more ordinary theories which he says dare be expressed by no intelligent man under sixty who is careful of his reputation. Is it not possible that the best hypothesis lies somewhere in the middle? Mr Bell, in his righteous contempt of merely literary painting, insists that no quality is essential to a work of visual art except significant form. He is right. But when he adds that other qualities (of description, for instance) are not only unessential, but always irrelevant, I suggest that his enthusiasm is better than his logic. Some works of art which are independent-of-descriptive-content are good. Therefore, he seems to say, all good works of art are independent-of- descriptive-content. Mr Bell is guilty of what I fancy I was taught to call an undistributed middle.
I am not over sixty, nor, I hope (what is worse!) careless of my reputation. But I have the effrontery to suggest that the descriptive content of a painting is not mere surplusage, always; and that the dramatic element in Giotto, the characterization in Rembrandt, and the romantic staging in Watteau, so far from being irrelevant, do combine almost inextricably with form, and do enhance the purely artistic value of the pictures. It is impossible to repeat too often that all these things are subsidiary to form, and that form is enough in itself—though most of us, I think legitimately, prefer some traces of representation to help as it were to canalize our attention. The principal function of visual art is the massage of the eye by the rhythm of shapes. And it is only when this function is fulfilled, that the criticism of phenomena, which is implicit in most pictures, can become aesthetically valuable. But on this condition, I do suggest that even our purest appreciation of art does in many cases depend for its full intensity on the artist's individual description of some aspect of the visible world, and that additional horse-power can be given by this means to the picture as a machine-à-émouvoir. That is to say, form alone can rouse emotion, content can heighten it.
Further, when an artist makes a distortion, he is seeking, not only to strengthen the design, but often also, to emphasize the impression that the appearance of the original in nature made upon him; and our pleasure in the new form is increased by our inclination unconsciously to correct the distortion in our mind, or at least to compare it (to its advantage) with the undistorted form which inspired it. We enjoy the difference because it stimulates the imagination.
