A pastel study of the head of Jesus, made by Leonardo for his "The Last Supper." The most powerful and expressive head of Jesus ever made in art. AS TO CLEVERNESS The New Standard Dictionary thus defines Cleverness: Adroit, bright, dexterous, expert, ingenious, quick, skillful, smart, talented. Cleverness is useful in everything, sufficient for nothing. Be clever! Be clever, for ever more be clever!! too clever!!! It's clever-but is it Art? Clever men are good, but not the best. AMIEL. Be not ANON. KIPLING. GOETHE. Great art is rarely clever and clever art is rarely great. ANON. A merely clever work of art can never rise to greatness, or arouse the love of mankind, if it fails to lift the majority of a race above merely intellectual surprises, or commonplace emotions. ANON. CHAPTER VII A STANDARD OF ART MEASUREMENT SECTION ONE CONCEPTION IN ART Appeared in the February, 1917, issue of "The Art World" In his "Philosophy of Art," a collection of lectures delivered at the École des Beaux Arts at Paris, Taine opens thus his chapter on "Kinds and Degrees of the Ideal": Among the ideas that artists express in their works are there some that are superior to others? Can one indicate one character that is worth more than another? Is there for each object an ideal form, outside of which all must be deviation or error? Can one discover a principle of subordination which assigns different ranks to different works of art? At first view, one is tempted to say no; the definition of art that we have found seems to bar the route to such a research; it leads us to believe that works of art are all on the same level, and that the field is open to arbitrary judgment. . . . Yet, nevertheless, in the imaginary world, as well as in the real world, there are different ranks, because there are different values. The public and the connoisseurs assign their ranks to some and estimate the value of others. We have done nothing else during the last five years, in our survey of the schools of Italy, of the Low Countries and of Greece. We have always, and at each step, passed judgment. Without knowing it, we had in our hand an instrument for measuring. Other men do as we are doing, and in criticism, as elsewhere, there are certain settled rules. Every one recognizes today that certain poets, like Dante and Shakespeare, certain composers like Mozart and Beethoven, occupy the highest place in their art. We accord it to Goethe among all the writers of our century. Among the Flemish no one disputes the place of Rubens; among the Dutch none questions the place of Rembrandt; among the Germans that of Dürer, and among the Venetians that of Titian are not challenged. Three artists of the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Raphael rise, by unanimous consent, above all the others. (Italics are ours.) And Charles Dudley Warner said in his "Fashions in Literature": If there is a standard of literary excellence-as there is of all beauty-and it seems to me that to doubt this in the intellectual world is to doubt the prevalence of order that exists in the naturalit is certainly possible to ascertain whether a new production conforms, and how far it conforms, to the universally accepted canons of art. As this book by Mr. Warner was published with a preface by so careful a writer as H. W. Mabie, in which he approves Warner's position, we feel safe in saying: It is possible to give a MEASURE or YARD-STICK, to speak plainly, by means of which any cultured layman can, after more or less study, assign to any work of art its proper rank in the hierarchy of Art. We shall attempt to give such a yard-stick or standard in the following formula: The highest Standard of Art Valuation is: POWER OF EXPRESSION; and the elements of art expression are Six: CONCEPTION, COMPOSITION, EXPRESSION; DRAWING, COLOR, TECHNIQUE; and that is the Greatest work of art, in which these six elements of expression are displayed in the highest degree. Of these six elements of the art-process, the first three make up the thought-side, the ideal and spiritual side, of a work of art; the other three elements, make up the manual side, the craftsmanship and artistry side of a work of art. Now, when we contemplate a work of art, the first thing we should do is: to estimate the social importance and beneficence of the Subject chosen. We rate all art subjects in the following order of their social importance and nobility: Religious, Ethical, Allegorical, Historical, Important Portraits, Genre or Contemporary Life, Landscapes and Marines, Still-Life. For, it is evident that the effect of the operation upon society of the spirit and form of Michael Angelo's "Creation," is far more potent and beneficent than the operation of a "Dutch Tap Room Scene" by Teniers. Having decided on the social value of the subject of the work |