XXVIII

M

oderation in all things. It is the encouragement of The Philosopher. Virtue is the state of character that is the mean between vices of excess and those of deficiency.

I had become virtuous.

Was I behaving as the Gods wished me to? Apollo would have been unimpressed. Aphrodite and Diana each would think me impious and Dionysus would stand at the edge of his vineyard shaking his head. The Fates would be rolling their eyes but they aren't real Gods anyway.

Leonardo tells us that "Light and darkness, together with foreshortening, comprises the excellence of the science of painting."

"Shadows and lights are the most certain means by which the shape of any body comes to be known."

From Ruskin then, "Great Art is the expression of the mind of a great man and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds foolishly and a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one beautifully and a vicious one, basely."

The feminine art is a languid art of lines and sensible curves. The masculine is one favouring contrasts, undercuts, and mass. The former is weightless; the latter heavy. The one favours tonal harmony and the other bold chiaroscuro.

Moderation in all things.

Viewers of the feminine persuasion do not savour the maelstrom of Michelangelo at his most Animus. Masculine appraisers do not hum along to the melody of a Renoir. We would ask neither to approach the other to find concordance. Stay apart! Exult in your expertise.

Raphael struggled to conjoin the two natures but see, in his School of Athens, how the central stonemason conflicts with the lightness of the other figures. Every body rises but the earth toned man descends. That one man has weight and it is his portrait of Michelangelo.

When a mean is achieved by an artist, it will be too hard for the Anima viewers and too soft for the others. Though we might recognize the merit in the endeavour, and perhaps the beauty (were it present), we would declare it not to our tastes and thereby issue condemnation. A virtuous man might be one that is too weak for half the world and too aggressive for the other. A virtuous man will displease all the Gods for different reasons.

With neither highlights nor shadows, there is only formlessness.

There is a trinity of tones in a painted figure: dark, middle, and light. It is startling to what degree the range from middle ground becomes, even as the hand holds the brush in the air before the canvas, a decision of moral consequence. How masculine will I be? How feminine? The subject cannot answer these questions. It is for the artist to select his stance.

Look to that cluster of trees in the middle ground with their dense foliage abutting the brilliant blue sky through a deciduous line. Unbridle the eye and see the foliage as a dense mass, light bright greens skyward but shaded to richer textures and verdant shades below. See the depth and the life that is bundled into that clustered interior. The blue is but a background. Now launch the heavens forward and push back the greens. Flatten them out and see the flitting, falling and rising line that winding makes the forms distinct. Suddenly now too you view new details in the shape of the leaves and begin to appreciate such slender branches of wood where they break the tree's horizon.

Your brush must be finer now.

Some see lines of sunlight streaming across the skies while others only know it by the shapes that it throws upon the surface of the world. There is no Sun in masculine skyscapes but the earth is carved out by its sure hand.

Having come some ways to art in company with Kenneth Clarke, I was obliged to pick my side betwixt Classic and Romantics. As youth is sure inclined to do I chose Romantic. Didn't you? In the garrets of suicidal poets with flaming red hair and with grinning skulls festooned with rose petals, we hurl diagonals across the canvas and plunge our pallet to darkest blacks and brightest reds. Maturity moderates us though. It takes us by the scruff. It drags us away from such flights of fancy. We are ordered to take a time-out to think about our behaviour. I sulked out to where Corinthian columns seemed overly garish and I completed diagonals with pyramids.

What Sir Kenneth failed to communicate was that those two poles do not speak to the whole range of art but that Romanticism, as described, is but a tone in the colour of classicism. How far does Delacroix stand from Pollack? Has Jacques Louis David anything to say to Piet Mondrien?

One must, in this modernity, be a Romantic to be a Classicist. I believe that we all start as Romantics and age toward Classicists. We grow toward a mean. Moderation is a cry of lamentation in maturity. It cannot be sung without a whispering chorus of regrets.

"I wish I wanted, Lord what I don't want.
Between my heart and the fire hides a veil of ice
Which moderates the fire, so that my deeds
Don't match my pen, and makes my page a liar."

Thus writes Michelangelo.

Moderation unmans me. No matter how wise it is to be, it makes my heart a fool. I do not know that certain sad day when died my fascination with morbidity to birth reflections on mortality. When did every carcass painted become some sombre self-portrait? Nothing is now painted though and canvasses are less than empty.

Neither canvases nor sketchbooks peopled my accommodations. I owned no paints. I had no pencils but that bore pink rubber erasers on their higher tips. I read though then: Zola and the Russians in the main, though Maupassant was also on the pile to partner Turgenev. When I had too long been with Tolstoy there was Austen.

Moderation in all things.

We, together, were stubbornly refusing to step out of the nineteenth century but we were doing so in moderation. My forges were of base temperatures but remained lit for there were no bellows to blow upon the roasted red coals of my passions. Certainly, that is a lie. The furnace of my heart could have been fuelled and tended until it was a conflagration of creativity. With but the will, there could have been such a blaze as to ignite all manner of art into being at my touch. I know that I had only to burn and beauty would rise from the billowing black ashes. Sublime art was within my power. Genius was within my grasp. The fire of the sun could be mine.

Moderation in all things.

"When I'm in such a wretched state, your face
Offers me, like the sun, both light and shadows.
As a flame grows more, the more it is buffeted,
By the wind, every virtue that Heaven extols
Shines the more, the more it is assaulted."

Michelangelo again.

My wilderness was windless by design so that exiled from both breezes and tempests; I could neither burn a cruel fire nor be blown from the virtuous course.

XXIX