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p Thus, for reasons quite beyond its control, one might say, the theory of art did not fulfil by a long chalk all that it had promised in the twenties of the present century. What it did do, however, was enough to prove that the aesthetics of the absolute idealists was useless.

p In forgetting about the clashes and friction of social elements and strata, art theoreticians closed their eyes to an extremely important factor which explains a great deal in the history of all ideologies in general. They deprived themselves of the possibility of understanding many details in the history of art, without an understanding of which it is impossible to avoid schematism and abstractions in theory. But nevertheless they did not cease to adhere to a correct theory. None of them doubted that the history of art is explained by the history of society, and some, Taino, for example, developed this idea with extremo talent. This idea is not sufficient for a full understanding of the history of art, but it is quite enough to .study this history without the slightest 167 reference to the absolute idea. Let us take albeit the abovementioned example from the history of French painting. Why did Boucher’s school give way to that of David, and David’s school to that of the Romantics?

p “It had to be so by the laws of development of the absolute idea,” Mr. Volynsky will tell us. But not expecting anything sensible from Nazareth, we shall not listen to Mr. Volynsky, but will attempt to solve the question with the help of the theory which we are defending.

p You may have chanced to read the study on Boucher in the first volume of the Goncourt brothers’ interesting work L^^1^^ Art du dix-huitieme siecle. If so, you will of course remember how it explains the appearance of this painter.

p “Neither the great age (i.e., the age of Louis XIV), nor the great king (i.e., Louis XIV himself) liked truth in art. The patronage that came from Versailles and the applause of public opinion made literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, in brief, all great minds and talents, seek false grandeur and conventional nobleness.... French society assumed that this false grandeur was the absolute ideal of art, the supreme law of aesthetics....

p “When the age of Louis XIV was succeeded by the age of Louis XV, and French magnificence gave way to French gallantry and when the people and things around the more human monarchy became more shallow, the ideal of art remained false and conventional, but it turned from the majestic to the elegant. Refined elegance and a passion for sensual delights spread everywhere.” It was then that Boucher appeared. "Sensual delight—that is the ideal, the entire soul of his painting—The Venus of whom Boucher dreams and whom he paints is a purely physical Venus."  [167•* 

p To this one thing must be added: Boucher’s Venus is not only "a sensual Venus”. Many "sensual Venuses" are painted today as well to satisfy the “aesthetic” feeling of profligates from the rich bourgeoisie satiated with life. But Boucher’s Venus is far more elegant. She is a coquettish woman of the eighteenth century, who knows very well how to live for pleasure, but who also knows how to behave according to all the refined rules of that refined age. She was not brought up on Olympus, of course, but nor was she brought up in a grocer’s shop. Thus Boucher is not only expressing sensual aspirations: he is expressing the sensual aspirations of the elegant French nobility, which had grown much more shallow in the eighteenth century and was quite incapable of being moved by the cold majesty that reigned during the days of Louis XIV, the golden age of the old regime. So Boucher’s painting is an 168 expression of a certain period in the history of French society, to put it more precisely, in the history of the upper estates in France.

p As the powers and self-awareness of the third estate grow, so its dissatisfaction with the existing order, its hostility towards the nobility and clergy also increase. And although, of course, the rich financiers to a large extent assimilated the depravity of the upper classes and their passion for the "sensual Venus”, the hotter, healthy section of the bourgeoisie looked with contempt upon the dissolute manners of the nobility and preached “virtue” (la vertu) ardently. Let us assume that often even in the works of the most progressive “philosophers” this virtue sometimes showed a bourgeois tastelessness and, to a large extent, lacked content. But different, truly courageous notes can also be heard in it, which grow progressively stronger. Descriptions of the joys of family life and sermons on respecting other people’s property give way to eulogies on the sentiments of the citizen who is always ready to sacrifice his personal well-being for the interests of his suffering homeland. At this time also worship of the great sages of antiquity became particularly widespread and firmly established. Young people read Plutarch avidly, diligently studying “virtue” from his heroes.

p Anyone who has read Diderot’s famous Salons will know how this brilliant representative of the third estate hated Boucher. This is understandable. If Boucher expressed the tastes of the corrupt upper classes he could not appeal to those who hated the nobility, its tastes, and particularly its corruption. Tims the course of social development in France was bound inevitably to produce a strong reaction against Boucher.

_p Boucher painted Venuses and the graces, shepherds and shepherdesses who were the same graces, only dressed (half-dressed) in something resembling clothes. These Venuses, graces, shepherds and shepherdesses became so loathsome to the section of French society that dreamed of Plutarch’s heroes, that the hatred and contempt for "Boucher’s absurd and monstrous system" continued even in the nineteenth century, when people could have regarded it more tolerantly.  [168•*  In complete accordance with the general change in taste, there now appeared in painting imitation of the Ancients, both in the drawing and composition of pictures, the content of which was, of course, borrowed from the lives of great people of antiquity. In place of Venus and Diana there appeared the Horace brothers, Belisarius and so on.

p Thus David’s school arose.

p "In David,” Clement says, "there is no absence of imagination, 169 the principal faculty of the artist. He was gifted with it to a high degree, but in his case it was deliberately suppressed by will, its nights were restrained by the spirit of the system. Intelligence. rationality or, rather, prejudice, assumed a role which did not belong to it at all, prevailing over inspiration and feeling."  [169•* 

p A strong imagination suppressed by an even stronger will, the impulse of the innovator governed by reason which adheres firmly to its “system”—what is this if not the psychology of the Jacobin? In all probability many of David’s friends in the Convention shared the same qualities. Napoleon was well aware of the meaning of the antiquarian interests of the new school in painting, when he advised David to renounce them and turn to the portrayal of “modern” subjects.

p But then the revolutionary storm subsided; society, “saved” by the coup of 18 Brumaire,^^51^^ returned to the peaceful prose of everyday life, and although its “saviour” showed an excessively militant spirit, the thunder now roared not in Paris, but somewhere far away, on the fields of Austerlitz and Eylau. In Paris life was comparatively very peaceful, and since all the essential economic demands of the former third estate had been met. it no longer dreamed of revolutions, but feared them. If its artists still continued even now to portray the great sages of antiquity, these sages no longer aroused in people  [169•**  the feelings which they had aroused before 1789. Now the portrayal of these sages became a matter of routine, they exuded no less conventionality than Boucher’s pastoral scenes. If reason continued to dominate imagination as before in David’s school, this reason no longer served any “system” of preconceived progressive ideas, but coexisted peacefully with what was around it, and was sometimes not even averse to dropping a few curtseys to the old regime. From being an innovator it had become a conservative. And this made its position insecure. Society,needed only to take a new important step in its development and produce a new phalanx of innovators, for the imagination of the latter to revolt against the reason of the protectors and for artists infected by the spirit of the new times to discover something that nobody had noticed before, i.e., that the artistic devices of Dav?d and his school did not satisfy a whole number of the “eternal” requirements of art.  [169•*** 

p Thus the Romantic school of painting arose. We shall not dwell upon it, but shall ask the reader: have we not done well in forgetting entirely for a while about the existence of the "absolute idea"? We trust that our forgetfulness has not caused him any inconvenience.

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p We believe that if the reader can reproach us for anything it is tiie following: "In fact you have gone no further than the surface of phenomena.” he will perhaps say to us. "It is true that the course of development of art is determined by the course of development of social life; but you have not taken the trouble to say what determines the development of social life in its turn. And until you say this, you run the risk at any moment of once more returning to idealism in aesthetics, not to the idealism which Schellmg and Hegel preached, true, but to the idealism of Buckle and suchlike imitators, who regarded the development of human idens AS the mainspring of historical movement. And once you have adopted the viewpoint of this idealism, you will no longer be able to break out of the vicious circle: the history of art and of all human spiritual activity in general is determined by the history of social development, but the springs of social development are rooted in human spiritual activity. If you wish to leave nothing unsaid, you should cast aside all ‘allegories and empty hypotheses’^^52^^ and give me a straight reply to my question."

We should be delighted if the reader were to address us mentally in such terms. And should be equally delighted to reply to his imaginary question, as long as

we do not tease the geese.

p But why should we bother about the geese? We shall reply as we think; and let the silly birds cackle as they please.

Tiie development of society is determined in the ’final analysis by its economic development, from which, however, it by no means follow? that we should be interested only in the "economic string”, as the revered sociologist N. K. Mikhailovsky once put it.