cliques.
For instance, even the school of painting that pasted bits of shoe-leather
and tram-tickets on its oil paintings, or the dramatic school that
showed a peculiar preference for the problems of the basest eroticism,
has naturally its taste-upholding type, and it would not be difficult
to define it precisely. But if people feel that they must associate
themselves with it though they play their full part in the struggle
for culture, that is to say for the ennobling of human instincts,
this can only be explained by the fact that the natural resistance
that once existed has been broken and that people no longer have
the courage of their aesthetic convictions. Only a thorough self-examination
and, where required, clear-sighted organization of the laity can
help to restore it.
As in the distant past, so also in the recent one, the perceptions
of the artist about himself have changed. The sense of bearing the
dignity of humanity in his hands made the artist capable of the
greatest achievements. But, simultaneously, intelligent people began
to ask themselves what effect this exaggerated artists' assessment
of their function, separation of their intellectual sphere from
that of the ordinary man, would be bound to have in the end on art
itself, how it would ultimately lead of necessity to a false relation
between human and artistic values in the life of art, and in a different
form would produce estrangement from the natural and the popular.
The theory of 'art for art's sake' divorced art from all influence
over life except the purely aesthetic, and so confined it within
a sacred grove whose priests were the artists. Artist-priests performed
their offices, entirely removed from the common herd by the extravagances
in which they indulged at times. The ordinary man could not follow
them. Surprisingly, however, this segregation from the public did
not in all cases mean cessation of dependence on the public.
Artists still needed the patronage of the public they openly despised
because if the external circumstances of an artist's existence are
against him, his whole production is only too likely to collapse.
Artistic creation is not necessarily something that erupts, forcing
its way out with elemental violence. Meredith once wrote to a friend
that he had hung up his poetry on a nail. "Being a servant of the
public, I must wait till my master commands before I take seriously
to singing," he said. This, though perhaps colored by bitterness,
contains a kernel of truth. But external circumstances deny to artistic
gifts in many cases the very beginnings of productive achievement.
Gray was not far from the truth in his "Elegy" when he philosophized
about the "mute inglorious Miltons" resting in the country churchyard.
But mute poets do not lie only in the village churchyards. In the
absence of the conditions for artistic achievement and appreciation,
in the absence of public interest, sympathy and understanding, there
is no achievement.
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