We have
taken a step into the realm of the Ideal; that is to say, we have
touched that which, without departing from the law, surpasses
conventional rule and the natural types accepted for the Beautiful.
Before following the Ideal into its ethereal region, we will further
consider the nature of its foundation, which is a combination of the
three mother faculties which Delsarte declares to be, in aesthetics, the
criterion of the law and the foundation of the science. We already
recognize these as the physical, mental and moral aspects of the human
being.
The plastic art allies itself particularly to the physical constitution,
but the physique cannot be perfectly beautiful unless it manifests
intellectual and moral faculties.
Moral and intellectual beauty reveal themselves in the human being under
the empire of passion and of sentiment, and the physique is momentarily
transformed. The artist should seize beauty at this moment of fullest
perfection, above the normal conditions of human existence and perhaps
beyond possible plastic beauty.
Behold what glorious possibility for the direction of the artist's
aspirations toward the Beautiful! But even this happy chance by no means
includes all of the possible conceptions of the Ideal, and neither does
it furnish us any absolute idea or definition. This vision of beauty,
made ideal by exaltation of the intelligence and the emotion, can only
be perceived by the artist of practiced observation and of that
intuitive perception which is the gift of nature.
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