THE PROFANITY OF PAINT




  THE PROFANITY
  OF PAINT. BY
  WILLIAM KIDDIER

  LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD,
  13, CLIFFORD’S INN, E.C.,
  1916




  PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.,
  PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND




TO LOVERS OF COLOUR




Contents


                                            PAGE

   1. My Book is True                         11

   2. My Friends the Trees                    13

   3. The Profanity of Paint                  17

   4. The Miserable Pursuit of Knowledge      21

   5. The Gift of Silence                     23

   6. The Magic of Words                      27

   7. The Personal Note                       29

   8. Colour                                  31

   9. Extravagance                            33

  10. Relation                                35

  11. Tragedy                                 39

  12. The Tonic of Genius                     41

  13. Critics                                 43

  14. The Closed Ear                          45

  15. The Painter’s Cigarette                 47

  16. The People’s Café                       51

  17. The Middle-class                        53

  18. The Masterpiece                         57

  19. Mission                                 61




1. My Book is True


My view-point is the painter’s, the poet’s; ah, I am a romanticist! But
my book is true. The romanticist finds truth without seeking it; it
is before him, around him, and he gathers it all with the joy of the
child that plucks the flowers in the fields. _Truth_ is not knowledge:
it belongs to temperament; it is vision! The child and the romanticist
love the beautiful, that is all: _truth_ is there!




2. My Friends the Trees


I have loved trees all my life; they were the friends of my baby years.
Though the land of the trees seemed far away from the close-built
houses, I wandered thither with great joy and never knew that my little
feet were tired. The tall aspens were the most wonderful things in
the world: they are still. I shed tears on being told that the Cross
was made from one of them. I have wept since at the sight of their
trembling leaves. They trembled for the tragedy of Golgotha. I know
they will tremble to the end of the world. Melancholy trees! O but they
are beautiful--beautiful and gentle like a nun with a prayer quivering
upon her lips, with her white fingers and her rosary sparkling from
under her robe: and, lo, the aspens are all alike, as she and her holy
sisters must needs be for the sake of their holiness.

Sensitive to all the changes of the sky, the aspen reflects wondrous
colour; the leaves, like a million little mirrors, draw the blue and
the purple from above and drink the orange from departing suns. And all
the colour and the light blend in subtle harmonies like the precious
pearls on the neck of a goddess. Ah! do they not pulsate like the
strings of beads on a maiden’s breast? The vision is fleeting as it is
beautiful; the colour upon the leaves, like that in the dews around, is
surely spiritual.




3. The Profanity of Paint


As a painter, out-of-doors, the aspens are my despair, for they are
surely beyond the limitations of paint. I once set my palette with
bright colours with a grove of aspens in front of me: O, but when I
looked up into all the mass of shimmering leaves, spread out like a
garment inwoven with gems, flowing upon the breezes and toying with the
rich dyes of heaven, I shut down my box, threw myself upon the grass
and sat there in idle adoration, like a heathen before his god. If all
I beheld was meant for a revelation it was surely as beautiful as the
burning bush. To Moses I am more than grateful: it is through him that
God’s voice rings out against the bad artist: _Thou shalt not make ...
any likeness of any thing._ When God said the same thing to the Chinese
three thousand years ago they understood and have painted _colour_ ever
since. Why is the western world in the dark?

O let my eyes be baptized with the sun that I may behold _colour_ like
the heathen!

How long I stayed in the temple of the trees I do not know; time did
not count because I was not at work: all was like a dream. If I had
been a Florentine of the olden days I would have seen here the robes
of a saint, perhaps the shining garment of the Blessed Virgin.

I did well to close my box and keep my eyes unspoiled by the profanity
of paint, leaving the pure impression to some happy occasion when the
memory of it all will be sufficient for my picture.




4. The Miserable Pursuit of Knowledge


The trend of this book shows clearly that I am no realist. Although,
in my solitude, years ago, I made many careful drawings of various
things and gained some knowledge of their mechanism, my labours
brought me no pleasure save the small satisfaction of having done a
self-inflicted task after reading miserable books on art. In those days
I pitied myself; but now I pity the miserable authors. The education
of the painter is a mistake: educate the _man_! The painter will find
himself, sooner or later. If there is no painter in him his case is
hopeless.

Art education, so called, which is the training of the eye and the
hand, gives one a facility for recording facts: _truth_ never. Truth
is _felt_. To the painter, the poet, the romanticist facts are cold
things belonging to the past--dead things that have nothing to do with
intuition, _vision_, _truth_. He must dream new dreams, employ new
methods, create new things! He is not a common creature and, therefore,
should not be entrusted with any public responsibility: but God grant
that in all the economic medley, called civilization, he may have the
right to live.




5. The Gift of Silence


Although I write just the things I feel, my book is an effort: but I am
glad of this. That I have no liking for any literary task and hate all
correspondence I regard as a gift. My mother has a rarer gift: she does
not talk. She speaks when she has something to say and never utters
empty words. O but she is eloquent! She clothes her thoughts with
simple language and stops at the right moment; it is a well-timed pause
in which her face counts. Her intermittent silence is a master stroke;
it gives the same sense of space that I would have in my picture.
Perhaps it is beyond art, but it is all hers without an effort; arising
out of her good soul it belongs to her nature.

I see her too little; her home is in a village on the coast and mine in
an inland city. That I shall miss her one day is the miserable thought
I cannot get rid of without seeing her. O but when I arrive my fears
vanish in a moment, for she lives for me. She is dear to look upon:
but when she looks at me my sense of spiritual security is greater
than can ever be described. I feel the influence of her peace which
brings mine back to me. Her eyes are aglow from silent thoughts of me,
and I stay with no other desire than to be with her and believe in
immortality--believe all her belief!




6. The Magic of Words


There is something in the art of the master that I can never find a
word for. I believe it is a sin to seek for one. Art in the finer sense
is beyond the limitations of all words assigned by the philologists.
The master is a magician, therefore it is only the poets that can speak
with authority about his work: and it requires all the magic of poetry
to deal with the creation of things. Words must be arranged so as to
lose all their etymological stiffness before they can ever express the
things born of inspiration. Only inasmuch as the poet’s song transcends
the meaning of his words does he approach the spiritual sense of art.




7. The Personal Note


In talking with brother painters I often find myself giving prominence
to some particular word like _rhythm_, _vibration_, or _colour_:
but I must always forget the root-meaning, or I would discard it
at once. I must employ my adopted word in a new way. Its special
meaning, though never explained, is communicated by repeating the
word freely in various relations, pronouncing it with emphasis in an
unexpected moment, or, again, pausing before its utterance so that
the appreciative ear may anticipate it and catch the spiritual sense
intuitively and feel all I had attached to it from myself. It is
nonsense to talk upon art without a personal note of this kind!




8. Colour


Very few understand how much _colour_ means to the colourist, or why,
in the higher sense, like _music_ it has no plural. Colours are the
pigments, the materials: but _colour_ is the soul of things!

I believe _colour_ belongs to the fairies; it never comes quite within
our grasp. It is borne upon the air, its chariot is the morning
dews, and its paths the sunbeams. I have come to regard _colour_ as
a spiritual thing changing for ever, as all spiritual things do. Of
a truth it is the beautiful emblem of _change_. The idea of eternal
change is fascinating beyond measure. God never created a _fixture_
intentionally. We are immortal only inasmuch as we are eternally moving
with the thought of God!




9. Extravagance


I love the word extravagance in its application to _colour_; for is not
the sense of _colour_ an innocent _extravagance_ of the mind, which
saves the possessor from discontent and death? I know I shall not die
while _colour_ floods in upon my eyes: it is the silent music of an
eternal vision!




10. Relation


The other day at coffee with a group of young painters I talked upon
the importance of _relation_. I went so far as to say that no picture
could have any sense of dignity without the quality I have named.
Everything in the work should, in some special degree, contribute to
the first idea. Nothing should be introduced for the sake of variety.
No; it is better to let _sameness_ be the principle.

I have seen sheep grazing in a meadow with all their heads turned
one way, all quietly pursuing the same course, as though led by a
sympathetic spirit, and I have felt that the peace of all the pastures
was undisturbed by their presence. I once saw a group of rustics with
all their faces so nearly alike as to represent a distinct type; all
bent upon the same work, pursuing the task with natural ease and
unconscious order, and I felt the nobility of their occupation, the
blessedness of labour. And when I have seen such people kneel before
the crucifix with their heads bowed towards the east and have noted
from behind the simplicity in their manners, the _sameness_ in all
their clothes, I have felt the fervour of their religion, the divinity
of poverty that makes them all unconsciously _relative_!

But if I want humour I get into a motor-bus and watch the mixed types,
the short and the long, the fat and the thin, the hook nose and the
snub; and I get it. But does not the motor-bus show the painter the
confusion of ideas he must always avoid in his work?

I sometimes think there is humour in trees when cultivated by people
who, from an insatiate love of variety, plant one of every kind
around their lawns. No artist, unless he was mad, would record such a
confusion of things as this.

Of a truth trees can only be painted by the sympathetic hand, one
that can make a simple group out of all around him, selecting only
those that, by their forms, shall contribute to the artistic sense
_relation_! In a word, the painter must never aim for likeness; the
material sense should never be transferred to canvas: more than
anything else trees have superb rhythmic tendencies: inspired by these,
he should paint a rhythmic picture.




11. Tragedy


The sky was impressive by its change from sunlight to sudden darkness;
and the ethereal fabric hung like black velvet over all the woods. All
the colour that a moment ago clothed the trees was gone in an instant,
as a candle is blown out; and the world was without form.

I stood under a tree. The sense of my own presence was the only note of
reality that disturbed the dream of pre-world void.

In a few minutes the heavens opened high above my head and a stream of
light slanted down upon an old oak. Perhaps it was the searchlight of
a war god, for in a moment the oak was struck, and the earth shook as
it fell. I was captivated as much by the greatness of the tree as by
its fall; it was torn up with its roots with a mountain of clay in its
grip. But more wondrous than all were the forewarned sheep that nestled
under it to the last moment. Why did they all rise and leap forth into
the open field? What made them flee before the blast?... There are
sanctuaries which should never be unveiled: there are questions you
should not attempt to answer--this is one.




12. The Tonic of Genius


There never was a colourist without a keen sense of humour and never
without a generous soul. When I say humour I do not mean satire or
anything that leaves a bitter taste. Satire is permissible with the
community, but should never be directed against a person.

Humour must always be buoyant, pleasant in every way, and have no other
meaning than that which makes the person who happens to be the sport
of it laugh with the rest. The one so honoured must, of course, be a
genuine humorist, or he would be unworthy of special attention.

Humour is the tonic of genius. It is the healthy reaction of prolonged
serious thought, the pleasant negative of stern reality, the divine
intoxicant for the over-productive brain.

I have always felt that the past should be either forgotten or turned
to humour. The only serious part of life is the present, but this
should have its lighter side. When we have ceased to laugh we have done
with all generous feeling, and, when this is dead, it is the end of all
creative thought.




13. Critics


A book is not worth its paper if it cannot suffer by the process of
critical mutilation; writing, and also painting, must be viewed as a
whole, but never pigment by pigment or line by line. Every paragraph
read separately must call forth some opposite view or else the book is
poor stuff. Every inch of the picture closely viewed by itself must
bewilder the observer; otherwise, it is a weak, insipid, belaboured
canvas, good for nothing. I tell you for your own sake: _do not hold a
microscope in front of genius_!




14. The Closed Ear


If I listened attentively to the things that others say my work would
lose character. To pay attention to criticism is to pursue the process
of laboured refinement which reduces all to the commonplace. Critics
with much knowledge are people with retrospective minds; they cannot be
of use to the born painter whose work is creative. Knowledge is related
to things already accomplished; but the vast unexplored fields open
to creative genius are beyond the range of all critical analysis. The
painter, more than any other, lives a life of spiritual change.

Look at the sky! The luminaries return, return, return! To the
scientist they move with regularity and precision; but to the
romanticist they shed new light every moment. The astronomer knows the
facts: the poet _feels the truth_!




15. The Painter’s Cigarette


There is a certain something in a cigarette that gives character to the
painter’s conversation. The cigarette itself plays an important part
in timing the frequent pauses to suit the wit of genius. The curls of
smoke punctuate a series of brilliant aphorisms which otherwise would
be impossible. The painter has the gift of making parables. The fact is
he talks from feeling rather than reason. He never makes a speech: he
tells you something. But is he not charming withal?

He has no self-restraint. The cold, placid surface, the cultivated
evenness that is counted a valuable asset in the man of business, in
the politician and the millionaire, is not his, thank God!

In his heart he is a child. He will talk about himself and his own work
so frankly that you will always be interested if not wholly charmed.
Unselfish in every vein, his grievance is never a personal one; it has
no bearings save for his art. From this point the matter is soon beaten
flat under his hammer of words. If he had not the courage to say all
he felt he would be no painter! But do not be deceived: his fearless
tongue has a fine counterpart deep in his heart. As a man in the right
capable of strong denunciation, he is the man you may safely approach
and trust!




16. The People’s Café


I prefer the café of the people, and never visit any that has an
exclusive atmosphere unless I am obliged. I do not care to see many
rich people at one time. It was ordained that the percentage of rich
should always be small, therefore a crowd of them in one spot is bad
form, often bad colour, and mostly confusion. A group of artisans never
gives me any unpleasant thoughts: it is the natural order of things;
the poor were regarded by Our Lord as the multitude.




17. The Middle-class


That I belong to the middle-class is my chief misfortune; it is
better to be born an aristocrat, but better still an artisan. To the
middle-class belong all the money makers: builders of monopolies,
political wire-pullers, and all that spells greed. These people buy
everything and sell everybody. With them lying is an art, whereas
for the poor it is only a pastime. The aristocrat--the product of
luxury and idleness--is as much above any mean action as he is at
loss in managing his own affairs. He must employ agents: _enter the
middle-class_! To them he entrusts all his worldly belongings, with an
intuitive knowledge that he is robbed always and will be as long as he
lives. He knows they pursue his money with all the zest that he pursues
sport. But he always carries the same bright face, the same kind heart;
and he would pay to the last penny. O but how strange, his agents
save him from ruin! and the people on the land contribute more to the
miserable business than is known to my lord, more than they themselves
ever realise: and so the middle-class remains the back-bone of the
Empire. But what does this mean? The truth is that God made the lord
and the labourer: the rest is mainly the work of the devil!




18. The Masterpiece


I once told a young artist to attempt no masterpiece. The thing cannot
be done. The moment you think of doing a masterpiece you are befooled.
Providence does not allow you to arrange anything of that kind. All
you must do is paint with a generous heart--paint _colour_--and leave
to the next generation the selection of your masterpiece. The painter,
above all men, must be himself, without any regard for the world’s
judgment. Do not be deceived: Time will decide the masterpiece--_Time
will destroy it!_

  From out the ageless oceans in the west,
      Where lazily the gods of new worlds rise
      And stretch their mighty limbs across the skies--
  Insatiate giants roused from out long rest--
  Uprose a Titan whose dark arms and breast
      Blackened the sea and drew the gull’s shrill cries;
      In his dark head he rolled his gloating eyes
  And kept his cruel lips together pressed.

  The sea that bore him was the eternal pit;
      Into its depths he threw the dreams of men--
      Threw with one stroke ten thousand tomes of rhyme,
  As many works of art, each once deemed fit
      To live. One was a masterpiece! Ah, then
      These words came forth: _I am the Tomb of Time!_




19. Mission


What is the painter’s mission? My dear sir, he has no mission. He may
talk about anything and everything, but this is his pastime. His art
should not be connected with any movement. Painting is a personal
matter and, therefore, cannot be regulated by communities. When
the painter talks he throws light upon himself, which is necessary
sometimes; it may help others to understand him. The painter must be
judged, in the end, from his own point of view: it is the only moral
judgment for an honest man!




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.