Clive Bell - Art
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Clive Bell >> Art
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ART
by
CLIVE BELL
1913
[Illustration: WEI FIGURE, FIFTH CENTURY
_In M. Vignier's Collection_]
New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers
Printed in Great Britain
All rights reserved
PREFACE
In this little book I have tried to develop a complete theory of visual
art. I have put forward an hypothesis by reference to which the
respectability, though not the validity, of all aesthetic judgments can
be tested, in the light of which the history of art from palaeolithic
days to the present becomes intelligible, by adopting which we give
intellectual backing to an almost universal and immemorial conviction.
Everyone in his heart believes that there is a real distinction between
works of art and all other objects; this belief my hypothesis justifies.
We all feel that art is immensely important; my hypothesis affords
reason for thinking it so. In fact, the great merit of this hypothesis
of mine is that it seems to explain what we know to be true. Anyone who
is curious to discover why we call a Persian carpet or a fresco by Piero
della Francesca a work of art, and a portrait-bust of Hadrian or a
popular problem-picture rubbish, will here find satisfaction. He will
find, too, that to the familiar counters of criticism--_e.g._ "good
drawing," "magnificent design," "mechanical," "unfelt," "ill-organised,"
"sensitive,"--is given, what such terms sometimes lack, a definite
meaning. In a word, my hypothesis works; that is unusual: to some it has
seemed not only workable but true; that is miraculous almost.
In fifty or sixty thousand words, though one may develop a theory
adequately, one cannot pretend to develop it exhaustively. My book is a
simplification. I have tried to make a generalisation about the nature
of art that shall be at once true, coherent, and comprehensible. I have
sought a theory which should explain the whole of my aesthetic
experience and suggest a solution of every problem, but I have not
attempted to answer in detail all the questions that proposed
themselves, or to follow any one of them along its slenderest
ramifications. The science of aesthetics is a complex business and so is
the history of art; my hope has been to write about them something
simple and true. For instance, though I have indicated very clearly, and
even repetitiously, what I take to be essential in a work of art, I
have not discussed as fully as I might have done the relation of the
essential to the unessential. There is a great deal more to be said
about the mind of the artist and the nature of the artistic problem. It
remains for someone who is an artist, a psychologist, and an expert in
human limitations to tell us how far the unessential is a necessary
means to the essential--to tell us whether it is easy or difficult or
impossible for the artist to destroy every rung in the ladder by which
he has climbed to the stars.
My first chapter epitomises discussions and conversations and long
strands of cloudy speculation which, condensed to solid argument, would
still fill two or three stout volumes: some day, perhaps, I shall write
one of them if my critics are rash enough to provoke me. As for my third
chapter--a sketch of the history of fourteen hundred years--that it is a
simplification goes without saying. Here I have used a series of
historical generalisations to illustrate my theory; and here, again, I
believe in my theory, and am persuaded that anyone who will consider the
history of art in its light will find that history more intelligible
than of old. At the same time I willingly admit that in fact the
contrasts are less violent, the hills less precipitous, than they must
be made to appear in a chart of this sort. Doubtless it would be well if
this chapter also were expanded into half a dozen readable volumes, but
that it cannot be until the learned authorities have learnt to write or
some writer has learnt to be patient.
Those conversations and discussions that have tempered and burnished the
theories advanced in my first chapter have been carried on for the most
part with Mr. Roger Fry, to whom, therefore, I owe a debt that defies
exact computation. In the first place, I can thank him, as joint-editor
of _The Burlington Magazine_, for permission to reprint some part of an
essay contributed by me to that periodical. That obligation discharged,
I come to a more complicated reckoning. The first time I met Mr. Fry, in
a railway carriage plying between Cambridge and London, we fell into
talk about contemporary art and its relation to all other art; it seems
to me sometimes that we have been talking about the same thing ever
since, but my friends assure me that it is not quite so bad as that. Mr.
Fry, I remember, had recently become familiar with the modern French
masters--Cezanne, Gauguin, Matisse: I enjoyed the advantage of a longer
acquaintance. Already, however, Mr. Fry had published his _Essay in
Aesthetics_, which, to my thinking, was the most helpful contribution to
the science that had been made since the days of Kant. We talked a good
deal about that essay, and then we discussed the possibility of a
"Post-Impressionist" Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. We did not
call it "Post-Impressionist"; the word was invented later by Mr. Fry,
which makes me think it a little hard that the more advanced critics
should so often upbraid him for not knowing what "Post-Impressionism"
means.
For some years Mr. Fry and I have been arguing, more or less amicably,
about the principles of aesthetics. We still disagree profoundly. I like
to think that I have not moved an inch from my original position, but I
must confess that the cautious doubts and reservations that have
insinuated themselves into this Preface are all indirect consequences of
my friend's criticism. And it is not only of general ideas and
fundamental things that we have talked; Mr. Fry and I have wrangled for
hours about particular works of art. In such cases the extent to which
one may have affected the judgment of the other cannot possibly be
appraised, nor need it be: neither of us, I think, covets the doubtful
honours of proselytism. Surely whoever appreciates a fine work of art
may be allowed the exquisite pleasure of supposing that he has made a
discovery? Nevertheless, since all artistic theories are based on
aesthetic judgments, it is clear that should one affect the judgments of
another, he may affect, indirectly, some of his theories; and it is
certain that some of my historical generalisations have been modified,
and even demolished, by Mr. Fry. His task was not arduous: he had merely
to confront me with some work over which he was sure that I should go
into ecstasies, and then to prove by the most odious and irrefragable
evidence that it belonged to a period which I had concluded, on the
highest _a priori_ grounds, to be utterly barren. I can only hope that
Mr. Fry's scholarship has been as profitable to me as it has been
painful: I have travelled with him through France, Italy, and the near
East, suffering acutely, not always, I am glad to remember, in silence;
for the man who stabs a generalisation with a fact forfeits all claim on
good-fellowship and the usages of polite society.
I have to thank my friend Mr. Vernon Rendall for permission to make what
use I chose of the articles I have contributed from time to time to
_The Athenaeum_: if I have made any use of what belongs by law to the
proprietors of other papers I herewith offer the customary dues. My
readers will be as grateful as I to M. Vignier, M. Druet, and Mr.
Kevorkian, of the Persian Art Gallery, since it is they who have made it
certain that the purchaser will get something he likes for his money. To
Mr. Eric Maclagan of South Kensington, and Mr. Joyce of the British
Museum, I owe a more private and particular debt. My wife has been good
enough to read both the MS. and proof of this book; she has corrected
some errors, and called attention to the more glaring offences against
Christian charity. You must not attempt, therefore, to excuse the author
on the ground of inadvertence or haste.
CLIVE BELL.
November 1913.
CONTENTS
I. WHAT IS ART?
I. THE AESTHETIC HYPOTHESIS page 3
II. AESTHETICS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM 38
III. THE METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS 49
II. ART AND LIFE
I. ART AND RELIGION 75
II. ART AND HISTORY 95
III. ART AND ETHICS 106
III. THE CHRISTIAN SLOPE
I. THE RISE OF CHRISTIAN ART 121
II. GREATNESS AND DECLINE 138
III. THE CLASSICAL RENAISSANCE AND ITS
DISEASES 156
IV. ALID EX ALIO 181
IV. THE MOVEMENT
I. THE DEBT TO CEZANNE 199
II. SIMPLIFICATION AND DESIGN 215
III. THE PATHETIC FALLACY 239
V. THE FUTURE
I. SOCIETY AND ART 251
II. ART AND SOCIETY 276
ILLUSTRATIONS
I. WEI FIGURE FRONTISPIECE
II. PERSIAN DISH 3
III. PERUVIAN POT 75
IV. BYZANTINE MOSAIC 121
V. CEZANNE 199
VI. PICASSO 251
I
WHAT IS ART?
I. THE AESTHETIC HYPOTHESIS
II. AESTHETICS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM
III. THE METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESIS
[Illustration: PERSIAN DISH, ELEVENTH CENTURY (?)
_By permission of Mr. Kevorkian of the Persian Art Gallery_]
I
THE AESTHETIC HYPOTHESIS
It is improbable that more nonsense has been written about aesthetics
than about anything else: the literature of the subject is not large
enough for that. It is certain, however, that about no subject with
which I am acquainted has so little been said that is at all to the
purpose. The explanation is discoverable. He who would elaborate a
plausible theory of aesthetics must possess two qualities--artistic
sensibility and a turn for clear thinking. Without sensibility a man can
have no aesthetic experience, and, obviously, theories not based on
broad and deep aesthetic experience are worthless. Only those for whom
art is a constant source of passionate emotion can possess the data from
which profitable theories may be deduced; but to deduce profitable
theories even from accurate data involves a certain amount of
brain-work, and, unfortunately, robust intellects and delicate
sensibilities are not inseparable. As often as not, the hardest thinkers
have had no aesthetic experience whatever. I have a friend blessed with
an intellect as keen as a drill, who, though he takes an interest in
aesthetics, has never during a life of almost forty years been guilty of
an aesthetic emotion. So, having no faculty for distinguishing a work of
art from a handsaw, he is apt to rear up a pyramid of irrefragable
argument on the hypothesis that a handsaw is a work of art. This defect
robs his perspicuous and subtle reasoning of much of its value; for it
has ever been a maxim that faultless logic can win but little credit for
conclusions that are based on premises notoriously false. Every cloud,
however, has its silver lining, and this insensibility, though unlucky
in that it makes my friend incapable of choosing a sound basis for his
argument, mercifully blinds him to the absurdity of his conclusions
while leaving him in full enjoyment of his masterly dialectic. People
who set out from the hypothesis that Sir Edwin Landseer was the finest
painter that ever lived will feel no uneasiness about an aesthetic which
proves that Giotto was the worst. So, my friend, when he arrives very
logically at the conclusion that a work of art should be small or round
or smooth, or that to appreciate fully a picture you should pace smartly
before it or set it spinning like a top, cannot guess why I ask him
whether he has lately been to Cambridge, a place he sometimes visits.
On the other hand, people who respond immediately and surely to works of
art, though, in my judgment, more enviable than men of massive intellect
but slight sensibility, are often quite as incapable of talking sense
about aesthetics. Their heads are not always very clear. They possess
the data on which any system must be based; but, generally, they want
the power that draws correct inferences from true data. Having received
aesthetic emotions from works of art, they are in a position to seek out
the quality common to all that have moved them, but, in fact, they do
nothing of the sort. I do not blame them. Why should they bother to
examine their feelings when for them to feel is enough? Why should they
stop to think when they are not very good at thinking? Why should they
hunt for a common quality in all objects that move them in a particular
way when they can linger over the many delicious and peculiar charms of
each as it comes? So, if they write criticism and call it aesthetics, if
they imagine that they are talking about Art when they are talking about
particular works of art or even about the technique of painting, if,
loving particular works they find tedious the consideration of art in
general, perhaps they have chosen the better part. If they are not
curious about the nature of their emotion, nor about the quality common
to all objects that provoke it, they have my sympathy, and, as what they
say is often charming and suggestive, my admiration too. Only let no one
suppose that what they write and talk is aesthetics; it is criticism, or
just "shop."
The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal
experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion
we call works of art. All sensitive people agree that there is a
peculiar emotion provoked by works of art. I do not mean, of course,
that all works provoke the same emotion. On the contrary, every work
produces a different emotion. But all these emotions are recognisably
the same in kind; so far, at any rate, the best opinion is on my side.
That there is a particular kind of emotion provoked by works of visual
art, and that this emotion is provoked by every kind of visual art, by
pictures, sculptures, buildings, pots, carvings, textiles, &c., &c., is
not disputed, I think, by anyone capable of feeling it. This emotion is
called the aesthetic emotion; and if we can discover some quality common
and peculiar to all the objects that provoke it, we shall have solved
what I take to be the central problem of aesthetics. We shall have
discovered the essential quality in a work of art, the quality that
distinguishes works of art from all other classes of objects.
For either all works of visual art have some common quality, or when we
speak of "works of art" we gibber. Everyone speaks of "art," making a
mental classification by which he distinguishes the class "works of art"
from all other classes. What is the justification of this
classification? What is the quality common and peculiar to all members
of this class? Whatever it be, no doubt it is often found in company
with other qualities; but they are adventitious--it is essential. There
must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist;
possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless.
What is this quality? What quality is shared by all objects that provoke
our aesthetic emotions? What quality is common to Sta. Sophia and the
windows at Chartres, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets,
Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della
Francesca, and Cezanne? Only one answer seems possible--significant
form. In each, lines and colours combined in a particular way, certain
forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These
relations and combinations of lines and colours, these aesthetically
moving forms, I call "Significant Form"; and "Significant Form" is the
one quality common to all works of visual art.
At this point it may be objected that I am making aesthetics a purely
subjective business, since my only data are personal experiences of a
particular emotion. It will be said that the objects that provoke this
emotion vary with each individual, and that therefore a system of
aesthetics can have no objective validity. It must be replied that any
system of aesthetics which pretends to be based on some objective truth
is so palpably ridiculous as not to be worth discussing. We have no
other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it. The
objects that provoke aesthetic emotion vary with each individual.
Aesthetic judgments are, as the saying goes, matters of taste; and about
tastes, as everyone is proud to admit, there is no disputing. A good
critic may be able to make me see in a picture that had left me cold
things that I had overlooked, till at last, receiving the aesthetic
emotion, I recognise it as a work of art. To be continually pointing out
those parts, the sum, or rather the combination, of which unite to
produce significant form, is the function of criticism. But it is
useless for a critic to tell me that something is a work of art; he must
make me feel it for myself. This he can do only by making me see; he
must get at my emotions through my eyes. Unless he can make me see
something that moves me, he cannot force my emotions. I have no right to
consider anything a work of art to which I cannot react emotionally; and
I have no right to look for the essential quality in anything that I
have not _felt_ to be a work of art. The critic can affect my aesthetic
theories only by affecting my aesthetic experience. All systems of
aesthetics must be based on personal experience--that is to say, they
must be subjective.
Yet, though all aesthetic theories must be based on aesthetic judgments,
and ultimately all aesthetic judgments must be matters of personal
taste, it would be rash to assert that no theory of aesthetics can have
general validity. For, though A, B, C, D are the works that move me, and
A, D, E, F the works that move you, it may well be that _x_ is the only
quality believed by either of us to be common to all the works in his
list. We may all agree about aesthetics, and yet differ about particular
works of art. We may differ as to the presence or absence of the quality
_x_. My immediate object will be to show that significant form is the
only quality common and peculiar to all the works of visual art that
move me; and I will ask those whose aesthetic experience does not tally
with mine to see whether this quality is not also, in their judgment,
common to all works that move them, and whether they can discover any
other quality of which the same can be said.
Also at this point a query arises, irrelevant indeed, but hardly to be
suppressed: "Why are we so profoundly moved by forms related in a
particular way?" The question is extremely interesting, but irrelevant
to aesthetics. In pure aesthetics we have only to consider our emotion
and its object: for the purposes of aesthetics we have no right, neither
is there any necessity, to pry behind the object into the state of mind
of him who made it. Later, I shall attempt to answer the question; for
by so doing I may be able to develop my theory of the relation of art to
life. I shall not, however, be under the delusion that I am rounding off
my theory of aesthetics. For a discussion of aesthetics, it need be
agreed only that forms arranged and combined according to certain
unknown and mysterious laws do move us in a particular way, and that it
is the business of an artist so to combine and arrange them that they
shall move us. These moving combinations and arrangements I have called,
for the sake of convenience and for a reason that will appear later,
"Significant Form."
A third interruption has to be met. "Are you forgetting about colour?"
someone inquires. Certainly not; my term "significant form" included
combinations of lines and of colours. The distinction between form and
colour is an unreal one; you cannot conceive a colourless line or a
colourless space; neither can you conceive a formless relation of
colours. In a black and white drawing the spaces are all white and all
are bounded by black lines; in most oil paintings the spaces are
multi-coloured and so are the boundaries; you cannot imagine a boundary
line without any content, or a content without a boundary line.
Therefore, when I speak of significant form, I mean a combination of
lines and colours (counting white and black as colours) that moves me
aesthetically.
Some people may be surprised at my not having called this "beauty." Of
course, to those who define beauty as "combinations of lines and colours
that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willingly concede the right of
substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may
be, are apt to apply the epithet "beautiful" to objects that do not
provoke that peculiar emotion produced by works of art. Everyone, I
suspect, has called a butterfly or a flower beautiful. Does anyone feel
the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for
a cathedral or a picture? Surely, it is not what I call an aesthetic
emotion that most of us feel, generally, for natural beauty. I shall
suggest, later, that some people may, occasionally, see in nature what
we see in art, and feel for her an aesthetic emotion; but I am satisfied
that, as a rule, most people feel a very different kind of emotion for
birds and flowers and the wings of butterflies from that which they feel
for pictures, pots, temples and statues. Why these beautiful things do
not move us as works of art move is another, and not an aesthetic,
question. For our immediate purpose we have to discover only what
quality is common to objects that do move us as works of art. In the
last part of this chapter, when I try to answer the question--"Why are
we so profoundly moved by some combinations of lines and colours?" I
shall hope to offer an acceptable explanation of why we are less
profoundly moved by others.
Since we call a quality that does not raise the characteristic aesthetic
emotion "Beauty," it would be misleading to call by the same name the
quality that does. To make "beauty" the object of the aesthetic emotion,
we must give to the word an over-strict and unfamiliar definition.
Everyone sometimes uses "beauty" in an unaesthetic sense; most people
habitually do so. To everyone, except perhaps here and there an
occasional aesthete, the commonest sense of the word is unaesthetic. Of
its grosser abuse, patent in our chatter about "beautiful huntin'" and
"beautiful shootin'," I need not take account; it would be open to the
precious to reply that they never do so abuse it. Besides, here there is
no danger of confusion between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic use;
but when we speak of a beautiful woman there is. When an ordinary man
speaks of a beautiful woman he certainly does not mean only that she
moves him aesthetically; but when an artist calls a withered old hag
beautiful he may sometimes mean what he means when he calls a battered
torso beautiful. The ordinary man, if he be also a man of taste, will
call the battered torso beautiful, but he will not call a withered hag
beautiful because, in the matter of women, it is not to the aesthetic
quality that the hag may possess, but to some other quality that he
assigns the epithet. Indeed, most of us never dream of going for
aesthetic emotions to human beings, from whom we ask something very
different. This "something," when we find it in a young woman, we are
apt to call "beauty." We live in a nice age. With the man-in-the-street
"beautiful" is more often than not synonymous with "desirable"; the word
does not necessarily connote any aesthetic reaction whatever, and I am
tempted to believe that in the minds of many the sexual flavour of the
word is stronger than the aesthetic. I have noticed a consistency in
those to whom the most beautiful thing in the world is a beautiful
woman, and the next most beautiful thing a picture of one. The confusion
between aesthetic and sensual beauty is not in their case so great as
might be supposed. Perhaps there is none; for perhaps they have never
had an aesthetic emotion to confuse with their other emotions. The art
that they call "beautiful" is generally closely related to the women. A
beautiful picture is a photograph of a pretty girl; beautiful music, the
music that provokes emotions similar to those provoked by young ladies
in musical farces; and beautiful poetry, the poetry that recalls the
same emotions felt, twenty years earlier, for the rector's daughter.
Clearly the word "beauty" is used to connote the objects of quite
distinguishable emotions, and that is a reason for not employing a term
which would land me inevitably in confusions and misunderstandings with
my readers.
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