XXTHE ARTISTIC SENSE
What is the long and short of it?Art is long, life is short.
What is the long and short of it?Art is long, life is short.
What is the long and short of it?Art is long, life is short.
What is the long and short of it?
Art is long, life is short.
AFTER a short tour through Italy, they had reached the Vesuvian Bay. As Mrs. Cultus expressed it, “Heretofore we have been visiting lakes and crypts, ruins and picture galleries, and now at last have met a volcano. It’s really beautiful, I assure you, quite as artistic as in pictures, and set in a frame of landscape which I don’t wonder artists love to paint. I feel just that way myself. Oh, it is so exquisite with these sloping shores! and in the distance that beautiful Island of Capri.”
Capri, the haunt of so many emperors in art as well as in government. Capri, favorite of the imagination, one of the enchanted isles, legendary locality, with its rustic stone ladder to ascend heavenward. Capricious Capri, with its grotto in blue, whereas ordinary mortals would be satisfied with grottoes in green. Picturesque Capri, with rocky foreground, no middle distance whatever, and several Paradises in the background. Mythological Capri, ever under the watchful eye of Minerva of the Promontory. Sportive Capri, with quails on toast, and woodcocks twice a year. Historic Capri, famous to the antiquary and modern economist; infamous, but only in days gone by.
All this appeared very mysterious on the morning that the Doctor looked from Capo da Monti over the Bay of Naples.The island, enveloped in light mist, hung, as it were, in mid-air between sea and sky. Adele and Paul were with him.
“Hazy atmosphere,” remarked the Doctor.
“I see violet tints,” remarked Adele. “I love violets.”
“It looks as if the island had no weight,” said Paul; “it might be blown away by the wind.”
“One of those atmospheric effects,” continued the Doctor, “which some artists portray with great success because much is left to the imagination.”
“Then the other fellow imagines what he likes best; safe, sure plan that; it just suits me,” said Paul. “All the pictures I had in my room at college had a ‘go’ in them, and I imagined what was coming.”
“Happy the artist who has the art of suggestion. It is a rare gift; inborn, I think—the power to make others complete the picture by reading their own best thoughts into it.”
“Some seem to care very little about what they say,” remarked Adele. “I never could understand why they paint a woman looking at herself in a glass; one’s back hair should not be the most conspicuous thing in the picture; and as to those extraordinary soap-bubble-cherubs, they don’t appeal to me, no matter how well they are painted.”
“What sort do you like?” asked Paul the innocent.
“Why, dancing, of course—dancing on one’s knee—that’s the place they would enjoy it most, stretching out their arms in play, not catching flies. Those fly-catching cherubs are just as bad as the bubblers.”
“How much you’re like your mother at times,” thought the Doctor while laughing; then audibly: “You’re right, Adele; art never is very high unless it reaches for something better than catching flies—fleeting impressions.”
“Then from your point of view,” said Paul, “the technical part and the scienceper semay appeal to the physical and mental only; but if you want a picture to be thought about afterwards, the subject must speak to the spiritual sense.”
“Well, rather!” exclaimed the Doctor, now getting somewhat excited; “and more than that, many a well executed work of art has been utterly forgotten simply because the subject had better be forgotten. Some artists have actually killed their pictures before they first touched brush to canvas.”
Adele appeared to agree to this, but said nothing. Paul was not so loftily mystical in his appreciation.
“Perhaps they belong to the ‘yellow’ school?”
“And have the jaundice themselves?” quoth the Doctor, warming up; “perhaps, for a bad subject is apt to have bad influence. No picture worthy the title of masterpiece endures as such unless it possesses the spiritual element and excites spiritual perception of the right kind. In the final analysis, the higher spiritual element is the salvation of any artistic production. Woe betide the artist who belittles his art by what might be called aspiration towards the low, and thinks to justify it by a perfect technique! That is a false position for a true man; for there is but one art—the Art Divine, which cannot be debased by unworthy association.”
“Of course you mean Music,” said Paul, smiling. “Now you’re off on your hobby; every man thinks his own hobby the best—his art divine. You’re just like ’em all, Doc! Look out! don’t measure everything by your own pocket-rule.” The Doctor paid no attention.
“In other arts than Music,” said he, “the physical association is so intimate and permanent that the artist has increased responsibility in consequence.”
“Then greater achievement when he does succeed,” interrupted Adele.
“Possibly, but not probably,” said the Doctor. “I only referred to music because it furnishes an ideal standard by which to judge of the unlimited power (of course divine, if unlimited) which may be exercised through the artistic sense. For instance, Mozart’s ability to excite pure spiritual aspirations towards the good and true by means of the beautifulin melodic phrase, was, and is (for he is immortal), so great that those who yield themselves to his art are often led to forget even the debased Don Juan (miserable subject), and have pure emotions and beautiful visions suggested by the melodic beauty of the music. One might almost say Mozart’s inspired art awakens the dormant Angel who sleeps within the nature of every man. You know what we find stated in Rau’s ‘Tone King’ about him?”
Adele drew close to listen.
“Mozart, when on the border land, when his lovely spirit so melodious in expression could see upwards even more clearly than around and about him, said something like this:
“‘All work is divine, and raises man above earth. We all love earthly things, but there are higher delights than these. I, too, know something of this higher joy of creating. The faculties God has given me render me happy; but I feel that these powers within me are capable of fuller development in eternity. To think that my power of producing something great and fine could cease just when it begins to rise to the full consciousness of all that might be accomplished, would be to doubt the perfection of Divine Wisdom—perhaps my whole being may be absorbed in one flow of immortal harmony, for the musical spheres within one cannot perish.’”
After a pause, the Doctor asked, with much feeling:
“I suppose you know what all this means?”
“Tell us,” whispered Adele.
“It means that all true art in this life springs from Love Divine, and aids in bringing life and immortality to light.”
As the Doctor said this the sound of a simple, plaintive melody came floating upward toward the crest of the hill on which they stood. Paul went forward to see whence it came.
“Some peasants in the next field; one is singing, another playing a pipe, before a shrine.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the Doctor; “not the first time that shepherdsabiding in a field have heard music with a spiritual significance.”
“And neither a Mozart nor very fine art,” remarked Paul.
Adele stood musing, then added, in a subdued voice:
“Yes; it is yet bringing Life and Immortality to Light.”