As A c******n Saw Us

Chapter 14

ART IN AMERICA

It is seldom that I have been complimented in America, but a lady has told me that she envied our "art sense." She said the Chinese are essentially artistic, that the cheapest thing, the most ordinary article, is artistic or beautiful. I wished that I could return the compliment, but a strict observance of the truth compels me to say that the reverse is true in America. If one go into a Chinese shop and ask for any ordinary article, it will be found artistic. If one go into an American shop, say a hardware "store," there will not be found an article that would be considered decorative, while everything in a Chinese shop of like character would fall under this head. The conclusion is that the Chinese are artistic, while the Americans are not.

The reason lies in the fact that the Chinese are homogeneous, while the Americans are a mixed race, that is injured by the continual introduction of baser elements. If immigration could be stopped for fifty years, and the people have a chance to acquire "oneness," they might become artistic. The middle class, however, is, from an artistic standpoint, a horror; they have absolutely no art sense, and the nouveaux riches are often as bad. The latter sometimes place their money in the hands of an agent, who buys for them; but all at once a man may break out and insist upon buying something himself, so that in a splendid collection of European names will appear some artistic horror to stamp the owner as a parvenu.

The Americans have not produced a great painter. By this I mean a really great artist, nor have they a great sculptor, one who is or has been an inspiration. But they have thousands of artists, and many poor ones thrive in selling their wares. You may see a man with an income of thirty thousand dollars having paintings on his walls that give one the vertigo. The poor artist has taken him in, or "pulled his leg," to use the latest American slang. There are some fine paintings in America. I have visited the great collections in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, and those in many private galleries, but the best of the pictures are always from England, France, Germany, and other European countries. Old masters are particularly revered. Americans pay enormous sums for them, but sometimes are deceived.

They have art schools by the hundred, where they study from the nude and from models of all kinds. There are splendid museums of art, especially in Boston and New York. The art interests are particularly active, but not the people; there are a few art lovers only, the people in the mass being hopeless. Cheap prints, chromos, and other deadly things are ground out by the million and sold, to clog still deeper the art sense of an inartistic people. They laugh at our conventional Chinese art, but the extreme of conventionality is certainly better than some of the daubs I have seen in American homes. Americans have peculiar fancies in art. One is called Impressionist Art. As near as I can understand it, painters claim that while you are looking at an object you do not really see it all, you merely gain an impression; so they paint only the impression. In a museum of art I was shown several rooms full of daubs, having absolutely nothing to commend them, weird colors being thrown together in the strangest manner, without rhyme or reason, but over which people went mad. The great masters of Europe appeal to me strongly. In America, marine painters attract me the most, for example, Edward Moran, who is a splendid delineator of the sea. Bierstadt is a noble painter, and so is Thomas Moran. There are half a hundred men who are fine painters, but half a thousand men and women who think they are artistic but who are not.

Americans have developed no individual architecture. You see semipagoda-like effects in the East, and old English houses in the South. They steal the latter and call them Colonial. They steal the architecture of the Moors and call it Mexican. They borrow Roman and Grecian effects for great public buildings. At one time they went mad over the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere have I seen purely American architecture. The race is not possessed of sufficient unity. So all their art is from abroad, and notably is French and English. They make broad effects, and give them an American name; but they are copied from the Dutch or Germans. All the furniture designers in America are Europeans. You will find a splendid house with a Chinese room, having teak inlaid with ivory, etc.; a Japanese room, a Moorish room, and an Italian room, all splendidly decorated; but the family lives in an "American room," that is commonplace and subversive of all art digestion and assimilation. The average middle-class American knows absolutely nothing about art; the lower classes so little that their homes are hopeless. Knowing this, they are preyed upon by thousands of foreign swindlers. There are hundreds of articles manufactured in Europe to sell to the American tourist. I have seen Napoleonic furniture enough to load a fleet. I can only compare it to the pieces of the true cross and the holy relics of the Catholics, of which there are enough to fill the original ark which the Bible tells the Americans landed on Mount Ararat in a great flood.

The houses of the best people I have told you about are as far removed from the commonplace as the equator from the poles. They are rich in conception, sumptuous in detail, artistic in every way, and filled with the art gems of the world. But these people have descended from refined people for several generations. They are the true Americans, but make up a small number compared to the inartistic whole. I believe America recognizes this, and with her stupendous energy is doing everything to educate the masses in art. They are building splendid museums; rich men give away millions. There are hundreds of art schools, free to all, and art is taught in all the schools. Fine monuments are placed in public squares and parks, and beautiful fountains and memorials in these and other public places. Their buildings, though foreign in design, are beautiful. In Boston one may see marvelous work in frescoes, etc., and in the Government buildings at Washington. The Capitol, while not American in design, is a pile worthy of the great people who erected it.