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The most significant tendency of art and the greatest danger, which operates in all fields, is, therefore, that commercialism, mass-production, standardization, and the heeding of large volumes of demand will lead to an increase in the quantity of art-production but a decrease in the average of its quality, unless the evils of the system are counteracted by certain developments, the chief of which are education, co-operation, and the birth of a new attitude with regard to art-ideals.
Our attitude towards the arts must lead us to relate them more closely to our other interests and, as a corollary, the different kinds and different values of artistic enjoyment must be synthesized. We desire neither to set art upon a pedestal of superiority nor to despise it as a recreative frivolity. We need to realize on the one hand that all human activities possess of a necessity positive or negative artistic significance which we cannot avoid; even though we consciously ignore art,we are subconsciously and indirectly influenced. Further, we cannot disregard the close economic relationship between the artistic and the merely utilitarian.
We have seen something, but only one aspect, of this when discussing applied art; the relation is wider than this, since, for example, the amount of time, energy, money, and material available for artistic purposes is closely connected with material economic conditions. And, still further, there is the psychological or spiritual element, art satisfying human needs which are unsatisfied by other activities, supplementing, filling the gaps in our personal development. We cannot put art into a watertight compartment. The extent to which art appeals to an individual, and the particular way in which and the special medium through which artistic impulses find expression, will depend very largely upon biological and social factors, upon the materially ordered associations of the individual, his work, his health, everything that impinges upon his life. Further research will expose the fundamental reasons for this, but even now we realize that a love of dancing, of the theatre, of poetry, of sculpture is nota mere gift or genius or taste or predilection but also something which is fostered and directed by material environment. Confronted with this realization, we must regard art as an inseparable organic element in life, not as a superimposed culture which may or may not exist in any individual or take any form.
And the corollary of this, as said before, is that, since artistic potentialities exist in all men according to their being and environment, the realm of art will present as large a variety of values, types, and manifestations as does our life itself. Yet all these manifestations are part of one. Good, bad, or indifferent, they represent the best, most suitable art that different men at any time are capable of appreciating or desirous of cultivating. This is the excuse for our plea for broadmindedness.