Page:Benois - The Russian School of Painting (1916).djvu/20

 greatest works of art, quite as rich in extrapictorial thought as they were beautiful from the standpoint of purely artistic merit. On the contrary, in epochs of weakening faith the quest for beauty assumed a narrowly æsthetic, specific character, and little by little art swerved into scholasticism, or academicism. Finally, in epochs dominated by the capitalistic, non-religious pursuit of earthly welfare, painting was subjected to social demands. Casting away all thought of beauty, which by some theoreticians was confused with ethical and political principles, men forced art to serve social ideas—either as a denunciatory weapon or as an instructive amusement.

In each of these currents there appears much of what is curious and precious. Yet not everything is curious and precious to an equal degree. If some works are self-sufficient and eternally youthful artistic revelations, other productions seem, when compared with those to have sprung from the petty cares of life, which mirror the vanity of passing interests, or, it appears, are the fruit borne by a deadening scholastic routine. A considerable portion of Russian painting—of the Western type—is distinguished by these very traits and has so little in common with the true nature of beauty, that the question may even arise whether it ought to be considered from the purely æsthetic standpoint, and