The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica : A handbook containing…

THE FINE ARTS: GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY The art-student and every other reader interested in the fine arts will find in the Britannica the material for courses of reading of very great range and of the utmost interest and value—whether he wishes to study theory, practice or history. [Sidenote: Theory of Art] Of course no adequate treatment of the arts, or of any one of them, could logically, much less advantageously, separate theory, practice and history. But the theory of art, though it may be inferred or deduced from many other articles in the book, including those the most devoted to the practical or historical, may best and most directly be studied in three articles, AESTHETICS, ART, and FINE ARTS. Of these, the first, AESTHETICS (Vol. 1, p. 277), equivalent to nearly 40 pages of this Guide, is written by Professor James Sully, late of University College, London, and author of _The Human Mind_ and other psychological studies. It discusses the meaning of beauty and the problem of the nature of pleasure, especially “higher” pleasure, its relation to play, etc. And the article closes with a history of Aesthetic Theories, including those of the following philosophers, on all of whom the student will find separate and elaborate critical biographies in the Britannica: PLATO, who set beauty high, but thought art a mere trick of imitation and wished it be censored rather than encouraged in his model republic; ARISTOTLE, who sets beauty above the useful and necessary, but whose aesthetic seems to be applied to poetry rather than to any other art; the German philosophers, KANT, SCHELLING, HEGEL, SCHOPENHAUER, who so deeply impressed their theories on the literature of their times, etc. The articles ART (Vol. 2, p. 657) and FINE ARTS are both by Sir Sidney Colvin, formerly keeper of prints and drawings, British Museum. The former begins with a contrast between art and nature—the contrast made famous by Pope, by Chaucer, repeatedly by Shakespeare and by Dr. Johnson in his definition of Art as “the power of doing something which is not taught by Nature or by instinct.” This definition is in itself an excellent text for a discourse on the importance in the study of the fine arts of the best literature on the subject. But Sir Sidney Colvin points out that the definition is incomplete, since Art is a name not only for the power of doing something, but for the exercise of the power; and not only for the exercise of the power, but for the rules according to which it is exercised; and not only for the rules, but for the result. Painting, for instance, is an art, and the word connotes not only the power to paint, but the act of painting; and not only the act, but the laws for performing the act rightly; and not only all these, but the material consequences of the act or the thing painted. Art is then “_Every regulated_ operation or dexterity by which organized beings pursue ends which they know beforehand, together with the rules and the result of every such operation or dexterity.” And a consideration of the etymology of the words “Art” and “Kunst” is the basis of a discussion of the relation of Science and Art, which is summed up in these words: Science consists in knowing, Art consists in doing. What I must do in order to know, is Art subservient to Science: what I must know in order to do, is Science subservient to Art. After speaking of dancing, music, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, the author says: Of all these arts, the end is not use, but pleasure, or pleasure before use, or at least pleasure and use conjointly. In modern language, there has grown up a usage which has put them into a class by themselves under the name of the Fine Arts, as distinguished from the Useful or Mechanical Arts. (See AESTHETICS and FINE ARTS.) Nay, more, to them alone is often appropriated the use of the generic word Art.... And further yet, custom has reduced the number which the class-word is meant to include. When Art and the works of Art are now currently spoken of in this sense, not even music or poetry is frequently denoted, but only architecture, sculpture and painting by themselves, or with their subordinate and decorative branches. [Sidenote: Fine Arts] The article FINE ARTS (Vol. 10, p. 355; equivalent to 70 pages of this Guide) is divided into the following parts: _General Definition_, with particular attention to the theory that makes the arts a form of play and to the definitions of Plato and Schiller; _Classification_—architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry classified as “shaping” and “speaking” or as imitative and “non-imitative,” with definitions from the aesthetic or philosophic point of view of sculpture and of painting; and _Historical Development_, with a criticism of Spencer’s theory of the evolution and gradual separation of the arts and of Taine’s natural history, as well as a critical and illuminating outline history of the arts. Whether we include under the fine arts music and poetry, or with the more popular usage make the fine arts not five but three, architecture, painting and sculpture, the arts may be studied in the Britannica and there is the basis for this study in this Guide. Music is the subject of a separate chapter. Poetry is treated in the chapters on Literature, but it will be well to remind the student of the philosophy of art of the remarkable article POETRY (Vol. 21, p. 877; equivalent to 45 pages in this Guide) by Theodore Watts-Dunton, and of the articles on the different poetic forms, mostly by Edmund Gosse. Architecture in the Britannica is outlined in this Guide in the chapter _For Architects_. The two chapters immediately following this are devoted respectively to Painting, Engraving and Drawing and to Sculpture and the Subsidiary Arts. Of practical value to the art student as an introduction to these two chapters are the articles ART SOCIETIES, by A. C. Robinson Carter, editor of _The Year’s Art_, and ART TEACHING, by Walter Crane, the English illustrator, who also contributed the article ARTS AND CRAFTS. For an alphabetical list of articles on the fine arts see the end of the chapter on _Sculpture_.