THE ART WORLD A Monthly for the Public THE HIGHER IDEALS November 1916 μηδὲν ἄγαν MANHATTAN NEW YORK CITY PUBLISHED AT No. 10 EAST 43D STREET 1700.21,1916 SCHOOL OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTUR COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE KALON PUBLISHING CO., INC. PRESS OF THE KALKHOFF COMPANY NEW YORK LIFE, by Edwin Howland Blashfield, engraved by Timothy Cole...... Frontispiece .... WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF ALL BEAUTY? A Definition. By F. Wellington Ruckstuhl. Illustrated 88 .... THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CERVANTES. By Professor Ralph Haywood Keniston. Illustrated 104 .... THE TRUTH OF ART HISTORY. By Professor Wm. M. Sloane, Columbia University 107 THE WATER-TANK NUISANCE. By Charles I. Berg. Illustrated... 110 THE ALTOVITI VENUS. By Charles de Kay. Illustrated 112 ANALYSIS OF WORKS OF SCULPTURE BY CABET, FALGUIÈRE, VIDAL AND RODIN. By Petronius Arbiter. Illustrated 121 ... THE VALUE OF GREECE TO THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD. Part I. By Professor Gilbert Murray 127 TEN CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN ART. Part I. By Professor Francis Haffkine Snow. Illustrated 130 .... THE AMERICAN PLAYGOER AND THE AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT. By Professor Brander Matthews 135 SOLOM MODERNISM AND POLITICS PLAY HAVOC OLOMON said: "He hath made all things beautiful in his time." And when he built his golden temple this, the wisest of men, followed in the footsteps of the Almighty and made it beautiful. Nature teaches us that the creation of rhythmic, melodious, lifting beauty is the fundamental urge back of the evolution of every moving thing in the universe. It is the supreme law of the Creator. It remained for the "modernistic" art party of Paris to flout and lampoon this supreme law. Everything comes out of Paris-the worst and the best. There are more wise men and more fools in Paris than in any other city. There are produced in Paris more geniuses and more idiots, more virtuous saints and vicious sinners, more heroic liberators and hedonistic libertines than in any other city. Paris is at once the most slummy and sublime city in the world. The sojourner takes out of it an intensification of what he brings into it. Are you sensualyou will bring away bestiality; are you poetic-you will bring away spirituality. And that is the haunting charm of Paris-it is a stimulating accelerator. That is why it is the capital of the world. Paris has been the scene of the most Bourbon traditionalism and of the most lurid radicalism. The city by the Seine is at once Paradise and Gehenna, because to go to excess is at once the strength and the weakness of the Parisian. Do you like your neighbor-Paris will make you a lover of mankind; do you lean to grouchiness Paris will make of you a pessimistic hater of your kind. Do you like a square deal-Paris will make you an honest man. Is success more important to you than a lofty soul-Paris will make of you a strutting charlatan. As "nothing succeeds like success," according to Emerson, and most men are still undeveloped enough to prefer success to sainthood, Paris is the home of the moral runt and his devourer-the cunning charlatan. Voltaire already claimed that Paris was being devoured by Charlatans. And Napoleon said: "Every General must be a charlatan." And Eugene Scribe said: "Charlatanism? Why everybody uses it in Paris. It is admitted, accepted, and is current coin." Paris was the first city to have a street fair of fakes and fakirs. In fact, charlatanism has been, in Paris, reduced to such a "fine art," that many keen Americans have been completely taken in, especially in the world of art. The world thought Paris sunk in a selfish, individualistic swinishness. The war has shown her simply sublime in her altruistic solidarity and self-abnegation-when civilization really required it. For an American to understand the Paris world of art he must, first of all, learn the difference between frothy chatter and real conversation, and arrive there with mature faculties, obtain exceptional chances for observation, and stay there at least ten years "on the job." Because everything which arrives in America from the Paris press-journals, magazines, books is -suspect. Because the world of art in Paris is divided into two parties: the Government-ins, and the Government-outs, fighting each other like cats and dogsboth eternally going to excess. And to find the middle course, the juste milieu, is given only to the levelheaded. It is that which makes Paris so interesting -also so dangerous. The strong only survive in Paris, the weak are devoured! Therefore it is the business of every commonsense leader of thought in America to winnow the intellectual and artistic output of Paris-like a furtrader when separating the beautiful robes of the seal from the questionable skins of the foxes and the suspect pelts of the skunks-and hold fast to that which is of the gods and cast out what is of the devil. From time immemorial down to 1800 no great artist in the eight arts thought of singing his song -merely to show off any peculiar way of workingof technical strutting-like a peacock on parade; in his self-expression he always aimed, not only to satisfy his own native hunger for the beautiful by the creation of things that would seem to him perfectly beautiful, but he aimed to make them so perfect that they should satisfy the hunger for the beautiful inborn in his fellow-men also. He sought to create universal beauty. That is what Universalism in Art means the creation of something that should appeal to everybody. The poets, painters and sculptors did not seek a peculiar way of rhyming, painting or carving. They sought a perfect way. And, having found a perfect way, they used their skill for one supreme purpose the captivating of mankind by stirring the emotions through the most perfect expression of IDEAS. Ideas, concepts, thoughts, sentimentsending in Emotion, formed the basis of all Art. Artists did not seek originality in individual technical processes, they sought originality in choice of subjects, conception of subjects, and composition of subjects-three immense fields for a display of originality. Technical processes they aimed to make perfect -not peculiar. But the Modernistic Art party, made up of a lot of ego-maniacal excessivists, decided that not universal beauty, but peculiarity and personality of technique should henceforth be the supreme test of an Artist. Let us see how they accomplished this. When, under Francis I, some artists of the Renaissance went to France, they Italianized French art, |