The truth is the German ideal of beauty in art is not, generally speaking, the same as that of the Anglo-Saxon or Latin foreigner.  The art ideals of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races in this respect are for the most part Greek, while those of the German race are for the most part Roman; and in each case the ideals are the outcome of the spirit which has had most influence on the mind and manners of the different races.  The Greek philosophic and aesthetic spirit has chiefly influenced Anglo-Saxon and Latin art ideals:  the Roman spirit, particularly the military spirit and the spirit of law, have chiefly influenced German ideals:  and, as a result, arrived at through ages during which events of epoch-making importance caused many successive modifications, while the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races are most impressed by such qualities as lightness and delicacy of outline, round and softly-flowing curves and elegance of ornamentation, the German appears, to the Anglo-Saxon and Latin, to be more impressed by the elaborate, the gigantic, the Gothic, the grotesque, the hard, the made, the massive, and the square.  In both styles are to be found “beauty and harmony, the aesthetic,” to quote the Emperor, but they appeal differently to people of different national temperaments.  To the Anglo-Saxon and Latin in general, therefore, German art, and particularly German sculpture and architecture, while impressive and admirable, lack for most foreigners the entirely indescribable quality we have called “charm.”

The true artist, the Emperor says, needs no advertisement, no press, no patronage.  The Emperor is right.  The true artist, once he begins to produce first-rate work, will obtain instant recognition, and his work will begin to sell, not perhaps at prices the same kind of work may bring later, but at prices sufficient to support the artist and his family in reasonable comfort.  If it does not, he is not producing good work and had better turn his attention to something else.  As a matter of fact very few true artists do advertise, use the press, or seek patronage.  The artist does not go to the press or the patron, for nowadays, the moment the artist does excellent work, the press and the patron go to him, and, when he is very exceptionally good, he is advertised and patronized until he is sick of both advertisement and patronage.

Naturally it is different in the case of the artist who is not excellently good, but the Emperor was not considering such.  These artists too, however, insist on living and must find a market for their wares.  It is an age of advertisement, the growth of new economic conditions, for advertisement creates as well as reveals new markets.  Hence the vast host of mediocrities, not only in art but in almost every field of human activity, nowadays advertise and seek patronage because only in this way can they find purchasers and live.  These artists, often men of talent, dislike having to advertise; they would rather work for art’s sake, but having to do so need not hinder them from working for art’s sake, since all that is meant by that much misused phrase is that while the artist is working he shall not think of the reward of his work, but simply and solely of how to do the best work he can.