Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

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DHE: ORACLE. 159 So it seems that we are really growing in cultivation. It becomes our responsibility as a composite people to unite the virtues of all races. In us must be found the rugged integrity of the Saxon blended with the delicate sensibility of the Italian. And this blending—this building up of ideal manhood—is the Mission of American Art. For it is ever the duty of Art to combine and to guide. What shall it be—Walt Whitman’s art, primitive once more, loosed of all tradition, utterly new—the art of the Prairie? Yes, in one sense, that it must be fresh, healthy, free from effete culture. But in a much deeper sense, No. For Art is Evolution and to begin again is to waste what three thousand years have developed. It is for us now to gather together the best that the World’s Art has attained, and to let it be moulded by Nature to express our American ideas in our American way. Then must come the genuine expression of our national life—harmonized, softened, idealized. We shall combine a Lincoln and a Raphael. We shall have eloquent Beauty and sturdy Manhood. Culture for culture’s sake we shall cast away; but the culture of fellowship with the sages, and the culture of experience for to-day’s ennobling we shall joyfully embrace. The blossom is all we see of the water-lily. Yet beneath there stretches in the muddy water a long stem that in its turn rise s from a slimy root. Cut away the root below, and in an hour we see the blossom wither on the surface. Healthy culture is the lily. Integrity, uncouth labor is the root. As a people we are noted pre-eminently for Ingenuity, and it becomes one of the greatest problems before us to prevent Cleverness from supplanting true Art. But Ingenuity can in one way serve our high- est ends—that by working through Science it may place Art within the reach of the people. Science simplifies the mechanical medium through which Art teaches. And the very simplicity implies two advantages—real Beauty, and Cost equal to the smallest pocket-book. It is Art only which can purify our national failings. We have a mighty slough of Commer- cialism that only Art can reconcile with Ideal. For Art always makes for righteousness and cleanness, drawing forth directly the nobilities of the character. That great soul which exists behind all, chooses many vehicles of utterance; and where the great soul exists, it must speak forth. We are a spiritual people—not in the emotional, wavering devotion of Italy, but in the hardier, mute earnestness of the North—more full of honest faith and honest doubt, more enduring, more sincere. And so our Art must come and will come—to simplify, to uplift, to loose from prejudice, always parallel with American living, yet ever going before to guide, softening our self- confidence, refining our commercialism, and moulding from his varied ele- ments the American as he should be—the type of ideal Manhood.

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158 THE ORACLE hearty, fox-hunting, honest to the core, glows from the rosy cheeks of a Reynolds portrait. Further back, before our modern civilization, we remember Greece —the race-name that stands for everything lofty in ideals. And after we have felt and thought a great deal about the broadness, the Christianity of Greek culture, what do we find embodies and expresses it all? A Greek God—a Greek God as a Phidias has imagined it for us. His Art executes our conception. | From all the civilized races of antiquity we have heirlooms of sculp- ture and building, as the only tangible memorial of their existence. So we see that pre-eminently, indication of character has been the peculiar func- tion of Art. In modern times, it may be that Painting with its own deli- cate attributes of color and shade expresses the feelings of our more compli- cated life with greater accuracy than any other of the Fine Arts—even than Poetry. For, if we believe Macaulay, Poetry is essentially primitive, and de- clines as civilization advances. Certain it is, that the infancy of the World produced a Homer and a David, and equally certain it is that a Phidias and a Raphael came by Evolution. The difference lies here, that whereas Poetry is the unhindered voice of the soul, in Art the voice of the soul speaks through the instrumentality of the hands. Mere speech is primi- tive, and needs no instruction, but the hands need training and the skill that comes only with Time. In Art, too truly, “the spirit is always willing but always the flesh is weak.’ And so in Art we see a parallel incarnation of human nature, ever striving to represent, to live, what it feels to be right— the spiritual, imperfectly seen, guiding the blind, endeavoring, unskilled hands of will. And when we realize how vital is Art to a nation’s develop- ment, and equally how accurate it is as an Indicator of the inner workings of national life, what must we fear and hope for the future of American Art? That an artistic revolution is in progress among our people is made evident by a thousand Signs of the Times. There is no longer a market for gilt vases. Our schools, once timbered barns, are now picture-galleries. This means that a certain part of the American people realize that children must be made to know something about Art. Whether these people are actuated more by a sense of obligation than by a spirit of sincere convic- tion is another matter. Very few of us can feel Art. But we all know that to be properly balanced we ought to. Taste is a thing which once lacked can never be acquired. But in the rough it can be developed, and the broad- cast spread of Art works it rapidly accomplishing a development.

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160 THE ORACLE Class Dau Ode HE Captain’s voice decrees: “Upon the shoreless seas, Launch out the ships I made thine own, to-day; All that Arabia holds, Spices and stones and golds, Rich-stored abundance waits for him who braves the way.” Equal the ships He gave, To stem the wildest wave; Equal to all the fulness of Hi s dower ; Unwarped, He filled our sails Ever with favouring gales; Yet do we find to-day Will equal to our Power? Us He has given all, Tis through ourselves we fall: What we shall be we only can decide, Whether to grasp the chance, Not blaming circumstance, Or let is pass unused—speak, ere thy Now has died! Ours is this plastic being, Plastic beyond our seeing, Mould it a Lincoln or a Cain at will! All to the high proves truer Than to the selfish doer, The clay is ours to mould, our hands the potter’s, still. Forgive the deeper Vision Unaided by Decision, Thought that aspires, without the hands to act, Judge not the seeming fool By the harsh tests of rule: Truth has more sides concealed than she displays in fact. Know and embrace the whole, Knowledge exalts the soul; Knowing, loving, striving on for ever;