TECHNIQUE IN ART. Technique is the manner of artis tic execution, the performance or method of manipulation in any art, but as to just how inclusive this definition should be regarded is a question. Certain authorities claim that technique is distinct from any consideration of general effect or expression, while others assign to it the meaning of the doctrine of the arts in general. The first conception might be called "Mechanical technique" and the latter "Technique principle." In this work the mechanical technique in each art is treated under each individual heading as the mechanical techniques vary considerably in detail—that of the sculptor being different from that of the wood-engraver, and that of the painter differing from that of the etcher. This article will therefore deal only with the broader conception of the definition—the technique principle, or those underlying rules which are found to be true in the practice of all of the arts.
It may be said that such a discussion falls within the field of aesthetics, but the difference lies in the fact that while aesthetics is a metaphysical discussion of man's conception of beauty, the technique principle is a discussion of how to obtain beauty or human appeal in a work of art. The one is philosophy and the other is a practical science based upon observation and reason. The one has to do with a discussion of the result, while the other shows how this result, indescribable as it sometimes may seem, can be obtained. The means whereby man can appeal to man in the creation of beauty, modern science has analyzed to a remark able degree, and just as Henri Bergson in L'Evolution Creatrice destroyed the old philosophical conception of negation by the ap plication of modern psychology, so have many of the old principles of philosophic aesthetics been destroyed by like methods. The modern artist must not only have mastered rules of anatomy and perspective through study such as that of many of the old masters over the dissection tables, and of mathematics, but must inquire into the psychological reactions caused by light or by various colours, the chemical action of his paints, the analyses of move ment as revealed by the motion picture camera and many other phases of modern scientific development, and therefore the old conception of the artist as an intuitive being dreaming his way through life and seizing now and then with the aid of a divine fire a dream which he in some inexplicable way makes tangible and durable for his fellowmen, must be cast aside. The artist may
dream, as the man of science or the inventor dreams of the crea tion of some remarkable work, but the work itself is a painstaking process of reason and the result may often be quite different from the cloudy original blur which was the first conception. The study of the subconscious has done much to explain intuition, and the modern man has learned to place less faith in the vision of glory which used to move his forefathers, for he realizes that these im mediate apprehensions of "truth" are topsy-turvy mirages of what may or may not be proved true by the searchlight of modern scientific reason. The modern artist is first of all a modern man in every sense abreast of the times, and, as an indispensable pre requisite, every artist must first learn to appeal to his fellow men. (See AESTHETICS.) Although the modern artist is perhaps more awake to the necessity of adopting this viewpoint, because of the recent marvel ous developments of science, nevertheless many of the great mas ters of the past have also expressed themselves clearly along the same lines. Leonardo da Vinci has said "Thou, 0 God dost sell unto us all good things at the price of labour" and throughout all of his writings Da Vinci has laid stress upon reasonable labour rather than trust to inspiration. Rodin said, "Nothing will take the place of persevering study—to it alone the secret of life de livers itself." Turner stated that he had no secret but hard work, and Pliny relates that the secret of Apelles was due to constant practice. Hundreds of other examples might be quoted, but it is sufficient to say that throughout the ages both in the Far East, where a great painter has been quoted as saying, "Man cannot call himself an artist until he has painted I o,000 pictures," to the western schools represented by such quotations as above, artists in writing of their own work have laid great stress upon the la bours of pure reason involved, while critics in writing of art (that field in which they have as a rule never practised) explain it on the grounds of a mysteriously intuitive and God-sent passion.