What Can Be Done for Art?

...At the present time they are going on from this, and logically, to an attempted expression of our present technological civilization, and doing it very well...

...We have seen recently in America the giving of $5,000,000 for the establishing in a great univerJune 12, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 155 sity of a "school of business administration" and other millions each year, uncounted millions, are expended on innumerable other schools of applied science...

...for, wholly apart from religious con- siderations, a society that is without art may possibly be civilized, but it is certainly deficient in the higher quality of culture, while it lacks one of the important factors of joy...

...It is easy to envisage such a school...

...Like these biological sports, however, they are few in number and need careful nurture to prevent reversion to type...

...It is unfortunate that this should be necessary...

...Even if one could count on an adequate and con-tinuing supply of Catholic architects, there is still the question of the other arts...

...In this connection it is necessary to recognize two facts...

...For 2oo years, partly of necessity, partly by its own fault, the Catholic Church was wholly cut of[ from the use and enjoyment of art of any kind ex- cept that which had been preserved from earlier cen- turies, and even this generally failed of any large measure of appreciation...

...If our sense of comparative values were not entirely lost, such schools would be in operation within a short decade...

...This fostering care is the first duty of the Church: to seek out and find these rare geniuses who appear like strange sur-vivals from the old days of Catholic society, and to use them when found, accepting no inferior substitute engendered by doctrinaire schools or commercial "mass production...

...But whether such a scheme as this is possible or not, there is another, more facile of achievement, that should certainly be put in practice, and that is some measure of proper instruction in Christian art, in secu- lar colleges and particularly in theological seminaries...

...which was fostered and used by the Catholic Church for more than a thousand years, and which found in this ser- vice its greatest opportuniLast week Mr...

...Cram discussed the tradition of art which reached its finest flowering during the middle-ages...

...The same is true of Italy and Spain, or seems to be, judging from minor examples, but of course here new churches are seldom built, so it may not be fair to judge...

...Now when the need is again felt and there is some revival of the sense of beauty --not only in itself but as a first test of values--the whole thing must be built up anew, for the cord of con- tinuity has snapped, just as it did in western Europe during the first dark ages that followed the fall of Rome...

...In spite of the as-tonishing phenomenon of the sudden appearance of a 154 THE COMMONWEAL June 12, I929 great number of young architects in the United States, competent and Catholic-minded, at least so far as their professional work is concerned, it is scarcely safe to rely on the continuance of this "uncovenanted mercy of God...

...It would do little good to train artists of any sort were they not to find adequate appreciation and patronage...

...At the best such practice as is given comes under the head of "archaeology...

...On the basis of invested capital the chances are just twice as great for failure in other lines as in farming...

...In one respect this is a good thing and not to be rejected...

...Approximately one-fifth of the wealth is invested in farming, while only one-tenth of the bankruptcies occur in that industry: farming is therefore more stable and the chances of failure are less in that line that in other lines of industry...

...First, that our technological civilization does not and cannot furnish a soil con-genial to the development of art of any kind while it ligious art, nor is there even any consciousness that religion exists and is a factor in society, or that churches are even built and embellished today...

...The labor expense on the successful farms was $13.oo per $IOO of income, while on the unsuccessful it was $44.oo per farm...

...Will not the present Sovereign Pontiff con- tinue the work of his illustrious predecessor and take action toward the restoration of the other arts of architecture, painting, sculpture and all the artist crafts of Christendom...

...The successful farmers had on the average sixty-two acres per farm in soil-building legumes, while the unsuccessful were not interested in such methods of soil improvement...

...The successful farmers used one-thlrd more fertilizer than the unsuc- cessful...

...What is the Church prepared to do, what can it do as matters stand...

...Where these architects and other artists come from is a mys- tery-certainly not from the schools...

...two or three in America, one of whom is an Englishman, one or two in France...

...Second, that in no school, studio or atelier to- day (with the possible ex-ception of the Academic de Saint-Luc in Belgium) is there any training or in-struction in any form of reties and through this produced its greatest works, has now through a process of nearly three centuries, be- came thoroughly secularized and is no longer "the handmaid of religion...

...the results of this sort of intensive education during the past hun- dred years are not encouraging...

...formation and reduce the labor cost made money, while those who could not do this did not make a profit...

...In the following article he concerns himself with the status of the crafts at present, holding that the Church must now consciously strive to regain the position as patron and inspiration which she once held uncon-sciously...

...It might even be organ- ized more or less on a guild basis, with the students proceeding from apprentices to journeymen and so to masters, the "masterpiece" of each being some con- crete contribution to the architecture and the embel- lishment of the chapel and other buildings of the school...

...A tithe of these vast sums would build, equip and main- tain a school of Christian art in every country in Europe and in the United States and Canada...

...In this process of secularization, as I have said, the positive gain has been balanced by an equally positive loss, and that is the almost total disappearance of that art which religion can use for its own expression and stimulation...

...It is, I conceive, the duty of the Church to see that this feature is added to the curriculum of institutions of higher learning, and that seminarians are given adequate instruction in the history and phil- osophy of art, and if possible some training in taste and in the discriminating between good art and bad...

...There is one farmer to every 4.4 persons in other lines of work based upon the entire population, and on this basis also the rate of mortality in farm enterprises is only one-half the rate which now exists in other activities...

...A recent survey of fifty-three farms near Charleston, South Carolina, is typical of the results obtained...

...They are and always have been established on the basis of pre-Christian art, and they could hardly change their basic theory and their resulting technical method...

...which was revivified by Christianity and given a new content...

...Moreover, there is no other country, not even England, that shows any similar phenomenon at the present time...

...Be-cause of this it is useless to expect from contemporary schools, admirable as they may be along their own lines (and there are, for example, no better architec- tural schools in the world, within their own limitations, than there are in the United States) the slightest chance of gaining acceptable artists or the least co-operation in fostering them and rendering them com- petent practitioners...

...This evidence very clearly...

...A similar study of farming, with exactly similar results, has been made by the University of Illinois...

...It is not enough that the Church should maintain an attitude of amiable receptivity, accepting what art is brought to her, even if it is the best of the time...

...It is not a very encouraging prospect, yet it is dazzling compared with the conditions that held twenty-five years ago...

...The farmer in this region who could so organize his enter- prise as to take advantage of all known scientific in...

...What, in the premises, is the duty, and what may be the function, of the Catholic Church ? It seems to me the answer is reasonably clear...

...While the acre investment was about the same in all cases, the successful farmers had 2oo acres per farm in crops as compared with I 16 acres in crops for the unsuccessful farms...

...The Acad6mie de Saint-Luc in Belgium, con-ducted by the Christian Brothers, and Notre Dame University in America, are the only two I know of and the latter deals with architecture alone...

...Actual conditions are here analyzed with real-ism, and some suggestions are offered in a spirit of eagerness to serve...

...In painting little enough in any country except, curiously enough, in the United States where there seems really the promise of something genuine and vital, and perhaps also among the Russian emigration...

...There are other arts in even worse cases and where the demand is even greater...

...It seems to me, therefore, and I think the proposal is pertinent to this inquiry, that it is the manifest duty of the Catholic Church to enter seriously into the fostering of all the branches of Christian art through the establishment in various parts of Europe and America, of schools and studios and workshops where the teaching is specifically Chris- tian and founded on strictly Catholic principles...

...As in industry elsewhere, success was largely a question of efficient management...

...at the worst it is such as is given now in France, where the same set of laws and theories are applied to the Catho- lic Church as are maintained in the case of airplanes, automobile manufacture, department stores, cinemas, apartment houses, industrial plants and all the other characteristic products of our technological civiliza- tion...

...In justice to Spain and to the Catholic Church, it must be assumed that the episode was outside both orbits and is now closed...

...It would be a Catholic school under a very simple semi-monastic rule...

...It is useless to expect a change of heart on the part of any of the existing schools of fine arts that would result even in a recognition of the existence of religion or a willingness to meet its needs and satisfy its de- mands...

...Both these attitudes are bad, one in a negative, one in a positive way, and neither can contribute an iota to the task of rebuilding Christian art...

...Art of all kinds ought to appear simultaneously (it always did) and as the result of a stimulating and crescent culture...

...Sculptors are few and far between...

...At present there is, not only among the clergy but in the public at large, a deplorable indifference to the claims of art, together with a wide inability to recog- nize its function as an integral part of the ecclesiastical organism...

...I.Ve may add that this article forms part of a volume soon to appear in the Calvert Series, published by the Macmillan Company.--The Editors...

...All the arts would be united, major arts including music and minor arts down to the simplest handicrafts...

...They can only be left to do their own chosen work, but since there is now a new and growing con- sciousness on the part of the Christian minority, both Catholic and Protestant, of the vital necessity of art of every sort, I see nothing for it but the establishing of other schools founded on a basis that will guar- antee, as far as possible, the training that may, by the grace of God, result in the production of specifically Christian art...

...The income on the poor farms was largely consumed in unprofitable labor...

...The number of farm bankruptcies was 5,679-The total wealth of the country is approxi- mately $29o,ooo,ooo,ooo of which $57,ooo,ooo,ooo is invested in farming...

...As I have already indicated, this sort of thing is even now being done, though in a very small way...

...They seem like biological mutations, appearing suddenly and without traceable parentage...

...As I have said before, England and the United States have restored the art of stained glass, but elsewhere it is either dull and third-rate copying, or as wrong-headed and poisonous as, at its worst, it is in France, Germany, Italy and Spain...

...for the last three centuries it has been, not especially discreditable but to all intents and purposes a blank...

...Thirty-three of these farms showed no profit while twelve had an average profit of $3,367 each per year...

...Her record is supreme and untarnished for nearly fifteen hundred years...

...On the successful farms the receipts for live stock were eight times as great as on the unsuccessful...

...Of course if we were to encounter a sudden and comprehensive religious awakening, with all the Christian world (and secular as well) turning Catholic, the problem would be solved by the second generation thereafter, but the contingency is remote, and therefore, as I say, we come back to formal and scholastic training as the only visible alternative...

...The Church must consciously resume the position she once more or less unconsciously held as the creator, patron and protector of the arts, at least in so far as they enter into her service...

...June I2, I929 THE COMMONWEAL I53 WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR ART ? By RALPH ADAMS CRAM RT which came into being under the im-pulse of religion and for its service...

...It would be established in no great capital of modernism such as Rome, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, London or New York, but in some small city still redolent of old art and environed in beauty--Siena, Segovia, Rouen, Ulm, Oxford...

...The thirty-five best farms in this group made a net income of $3,480, which is 5.8 percent on an investment of $6o,ooo...

...This significant difference in net income is due largely to more efficient management...

...tends increasingly to pro-duce a spiritual and material environment that is distinctly unfavorable and even hos-tile...

...If one were to form an estimate on the basis of the preposterous Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona, it would be more condemnatory than could hold elsewhere in Europe, but this abortive work of misdirected genius was after all the invention of one individual, now dead, while the thing itself stands desolate and abandoned in all its pathetic absurdity...

...it is indeed a reflection on the nature and quality of our civilization, for such a thing was never needed before, but the fact remains that, whatever its implications, it is needed now and must be provided if the Catholic Church is to recover its old position as the instigator, the patron and the guardian of good art...

...Personally I am not 'fully persuaded of the value or effectiveness of formal training in the arts...

...Some- thing of the sort has already been begun in the case of music, but must the work stop here...

...Yet the need is imperative, the demand clamorous, and that this de- mand can be met is proved by the work of contem- porary architects in England and the United States, the revival of the art of stained glass, the sporadic instances of sculptors and painters in several coun-tries, and the vast reform that has been effected in music and liturgics in the last twenty-five years...

...It is true that there are there a few men of commanding genius, but the present pro- fessional tendency so far as schools and practice are concerned, is away from sound racial standards, averse to the vital art of Liverpool cathedral for example, and almost exclusively toward the gravely misleading ways of France where, as also in Germany, there seems to be no one who grasps the ethos of Catholic art or is capable of interpreting it in any acceptable sense...

...The supply is hardly adequate...

...SUCCESSFUL FARMING IN AMERICA By ROBERT STEWART D URING the fiscal year ending June 3 ~ , 1928, there were 53,444 bankruptcies in the United States...

...Lacking this, as is sufficiently proved by the artistic output of a century, and accepting the situation as definite, we are driven back on the only available substitute, which is formal training and intensive education...

...The reason for this astonishing result was clearly brought out in the survey...

...Since religious sense, whether Catholic or Protestant, is now for the moment an attribute of only a minority, art, which is a part of man's birthright, can no longer be sought through the material channels of religion, and it is only fair that it should exist and be fostered in the secular sphere...

...The outstanding result of the farm management studies in the several states of the union during the past twenty years is that many farmers are making a real business success of farming and have done so even during the past few years of farm relief agitation...

...The thirty-five poorest farms made a net income of $5r a difference of $2,9r in income for the best and poorest farmers of the district...

...These farmers in the highest group made money because of bigger crop yields, larger amounts of live stock, superior live stock, better selection of crops, efficient marketing methods, the efficient use of power machinery, soil improvement and reduced labor costs...

...This, however, is not enough...

...This study was made on 175 farms in eastern central Illinois where similar climatic and crop conditions pre- vail...

...With her rapidly gaining power over the souls of men it is imperative that she should reassume her lost leadership, not only on account of the added energy that so will accrue to her efforts toward the spiritual harmony of Christendom but as well for the immeasurable benefit of all peoples...