Individuality
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As actually existing substances, paintings are individuals—that is to say, beings that cannot be divided into parts without ceasing to be the particular beings they are. When a painter is not pleased with the over-all effect of one of his works, he may cut out of it one or two of the parts (17 a, b) he prefers and throw away the rest. If he does so, each part becomes a new individual.1 As for the primitive painting—that is, the primitive individual —it ceases at once to exist. To say that paintings are individuals is therefore to say that, considered as the very being it is, each of them enjoys the privilege of indivisibility.
The indivisibility of a physical substance is one and the same thing as its individuality. The primitive meaning of "individual" exactly is: "not divisible." An "individual" is an entity that cannot be divided without ceasing to be that which it is. Now, the notion of individuality itself is inseparable from that of singularity. Strictly speaking, an indivisible entity cannot be duplicated. Leibniz was fond of saying that no two identical tree leaves could be found in any garden, nor, for that matter, two identical beings in the whole universe. And, indeed, it is one and the same thing for any being to be one and to be the very being it is.
Individuality and singularity belong to every being taken as a whole. In other words, in any given being, individuality belongs to the whole as such. In applying these notions to paintings, we shall say that each and every one of them is a distinct entity, which cannot be duplicated, even by its own author. However carefully he may copy himself, a painter can turn out only another painting. Now, the fundamental cause assigned by philosophers to this character of physical substances lies in the very matter that enters their composition. The classical formula—matter is the principle of individuation—means something quite simple. It merely expresses the fact that each definite portion of matter, delimited by certain dimensions, exists only once. A man, or even a machine, can turn out any number of similar chairs made out of the same kind of wood, but the same kind of wood is not the same piece of wood. The number of similar chairs it is possible to make depends only on the available quantity of wood, but the particular piece of wood that goes into the making of one particular chair cannot enter the structure of another one. This is what the philosophers give us to understand in saying that, on account of its fundamental incommunicability, matter is the principle of individuation.2
These notions apply to paintings inasmuch as these are material objects. In view of the considerations that are to follow, any painting should be considered as a single material unit consisting of its solid support (plaster, wood, cardboard, etc.), together with the successive coats of color and varnishes that cover it. Although our analysis will have to examine these various elements separately, they can be considered as making up, taken together, a single material unit endowed with all the properties that physical beings derive from their materiality.
A similar remark applies to the philosophical notions of matter and form. They, too, must be examined apart without being conceived as separate in reality. Even in our own day, very few art critics, and still fewer aestheticians, have been able to do away with these two classical notions. At the same time, they seem to have felt reluctant to resort to them, because. these two notions strongly smack of their scholastic origin and, by the same token, of the discredited philosophy of Aristotle. In other words, the notions of matter and form, so often ridiculed ever since the time of Descartes and his school, suffer a regrettable lack of modernity.
There is no reason this should prevent anybody from resorting to them. In the first place, even if the philosophy of Aristotle were rightly discredited, these two notions should still be considered valid, for the simple reason that the arts did not borrow them from Aristotle's philosophy; on the contrary, the philosophy of Aristotle borrowed them both from art. It is enough for anyone to consider any kind of artifact in order to realize that it is made up of a matter either informed or worked into shape by the skill of some artisan. This is true of all handmade products, from painted vases to statues and paintings. In returning to the fundamental distinction of matter and form, art borrows nothing from any philosophy; it is simply reclaiming what has always been its own property.3
I. Invention of the Material
The treatment of color as the very stuff of which pictures are made implies a strong temptation to try what has often been called the "scientific approach" to painting. And, indeed, colors are physical facts; they are part and parcel of the subject matter of optics; especially since the time of Newton, it is not easy to imagine a painter wholly indifferent to what science says about the nature and properties of colors; at a more recent date, the research work of Chevreul in that field has provided the neoimpressionists with food for thought.4 There is no contradiction between being a painter and being a scientist or, at least, a man interested in science, especially in those parts of it which deal with the very material out of which works of art are made. Generally speaking, there is no such thing as useless knowledge. Nevertheless, complete scientific ignorance would be better than the slightest confusion between the respective domains of optics and painting, or, in other words, of science and art.
Art is much older than science. We cannot imagine the kinds of notions present in the minds of the men who, millenniums ago, decorated the caves of Lascaux and Altamira ; it is at least certain that modern physics would have meant nothing to them. Even at the time of the Italian Renaissance, few artists were comparable in learning to Leonardo da Vinci, and some of them knew very little indeed. Speaking of Luca della Robbia, Vasari observes as the most natural thing in the world that "he was carefully brought up, so that not only was he able to read and write, but, like most Florentines, he could do such arithmetic as he needed."5 In our own day, even leaving aside the primitive masters of African art, comparatively few painters are worrying about the last discoveries of physiology concerning sight and of physics concerning colors. Even though they could understand them, artists would find these discoveries practically irrelevant to their own problems, for the simple reason that the colors of the physicist have little in common with those used by painters in their work.6
Even considered under its simplest form, that is, in the optics of Newton, the scientific notion of color is practically irrelevant to painting. The so-called seven primitive colors of the spectrum are not primitive; nor are they seven in number. The reasons Newton counted seven of them have little to do even with science. After decomposing white light into a spectrum by means of a prism, Newton observed a certain correspondence between the proportions of the spaces occupied by the main colors on the spectrum and the ratios of the notes in the diatonic musical scale. So the only reason there are seven primitive colors in the spectrum is that there are seven notes in the diatonic scale. In fact, painters refuse to recognize at least one of them as a distinct color; it does not even take a painter's eye to see that "indigo" is a variety of blue. Moreover, since spectral colors are physically distinct on account of their wave lengths, the spectrum really is continuous. True enough, the number of hues that the average human eye can distinguish and identify to the point of giving them fixed names is small enough, but this simply means that we take a discontinuous view of a continuous reality. Last but not least, the very title of the first memoir of Newton on the question, New Theory about Light and Colours (1672), is for us a reminder of the fact that the spectral colors arise from the decomposition of light, whereas no painter, precisely qua painter, is called upon to handle anything like the white light of the sun or the colors arising from its decomposition.7
Painters use only specially prepared pigments, that is, colored bodies, whose surfaces appear to be differently colored according to the wave lengths of the light radiations they absorb or reject. Absolutely pure colors are practically impossible to obtain. A blue object usually reflects some violet and some green together with the blue; a similar phenomenon takes place in the case of a yellow object, or of a green one; and because the possible combinations and proportions of these overtones are practically infinite in number, countless hues are at the disposal of the painter. Some prefer to produce them on their own palette by means of the three colors painters consider primitive, yellow, red, and blue; but there are illustrious examples to the contrary.8 In any case, the matter that enters the structure of modern paintings ultimately comes from vulgar tubes prosaically bought at some paint dealer's. The history of their production is part of the general history of chemistry; factories are busy providing painters with an always increasing number of different hues; just as musicians write music for instruments that have had to be invented, so also the creation of colors precedes the creation of the paintings whose matter they provide. Artistic invention extends to the very matter of the works of art.
The importance of the part played by chemical industries in the development of modern painting should not be underestimated. Art lovers do not think of it, because they are interested only in the finished product, but there is at least one aspect of this product in which they should feel interested, namely, its preservation. Durability is a fundamental quality in a pigment. Some paints do not age well, and however great an artistic genius he may be, a painter is powerless to preserve his works from partial or total destruction if he uses exceptionally perishable pigments. All paintings are ultimately doomed to perish, but there are degrees in this risk of impermanence, and the color solidity of a pigment is of primary importance in this respect.9
In comparing hues with musical sounds we have just said that even the material element of a picture results from an invention. Let us add that, although produced in laboratories, colors and hues also result from an effort of artistic creation.
One of the fundamental facts to whose consideration it is often necessary to return is the aptitude of human sensibility to experience pleasure at the mere sight of certain colors or, inversely, the aptitude of certain colors to please the eye. This is not true of the human eye alone. Darwin has shown that the perception of colors plays a decisive part in the sexual life of many animal species, and, to some extent, the same remark also applies to the botanic species, the colors of whose flowers probably attract the attention of insects. But art is for us human art, and its very existence rests upon the fact that certain musical sounds, certain forms, and certain colors are pleasing to perceive in themselves and by themselves. Since sense perception is the common act of the sensible quality and of the perceiving subject, the very possibility of the pleasure that, in Aristotle's own words, accompanies an act as "an end which supervenes as the bloom of youth does on those in the flower of their age" hangs on the presence of a certain harmony between the perceiving subject and the structure of its object.10
If this be true, one cannot deny that the subjective dispositions of the onlooker play a decisive part in the aesthetic experience of the kind of pleasure given by the perception of colors. This is so true that most of us cannot help envying such artists as Delacroix to whom the sight of certain colors was enough to cause joys whose intensity remains unknown to us. At the same time, and precisely for the same reason, the invention of a certain color, or even of a certain shade of red, yellow, or green, by a chemist working in a laboratory compares in importance with the creation of the musical sounds produced by the bass tuba, the bass clarinet, or the Mustel celesta. From this point of view, there is an artistic creation of colors as there is one for sounds. Some painters are fond of using colors exactly as they buy them. Others appreciate the same colors in the light of what they become when various proportions of flake white or zinc white are added to them. A chemical formula thus results in a certain color pigment, sold by a paint dealer in a tube, that appeals more or less to the eye of the painter according to his personal taste and his own visual sensibility. The names given to colors by their makers are largely arbitrary, for the simple reason that the colors themselves depend on the makers' free choice. What is advertised as a pure Naples yellow by a certain firm may be identical with what is represented by another firm as Naples yellow tinted with. zinc white. These facts are being mentioned here as so many tokens of this general truth, that artistic creation begins at the level of the fabrication of its material element, that is, colored pigments.
Expressed in terms of classical philosophy, this means that even colors, which are the "material cause" of paintings, have first to be invented. Painters do not create out of nothing; they must resort to some sort of given material to be formed later on by their art. Since there is no painting without this material element, the matter out of which a picture is made can rightly be considered one of the causes for its existence. But this is not the whole truth. It will presently be seen that, when it is applied to art, the very notion of matter, and the kind of causality proper to it, exhibit an extreme complexity.
2. Material Causality
Such as it was understood in classical metaphysics, the word "matter" pointed out, in its first acceptation, "primary matter," that is to say, matter as such, taken in itself and without any formal specification. Thus understood, matter was common to all material beings, in this sense at least that, according to its very notion, it was complete and absolute indetermination. Conceived as a mere aptitude to receive further determinations, this receptacle was, in Plato's own words, a near nothingness, so much so that it could not even be conceived in itself and apart from some determining form.
This absolute meaning of the term, however, was reserved to its metaphysical use. In sense experience, and consequently in given reality, this notion of primary matter never applies. In the infinite chain of determining and determined beings we observe that all that is being determined, shaped, or molded, in any way, is considered as standing on the side of matter, whereas all that is determining, shaping, or molding stands on the side of form. According to this empirical interpretation, what is matter in a certain relation can be form in another one. More important still, since there is no such thing as pure and absolute indetermination in reality, each and every given matter includes a certain amount and a certain kind of formal determination. In fact, the physical unit made up of a solid support and of the colored pigments applied to it by the painter constitutes, so to speak, the body of the painting.
A general remark must be made concerning the meaning of the term "matter" or "material" when it applies to works of art. Whatever its origin, its physicochemical structure, and even though it already is in itself a manufactured object, that which an artist assumes in order to use it as a material in the making of a work of art ceases thereby to be a natural element or an industrial product. It becomes at once an artistic material. When the prehistoric artists who decorated the Lascaux caves first collected various earths with a view to turning them into colors, these "natural" earth pigments, along with the animal grease they probably used as a medium, ceased at once to be "natural" materials. They became artistic materials, whose function was henceforth entirely foreign to those they were fulfilling before their introduction into the new world in which they now belonged. An earth pigment may be a "natural" product, or it may have been artificially produced in a chemical plant; in both cases, the pigment at stake will not be used by the painter as a natural or as a chemical product, but as one of the various elements that can enter the structure of a work of art and be made subservient to its ends.
This truth accounts for the recent attempts made by several painters to use paper, leather, sand, metallic objects, and practically anything as a painting material. The fact that it is possible to do so is not in itself a sufficient justification for the method.(18, 82)The only judge of the method is its final success or failure. But this at least is certain: since everything that enters the structure of a work of art assumes an artistic significance, there is no a priori reason to disqualify any kind of material. Everything hangs on what Focillon has so admirably called the "formal vocation" of each and every kind of material at the disposal of the artist.11 His creative imagination alone is judge of the possibilities of any material available. No abstract precept is of any value to determine what it is "lawful" or "unlawful" to use in order to reach the ends of art.
This first truth contains within itself the principle of its own limitation. Any material can be assumed by a painter to the ends of his own art, but the formal vocation of matter entails the consequence that, once selected by the painter and integrated with his work, each kind of material will have to be used according to its own nature. Anything can be used by the artist, but the choice that he freely makes of a certain material will determine to a large extent the nature of his future work. To be sure, the painter is the sole judge of the possibilities latent in the material he has decided to use. Still, when all is said and done, the formal vocation of a painting material has both its possibilities and its limits. This is the moment the causality attributable to their matter becomes a determining factor in the genesis of the works of art.
One cannot do much more, to make precise the nature of this causality, than to illustrate it by means of selected examples. For instance, its consideration should help to curb an unsound ambition that has literally wrecked the career of several promising artists.
Some painters are so deeply impressed with the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance exhibited in art galleries that they dream of reviving the art of the masters of the past. Ever since the time of Delacroix, and certainly not without good reason, the conviction has been spreading among painters that the secret traditions of the great techniques of the Renaissance were "mysteriously lost" about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Hence the efforts made by some modern artists to "rediscover the methods of such masters as Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez," as well as of some of their predecessors, such as Jan van Eyck, Memling, and Giovanni Bellini.12
There is something pathetic in the thought that, in our own times, such painters as Louis Anquetin and Emile Bernard either wholly renounced the art of painting in order to hunt for its lost secrets or else exhausted themselves in obstinate efforts to achieve works similar in general effect to those of the Venetians. Assuredly, this kind of investigation is most interesting in itself. It can even prove helpful to painters, since it calls to their attention painting techniques that once flourished, then died out, and could perhaps be revived with profit. The long-lost art of encaustic painting, the ancient tempera technique, even the primitive oil technique used by Jan van Eyck, certainly deserve to be investigated. The very fact that modern art almost entirely depends, in its rise and development, upon the discovery of oil painting clearly shows how deeply the very material of which paintings are made affects their nature as works of art. But this also is the fundamental reason, even though modern painters could rediscover the lost secrets of the ancient painters, they still could not duplicate their works in our own times. This truth has been clearly stated by J. L. F. Merimee (the father of Prosper), in his book De la Peinture a l'huile (1830), when he said that "although a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, who had won the Grand Prix de Rome, might well be capable of copying correctly a work done by his own master, he could never successfully attempt the reproduction of any work of the earlier periods because he did not possess the exact medium used in those times."13
The same truth has been formulated in a still deeper way by the painter Andre Lhote, when he said that since our own oils, essences, gums, and colors are wholly different from what they still were in the eighteenth century, even a modern painter of genius could not achieve today "the equivalent of that art (of Titian and Veronese) whose expressive power wholly resides in its painting material."14This statement should be understood in its full force, for indeed, despite its paradoxical appearance, it is literally true. A very great amount of literature can be written about the genius of such painters as van Eyck, Veronese, Vermeer of Delft, or Titian; aesthetic and technical studies can go a long way to help us understand the nature of their works, but to the extent that these act upon sight by their very color, all attempts to achieve the same effects have been doomed to fail ever since the same color material ceased to be available.
The fact that the material elements included in paintings are determined by forms of their own brings about a second series of still more important consequences. Many ancient philosophers expressed the opinion that there is in matter, not only an absence of form, but a sort of obscure craving for it. To the extent that matter is already determined by a certain type of form, this aspiration seems to be directed toward further determinations of a definite type. In more simple terms, the medium chosen by the artist in which to express himself partly determines the general nature of what he will say.
This remark rests upon the fact that, in reality, matter and form are inseparable. They are always given together. Modern aesthetic has forcibly stressed the part played by matter in the "life of forms." On the one hand, form strives to liberate itself from matter; on the other hand, without its matter, form could not possibly subsist. In one of the deepest remarks he ever made, Focillon said that, without matter, art would neither be "nor be such as it wishes to be."15 Whereupon, seized by a curious scruple, he presently added that, although they still obsess our minds, the "ancient antinomies," such as spirit versus matter, matter versus form, manner versus matter, should be left behind and this, precisely, for the reason that, in fact, both terms of these antinomies are always given together, reacting upon one another and mutually determining one another. But these alleged "antinomies" have really never existed. Only prime matter, could it exist apart, would be absolute indetermination. But it does not and cannot exist apart. In concrete experience, all relations are of act to potency, and inversely, that is, they are relations between that which determines and that which is being determined. In such relations, that which stands on the side of act and fulfills a determining function is called form, while that which stands on the side of potency and of determinability is called matter. Since a particular material is always specified by its form, it is through its form that the matter of a work of art finally exercises its own formal vocation.
As has already been said, the integration of a certain material with a work of art introduces it into a new order of reality. Its physical qualities may well remain the same, but they become the qualities of an artistic material. This is to say that, in a work of art, everything is determined to an artistic mode of existence. When it is pasted on a canvas by a painter, a piece of newspaper loses its newspaperly nature; physically the same, it no longer exists as a piece of newspaper, but as part of a painting. It is painting. On the other hand, since each particular kind of material is determined by its own natural form, no two of them are interchangeable. The same form will not be able to pass from a certain matter to another one without undergoing some modification. In fact, it will not remain the same.
Henri Focillon has so forcibly made this truth his very own that it cannot be better expressed than in his own language. "In passing from a given matter to another one, a form undergoes a metamorphosis."16 This is the deepest reason why the same aesthetician has so often considered the two notions of matter and of technique practically equivalent. Each kind of material requires a mode of treatment adapted to its own nature, and, in turn, this technique itself largely conditions the form and substance of the work. Assuredly, the formal qualities of a pencil drawing by Ingres are akin to those of his oil paintings, yet, in the last analysis, a drawing and a painting of the same model, or of similar ones, done by the same painter, are two specifically distinct works of art.17
It is easy to verify the truth of this remark by comparing works done by the same artist when, as was the case with Ingres, he happened to be both a great portrait painter and an unsurpassed master in the art of drawing. He himself knew the difference between these two media so well that he once refused to exhibit some of his drawings together with oil portraits. He felt afraid for the oils, not for the drawings. "People," he said, "would look at nothing else than the drawings." Leaving aside all problems of preferences, this at least is certain, that neither the end nor the means are the same in a lead drawing, like the portrait of Mme Destouches (19a), in which a few lines suffice to circumscribe a space that is hardly occupied; in the portrait of Ingres' first wife (19b), in which wash comes to the rescue in order to ensure an effective occupation of space; and in any one of his oil portraits —for instance, that of Mme Riviere (19c), which entirely submits space, lines, and forms to the controlling will of the artist. In this case, oil enables the painter to achieve a work that, rather than a rendering of reality, is in itself a subsisting reality.
The importance of the material causality exercised by the various species of colors becomes manifest when one attempts more or less arbitrarily to classify the various branches of the art whose means of expression is color.
A first class would include, under the name of painting properly so called, all the works executed by means of colored pigments diluted in some liquid and applied with a brush or otherwise, such as oil, tempera, water, etc. The two main classes of paintings, properly so called, are those in oils and those in water color. But there are other techniques, and the point we are now enforcing is that, taken in its very materiality, the same red is different, depending on whether it is painted in water color, in oil, in tempera, or in fresco. It is the same color as the same note is the same sound when produced by a piano, a violin, an oboe, or a horn. All the wash drawings, sepias, etc., are included in this class.
A second class should comprise the various kinds of drawings—that is to say, media of design in all their forms. Lead pencil, conte crayon, charcoal, chalks (white, black, or colored), pastel colors, etc., constitute so many materials whose influence on the formal structure of the work is decisive. As has been said, these matters are not interchangeable;18 their physicochemical structure determines the way in which each of them must be handled as well as the general effect that can be expected from their use. Since their combinations, and even the way to handle them, can be indefinitely diversified, no exhaustive enumeration of such materials is possible. No two artists use the same color material in identically the same way. Even the touch of the painter changes the color effect, just as the "hand" of the artist changes the material qualities of a line. Form is here beginning to react upon its matter. In fact, the very choice an artist makes of a certain material is conditioned by the effect this artist intends to achieve (20, 21). Matter is there in view of its form. Yet, the fact that their causality is reciprocal implies that matter itself acts as a cause on the structure of such works of art.19
Whatever their materials, all the preceding techniques have this in common, that they let the painter free himself to produce the colors or the light values included in his work. This is true of all paintings properly so called, including Chinese inks painted on silk, with or without addition of faint colors; Japanese sepias on paper screens; painted potteries of all denominations, from the black-figure and red-figure Greek potteries, with all the brushwork required for their painting, to the Urbino painted dishes and the incredible variety of decorated vases, cups, and vessels dating from so many centuries and coming from practically all the explored parts of the earth. In these techniques, the painter is more or less master of the colors he uses, and they all are destined to be seen, on a plane surface, under reflected light.
Other color materials are used by certain arts that, although intimately related to painting, cannot be identified with it. Such is, for instance, the case of mosaic. Nothing more closely resembles a painting than a mosaic. A mosaicist has to face the same problems as a painter: composition, tone values, light values, and so on; the only difference is that he is no complete master of his colors. A mosaic is a surface decoration made up of small pieces of colored stone, marble, glass, or any other such material; its author has therefore to make use of the colored fragments at his disposal, and he must use them such as they are. The influence exercised by the material on the whole work is nowhere more evident than it is here. The mode of decadence proper to the art of mosaic has consisted in its attempting to achieve the effects proper to the art of painting (22). This art seems to have yielded its most perfect masterpieces in the Greco-Roman antiquity, and in early Christian art. Giotto is rightly credited with having liberated painting from the Byzantine tradition, and indeed he was among the very first artists to paint pictures that did not look like Byzantine mosaics; but what then was the beginning of a rebirth of the art of painting was also for mosaic the beginning of a long decadence. Despite its merits, Giotto's famous Navicelle20 has initiated the interminable series of modern mosaics whose ambition it is to be mistaken for so many pictures. Many churches bear witness to the fact that this time-honored error, already familiar to the Romans, has not ceased to dominate an art that, in antiquity, produced admirable masterpieces.
For similar reasons, tapestry should be set aside as distinct from the art of painting. The tapestry maker works with woolen threads of different colors. His choice is a limited one. Even in modern tapestries, which make use of an enormous number of different hues, the artist has to use the ready-made colors set at his disposal. He can only place side by side threads of different colors whose juxtaposition cannot achieve the continuity so easily obtained by painters. Like mosaic, tapestry has undergone a decadence on account of its ambition to ape the effects proper to painting. The contemporary renaissance of this art is due to the decision made by certain painters to liberate tapestry (23) from its submission to painting and to restore it to its own independence. The basis for this reformation is precisely provided by the "formal vocation" of its material cause: the colored woolen thread.21 The same problem arises in connection with silk embroidery, the only difference being that the temptation to make an embroidery as indiscernible from a picture as possible will probably always remain an irresistible one. Only true artists are clear-sighted enough to discern the particular kind of form that can fulfill the potentialities proper to a certain kind of matter. Among those who perceive the different formal requirements of the different matters, few succeed, during their own lifetime, in obtaining the recognition of these requirements by the public.
Twice removed from painting, despite contrary appearances, is the art of stained glass(24). Taken in the purity of its style, stained glass is more like a mosaic than a painting. Nevertheless, unlike the mosaics properly so called, it is made up of colored fragments of glass through which light shines instead of being reflected by it. Naturally, stained glass has followed the same evolution as mosaic and tapestry. It has progressively degenerated into an imitation of painting. Recent efforts to rediscover the formal vocation of this kind of matter are beginning to yield promising results.22
3. Originals and Reproductions
Passive as it is, the kind of causality exercised by matter produces a number of positive effects. If what precedes is true, it entails the consequence that, strictly speaking, no picture can be duplicated. We thus find ourselves confronted, for the first time, with one of the many problems that arise from the constant interfering of aesthetics with education.
There is no more common expression than the formula: reproduction of works of art. The manufacturing, distributing, and selling of so-called "reproductions" of works of art in our own day is a rather thriving business. As is often the case, financial, cultural, ethical, and even religious interests are involved in one and the same process. Some benefactors of mankind seem to feel convinced that it is their solemn duty to spread artistic culture among the masses by multiplying mechanical "reproductions" of famous paintings, either in black and white or in colors. They hope to render many people so art-conscious that they will want to sown at least duplicates of originals out of their reach.
It would be hypocritical to take a scandalized attitude toward this industrial exploitation of art and of artistic feeling. The fact is so intimately tied up with the structure of modern society that it cannot possibly be avoided. Be it religion, love under all its forms, literature, or art, there is not a single spiritual force that does not become an object of commercial exploitation. Besides, all the consequences of this fact are not necessarily bad. On the contrary, some of them are undeniably good, so that here again, as is often the case in matters related to art, a wholesale condemnation of such practices would not do justice to the complexity of the problem.
On the other hand, and for the very same reasons, a wholesale approval of the commercial utilization of art also raises certain objections, some of which are of direct interest to us because they are rooted in the very being of painted works of art. Without denying in the least that much good can be achieved along the lines of artistic propaganda, one thing at least should be made clear from the very beginning—be it only for purely physical reasons, no painting can possibly be duplicated. As has been said, there is a contradiction in conceiving a painting as identical with another one. Even if they are not always easy to detect, their individuating differences do nevertheless exist. First of all, since they are two in number, the material out of which one of them is made cannot be the material included in the other one. Secondly, since it has been seen that, in works of art, matter always is specified by its own form, it is hardly possible to imagine two paintings in which the quality of the canvas, of the colors, and of the execution could be said to be really alike in all respects. Strictly speaking, then, a picture can be "imitated"; it cannot be "reproduced." To reproduce a picture is to produce another one. To speak of the "reproduction of works of art" has become so common that there would be no point in refusing to use this now received expression. Provided only we remember that, in this case, reproduction means "imitation," no harm is done. As to the good public, on which it seems clear that some sort of deception is very consciously practiced,23 this represents only one more case in which men buy something else than what they are supposed to be sold. It is both naïve and vain to object to such practices, so long at least as fraud does not present itself as a method of education.
To this remark, the ready objection is that it is a purely theoretical one. So long as the differences between an original and its reproduction are indiscernible, the fact that the two works remain materially distinct is of no importance. To all practical purposes, and educational purposes certainly are practical ones, the distinction between the notions of imitation and of reproduction seems to be irrelevant.
In fact, everything proceeds as if it were irrelevant indeed. Nay, we shall have ample proof that, in many cases, this distinction is intentionally disregarded. But it should not be, for the simple reason that there always are perceptible differences between a painting and any one of its so-called reproductions.
Even leaving aside the formal differences that occur when the reproducing process is not a mechanical one (no man signs his own name twice in identically the same way), the fact that matter itself always exhibits some formal differentiations makes it impossible to do two identical paintings. Even if, as sometimes happens, a replica is the work of the same painter who did the original, the finished product will really be another original, and the more inventive the painter, the freer he will feel to introduce minor variants in either the conception or the execution of the replica. But even if a copyist undertakes to duplicate as perfectly as possible an original painting, the result is bound to be a different one, because he will not use the same canvas, the same brushes, the same colors, or the same varnishes. At any rate, even though all the rest were indiscernible, he would not use the same hand.
The experiment has been made at least once, under circumstances so peculiar, and so unusually favorable, that there is little hope ever to perform a more convincing one. It is related to Ingres' famous portrait of M. Bertin. Bertin had two sons. After his death, the elder inherited the famous portrait, and since it was impossible for the younger son to have it too, he thought of having a copy of it made by Amaury-Duval. Now, this Amaury-Duval, who tells the story in his memoirs, had been a pupil of Ingres for years. If it was a question of painting a la Ingres, nobody could touch him, not only because he knew all the workshop recipes and all the tricks, but also because, after applying them for years and years under the supervision of the master, he achieved a result a la Ingres. Still, there was nothing in it that could make it pass for an authentic work of the master. Ingres knew it, his pupil knew it, and we ourselves still can see it by looking at Amaury-Duval's portrait of the Countess of Circe that is now preserved in the art gallery of Poitiers. This picture cannot have been painted by anyone else than a pupil of Ingres; it is the work of a perfectly trained artisan; its craftsmanship is flawless, and still, even if we did not know its author, nobody would mistake it for a work of Ingres.
In the case under discussion, however, the problem was different. It was only a question of copying a portrait already done by Ingres, and since the work was to be that of a pupil perfectly conversant with the technique of the master, the result should have been an exact duplicate of the original. Remarkably enough, to all external appearances, it was. Ingres was a frightening judge; he had no illusions as to the genius of his pupil, and the cruelty of his judgments could sometimes be appalling. In this case, his favorable verdict was the more surprising, as one of his own works was at stake. After carefully examining the copy, Ingres simply concluded: "I would willingly sign it." Here is, as it seems, a perfect experiment, whose success is wholly guaranteed by the most competent authority. Yet, we also know from the same Amaury-Duval that when, several years later, he saw again his own copy, he found it darkened. Let us not investigate the reasons he quotes in explanation of the fact,24 for the fact itself is what now matters, and it is that, to use the same colors as the painter a second time, and to use them twice in identically the same way, is a practical impossibility.
The real problem is not there. It rather consists in knowing if imitations, or reproductions of paintings that nobody could mistake for originals, can be used, to any practical purpose, as so many substitutes for the originals they represent. This point deserves careful consideration,. because many different interests, each of them respectable in its own order, are involved in it. Big business is naturally concerned with serving civic communities and, by the same token, with promoting artistic culture in the masses. If it could succeed in placing three or four color prints of world-famous masterpieces in each and every home, big business would, at one and the same time, serve a lofty cause and promote its own interests.
The same remark applies to the colossal multiplication of art books, folders, postcards, color slides, and illustrated art histories, whose avowed ambition it is to introduce school children and, generally speaking, the public of art galleries to the mysteries of art appreciation. These so-called albums of famous masterpieces are a constantly rising tide or, rather, a flood that progressively invades bookstores, private and public libraries, newspapers, and weeklies; so much so that at the same time that Cezanne, van Gogh, and Utrillo are being used to decorate the walls of schools and colleges, they meet us in every hotel room and even assail us through our mail. This pictorial inflation parallels the musical persecution we have to resist in order not to let radio sets pour the "Eroica" upon us ten times a month, particularly at breakfast time, or while we wash, dust, or sweep.25
Whatever their ultimate motives, commercial, artistic, educational, or otherwise, those who devote themselves to this pictorial propaganda act as if, to all practical purposes, there were no specific difference between looking at a painting and looking at one of its mechanically produced imitations. This conviction is not without justification. There are at least four extremely useful things that the image of a painting can do for us: it shows the subject of the picture; it shows its composition;. it helps us to remember it after a more or less long time has elapsed since we last saw it; it prevents a painting from relapsing into absolute nothingness when the original has been destroyed. The third and fourth points need no commentary, but it may prove profitable to make some remarks concerning the first two.
Subject and composition are inseparable, and although the importance of subject can be exaggerated, that of composition is beyond doubt. From these two points of view, photographic documents are strictly irreplaceable, and everybody knows it from bitter experience. In reading ancient art histories or critical studies written when nothing but words were available as a means of conveying some idea of the paintings at stake, we feel slightly discouraged at the endless descriptions of objects that, because we have not seen them, we feel powerless to imagine. The most modest drawing then appears a priceless help. And, indeed, a sketch belongs in the same class of objects as the paintings it represents. It makes us see something intended to be seen, whereas literary descriptions consist of written symbols, each of which contributes to the formation of a verbal sign that evokes a certain image in us. Now, mental images are more or less indeterminate, and not all men enjoy the imaginative power required in order to organize them into definite structures comparable, in intensity and in coherence, with the perceptions of sight. When an art critic or an art historian attempts to describe a painting, he has us at a disadvantage. He has seen the picture he describes; he probably has kept a written record of what lie has seen; in some cases, he is describing a picture he actually has before his eyes; in all these cases, the writer goes from actually seen objects to the words by which he is trying to make us form certain images, whereas we are invited to go from written words to the images of sense perceptions we have never had.26 The poorest photograph of a painting is incomparably preferable to the most eloquent of literary descriptions. One of the great services rendered by the introduction of plates has been to rid art histories of an infinite number of practically useless descriptions.
Incidentally, let us remark that the same conclusions hold good for all the cases in which the direct inspection of a painting is difficult or impossible. Inaccessible murals, pictures placed in such a bad light that they are permanently invisible, high painted ceilings, details that escape our sight on account of their small size or the distance at which they are seen—all these and many other similar instances of hardly visible paintings wholly justify the use of photographs, plates, and slides as so many helps to our sight. To sum up, it is always advisable to substitute for language any kind of graphic document. A visible object is always better represented by its own image than it can possibly be by any combination of words. This being said, the fact remains that a painting and any one of its mechanically made images are two specifically distinct things.
On this point, attention should be called to the problem raised by the present vogue of color plates and by their diffusion in school circles as well as among the book-buying public. Color plates give satisfaction to the natural taste of men for colored images of recognizable objects. Even children delight in such pictures; yet, however perfect the reproducing process, even the best color plates never exactly duplicate the originals. To stand in front of a painting and to compare it with even a good plate of it is enough to reveal how different they are. A more costly experiment consists in collecting different color plates of the same painting, or to compare the plates printed in several different books dealing with the same work of art; no two of them agree on the most fundamental tones either between themselves or with the original. But a supreme indifference seems to prevail in this matter. Not only publishers, booksellers, and art shops, but even art galleries, in Europe as well as in America, offer for sale illustrated books on painters and on the history of painting, color plates of all sizes and, unfortunately, of any color too, plus collections of color slides, vignettes, and miniatures, including even. postage stamps, all of which constitute so many betrayals of the paintings they are supposed to represent.
To try to substantiate such statements by means of concrete examples is obviously impossible. The operation would imply a vicious circle. The color plates of one and the same painting are not perfectly identical even within the same edition of one and the same book. Any attempt to show, by reproducing them side by side, how different the color plates of a certain painting can be in several different reproductions of the same work would simply lead to printing new color plates themselves different from their own originals.27
Even if an objective demonstration of this truth were possible, there would be no point in giving it. Most of those who favor the diffusion of color plates content themselves with observing that many of them are "pretty good." They do not wonder what the painter himself would think of certain minor differences that, to him, are simply destructive of his work. Those who manufacture these so-called reproductions sometimes think that the difference in price more than compensates for the artistic difference there certainly is between the originals and their approximative imitations. Or else they feel that color plates are better than nothing at all. Generally speaking, all the differences in colors and value that put a painting "out of tune" are considered unimportant by those who do not see them with a painter's eye. Moreover, all these problems are often obscured in the minds of the popularizers of the great masterpieces of painting by the nobility of the motives that prompt them to act. Fortunes have been spent in subsidizing such "educational" ventures, and they have often been spent in a most disinterested way.
The motives behind the industrialization of art are not here at stake. The fact alone counts, along with its consequences. The problem arises at the meeting point of three forces, two of which at least are not unrelated—namely, art itself, industrialism, and democracy. At any rate, their simultaneous appearance in modern history is a sure sign that mass production and production for the masses are two aspects of one and the same event. It would be vain to look at personal motives or at private interests for the main causes of events that no individual can either bring about or bring to a close. As long as these two collective forces prevail, the highest manifestations of the human mind, the highest aspirations of the human soul, the most rare, the most exquisite, and the loftiest products of human art will be sooner or later industrially processed, manufactured, and marketed so as to be put at the disposal of practically all men.
Any remark made on this point would be an imprudence, because it would seem to question one of the few myths really alive in our own times —namely, democracy. Fortunately, political philosophy is entirely irrelevant to this investigation. The problem at stake is not to know if it is desirable in itself to put all the great masterpieces of the art of painting at the disposal of all men; it is not even to know if all men are both desirous and capable of the loftiest aesthetic experiences; our only problem is to know if such an undertaking is possible, or if, on the contrary, it is not contradictory to the very nature of things.
Unfortunately, it is. The present imperfection of the techniques used in reproducing works of art is not what matters. It is possible to foresee a time when, owing to further technical progress, an extremely high degree of fidelity will be achieved in the rendering of colors. What seems to be unthinkable is that a time will ever come when a "reproduction," made up of materials completely different from those which enter the texture of a painting, will affect our eyes in the same way as a painting. Real paintings are made by the hand of painters on wood, canvas, or cardboard, with brushes or palette knives, by means of colored pigments they usually buy in tubes and whose physicochemical properties exercise such a determining influence on the finished product that its aspect is wholly different, depending on whether the painter has used oil, tempera, encaustic, or any other one of the many media at his disposal. It is no doubt possible to turn out still better reproductions than the best ones among those we know, but neither typographical inks nor any kind of sensitized surfaces will ever affect the retina in exactly the same way as touches or layers of colors whose substance is physically different. Printed plates are pictures; they are not paintings.28
Since, however, no proposition concerning the future is safe, let us content ourselves with saying that, such as they now are, the so-called reproductions of famous paintings can do little more than to familiarize their public with the subjects and the composition of these masterpieces, but when it comes to colors, which are the substance of paintings, they are likely to spread the misleading opinion that, provided their colors more or less resemble those of the original, a few differences in tones do not matter much. What, in the long run, will be the result of this effort to educate pictorial taste? Just about the same as that of a musical propaganda whose method it would be to ensure repeated performances of symphonies played on pianos out of tune. If the average optical sensibility of art lovers equaled that of their ears, most color plates would be unbearable to their eyes.
To conclude, without denying that the mechanical imitations of paintings may have their usefulness or, rather, while expressly affirming that they are indeed extremely useful in view of certain other ends, we must maintain, as a consequence of their individuation by their own matter, that paintings can be seen only where they are. Apart from all further considerations concerning form, and the part played by the hand of the artist in the execution of a painting, we can safely consider inconsistent with their very nature that paintings should be duplicated.
Endnotes
1. Delacroix's portraits of George Sand and Chopin used to form a single picture representing "Chopin improvising at the piano, George Sand behind him listening." See the Journal, pls. 20,21, and the notes on p. 485. They have been separated; some say by Delacroix himself, others, as late as 1889. Degas had made a study of Manet and Mme Manet; he gave it to Manet, who, not liking the effect produced by Mme Manet in the picture, simply cut her face out of it. Vollard wonders if Manet would have hesitated to cut a painting by Ingres or Delacroix. On this anecdote, and on the dissection, by Manet's family, of one of his versions of the Execution of Maximilian (National Gallery, London), see Ambroise Vollard, En ecoutant Cezanne, Degas, Renoir, pp. 125-26.
2. Many discussions have taken place among the Scholastics themselves on the cause of individuation. The generally received answer to the problem can be summed up as follows. Supposing that there are species (for instance, the species "man"), the notion of the species itself applies in the same sense to all its individuals. All men are men in the same sense, and one man cannot be more or less man than another one (although he can be man in a better or in a less good way). Individuals can be multiplied as distinct entities, within their respective species, by their bodies only; this, of course, does not mean that corporeal matter constitutes their "individuality," but it is the cause of their individuation.
3. Focillon (Vie des formes, p. 47) has forcefully stressed the fact that, in art, form remains a mere view of the mind, an abstract speculation about geometrical extension, as long as it does not live in matter. This, which is absolutely true, has far-reaching consequences. In plastic arts at least, as long as matter is not there, it can be a question of philosophy, aesthetics, art history, or art criticism. It can even be, in the mind of the artist himself, a question of dreaming about art. But there is no art.
4. Paul Signac, D'Eugene Delacroix au neo-impressionnisme, p. 80. — On account of what follows concerning the radical difference between the optical mixtures of light-colors and the pigmentary mixtures, or mixtures of material pigments, it may prove useful to read of Signac's remarks (he is a neoimpressionist) on the fundamental analogy that subsists between their respective laws; Signac even attempts to prove that, in the last analysis, a pigmentary mixture can be made to look like an optical mixture (p. 66, n. 1). In fact, this was the very essence of neoimpressionism.
5. Lives, I, 224.
6. For an introduction to the general theory of color, see Arthur Pope, The Language of Drawing and Painting (it includes a bibliography). — For the background of the problem, see Goethe's celebrated contribution, Zur Farbenlehre, in Samtliche W erke, vol. 28, especially the first part, pp. 20-284. Also, Goethe's Theory of Colours, tr. Charles Lock Eastlake. This translation includes the first part of Goethe's work, besides a series of notes that have been mainly borrowed from the historical part of the Farbenlehre. —Newton and Goethe made the same error in looking for a theory that could account for both psychophysiological colors (i.e., qualitative) and physical colors (i.e., quantitative). If he had let Newton alone, Goethe would have largely been right. Most of Newton's optics is irrelevant to painting; most of Goethe's Farbenlehre is irrelevant to optics, but it is highly relevant to painting. See, particularly, Didactic Part, sec. VI, arts. 758-919, pp. 194-230, on the moral connotations of color perceptions.
7. Light and the spectrum colors would provide material for an art entirely different from painting. The French Jesuit Louis Castel conceived it as a combination of sound and color and imagined what was called an "ocular harpsichord." The idea has never been entirely forgotten, but the present trend seems to be to eliminate the element of sound in order to preserve the color element only. The "clavilux" of Thomas Wilfred (1919) is a color projector that enables a trained artist to give color recitals. On the question: A. W. Rimington, Colour Music: The Art of Mobile Colour; A. B. Klein, Colour-Music: The Art of Light; and art. "Colour-Music," The Encyclopeedia Britannica, 14th edn., vol. 6, pp. 64-65. — Klein observes that the analogy between color and sound is misleading. One of the main obstacles to the success of an art of light is that, if it uses nothing else than light-color, it is purely qualitative. Now, it is a curious fact that without a quantitative element (such as intervals and rhythms in music) there is no art. In painting, design and composition provide this quantitative element that colors alone would not provide. As to their intervals, which are no less real than those of sounds, it is difficult to say if our eyes could be trained to perceive them and to locate them at fixed places on color scales similar to the musical ones. There is much relativity in sensory habits (remember how hard it is for Western ears to perceive any music in the sounds made by African or Asiatic musicians), so that to deny the intrinsic possibilities of color music would be to take a gratuitous risk. Certain color sequences in some cartoons of Walt Disney suggest what such an art could be. We cannot help feeling that, handled by him, nonimitational color films could be successful experiments.
8. See the scene between Emile Bernard and Cezanne. Bernard was using a very sparingly loaded palette: flake white, chrome yellow, ultramarine, blue, vermilion, plus a madder red (laque de garance) that he obviously needed to get his scale of reds. Cezanne indignantly asked him: "Are these all the colors with which you paint?"—"Yes."—"But where is your Naples yellow? Where is your peach black? Where are your raw sienna, your cobalt blue, your burnt lake? . . . One cannot paint without these colors!" (Emile Bernard, Souvenirs sur Paul Cezanne, et lettres, p. 35.) — Absolutely speaking, Bernard was right; with his four colors and his white, he could produce all the other colors either on his palette or on the canvas. But Cezanne used to paint differently. For instance, he would obtain a certain gray by the juxtaposition, on the canvas, of three slightly overlapping spots of blue, ocher, and green whose blending takes place in the eye of the spectator. He needed an extended scale of pure hues in order to create the scale of grays he wanted without multiplying his operations to infinity. The often-made remark that, under close inspection, the works of Cezanne reveal an incredible number of color spots illustrates in part what has just been said.
9. This is a point on which, far from being a threat to art, science and industry are of vital importance for the survival of its works. When artists themselves start experimenting with colors, anything may happen. As a symbol of a long series of disasters owing to the poor quality of the material used by painters, let us recall the incident of Leonardo da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari: "Thinking that he could paint on the wall in oils, he made a composition so thick for laying on the wall that when he continued his painting it began to run and spoil what had been begun, so that in a short time he was forced to abandon it" (Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, II, 166). Leonardo also painted a Virgin and Child "with infinite diligence and art, but today it is much spoiled either by neglect or because of his numerous fanciful mixtures and the colouring" (II, 166). — Nearer to our own times: "It must be admitted that the names of some of the pigments —moraie, vert-chou and laque de gaude for example—leave one aghast at the risk of impermanence he [Delacroix] was willing to accept. One no longer wonders at the ruin of so many canvases." (The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, Introduction by Hubert Wellington, p. xxiii.) The conditions for the possibility of the very existence of paintings is what is at stake in these considerations.
10. Nicomachean Ethics, X, 4, 1174b, 31-33. — This sets a limit to the possibility of universalizing aesthetic experience. Delacroix does not seem to have entertained too many illusions as to the number of people qualified by nature to experience the beauty of colors: "They speak of having an ear for music: not every eye is fit to taste the subtle joys of painting. The eyes of many people are dull or false; they see objects literally, of the exquisite they see nothing." (Journal, p. 414 [June 22, 1863], the last entry.)
11. Vie des formes, pp. 48-51. — On the paper collages used by Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris, and Reth, see Michel Seuphor, "Matiere a discussion," La Matiere et le temps dans les arts plastiques, pp. 9-14. One of the most certain successes in this field is Reth's Still Life before a Window, formerly in the Musee d'art moderne, Paris (see Pl. 18). Picabia's use of sardine tins, combs, matches, and bits of string had perhaps chiefly the value of bravado. On the contrary, plaster, sawdust, sand, gravel, sea shells, and piled eggshells seem to have become part and parcel of the media normally used by certain painters. Some walls painted by Utrillo owe much of their quality to the fact that the painter used real plaster in painting them instead of the usual pigments.
12. Jacques Maroger, The Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Masters, p. 7. Following the example of Louis Anquetin (the "French Michelangelo"! ), Maroger finally gave up creative work in order to dedicate himself to the quest for the discovery of "the secret material known to the old masters but lost to us." — This seems to be a widely generalized obsession: "The tradition entirely lost in modern painting." (The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, p. 331 [January 11, 18571.) — "We might say that for a long time the art of painting has been a lost secret, and that the last masters of great experience who practiced it took the key away with them. We need it, we ask for it, and it cannot he found." (Fromentin, The Masters of Past Time, p. 132.) — Andre Lhote (La Peinture, le coeur et l'esprit, p. 290) accounts for the return of many modern painters to primitive techniques by the fact that they have lost the tradition of the classics; they pass before the Venus of Urbino, or before the Entombment (Titian), as they would pass "before the doors of a lost paradise."
13. Maroger, p. 12. — Note, same page, the sad remark: "Merimee's researches have given us the formula for four varnishes. Unfortunately, the use of some of these proved disastrous in actual practice. Prud'hon used one of them on his Christ on the Cross, in the Louvre Museum, and in view of its present state we cannot but confirm the failure of this particular formula."
14. La Peinture, p. 289. Lhote quotes (p. 290) as an example of a painting material whose progressive corruption is observable in our own times the "Haarlem siccative" used by Ingres and Cezanne. To which he presently adds: "Besides, if we still had this precious material, we would not know how to use it. It is in the presence of this mystery that those among the moderns who still were somewhat honest and aware of the situation, renouncing the lost art of glazing, adopted the ancient, primitive technique of the flat tints."
15. Vie des formes, p. 47. "The old antinomies, spirit-matter, matter-form, still obsess our mind with as much force as the time-honored opposition between the matter and the manner. Even though some shadow of meaning or usefulness may still remain attached to these antitheses in pure logic, anybody wishing to gain some understanding of the life of forms must first get rid of them." As will presently be seen, the admirable master is here at grips with historical phantoms. Incidentally, let us recall that, according to Focillon himself (p. 47) : "Every science of observation, especially if it studies the activities and the creations of the human mind, is, before anything else, a phenomenology, in the strictest sense of the word." As is the case with every phenomenology, this one would fare better if it were supported by a correct ontology, without which, even as a phenomenology, it cannot be completely right, — On matter and form, see pp. 106 ff.
16. Ibid., p. 52.
17. Ibid., p. 51. — A primary introduction to the basic knowledge of the material used by painters can be found, among many other ones, in the charming yet extremely precise little book of Norman Colquhoun, Paint Your Own Pictures, especially ch. 5, "Paints and Pigments"; ch. 6, "Oil Painting"; ch. 7, 'Water-Colour and Other Media"; ch. 8, "Colour" (including the color circle, p. 161). The book is completed by a useful Glossary of Technical Terms.
18. "Ink, wash drawing, lead pencil, charcoal, red chalk, white chalk, either separated or united, represent so many different properties, so many different languages. To convince himself of this, let one try to figure out this impossibility: a red chalk by Watteau, for instance, copied by Ingres in lead pencil" (Focillon, Vie des formes, p. 51). More simply, let us imagine Ingres himself copying in pencil one of his own oil portraits. The results would be altogether different. — As an example of the modifications to which artists can subject their materials, see the treatment of pastels by Degas, in Vollard, p. 120. Degas used to wash his pastels, let them dry, then wash them again. The result was the mat and solid appearance of some of his drawings, especially of ballet girls, so puzzling if one remembers the effect of unsubstantial fluffiness that normally goes with the use of pastels.
19. Compare the head of the barmaid in Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere (National Gallery, London) with Manet's pastel portrait of the model, now in the Museum of Dijon (Pls. 20 and 21). Incidentally, to use plates to show the difference between the material texture of two paintings is self-defeating. We can only hope that some of the differences between a pastel and an oil rendering of the same model, by the same painter, will remain perceptible even in their printed condition.
20. In the atrium of St. Peter's, Rome. This mosaic will have to be considered from the point of view of the art of painting itself. See below, pp. 242 f.
21. Marc Saint-Saens ("Le Carton et la creation dans la tapisserie," in Lalo et al., pp. 176-84) shows how tapestry has lost its own technique by attempting to imitate painting and how modern painting is trying to bring back tapestry to its own traditional technique. As can be seen from this remarkable study, the difficulty does not lie on the side of painters, but, rather, on the side of the artisans who have lost the traditional knowledge of their own means of execution.
22. The recent stained glass designed by Leger for the church of Audincourt is by itself a sufficient proof that the resurrection of this long-lost art is possible.
23. The standard technique is a well-known one. First, the advertisement presents itself as mainly concerned with art itself and with the artistic education of the people (the Great Art Treasures of the World in every home). Secondly, it builds up the romantic figure of the painter whose works are supposed to be "reproduced" (he always happens to be the most important painter of the day, and, perhaps, the greatest painter of all time). Thirdly, it invites the public to buy, at a nominal price, a batch of "paintings by X, faithfully reproduced in full color." The last moment of the operation is also its triumph. Having persuaded some people that they now can own masterpieces at practically no cost, it remains to invite them to subscribe to a course in art appreciation based upon the "paintings" they now own. The cycle then is complete. Art appreciation is being taught on the basis of industrial products imitated from works of art, which are not works of art.
24. L'Atelier d'Ingres, pp. 162-65. Ingres had used violet hues in the hope that, after darkening, they would yield the equivalent of warm dark browns. When Amaury-Duval did his copy, this effect had already taken place, so that in "reproducing" the painting he started, not from any violet, but from a dark brown that, in turn, became still darker with time. — Incidentally, let us note the curious fact that, had he not been held in check by the respect he felt for his model, Amaury-Duval would have painted the background in greenish tones. After extending to him his warm felicitations, Ingres suddenly asked Duval: "Why didn't you try another background . . . a greenish background?"
25. It has been said that reproducing a work of art is analogous to recording a musical piece (Mikel Dufrenne, Phenomenologie de l'experience esthetique, I, 73). But the two problems are very different. Even an exactly recorded performance of one of his own piano sonatas played by Beethoven himself would still not be an original. It would simply represent that sonata as Beethoven was able to play it, on the instrument then at his disposal, and as he happened to play it on the day it was recorded.
26. Our remarks do not apply to the many instances in which plates are used for other ends than the communication of paintings. For instance, iconography is incomparably better equipped when it uses plates than when it has to rely on the direct inspection of the original works. The same applies to "art culture" as well as to the kind of dialectical speculation about art that Andre Malraux has popularized. In short, our remarks apply to all that, in the art of painting, is directly relevant to painting as such. Painting can exist, subsist, and thrive without iconography, art history, art criticism, or aesthetics. It particularly stands in no need of any phenomenology or ontology of art. All these disciplines are legitimate in themselves, and most of them can put plates to good use. But their conclusions can be valid with respect to plates without being valid with respect to art.
27. It would not be fair to judge color plates on their regular failure to "reproduce" the colors of Cezanne. But it does not seem unfair to compare different color plates representing simpler works, such as Matisse's Le Piano (Museum of Modern Art, New York) or Rousseau's The Dream (same museum). Naturally, it can be objected that color plates are growing better and better and that they will someday be perfect; but our remark is about what they are, not about what they will be. Moreover, even perfect prints would still remain substantially different from paintings. Because their physical mode of existence is not the same, our aesthetic experience of them must needs be different.
28. We beg leave to avail ourselves of the distinction there sometimes is, in common language, between the respective meanings of the words "picture" and "painting." A painting can be a picture; a picture is not necessarily a painting. The dominant notion in the word "painting" is that of paint. The dominant notion in the word "picture" is that of image. A picture, says the Pocket Oxford Dictionary (11th edn., New York, 1949, p. 617), is "a representation of something produced on a surface by painting or other means." Thus understood, pictures are essentially images. As such, they fall under the jurisdiction of a recently created science, namely, eiconics. See Kenneth Boulding, The Image, ch. 10, "Eiconics: a New Science."
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