George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 179  George & All Art Being Quite Useless.

It was, of course, the Divine Oscar Wilde who said that all Art is quite useless. As Oscar was never frivolous, particularly when he was being amusing, we can take it that he meant what he said. But, what did he mean? I think he means Art doesn't have to have a point, or a meaning, or a function or a need to be anything other than what it is. It isn't required to teach us anything or point anything out to us, or represent anything but what it is.

George considered himself an Artist at a time when literature held more cultural clout than the visual Arts. Anyone of a creative bent wanting to make a name (and a fortune) for themselves might be tempted to gravitate towards writing because it might be seen as less hard work and offer the originator more free time to sit unmolested reading books and thinking up less than life-enhancing poetry. Visual Arts - painting and sculpture in particular - are unforgiving beasts, requiring skill and much practise to perfect. The notion that it is all spectacular feats of serendipitous legerdemain is tosh. Picasso said 'Inspiration exists but it has to find us working'.

The Artistic spark might be spontaneous, but the manifestation of it requires endless practise perfecting the process and mentally debating those decisions about what to keep and what to bin. Experienced artists get better at anticipating what will or won't work, and so save on materials. Writers are lucky, in that their materials are relatively cheap - whereas Visual Artists usually waste a lot of expensive gear before they realise they are barking up the wrong tree with marble carving and move to a cheaper medium - such as wood - then settle for working in a bookshop (I didn't put ‘settle for teaching’ there, see? Because teaching is a hard, troublesome and sometimes thankless task and needs more love shown to it haha)). Thus, money usually dictates what Art is made - as George found out so harshly.

George's decision to abandon all but Art for Art's Sake (about the time he gave up Positivism, c 1883/4) in his work was an economic disaster and an impossible to pull off piece of wonky magical thinking, but it did provide him with an excuse in the unlikely event that no-one understood his work. If something he produced did not go down well, he might be able to claim he was 'misunderstood'; 'ahead of his time'; 'surrounded by philistines'... In fact, anything but 'mediocre' or 'unpopular'. 

Philistines by Jean-Michel Basquiat 1982

Selling creative work means someone approves of it - which is one of the reasons some people make it - for approval. With or without a patron, Artists have always wanted to make money, if only to live and buy paints and materials, and so unless they have a ready-made income, they will always have to pander to the market in order to finance their work. It's reactionary stuff constructed from envy and resentment to suggest, as George did, that only one who has starved can truly be an Artist. Some of the most gifted of his contemporaries had never struggled for money, but still came up with the goods: Jacques aka James Tissot, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec all came from comfortable financial backgrounds, and look what they managed to turn out - though in the case of Whistler, it couldn't make him a likeable, decent human being. 

The struggle for making or even appreciating Art often starts with a debate about what is good or bad. The creative 'Artistic process' is a series of judgements and corrections based on mysterious forces dictating what to include and what to leave out. Unless there is totally random abstraction, this is so, but I am not aware of any Artist who works in this way - maybe machines do it, and the future cyborgs and robots probably have an app already installed, but the most abstract of artists - say, Jackson Pollock - control their paint, decide its direction, and choose its colours (or colors, in the case of Pollock haha) and deliberate every minute detail. 

The Key by Jackson Pollock 1946

George made visual Art - paintings and sketches - in his youth, much as he dabbled with poetry. He left the paints behind, except as a 'weekend' activity-cum-hobby, but carried on making poems, not in the very best interests of Poetry, but because he felt strongly moved to put pen to paper. I know nothing about poetry beyond what moves me, but George's poems are mostly awful, over-long and pompous, merely showing off all he knows about Greek works and their construction, and failing to rise to the appropriate intimate emotional heights. What we want from a poem is monumental in the same way The Doors' Light My Fire brings the listener to a happy ending click. Robby Krieger in sublime form here. There is a small sketch George did of a tree - which couldn't be less skilled if it tried, or more phallic (or tumescently erect!) and could easily have been done by DH Lawrence at his painterly worst.

George was much taken with the many teachings of John Ruskin, who was of the mind that Art can only be produced by those with high spiritual sensibilities; George was of the belief that this might be so, but only if those persons were also 'a cultured, highly intelligent & reflective minority' - according to his letter of August 28th 1898. Up to his armpits in the arduous and time-consuming task of wooing Gabrielle Fleury, he took time off to respond to a letter sent to him by a disciple/fan of his, a Russian émigré living in Paris and working as a translator - Il'ja Halperine-Kaminsky click. This young man addressed George as 'Dear Master' - which went down a storm with our man, and made its way into a letter he sent to Gabrielle. Il'ja sent him his translation of a book written by Leo Tolstoy - ' Qu'est-ce que l'Art? (click for full English text) Of course, at this time, Tolstoy was a legend, but had lost some of his credibility because of his socialist behaviour - by turning his back on privilege and choosing to live like a peasant, he hoped to lead the way for the rich to redeem their souls by giving away their money and estates and living like simple folk. His thoughts on Art were in sympathy with Ruskin's - distinctly pro-proletariat and democratic and socialistic - three things not much to George's taste.

Detail from a Portrait of Tolstoy
by Kramskoy Ivan 1873

 Tolstoy answered his own question 'What is Art?' with:

The object of this activity is to transmit to others feeling the artist has experienced. Such feelings intentionally re-evoked and successfully transmitted to others are the subject-matter of all art. By certain external signs, movements, lines, colours, sounds, or arrangements of words an artist infects other people so that they share his feelings. Thus 'art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings'

  

This was, of course, written before the rise of Modernism, which might, in the second sentence, substitute 'ideas' for 'feelings'. And with absolutely no regard for females - though the term 'man' or 'men' stood in for 'human' in those days. And the bit about joining them in feelings? Not necessarily, as no two people see the same thing in a painting. 

In his response to this, George wrote that he agreed, up to a point, but that he could not agree that Art was the product of the prevailing 'religious spirit of the age', and that morality had nothing to do with Art. Echoes here, of Oscar Wilde's 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written'  (when quizzed about The Picture of Dorian Gray). In his defence of Dorian, Oscar wrote: 'An artist has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colours on his palette are to the painter'. He adds, 'If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson.' However, 'If a man sees the artistic beauty of a thing, he will probably care very little for its ethical import.' click

But where George is most at odds with Tolstoy's view is in deciding that only simple folk - the proletariat - can truly appreciate Art. George writes that the new sentiment (in literature) does not appeal to the uncultured reader, it is recognized only by a highly intelligent & reflective minority, & received very slowly indeed by the world at large. George is not referring to painting here; but is Tolstoy speaking about literature, or is he thinking of the Visual Arts? Literature is always going to be a much more difficult Art form to appreciate because it depends so much on knowing the intricacies of a language with its rules of grammar and punctuation, depth of vocabulary, knowledge of cultural references, rules of composition and genre... and painting and the other Visual Arts can be just as simple as looking. You don't even have to think - you just let it wash over you. Like music.

Where George was in total agreement with Tolstoy is in the matter of Art not being considered a 'trade'. This is a one of the most significant, but subtle, influences on the production of Art - the rise of the Visual Artist as a non-tradesperson. In the Renaissance, the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo were tradespeople, happy to work for anyone and probably paid by the hour - or the yard! JMW Turner regarded himself likewise, and mass-produced his watercolours in an almost industrial way to maximise his ideas and make as much money as he could. At some point, the move to regard Artists as special in a good way - personified by the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren - demanded a distinction between Artists and artisans. It is the difference that exists between journalists and novelists. Artists ceased to be jobbing tradespeople who could decorate an inn sign as readily as paint a church screen, and became the lofty souls we now recognise. William Morris was an artisan because he was principally a designer (amongst other things, of course) - Rossetti was an Artist. Artists do not like to be referred to as artisans. Graphic Arts are looked down on by Fine Artists... Snobbery crept in and elitism followed; Andy Warhol was initially seen as a lesser talent because he started in advertising. Now he is rightly placed at the top table as one of the greatest Artists of all time.

Andy Warhol photographed by Dennis Hopper 1963

The Visual Arts are a universal language which is appreciated by those who 'get' it - you can like an Art work and not know why, and appreciate it without knowing how or why it was made; even when you get the wrong end of the stick about it, you can still find it meaningful. A book requires a particular set of skills and a specific form of knowledge already in place in order to access the stuff to be found in between the pages - and if you haven't got much learning, that can make you feel inadequate. An Art work is 'take it or leave it', and it doesn't judge the onlooker. Everyone has a creative reflex that reacts to Art works - you either like Puppy, or you are indifferent. You are either glad it exists, or you pass it by.

Puppy by Jeff Koons 1992

All Art is quite useless? Yes, inasmuch as it doesn't have to fulfil a function - like a teapot or a cushion. That is the difference between Art and craft.