Art | Page 8

building by
one of those highly civilised architects who flourished a thousand years
earlier or eight hundred later. But such exceptions are rare. As a rule
primitive art is good--and here again my hypothesis is helpful--for, as a
rule, it is also free from descriptive qualities. In primitive art you will
find no accurate representation; you will find only significant form. Yet
no other art moves us so profoundly. Whether we consider Sumerian
sculpture or pre-dynastic Egyptian art, or archaic Greek, or the Wei and
T'ang masterpieces,[1] or those early Japanese works of which I had the
luck to see a few superb examples (especially two wooden
Bodhisattvas) at the Shepherd's Bush Exhibition in 1910, or whether,
coming nearer home, we consider the primitive Byzantine art of the
sixth century and its primitive developments amongst the Western
barbarians, or, turning far afield, we consider that mysterious and
majestic art that flourished in Central and South America before the
coming of the white men, in every case we observe three common
characteristics--absence of representation, absence of technical swagger,
sublimely impressive form. Nor is it hard to discover the connection
between these three. Formal significance loses itself in preoccupation
with exact representation and ostentatious cunning.[2]
Naturally, it is said that if there is little representation and less
saltimbancery in primitive art, that is because the primitives were
unable to catch a likeness or cut intellectual capers. The contention is
beside the point. There is truth in it, no doubt, though, were I a critic

whose reputation depended on a power of impressing the public with a
semblance of knowledge, I should be more cautious about urging it
than such people generally are. For to suppose that the Byzantine
masters wanted skill, or could not have created an illusion had they
wished to do so, seems to imply ignorance of the amazingly dexterous
realism of the notoriously bad works of that age. Very often, I fear, the
misrepresentation of the primitives must be attributed to what the
critics call, "wilful distortion." Be that as it may, the point is that, either
from want of skill or want of will, primitives neither create illusions,
nor make display of extravagant accomplishment, but concentrate their
energies on the one thing needful--the creation of form. Thus have they
created the finest works of art that we possess.
Let no one imagine that representation is bad in itself; a realistic form
may be as significant, in its place as part of the design, as an abstract.
But if a representative form has value, it is as form, not as
representation. The representative element in a work of art may or may
not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For, to appreciate a work of art
we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and
affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. Art transports us from the
world of man's activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a moment
we are shut off from human interests; our anticipations and memories
are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life. The pure
mathematician rapt in his studies knows a state of mind which I take to
be similar, if not identical. He feels an emotion for his speculations
which arises from no perceived relation between them and the lives of
men, but springs, inhuman or super-human, from the heart of an
abstract science. I wonder, sometimes, whether the appreciators of art
and of mathematical solutions are not even more closely allied. Before
we feel an aesthetic emotion for a combination of forms, do we not
perceive intellectually the rightness and necessity of the combination?
If we do, it would explain the fact that passing rapidly through a room
we recognise a picture to be good, although we cannot say that it has
provoked much emotion. We seem to have recognised intellectually the
rightness of its forms without staying to fix our attention, and collect,
as it were, their emotional significance. If this were so, it would be
permissible to inquire whether it was the forms themselves or our

perception of their rightness and necessity that caused aesthetic
emotion. But I do not think I need linger to discuss the matter here. I
have been inquiring why certain combinations of forms move us; I
should not have travelled by other roads had I enquired, instead, why
certain combinations are perceived to be right and necessary, and why
our perception of their rightness and necessity is moving. What I have
to say is this: the rapt philosopher, and he who contemplates a work of
art, inhabit a world with an intense and peculiar significance of its own;
that significance is unrelated to the significance of life. In this world
the emotions of life find no place. It is