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The Iniquity of Art Galleries
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (July 3, 1909) : 27
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      Art galleries must have been very crafty in the beginning. At a time when every one was lusty, open, and mediaeval they were, so it would seem, possessed of a truly shocking guile. If they had honestly proclaimed their intentions, or even by accidental bungling shown their true colors, they would have been strangled in their cradles. It will be seen that the most charitable view possible is being taken of our forefathers. But instead of any such frank procedure the galleries lay low (the supposition is based on their subsequent wile); they pretended that they had no ulterior motives concealed anywhere about them, and gave every one to understand that they expected to remain things of little moment and had not the faintest intention of disturbing any one. This must have been the way of it, or else why was nothing done while there was time, and while, which is much more to the point, they were of a manageable size?
      If prophetic eyes saw danger ahead they are to be pardoned their inaction, for what more likely than their reasoning that cardinals would be cardinals, popes popes, and kings kings? And any little fads they indulged in temporarily were not to be taken seriously. If one was tiresomely proud of a marble god recently dug up, the other was publicly tickled over a pair of lions chained in his courtyard. Both playthings were out of place and more or less held by force, yet no real harm was done so far. Great people need small diversions to compensate them for their exaggerated lives, and, like as not, the matter would go no farther. Then when a tomb was unearthed and took its place in the Pope’s great dining-hall the possessor of the prophetic eyes probably grew more troubled and wondered if the world would some day cease praying at its shrines and walk over them muttering dates instead of prayers. and wondered if the world would some day cease praying at its shrines and walk over them muttering dates instead of prayers.So dreadful a possibility was on the face of things unlikely. Beauty, created in an effort to make concrete the artist’s religion, to be separated from its source and denied its end? The thing was unreasonable and the prophetic eyes regained their calm. Many people grew excited over their children and over their dogs and made a great to-do because the former were beautiful and the latter intelligent, proving how easy it was to forget that both were miracles and how general was the fresh surprise at their existence. The solemn discourse the Pope and his friends held over the unearthed tomb was much the same thing. Let the enthusiasts prattle, cried the prophetic eyes. Of a naturalness the tomb was beautiful. Some one had loved the beautiful dead person it once held. The only simple thing about it was its beauty. The marvel was that it should end its days as an ornament in a dining-hall and receive adjectives instead of tears. Some one had loved the beautiful dead person it once held. The only simple thing about it was its beauty. The marvel was that it should end its days as an ornament in a dining-hall and receive adjectives instead of tears. So because the first justly nervous tremors were disregarded and it was decided to be lenient with the first collectors, art galleries grew unchecked. When their footing was firm and people were thinking of other things they enlarged scandalously, and finally, when they were beyond everybody’s control, they flung caution to the winds, assumed their present appalling proportions, and it is doubtful if anything short of flood and fire will set things straight again. Providence, that inspired, far-seeing soul, who has our interests so much more at heart than any of us ever admit, did her very best to save us future torment when, as a last resort, and in her own violent way, she buried as many beautiful things as she could lay her hands on. She saw that we would never be able to stand so many statues and, with a comfortable motherliness, put them out of our sight. (This theory throws a startlingly new light on the Pompeii affair). But instead of letting these sleeping ladies lie, what did we do but, at great inconvenience and expense, dig them all up again and place them in the most prominent cities of the world where there is not a chance of their being missed? Besides making our brains reel because of their number, which is, after all, one of the mildest faults to be laid at their door, they daily commit other crimes which are so serious as to necessitate their being treated of separately. The length of magnetism to which galleries will go is past belief. It is their common habit to drag an exhausted, unwilling, even desperately disapproving traveller, out of his comfortable bed, and when they once get him inside their walls his agony is a matter for their stony laughter. They pull people from great distances, oceans being mere skittles to them. They do not take strong people who are equal to galleries, but poor souls with bodies made of nothing but bones and muscles and such weak material and minds of only average capacity. They start them in at one end of the gallery, roll them down to the other end, pull them from one statue to another, and pay no attention to their piteous cries for help. No one brain can take in, remember, even half see or realize one-sixteenth of the things to be seen in one gallery of say, the Vatican. Yet no one tries to remedy the situation (it is clear that as minds refuse to be enlarged galleries will have to be decreased), and the mentally sobbing, wholly protesting person makes a serious-minded effort to stand in front of each beautiful thing and tries bravely to pack heads, figures, and groups into eyes already bulging with undigested sights. All because the impossible, the mad, and the perverted have been pronounced necessary, right, and intelligent.
      What condition is any one in to appreciate beauty when he has been brought up on ugliness? What condition is any one in to appreciate beauty when he has been brought up on ugliness? What was ever more farcical than corralling all the greatest beauties of the world into rooms that we visit late in life — this meaning any time after twenty. No wonder the shock is too much for us. Beauty should be broken gently to us at our birth, instead of which we wear ugly clothes we are (let it be put mildly) plain ourselves; the houses we live in; the chairs we sit on; above all, the carpets, and particularly all the small things we use daily, are ugly to the point of stultifying us. After such a preparation we are turned loose in a wilderness of fragments once belonging to a whole that was for daily use and, consequently, particularly beautiful, and we are expected to float on clouds of admiring ecstasy. What we really do is to conceal the intense depression that naturally follows; or, if we are wise, we escape quickly, leaving all galleries far behind, turning to the sea or something else that can be used and will not be shut in a gallery if admired; and we refuse to ever again approach any collection of haunting, unattainable, utterly crushing beauties. If galleries were not so firmly established every one would see the absurdity of them.
      How is it that modern artists have the heart to produce anything with this great bulk of unused beauty taking up all the corners? It is preservation become avarice. The porphyry bath-tubs should be used. A beginning could be made on the custodian. All things should be used. And if they wore out, what more natural and proper? yet for the rest of the year we sit on chairs with turned legs and smile contentedly at brownstone fronts... We not only do not loath ugliness; we thrive on it. The terms of intimacy on which we live with it make our disowning it out of the question. The heat attendant on the subject makes one’s language more or less hectic. More would be made. Let us at least have the sporting spirit to hope so. A battered, noseless gentleman, left in a garden, has at least lived his life and made room for some one else; but the Caryatides slothfully stopping in a gallery — well, with all due respect one murmurs, “Shirkers.” We call ourselves lovers of beauty because we enjoy seeing during a short vacation a capital, a fountain, a Madonna, and a temple; yet for the rest of the year we sit on chairs with turned legs and smile contentedly at brownstone fronts. If beauty is adored, ugliness is loathed. We not only do not loath ugliness; we thrive on it. The terms of intimacy on which we live with it make our disowning it out of the question. The heat attendant on the subject makes one’s language more or less hectic. It may be that the effect of a visit to the galleries warns us how little beauty we can stand, and, though caution would be needed, we still feel that there is not a real necessity of its being guarded so closely. If a bit were allowed to leak out, and we all promised to be temperate, the results might be much happier than the things we do now in reacting from our periodical overdoses of loveliness. To take beauty for granted would be so well bred, so infinitely preferable to the relaxed lower jaw and shambling dismay to be seen at present in our galleries. If we admire too madly the resting Mars it says unspeakable things of what humans actually look like. Galleries betray us into criticisms of the present by startling out of us worship of the past. There is hardly anything they do not do. They are — But there is no time to say what, as they open in half an hour, and missing a moment is out of the question.
 

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