Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/31

15 Turning to the consideration of each great group, we note that the arts of sight have become clearly differentiated on lines which enable us to group them broadly as the graphic arts, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Each of these latter has become important in itself, and has separated itself from the others, just so far as it has shown that it can arouse the sense of beauty in a manner which its kindred arts of sight cannot approach. It is true that all the arts of sight hold together more closely than do the arts of sight, as such, with the arts of hearing, as such. But it is equally clear that the bond between the several arts of sight was closer in earlier times than it is to-day, in the fact that modelled painting and colored sculpture were common media of artistic expression among the ancients, the latter being still conventional even so late as in the times of the greatest development of art among the Greeks.

But the modern has learned that in painting and graphics the artist can gain a special source of beauty of color and line, which he is able to gain with less distinctness when he models the surface upon which he works; and the experience of the ages has gradually taught the sculptor once for all that he in his own special medium is able to gain a special source of beauty of pure form which no other arts can reach, and that this special type of beauty cannot be brought into as great emphasis when he colors his modelled forms.

In my view we may well state, as a valid critical principle, that, other things being equal, in any art the artist does best who presents in his chosen medium a source of beauty which cannot be as well presented by any other art. That this principle is appreciated and widely accepted (although implicitly rather than explicitly) is indicated by the unrationalized objection of the cultivated critic in our day to colored sculpture, or to modelled painting, and, in a more special direction, to the use of body color in aquarelle work. The objection in all cases is apparently to the fact that the artist fails to bring into prominence that type of beauty which his medium can present as no other medium can.

Personally, I have no objection to raise to a recombination of the arts of sight, provided a fuller sense of beauty can thereby be