Show AKT vs SKILL I I By HENRY O TRYON There is a story familiar to most people of two rival artists whose relative merits were disputed by their several admirers To settle 1 n the dispute they engaged m a friendly contest One painted some fruit and yl iced it in a window It so skilfully executed that the was The birds tried to gee at the fruit other then had his picture ready and draped His rival erupting covered the to raise the curtain tnit learned that it was cture supposed p skilfully cleve deception being a a painted representation of cloth The enthusiast exclaimed t s first are J artist ally You are the greater for while deceived only birds you have deceived an artist Tuffs story like most of those written about artists 13 the veriest nonsense Two artists are not likely to enter into a goasyou please to try contest nor to pu on gloves which is the bettor man for a prize medal and the applause of the pub has been lic That is and always performers and to left to public p mountebanks But assuming the story to be true it is no proof that was an artist in a either of them It nothing what real sense proves ever The popular idea of art is that skill imitation projection and perspective are the ends of all efforts In art and that a work of art prac the skill be judged by ticdliy is to shown in theso directions with akin a-kin < l of vague idea that sentiment tender color tone harmony force I ness and feeling are but means intended for the connoisseur to would pretty I ring them inas one in be thrown talk which may indiscriminately An artist for instance paints a street scene It matters not how inartistic and mechanical the scene m be nor how harsh and crude miy may be the color if the perspective and i light and shadow be correct the observer will look upon the average marvelous wurk for h It scene as a appears to reach back for a mile and his surprise and wonder at this 1 success overcomes any other feeling misunderstanding of the ing This aim and object of true art prevents critical or even interested him from being terested in anything beyond Yet all this is a mechanical 1 success and simpe That linear pure of has no art quality itself perspective and is not even QitHcuit of attainment all artists know who know anything about it It is the same with projection Draw an it from object and cast a shadow from snd it will apparently project the paper Anybody can do it So with imitation Every portrait painter knows the necessity of not painting laces or jewels or other Hipp int accessories accessor-ies with too much realism < else the general observer who imagines imitation to be the great achievement achieve-ment will never see the face at all A certain eminent artist in painting paint-ing a subject introduced in the picture pic-ture a mat After the attention of a few people had been fastened on I that mat and they had analyzed its material texture and probable coat yard in disgust he painted it per over so that nobody afterward would think of it except that it was a mat and pass on to the real picture pic-ture the material which made up the sentiment and the story he desired de-sired to express Suppose a person in describing in writing the wonderful won-derful grandeur and beauty of the Wasatch range snould pause I lovingly in the description of some pig pen making this description so vivid and realistic that the total impression remained with the reader that it was a picture with an accessory of of a pig pen Wasatch mountains What would that the reader think assuming of iitera the purpose of thin piece ture was to convey a sentiment of I the granduer of the mountains It is exactly so wth art mere imitation imita-tion requires nothing but a little knowledge more practice and more or less patience but these qualities alone do not make an artist they simply enable an artist to express art feeling The mere mechanical ability to touch the right keys on a piano in the translation of a musical mu-sical composition does not make a I musician It merely enables one and feel to express musical thought ing if he has it and if he has it not he is not recognisec by musicians as a musical artist but is considered a musical mechanic me-chanic We all understand what is meant by machine poetry The rhyme and the metre may be faultless fault-less but if it contains no grand beautiful or ennobling thought it is recognised by all as mere verse and there is all the difference in the world between verse and poetry Literature and the arts are precisely similar in their objects The poet paints with language the musician with harmonies of sound the painter uses color the sculptor and draughtsman forms The arts are so intimately blended that the technical f phrases even are the same throughout Who does not fee what is meant by color as applied to musical composition and tenderness tender-ness strength feeling end harmony applied to painting Follow as all of the the terms used in arts and they can be applied each Art is to indiscriminately pic it is nothing If a poetry or skillfully has never so tare painted and skill the nothing in it except of the artist and does e knowledge feeling or in it contain poetic not cause why it or poetic any purpose it ranks painted should hae been than apiece work of art no higher a as produced for the of literature piece sole object of showing the authors knowledge of words and of the grammatical gram-matical arrangement of them A picture should be painted to sentiment and assum express some successfully that that has been ing accomplished the Ability purity tentiment and beauty of that will determine the position of the picture as a work considered is generally of art What sidered to be the end of the means to the of art is properly enl the real end depends upon the U3 of the artist It is always genius thoroughly conceded that an artists understand the mechanical means it mentioned just as to art before LJpresuprojed that an author understands under-stands grammatical r > les and the skillful construction of sentences then When itch is thus equipped he has within his grasp all that is required to Rive pxpression to high thoughts and sublime images but unless the genius the spirit of peo tryis inherent he can only give to the world that which time will do and patience 311 < persiverauce for any intelligent person |