Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 312, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1919 — ART AS THE FRENCH SEE IT [ARTICLE]

ART AS THE FRENCH SEE IT

In Their Eyes It Is the Direct Antithesis of Artifice as Generally . Understood. , No one can understand this Ifrench conception -of art. as no one could understand the similar Greek conception, without ..distinguishing clearly between art and artifice,— The first comment Of the Anglo-Saxon on, all art is likely to be that .it is .artificial, his comment upon the French life, itself an art. is that it partakes too much, of the‘quality of artifice. The difficulty is that such a comment assumes civilization as a natural tiling, said Prof. Erskine in a recent 1 centre'to his soldier students in 1- ranee. The I'renclnunn knows bettor. 1' bon our pothers sent ns tp eKHtlfiooff parties and cautioned us to behave, naturally they did not mean what they said: they meant that we should wear our acquired arts of courtesy as though they wor? tfatnrak--111 that sense all civilization,! is not natural, and French life, being the most highly civilised, has most the character- of art. But the French •themselves art* even, more severe than we are in"'condemning artifice. Which -a them is*:not* art, but its most perverse • enemy. Art for them must be frank and sincere, a quite open control of means to reach an intelligible ideal.* There is nothing secret about it: its glory is the' large part that reason and calculation frankly play" in it —as any choice befweep good and evil should be calculating and reason* able. Artifice; on live other hand, is the ptlttirrg on of disguise, the assuming of methods which do not harmonize with the, genuine purpose; it is too great emphasis upon means and too slight valuation of the noble end. Art is, as it were, the contrast or other pole to.nature; it is the condition* which is reached when man has given ( an interpretation and a direction to the chaos of crude experience. In be* tween these extremes is artifice, partaking of the quality qf.both-phalf directed. half meaningless.—Nejv York Evening Post. y