[Note: for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents to thebeginning of the text.]
THE ENJOYMENT OF ART
BY
CARLETON NOYES
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY CARLETON NOYES
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published, March, 1903
To
ROBERT HENRI
AND
VAN D. PERRINE
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at
the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of
those orbs, and thepleasure and knowledge of every
thing in them, shall we be fill'd and satisfiedthen?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and
continuebeyond.WALT WHITMAN
CONTENTS
| Preface | ||
| I. | The Picture and the Man | i |
| II. | The Work of Art as Symbol | 19 |
| III. | The Work of Art as Beautiful | 41 |
| IV. | Art and Appreciation | 67 |
| V. | The Artist | 86 |
PREFACE
The following pages are the answer to questions which a young man asked himself when,fresh from the university, he found himself adrift in the great galleries of Europe. Ashe stood helpless and confused in the presence of the visible expressions of the spiritof man in so many ages and so many lands, one question recurred insistently: Whyare these pictures? What is the meaning of all this striving after expression? What wasthe aim of these men who have left their record here? What was their moving impulse? Why,why does the human spirit seek to manifest itself in forms which we call beautiful?
He turned to histories of art and to biographies of artists, but he found no answer!to the "Why?" The philosophers with their theories of aesthetics helped him little tounderstand the dignity and force of this portrait or the beauty of that landscape. In theconversation of his artist friends there was no enlightenment, for they talked about"values" and "planes of modeling" and the mysteries of "tone." At last he turned in uponhimself: What does this canvas mean to me? And here he found his answer. This work of artis the revelation to me of a fuller beauty, a deeper harmony, than I have ever seen orfelt. The artist is he who has experienced this new wonder in nature and who wants tocommunicate his joy, in concrete forms, to his fellow men.
The purpose of this book is to set forth in simple, untechnical fashion the nature andthe meaning of a work of art. Although the illustrations of the underlying principles aredrawn mainly from pictures, yet the conclusions apply equally to books and to music. Itis true that the manifestations of the art-impulse are innumerable, embracing not onlypainting, sculpture, literature, music, and architecture, but also the handiwork of thec