this. No painter can reproduce on a canvas the infinite detail of any
object or exactly imitate its colors and lines. In the single matter
of brightness, for example, his medium is hopelessly inadequate; even
the light of the moon is beyond his power, not to speak of the light
of the sun; he has to substitute a relative for an absolute scale of
values. The sculptor cannot reproduce the color or hair of the human
body. However, this failure exactly to imitate nature does not prevent
the artist from suggesting to us ideas of the objects in which he is
interested. If the outline of the marble be that of a man, we get the
idea of a man; if the color and shape be that of a tree, we get the
idea of a tree. Our acceptance of these ideas is, of course, only
partial; for we are equally susceptible to the negative suggestions
of the whiteness of the marble and the smallness of the outline of the
tree. Every work of art represents a sort of compromise between reality
and unreality, belief and disbelief.

Nevertheless, despite this compromise, the purpose of art is
uncompromisingly attained. For art does not seek to give us nature
over again, but to express its feeling tones, and these are conveyed
when we get an idea of the corresponding object, even if that idea is
inadequate from a strictly scientific point of view. We do not react
emotionally to the infinite detail of any object, but only to its
presence as a whole and to certain salient features. The artist succeeds
when he constructs a humanized image of the object--one which arouses
and becomes a center for feeling. This image, when made of a few
elements, may be far more telling than a much more accurate copy; for
there is no diffusion of interest to irrelevant aspects. How effective
a medium for expression are the few and simple lines of Beardsley's
draftsmanship! The amount of detail necessary to convey an emotionally
effective idea is relative to the technique of the different arts and