Part 34

Marian said: “Sometimes some one says to me, ‘that picture is perfectly beautiful,’ and I can’t see it so. Then again I may think a picture beautiful, and another person will not. Why is that?”

“Because,” I said, “your taste, your standard, is different.”

“Is it just taste?” she asked.

“Taste with a reason,” I said, “even if you don’t know the reason.”

“I think,” said Virginia, “that when an artist expresses himself well, every one must realize it.”

“Not at all,” I said. “One has to be trained to understand pictures, as one has to be trained to see.” I told them of Turner, whose pictures look beautiful to some, and to others are mere blotches of color.

“A picture is not what it represents,” I said. “One must learn to see it. A proof of this is that babies, quite able to recognize objects, do not recognize pictures. And so some people are babies all their lives in relation to art.

“Now,” I asked, “do any of you think photographs artistic?”

I believe Henry was going to say he did, but was overwhelmed by the others. Alfred said: “In a photograph all the unimportant things are there with the important.”

Marian said that there, as in life, there was intrusion of inharmonious details.

The out-of-focus and blurred photograph sometimes is artistic, because of the lost details and the effect of distance; but, just therefore, it is untrue to fact.

Virginia said photographic art was bad art. She said: “My teacher gave a good example. If a fire-engine were tearing along the street, you would be so interested in that you would see nothing else. There might be crowds of people, but you would not notice them. But if a camera were to be snapped, they would all be in it and obscure the engine. You see only what is important, but the camera sees everything.”

“That is a good illustration,” I said. “And so you see we are story-tellers in vision as well as in narrative. We see things complete and dramatic, whether they are so or not, just as we must tell a complete story. Do you realize how all the arts are related, how they all have the same laws? And these, I believe, are the laws of life.

“Did you ever think of it, that the artist sees only with his eyes, whereas you see with your eyes, fingers, ears, with all your senses? You see a table square, high, hard, smooth, but an artist sees it only in perspective, from a certain point of view. To get completeness you must limit yourself, because you cannot see the universe. The drop of water is most complete and perfect when it is a limited, spherical drop, not when it is scattered abroad in mist.

“The artist,” I said, “is one who sees things beautiful, even when to others they do not seem so; and to see things beautiful is to see truth.”

None of the children disputed this much-disputed fact—for to youth it is obvious—so I myself had to answer the objections. I said: “One might say that in life many things are ugly, and these things are true, therefore to see these things as beautiful is not to see them truly. But we believe that the whole universe, altogether, could we know it, would be harmonious and beautiful; therefore to see things as beautiful is to see them in relation to that truth, and as symbols of that truth.”

Marian said: “We must believe that the whole universe is harmonious; anything else is unthinkable. We feel it in ourselves.”

“You mean, because we have the laws of harmony in our own nature?”

“Yes. The whole must be harmonious.”

We spoke of instances in which ugly things could be seen as beautiful. The empty lot across the street, with its boards, rubbish and shanties, is ugly; but at times, under certain conditions, and by shutting out a part with my hand, I see it as a beautiful wild landscape.

Marian said: “Near us are some poor, ugly houses, that I hate to see; but sometimes I see little children at the windows, who are so sweet and graceful they make the houses look beautiful.”

“There are a great many pictures,” said Virginia, “but I think there is not much art. Do you?”

“No,” I said. “To be a painter does not make one an artist. Do you remember hearing people make the criticism that a picture was pretty, but not beautiful? Prettiness in art is a sad fault, one that perhaps you, too, have found. But do you know just what it is?”

Virginia said she had often seen pictures that were just pretty, without character.

I said: “When a painter makes pictures to please the taste of people whose taste he does not respect, when a would-be artist works to catch applause or money from the crowd by satisfying their bad taste, and does not even believe in the love of truth and beauty which sleeps in them all, then the thing he paints is usually pretty. He will paint a little child with a kitten in her lap, because that is a pretty subject, but it will be the most affected child and the posiest kitten!”

“It is superficial,” they said.

“Yes, for he does not know the true character of those for whom he works, nor care to know his subject. The smirking advertisements one sees are a good example of prettiness. But many artists, working for money alone, fall into this cheap, easy habit of pleasing the worst taste.”

“Wouldn’t you call ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ a pretty book?” asked Henry.