NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF ART 77 



A separate section devoted to music and architecture recognizes, 

 not only the mathematical relationships they both involve, but 

 also the fact that, for example, 'sound is analogous to the cry, and 

 by this title it directly expresses with unrivalled precision, delicacy 

 and force, suffering, joy, rage, indignation . . .'.i^ This argument, 

 though it employs the language of expression, is used to prove the 

 imitative character of music and architecture. 



Thus, Taine's analysis seems intended to include the expressive, 

 as well as the representational, role of art. Subjective elements of 

 style represent the artist's means of emphasizing what he con- 

 siders to be the essential character of the object; distortions, such 

 as those employed by El Greco, are both expressive and real. 

 Taine's definition might even be interpreted so as to cover most 

 of the schools of modern painting: cubism and abstract art are con- 

 cerned with 'relationships of parts' ; surrealism is concerned with 

 the 'essential character' of dreams; and so forth. Picasso's two- 

 faced women can be understood, perhaps, as imitations of essential 

 character achieved by abstracting certain relationships and com- 

 bining them in an interesting design (see Appendix F) . 



The Voyage in Italy contains a number of passages which indicate 

 some of the meanings conveyed by Taine's use of 'expression'. 

 For example: 'How true it is that art is only expression, that above 

 all one must have a soul, that a temple is not a heap of stones or a 

 combination of forms, but at once and uniquely a religion which 

 speaks!' 16 Taine's description of Bernini's statue of 'St. Theresa' 

 is a poetic rendering in words of her 'rapturous attitude', and the 

 work is found to conform 'to the modern standard of sculpture, 

 wholly based on expression' .'^'^ In one passage, the central principle 

 of art is 'to reveal and to perpetuate a personality, that of the artist, 

 and of this personality whatever is essential' .^^ Since expression 

 involves a logic of its own, 'outward or inward' ^^ — i.e., either in 

 external objects, which are imitated, or in the 'human nature' 

 of the artist, which is 'expressed' — 'essential character' seems 

 broad, or perhaps ambiguous, enough to cover both. 



Instead of praising Taine for his attempt at synthesis. Professor 

 Jenkins erects the contrast between imitation and expression into 

 a hard-and-fast dualism and proceeds to trace 'inconsistencies' 

 in the Lectures on Art. His initial error is in accepting the all-too- 

 common reading of Taine's metaphysics as naively positivist, 

 materialist, mechanist, and nominalist; but, side by side with such 

 quotations as he cites to justify such a reading, the conclusion of 



