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"Too slow footed is all speech for me:--Into thy chariot, O storm, do I leap! And even thee will I scourge with my devilry.

"Thus spake Zarathustra."

Delivered at University College on Dec. 1st, 1910.

AEsthetic , p. 350.

Nietzsches AEsthetik, p. 5.

The State of Modern Art.

The Art of to-day, unholy and undivine as the Tower of Babel, seems to have incurred the wrath of a mighty godhead, and those who were at work upon it have abandoned it to its fate, and have scattered apart--all speaking different tongues, and all filled with confusion.

Precisely on account of the disorder which now prevails in this department of life, sincere and honest people find it difficult to show the interest in it, which would be only compatible with its importance.

Probably but few men, to-day, could fall on their knees and sob at the deathbed of a great artist, as Pope Leo X once did. Maybe there are but one or two who, like the Taiko's generals, when Teaism was in the ascendancy in Japan, would prefer the present of a rare work of art to a large grant of territory as a reward of victory; and there is certainly not one individual in our midst but would curl his lips at the thought of a mere servant sacrificing his life for a precious picture.

And yet, says the Japanese writer, Okakura-Kakuzo, "many of our favourite dramas in Japan are based on the loss and subsequent recovery of a noted masterpiece."

In this part of the world to-day, not only the author, but also the audience for such dramas is entirely lacking.

The layman, as well as the artist, knows perfectly well that this is so. Appalled by the disorder, contradictoriness, and difference of opinion among artists, the layman has ceased to think seriously about Art; while artists themselves are so perplexed by the want of solidarity in their ranks, that they too are beginning to question the wherefore of their existence.

Not only does every one arrogate to himself the right to utter his word upon Art; but Art's throne itself is now claimed by thousands upon thousands of usurpers--each of whom has a "free personality" which he insists upon expressing, and to whom severe law and order would be an insuperable barrier. Exaggerated individualism and anarchy are the result. But such results are everywhere inevitable, when all aesthetic canons have been abolished, and when there is no longer anybody strong enough to command or to lead.

"Knowest thou not who is most needed of all?" says Zarathustra. "He who commandeth great things.

"To execute great things is difficult; but the more difficult task is to command great things."

Direct commanding of any sort, however, as Nietzsche declares, has ceased long since. "In cases," he observes, "where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders by the summing together of clever gregarious men: all representative constitutions, for example, are of this origin."

Although, in this inquiry, the Fine Arts will be the subject of my particular attention, it should not be supposed that this is necessarily the department in modern life in which Nietzsche believed most disorder, most incompetence, and most scepticism prevails. I selected the Fine Arts, in the first place, merely because they are the arts concerning which I am best informed, and to which the Nietzschean doctrine can be admirably applied; and secondly, because sculpture and painting offer a wealth of examples known to all, which facilitates anything in the way of an exposition. For even outsiders and plain men in the street must be beginning to have more than an inkling of the chaos and confusion which now reigns in other spheres besides the Fine Arts. It must be apparent to most people that, in every department of modern life where culture and not calculation, where taste and not figures, where ability and not qualifications, are alone able to achieve anything great--that is to say, in religion, in morality, in law, in politics, in music, in architecture, and finally in the plastic arts, precision and government are now practically at an end.

"Disintegration," says Nietzsche,"--that is to say, uncertainty--is peculiar to this age: nothing stands on solid ground or on a sound faith.... All our road is slippery and dangerous, while the ice which still bears us has grown unconscionably thin: we all feel the mild and gruesome breath of the thaw-wind--soon, where we are walking, no one will any longer be able to stand!"

We do not require to be told that in religion and moral matters, scarcely any two specialists are agreed--the extraordinarily large number of religious sects in England alone needs but to be mentioned here; in law we divine that things are in a bad state; in politics even our eyes are beginning to give us evidence of the serious uncertainty prevailing; while in architecture and music the case is pitiable.

"If we really wished, if we actually dared to devise a style of architecture which corresponded to the state of our souls," says Nietzsche, "a labyrinth would be the building we should erect. But," he adds, "we are too cowardly to construct anything which would be such a complete revelation of our hearts."

However elementary our technical knowledge of the matter may be, we, as simple inquirers, have but to look about our streets to-day, in order to convince ourselves of the ignominious muddle of modern architecture. Here we find structural expedients used as ornaments, the most rigid parts of buildings, in form , placed near the roof instead of in the basement, and pillars standing supporting, and supported by, nothing. Elsewhere we see solids over voids, mullions supporting arches, key-stones introduced into lintels, real windows appearing as mere holes in the wall, while the ornamental windows are shams, and pilasters resting on key-stones.

And, everywhere, we see recent requirements masked and concealed behind Greek, Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque embellishments, thrown together helter-skelter, and with a disregard of structural demands which must startle even the uninitiated.

Our streets are ugly in the extreme. Only at night, as Camille Mauclair says, does the artificial light convert their hideousness into a sort of lugubrious grandeur, and that is perhaps why, to the sensitive artistic Londoner, the darkness of night or the pale glow of the moon is such a solace and relief.

"Music has indeed been defined," he says, "as 'sound with regular vibrations,' other sounds being called noise. This definition," the author adds, "is only suited to undeveloped music; modern music may include noise and even silence."

People are mistaken if they suppose that Nietzsche, in attacking Wagner as he did, was prompted by any personal animosity or other considerations foreign to the question of music. In Wagner, Nietzsche saw a Romanticist of the strongest possible type, and he was opposed to the Romantic School of Music, because of its indifference to form. Always an opponent of anarchy, despite all that his critics may say to the contrary, Nietzsche saw with great misgiving the decline and decay of melody and rhythm in modern music, and in attacking Wagner as the embodiment of the Romantic School, he merely personified the movement to which he felt himself so fundamentally opposed. And in this opposition he was not alone. The Romantic movement, assailed by many, will continue to be assailed, until all its evil influences are exposed.

"Since the days of Beethoven," says Emil Naumann, "instrumental music, generally speaking, has retrograded as regards spontaneity of invention, thematic working, and mastery of art form," and the same author declares that he regards all modern masters as the natural outcome of the Romantic era.

Nietzsche has told us in his Wagner pamphlets what he demands from music, and this he certainly could not get from the kind of music which is all the rage just now.

What it lacks in invention it tries to make up in idiosyncrasy, intricacy, and complexity, and that which it cannot assume in the matter of form, it attempts to convert into a virtue and a principle.

"Bombast and complexity in music," says P. von Lind, "as in any other art, are always a sign of inferiority; for they betray an artist's incapacity to express himself simply, clearly, and exhaustively--three leading qualities in our great heroes of music . In this respect the whole of modern music, including Wagner's, is inferior to the music of the past."

But of all modern musical critics, perhaps Richard Hamann is the most desperate concerning the work of recent composers. His book on Impressionism and Art entirely supports Nietzsche's condemnation of the drift of modern music, and in his references to Wagner, even the words lie uses seem to have been drawn from the Nietzschean vocabulary.

Well might Mr. Allen cry out: "Oh for the classic simplicity of a bygone age, the golden age of music that hath passed away!" But the trouble does not end here; for, if we are to believe a certain organ-builder, bell-founder and pianoforte-maker of ripe experience, it has actually descended into the sphere of instrument-making as well.

This is such a common fault that it is superfluous to give particular examples of it, but the New War Office in Whitehall is a good case in point.

Local Government Board building; Piccadilly Hotel .

Piccadilly Hotel , and the Sicilian Avenue, Bloomsbury.

New Scotland Yard.

Gaiety Theatre; the new Y.M.C.A. building, Tottenham Court Road.

Local Government Board.

Gaiety Theatre.

Marylebone Workhouse.

Der Impressionismus in Leben und Kunst.

The Fine Arts.--1. The Artists.

Turning, now, to Painting and Sculpture, what is it precisely that we see?

There is nothing in this definition which is likely to offend the modern artist. On the contrary, he would probably approve of it all too hastily. But, in approving of it, he would confess himself utterly ignorant of what Art actually is, and means, and purposes in our midst.

Or to state the case differently: it is not that the modern artist has no notion at all of what Art is; but, that his notion is one which belittles, humiliates and debases Art, root and branch.

To have gazed with understanding at the divine Art of Egypt, to have studied Egyptian realism and Egyptian conventionalism; to have stood doubtfully before Greek sculpture, even of the best period, and to have known how to place it in the order of rank among the art-products of the world; finally, to have learnt to value the Art of the Middle Ages, not so much because of its form, but because of its content: these are experiences which ultimately make one stand aghast before the work of our modern men, and even before the work of some of their predecessors, and to ask oneself into whose hands could Art have passed that she should have fallen so low?

Whether one look on a Sargent or on a Poynter, on a Rodin or on a Brock, on a Vuillard or on a Maurice Denis, on an Alfred East or on a Monet, the question in one's heart will be; not, why are these men so poor? but, why are they so modest?--why are they so humble?--why, in fact, are their voices so obsequiously servile and faint? One will ask: not, why do these men paint or mould as they do? but, why do they paint or mould at all?

Ugliness, in the sense of amorphousness, one will be able to explain. Ugliness, in this sense, although its position in Art has not yet been properly accounted for, one will be able to classify perfectly well. But this tremulousness, this plebeian embarrassment, this democratic desire to please, above all, this democratic disinclination to assume a position of authority,--these are things which contradict the very essence of Art, and these are the things which are found in the productions of almost every European school to-day.

But, as a matter of fact, to do artists justice, beneath all the tremendous activity of modern times in both branches of the art we are discussing, there is, among the thinking members of the profession, a feeling of purposelessness, of doubt and pessimism, which is ill concealed, even in their work. The best of these artists know, and will even tell you, that there are no canons, that individuality is absolute, and that the aim of all their work is extremely doubtful, if not impossible to determine. There is not much quarrelling done, or hand-to-hand scuffling engaged in; because no one feels sufficiently firm on his own legs to stand up and oppose the doctrine that "there is no accounting for tastes." A clammy, deathlike stillness reigns over the whole of this seething disagreement and antagonism in principles. Not since Whistler fired his bright missiles into the press has the report of a decent-sized gun been heard; and this peace in chaos, this silence in confusion, is full of the suggestion of decomposition and decay.

"Art appears to be surrounded by the magic influence of death," says Nietzsche, "and in a short time mankind will be celebrating festivals of memory in honour of it."

With but one or two brilliant exceptions, that which characterizes modern painting and modern sculpture is, generally speaking, its complete lack of Art in the sense in which I shall use this word in my next lecture. This indeed, as you will see, covers everything. For the present purpose, however, let it be said that, from the Nietzschean standpoint, the painters and sculptors of the present age are deficient in dignity, in pride, in faith, and, above all, in love.

They are too dependent upon environment, upon Nature, to give a direction and a meaning to their exalted calling; they are too disunited and too lawless to be leaders; they are in an age too chaotic and too sceptical to be able to find a "wherefore" and a "whither" for themselves; and, above all, there are too many pretenders in their ranks--too many who ought never to have painted or moulded at all--to make it possible for the greatest among them to elevate the Cause of Art to its proper level.

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