Now some words as to the Anglo-Saxon language and its relation to
pictures. In England and America our plastic arts are but beginning.
Yesterday we were preeminently a word-civilization. England built her
mediæval cathedrals, but they left no legacy among craftsmen. Art had to
lean on imported favorites like Van Dyck till the days of Sir Joshua
Reynolds and the founding of the Royal Society. Consider that the friends
of Reynolds were of the circle of Doctor Johnson. Literary tradition had
grown old. Then England had her beginning of landscape gardening. Later
she saw the rise of Constable, Ruskin, and Turner, and their iridescent
successors. Still to-day in England the average leading citizen matches
word against word,--using them as algebraic formulas,--rather than
picture against picture, when he arranges his thoughts under the eaves of
his mind. To step into the Art world is to step out of the beaten path of
British dreams. Shakespeare is still king, not Rossetti, nor yet
Christopher Wren. Moreover, it was the book-reading colonial who led our
rebellion against the very royalty that founded the Academy. The
public-speaking American wrote the Declaration of Independence. It was
not the work of the painting or cathedral-building Englishman. We were
led by Patrick Henry, the orator, Benjamin Franklin, the printer.
The more characteristic America became, the less she had to do with the
plastic arts. The emigrant-train carried many a Bible and Dictionary
packed in beside the guns and axes. It carried the Elizabethan writers,
Æsop's Fables, Blackstone's Commentaries, the revised statutes of
Indiana, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Parson Weems' Life of Washington.
But, obviously, there was no place for the Elgin marbles. Giotto's tower
could not be loaded in with the dried apples and the seedcorn.
Yesterday morning, though our arts were growing every day, we were still
more of a word-civilization than the English. Our architectural,
painting, and sculptural history is concerned with men now living, or
their immediate predecessors. And even such work as we have is pretty
largely a cult by the wealthy. This is the more a cause for misgiving
because, in a democracy, the arts, like the political parties, are not
founded till they have touched the county chairman, the ward leader, the
individual voter. The museums in a democracy should go as far as the
public libraries. Every town has its library. There are not twenty Art
museums in the land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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