A Critique of Contemporary Art

by Columban Sattler

Art is universal. And with such a profound opening statement, all agreement comes to an end. At least the probability is great because the problem of esthetics is most difficult and seems to call for disagreement.

By this universality of art we do not mean that art (whether of painting, sculpture, music, the dance, or literature) is a universal language understood by all people in all parts of the world. In fact, it is precisely at this point where we begin to disagree. Art is universal in the sense that it is not restricted to any particular country, climate or civilization. It is as old as the human race and is as much a part of man as his eyes or ears, his hunger or thirst. No tribe has ever been discovered that did not have either an art or a religion. And the reason in both cases is that man wishes to reach beyond his own poor limitations and express the higher, inner cravings of his soul for the Good and the Beautiful.

Yet this, which is a part of the very nature of man, has often caused more disagreements than any other phase of his life as a social being. Why is it that something which is so innate that we all tend to express it in various periods of our life should at the same time be a source of contention among men? The causes would be as variable as the differences of opinion, but briefly summed up they may be due to anything from environment and cultural differences to a lack of social and intellectual contact with other races.

Scope of Paper

But the purpose of this writing is not to enter into a broad philosophy of art. First of all we must narrow our view to a particular phase of art, namely, painting and sculpture, as well as a specific period which we will classify as Contemporary. (Only a Van Loon would attempt all the arts throughout the entire history of mankind.) Secondly, even the meaning of the controversial term ART will have to be left to the disputes of the philosophers, although subsequent writing will reveal the generally accepted understanding of that term. Finally, this shall not be so much a discussion of personalities and their individual worth or failure, as a survey of the broad field of Modern or Contemporary Art and its effect on, or relation to, our present society.

Although differences of opinion have always existed, for generations men more or less agreed on general views in art, its meaning, purpose, and function. Never in the history of civilization have there been such confusion and controversy upon the great part of the public as there exists today regarding so-called Modern Art. And so great has this become that the majority of people have become antagonistic toward it. It may well be true that there has always been a gap between the most vital art of a given period and the general public. For example, the great masters of the Middle Ages may not have been immediately comprehensible to the people of that day — and for that matter they are not fully comprehensible even today to those whose education or sensitivity is deficient. Yet the gap today appears to be wider — some even argue that it is a different kind of gap. All of which leaves us with the question: Can our civilization continue without the harmonizing influence of a living art that is understood and enjoyed by the larger part of the public? And more specifically, who is at fault in Modern Art — since admittedly there is one — the artist or the public?

In such a complicated and controversial subject, let us be objective above all. True, it is most difficult in view of the situation. It is something that affects us personally and today, not tomorrow or yesterday. And it is always so much easier to discuss something that has happened in the past. Then we can search out the facts and weigh them in a disinterested manner. But the contemporary is often an issue beclouded by prejudices or real lack of understanding through ignorance of the facts involved. This is an attempt at objectivity in which we will assay the relative worth of Modern Art from the point of view of the artist himself and then from the results produced.

It all began about a hundred years ago. Previous to that, art had passed through a series of interesting stages which must be understood in a broad sense in order to appreciate the current trends. The primitive animal drawings of cave dwellers developed into the amazing wall paintings and adornments of the ancient cradles of civilization, such as Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia. As we approach the Christian era, the instinct to record the beauty of form, color, and movement becomes more strongly developed. Four centuries before Christ, the Greeks brought sculpture to a point of perfection and physical beauty which has never been surpassed, while their architecture still influences us in this day and age. The Dark Ages left the East still supreme with its oriental love of color and decoration as exemplified in Byzantine art, until the spirit of faith swept all of Europe and a new civilization and the greatest culture the world ever knew came to overshadow it. All the arts, with the possible exceptions of music and literature, reached their highest form of perfection in the Middle Ages. This was accountably so too. Moved by a living faith, they sought to reflect the beauty of God's handiwork (which is the first essential of art) — to please, to enchant us, to transport us into the ideal world — and secondly, sought to do all things well (which is the other requisite) — to make things as perfectly as possible.

Spirit of the Renaissance

The spirit of the Renaissance with its humanist philosophy began to sow the seeds of destruction in this vitally alive concept of art. And then came the Reformation. The impact was too great, and under it a great culture began to crumble away. It had to be the death knell of art since the reformers rejected all that made life brighter or happier or pleasurable for men, and above all when they protested against all that was motivated by the spirit of the Church and this greatest of art was definitely Catholic.

Once art lost its close association with religion, a great change slowly overcame the culture of the West. I say slowly advisedly, because the titanic stature of the old Masters was too great to be lost overnight. But divorced from this vital, living force, the arts began to look inward instead of outward, and man at best is a most limited subject. For three hundred years following the Reformation, history records a general downward trend of Western civilization. So apparent has this become that some historians claim that the Reformers have not made one single contribution to civilization. During that time there were a few throwbacks to the glory of the Middle Ages and the spirit of the Renaissance. Such men as El Greco, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Rubens, Titian, and Goya deserve our recognition and attention. But they were great because they were heirs of another age.

With the coming of the Reformation, synchronising as it did with the failure of the Renaissance, art ceased to be an active force in society. Instinctive love for beauty continued for a time in secular life, though with a diminishing force that was finally to be extinguished in the 19th century. The impulse was dead. As a result, art merely became representational. It had no inner spark of life or vitality, any reasonably good photograph was far more charming. It was flat, emotionless, and dull. To make it worse, it assumed a romantic air in the past century — relying more on the poetic subject matter than on the invention of new forms. The exponents of this Romanticism indulged in sentiment, nostalgia, heroic fervor and languid musings. All of which ended in the degradation known as Victorianism.

Impressionism to Expressionism

Now the stage was set. Art could sink no further. A change had to take place lest it disappear from the face of the earth. Then came the revolt. As in the case of any revolt, it was not without relationship to the past, at first. This initial step in what was to be a radically new movement in art was called Impressionism. It meant just that. The representation of nature as it impressed the artist at a glance. Two factors helped considerably in developing this. For one thing, up until this period (the middle of the last century) the artist, in the main, had always worked indoors, whether painting interior or exterior scenes. But now when the idea of moving their easels outdoors became popular, they discovered many fascinating qualities of color in light that was not true of the color as found in their pigments. Secondly, the introduction of photography should not be overlooked, as it forced the artists to ask themselves just how important was representation in art. As a result they attempted to do what no camera could do — and that was to reproduce color as contained in light.

From this developed a whole new palette of colors as well as a school of painting. Their results were interesting, if only as an experiment in light and pigment. They used the colors of the spectrum (that is, white light broken down into its component colors when passed through a prism) as their guide, discarding the basic primaries and secondaries as established by the nature of the pigments used in painting. They painted as if with light, though still using the confining medium of pigments. Instead of mixing pigments to produce varieties of color, they placed one pigment next to another in dots or bands to reproduce the colorful effects of light. Shadows were no longer an absence of light, but light of a different quality and value. Black did not exist. In its place they used the darkest tones of blue, violet, or green. Nor was there such a thing as brown, here they placed green, red, and yellow (the components of the color) side by side. Gray was formed by the juxtaposition of yellow and violet. Every tone or chromatic quality was secured by this method of juxtaposing pure color which, at a certain distance, fused in the eye of the beholder and produced the effect of the tint desired. This device is known as "optical mixture" because the mixing is done in the spectator's eye. The Impressionistic method may also be described as Luminism because the aim of the process is primarily to express the color of light with all its sparkle and vibration.

This school brought about a decided innovation. The dazzling, unbroken color dabs produced a radical obliteration of definite contour. It specialized in evanescent surface effects, appealing to the eye through a rainbow-color display. Though it spread rapidly throughout the world, it never amounted to much outside of France.

Its limitations were several. It was not entirely new, as centuries before Titian and Velasquez had experimented with it. The early Masters had used it sparingly, as a means to an end, but not as an end in itself as did the Impressionists. It began the schools of the technicians rather than the painters. And one must fear that the hazy approach of such painters was extremely suitable to veil a complete collection of a painter's shortcomings. In fact, anybody who had the audacity to splash bad colors, preferably combinations of blues, yellows and violets, could paint an impressionistic picture. By 1910, it had hazed itself into obscurity. And although traces of it may still be found today, it does not exist as a school of painting.

Reaction Sets In

It was from the heart of Impressionism itself that the most powerful reaction began. A new generation began to argue that after all, painting was not a science but an art, and its primary function was not an accurate representation of nature but the expression of emotion. A fresh start was made in a new direction. Emphasis was now to be laid on expressing an idea rather than rendering appearances. It was also held that by reducing the facts of phenomena to a minimum, the idea might be able to shine forth more brightly. And it was in this way that the visible world began to be reduced to its basic geometric forms of the cube, cone, and sphere. Trappings were discarded, and only the basic forms were used to give painting a rugged simplicity. Here was conceived Modern Art as we know it, and the four great proponents of this new school were Seurat, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gaugin.

Since it attempts an extravagant vehemence of expression and feeling, visual matter becomes secondary. Unlike other art forms, it is not limited in range of technique, color, or theme. It does not disdain to draw from all sources available. Its aim is to attain a highly personal and dramatic expression. To do this, the Expressionist does not hesitate to employ dissonance of colors and distortions of forms.

Again this is not a school without precedent. Many ancient works of art can be classified as Expressionistic. In fact all art worthy of the name is the expression of the inner feelings and convictions of the artist. The whole history of Western Art from Giotto and Cimabue to the breathless intensity of Michaelangelo and Da Vinci to the extreme asceticism of El Greco, breathe of a deep expressionism, but with limitations. In the contemporary innovation, there are no limitations any longer, as the artist removes himself from the pale of any confinement to express his inner emotions.

A brief examination of the varying styles of the four masters in Modern Art will bear this out. Seurat clung tenaciously to the color juxtaposition of the Impressionists but despairing of their haziness, returned form to painting, though in a meticulous and rigid geometric pattern. Van Gogh changed from the pointillism of Impressionism (that is, the method of using small dabs of color) to strong serpentine streaks of juxtaposed colors to better express the extreme emotional content of his paintings. Cezanne, who is called the Father of Modern Art because his influence was the greatest, was mainly concerned with the basic geometric forms underlying all nature. In his work, whether houses, trees, or human beings, everything bends to this concept of form and assumes that basic pattern. He strongly felt that the world was built by an Architect, and so he made the picture subject architectural. Gaugin was intensely interested in strong color combinations and his work becomes lush color studies with the subject reduced to two-dimensional patterns.

This vitally alive, colorfully flamboyant, and unrestricted art set the world agog, and by its very limitless manner of expression led to many schools of thought. Bear in mind the four "Greats" mentioned above and the varying tendencies of their work, and the subsequent developments that follow will be rather easily understood and even appear logical.

Schism in Art

Since the days of Cezanne there has appeared, mainly in Paris, a succession of movements which, under the collective name of Modernism, has shocked the complacency of the orthodox for the past fifty years. In 1906 a group of artists held an exhibition in Paris which advocated lyrical deformations of nature and the crude rhythms of savages. They founded the first Modernist schism in art, and in a spirit of derision were called Les Fauves, or wild beasts. From then on the lid was off and art runs amuck through a series of cults and ends somewhat exhausted in the present School of Paris. In 1909 the geometric concoctions of Picasso made their appearance, to be treated with contempt by the name Cubism. At the same time, two Americans in Paris purported to combine the properties of architecture and music into what they called Synchronism. Then came Futurism, Orphism, Vorticism, Purism, Surrealism, and a dozen others equally sonorous and Latin. The rivalry was absurdly acrimonious since the distinctions between the sects were immaterial. Actually as a climax to all this school-founding and schism, a group of cynical renegades contrived by a campaign of ingenious parody to burlesque Modernism to death under the title of Dada-ism.

These cults with their pompous denominations were for the most part technical schisms. Today many of them are dead and all but forgotten. There is nothing to be gained by discussing them individually. The picture becomes too complex, and in an effort to simplify we shall merely discuss the more important phases that still have a bearing on art today, and which, for all practical purposes, may be grouped under the two general headings of Cubism or Abstract Art and Expressionism.

Nature of Cubism

There is nothing mysterious in a cube or a cone; nor is there anything mysterious in Cubism if taken for what it is — an experiment in structure. All artists, the classics especially, have considered the geometrical formation of objects as part of their equipment. In studies of some of the old masters we may discover analyses of structure antedating by centuries the Modernist examples. But Cubism, as a distinct school of painting, owes its origin to Cezanne whose forms were composed of colored planes. Picasso, in his first phase, enlarged upon the planes and changed the contrasting colors into simple areas of light and dark. This process, carried further, abstracted an object into its nearest geometrical equivalent; that is, a human head, though still recognizable as a head, was reduced to an assemblage of geometrical fractions. In his second phase, Picasso split the head into sections and then arbitrarily shuffled the sections together again so as to bring into a single focus aspects observed from several points of view. Or as his followers glibly inform us: " . . . moving around an object, he seized several successive appearances which, when fused into a single image, reconstituted it in time." The head is now only an eye, a nose, and an ear scattered among a splintered wreckage. In its last phase Cubism went flat. The three visible planes of the cube by a process of extension were projected beyond the limits of vision, ceasing to function as indications of solidity, and becoming automatically three flat tones: The head, needless to say; disappeared. Representation was annihilated. Art at last was pure, absolute, and abstract.

While Cubism was getting under way in France and knocking the chips off objects, other abstract movements began in Europe. Some of them deliberately banished the subject picture. Others used natural objects as their point of step-off into the void. Always the aim was to discover new shapes and fresh combinations. The abstractionist who creates from the inside out, expects you to assess his picture only on the strength of its color and forms and the arrangement of these forms in the picture space. To distinguish himself from the other "Isms" he describes his work as Non-Objective, and generally titles it Composition, indicating that the material is original and invented by him.

By dictionary standards to "abstract" is to draw out, or distill the essence of. Distilled far enough, a landscape or cow can end up in squares and triangles, and the artist alone is able to name the natural parent of his child. Since to the layman an abstract painting can be readily confused with a Non-Objective, we see no point in trying to draw a line of distinction between the two. For, like many another movement, the most interesting and valuable thing about abstract art was the practical influence it had on modern design rather than any inner worth of the painting itself.

Even in abstract or Non-Objective art we find traces of Expressionism at times. Kandinsky is a prime example of this. In the words of the artist himself he tries to transfer emotion to his outlines and he uses color to express mood rather than for decoration. His compositions are amorphous (that is, without definite shape), in which he tries to give his paintings a musical ebb and flow. In fact the Non-Objective painter considers his combinations of colors and forms as similar to a combination of tones in music.

The last of the shockers was Futurism, a cult manufactured in Italy and launched into Paris amid the beating of drums and the dodging of vegetables. On its practical side it borrowed from Cubism the idea of trying to illustrate simultaneous aspects of movement. (A famous illustration of this school is Balla's: "A lady and her dog.") It had a propaganda to offer and was bent on driving it home in the most sensational manner. The argument of its manifesto was as follows: "The language of the old art is dead. We have a new and more exciting idiom, a set of personal symbols composed of everything and anything. We will translate into graphic form live states of the soul; we will jerk your sensibilities into the most acute responses. Without shocking emblems of free line and brilliant color, we will make you feel art against your will." The argument captivated beginners: to break with the past, to abolish tradition, to step out like a child into a world of freedom, to invest life with fresh symbols, to feel and to express — thus to create art. Everything was art so long as it was inspired by true feeling.

The influence of Futurism was short, just as was its existence. It is worthy of note only because it points up the turmoil and revolutionary spirit of the age. Besides, it was the only school that developed outside of France at this time. And the only thing that it did for Italy, where it originated, was to produce Mussolini — he adopted its radical philosophy to suit his own ends.

Futurism, like many of the lesser movements in the modern era, became absorbed by Expressionism, a movement in turn which gave rise to the greatest freedom and divergence in art. Where Cubism meant analysis of underlying forms and resulted in the abstract, Expressionism tapped the emotions. They were not pretty emotions, but, from the mad pitch of a Van Gogh to Rouault's black rages, they were passionately sincere. When a man paints from the heart the most instinctive method becomes the most expressive one. Brushwork is correspondingly slashing and much detail is suppressed or slurred over in order to point up a dominant trait or attitude.

Their creed, as expressed by one of themselves, is as follows: "Our contacts with nature — the facts of the visible world — for creative purposes are more important than any amount of learning or traditional knowledge. Given a genuine insight into the world of everyday experience, it is possible for the artist to dispense with the old forms and to create directly. So working the artist inevitably produces new forms. The burden of dead learning which stultifies academic practice is overthrown by an earnest and truthful expression of experience."

All of which could and did lead to many abuses as long as you grant that "true feeling makes true art," and the intervention of the mind is not necessary in transferring sensations to the canvas. But like many of the ideas of faith-healers, it does hold a grain of truth. It states unequivocally that the artist must have a natural and not a forced interest in his subject; it orders him to look, if only superficially, into his surroundings, and condemns such things as mere technical skill alone.

Expressionism runs into many vague symbols and forms of expression known only to the artist since they devote themselves to the cult of true feeling. Its final stages were the fantastic or dream world. At first the artists were visited by dreams — ominous presentiments as in the case of Chirico, or affectionate inconsistencies as with Chagall. Later, in their sense of futility over the destructive force of war, another group set out to laugh certain traditions to death (Dada-ism). Lastly came the Surrealists, who have deliberately and artificially attempted to raise the submerged half of the mind (our subconscious) and weave dream and waking into a new irrationality.

This in brief is the story of Modern Art. Basically they hold that the emotional power of art is its abstract organization. Holding to this fixed principle, they have explored and experimented with every structural device known to art. They have examined the problems of equilibrium from the simplest forms of balance to the most intricate allocation of weights about a center; they have tested the value of symmetrical and free or proportional design; the use of distortion; the recession of forms in deep space; the effects of pure color; the resistance of weight and mass; calligraphic line; plasticity and flat decoration; the violation of natural perspective; the geometrical basis of natural forms; the rendering of objects by the utmost economy of means — all these, not for the sake of imitation, but for new schemes of co-ordination. The net result, however, is not so much an increase or recovery of emotional power, but rather an enlargement of the instrumental power of the artist. The young student of today finds himself in possession of an instrumental equipment that would have terrified the early masters. This is not an unmixed blessing. To those with nothing to express, it means no more than a boring repetition of idle combinations; to the artists of real ability, it means the freedom from academic bondage, a swifter realization of their powers, and it may be, in the hands of a genius, a more dramatic art than anything in the past.

The great Modernist Movement has come, and to many it also appears on the wane. It went over in a remarkably short time; it was interesting and even salutary. Its ingenious combinations and abstract relationships have been far more interesting than anything produced in the previous century by mechanical imitation. It is, at least, a beginning, the first step toward the making of new things. It has been popular with artists because it was primarily addressed to artists for their advancement and edification. It has also been popular with certain groups of the laity. But the time has come for advancement, and Modern Art does not have the seeds of that within itself. Since it has carried art back to first principles, it has also cleared the way for a new order. It has removed from art all artificial stimulants and restoratives, including its own. Actually it has been a concentration on method to the exclusion of content. The next move of art is a swift and fearless plunge into the realities of life — but it must move on.

Contributions of Modern Art

Any attempt at reviewing Modern Art objectively is a most difficult task since sufficient time has not elapsed to fully weigh its value. Then, too, the very nature of this contemporary art with its pronounced break with the past and wild dash into clashing color harmonies and flamboyant non-objectivity or expressionism, doesn't allow one to be a complacent viewer of such a disturbing scene. In either case we seem to be very much for or against such machinations in the art world. However, before entering into the heart of the dispute, the pros and cons of this questionable art, there are three points that we must consider in all fairness to this question. Namely, the position of the layman as an observer in the field of contemporary art; the nature of the painter of this art; and finally, the place and contribution of this art in our present society.

First, the position of the lay observer. Its importance cannot be overestimated since our antipathy, our indifference or our adulation can do much to promoting a good or bad art. Thus we should strive to be intelligent, discerning critics. If we can only find everything bad or everything good in an art which is actually part of our present culture, how can we expect to reach any reasonable conclusions on such a controversial subject, or arrive at any remedies for evils or ills we feel are there? Educators, above all, should beware of any smugness on the subject, since they are usually the first to adopt such an attitude. Education in a given field does not make us masters in many, and particularly in art where the work is so highly specialized.

In evaluating paintings, the public is subjected to more confusion than in judging works of any other branch of human endeavor. In the field of music or literature a "forgotten genius" rarely exists. A great musician or composer is generally understood and recognized by the multitude. That some of them were at times poverty-stricken was due to the absence of copyright laws and the system of royalties, and not to an unresponsive public. In literature also, discoveries of forgotten genius are not frequent. Usually a great literary work is adjudged great upon the appearance of the first edition. It does not necessarily have to age to win acclaim. In the theater and the motion pictures the undiscriminating masses take to the good as well as the bad. An appalling amount of trash is being enjoyed to be sure, but a good play will not pass unnoticed. The same public which applauds an inferior performance will recognize a great one.

But the popular awards are bestowed without fail on an inferior type of art, for here the public likes to be hoodwinked. This characteristic of the masses is not of recent origin. We know it on good authority because the artists of all centuries have complained bitterly about it, even as far back as the days of the Greeks. By now it is almost a matter of tradition that the layman, regardless of social standing or education, loves and admires the wrong thing in art. Persons of otherwise immaculate taste almost invariably show poor taste and lack of discrimination in matters of art. The causes of this failing are many, but lack of education in art is the main one. People see painting only occasionally, whereas they read books, or at least are acquainted with the written word from childhood, and so are better able to judge reading matter. Good music is also heard often enough, and even a small degree of familiarity with it will sharpen the ear of the listener.

We can easily assume that the average person spends some two or three hours a week in movie theaters (at least they did before the advent of television); this accounts for the often astounding accuracy of the public in judging a really good movie production. On the other hand it is just as safe to say that the average man does not take the trouble to look at paintings for even one hour within one month. To be sure, one cannot view and appreciate paintings without effort. The mental labor required in order to understand a painting is considerable, and the better the painting the more intense the mental effort becomes. A person viewing a painting must cooperate with the ideas of the painter and mentally fight his way through to an appreciation of it.

The difficulties of penetrating a work of art arise from the fact that, unlike music or literature, painting challenges simultaneously the mental and visual faculties. To correlate and employ these faculties at the same time seems to be a difficult task. We do not have to think or see when listening to music. All we have to do to enjoy music is to loosen the reins of our emotions. When we are reading a good book our eye is not challenged by the various means that a painter has at his command.

It is quite understandable that the judgment of the laity will often be at fault; however, let us not get the idea that the so-called expert, the art critic, or even the painters themselves, are infallible. They have a long record of errors in judgment against them. Hence the value of the lay critic becomes more apparent, as well as the necessity of raising our standards of judgment.

Judging a Work of Art

To carry further this investigation of the cause of misjudgment, it is important to understand a cardinal error that most people make in their approach to art. They consider the liking or disliking of one or another type of art to be governed by personal taste. Now taste is a complex experience incorporating a variety of qualities. It is a vague and fickle thing; it can be exercised in the choice of food or the styles of women's fashions. Art must not be judged by personal likes or dislikes.

Works of art vary in degree from the masterpiece to the nonentity, and for each shade of quality there is a criterion which can be objectively formulated. But in order to remove the evaluation of art from hazy notions of esthetics, we will have to delete personal taste and habitual preferences. We will have to strive for a more stable classification of "art by means of an intelligent critical approach. Perverse perception is frequently a cause of resentment, which in turn accounts for a hostile attitude toward art in general, or at least toward a particular art trend. The possessor of this mentality, on viewing a work of art beyond his immediate comprehension, will take cover behind his defense mechanism in order to conceal his ignorance. Obsequious admiration as well as scorn and contempt might result from such reactions.

Understanding the forms of art and their esthetic value is a difficult accomplishment. The faculty to discriminate is developed through discipline and cultivation. In the initial stages the art-conscious mind is attracted by the pictorially garish, the obvious, and the sentimental. Later, through a process of conscious classification and comparison an appreciation of the noble is developed. Nature does not endow us a priori with the powers of penetration and discrimination, although it may predispose us to them. We are not born with a fastidious taste. Above all don't fall victim to the old cliche, "I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like," because it means precisely that you don't know what you like.

By what means does the layman acquire the faculty to distinguish between good and bad music? It is acquired simply by listening exclusively to good music; and this alone will guard against the depravation of auditory perception. When you discover the tonal beauty of good music you will not lend your ear to vulgar musical entertainment. The same applies to the faculty of judging good and bad art. When we keep company with noble paintings, we school and cultivate our tastes and sensibilities for the noble. An intimate knowledge of the great works of art will make our senses acutely aware of what makes a painting great unless we are one of those unfortunates who lack sensitivity or possess an inartistic disposition.

The second point that we must bear in mind is the nature of the men involved in this movement. Very often those who view all of Modern Art with the greatest antipathy make the claim that these men were never sincere nor were they ever artists — in the sense that they couldn't draw and hence resorted to subterfuges. Like many such sweeping statements it is only partly true. There has been some quackery in the movements which cannot be denied by either camp; but not a great deal. Many of the painters were sincere men consumed with the desire to be original at any price, above all those who were pioneering these movements. Had they been impostors they could never have grown hysterical and blood-thirsty over such childish things.

Let us also correct the impression that they never learned to draw that is, draw according to the precepts of the Academy — and that they resorted to subterfuges and preposterous distortions to conceal deficiencies in draughtsmanship. Many of the Modernists were prize winners at the art schools; others respectable teachers; almost all of them had passed through what was known as the sound training of the best traditions. It was because of this meaningless training that they repudiated the training of the Academy. They were sick of Impressionism, sick of salon frivolity, of naturalism in all its forms. Painting was either a spiritual force, or it was nothing. They found their new look in Cezanne directly, or through his missionaries Van Gogh and Gaugin, and the new movement was on.

Place of Modern Art

Finally, let us always remember that Modern Art not only has its place in present society, but has made many contributions to it. This movement not only has a certain plausibility but is even a healthy sign, for as ugly as are its products and handicapped by the allegiance of so many crack-brained and incompetent novices, it nevertheless stands on firm ground. Art of every kind, if it is vital, relates itself intimately to life, is, in point of fact, a symbolical expression of that life in its highest and finest aspects. Now the last century has seen an almost complete transformation in society, in its mechanism, the tools with which it works, and in its motives, its mental processes and even its ethical standards. The material side of life experienced no very drastic changes, achieved no very important accessions between the reign of Nebuchadnezzar and that of Queen Victoria. Everything that conditions life today in its material aspect, all those things that have made possible an amazing technological civilization, are the products of a space of time within the memory of men. The reconstruction of the world is almost as complete as that which took place cataclysmically and in a strange secrecy some four thousand years before the Christian Era, drawing a line of demarcation between Neolithic man and the man of the historic period. Neither the Fall of Rome, nor the Renaissance, nor the French Revolution, has marked essential transformations in society comparable with what has happened in our own time.

Certainly this great transformation should show itself through an adequate art. But as a matter of fact it did not for a very long period. The old forms continued to be used in the clumsiest way, being arbitrarily imposed on an alien and unsympathetic base. Take for example the early American skyscrapers which assumed the general form of a Medieval church tower of incredible dimensions and then was overlaid with "Gothic" detail produced by mechanical means. All the arts of the late nineteenth century, except music, were retrospective and the attempt at an artistic revival after the sterility of the preceding century found itself wrapped up in almost complete artificiality.

Modernism tried logically to correct this, to create an art that fitted a technological, materialistic and despiritualised society. In a way it succeeded. "Jazz," futurism and cubism in painting and sculpture, modernism in architecture, free verse — all these things relate themselves to contemporary life, and nowhere more intimately than in their severance from all precedent, their denial of any fundamental law, and their devotion to ugliness.

The strangeness of the Modernist movement — its obsessions and eccentricities — has convinced a large part of the public that the whole movement was a charlatan mutiny organized in Paris for notoriety and profit. This erroneous impression is far too flattering to the artists: as a class, they are far too busy and absorbed with their work to conceive such a scheme, and too ignorant of practical affairs to put it in execution. In a society with no solidarity of purpose, no unifying religion, and no general idealism; in a world that actually encourages pretense and sham and factitious achievement — anything, in fact, that looks important — it is to be expected that art too should be polluted by snobbery, inanity, and commercial cunning. In this respect Modern Art resembles modern life: it includes in its ranks the upstart, the cheap exhibitionist, the politician and the virtuoso, together with the deluded visionary who sees a new world where there is only chaos. But the artists, taken one with another, have been sincere and pathetically long-suffering, and most of them have paid a heavy penalty for their devotion to a dying cause.

So in its origin, at any rate, this art must be estimated as a natural uprising; and in its broadest aspects, as an educational measure. It is natural in that it is a cry of despair, the assertion of the artist of his right to exist even though he can discover no happier niche than the Bohemian igloo. It is an old cry: it has echoed down the centuries, but never before has it been so insistent and hysterical. Remember that since the Renaissance the artist, with an occasional mighty exception, has been a nobody, a superfluous nuisance living any which way, half of his life devoted to persuading himself and the world that he is needed, the other half to the search for a social connection. What social changes will restore him to an honorable position only time will tell.

Modern Art as an Educational Movement

As an educational movement, Modern Art can hardly be overestimated. It has given the death blow to naturalism; it has destroyed the old superstition that art is the mechanical imitation of nature. That, in itself, is sufficient excuse for its existence. Nothing, it seems, would have slain the curse of imitation except concerted violence and the wholesale slaughter of the photographers. Remember that since the days of the Renaissance, save for the work of a few exceptional men, art has subsisted on its interest in natural phenomena. The Impressionists took the intellect out of painting altogether and made it a form of chromatic photography. The interest in atmospheric effects, while it saved art from total decay, deprived painting of the emotional life and vitality it possessed in its flourishing days.

The Modernists exposed the shallowness of the Impressionists, and at the same time, the academic fallacy that the emotional elements of art reside intact in nature, and that the artist has only to seek out these natural forms and duplicate them in paint in order to create a work of art — the old business of mechanical imitation again, whereas the formula is not so simple. The emotional elements are the perceived and experienced facts of life; they are transformed by the mind of the artist, an imaginative act involving hard, constructive labor and an indefinable factor called genius. How it is that certain minds can seize upon the commonplace and dramatize them, is as mysterious as life itself. But the transformation of experience, as Van Gogh's heart-breaking trials bear witness, calls for the knowledge of method, and the more the better. The Modernist laid stress on construction, on the necessity for design, organization, and the coherence of statement. By destroying Impressionism they removed the last artificial restorative to the life of art. For imitation they substituted structure; but the necessity now is an imaginative content for all their structure. Unless this is discovered, the purpose of the pioneers has gone wrong and art is doomed to the nothingness of abstract form.

If we glance back over the years of this current century we will find that this revolution in the art-world has had a very practical bearing on our everyday mode of living. In fact it would be hard to imagine what the nineteen fifties would look like if the artist had not set his hand to altering the basic forms of the twentieth century. This housecleaning took place a great many years ago. The shapes of modern architecture — shapes we are so accustomed to we don't even see them as geometrical — go back to the painters who worked before the First World War. The Modernist insistence on "significant form" and functionalism which in the two-dimensional area of painting has driven the beholder into spasms of shock or nausea, has paid off in the three-dimensional field of shelter. The functionalism of modern housing is everywhere apparent, and if we disagree with the methods of construction then let us confine our arguments with the crafts but not the art.

The insistence of Cubism on basic geometric forms, together with its progeny: Abstract and Non-Objective art, has raised industrial design to a really high level of artistic expression. From the car you drive, the chair you sit on, the bed you sleep in, the lamps that give you light, the household appliances that do your chores, down to the simplest forms of existence: the plate you eat off or the can-opener that gives you access to your dinner, all of these reflect to a tremendous degree the basic concepts of contemporary art. There isn't anything that we come in contact with from day to day, no matter how insignificant we may consider it, that hasn't been molded according to these concepts. And you find them pleasing to look at because of their simple lines, and pleasing to use because of their functionalism.

At long last our interiors are beginning to reflect this wholesome influence too. I say wholesome advisedly because not only is the general effect more pleasant and healthier, but it makes for uncluttered living and perhaps in this way man will have an opportunity to get back to the basic values of life which have been lost over the centuries. At this point it may be well to mention here that France has been woefully deficient in this field. In fact whatever she has attempted along these lines has been the poorest expression of art, whereas here in America it has become a vibrant movement. The importance of this should not be overlooked since it means that at long last we are beginning to come into our own. More than that, it has also helped us to become aware of the fact that art can be produced outside of Paris and once the world is able to break the shackles that hold it to the waning and dissipated efforts of the French, then will art be free to express itself in an intelligent and recognizable fashion.

Finally, we cannot ignore the contributions of the Expressionists whose influence on certain crafts, particularly costume designing, weaving, print-cloths and pottery, has been gay and beneficial. They have been particularly expressive in the entertainment world where the theater and ballet have taken on a whole new impetus. In the printing world type and color have acquired terrific verve. In fact in our advertising field the American public is beginning to get a frequently good education since many fine artists have been unable to make a living from art itself and therefore turn their efforts to this more lucrative field. Typography without capital letters was the Futurist's way of protesting against the accepted good taste as far back as 1912. The most "advanced" magazine layout is nothing but a collage, the kind of paste-up that Picasso and Braque were making in 1913.

In retrospect we find that there is one general contribution for which we can all be grateful to Modern Art. And that is that art can step out of the luxury class and take its place as our generation's basic way of seeing, since we do have many good art forms reflected in the various things with which we come in contact every day.

Is Modern Art Really Art?

Here is the real poser. Reams have been written on this very question, both pro and con, to the apparent satisfaction of neither side. It will probably take succeeding generations to fully evaluate the worth or shortcomings of such a controversial movement; history has a decisive way of determining the worth of ideals and men. But after being on the scene for fifty years, Modern Art cannot escape entirely from the criticism of time and productivity, and in some respects has very much to answer for in this regard. There are certain inescapable conclusions that can be formulated even today and from them this contemporary art should either stand or fall. It is hoped the following analysis will bear this out as it is based on the professed intentions of the Modernists as well as on the work'produced by them.

In general the answer to the opening question, "Is Modern Art really art?" may be summed up as follows. If by that question you mean "Is it a great art?" then of a certainty it is not because admittedly it possesses neither the communication nor the receptivity of a great art — that is, it does not make itself understandable nor is it accepted or followed by any great number of people. If you mean "Is it an art as a means of expression?" then by all means yes, because the artist would be the last to deny and the public the first to admit that he is expressing himself most intensely. Finally if this is asked in relation to the general acceptance of the term art as involving beauty and perfection, then the answer must again be in the negative, at least in the main. As far as the former is concerned, the Modernists have admittedly spurned the beautiful for the cult of the ugly. And as for perfection, here they are divided. The Cubist or Abstractionist seeks for perfection in basic geometric forms, their arrangement and their technique. The Expressionist on the other hand is interested solely in manifesting his innermost thoughts, feeling or aberrations, and nothing else matters. And this latter is to be taken in its most literal sense because they are completely indifferent to form, medium or technique.

Admitting the limited good that Modern Art has accomplished and giving due credit for the contributions it has made to contemporary living, it is high time that we weighed this art objectively, critically, and openly. Its protagonists have tried to defend it with a whole new vocabulary of gibberish that has done more harm than good by discouraging the intelligentsia and frightening the sincere. So let's peer behind these scenes of confusion to discover what these men are trying to do or say.

In its later stages the movement is definitely suspect. Not only from the above mentioned point of hiding under a whole array of confusing jargon, but also from this one simple fact: the defenders of the movement have never yet adversely praised any work of the so-called masters. In its current stage Picasso and Matisse are held to be the painters without peer, mighty geniuses of this cataclysmic art. Yet have you ever heard an apologist of Modernism explain why certain works by these painters are mediocre or trivial? Is it perchance that Mr. Picasso or M. Matisse do not slip? Rembrandt did; and El Greco; even Michaelangelo! In point of fact, the greatest of men used to err once in a while and the greatest among us still do so.

There are any number of real charges that can be hurled at the Modernists based on their own admissions. There have been too few Masters in the movement, leaving much of the work a product of mediocrity and charlatanism. They have revolted against existing forms of art but once they destroyed the past they found they had nothing to put in its place. They claim to have made a complete break with everything in the past yet ape the ancient forms of art or the distortions of uncivilized tribes. Continuing their contradictory bent they claim to represent the present age yet abhorring the technological progress of the twentieth century, isolate themselves from all society in the profligate haunts of decadent Paris. They hold that the uglier a thing is in nature, the more beautiful it becomes in Art; thus they come to uphold and depict the grotesque for its own sake. And finally to dispel all dissension within or out of its own ranks, they put themselves above all law and here in their own little world it is only they who can legislate (and must the legislator explain his immortal designs to the vulgar?).

Some Misunderstandings

That he, the modern artist, has often been misunderstood, cannot be denied. But strange to relate, more harm has been caused by the self-appointed connoisseurs and obsequious followers of the movement than by all the opposing forces combined. The purpose of this analysis is not an attempt to suppress the movement by pamphleteering — probably because it couldn't be done; but the real aim is to divest it of the pretences, false assumptions and mumbo-jumbo in which it has been cloaked.

For example, if one were to criticize the childish and ineffectual line work of Matisse's paintings, the apologist is wont to remark: "Yes, but he can really draw, you know, when he wants to," leaving the observer to believe that Matisse is merely capricious, that he is mystifying the public for some ulterior purpose when he might be doing beautiful work. Whereas the line work of Matisse really doesn't matter since he is mistaken for a painter instead of the print-maker that he is; his work might be interesting if applied to silks, cretonnes, or ceramics, but it should never be considered as something to be framed and hung on a wall.

Improbable as it may seem, in a recent work on Modern Art the following were all involved to explain a single work of the same indifferent Matisse: Newton, the Koran, sundry temple priestesses, the law of gravity, Athens, Byzantium, plus some unseen forces and religion in general. Here everything was done to bewilder the reader, everything in fact but an attempt to lead him to judge a painting on its own terms. Here confusing verbalism achieves its ultimate goal — by dragging in a false philosophy the connoisseur evaded the real issue of art and yielded to parlor mysticism. What is by its very nature an affair of visual perception becomes in our so-called advanced age a philosophic, ethnologic, liturgic, and what-have-you problem. That this is done for clarification of art issues can only be seriously doubted; for these issues, after such treatment, can emerge only warped beyond all recognition.

There is little doubt that most of the professional art critics, journalistic and otherwise, have proved unequal to their task when commenting on contemporary art. It is not that the critics are lacking in information, they are, for the most part, well-versed in the current art gossip. They know the facts and official findings of the art historians, and their mental larders are well-stocked with professional sounding patter and standardized phraseology. But in the course of time all this has been conveniently tailored to cover any emergency or shortcomings. To sum it up, they are governed by the mode of the market place rather than by esthetic and technical principles, by shifting standards rather than by well-defined, immutable criteria.

That the Modernist has discredited, if not wholly destroyed, the stale and sterile formulae of Victorian Art is certainly true, and we owe him much for this. His success amounts almost to a revolution, but in one essential respect it differs from all other antecedent revolutions and finds its fellow only in the social and political revolution in Russia in 1917. In the past, an old system was overthrown because certain individuals or groups already had formulated another, and in order to establish their new order the old had to be destroyed. In the case of Modern Art and Bolshevism, the old was assailed because it seemed to some that it was bad and therefore had to go. This laudable act accomplished, the workers of the revolution found themselves in the embarrassing position of having nothing valid to offer in its place. One after another new devices were brought forward only to be in turn discarded, and now after fifty years of chaotic effort to discover or create a new art, we are further from success than ever.

This last point will be discussed later when we consider the work produced by this new movement; but a momentary reflection will show this to be true since all phases of this contemporary art had been developed by 1910 with the exception of Surrealism. The last forty years has merely been a stultifying repetition of the work of the pioneers whose lives were not long enough to realize their own aims and whose ideas were never understood by the contemporary artists in the second place because they neither advanced nor completed them. All of which further bears out the original charge that there have been too few masters in the field. The most ardent and obsequious followers of this art have bleatingly bemoaned this fact. And what further proof do we need than this obvious factor that the embryonic state of the modernist movement is unchanged after four decades of experimentation?

Witnesses for the defense make bold to declare that abstract organization was the reflex of the machine age, that the pseudo-scientific technique of the Modernists was the natural result of mechanical forces. It is open to the credulous to believe this: but it so happened that abstract art was deduced from Cezanne, a Provencal recluse for whom the machine age never existed. It also happens to be a matter of record that the Bohemians are poorly educated in modern life, and are avowedly hostile to the machine age, living as far from it as possible, preferably in the more degenerate quarters of Paris. And it is no more possible to symbolize the dynamic energy and movements of modern machines by combinations of lines and masses bearing no discoverable relation to the machine, than it is to symbolize the strength and grace of the human body by abstract designs. The effect of the machine on man — how it has altered his conceptions of speed, power, and space — awaits the mind of the educated artist; but it cannot be rendered by the simple trick of reducing both man and his instruments to a common abstraction.

Cult of the Ugly

Perhaps in one sense Modernism does express the spirit of the age through its ugliness and chaotic qualities. I don't think we could find fault with it on this score. But even if we didn't agree with the above contention that man and his machines cannot be reduced to a common abstraction, there is a major contact with life that Modern Art has neglected sadly: that is, its inability to discriminate between the new things that need expression, which are perhaps most transient, and the old things that are eternal although quite alien to these new days. Among these is certainly religion in its traditional forms. The same is true of other real elements in society, e.g., education and the home. Here there is indeed a marked surrender to modernism but it is not universal. Underneath the very blatant show of a modernized life there still survive the old ideals and motives of earlier days, and to these the new art as well as the pragmatic philosophy of the day is definitely inapplicable. The present is a time of artistic eclecticism and opportunism, as it is in philosophy and religion. The gropings and many inventions of the Modernist must continue until a footing is found on a revaluation of values, or the issue is determined in another of those periodical lapses into degeneration and temporary oblivion which are the chapter endings of world history.

As for the Modernist cult of the ugly, we could not say enough. The search for beauty and the creation of beauty through art has always been the possession of humanity from the beginning of time. The quality of its achievement and the nature of its manifestation have varied with the culture of a given race or period. But at no time in history has there been a conscious turning to, searching for, and creation of ugliness in place of beauty, except amongst the Negro tribes of Central Africa and in Europe during the last half century. And if we take the search for beauty to be an essential requisite for art, then we may add that in all of history there have been but two periods when art suffered a temporary but almost complete eclipse: the Dark Ages of Western Europe, between the years 500 to 1000 A.D., and the past century dating from about 1850 (with the exceptions of music and poetry which flourished in the last half of the nineteenth century, and architecture which has shown a surprising rejuvenation even in this country).

There is a good deal of significance in this search for the ugly. The perception of beauty synchronizes with the appearance of culture. The "art" of the Congo which is admired so much these days marks no culture but is simply totemism, i.e., a system of distinguishing families or clans. No doubt this same totemism existed prior to the emergence of Neolithic or even earlier man, but in the course of his cultural development over the centuries he found the power to transmute his brutal totems into creative art. Or perhaps, if this totemism is not the survival of pre-cultural man, it may be the manifestation of degeneration or reversion to type.

By this latter we mean an unconscious reversion to type following the decadence of a civilization that, having reached the allotted height of development, now prepares to yield its place to another as yet only in the most rudimentary stage of emergence into the light. Certainly from all indications of the past century or longer, we are entering into a new Dark Age since with the exception of our technological progress we find nothing but deterioration on every side from education to culture to the very heart of society itself, the family.

On the other hand, this may be the natural result of that wide revolution in society that first made its appearance in the sixteenth century, and now in its ever-widening orbit has come to involve the whole of life and its determining spirit. Be it coincidence or consequence, art in nearly all its forms has taken on a coloration sympathetic with the new social dispensation. An interesting parallel might be drawn between Modern Art, from Impressionism through all its curious and surprising manifestations, down to jazz and the latest French aberrations, Soviet Communism and pragmatic philosophy.

Whatever the explanation, the results are unmistakable. For the first time in the memory of man the modern artist pursues and accomplishes ugliness, and asserts that there is no such thing as beauty in any sense that permits definition. In the Dark Ages of Western Europe culture was at a very low ebb admittedly, but even then the arts, while crude and illiterate, showed a real desire for beauty and a pathetic desire to accomplish this. But the "dark ages" of this past century are entirely different. Now there is no suffering from an inferiority complex, but rather a self-assurance that is all the worse for having no foundation. All the old art of Christianity has been scorned. There is no searching for the best artists and craftsmen (the search may have been fruitless but one wishes the effort had been made). With rare exceptions the most incompetent tyros have been accepted rather than those a shade less futile in their ideas and accomplishments.

This latter reflection leads us to the last charge made against the Modernists, namely, the manner in which they have removed themselves from all possible criticism (as well as from all possible contact with their public) by denying the existence of all law and criteria and admitting only of complete freedom of expression. Their aim has been to place the artist in a world of his own where only he may legislate, interpret, judge, and dispense the esthetic joys of life. From this premise we can readily see the reason behind the resultant chaos, since it is only through observance to law that we can produce order.

New Standard of Values

It is for this reason that we are confronted today with a new estimate of esthetic values and a corpus of new dogmas on the nature and function of art. In the place of the word "beauty" we now have "significant form." This highly superior and supercilious intelligentsia of the domain of esthetics reject the idea of the existence of any standard of values apart from the personal equation. Doubting the existence of the absolute, they come to deny any essential difference between the frieze of the Parthenon and a comic strip in a popular daily. It has led them to state with gravity that "an apple painted by Cezanne is worth all the Madonnas of Raphael." The words "art" and "artist" have a new but mutable connotation, while "truth," "the ideal," and "good" are similarly discarded as no longer representing anything in the realm of reality. As a whole, the old terminology, even when it is retained for lack of a sufficiently ingenious and mystifying substitute, is given a new content and so becomes, not an agent for the clarifying and expression of ideas, but as has been brought out before, a method of concealing them. There are those who maintain that ideas themselves do not exist; hence the practical usefulness of the new method.

But let us enter this inviolable world of the artist and consider his claim that we cannot compare the old with the new, that to judge quality by a system of comparison is an utterly false concept. We beg to differ with such a false assumption since it denies the necessity of sense-perception for the intellect to form judgments. How else would we judge the quality of music, violins, prima donnas, any standards in art without making comparisons?

Apropos of violins: How would you know that a Stradivarius, for example, is a better instrument than one can buy in a bargain basement, unless you compare their properties? Or suppose that all the music you had ever heard in your life had been, some of our popular tunes. How could you know that such tunes are utter abominations as compared with tunes composed by Schubert? Of course, you may enjoy any noise without attempting to evaluate its artistic merit, but once you seek for a standard of value, you will first have to establish a scale of values. And what would such a paradigm be? In the case of Gothic architecture, for example, it would be the cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Rouen, or other great Gothic masterpieces. Now assuming that an Oriental who has never seen a Gothic edifice, comes to New York, you could safely point out to him the Rockefeller church on Riverside Drive as a splendid example of Gothic architecture, and the unsuspecting soul would have no idea that you were being facetious.

There are some who hold that we cannot compare the classic with the new art, and in so doing arrive at a common denominator of quality. The truth is that there is no difference in the issues involved. Whether in the old or new art, the esthetic laws which rule the art of all times are immutable. Today, because of the dual standard, there is much confusion in the matter of evaluation. We have ample evidence that in our contemporary system of criticism the quality of art is determined by means as dependable as reading leaves in a tea-cup or by crystal gazing. If you think this is going too far, then consider these words from one of the leading spirits of the Museum of Modern Art. In defense of their acquisition and exhibition of questionable works of art, he stated that the Museum would continue with its policy even " . . . at the risk of having guessed wrong nine times out of ten . . ."

The protagonists of contemporary art often complain that "the adversaries of Modernism most commonly take refuge in generalizations" and that "they attack without having looked first to see whether the object has realized and fulfilled its aims." In short, they feel that "the theories of the unenlightened seem to obscure their perception." But in turn we have some weighty questions to be considered by such art critics. Is it not, perhaps, that the perceptive faculties of the so-called enlightened have been dimmed and damned by the deadly dread of appearing backwoodsy and lacking in sophistication? Is it not, perchance, the ludicrous disease of homo Americanus, born out of insecurity with regard to taste, which is responsible for the virulence of the bandwagon chasers? I can quote a gem in this respect and I'm sure the instance can be multiplied many times over. A few years ago in a debate on this very subject with a well-educated apologist and teacher of this movement, the following conclusion was reached after all the pat arguments had been exhausted: "Well, everybody is taking it up now so we may as well jump on the bandwagon." Spurious ideas of sophistication and glamour seem to be the chief obstacles standing in the way of development of an independent taste in the American mind. The time is long overdue for us to cease such childish lisping and fawning.

The contention that we "attack without having looked first to see whether the object has realized and fulfilled its aims" is contradicted by the mass of matter that has appeared over the years, objectively weighing and criticizing the work of the contemporaries. It also brings us to the final phase of this critical essay in which we will consider the relative worth of what the artist has produced these last few decades.

Symbols in Art

Perhaps Life's Round Table on Modern Art held in the Fall of 1948, and published in the October 11th issue of that same year, reached a few conclusions that were far more potent than their contributors realized at the time. This group was composed of art critics and connoisseurs from England, France, and America, and was equally balanced between the enthusiasts for and the critics of Modern Art. It contained an imposing array of names and although their observations were not as imposing or world shattering as the editors of Life or the contributors themselves thought they might have been, they deserve some attention — if only to bolster our own humble opinions in this controversial field. After criticizing the general lack of education in art on the part of the public, as well as the great number of poor or even bad artists that clutter the art world today,* the members generally felt that it was the use, or misuse, of symbols that removed the work of the contemporary artist from the public.

Now symbols are a real part of art. They consist of an object or image that is intended to represent a whole field of reality. Its creation is perhaps the highest artistic act. Great symbols grow to be accepted and recognized by all men; moreover they grow not only out of the artist, but out of the being that is man, out of his religion, his society, his race, and his times. One of the leading characteristics of the contemporary art, derived from its great emphasis on individualism, is that the symbols have become increasingly private. And this sometimes raises insuperable barriers for the observer.

Thus the Modernist has deliberately destroyed communication with the public. Actually it has become a case where private pictures are being produced for public exhibition. And the extent of the privacy of the communication is the measure by which the public will accept or reject the work of art. Here the Round Table generally agreed that the artist must begin striving within the limits of his vision and resources, to work in the direction of intelligibility; and only then could Modern Art become acceptable to the public and achieve the cultural validity that its critics demand.

At the close of the discussion, the members of the panel, but especially the editors of Life, were amazed to find that in their honest search for the true worth of Modern Art, they could only end on a note of gloom. Even the most enthusiastic defenders were filled with a sense of discontent, for having surveyed the field they could but ask: "Where do we go from here?" Yet their dismay should not have been too great because anyone aware of the trends of contemporary art cannot help but feel the inadequacy of the movement. For fifty years there has not been a single development of any one of the revolutionary movements introduced by the pioneers. Art has been stripped to its essential elements of line, form, color and texture, and the artist has further stripped it of its relationship to the fundamental values of life, even denying that such values exist. Many times the failure of our civilization has been blamed for the failure of our artists. We cannot deny these destructive tendencies, but on the other hand we cannot allow the artist to deny the existence of all values in order to cover up his lack of intelligence and skill to form the elements of art into an intelligible picture. For well over a generation they have been playing with the elements that go into a great work of art but to date have failed to produce one. Decades before Life's Round Table convened, critics were asking the same question: "Where do we go from here?" The sad part of it is that we're still seeking the answer.

In review we might sum up the failure of the movement as follows. The weak point in the whole thing was the assumption that there were no values existing other than the new ones created by modern society. The old values, existing regardless of any temporal changes, such as the home, education, religion, and many others besides, were ignored as vital factors. These things have their own laws, their lasting traditions, their demand for a different artistic expression; yet an attempt was made to involve them in an art which, however intimately it might relate itself to the new technological society, had nothing whatever to do with them. As a result we find art of every kind becoming a series of personal reactions to stimuli far above the achievement and even the comprehension of the individual. Enter the "artist" as such; no longer the good craftsman sensitive to aspiration, exaltation, the quest of goodness of his own people in their own time; but the self-centered, introspective, egocentric individual, driven insistently to express not that which was beyond and above himself, but — simply and frankly — himself!

The reason one is led to conclude that this art is merely a transient form (although we don't know where it is heading yet) and incapable of itself to produce a great work of art, is from the very nature of the stage at which it has stopped. In other words, Cubism and Expressionism are forms of arrested development.

There is nothing unreasonable in Cubism, and there would have been nothing sensational in it, had painters kept their experiments in their studios instead of offering them to the world as the loftiest manifestations of the human soul in a state of ecstasy. The contagion spread for various reasons as we have seen, and it was a legitimate effort to increase the reality of objects by emphasizing structure and excluding sentimental attachments. But here the good in the movement ends. It was a transitional measure; like Pragmatism, a method, and not a philosophy. To argue that it was an independent growth, an art complete in itself, is frankly absurd. Let us see why.

Limitations of Cubism

Cubism erroneously presupposes that design is an end in itself and not a means to an end, and that all human attributes are irrelevant. It limits the meaning of art to the perception of the abstract relations of the various parts in a picture, and shrouds simple processes in an element of mystery by using such awful terminology as "plastic dynamism," "the integration of the plastic consciousness," "the quality of the form is the incommensurable sum of the affinities perceived between the visible manifestations and the tendency of the mind." All art, to be sure, implies a certain amount of selection — one cannot include everything — but normally the purpose of the selection is to set down one's experiences in forms objectively valuable. Such is its function — a means to an end. Why then should the Cubists carry the process to its second stage, to abstract the primary selection until nothing remains but dry bones? The answer is that they have no experience worth communicating, or simply, nothing to say. Without a teleological basis, art, if sufficiently pursued, leads to all sorts of mental aberrations.

The Cubists uphold their art on the grounds that it is analogous to music; that modern painting, relieved of representational baggage, has attained to a state of harmonic perfection. Furthermore, it is claimed that all good painting is visual music, appealing to the emotions, not through what, it represents or symbolizes, but through its rhythmical pattern. For instance, when you look at a canvas by Raphael or El Greco, you see only a symphony of abstract forms and colors. It is based on several fallacies, namely: the identification of colors with musical tones, and the notion that the meaning of painting lies in its harmonic relationship of the parts. Finally the advocates of pure harmony in painting and music never pause to consider the relation of these arts to the experience of the composer. Because music does not ape the measures of nature, they assume that it has no connection with life; because painting has a pattern basis, they assume that it must, like music, dispense with representation — with everything that resembles natural forms.

Common Purpose of Arts

The arts are united in a common purpose — the integration and communication of experiences — but each art employs its own means. From Giotto's first efforts to relieve forms in space, Da Vinci's chiaroscuro, Rembrandt's achievements in tone, down to Cezanne's painful experiments in cubic structure, painting has constantly striven to increase its representational power, not to imitate nature but to make plausible reconstructions of nature; to make forms that are real and convincing, that strike us with the force of life-experiences. Since the conception of reality varies from age to age, new forms are needed to represent the meaning of reality at a given period. Harmony is neither a force nor an end; it is the accompaniment of art. We have had of late, so much harmony in painting that we are all sick of it. We long for substance, concrete subject matter, something bearing on life as it is actually lived.

This tendency to isolate and extol for their own sake the component parts of art, has led today to the appraisal of painting in terms of physical properties such as density, solidity, and plasticity. Yet these material properties are not peculiar to art; they are found in a greater degree in natural forms, and are of no importance in painting unless directed to expressive ends. The modern method is to dismember a work into plastic scraps, then gather them together with an imposing array of technical terms, noting meanwhile the presence of color, light, mass, and line, and then finally trace the ancestry of the scraps back to the old masters, or better yet, to the Negroes.

Instigated by this mumbo-jumbo, certain critics would have us reduce the creation and appreciation of art to physical reactions. They hold that certain lines and colors in particular combinations produce "significant form" which arouses within us (that is, within the favored few) a unique emotion. The notion of significant form is a crude byproduct of an outmoded psychology that restricted all art values to materiality, confusing processes with meanings, and considering form as the simple result of psycho-physical responses to objective stimuli. It makes the history of art nothing more than mechanical expansion, the mechanical evolution of technique. It does not penetrate into the immediate necessity of the intimate relationship between form and human experience, nor does it consider how deeply bound to one's whole nature are those impulses which take form in the conventions of art. When it was discovered that the forms of machines were also "significant," and that our physical reactions to abstract painting were not different from our reactions to mechanical diagrams, a whole new esthetic emotion was born.

The esthetic emotion is that peculiar state into which the high-brows of art are transported by the perception of formal relationships. It is not to be confused with mere swooning, with the neurotic dizziness of the pre-Raphaelites, nor the psychosis of the Expressionists. It is an intellectual ecstasy, the privilege of the elite, the last stage of cultivated arrogance. We can understand most of the esthetic emotionalists: their snobbery is transparent; their pursuit of art is a retreat from vulgarity. They are the ones who hold to such vapid ideas that abstract art goes beyond ordinary human experiences and expresses by its own stark symbols infinite values and intangible essences (taking a page from Plato — though in their blind conceit they failed to read further and find that the same Plato had no use for artists and relegated them to a low position in his Republic); or champion the equally absurd idea that the abstract is a psychological necessity, the protest of ill-adjusted souls who, being unable to identify themselves with their surroundings, withdraw from society and build up an imaginary inner world. But what shall we say for the poor, misguided wagon-chaser who, standing wall-eyed before a Rubens or Goya, can see only formal relationships?

The Cubists and their co-workers, the Abstractionists and the Non-Objectivists, staked everything on method — the deep meanings and hidden mysteries came as afterthoughts. The Expressionists, going to the other extreme, have repudiated traditional methods, and from the first moment have professed to reveal psychic states by blotches of color and zigzag lines. They did not entirely abandon traditional practice, not even in those whirling pieces that contain not the least signs of intelligence. One idea they borrowed from the Cubists — that of trying to illustrate the simultaneous aspects of movements. "The plastic interpenetration of matter" was the fine name given to this quirk. Here we have "the purity of direct sensation," that is, the artist directly conveys his sensations to the canvas without the intervention of the mind (might I add that after looking around some of the more "advanced" exhibits one has a feeling that it's rather obvious). The Expressionsts' war cry was based on the happy notion that "true feeling makes true art."

Fallacies in Expressionism

From its own thesis, Expressionism has run into cracked symbolism and pathological trances, and abetted by Freudian research, ends up in the dream-world of Surrealism. You have seen it in the galleries: each picture a gruesome manifestation of some private and incommunicable agony; and you have seen the spectators, little knots of serious folk seeking in each picture the special key without which no entrance into the soul of the artist is possible. That the artist is sincere and original is no recommendation. The world has been flooded with blobs and tangles put forth in the name of pure expression for too long a time now. Much of the stuff is puerile; it has no more a claim on the attention of adults, and no more right to be considered as art than the bawlings of a child — also pure expression.

Again the movement is rife with fallacies. They believe that colors symbolize the spiritual life. Because color nuances affect to some extent our moods and feelings, it is easy for the morbidly sensitive souls to worship tonal combinations, and going further, to believe that these loose pigments can express the deepest emotions. Investigation, on the other hand, has shown that the sensational aspects of color are too fluctuating to be of definite significance; that the moods induced by color schemes are shadowy and uncertain; and that the position of these schemes in space is never positive.

The idea that unrelated color, or form in the abstract, can be identified with specific factors in our spiritual life, has no basis in experience. A blob is a blob, and a triangle is a triangle; when either becomes the carrier of spiritual meanings, the emblem of metaphysical spasms, or the portrait of the soul, it is an aberration. The abstract forms of Modern Art are eclectic patterns or free decorations — free in the sense that they are not symmetrical. They have in many cases, taste, tact, and acute feeling for the organization of sensuous elements; but like the designs of other periods, they contain no meanings and no vitality unless they stand for something — for the facts of experience. In that event they require no special interpretation; the key to their significance lies within the work itself.

As for the last stages of Expressionism, which has been tagged Surrealism, we have an example of the extent to which pure expression can lead us. The aim of this group is to provide a place in art for abnormal perception; to express by symbols the inner world of dreams and fantasies — the debris of the unconscious mind. The accomplishments amount to nothing: incoherent tags and strings, scrambled colors, headless forms, silhouettes, circles and dispersed knick-knacks, which, as symbolical references to the world beyond our experiences, may mean anything. "But," these addled painters insist, "hallucinations too are experiences. They are our own original discoveries, and they are very real." True enough, but discoveries only to the warped minds that make them. And inasmuch as reality is distorted to fit the pattern of the neurotic mind, they cannot be called real experiences. The validity of experience can be checked and tested; and no experience is valid in art unless it can be recognized, shared, and connected with reality.

Modern Art, both in criticism and production, has been engaged in the hopeless task of erecting a pure esthetic by the separation of technique from meaning. The machinery involved in this esthetic business is simple. It is only a matter of restricting the range of the significant elements in the production and appreciation of art. By confining the elements to those whose understanding rests upon special training or unusual experience, the number of the elect is satisfactorily reduced and the prestige of the chosen few correspondingly enhanced. That part of creative work which is removed from ordinary human affairs, or which can be made to appear so, becomes the very center of significant values. Technique, essentially a matter for artists or a handful of specialists, is a field already prepared for such legerdemain. And in thus wise does technique become the whole field of art, a field completely isolated from vulgar understanding. Into this exclusive field the thoroughbreds dragged the values belonging to the profoundest art and annexed them to minor technical issues. Furthermore, by describing technical problems in the terms of physiological mechanics and psychology, painters made the simplest processes enormously impressive. The "purification of painting" was the fine name given to this dehumanization; and to be looked upon as "in the know," one was forced to subscribe to the high-sounding chatter about abstraction, empathy, significant form, dynamic relationships, and so forth.

The purification of painting! An enchanting fallacy if there ever was one. As was said long ago: "Pure beauty is like pure water — it has no taste." Yet this tasteless art has multiplied by leaps and bounds. The various purity cults founded on the technique of line and color organization, raised mediocrity to a glorious eminence and provided the novice with the regalia for personal distinction. To be "highly sensitive" was the supreme honor in this limited circle, and any painter ingenious enough to erect a precious mythology around a few lines or daubs of color, was assured of enviable notoriety. A tangle of lines, a swirl of tones, and we had our hands full of subjective cryptograms enhanced by such titles as Psychic Portrait, Symphony in Blue-Green, or Centripetal Force. Poor old Cezanne's exploration of geometrical forms was the father to a thousand perversions. Every little technical operation, every shade and detail, was magnified to epochal proportions. The artist became willing to die to make a tablecloth pictorially interesting, willing to sacrifice his life to a pattern of spots and curves, the sole value of which lay in its "abstract beauty." He became so self-contained that he esteemed man less than a bowl of fruit or a congestion of cubes. The growth of humanity did not concern him, for he was too busy painting the growth of abstractions. Eventually he talked more about himself and his strange soul-states than about his art, and art became like unto him, weak, subjective, confused, and above all, had nothing to communicate to mankind because it had nothing to say.

Art and Life

Today we plead with all earnestness for the recovery of beauty as an essential part of life, in its quality as an expression of the best and highest things, as a stimulus to greater endeavor, and as a sound method of testing values. We look for the recovery of art as a singular source of joy, as the truest communal expression, and as the symbolic manifestation of those things that are too high for other voicing. And by this we mean beauty in the Christian, not the pagan sense, and art as a common thing, not an added amenity of life nor as the peculiar possession of the few. If we continue to make beauty a cult isolated from life, if we accept it only after the pagan and Renaissance fashion as a sense perception and a stimulus either to intellectual or voluptuous enjoyment, then we are lost indeed as shown by the sad events of the past few hundred years.

Art is an expression of flourishing life, it is not a product of propaganda, publicity, or pedagogy. Unless beauty can become an active principle in life, visible and operative in our institutions and methods, it will remain far afield; unless art can become the normal and instinctive mode of expression of all men, it will continue decadent as now.

Is it an impasse in which we find ourselves? A situation which denies us good life unless we first acquire beauty, and beauty unless we first acquire good life? We have the will now and in good measure, but there is error in the direction in which this will is applied. We still rely on machines and mass-action for the redemption of society; we still adhere to our art museum propaganda and our art school pedagogy for the recovery of beauty and the recreation of art, because we have not been able as yet to emancipate ourselves from the old intellectualistic methods that wrought our undoing. Now is the time for them to seek redemption. We must win back the old consciousness that made possible the Christian society and the Christian art of the past: the consciousness that life itself is greater than any of its parts, that it is more than the sum of its individuals, that it has, in a word, unity and personality. When we see this, we shall know that life cannot be divided into separate categories, each part functioning in individualism and methods of high specialization, but that vitality can be attained only by co-ordination. For example, religion and beauty have as much, perhaps more, to do with the solving of our industrial problems than have the mechanistic economic laws we have deduced from half-comprehended phenomena, and the science of psychology we have invented to explain them. The possession of beauty and the function of art are intimately and absolutely an integral part of life itself, and are neither attainable, nor usable, nor even desirable, unless they are so related.

Beauty must be linked again with life, and art given back its true service. There is no better or more logical place that this can begin than in re-establishing our moral standards, in a word, with a return to religion. One of the troubles with our culture is the breakdown of standards so that modern man cannot make value judgments. Once you use the words "genuine" and "authentic" in art, you cannot separate morality and truth from the work of art. If we had this spirit of faith back in its old nature and power, we should not need to trouble ourselves over the problems of art, for it would burst forth into a glorious flowering as before, when men were not mired in the miasma of their own confused souls, but expressed the beauty that was above and beyond them. Perhaps through the conscious attempt at a recovery of art and its right application, we may be making more easy the way toward regaining this greater thing which, once achieved, would solve more than esthetic problems.

* Mr. Frankfurter, editor and publisher of the Art News, stated: " . . . perhaps at no point in the history of art has there been so conscious a pattern of style imposed everywhere in the world by people who have only half-understood, or a quarter-understood, the meaning of what the great masters and innovators have done."

Bibliography

Please note that on such a subject the list would be inexhaustible, the following is therefore a limited listing to make it more workable and also because of the real contributions they make on this subject.

Cram, R. A., The Catholic Church and Art (Macmillan, 1930). Craven, T., Men of Art (Simon and Schuster, 1931). Craven, T., Modern Art (Simon and Schuster, 1940). Faure, E., History of Art (Garden City, 1931). Frost, R., Contemporary Art (Crown Publishers, 1942). Leepa, A., The Challenge of Modern Art (Beechurst Press, 1949). Life, October 11, 1948. Meyers, B., Modern Art in the Making (Whittlesey, 1950). Orpen, W., Outline of Art (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931). Taubes, F., You Don't Know What You Like (Dodd, Mead, 1943). Taubes, F., Paintings and Essays on Art (Dodd, Mead, 1950). Zucker, P., Styles in Painting (Viking Press, 1950).

Discussion

Aidan Carr, O.F.M. Conv.: — When Fr. Columban says "The weak point in the whole thing (the modern art movement) was the assumption that there were no values existing other than the new ones created by modern society," I think we might say with equal truth that a weakness in the movement is the denial of values other than those created by the artists themselves. And in that sense there is an affinity between much of modern art and the pragmatic theory of the Deweyites who deny the notion of any antecedent reality at all. For them all rules are merely provisional and tentative. What is important is not what is but what is in process of now being generated. Art becomes a sort of interaction between the "artist" and his material: each influencing the other and each doing something to the other. That is a typical monist attitude: all reality is a process, and the same holds for art. It appears to me that the essence of art consists rather in the pouring into matter of a pre-conceived form in a truly purposive operation. There is too much of James Joyce's "stream of consciousness" in many products of the (extreme) modern school.

Perhaps Fr. Columban and I don't understand the same thing in the phrase "significant form." He writes: "The notion of significant form is a crude byproduct of an outmoded psychology that restricted all art values to materiality." I think the notion of significant form is valid and very useful. "Significant form" coordinates and unifies the elements of an esthetic whole; it gives meaning to an artifact in the measure that a thing is beautiful. This concept of form is applicable also to beauty in nature.

The notion of "significant form" is analogous to substantial form in the hylomorphism of ontology. It is not univocally the same however, since we can apprehend specifying forms in many objects that have no esthetic value. A squashed cat, for example. Significant form is essentially joined to qualified matter in such wise as to be embedded in the matter, and so is peculiarly unsusceptible to abstraction. And this truth is what makes abstractions in art so artificial: that which is essentially connected with matter is removed from matter in a process of over-intellectualization. Abstraction — as such — is a blind alley, and when the work of Picasso, for example in a cubist form, is the source of an esthetic experience, it is because of his superb grasp of color and certainly not because of the over-intellectualized form therein depicted.

Fr. Columban makes a profound and stimulating observation near the end of his paper: "Today we plead with all earnestness for the recovery of beauty as an essential part of life . . . and by this we mean beauty in the Christian sense . . ." As Catholics we must influence our contemporary culture. Must be the leaven in the mass. Part of that task lies in acquainting our people with what is really good art, giving them a taste for the worthwhile in beauty. The disfavor in which the very term "esthetic" is held by many people today is due to the draining out of the Christian esthetic values. Perhaps we have been relatively uninfluential and inarticulate simply because we have not yet evolved a mid-course between a rigoristic position that shuns whatever is man-made and provocative of emotional response and so a possible source of distraction from our main task: going to God; and a kind of materialistic philistinism that place before men a false philosophy based on perverted tastes and vague norms of evaluation of beauty. I think E. I. Watkin's idea of a synthesis between the movement of the Christian mind vertically to God and horizontally to whatever is good in man-made culture, approaches our need. There is no necessary opposition between these two movements, although there is potentially the danger of turning oneself excessively to material embedded beauty. Our Catholic educational system has done a wonderful job of preparing our students to view life in correct focus: that we are created for God and He is our destiny. But in the more specialized fields, as in the development of art forms, we have been deficient. Technique is important too, and the children of this generation have taken the lead there. The products of our schools must be leaders, and to be that they must be all things to all men. Even to contemporary artistic trends and their exponents.

Here are a few questions which arose in my mind after reading the paper:

1. Has modern art proved that a thing purely spiritual cannot be the object of an esthetic experience?

2. Is there a Catholic art?

3. Does modern art violate the basic concept of art as splendor ordinis?

4. Wherein is our educational system defective in imparting an appreciation of esthetic values?

© 1952