We now make believe to have freed
ourselves from these trammels, but the departure is more apparent
than real. Our works of art fall into a few well-marked groups and
the pictures of each group, though differing in detail, present the
same general characters. We have, however, broken much new ground,
whereas until the last three or four hundred years it almost seems
either as if artists had thought subject a detail beneath their
notice, or publics had insisted on being told only what they knew
already.
The principle of living only to see and to hear some new thing, and
the other principle of avoiding everything with which we are not
perfectly familiar are equally old, equally universal, equally
useful. They are the principles of conservation and accumulation on
the one hand, and of adventure, speculation and progress on the
other, each equally indispensable. The money has been, and will
probably always be more persistently in the hands of the first of
these two groups. But, after all, is not money an art? Nay, is it
not the most difficult on earth and the parent of all? And if life
is short and art long, is not money still longer? And are not works
of art, for the most part, more or less works of money also? In so
far as a work of art is a work of money, it must not complain of
being bound by the laws of money; in so far as it is a work of art,
it has nothing to do with money and, again, cannot complain.
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