myth was exterminated. The representations of the myths which the artists did employ were never convincing in relationship to the myth itself, but rather were a demonstration of their lack of mythical developments. Who would deny that Mantegna’s crucifixion is less revealing of the Christian spirit than that of Giotto, and the Ecce Homo of Titian is an excur- sion into sensual romanticism rather than the exaltation of religiosity, or that Rembrandt’s rendering is a romantic expression of individualized suffering rather than the expression of a communal crucifixion?
It must be clear that particularization, which is the end of naturalism, is the most potent expression of individualism and the direct antithesis of the communal spirit. In other words, if labor is the hero, the representation of a workingman must be all workers and not a particular worker. And any representation of the relationship of one human to another must be referable to the interaction of all humanity rather than the relation of one individual to the other or the representation of the job which they are performing. And the emotion, which the sum total of the representation evokes, must be a feeling referable to the basic feelings of all humanity rather than the particular expression of the joys and pleasures of the particular individuals. Conversely, the more we are lost in the participation of the actual expression of the individual object or objects, the far less likely we are to refer it to the general.
Those who have realized the discrepancy between naturalism and a heroic anecdotal art have therefore relied upon the subjective expression of the day, for those artists, at least, achieve, within the current plastic notions, the reference to subjective universality (the expression of the objective universality today has been achieved by the abstraction- ists). Therefore we find artists who have employed anecdotes that supposedly relate to social generalization by means of the plastic languages evolved by these subjective arts, namely expressionism and surrealism. Their failure here to achieve their purposes is due to their failure to recognize the organic and indivisible character of subject matter and the plastic elements. Hence they have achieved simply another variety of surrealism or expressionism, and the feeling which is evoked is not of the anecdote but rather of the particular mysti - fications of surrealism, and the emotionalism of expressionism. For in using these forms of expression they have had to convert their anecdote into the expressive forms themselves and have therefore lost the identity of their anecdote, except by such associations as they have been able to conjure up through the titles which they affix to their creations.
Again we might learn our lesson clearly from the known practice of children. Any child will use a great variety of subjects. Yet all his pictures amount to the same expres- sion which can be characterized by the description of his plastic predilections. His artworks will all display the same kind of fantasy, the same preference for certain textures or kinds
of calligraphy. The subject is lost in the contemplation of the effect. And it is only a careful examination which will reveal a difference of intention as to the matter represented. But children are wise in this respect. They are very clear about their interests. Impose a subject on them, let us say a historical subject, and they will select those episodes which will allow them to use those forms which they have found to be the best expressions of their predilec- tions. The girls will find dresses to design, the boys soldiers and movement, or a house or whatever shapes they find most sympathetic.
Ultimately, this attempt to represent the universal rests upon one of a few solu- tions. The artist must either fall back upon the treatment of a single figure, for it is here wherein the artist since the Renaissance has been the most successful in attributing gener- alized implications to the human being, or they must await the evolvement of a series of anecdotal myths which will give a universal significance to their newly found unity, or they must fall back upon the allegories of the past which have used a form of symbolism sig- nifying communal interrelationship. It is noteworthy that the Mexican painters who have adopted the Aztec plastic terminology have used it mainly for the purpose of portraying subjective terror, whereas for the portrayal of human interaction they have had to revert to the symbols of Giottoesque Italy. In that sense their art has never yet been integrated into a unity, for we do not know, in any scene which they represent, whether it is the terror that is uppermost or the hope which they wish to announce.
In our hope for the heroic, and the knowledge that art must be heroic, we cannot but wish for the communal myth again. Who would not rather paint the soul-searching agonies of Giotto than the apples of Chardin, for all of the love we have for them?
104
THE A
TTEMPTED MYTH OF TODA
When discussing primitives and ancients, as we have at various points throughout this work, a distinction must be made between the antique civilizations — that is, the civiliza- tion of Greece (and all of the civilizations to which it was indebted at its beginnings, and which were in turn indebted to Greece through their own interaction with it)—and those civilizations which have more recently become the objects of intensive study: the primi- tive civilizations, as exemplified by those of Africa and the Indian tribes of the Americas. This latter group, either contemporaneous with us or at least much closer to us in time than the civilizations of antiquity, are further removed from us by their notions of reality.
We have treated both these types of civilizations as a unit until this time because their arts share a common factor which allows us to unify them in our study of subject matter: they all have a myth which symbolizes completely their notions of reality. We must now turn, however, to the investigation of their differences in order to discover why the civilization of Greece and all of those other civilizations which approximate it — those of the Aegean, the Nile, and even India and China — have had so direct an influence upon Western art, up to the present century, to the exclusion of the other civilizations.
It may be said that our knowledge of the primitive arts was very meager until the turn of this century. This is true only to a limited extent, for travelers have for many centuries reported the strange tales of the aborigines, and the civilization of the Aztecs was well known in the middle of the sixteenth century. The exotic qualities of the negro — but only the exotic qualities—were very well recognized during the succeeding two centuries, where they began to appear in the paintings of the Venetians and their successors. We find the American Indian serving as a prototype in Shakespeare, and he was apparently a dar- ling of exoticism in the courts of both the Russian and the French aristocracy. He is also the inspiration of the naturalism and primitivism of Rousseau. Yet it was not until the pres- ent century that his art and his particular myth entered as a stimulant in the art of the Western world. Similarly, Titian was painter to the sultan and must have seen Islamic art, but again only the romantic aspects were recognized.