And if there be no question of
perfection, but only of the artist's attitude, one has but to ask
himself the real meaning of the epithet Shakespearian to be assured of
the harmony between individuality and the most impersonal practice.
Nevertheless, this attitude and this perfection, characteristic as they
are of Chapu's work, have their peril. When the quickening impulse, of
whose expression they are after all but conditions, fails, they suddenly
appear so misplaced as to render insignificant what would otherwise have
seemed "respectable" enough work. Everywhere else of great
distinction--even in the execution of so perfunctory a task as a
commission for a figure of "Mechanical Art" in the Tribunal de
Commerce--at the great Triennial Exposition of 1883 Chapu was simply
insignificant. There was never a more striking illustration of the
necessity of constant renewal of inspiration, of the constant danger of
lapse into the perfunctory and the hackneyed, which threatens an artist
of precisely Chapu's qualities. Another of equal eminence escapes this
peril; there is not the same interdependence of form and "content" to be
disturbed by failure in the latter; or, better still, the merits of form
are not so distinguished as to require imperatively a corresponding
excellence of intention.
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