Art | Page 6

non-aesthetic use;
but when we speak of a beautiful woman there is. When an ordinary
man speaks of a beautiful woman he certainly does not mean only that
she moves him aesthetically; but when an artist calls a withered old hag
beautiful he may sometimes mean what he means when he calls a
battered torso beautiful. The ordinary man, if he be also a man of taste,
will call the battered torso beautiful, but he will not call a withered hag
beautiful because, in the matter of women, it is not to the aesthetic
quality that the hag may possess, but to some other quality that he
assigns the epithet. Indeed, most of us never dream of going for
aesthetic emotions to human beings, from whom we ask something
very different. This "something," when we find it in a young woman,
we are apt to call "beauty." We live in a nice age. With the
man-in-the-street "beautiful" is more often than not synonymous with
"desirable"; the word does not necessarily connote any aesthetic
reaction whatever, and I am tempted to believe that in the minds of
many the sexual flavour of the word is stronger than the aesthetic. I
have noticed a consistency in those to whom the most beautiful thing in
the world is a beautiful woman, and the next most beautiful thing a
picture of one. The confusion between aesthetic and sensual beauty is
not in their case so great as might be supposed. Perhaps there is none;
for perhaps they have never had an aesthetic emotion to confuse with

their other emotions. The art that they call "beautiful" is generally
closely related to the women. A beautiful picture is a photograph of a
pretty girl; beautiful music, the music that provokes emotions similar to
those provoked by young ladies in musical farces; and beautiful poetry,
the poetry that recalls the same emotions felt, twenty years earlier, for
the rector's daughter. Clearly the word "beauty" is used to connote the
objects of quite distinguishable emotions, and that is a reason for not
employing a term which would land me inevitably in confusions and
misunderstandings with my readers.
On the other hand, with those who judge it more exact to call these
combinations and arrangements of form that provoke our aesthetic
emotions, not "significant form," but "significant relations of form,"
and then try to make the best of two worlds, the aesthetic and the
metaphysical, by calling these relations "rhythm," I have no quarrel
whatever. Having made it clear that by "significant form" I mean
arrangements and combinations that move us in a particular way, I
willingly join hands with those who prefer to give a different name to
the same thing.
The hypothesis that significant form is the essential quality in a work of
art has at least one merit denied to many more famous and more
striking--it does help to explain things. We are all familiar with pictures
that interest us and excite our admiration, but do not move us as works
of art. To this class belongs what I call "Descriptive Painting"--that is,
painting in which forms are used not as objects of emotion, but as
means of suggesting emotion or conveying information. Portraits of
psychological and historical value, topographical works, pictures that
tell stories and suggest situations, illustrations of all sorts, belong to
this class. That we all recognise the distinction is clear, for who has not
said that such and such a drawing was excellent as illustration, but as a
work of art worthless? Of course many descriptive pictures possess,
amongst other qualities, formal significance, and are therefore works of
art: but many more do not. They interest us; they may move us too in a
hundred different ways, but they do not move us aesthetically.
According to my hypothesis they are not works of art. They leave
untouched our aesthetic emotions because it is not their forms but the

ideas or information suggested or conveyed by their forms that affect
us.
Few pictures are better known or liked than Frith's "Paddington
Station"; certainly I should be the last to grudge it its popularity. Many
a weary forty minutes have I whiled away disentangling its fascinating
incidents and forging for each an imaginary past and an improbable
future. But certain though it is that Frith's masterpiece, or engravings of
it, have provided thousands with half-hours of curious and fanciful
pleasure, it is not less certain that no one has experienced before it one
half-second of aesthetic rapture--and this although the picture contains
several pretty passages of colour, and is by no means badly painted.
"Paddington Station" is not a work of art; it is an interesting and
amusing document. In it line and colour are used to recount anecdotes,
suggest ideas, and indicate the manners and