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Hopes and Fears for Art By: William Morris (1834-1896) |
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HOPES AND FEARS FOR ART by William Morris
Contents: The Lesser Arts
The Art of the People
The Beauty of Life
Making the Best of It
The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation THE LESSER ARTS {1} Hereafter I hope in another lecture to have the pleasure of laying
before you an historical survey of the lesser, or as they are called
the Decorative Arts, and I must confess it would have been
pleasanter to me to have begun my talk with you by entering at once
upon the subject of the history of this great industry; but, as I
have something to say in a third lecture about various matters
connected with the practice of Decoration among ourselves in these
days, I feel that I should be in a false position before you, and
one that might lead to confusion, or overmuch explanation, if I did
not let you know what I think on the nature and scope of these arts,
on their condition at the present time, and their outlook in times
to come. In doing this it is like enough that I shall say things
with which you will very much disagree; I must ask you therefore
from the outset to believe that whatever I may blame or whatever I
may praise, I neither, when I think of what history has been, am
inclined to lament the past, to despise the present, or despair of
the future; that I believe all the change and stir about us is a
sign of the world's life, and that it will lead by ways, indeed, of
which we have no guess to the bettering of all mankind. Now as to the scope and nature of these Arts I have to say, that
though when I come more into the details of my subject I shall not
meddle much with the great art of Architecture, and less still with
the great arts commonly called Sculpture and Painting, yet I cannot
in my own mind quite sever them from those lesser so called
Decorative Arts, which I have to speak about: it is only in latter
times, and under the most intricate conditions of life, that they
have fallen apart from one another; and I hold that, when they are
so parted, it is ill for the Arts altogether: the lesser ones
become trivial, mechanical, unintelligent, incapable of resisting
the changes pressed upon them by fashion or dishonesty; while the
greater, however they may be practised for a while by men of great
minds and wonder working hands, unhelped by the lesser, unhelped by
each other, are sure to lose their dignity of popular arts, and
become nothing but dull adjuncts to unmeaning pomp, or ingenious
toys for a few rich and idle men. However, I have not undertaken to talk to you of Architecture,
Sculpture, and Painting, in the narrower sense of those words,
since, most unhappily as I think, these master arts, these arts more
specially of the intellect, are at the present day divorced from
decoration in its narrower sense. Our subject is that great body of
art, by means of which men have at all times more or less striven to
beautify the familiar matters of everyday life: a wide subject, a
great industry; both a great part of the history of the world, and a
most helpful instrument to the study of that history. A very great industry indeed, comprising the crafts of house
building, painting, joinery and carpentry, smiths' work, pottery and
glass making, weaving, and many others: a body of art most
important to the public in general, but still more so to us
handicraftsmen; since there is scarce anything that they use, and
that we fashion, but it has always been thought to be unfinished
till it has had some touch or other of decoration about it. True it
is that in many or most cases we have got so used to this ornament,
that we look upon it as if it had grown of itself, and note it no
more than the mosses on the dry sticks with which we light our
fires. So much the worse! for there IS the decoration, or some
pretence of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use and a meaning.
For, and this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made by
man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly;
beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it
is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be
indifferent: we, for our parts, are busy or sluggish, eager or
unhappy, and our eyes are apt to get dulled to this eventfulness of
form in those things which we are always looking at... Continue reading book >>
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