Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/687

 MUNICIPAL ART.

IN the midst of conditions which cry aloud for betterment in all that pertains to a city's life, what place can there be for a consideration of art ? Very forcibly does this idea present itself to those familiar with the aspects of existence in that portion of a great city where the results of neglect and bad management on the part of the public are most apparent, and the need for improvement most pressing. It would seem, as one of our apostles of art for the people, Miss Starr, of Hull House, sug- gests, when looking at a related question from the same side, that we "should devote every energy to the 'purification of the nation's heart and the chastisement of its life.' " Yet, in so far as municipal art has to do with that betterment, so imperatively demanded, we must deem it worthy of consideration. And that it has much to do with such betterment no one who knows the history of art can fail to recognize.

Public art is as old as the pyramids ; and in any broad sur- vey of the past its varied forms will be seen to take pyramidal proportions. In Egypt they stand boldly forth, revealing more of the inner life of the people than any hieroglyphs have ever done. Turn the gaze toward ancient Babylon, and behold its hanging gardens ! In Greece see how this art towers ever above the mount of the gods. Italy has height after height of art production, reaching in real significance far above all work of battle, conquest, and kingly rule. In the cities of northern and western Europe the public works are so great that these cities can never be accused of being "great through largeness only." It is only in our own day and spot of the earth that civic art dwindles to nothingness, and art has become, as someone describes it, "a frivolous art for the gilded classes, without des- tiny, without aim, subject to the caprice of speculation and fashion, scattered by chance in private salons." All great art, it seems generally agreed, is, or has been, distinctively an art of cities. But, someone Will say, this art has been the work of

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