The death-knell of Art is sounding!
Boom! Doom!—Boom! Doom!
With Botticelli or Brangyn, with Pre-Raphaelitism or Post-Impressionalism, with Symbolism or Realism, we here have no concern.
Art is not entirely a thing of colours and academies. It lies far-flung athwart the world. It is born of the womb of Imagination. It is the child of ecstatic moments, half-remembered, half-immortalized in form or colour, in rhythm or in tone. And Art is dying.
Why?
Art was inspired by the idea of God. The Gods are dead. Art was inspired by the greatness of Kings. Today we have only Republics; or else— Popinjays! Art was inspired by the romance of War. Today we have Peace; or else—Murder! Art was inspired by the ecstasy of Love. Today, love is dragged in ignominy through Divorce-Courts, or lies stagnant, loathsome in the Brothel.
Pop goes the Past!
Our civilisation is empty of Gods and Kings and Wars—empty of ecstasy. Our supreme moments are not now experienced in temples, or in king’s palaces, or on corpse-strewn battle-fields. We find our ecstasy in the theatres, the moving-picture shows, the music-halls. A few of us, perhaps, have had supreme moments elsewhere—at prize-fights, at Cup-Finals, at Lord’s. And the ecstasy-providers are almost always professional.
How then can we have any Art, when ecstasy is only to be got at secondhand, through the medium of money-grabbers?
Moreover, Art is dependent upon concentration. And Life has become so strenuous, so complex, that few can concentrate. Our lives are filled with duties, to ourselves, to our families, to the nation, to society, and to our particular political party. We are partizans all. We must have some sort of conviction about every topic of the hour. The sin of society is to remain neutral.
We must either be Socialists or Individualists. We must be Whigs or Tories; Republicans or Monarchists; Orthodox or Agnostic. And to support parties we must read, write, argue, spout. We must attend meetings and lectures and soirees and banquets and conferences. In short, we must waste nine hours in reading and listening and feasting and applauding other people, for every one hour of actual work we do ourselves for the cause in question. Art is not a matter of parties, political or otherwise. It is in no way connected with tea-drinking or with mock-turtle-soup.
Life is short and Art is long. We are all too busy.
Art is dying!
But there is still a weightier reason. We are too clever.
Instead of artists we produce cleverists. In the absence of ecstatic inspiration, amid the roar and rush of our narrow partisan lives, the soul of man is decaying—the mind of man is developing.
We are drifting away from Emotionalism, away from Sentimentalism. We have discovered a strange Mind—Ecstacy. We have made wondrous expeditions into the newly explored realm of Cleverdom.
Competition, Commercialism, the Struggle for Existence have sharpened our brains and deadened our souls. In our endeavours to be clever we have forgotten how to be great. We have sold a glorious birthright for a mess of pottage.
We are a race of Gradgrinds.
Art is degenerating into an accessory of all sorts of propaganda. We are obsessed with LEITMOTIFS.
Bernard Shaw is a propagandist of the most pronounced type. “Man and Superman” is nothing but a philosophical dissertation shopped up, and labelled—“Tanner”—“The Statue”—“The Devil”—and so on.
Wagner was not less guilty, although the issue was perhaps, more thickly veiled, in his “Nibelungenlied.” And what of Ibsen?—of Tolstoy?—and Hassal painting advertisements?
Art is dead!
Long life to Cleverism!
Who is there to lament the decay of Art? Who is there that shall say the mess of pottage was not worth the birth-right? Only the religionists. Only the praters of Art for Art’s sake.
Lo! we have broken another link that bound us to the beasts. Art was dependent upon Gods and Kings and Wars and Passion—on all things effete and obsolete.
We have no great artists. We have no great men. But, as a race we are more clever than any race the world has ever seen. The aristocracy of Art, like all the aristocracies, has had its day. The democracy of Cleverism has replaced it.
Man has realized at last that he has no immortal soul. Man has realized that the soul dies with the body; but that the mind of the race shall evolve through countless centuries into the image and likeness of the great Unnamed!
The Art of today is blended with all propaganda working towards this end. Art today is wedded with Work, with Commercialism, with Rationalism, for the regeneration of the world.
Art is no longer a priceless thing, an indulgence, a luxury. It is no longer pursued only by the favoured few, in schools, in cloisters, or under the patronage of princes. Art has evolved into Cleverism. It is the possession of the poor. It is to be found on the calendars that tradesmen present gratis to their customers; it is given away with a pound of tea; or exchanged for an accumulation of soap-wrappers.
Art was comprised of the noblest efforts of an aristocracy of great men. It is dead. Cleverdom is comprised of the noblest efforts of a democracy that joins hands across the world. It will live forever.
Bound up as it is with the mundane things, the hum-drum and the heyday of life, it is slowly drawing humanity out of the mire; and shall eventually lead them across the psychic bridge to the Next Beyond, where transfigured man shall look back at his last stage of evolution, as he does now, with disgust and contempt.
Man shall some day be surpassed!