This illustrated book of art essays was published in 1920.
Contents:
Art and life.--An essay in aesthetics.--The ottoman and the whatnot.--The artist's vision.--Art and socialism.--Art and science.--The art of the Bushmen.--Negro sculpture.--Ancient American art.--The Munich exhibition of Mohammedan art.--Giotto.--The art of Florence.--The Jacquemart-Andre collection.--Durer and his contemporaries.--El Greco.--Three pictures in tempera by William Blake.--Claude.--Aubrey Beardsley's drawings.--The French post-impressionists.--Drawings at the Burlington fine arts club.--Paul Cezanne.--Renoir.--A possible domestic architecture.--Jean Marchand.--Retrospect
Preface: :
This book contains a selection from my writings on Art extending
over a period of twenty years. Some essays have never before been published in England ; and I have also added a good deal of new matter and made slight corrections throughout. In the laborious work of hunting up lost and forgotten publications, and in the work of selection, revision, and arrangement I owe everything to Mr. R. R. Tatlock's devoted and patient labour.
.........................................................................................
Excerpts:
When we look at ancient works of art we habitually treat them
not merely as objects of aesthetic enjoyment but also as
successive deposits of the human imagination. It is indeed
this view of works of art as crystallised history that accounts
for much of the interest felt in ancient art by those who have but
little aesthetic feeling and who find nothing to interest them in the work of their contemporaries where the historical motive is lacking and they are left face to face with bare aesthetic values.
I once knew an old gentleman who had retired from his city office
to a country house - a fussy, feeble little being who had cut no great figure in life. He had built himself a house which was preternaturally hideous ; his taste was deplorable and his manners indifferent ; but he had a dream, the dream of himself as an exquisite and refined intellectual dandy living in a society of elegant frivolity. To realise this dream he had spent large sums in buying up every scrap of eighteenth-century French furniture which he could lay hands on. These he stored in an immense upper floor in his house which was always locked except when he went up to indulge in his dream and to become for a
time a courtier at Versailles doing homage to the du Barry, whose toilet-tables and what-nots were strewn pell-mell about the room without order or effect of any kind. Such is an extreme instance of the historical way of looking at works of art. For this old gentleman, as for how many an American millionaire, art was merely a help to an imagined dream life.
....................................................................................
Art and Socialism:
I am not a Socialist, as I understand that word, nor can I pre-
tend to have worked out those complex estimates of economic
possibility which are needed before one can endorse the
hopeful forecasts of Lady Warwick, Mr. Money, and Mr.
Wells. What I propose to do here is first to discuss what effect
plutocracy, such as it is to-day, has had of late, and is likely to have in the near future, upon one of the things which I should like to imagine continuing upon our planet - namely, art. And then briefly to prognosticate its chances under such a regime as my colleagues have sketched.
Genre: Western
Contents:
Art and life.--An essay in aesthetics.--The ottoman and the whatnot.--The artist's vision.--Art and socialism.--Art and science.--The art of the Bushmen.--Negro sculpture.--Ancient American art.--The Munich exhibition of Mohammedan art.--Giotto.--The art of Florence.--The Jacquemart-Andre collection.--Durer and his contemporaries.--El Greco.--Three pictures in tempera by William Blake.--Claude.--Aubrey Beardsley's drawings.--The French post-impressionists.--Drawings at the Burlington fine arts club.--Paul Cezanne.--Renoir.--A possible domestic architecture.--Jean Marchand.--Retrospect
Preface: :
This book contains a selection from my writings on Art extending
over a period of twenty years. Some essays have never before been published in England ; and I have also added a good deal of new matter and made slight corrections throughout. In the laborious work of hunting up lost and forgotten publications, and in the work of selection, revision, and arrangement I owe everything to Mr. R. R. Tatlock's devoted and patient labour.
.........................................................................................
Excerpts:
When we look at ancient works of art we habitually treat them
not merely as objects of aesthetic enjoyment but also as
successive deposits of the human imagination. It is indeed
this view of works of art as crystallised history that accounts
for much of the interest felt in ancient art by those who have but
little aesthetic feeling and who find nothing to interest them in the work of their contemporaries where the historical motive is lacking and they are left face to face with bare aesthetic values.
I once knew an old gentleman who had retired from his city office
to a country house - a fussy, feeble little being who had cut no great figure in life. He had built himself a house which was preternaturally hideous ; his taste was deplorable and his manners indifferent ; but he had a dream, the dream of himself as an exquisite and refined intellectual dandy living in a society of elegant frivolity. To realise this dream he had spent large sums in buying up every scrap of eighteenth-century French furniture which he could lay hands on. These he stored in an immense upper floor in his house which was always locked except when he went up to indulge in his dream and to become for a
time a courtier at Versailles doing homage to the du Barry, whose toilet-tables and what-nots were strewn pell-mell about the room without order or effect of any kind. Such is an extreme instance of the historical way of looking at works of art. For this old gentleman, as for how many an American millionaire, art was merely a help to an imagined dream life.
....................................................................................
Art and Socialism:
I am not a Socialist, as I understand that word, nor can I pre-
tend to have worked out those complex estimates of economic
possibility which are needed before one can endorse the
hopeful forecasts of Lady Warwick, Mr. Money, and Mr.
Wells. What I propose to do here is first to discuss what effect
plutocracy, such as it is to-day, has had of late, and is likely to have in the near future, upon one of the things which I should like to imagine continuing upon our planet - namely, art. And then briefly to prognosticate its chances under such a regime as my colleagues have sketched.
Genre: Western
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