The photographic news

• Bandzählung: 29.1885
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1885
• Sprache: Englisch
• Signatur: F 135
• Vorlage: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Rechtehinweis: Public Domain Mark 1.0
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• PURL: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id1780948042-18850000
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• Sammlungen: LDP: Historische Bestände der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Sammlungen: Fotografie
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• Strukturtyp: Band

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• Strukturtyp: Ausgabe

October 23, 1885.J THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. 679 fall and rise, often according to what appears to be the mere caprice of fashion, though even fashion is controlled by com mercialism. And as to the wealth of successful painters, is that always in proportion to the excellence of their work, or the labour bestowed upon it, and is it always the accompaniment of the highest skill and the loftiest aims ? Overwhelmed with com missions, the fashionable painter has the alternative before him of over-work or inevitable deterioration. In many cases he becomes the victim of both. Then, too, for one favourite of fame and fortune, how many unfortunate, struggling, obscure? Thus, at both ends of the scale, the influence of commercialism is only for evil. Consider, too, the waste of energy and talent in this unequal struggle for artistic life and recognition—this pictorial lottery, where so many blanks are drawn. Think of the capacities now swallowed up in the tasteless contention of exhibitions, which, properly organized and directed, might co-operate to adorn our streets and public places, our lecture halls and railway stations, left desolatenow to another and more hideous form of competition in the clamorous posters of commercialism, which cover our waste walls and hoardings, and crowd upon the weary eye in all their shame less self-assertion aud sordid language of the market, shouldering one another in the unspeakable coarseness of colour- bedizenment and graceless superscription. In spite of our refinement, our care for art, our stheticism, forsooth 1 and the lavishly decorated private interiors of wealth, to this complexion must we come out of doors ! And in the meantime -we are so inured and hardened fo such disfigurements that we cease to feel their enormity. Nay. we must grow to like them, for are not advertising and bill-sticking an inseparable part of our system ? There is no escape. So it is, and so it will be, so long as we allow this selfish, demoralizing, and unscrupulous demon of commercialism to tyrannize over and exploit us, ever with its continual cry of “ Profit, profit, profit!” Every aspiration will be shouted down as visionary and un practical ; every real attempt to better our disorganized condi tion will be opposed by the dead weight of vested interests. It is on record that one of the few living artists, properly called ideal—George Frederick Watts—offered to decorate the hall of the Euston Station with frescoes without charge, if the Company would bear the cost of the materials ; and the offer was refused. How can monumental art, which is but decorative art in its highest form, exist in such apathetic conditions ? To grow the flower, you must not only have the seed, but a favour able soil and climate. It will be written of our age that we squandered the talents of our more original writers and artists upon the newspaper and periodical press We preferred to be amused with a constant succession of brilliant trivialities and passing sensations, to beholding our best thoughts embodied in enduring and noble forms of art ; and it did not seem to signify how many lives might be frittered away—how much energy and talent ground to powder in the process. But monumental art demands the sympathy of a people bound together by common interests, interested in the drama of history, and proud of their own struggles and sacrifices for freedom; accustomed to dwell with ennobling thoughts and aspirations, and accustomed to give them free and forcible expression ; sensible both of the joy and the tragedy of life, delighting in phantasy and invention, and, above all, in beauty and form of colour. Yet there is nothing in these things but what naturally belongs to humanity. Can such art be found where the best energies are engrossed in the feverish and unequal race for a more or less precarious existence on the one hand, and, on the other, made artificial by excess of wealth ?—where the aspect of life, whether public or private, is neither simple nor dignified, and where cities become unlovely and inorganic accumulations of bricks and mortar ?— where, with an appearance of zeal for art, education, and refine ment, and the elevation of the masses, we allow mile after mile of mean or pretentious dwellings to carry the desolation of our unwieldy human warrens further and further into the green country, as the capitalist and the jerry-builder join house to house and brickfield to brickfield ? . So we arc thrown back on economic conditions, which, it is impossible to doubt, are finally responsible for these things, as, indeed, they have always been responsible for the form in which the art of a period is cast. How hopeless it is, for instance, to expect varied and beautiful street architecture with the present system of house tenure and the contract system in building ? Here and there a dwelling, with some claims to beauty aud distinction—or, at least, individuality—perchance arises from the sordid crowd ; but these are the homes of men of wealth and exceptional taste who build for their own delight, and have secured their ground. Here and there a board-school building relieves the monotony, and seems to point to the possibilities of better things. But the mass of modern London consists of the erections of the speculative builder—miles of absolutely uninteresting house fronts composed chiefly of the repetition of one pattern, and that of the meanest and most uninventive kind crowded together—the ready-made packing-cases for civilized humanity which enters in aud dwells there. Could these things be,, were it not for the powers of commercialism, based upon the individual possession of land and capital, with the one object of money gain in their disposal ? But all things are in the grasp of commercialism. Let a band of artists and craftsmen associate together, and, working quietly, make to themselves and all whom it may concern, things of beauty and utility for the use and adornment of simple homes. Straightway there is' a growing desire for these things as a relief from the dreary monotony of ugliness, or the pretentious luxury of second empire taste. Thereupon commercialism, perceiving a demand, brings out what it calls art-furniture, art-colours, and so forth—the addition of the magic word being supposed to make all the difference—sucks the brains of designers, steals their designs, and devotes them to objects for which they were never intended ; deluging the market with strange travesties and tortured mis-applications of ill-digested ornament, which overruns everything like an irrepressible weed, until, coming down to its lowest forms in the cheap furniture shop, one is tempted to think that, in the matter of taste, our last state is worse than the first. Thus are all the channels of production fouled. Does not commercialism hold the keys of the kingdom of both art and industry ? Everything has to pass through the sieve of profit before it reaches the public ; and to keep the huge and wasteful machinery of competitive production and distribution going, even at an ordinary jog-trot, it appears to be necessary in every de partment of trade to make a vain show of so-called “ novelties ” every season, whether they are really new and better than the old, or not. But the counts of the indictment against commercialism are not yet filled up. The subject is, indeed, too vast and far reach ing to be adequately treated in the limits of a single paper. Hitherto I have kept very near home, but if we look abroad over the world we shall see the same causes at work, the same deterioration going on. Look at the effects of our rule on the native arts of India. The same process of extinction of the art of the people, of the village crafts, is taking place there as has resulted from the action of commercialism at home. (On this point I cannot refer anyone, who is desirous to pursue the sub ject, to a more competent authority than Sir George Birdwood.) But all over the East, wherever European influence is in the ascen dant, the result is disastrous to the arts, and thus the very sources of ornamental design, beauty of colour, and invention are being sullied and despoiled by the sharp practices and villainous dyes of Western commerce. Even in Japan, where the artistic sense seems instinctive among the people, so that everything touched by them bears its impress, since the results of ages of art labour and exquisite craftsmanship have suddenly been placed within the insatiable grasp of commercialism, there are signs that these riches are becoming exhausted, and the rarer and finer kinds grow scarcer every day. We can no longer expect to be given of the best, and wares are being consciously prepared for the European market. This is but the “ retort courteous ” for the compliments of Manchester in china, clay, and size. We actually hear of proposals to establish schools of design on the British model, the more effectually, I suppose, to drive out those quick, spontaneous, characteristic, native methods of art-expression, than which nothing, perhaps, has so refreshed and stimulated the jaded sensibilities of European design. Thus even by contact with a vicious civilisation the natural quickness of intelligence of a race may bring about its own destruction. Thus, in the fierce and unscrupulous struggle for wealth, one after another, virgin markets are opened, and new peoples ex ploited by commercial enterprise, which, like a huge steam plane, is passing over the world stiiving to reduce all art, and with it humanity, to one dull level of common-place mediocrity, leaving us but of vital and beautiful varieties the relics and shavings. Greedy eyes are now turning to central Africa. The next act in the commercial drama will probably take place there. Already the rampant explorer, posing as the benefactor of humanity, has