December 
1923 
59 
IS THERE ART in ARTIEICIAL PLANTS? 
RAI.PH PA'n iSON’ 
P LANTS are not always 
so real as they are 
painted. Yet somehow 
their reality, when it has 
been painstakingly achiev¬ 
ed, is, like that of the 
effigies in the wax-works of 
IMadame Tussaud and the 
Eden Musee, a little grue¬ 
some. This horrid quality, 
which one finds always in 
those ghastly sculptures, 
and almost always in imita¬ 
tion plants and flowers, is 
not there because the things 
are imitation only, but also 
because whosoever made 
them failed to realize his 
limitations. He could never 
have made anything real, 
and it was rather foolish of 
him to try. Oscar Wilde 
observed that “One touch 
of Nature may make the 
whole world kin, but two 
touches of Nature will de¬ 
stroy any work of Art”; and 
it is more than likely true 
that if any artificial plant 
or flower was ever a work 
of art it was so because 
the one who contrived it 
strove mostly to make 
something beautiful, and 
used Nature simply as a 
reminder. 
Artificial plants and 
flowers are made in many 
materials—from porcelain, 
in which they are often 
exquisite, to the preserved 
structure and substance of 
the plant or flower itself, in 
which they are quite always 
depressing. The artistic 
worth of any of them is de¬ 
termined not by the close¬ 
ness with which they re¬ 
semble the real thing, butby 
the beauty they hold in themselves regardless 
of the real thing. If they are beautiful they 
have some reason for existing; if their ap¬ 
pointed task is to ape nature, then their 
existence must be ever futile and forlorn. 
Halfway between (a) artificial plants and 
flowers which are beautiful and (b) artificial 
plants and flowers whose verisimilitude to 
nature makes them strikingly unreal are 
those artificial plants and flowers which are 
neither particularly beautiful nor to any 
bewildering degree lifelike. These have 
forsworn both art and nature. They are 
pathetic, but they have a purpose. Their 
Drix Duryea 
In the sunlit 
room above arti¬ 
ficial plants have 
been used to 
create a heavy 
background^ of 
evergreen foliage 
purpose is to serve as 
temporary decorations in 
places where real plants 
could not live with comfort, 
where cut plants would not 
remain fresh, and where the 
artistic substitutes would 
be either too expensive or 
too poorly appreciated. 
For example, there are 
certain festivities and oc¬ 
casions for which foliage 
effects on a large scale 
might seem the most appro¬ 
priate method of decorating 
parts of the house. If the 
season is one in which 
autumn branches were not 
to be had, or evergreen 
foliage not available, then 
the “plants” from the half¬ 
way group are able to comie 
to the rescue. In passing 
one might cite the stage as 
a place where for foliage 
effects these things might be 
extremely useful. They are 
endlessly durable, and they 
can be freshened by dusting 
and sprinkling. 
The most popular of 
these foliage “plants” is 
made, strangely enough, 
from an actual plant. This 
is called Butchers’ Broom 
(Ruscus) and it grows in 
great abundance in South¬ 
ern California, from where 
it is shipped all over the 
country. It is preserved 
and artificially colored red 
or green by being dipped in 
a varnish-dye. In good 
shades of green it creates 
an extraordinary illusion of 
real foliage, particularly 
when it is seen under artifi¬ 
cial light. By erecting a 
suitable framework one may 
devise clipped hedges to surround gardens 
of artificial flowers, and vine covered walls 
to serve as backgrounds for seats and foun¬ 
tains. But these hedges and walls, and ail 
the other forms into which this greenery 
may be contrived, should be put up and 
looked upon in the make-believe spirit. 
Artificial plants and flowers which strain 
after reality and succeed in imitating all 
but its most essential characteristic—life, 
have no connection with art; and artificial 
settings, made with imitation plants and 
flowers with the idea that they will seem 
authentic, have even less. 
/I rtificial ivy and 
artificial bo.x 
keep their form 
and color here 
•where the real 
plants would 
soonwitherawav 
