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The Art Spirit Excerpt by Robert Henri

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual.
Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If
one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented.
Sign-posts on the way to what may be. Sign-posts toward greater knowledge.

Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing
things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing. When the artist is alive in any person,
whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing
creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways
for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it,
shows there are still more pages possible.

The world would stagnate without him, and the world would be beautiful with him; for he is
interesting to himself and he is interesting to others. He does not have to be a painter or sculptor to
be an artist. He can work in any medium. He simply has to find the gain in the work itself, not
outside it.

Museums of art will not make a country an art country. But where there is the art spirit there will be
precious works to fill museums. Better still, there will be the happiness that is in the making. Art
tends towards balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living
—very good things for anyone to be interested in.

The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see it through.
You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in
company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and
on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay
for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

We are not here to do what has already been done.

I have little interest in teaching you what I know. I wish to stimulate you to tell me what you know. In
my office toward you I am simply trying to improve my own environment.

Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the
conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They
made their language. You make yours. They can help you. All the past can help you.

An art student must be a master from the beginning; that is, he must be master of such as he has. By
being now master of such as he has there is promise that he will be master in the future.

A work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man. It is the manifest of a
very positive nature in great enjoyment, and at the very moment the work was done.

It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work. The brush stroke at the moment
of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the
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work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by
the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself.

For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been interesting to himself. He must have been
capable of intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation.

He who has contemplated has met with himself, is in a state to see into the realities beyond the
surfaces of his subject. Nature reveals to him, and, seeing and feeling intensely, he paints, and
whether he wills it or not each brush stroke is an exact record of such as he was at the exact
moment the stroke was made.

The sketch hunter has delightful days of drifting about among people, in and out of the city, going
anywhere, every- where, stopping as long as he likes—no need to reach any point, moving in any
direction following the call of interests. He moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently
the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his
sketchbook, a box of oils with a few small panels, the fit of his pocket, or on his draw- ing pad. Like
any hunter he hits or misses. He is looking for what he loves, he tries to capture it. It’s found
anywhere, everywhere. Those who are not hunters do not see these things. The hunter is learning to
see and to understand—to enjoy.

There are memories of days of this sort, of wonderful driftings in and out of the crowd, of seeing
and thinking. Where are the sketches that were made? Some of them are in dusty piles, some turned
out to be so good they got frames, some became motives for big pictures, which were either better
or worse than the sketches, but they, or rather the states of being and understandings we had at the
time of doing them all, are sifting through and leaving their impress on our whole work and life.

Don’t worry about the rejections. Everybody that’s good has gone through it. Don’t let it matter if
your works are not “accepted” at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are
of acceptance. Just remember that the object of painting pictures is not simply to get them in
exhibitions. It is all very fine to have your pictures hung, but you are painting for yourself, not for
the jury. I had many years of rejections.

Do some great work, Son! Don’t try to paint good landscapes. Try to paint canvases that will show how
interesting landscape looks to you—your pleasure in the thing. Wit.

There are lots of people who can make sweet colors, nice tones, nice shapes of landscape, all done
in nice broad and intelligent-looking brushwork.

Courbet showed in every work what a man he was, what a head and heart he had.

Every student should put down in some form or other his findings. All any man can hope to do is to
add his fragment to the whole. No man can be final, but he can record his progress, and whatever he
records is so much done in the thrashing out of the whole thing. What he leaves is so much for
others to use as stones to step on or stones to avoid.

The student is not an isolated force. He belongs to a great brotherhood, bears great kinship to his
kind. He takes and he gives. He benefits by taking and he benefits by giving.
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Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.
They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other,
and time and space cannot separate them.

The Brotherhood is powerful. It has many members. They are of all places and of all times. The
members do not die. One is member to the degree that he can be member, no more, no less. And
that part of him that is of the Brother- hood does not die.

The work of the Brotherhood does not deal with surface events. Institutions on the world surface
can rise and become powerful and they can destroy each other. Statesmen can put patch upon patch
to make things continue to stand still. No matter what may happen on the surface the Brotherhood
goes steadily on. It is the evolution of man. Let the surface destroy itself, the Brotherhood will start
it again. For in all cases, no matter how strong the surface institutions become, no matter what laws
may be laid down, what patches may be made, all change that is real is due to the Brotherhood.

If the artist is alive in you, you may meet Greco nearer than many people, also Plato, Shakespeare,
the Greeks. In certain books—some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a
brother.

You pass people on the street, some are for you, some are not.

Here is a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci. I enter this sketch and I see him at work and in trouble and I
meet him there.