Page:Woman in Art.djvu/98

WOMAN IN ART would be all out of key if nature were left out, all out of key if art were lacking. Nature's work and man's work are the warp and woof of, and closely interwoven are the various threads in the fabric we call civilization.

Early art as practiced by primitive folk seems to have been an outline or skeleton gradually clothed upon by fleshly parts and proportions, resembling man or beast. The decorative faculty still exists, marvelously developed in the last half century. It has been a long road from crude marks and symbols to the art of today as expressed in exquisite drawings, modelings, color and proportions of some twentieth century work. Looking at the work of our time, we realize that man has not labored merely for pelf, nor wholly for the pleasure and development of his faculties, nor yet to add a spoke to the wheel of progress, nor to produce something for critics to whet their wit upon, or upon which they may focus wisdom for the benefit of those who have lacked opportunity.

Art has four high functions:

First: At its best, art glorifies a nation or epoch.

Second: It is a measuring rod showing degrees of development and advancement of a people, their customs and achievements.

Third: Art is a means of pleasure and uplift to the beholder, be he educated or ignorant.

Fourth: Art develops the soul of the man or woman who conceives the ideal and works it out.

Every age and nation has its characteristic art expression, but who can name the first woman known for a work of art?

So far as we know, things artistic, from pyramids to pen-point borders of mediaeval manuscript books, man has monopolized. Now and then through the ages, circumstances have singled out a woman as ruler or leader of a nation or movement, but rarely has she been identified with art except as a promoter or model for the assistance of man: a living thing of beauty that challenges his effort and skill.

Thus did their women make the art of Greece famous. So did the exquisite beauty of Simonetta lend time-honored fame to the Madonnas from the soul and brush of Botticelli. From Egypt to Greece, Greece to Rome, Rome to the Renaissance, we find few names of women in the annals of art.

This fact points to another, the slow emancipation of womanhood through the ages.

Those of us who have silver threads among the gold or brown can recall 72