Art

Art

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Title: Art
Author: Clive Bell

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Language: English
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ART
by
CLIVE BELL
1913

[Illustration: WEI FIGURE, FIFTH CENTURY _In M. Vignier's
Collection_]

New York Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
Printed in Great Britain
All rights reserved

PREFACE
In this little book I have tried to develop a complete theory of visual art.
I have put forward an hypothesis by reference to which the
respectability, though not the validity, of all aesthetic judgments can be
tested, in the light of which the history of art from palaeolithic days to
the present becomes intelligible, by adopting which we give intellectual
backing to an almost universal and immemorial conviction. Everyone
in his heart believes that there is a real distinction between works of art
and all other objects; this belief my hypothesis justifies. We all feel that
art is immensely important; my hypothesis affords reason for thinking
it so. In fact, the great merit of this hypothesis of mine is that it seems

to explain what we know to be true. Anyone who is curious to discover
why we call a Persian carpet or a fresco by Piero della Francesca a
work of art, and a portrait-bust of Hadrian or a popular problem-picture
rubbish, will here find satisfaction. He will find, too, that to the familiar
counters of criticism--_e.g._ "good drawing," "magnificent design,"
"mechanical," "unfelt," "ill-organised," "sensitive,"--is given, what such
terms sometimes lack, a definite meaning. In a word, my hypothesis
works; that is unusual: to some it has seemed not only workable but
true; that is miraculous almost.
In fifty or sixty thousand words, though one may develop a theory
adequately, one cannot pretend to develop it exhaustively. My book is a
simplification. I have tried to make a generalisation about the nature of
art that shall be at once true, coherent, and comprehensible. I have
sought a theory which should explain the whole of my aesthetic
experience and suggest a solution of every problem, but I have not
attempted to answer in detail all the questions that proposed themselves,
or to follow any one of them along its slenderest ramifications. The
science of aesthetics is a complex business and so is the history of art;
my hope has been to write about them something simple and true. For
instance, though I have indicated very clearly, and even repetitiously,
what I take to be essential in a work of art, I have not discussed as fully
as I might have done the relation of the essential to the unessential.
There is a great deal more to be said about the mind of the artist and the
nature of the artistic problem. It remains for someone who is an artist, a
psychologist, and an expert in human limitations to tell us how far the
unessential is a necessary means to the essential--to tell us whether it is
easy or difficult or impossible for the artist to destroy every rung in the
ladder by which he has climbed to the stars.
My first chapter epitomises discussions and conversations and long
strands of cloudy speculation which, condensed to solid argument,
would still fill two or three stout volumes: some day, perhaps, I shall
write one of them if my critics are rash enough to provoke me. As for
my third chapter--a sketch of the history of fourteen hundred
years--that it is a simplification goes without saying. Here I have used a
series of historical generalisations to illustrate my theory; and here,

again, I believe in my theory, and am persuaded that anyone who will
consider the history of art in its light will find that history more
intelligible than of old. At the same time I willingly admit that in fact
the contrasts are less violent, the hills less precipitous, than they must
be made to appear in a chart of this sort. Doubtless it would be well if
this chapter also were expanded into half a dozen readable volumes, but
that it cannot be until the learned authorities have learnt to write or
some writer has learnt to be patient.
Those conversations and discussions that have tempered and burnished
the