490
PARTISAN REVIEW
that all Gothic painting is good: but the difference that separates
Giotto from the most mediocre of his imitators is not of the same
kind as that which separates Renoir from the caricaturists of the
Vie Parisienne
on the one hand, and from the academicians on the
other. The works of a civilization possessing a faith all express the
same artistic attitude, imply a single "function" for painting. Giotto
and the Gaddi are separated by talent, Degas and his disciple Bon–
nat by a schism, Renoir and "suggestive" painting by what? By the
fact that this last, totally subjected to the spectator, is a form of
advertising which
aims
at selling itself.
If
there exists only one word
to designate what makes of lines, sounds, words the expression of
the greatest human language, and also what assures their almost
physical action (for "music" is Bach, but also the most syrupy
tango, and even the sound of instruments), it is because there was a
time when the distinction between these things had no point: in–
struments only played real music then, for there was no other. The
conflict between the arts and their means is in no way eternal: in
painting, it begins with the school of Bologna, i.e., with eclecti. –
ism. It would have been inconceivable in the Romanesque period.
The symbol of art
understood
by the folk of a coherent (but non–
totalitarian) civilization is the Dark Virgin: up to the beginning of
this century, many Virgins of the great pilgrimages were dark, be–
cause being thus less human, they were more sacred. The cover of
Fantomas,
magazine illustrations, the portraits of Hitler and Stalin
are not Dark Virgins. The only plastic art that has spoken to the
masses without lying to them was based, not on realism, but on a
dream hierarchy ordered by the superhuman: from Sumer to the
cathedrals, this developed before the idea of art was conceived.
The success of the appeasing arts is less due to a technique than
is commonly held. No doubt, the triumph of a tune throughout the
Western world is closer to the success of Bebe Cadum's advertising or
a propaganda slog.an than to the glory of
J.
S. Bach; song, publicity,
and propaganda turn an elementary and powerful feeling to the
benefit of their author; (a bomber above Bebe Cadum in the talcum
powder ad would make a better peace poster than Picasso's dove).
But their effectiveness comes from a discovery that their technique
invokes but does not supply. This discovery is a crystallization of the
