What is Art?

Appendix 4
BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL.” No. XXIV. I adore thee as much as the vaults of night, O vase full of grief, taciturnity great, And I love thee the more because of thy flight. It seemeth, my night’s beautifier, that you Still heap up those leagues—yes! ironically heap!— That divide from my arms the immensity blue. I advance to attack, I climb to assault, Like a choir of young worms at a corpse in the vault; Thy coldness, oh cruel, implacable beast! Yet heightens thy beauty, on which my eyes feast! BA... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Appendix 3
These are the contents of The Nibelung’s Ring:— The first part tells that the nymphs, the daughters of the Rhine, for some reason guard gold in the Rhine, and sing: Weia, Waga, Woge du Welle, Walle zur Wiege, Wagalaweia, Wallala, Weiala, Weia, and so forth. These singing nymphs are pursued by a gnome (a nibelung) who desires to seize them. The gnome cannot catch any of them. Then the nymphs guarding the gold tell the gnome just what they ought to keep secret, namely, that whoever renounces love will be able to steal the gold they are guarding. And the gnome renounces love, and steals the gold. This ends the first scene. In the second scene a god and a goddess lie in a field in sight of a castle which giants have built for them. Presently they wake up and are pleased with the castle, and they relate that in payment for this work they must give the goddess Freia to the giants. The giants come for their pay. But the god W... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Appendix 2
No. 1. The following verses are by Vielé-Griffin, from page 28 of a volume of his Poems:— OISEAU BLEU COULEUR DU TEMPS. 1. Sait-tu l’oubli D’un vain doux rêve, Oiseau moqueur De la forêt? Le jor pâlit, La nuit se lève, Et dans mon cœur L’omber a pleuré; 2. O chante-moi Ta folle gamme, Car j’ai dormi... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Appendix 1
This is the first page of Mallarmé’s book Divagations:— LE PHÉNOMÈNE FUTUR. Un ciel pâle, sur le monde qui finit de décrépitude, va peut-être partir avec les nuages: les lambeaux de la pourpre usée des couchants déteignent dans une rivière dormant à l’horizon submergé de rayons et d’eau. Les arbres s’ennuient, et, sous leur feuillage blanchi (de la poussière du temps plutôt que celle des chemins) monte la maison en toile de Montreur de choses Passées: maint réverbère attend le crépuscule et ravive les visages d’une malheureuse foule, vaincue par la maladie immortelle et le péché des siècles, d’hommes près de leurs chétives complices enceintes des fruits misérables avec lesquels périra la terre. Dans le silence inquiet de tous les yeux... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Chapter 20
I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has occupied me for 15 years, on a subject near to me—that of art. By saying that this subject has occupied me for 15 years, I do not mean that I have been writing this book 15 years, but only that I began to write on art 15 years ago, thinking that when once I undertook the task I should be able to accomplish it without a break. It proved, however, that my views on the matter then were so far from clear that I could not arrange them in a way that satisfied me. From that time I have never ceased to think on the subject, and I have recommenced to write on it 6 or 7 times; but each time, after writing a considerable part of it, I have found myself unable to bring the work to a satisfactory conclusion, and have had to put it aside. Now I have finished it; and however badly I may have performed the task, my hope is that my fundamental thought as to the false direction the art of our society has taken... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art. There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint, on reading, hearing, or seeing another man’s work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

The cause of the lie into which the art of our society has fallen was that people of the upper classes, having ceased to believe in the Church teaching (called Christian), did not resolve to accept true Christian teaching in its real and fundamental principles of sonship to God and brotherhood to man, but continued to live on without any belief, endeavoring to make up for the absence of belief—some by hypocrisy, pretending still to believe in the nonsense of the Church creeds; others by boldly asserting their disbelief; others by refined agnosticism; and others, again, by returning to the Greek worship of beauty, proclaiming egotism to be right, and elevating it to the rank of a religious doctrine. The cause of the malady was the non-... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

Becoming ever poorer and poorer in subject-matter and more and more unintelligible in form, the art of the upper classes, in its latest productions, has even lost all the characteristics of art, and has been replaced by imitations of art. Not only has upper-class art, in consequence of its separation from universal art, become poor in subject-matter and bad in form, i.e. ever more and more unintelligible, it has, in course of time, ceased even to be art at all, and has been replaced by counterfeits. This has resulted from the following causes. Universal art arises only when some one of the people, having experienced a strong emotion, feels the necessity of transmitting it to others. The art of the rich classes, on the other hand, arises not... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

People talk of the art of the future, meaning by “art of the future” some especially refined, new art, which, as they imagine, will be developed out of that exclusive art of one class which is now considered the highest art. But no such new art of the future can or will be found. Our exclusive art, that of the upper classes of Christendom, has found its way into a blind alley. The direction in which it has been going leads nowhere. Having once let go of that which is most essential for art (namely, the guidance given by religious perception), that art has become ever more and more exclusive, and therefore ever more and more perverted, until, finally, it has come to nothing. The art of the future, that which is really coming, wil... (From : Gutenberg.org.)

In our society three conditions co-operate to cause the production of objects of counterfeit art. They are— the considerable remuneration of artists for their productions and the professionalization of artists which this has produced, art criticism, and schools of art. While art was as yet undivided, and only religious art was valued and rewarded while indiscriminate art was left unrewarded, there were no counterfeits of art, or, if any existed, being exposed to the criticism of the whole people, they quickly disappeared. But as soon as that division occurred, and the upper classes acclaimed every kind of art as good if only it afforded them pleasure, and began to reward such art more highly than any other social activity, immediately... (From : Gutenberg.org.)