United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The impulse to expression is common to all; the difference is one of degree. And the message of art is for all, according as they are attuned to the response. Art is creation. For the artist it is creation by expression; for the appreciator it is creation by evocation. These two principles complete the cycle; abstractly and very briefly they are the whole story of art.
Beauty is removed from practical life, not because it is unrelated to life, just the reverse of that is true, but because the enjoyment of beauty is disinterested. The detachment involved in appreciation is a detachment from material. The appreciator may seem to be a looker-on at life, in that he does not act but simply feels. But his spirit is correspondingly alert.
Mistress Susan was not above being open to the insidious flattery of being questioned and listened to; and to find herself regarded as an oracle of wisdom and a mine of information could not but be soothing to her vanity, little as she knew that she possessed her share of that common feminine failing. Then Cuthbert was a warm appreciator of her culinary talents.
Mere scholarship without temperament misses art at its centre, that art is the expression and communication of emotional experience; and the scholar in criticism may wander his leaden way down the by-paths of a sterile learning. To mediate between the artist and the appreciator, the critic must understand the artist and he must feel with the appreciator.
The "Divina Commedia," too, he continued, was a poem too terrible to him to read. He had never been able to finish it. It is probable that poor translations of both "Faust" and Dante read in early youth were at the bottom of these opinions. Emerson was a true appreciator of Walter Scott.
The modern appreciator, after the model limned by Professor Gates, was to strive to get, as it were, the aerial perspective of a masterpiece, to present it as it looks across the blue depths of the years. This is without doubt a fascinating study; but it may be questioned if it does not darken the more important issue.
Professedly Celia was his critic, but really she was the necessary appreciator, for probably most writers would come to a standstill if there was no sympathetic soul to whom they could communicate, while they were fresh, the teeming fancies of their brains. The winter wore along without any incident worth recording, but still fruitful for the future, as Philip fondly hoped.
So highly have I eulogized her, that his majesty desires an interview with her, that he may judge with his own eyes if I am an appreciator of beauty." At these words comte Jean felt a momentary agitation, but soon recovering himself, he replied: "I am exceedingly obliged to you, sir, for the favorable disposition you have evinced towards the comtesse du Barry.
So art too has a message addressed to him, for art starts with life and in the end comes back to it. If art is not the expression of vital feeling, in its turn communicating the feeling to the appreciator so that he makes it a real part of his experience of life, then the thing called art is only an exercise in dexterity for the maker and a pastime for the receiver; it is not art.
I find, too, that the chance for appreciation is much increased by being the son of an appreciator, and that these boys who now grow up are caught not only years too late, but two or three births too late, to make the best scholars of.
Word Of The Day