Herbert Read

The ethical aspect of art was one of the preoccupations of nineteenth-century writers, and from Ruskin to Tolstoy, they all made a desperate effort to give art an ethical foundation. But, however variously they expressed themseves, they had only one notion of how this could be done. Art itself must be ethical - that is to say, the artist must have an ethical conception of life and must give clear expression to it in his works. "It is necessary that he should stand on the level of the highest life-conception of his time," said. Tolstoy; and Ruskin was even more explicit. But art remained obstinately non-ethical; indeed, these doctrines only succeeded in provoking a reaction among artists, and art has never been so deliberately devoid of a message as during these last fifty years. At the same time, and in the true sense of the word, we can also assert that art has never been so effectively ethical. Never has art roused such intense feelings, of protest or of partisanship; even in this indifferent country of ours works of art have been reviled and defaced by indignant zealots; while farther afield the smoke still rises from holocausts of condemned pictures and books. To a great extent, indeed, the artist now occupies the place of the persecuted saint of another day.

The explanation of this paradox is simple; for art actually becomes more ethical the purer it becomes. Ultimately art is concerned with one value and one value only: truth. But truth is an ethical value - perhaps the supreme ethical value. Modern art is unpopular because it has pursued this value to the exclusion of all sentiment and compromise. In painting, for example, it has discarded the shadow for the substance, the appearance for the form; in poetry it has rejected artifice and convention in favour of the rhythms of human speech; in fiction it has laid bare the psychological motives which determine our actions; and generally art has discovered that the imagination is an instrument of revelation, not an agent of obscuration. In modern art the public discovers an unfamiliar world ; and many people draw back, frightened or resentful. But the new images, the new vision, cannot be dismissed; they are so much more vivid than the old ways of seeing and hearing; they are so much more real. So gradually the public accepts them; it recognizes them as a necessary revelation. Art has thus achieved its ethical object, which is to persuade us to accept a true vision of the world. So long as the public and the artist moved within the conventions of a generally accepted moral code, art was like a game of chess. Each element had a definite function, and the art was in the skill with which the accepted rules were applied. Art then encouraged qualities like ingenuity, memory, and style. Even so, artists were always the people who broke the rules; who invented new pieces, new moves, new games. Artists cannot escape the accusation of being disturbers of the peace, outragers of morality, and generally advocati diaboli. But the wellbeing of society demands some such ferment. Stability, which we foolishly yearn for, is but another name for stagnation; and stagnation is death. The ideal condition of society is the same as the ideal condition of any living body - a state of dynamic tension. The yearning for safety and stability must be balanced by impulses towards adventure and variety. Only in that way can society be stirred into the vibrations and emanations of organic growth.

Plato, as is too often and too complacently recalled, banished the poet from his Republic. But that Republic was a deceptive model of perfection. It might be realized by some dictator, but it could only function as a machine functions - mechanically. And machines function mechanically only because they are made of dead inorganic materials. If you want to express the difference between an organic progressive society and a static totalitarian régime, you can do so in one word: this word art. Only on condition that the artist is allowed to function freely can society embody those ideals of liberty and intellectual development which to most of us seem the only worthy sanctions of life.