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The crisis in modern art

by
Anthony M. Ludovici

The New English Weekly 34, 1948–49, pp. 152–153


- p. 152 -
I am afraid I knew nothing about Professor Wladimir Weidlé before a translation of his Les Abailles d'Aristée * came into my hands. But I may truthfully add that the subject of his book has been in my mind ever since, as an adolescent, I hovered hesitantly on the brink of the graphic arts as a career. For the very chaos, atomization, anarchic subjectivity and lack of a unifying style and canons in the arts, to which he, much too verbosely, calls attention, constituted the chief objection I was then raising to all and sundry, including my own parents, to the adoption of the graphic arts as a calling. If I may be pardoned these autobiographical details, I would even go so far as to confess that, as a young man, what most disturbed me, inclined as I was by family tradition, tastes and gifts for the life of a painter, was the bewildering inconsistency and contradictoriness of the opinions on my work I was able to elicit from the very people — the only people in fact — whose judgment I valued. I would show a pastel or a water-colour to my father, to Holloway, to Rodin, to Sauter, or to Whistler and would receive a wholly different opinion at each shot. Since, however, a young aspirant to any calling wishes above all to know where he stands and to learn from those he regards as in authority what he is to do and how he is to do it, it is impossible to imagine a state of affairs more deplorable than the absence of all authority, or at least of any unanimity among authorities.
        This was roughly about 1898, when Professor Weidlé was just three years old. Ever since then, on and off, my thoughts have turned upon the why and wherefore of this confusion and lack of standards in the arts and upon its disastrous consequences. More especially have I always felt the danger of a pervasive charlatanism in a sphere where, owing to the absence of established canons and standards, everything is allowed and, owing to the mob's susceptibility to forcible hetero-suggestion, every aberration, every outré self-advertising eccentricity, however insincere, is rendered viable or sight-worthy and may often secure a phenomenal success.
        Nor is this danger imaginary. On the contrary! It has threatened and is still threatening all the arts, and in most of them instances can be adduced of its having victimized large groups of derelict, leaderless laymen. Especially is this so perhaps in the graphic arts. Or, in suggesting this, is an attentive student of these arts merely led astray by his specialisation and therefore guilty of overlooking similar phenomena elsewhere only because he is less familiar with the spheres where thy occur?
        For the absence of standards, which arises from our loss of a homogeneous culture — the only culture worthy of the name according to Nietzsche — by depriving the public of their one chance of union with the artist, and of understanding his message (feeling it with him), exposes them to a twofold aesthetic fraud. On the one hand they may, by the persuasion of a clique and the loud noise such a clique can make, be led to accept a mere poseur, a mountebank in fact, as a considerable performer; and, on the other, owing to the easy confusion of mere conspicuousness or outrageousness with outstanding merit and originality, they may spontaneously acclaim what is at bottom worthless.
        Inevitably, too, this state of affairs must affect the artist. For if, as is the case to-day, success can too often be secured through contriving by hook or by crook to collect about one as many of the lay public as possible who will dutifully bleat one's name, it would follow that an important condition of fame is at least to make a noise,

        * The Dilemma of the Arts, S.C.M. Press Ltd. Demy 8vo. pp. 130. Price 10/- net.

- p. 153 -
to attract by bold and persevering excesses in oddness — oddness not necessarily related to any high quality.
        Hence the constant temptation in the art world of the West, as Coomaraswamy repeatedly pointed out, to lead a clique by being outré, if not actually outrageous. For when once a hundred vociferous and influential men and women are gathered behind one, snobbery often does the rest and, where it fails, speculative picture dealers, who have bought at ludicrously low prices, will often fill the breach.
        In the absence of all standards, how can this be prevented? Has it been prevented?
        Even art-criticism itself becomes an empty gesture in times like these, unless the art critic is prepared quite openly and without pretence, to be as subjective as the lonely artist. For if the artist stands outside all canons and standards, what can the critic do beyond writing about his personal reactions? "I, Mr. A. or Miss B. find that artist C. appeals to me more than artist D." The critic's apparatus of historical and technical knowledge may enable him to clothe this bald statement in a learned jargon that reads remotely like the standard and canon-inspired criticisms of better days; but, stripped of its frills and scholarship, art-criticism to-day can hardly exceed the bald admission of which the universal formula is given above.
        Now, Professor Weidlé deals with all this. It is in fact the subject of his whole essay. But, without intending unduly to exalt my own and belittle his statement of the case, I can only wish that he had been a little less wordy and a good deal more clear. A reader informed about the position can in the end at last disentangle the main threads of his argument; but a newcomer to the subject is likely to have much more difficulty.
        His main contentions have been more or less a commonplace for decades and have already been stated with clarity and precision. Do the remedies he suggests make a better showing?
        His principal claim is that, owing to the complete disappearance of even a shadow of homogeneity in our culture, the artist is lonely, isolated and derelict. He no longer enjoys the life-giving contact with either his inanimate or animate world, which the prevalence of uniform values would give him. He is uninspired. All this is admitted.
        He then proceeds to argue that what the artist really lacks is Faith and quotes with approval Claudel's words: "In a world in which you know neither the Yea nor the Nay of anything, where there is no moral and intellectual law, where everything is allowed, where there is nothing to hope for and nothing to lose, where evil brings no punishment and good no reward, in such a world there is no drama because there is no struggle and there is no struggle because there is nothing which is worth struggling for."
        In support of his claim that Faith is the principal deficiency of the modern world, the deficiency above all which makes high art impossible, he instances the Faith-inspired arts of Egypt, India and China.
        "The great artistic cultures of Egypt, India and China," he says, "are sufficient evidences of this," and he declares that "a religious renewal of the world can alone save art." In pursuing this line of thought, however, and in insisting on a world wide revival of Christianity as the only means of saving art, he does not sufficiently separate and independently establish his two claims. The alert reader who expects to be convinced may well ask Professor Weidlé whether he has adequately pondered the separate contributions which a religious faith and a homogeneous culture make to the production of lofty artistic creation. For instance, Professor Weidlé might with advantage have devoted more space to a discussion of the factor of uniform values (the homogeneity of culture) in the production of a lofty artistic production and compared it with the contribution from religion. Was the great art of Egypt and India due chiefly to the one factor or the other? Or are religious faith and uniform values interdependent? China and its art would be an interesting field in which to settle the question. Moreover — and this is where Professor Weidlé seems to have been careless in heaping up his charges against modern conditions — there are many who regard Egyptian art as the highest so far produced. It was most important, therefore, to differentiate sharply between the factor of religion and that of a homogeneous culture. For if, as he alleges, the Egyptian religion was of a "lower" kind than Christianity and religious Faith takes precedence of uniform values in making art possible, those who enthusiastically favour Egyptian art as the highest of all, will not unnaturally feel some perplexity.
        The general thesis of Professor Weidlé's book could, therefore with advantage, be more carefully, more precisely worked out. The subject is one which, especially now, cannot fail to arouse passionate interest. But the best way to satisfy this passionate interest is not by writing passionately in support of a personal and definite point of view, but in calmly and cogently establishing the grounds for holding that definite point of view.

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