The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays on Art, by A. Clutton-Brock

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Title: Essays on Art

Author: A. Clutton-Brock

Release Date: July 2, 2005 [EBook #16178]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ESSAYS ON ART

BY

A. CLUTTON-BROCK

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

_First Published in 1919_

PREFACE

These essays, reprinted from the _Times Literary Supplement_ with a few
additions and corrections, are not all entirely or directly concerned
with art; but even the last one--Waste or Creation?--does bear on the
question, How are we to improve the art of our own time? After years of
criticism I am more interested in this question than in any other that
concerns the arts. Whistler said that we could not improve it; the best
we could do for it was not to think about it. I have discussed that
opinion, as also the contrary opinion of Tolstoy, and the truth that
seems to me to lie between them. If these essays have any unity, it is
given to them by my belief that art, like other human activities, is
subject to the will of man. We cannot cause men of artistic genius to be
born; but we can provide a public, namely, ourselves, for the artist,
who will encourage him to be an artist, to do his best, not his worst.
I believe that the quality of art in any age depends, not upon the
presence or absence of individuals of genius, but upon the attitude of
the public towards art.

Because of the decline of all the arts, especially the arts of use,
which began at the end of the eighteenth century and has continued up to
our own time, we are more interested in art than any people of the past,
with the interest of a sick man in health. To say that this interest
must be futile or mischievous is to deny the will of man in