THE STUDIO


EDITORIAL.
ART IN THE MACHINE AGE.
THE nineteenth century marks the
beginning of a new epoch in the world’s history as a pioneer in the fields
of science and engineering, the throwing off of Medievalism and its arts. In fact, the turning to the machine rather than to the craftsman as a means to an end. As with every new plaything, human nature is apt to go too fast, to go forward without taking stock of past experience—so here.
The nineteenth century plunged into science and machinery rather for the sake of science and machinery than for anything
else. It was taken for granted that they eliminated automatically the artist and
the craftsman. In the nineteenth century the class that held the purse strings was recruited from people who had no con
ception of art as a thing either of public amenity or of importance in the industries which they were building up or in the huge
cities which they carelessly created without form or plan. They were obsessed with the fact that the wheels went round “ whiz, whiz, all by steam.” Art was a plaything. Its practitioner was regarded with a sort of contemptuous amusement, and except in France, only those survived
who could produce trivialities which were not art at all.
The products of the age lacked sound design. Paintings imitated the new invention of photography. The handi
craftsman was not replaced by artists in industry. Copies of old work were the poor alternative to which industry turned, and the machine-made was in consequence
identified with the ugly, producing a
reaction among the more sensitive. 0
The Morris and the pre-Raphaelite movements were an attempt to deal with this evil state of things, not by facing out the facts and accepting them, but by running away from them, running away to the Middle Ages.
They looked on the machine as an evil beast which should be destroyed, and not
as a Promethean gift. Instead of altering its management they sought to remove it altogether, and as they could not remove it,
ignored its existence. The cry was not “ Forward ” but “ Back.” The pre
Raphaelites looked back to the early Italians—William Morris to an Utopian Medievalism of arts and crafts, and Ruskin to a kind of archaistic mixture in which
Merrie England, the Republic of Plato, the prophecies of the Old Testament, and the
splendour of the old masters, should all be curiously combined.
The practical results were not considerable because the machine, working on its own resistless economic course, had become more and more firmly estab
lished. Population has assumed enormous proportions and its needs can only be satisfied by machine products. It uses what the factory turns out because that is the obvious and convenient thing to do. The number of the handworkers is too few and their price is too high for them to be anything but a drop in the industrial ocean. A masterpiece of aesthetics is naturally enough the work of an individual,
appreciated, perhaps, by comparatively few. But craftsmanship is eminently practical in its nature. If it is not used then it is quite plainly of no use. Lonely geniuses do not sit in garrets carving chairs which are never sat upon, but are eventually
given the admiration of posterity and put in a museum. Craftsmanship which is not naturally turned out for and employed by the public in general, therefore, fails in its main object. In that respect the late Victorian movement failed.
The value of the movement lay in its demonstration that the machine had to be dominated and put in its place like every other servant of man. Unchecked its effect is crushing. Properly controlled it is an excellent servant. Had there been a movement among artists and craftsmen to become scientists and engineers we should,
perhaps, be further on the road to-day. 0
To-day, we have accumulated experience and knowledge as a result of the pioneer
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