and was utterly unable to understand what was meant by it. He knew that by this term was meant a mechanical dexterity for painting or drawing, entirely apart from its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of attention and care was necessary in taking off the veils, to avoid injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the veils; but there was no art of painting - no technique of any sort - about it. If to a little child or to his cook were revealed what he saw, either would have been able to peel the veils off what was seen. And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical faculty paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted he saw faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the veils - faults he could not correct now without spoiling the whole.
And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the veils not perfectly removed that spoiled the picture.
`One thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark...'
observed Golenishchev.
`Oh, I shall be delighted, I beg of you to do so,' said Mikhailov with a forced smile.
`That is, you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But Iknow that was what you meant to do.'
`I cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart,' said Mikhailov morosely.
`Yes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think...
Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical subject, fresh, untouched.'
`But if this is the greatest subject presented to art?'
`If one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the question arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, ``Is it God, or is it not God?' and the unity of the impression is destroyed.'
`Why so? I think that, for educated people,' said Mikhailov, `the question cannot exist.'
Golenishchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mikhailov by his support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being essential to art.
Mikhailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defense of his own idea.
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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 5, Chapter 12[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 12 Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances, regretting their friend's flow of cleverness. At last Vronsky, without waiting for the artist, walked away to another small picture.
`Oh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!'
they cried with one voice.
`What is it they're so pleased with?' thought Mikhailov. He had positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through with that picture when, for several months, it had been the one thought haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it.
`Oh, that's only an old study,' he said.
`How fine!' said Golenishchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity, falling under the spell of the picture.
Two boys were angling in the shade of a willow tree. The elder had just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue eyes.
What was he thinking of?
The enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it in Mikhailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture.
But Vronsky asked whether the picture was for sale? To Mikhailov at that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of money matters.
`It is put up there to be sold,' he answered, scowling gloomily.
When the visitors had gone, Mikhailov sat down opposite the picture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own full, artist's vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture - a conviction essential to the intensest fervor, excluding all other interests - in which alone he could work.
Christ's foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited for that. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affected and saw everything too clearly. There was only one stage in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was possible.
