The Painter in oil

Art for Art’s Sake. - This is the real meaning of the much-debated phrase, “Art for
art’s sake.” The mistake which leads to the misconception and most of the discussion
about it, is in confounding “art for art’s sake” with “technique for technique’s sake,”
which is a very different thing. Certainly every painter will work to attain the most
perfect technique he is capable of. But not for the sake of technique, but for what it will
do. The better the technique the better the control of all the means to expression. If you
take technique to mean only the understanding and knowledge of all manipulations of
art, technique is only a means, and it is so that I mean it to be understood here. If you
broaden its meaning to include other mental conceptions and means, that is another
thing, and one likely to lead to confusion of idea. So I use the word technique in its
strictest sense.
The Æsthetic Elements. - What, then, are these æsthetic qualities I have spoken
of? Will you consider the quality of “line”? Not a line, but line as an element, excluding
all the possible things which may be done with lines in different relations to themselves
and to other elements. Now you consider also the other elements, “mass” and “color”?
Do you see that here are three terms which suggest possibilities of combination of
infinite scope? And they are purely intellectual. What may be done with them may be
done, primarily, without taking into consideration the representation of any material
fact whatsoever. Take as the type, conventional ornament. You can make the most
exquisite combinations, in which the only interested charm lies in the fact of those
combinations in line and mass and color.
Take architecture. Quite aside from the use of the building is the æsthetic resultant
from combinations of line and mass and color. And so in the picture the question of art,
the question of æsthetic entity, lies in the intellectual qualities of combinations of line
and mass and color which permeate through and through the technical and material
structure that you call the picture, and give it whatever universal and permanent value it
has, and which make it immortal, if immortal it ever can be. Composition. - The bearing
of all this on composition should be obvious, for composition is the technique of
combination. In the composition of a picture all the elements come into play. It is in
composition that the management of the abstract results in the concrete.
Let us look at it from a more practical side. Frankly, there are qualities, which you
always look for in a picture, - good drawing, of course, and good color. But there are
such things as these: Harmony, Balance, Rhythm, Grace, Impressiveness, Force, Dignity.
Where do they come from? Must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to
some extent? How are you going to get them? If you have fifteen or twenty square feet or
square yards of surface, you will not get them into it by unaided inspiration. Inspiration
is, like any other intellectual quality, quite logical, only it acts more quickly and takes
longer steps between conclusions perhaps. You will get these qualities onto your canvas
only by so arranging all the objects which make up the body of your picture that this
quality shall be the result. It is arrangement then.
Arrangement. - But arrangement of what? how? The objects. But on some principle
back of them. Consider another set of qualities: proportion, i.e., relative size;
arrangement, relative proportion; contrast; accent, — these are what your manipulate
objects with, and your objects themselves are only line and mass and color in the
concrete. Objects, figures, brick-a-brac, draperies, houses and trees, skies and