310 The Evolution of Art. 



brought about changes in standards of art which have 

 found a response in the taste of the people. Whoever stands 

 in the City Hall Park of New York, and, appalled at the 

 grotesque ugliness of the Post Office, fails to understand 

 why the builder could not have opened his eyes to the simple 

 and chaste proportions of the City Hall across the Plaza, can 

 find a sure relief by crossing the Wall Street Ferry and 

 feasting his eyes upon that modern wonder which swings its 

 fair proportions above the vehicles of traffic that ply their 

 complex passage beneath the Brooklyn bridge. Here ne- 

 cessity, many times the cruel tyrant of art, has imposed condi- 

 tions upon the builder, the result of which has challenged 

 the artistic homage of the world. It most effectually satis- 

 fies the two great essentials of art simplicity and unity of de- 

 sign. 



Now, this average judgment of the times, called by some 

 good taste, is subject both to complete submergence, as in 

 the centuries before the Renaissance, and to epidemic dis- 

 eases due to changing environment and to sporadic art- 

 fashions. 



Modern Italian art, especially in sculpture, exhibits one of 

 these, and in our day the rank contagion of an unnecessary 

 realism in art offers a conspicuous illustration. We have 

 among us quite a scholastic contingency, who have fallen in 

 love with that kind of interpretation of Nature which re- 

 produces with photographic minuteness all her minutiae of 

 incident and fact under the plea that it is a necessity of 

 truth. 



Tolstoi, Zola, and Whitman, in literature, are the apostles 

 of what seems to their disciples to be a new era in art, the 

 province of which is to tell some secret of Nature hitherto 

 decorously concealed. They attach themselves to the real- 

 istic school of art and carry the wholesome doctrine of anti- 

 sham production to an extreme which would be ridiculous 

 if it were not disgusting. Nothing is to be left to the im- 

 agination of the reader. The most offensive details of im- 

 morality, the by and forbidden paths of infamy and vice, 

 are dragged festering to the light of day, under as conscien- 

 tious a disregard of the decencies of society as if the artists 

 had been sworn in a court of justice to tell the truth, the 

 whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Under the foster- 

 ing protection of many men of genius, our book-stalls are 

 infected with the vilest suggestions of indecency, and pub- 

 lishers vie with each other in running as near the condem- 



