Besides the major fine arts — painting, sculp ture, architecture and music — there are certain minor arts which minister to the lower forms of esthetic pleasure. Dancing belongs in this category, when practised not as a social diver sion, but as an artistic sequence of beautiful and rhythmic movements, as in the ancient Greek choral dances, the modern Samoan dances, the operatic ballet, folk-dances and other forms of the art made familiar to us by Russian and American performers. Fire works are also a form of fine art, having no other purpose than to delight the esthetic sense by beautiful combinations of luminous form and color. Whether, therefore, a given work belongs among the spures or ((independents or ((major" fine arts, or the decorative arts, is really a question of how far it has been created for its own sake, and how far its artistic value and merit can be dissociated from the object or structure which it embellishes. Thus the sculptures of the Parthenon pediments, although ostensibly created as decorations for a temple, are really of such surpassing merit as works of sculpture, quite apart from their architectural setting, that they are universally recognized as masterpieces of pure sculpture. On the other hand, the charming figures of nymphs of the Seine carved in low relief by Jean Goujon, in the Fountain of the Innocents in Paris, are so evidently designed for the special places they occupy in that structure and lose so much of their value and significance when detached from it, that they are universally recognized as master pieces of decorative art.
The Appeal of the Fine Arts.— In the ap peal which works of fine art make to the emo tions there is nearly always a large element more or less purely intellectual, which must be distinguished from the purely esthetic quality of the work. Thus a picture represents a scene or an episode; a poem tells a story or extols a religious or moral conception; a statue pre sents the effigy of a hero, or the embodiment in allegorical form of some abstract conception; a song expresses an idea of love, patriotism or war; a building excites admiration by its bold construction and logical planning. Each of these works addresses itself in these particulars rather to the mind than directly to the feelings. Injudging them, therefore, purely as works of fine art, we must eliminate the element of purely intellectual satisfaction from our judg ment in order to weigh correctly the purely aesthetic excellence of the work. A picture esthetically beautiful may be uninteresting from the intellectual point of view. Still more often does it happen that a picture appeals power fully to the reason, and even reaches the emo tions through the intellect, and is nevertheless totally lacking in esthetic excellence, as is often the case with political cartoons and clever caricatures. Its appeal is primarily to the in telligence, and the emotions which are aroused as the final but secondary result are moral and intellectual emotions rather than esthetic. The
appeal of a work of fine art to the esthetic emotions is the direct appeal of beauty of form or color, harmony, rhythm, balance, proportion, movement. It is often difficult to distinguish between the direct esthetic effect of a work of art and its indirect appeal through the intellect, but the distinction is important in any close analysis or detailed criticism, and the failure to recognize it is the root of many erroneous judgments and criticisms by writers on art. This error is frequent in Ruskin's writings, for in stance, where moral and intellectual apprecia tions often dominate what are advanced as purely esthetic judgments. See Cerrtctsx.
It does not, however, by any means follow that those are the highest forms of art which appeal most exclusively to the esthetic sense. Dancing and pyrotechny are completely free from intellectual and non-artistic elements, but they can hardly be classed as the highest forms of art. Intellectual satisfaction is a natural accompaniment of the pleasure we, experience in many forms of art; and, other things being equal, the higher the form and grade of the work the higher will be the intellectual satis faction experienced. The artist who can at once touch our deepest emotions and appeal to our highest intelligence while he delights our es thetic sensibilities, has reached a higher plane of art than one whose work makes no such intellectual impression. And while it is true that any philosophical analysis must make the distinctions above set forth, it is also true that the spectator seldom or never makes them, and is in no wise called upon to do so. The phil osophical analysis of art is one thing, the sub. jective enjoyment of it is another. The total impression it makes is very complex, and not easy to divide into its constituent elements.
Principles and Technic.— The underlying principles of all the fine arts are the same; the application and development of these principles vary with the art, its medium of expression, the purpose of the work, the personality of the artist, the time and place in which he lives and many other circumstances. The particular method of the application and development of the underlying principles in a given form of art constitute Its technic; the shape and diric tion imposed upon this technic by external con ditions of time and place, and the resulting characteristics or habits and manner of design, constitute its style. It is of course impossible to lay down in a brief exposé like the present article the laws which are recognized as cony. mon to all the arts. We can only observe that they relate to composition, which deals with the general plan of the work and the relations of its various parts in that plan or scheme, deter mining the sequence, balance, proportion and rhythm both of the whole and of its parts; and to expression or the manner in which the under lying sentiment, conception or idea of the work is developed and made clear and effective.