Hopes and Fears for Art | Page 9

you want to make your art succeed
and flourish, you must make it the fashion: a phrase which I confess
annoys me; for they mean by it that I should spend one day over my
work to two days in trying to convince rich, and supposed influential
people, that they care very much for what they really do not care in the
least, so that it may happen according to the proverb: Bell-wether took
the leap, and we all went over. Well, such advisers are right if they are
content with the thing lasting but a little while; say till you can make a
little money--if you don't get pinched by the door shutting too quickly:
otherwise they are wrong: the people they are thinking of have too
many strings to their bow, and can turn their backs too easily on a thing
that fails, for it to be safe work trusting to their whims: it is not their
fault, they cannot help it, but they have no chance of spending time
enough over the arts to know anything practical of them, and they must
of necessity be in the hands of those who spend their time in pushing
fashion this way and that for their own advantage.

Sirs, there is no help to be got out of these latter, or those who let
themselves be led by them: the only real help for the decorative arts
must come from those who work in them; nor must they be led, they
must lead.
You whose hands make those things that should be works of art, you
must be all artists, and good artists too, before the public at large can
take real interest in such things; and when you have become so, I
promise you that you shall lead the fashion; fashion shall follow your
hands obediently enough.
That is the only way in which we can get a supply of intelligent popular
art: a few artists of the kind so-called now, what can they do working in
the teeth of difficulties thrown in their way by what is called
Commerce, but which should be called greed of money? working
helplessly among the crowd of those who are ridiculously called
manufacturers, i.e. handicraftsmen, though the more part of them never
did a stroke of hand-work in their lives, and are nothing better than
capitalists and salesmen. What can these grains of sand do, I say,
amidst the enormous mass of work turned out every year which
professes in some way to be decorative art, but the decoration of which
no one heeds except the salesmen who have to do with it, and are hard
put to it to supply the cravings of the public for something new, not for
something pretty?
The remedy, I repeat, is plain if it can be applied; the handicraftsman,
left behind by the artist when the arts sundered, must come up with him,
must work side by side with him: apart from the difference between a
great master and a scholar, apart from the differences of the natural
bent of men's minds, which would make one man an imitative, and
another an architectural or decorative artist, there should be no
difference between those employed on strictly ornamental work; and
the body of artists dealing with this should quicken with their art all
makers of things into artists also, in proportion to the necessities and
uses of the things they would make.
I know what stupendous difficulties, social and economical, there are in
the way of this; yet I think that they seem to be greater than they are:
and of one thing I am sure, that no real living decorative art is possible
if this is impossible.
It is not impossible, on the contrary it is certain to come about, if you

are at heart desirous to quicken the arts; if the world will, for the sake
of beauty and decency, sacrifice some of the things it is so busy over
(many of which I think are not very worthy of its trouble), art will
begin to grow again; as for those difficulties above mentioned, some of
them I know will in any case melt away before the steady change of the
relative conditions of men; the rest, reason and resolute attention to the
laws of nature, which are also the laws of art, will dispose of little by
little: once more, the way will not be far to seek, if the will be with us.
Yet, granted the will, and though the way lies ready to us, we must not
be discouraged if the journey seem barren enough at first, nay, not even
if things seem to grow worse for a while: for it is natural enough that
the very evil which has forced on the