Before the days of
photography the artist had to be employed to encapsulate nature.
What was asked of him was at once simple and very
difficult–he was required to show precisely what was
in front of him, no more and no less. Yet these shells, these
flowers, these insects–so painstakingly delineated–they
carry with them an air not so much of reality but of super-reality
(the distinction was to be recognized when someone invented the
term "magic realism"). When we hold the real, the identical shell
next to the shell in the drawing, the product of nature pales
before the product of man. In order to make his drawing the artist
has had to comprehend the shell fully. His whole intellect has been
engaged. And inevitably such effort leaves its traces. When we look
at the drawing, however dull we are, we grasp the structure, the
colour, the pattern, more firmly than ever we could from the shell
which we hold in our hands. It glitters before us in the cold light
of intellectual analysis.
Then, as we look,
the reality begins to diminish. It is the shell which we hold that
is real, after all. The totality of intellectual commitment is as
betraying, and as seductive, as the total commitment of the
emotions which Palmer asks of us. The artificiality of this so-
called "scientific" approach can be seen if we turn from a
seventeenth-century drawing of shells to a bouquet of flowers as
painted by Monet. Here the veil of the atmosphere shimmers between
us and the intricate forms of petal and stamen. We are now on the
brink of being convinced that all we apprehend, or need to
apprehend, are the effects of atmosphere and light.
Even amidst the
anti-naturalistic gestures of modern art the obsession with nature
remains. We listen to the visionaries, who try to persuade us that
nature at its most seductive is only a projection of our own
thoughts and desires; we listen to the scientific analysts, who try
to persuade us that we can penetrate the secrets of a firmly
external reality. Since the discoveries of the Impressionists we
have also had to lend an ear to those who want to replace one kind
of scientific vision with another, more comprehensive one. But the
one thing we can never see whole and complete is ourselves as we
stand in nature. This may be one of the reasons for art; and the
basic psychological dilemma that plagues the artist.
