Pattern for printed fabric, block-printed and indigo discharge on cotton, 135.5 × 93 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
William Morris (for the design) and Morris & Co. (for the production), Strawberry-Thief, 1883.
Pattern for printed fabric, block-printed and indigo discharge on cotton, 60 × 95.2 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
William Morris, “Wallflower” design.
Private collection.
In making beauty “the perfection of sensuous knowledge,” the field of aesthetics was demarked plainly from that of logic and ethics. These distinctions prevailed in philosophy up to the middle of the nineteenth century, with the result of fashioning a school of art that laid stress only upon sense effects, and, advocating “art for art’s sake,” had so far withdrawn from life that art had become merely a means of amusing and entertaining the upper and leisure classes. Against this aesthetic Ruskin set his face, affirming that the impressions of beauty were not of sense, or wholly of mind, but more essentially moral or social. The test he applied to art was its degree of social usefulness. He would never even use the term “aesthetic” except to refute its implications. The art of any country is seen to be an exact exponent of its ethical life: “You can have noble art only from noble persons.” When writing the Stones of Venice, he examined each structure with reference to its capacity for fulfilling expressional purposes. In his more technical lectures on art at Oxford it was noticed that he touched constantly upon the problems of life. His exposition of the art of engraving, for instance, was as much a treatise on line in art as on line in conduct. His characterisation of the art of engraving, in the course of these lectures, is quite typical of his attitude: “It is athletic; it is resolute; it is obedient.” In Aratra Pentilici, speaking of sculpture, he said: “Its proper subject is the spiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, and so represented as to give evidence that the sculptor has loved the good of it and hated the evil.” The laws which he deduced for sculpture are wholly untechnical: (1) That the work is to be with tools of men. (2) That it is to be in natural materials. (3) That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no quality inconsistent with them. (4) That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with common needs, and in consent to common intelligence. From such discussion the definition is soon reached that art is expression.
As art, then, is not an entity distinguished by a quality called beauty, but a mode of expression, allied to all other forms of expression, and so marked by characteristics that may be termed moral or social, it follows that the chief test of art is its inclusiveness, its lowly origin, its universality, its serviceability, its degree of satisfying genuine social needs. The general proposition underlying Modern Painters, Stones of Venice, and his other art studies is this: “Great art is nothing else than the type of strong and noble life.” A sense for the noble in life is something quite different from the “taste for beauty” developed by the opposite aesthetic. The false sense for art is known by its refinement, its fastidiousness, its preciosity; purity of taste is tested by its universality. Hence Ruskin told his students to beware of the spirit of choice, saying, “It is an insolent spirit, and commonly a base and blind one, too.”
Philip Webb and Morris & Co., The Morning Room, c. 1892–1894.
Standen, East Grinstead.
S. & H. Jewell & Co. (for the table and Queen Ann chairs) and Philip Webb (for the fireplace design), The Dining Room, 1896 (furniture).
Standen, East Grinstead.
William Morris, Violet and Columbine, 1883.
Pattern for woven textile.
Private collection.
William Morris, Wandle (name of the river next to Morris’ workshop), 1884.
Pattern for printed fabric, block-printed and indigo discharge on cotton, 160.1 × 96.5 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
He told them also that the main business of art was its service in the actual uses of daily life, and that the beginning of art was in getting the country clean and the people beautiful. He pointed then to the fact that all good architecture rose out of domestic work, that before great churches and palaces could be built it was necessary to build good doors and garret windows. The best architecture was simply a glorified roof. His own statement runs: “The dome of the Vatican, the porches of Rheims or Chartres, the vaults and arches of their aisles, the canopy of the tomb, and the spire of the belfry are art forms resulting from the mere requirement that a certain space should be strongly covered from heat and rain.” In the Crown of Wild Olive we meet the startling statement that the builders of the great medieval cathedrals corrupted Gothic architecture – they corrupted it by forgetting the people and devoting it to priestly and aesthetic needs, until, losing its vitality, it declined in expressiveness and ultimately ceased to be. From these and other instances, Ruskin deplored the tendency of art to narrow its appeal and to become the object of the educated classes.
However attractive much of the art of the Renaissance was to him, he yet saw that it had for foundation nothing but the pride of life – the pride of the so-called superior classes. His strongest statement on this point occurs in The Two Paths:
“The great lesson of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto, having been supported by the selfish power of the ‘noblesse’, and never having extended their range to the comfort or the relief of the mass of the people – the arts, I say, thus practiced, and thus matured, have only accelerated the ruin of the states they adorned; and at the moment when, in any kingdom, you point to the triumph of its greatest artists, you point also to the determined hour of the kingdom’s decline. The names of great painters are like passing bells: in the name of Velásquez, you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this; for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality. We may abandon the hope – or if you like the words better – we may disdain the temptation of the pomp and grace of Italy in her youth. For us there can be no more the throne of marble, for us no more the vault of gold; but for us there is the loftier and lovelier privilege of bringing the power and charm of art within the reach of the humble and the poor; and as the magnificence of past ages failed by its narrowness and its pride, ours may prevail and continue by its universality and its lowliness.”
The beauty which is to be “a joy forever” must be a joy for all.
John Henry Dearle (for the design) and Morris & Co. (for the production), Iris, 1902.
Wallpaper.
Private collection.
William Morris, The Woodpecker, 1885.
Tapestry.
William Morris Gallery, London.
Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris (for the design) and Morris & Co. (for the production), Pomona, 1885.
Tapestry woven wool, silk and mohair on a cotton warp, 300 × 210 cm.
The Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester.