The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-09-06

Sanity of mind, sweetness of temper, strength of physique: an unsuitable curl, osity for the truth at all cost; an un- swerving loyalty to manly goodness in the face of all difficulties, and an unshamed love of beauty in every guise, these are some of the prime qualities which go to make an artist" What a text this is for those who are the representatives of art! It is as if to be an artist, the man must first be perfect. This is Bliss Carmen's idea of what the writer, the painter, the musician, the architect should be. And 1t is given to us in a discussion as to wheth- CT art is a product of disease. He makes these men the sanest of the sane, as the expositors of the "very best spirits and minds'' of their race. Carman's assertion that great sanity alone can give birth to great art" is accounted for by him, in the fact that, roughly speaking the aim and business of the fine arts is to represent life" He explains this: Not merely to reproduce the most exact im- age or picture of life, but to reproduce it with something added. That something is the personal quality of the artist him. self. his thoughts and feelings about life. If. then, we consider the whole body of art, all the product of the literatures and fine arts of all peoples, we may say that 1t is very fair representation or reve- lation of the different races as well. Not
 
 the world as it existed then and there. just as life fails; 1t will form faithful counterpart and picture, so far as it goes. of the life of that nation" With philo- sophie inspiration MT. Carmen. further sees that ''The fine arts have always em- bodied for men. not only reflections about life, but aspirations and ideals. Art has held the mirror up to nature; but it has always been a magic mirror. a mir TOT of the artists own make. in which we might behold the world truly. and accurately, but with a certain glamour or bloom. added. It has shown us very truly what life is, but 1t has also shown us what life might become. There has ever been a prophetic quality in art. It has always been able to foreshadow ste rdards of conduct and culture; and civilizations have always tended to make themselves over, to grow and develop, on the lines of progress laid down by their poets. seers and artists"
 There is no thought of genius as crank ism in these very sane expressions; in- deed, Mr. Carmen follows up his aes- Sthetic conclusions with the practical ex- planation that the man must be greater than the artist-and, in other words an artist must be an athlete and a 'philoso- pher as well. Physical strength and mental soundness is MT. Carmen's re- quirement for true art-foB says he the works of art and literature, the Works which the world has cared to preserve with loving gratitude, have been pro- duced by men whose interest in life was greater than their interest in their art. They were men first and art afterward." !" With reference to abnormal types which appear it is admitted that there is-art born of unwholesome conditions; and, too, that fine art 'easily tends to specialize ton" on account of the technical skill required, which is very exacting:" but MT. Carmen believes that the artist or the writer who Is too exclusively en- grossed in his art is not the person from whom the best work is to be expected. His art may be so overladen with tech- nique that the great human emotions may be lost.
 Differing with Stephenson's suggestion "that art, after all, may be the result of a diseased condition" and forsaking the well-known theories of Lombroso and