Beauty's Inspiration and Art

For the artist there is all hope so long as he cleaves to the moral purpose of beauty, from thence draws his inspiration, with that fills his life. But let him depart from that and he is lost. Art, then, must be the temple wherein he worships the Sublime; his life a worship and his work the evidence of such the greatness, the virility, the purity of his work but the greater evidence. His inspiration must come from above and within. He must see beauty only, and know that beauty is spiritual.

Let him live in his Quartier Latin if he choose genial master of a lofty purpose with eyes only for the ideal. Art must be his bride, and art is but one form of worship of the immanent God. But if he cannot so live, let him forsake art. It is no use for him to fly to the top of the Altai Mountains. His weakness dwells there as well. To the strong sane man Paris is a vain show, and he ceases to be aware of anything but the purpose that brings him there, and bends all things to his work. But to the weakling it is a vicious school ; he is soon infected with the prevalent immorality and a little slime added to his paint.

I paint my character into my picture, I write it into my poem, I build it into my house. These then declare for my perception of beauty whether it be real or superficial merely, whether it spring from love or is personal and vain. Weakness of character is as unsightly as leprosy. But force of character, decision, strength, tempered with great love, is the real beauty, and will project itself in art such as no lesser worth can create. Poet, artist, musician one and all must rise to the universal. What have they to do with personality who should live solely to beauty!

Yet as a fact they are too often encumbered with a monstrous egotism. They forget that personality is an opaque glass and lets no clear sunlight through. He who would consecrate himself to harmony must first of all come into harmonious relations with its fellows. How may he give fit expression to the universal so long as he is warped, crabbed, bigoted in his outlook ? Children of beauty their responsibility is greater than is dreamed of, and the mills grind exceeding fine. If I have not risen out of myself, my brush convicts, my voice tells on me. I must give myself wholly to beauty of life and beauty of thought ; my heart must be right, or beauty will not use me.

We are impressed by those examples of art wherein we feel the universal had free play. It is this that makes them to be great. In the masterpiece it is beauty apart from race and place grace and beauty personified. These are not so much Greeks as men and women. On San Miniato we are sensible, not of a biblical David, but of an emblem of youth and courage. Not so always with the paintings of the old masters ; despite their technical marvels we feel them to have been limited by subjects which had not the elements of universality, but sprang from dogma and so do not stir us. With all our wanderings through the Louvre, the Vatican, the Pitti and Ufizzi, 'it is to feel at last we care not a fig for their saints and madonnas, and would see no more gruesome heads of the Baptist nor arrow-stuck Sebatians so long as we live. We look at the traditional madonnas, but it is motherhood and childhood that hold us. The tradition we may have outgrown, but motherhood and childhood we never outgrow.

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Felicity Loveheart likes to write about beauty and health. Some of her other articles include: cures for acne, best treatment for acne, and how to reduce acne redness.

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