Complete. From “What Is Art?”

PEOPLE talk of the art of the future, understanding by the art of the future a specially refined new art, to be elaborated from the art of one class of society, which is now considered the highest. But such new art of the future cannot and will not exist. Our exclusive art of the upper classes of the Christian world has come to a dead wall. Along the path it has been following it has no further to go. This art once it has failed in the chief condition of art (that it should be led by the religious consciousness), becoming more and more exclusive and therefore more and more corrupt, has become a negative quantity. The art of the future—that which will really come into being—will not be a continuation of the present art, but will arise on perfectly different and new foundations, having nothing in common with those by which our present art of the upper classes is guided.

  The art of the future, that is, that part of art which will stand out from the whole of art existing amongst men, will consist not of the transfer of feelings accessible only to some people of the rich classes, as happens now, but will be that art alone which realizes the highest religious consciousness of the people of our time. Only those productions which shall convey the feelings which draw people to brotherly unity, will be counted art; or which convey such feelings, common to all men, as shall have the power to unite all people. Only this art will stand out, be admitted, approved, and spread. And all the rest of art, conveying feelings accessible only to some people, will be considered unimportant, and will be neither condemned nor approved. And the patron of art in general will not be, as happens now, the separate class of rich people, but the whole nation: so that for a production to be considered good, approved, and circulated, it will be necessary for it to satisfy the demands not of a few people, who are in the same often unnatural conditions, but the demands of the whole people, the great masses of the people, who live in the natural conditions of toil.

  And artists, who produce art, will not be, as now, only those rare people, selected from a small part of the whole nation, from the rich classes or those close to them, but all those gifted people of the whole nation, who show themselves able and willing for artistic activities.

  Artistic activity will then be accessible to the whole people. And this activity will be accessible to individuals from the whole people, because, in the first place, in the art of the future not only will there be no demand for that complex technical skill which disfigures the art of our times, and demands intense effort and great expenditure of time, but on the contrary there will be a demand for clearness, simplicity, and brevity, conditions which are gained not by mechanical effort, but by education of taste. In the second place, artistic activity will become accessible to the whole people, because instead of the present professional schools, accessible only to the few, every one in the preparatory national schools will learn music and painting (singing and drawing) on equal terms with reading, so that every one receiving the first foundations of painting and musical knowledge, and feeling an ability and calling for any of the arts, may be able to perfect himself in it.

  People think that if there are no special art schools, technical skill in art will diminish. It will undoubtedly diminish, if by technical skill we understand those complications of art which are now considered valuable; but if by technical skill we understand the clearness, beauty, freedom from great complexity, and conciseness of a production of art, then technical skill will not only not diminish, but will become a hundred times more perfect, even if there are no professional schools, and even if the national schools should not teach the rudiments of drawing and music. It will be perfected because all the artists of genius, now hidden amongst the people, will take part in art, and will give examples of perfection, which will be, as always, the best school of technical skill for artists. Every true artist even now learns not in the school, but in life, from the examples of the great masters; but then, when those who take part in art will be the most gifted people of the whole nation and there will be more examples, and these examples will be more accessible, the teaching in the schools which the future artists lose will be repaid a hundred times by the teaching which the artist will receive from the numerous examples of good art distributed throughout society.

  This will be one difference between future and present art. Another difference will be that the art of the future will not be produced by professional artists, who receive a reward for their art, and working at nothing except their art. The art of the future will be produced by people of the nation, who will work at it when they feel the inner necessity for this activity.

  In our society it is thought that an artist will work best and do most if he is materially independent. This opinion would prove once more to demonstration, if it were necessary to prove it, that what is considered art amongst us is not art, but only a semblance of it. It is perfectly true that to produce boots or loaves, division of labor is very advantageous, that the shoemaker or baker who need not prepare his own dinner and firewood makes more boots and loaves than if he were compelled to occupy himself about his dinner and firewood. But art is not a trade, but the transfer of feelings experienced by the artist. And feelings can only have birth in a man when he is at all points living the natural life proper to all men. And therefore the assurance of the material independence of artists is the most destructive condition for the artists’ productivity, since it frees the artist from the condition, proper to all men, of struggle with nature for the support of his own life and the life of others, and therefore deprives him of the opportunity and possibility of experiencing the feelings that are most important and proper to human beings. There is no position more destructive to the artist’s productivity than the position of complete independence and luxury, in which the artist is generally found in our society.

  The artist of the future will live the ordinary life of men, and will earn his living by some form of work. And the fruits of that higher spiritual force, which passes through him, he will try to give to the greatest number of people, because in this transfer to the greatest number of people of the feelings which came to the birth in him is his joy and his reward. The artist of the future will not even understand that an artist, whose chief joy consists in the greatest distribution of his productions, could offer his productions only at a given price.

  Until the merchants are cast out of the temple, the temple of art will not be a temple. The art of the future will drive them out.

  And therefore the subject-matter of the art of the future, as I represent it to myself, will be quite unlike the present. The substance of the art of the future will not consist in the expression of exclusive feelings: vanity, weariness, satiety, and sensuality in all possible forms, accessible and interesting only to people who have violently separated themselves from that work which is proper to man, but will consist in the expression of feelings experienced by a man who lives the life that is proper to all people, and flows from the religious consciousness of our time, or feelings accessible to all people without exception.

  To people of our circle who do not know, and cannot or will not know the feelings which must constitute the substance of art of the future, it seems that this subject-matter, when compared with the refinements of exclusive feeling, with which they are now occupied, is very poor. “What new thing can be expressed in the field of the Christian feelings of love for our neighbor? And feelings accessible to all men are so insignificant and monotonous,” they think. But at the same time the only really new feelings possible in our time are Christian religious feelings, and feelings accessible to all. The feelings flowing from the religious consciousness of our time, Christian feelings, are endlessly new and varied; but not in that one sense, as some think, of depicting Christ and the episodes of the Gospel, or of repeating in a new form the Christian truths of unity, brotherhood, equality, love, but in the sense that all the very oldest manifestations of life, familiar and studied from all sides, evoke the newest, most unexpected and touching feelings, as soon as a person approaches these manifestations from the Christian point of view.

  What can be older than the relations of married people, of parents to children, of children to parents, the relations of people to their fellow-countrymen, to people of other races, to aggression, defense, property, the earth, animals? But as soon as a man approaches these manifestations from the Christian point of view, there straightway arise the most endlessly varied, new, complicated, and touching feelings.

  In just the same way the field of that art which conveys the very simplest worldly feelings accessible to all, is not contracted, but expanded. In our former art it was considered dignified to convey in art only the expression of feelings belonging to people of a certain exclusive position, and this only when they were conveyed by the most refined means, inaccessible to the majority of people; and all the immense field of popular child art—jokes, proverbs, riddles, songs, dances, children’s games, mimicry—was not recognized as a worthy subject of art.

  The artist of the future will understand that to write a tale or a little song that touches—an adage or a riddle that entertains—a joke that amuses, or paint a picture that rejoices tens of generations, or millions of children and adults—is incomparably more important and fruitful than to write novels or symphonies, or paint pictures, which for a short time entertain a few people of the rich classes, and are then forgotten forever. And the field of this art of simple feelings accessible to all is immense and still almost untouched.

  So that the art of the future will not only not be impoverished, but, on the contrary, will be endlessly enriched in material. And in exactly the same way the form of the art of the future will not only not be lower than the present form of art, but will be beyond all comparison higher than it, higher not in the sense of refined and complicated technical skill, but in the sense of knowing how to convey the feeling which the artist experienced and wishes to convey, briefly, simply, and clearly, without any superfluity.

  I remember that once in talking to a famous astronomer, who delivered public lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, I said to him how fine it would be if, with his knowledge and masterly delivery, he should give a public lecture on cosmography, confined to the movement of the earth, as among the auditors of his lecture on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, there were probably very many people, especially women, who do not quite know why day and night exist, or summer and winter. The wise astronomer, smiling, answered me: “Yes, that would be excellent, but it would be very difficult. To lecture on the spectrum analysis of the Milky Way is far easier.”

  And it is just the same in art: to write a poem in verse of Cleopatra’s time, or to paint a picture of Nero burning Rome, or a symphony in the spirit of Brahms and Richard Strauss, or an opera in the spirit of Wagner, is far easier than to tell a simple story without any superfluity, and at the same time in such a way as to convey the feeling of the narrator, or to draw a pencil sketch that will touch or amuse the beholder, or to write four bars of a simple, clear melody, without any accompaniment, which will convey a mood and be remembered by the hearer.

  “It is impossible for us now, with our development, to return to the primitive”—say the artists of our times. “It is impossible for us to write stories like the story of Joseph and his Brethren or the ‘Odyssey’; or to carve statues like the ‘Venus of Milo’; or to compose music like the national songs.”

  And, in fact, for the artist of our times, this is impossible, but not for the artist of the future, who will be ignorant of all the corruption of technical perfections which conceal the absence of subject-matter, and who, not being a professional artist, and receiving no payment for his work, will only produce art when he feels an irresistible inner necessity to do so.

  So completely different from what is now considered art, both in substance and form, will the art of the future be. The subject-matter of the art of the future will be only feelings drawing people to unity, or really uniting them; another form of art will be such as to be accessible to everybody. And therefore the ideal of perfection of the future will not be exclusiveness of feeling, accessible only to some, but, on the contrary, its universality. And not crowdedness, obscurity, and complexity of form, as it is now held to be, but, on the contrary, brevity, clearness, and simplicity of expression. And only when art is like this will it no longer merely amuse and corrupt people, as it does now, demanding the expenditure of their best forces on this, but it will be what it ought to be, an instrument for the transfer of the Christian religious consciousness from the region of intellect and reason to the region of feeling, thus bringing people in reality, in life itself, to that perfection and unity which the religious consciousness points out to them.