ART, HisToav OF. The monuments produced by the artistic faculty represent in the most con crete form the different stages and kinds of human activity on its more ideal side, and are intimately connected with the two other main spheres of science and industry, to whose prod ucts art is often called upon to lend beauty and interest. Within the sphere of art itself, the social arts of religion, philosophy, and govern ment supply not only the literary arts, but also the f ormat i re arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting. with their themes and their inspiration, without which works of art would have little im portance in the development of civilization. The fine arts, in order to attain a high standard, must therefore embody some higher idea. A Greek temple, a Gothic cathedral, a Moham medan mosque, a Benedictine monastery, a tri umphal arch, an amphitheatre, a Roman villa, a feudal castle, represent religions and social forces. above and beyond fine art, which mold these monuments so that they are part of the larger life. The form, arrangement. decoration, and purpose of such buildings are no part of `art for art's sake.' So it, is with works of sculpture and painting—with a Phidian Zeus, a Byzantine Christ. a t'imalme Madonna borne in triumphant procession, an Immaculate Conception by Murillo. I4reek mythology and Christian dogma are as much embodied in art as in literature; art has been regarded for as many millenniums as a means of teaching as it has been for centuries as a means of pleasing,. The feet. therefore. that works of art. though produced under their own special organic laws, are gov erned by the general laws of the civilization to whirl] they belong, brings. as a necessary conse quence, the result that these works, like every thing else in civilization, are a mixture of good and evil, tone and false. and that the customary aesthetic opinion that beauty alone is the aim of art is eontradieted by both theory and prac tice. Such a standard could not lie applied to the novel or the drama in literature, as it would eliminate a majority of masterpieces; neither can it be applied in art. Any work that has a distinct significance and character is artistic, whether its theme is moral or immoral, its form beautiful or ugly, and whether it is inspired by a sentiment of the grotesque, the de-. formed, and the fearsome, or of the sublime and the beautiful. It, is from this point of view that the articles in this Encyclopiedia have been written.
A study of the history of art will show that through the four thousand or more years during which such works were produced before the Fifth Century B.C., the Festhetie pleasure they gave was practically independent of the human figure and was dependent. on effects of color and material forms. The exquisite appreciation of color among the peoples of western Asia and the grandiose combinations of architectural lines and masses among the Egyptians were the keynotes of this long period, of this lower and material stage, when the human figure was used as a higher species of hieroglyph, as a means, not an end. The long, painted processions in an Egyptian tomb; the friezes in relief of an Assyrian palace, were a part of ceremonial or contemporary his tory. With the Greek art of the Sixth and Fifth centuries, art enters upon a higher mission; this mission becomes both more definite and more ideal, centring around the human figure. It is the plastic stage of ancient art. Even in archi tecture it is questions of outline. proportion, and rhythm that predominate, in place of the earlier material ideas of colossal mass. Color became subsidiary and remained crude, never attaining among the Greeks to the harmony and subtlety of Asiatic art. The human form was for the first time idealized in plastic form and made to ex press types and thoughts beside mere external facts. The next change was heralded in the Alex andrine Age and fully embodied in Roman civili zation. Art became pictorial and psychological; Greek simplicity became complex. Portraits re
placed types; the variegated porphyries, ser pentines and other strong-colored marbles suc ceeded the white Parian ; in place of the cameo like Attic reliefs on a single plane without background we have first the picturesque scenery of the Alexandrine relief and then the two and three planes of the imperial Roman sculptures. Even architecture was fundamentally modified. The Hellenic Greeks had placed their buildings singly and with an unerring eye for beauty on the appropriate natural site: but each one was for itself. Under Rome, architectural composi tion is developed, and the grouping of coi)rdinate structures, the planning of stupendous interiors, becomes a large part of the art, accompanied by wonderful richness of color in decoration. There is plastic loss and picturesque gain. In harmony with the new love of luxury, art is made to minister to private as well as to public life. Its bonds were thus immeasurably enlarged while its ideals were lowered. Philosophically speaking, the fit closing of an artistic era was now reached ; all the changes had been rung.
When the Christian Revolution set in, art was regenerated, as a consequence of the religious and social regeneration. The second era began, of course, by a reconstruction in the higher spheres of religious and philosophic thought and the state; until their currents could reach and re vivify the fine arts, until new artistic forms could be created to express suitably these new ideas, the result was necessarily inadequate, as it had been, for example, in the centuries of Greek art before Phidias. As a natural reaction from the previous worship of beauty of form, Christian art went at first to the other extreme of caring merely for the content. The decay of skill went with a carelessness as to its acquisition. Like the Egyptians and Assyrians, the artists of the early Christian and Byzantine periods used figures largely as hieroglyphs, for purposes of instruc tion, but the things taught were fundamentally different : they were the things of the spirit. A true history of Christian sculpture and painting up to the Renaissance should deal hut little with the technique and mainly with the theme, not with the :esthetic pleasure, but with the internal significance. Imperfection of form was regarded as immaterial. This point of view once secured, it becomes clear how we should study the fres coes of the Catacombs to reach the heart of Chris tianity before the stage of theological definitions; how the dogmas and beliefs of the Eastern Church are set forth in illuminated Bibles and in the mosaics and frescoes of Byzantine churches, from Saint Mark at Venice. and from Monreale to Mount Athos; how the encyclopaedic learning and dominant thoughts of the _Middle Ages can be grasped in the sculptures and glass windows of such French Gothic cathedrals as Chartres, Rheims. and Amiens. The intellectual quality of this art is shown in the supremacy of geo metric law and constructive thought in an archi tecture which is the embodiment of the triumph of mind over matter—the antipodes of Egyptian architecture. During this pre-Renaissance period there was the greatest variety of stages: in the \Vest the only time when the external expression was adequate to the ideas involved was the period of the Gothic cathedrals, which in many ways was the exact counterpart of the Hellenic development of the Fifth and Fourth centuries B.C. (Pllitlia53. to Lysippus). in the same way as the earlier Christian period had corresponded to the Ori ental stage and the later Renaissance period was to mirror the Roman stage of ancient art. It is interesting to follow out this analogy; to see how portraiture. psychologie study, picturesque ness, and the supremacy of painting are char acteristics of the Renaissance as of Roman art, but on another plane. in which the keynote was furnished not by architecture, as with the Romans. but by sculpture.