Art is the appeal to the instinct of communion in men. We recognize one another by the echoes it awakens in us, which we transmit to others by our enthusiasm, and which resound in the deeds of men throughout all generations, even when those generations may not suspect it. If, during the hours of depression and lack of comprehension only a few of us hear the call, it is that in those hours we alone possess the idealistic energy which later is to reanimate the heroism asleep in the multitudes. It has been said that the artist is sufficient unto himself. That is not true. The artist who says so is infected with an evil pride. The artist who believes it is not an artist. If he had not needed the most universal of our languages, the artist would not have created it. He would dig the ground to get his bread on a desert island. No one has more need of the presence and approbation of men. He speaks because he feels their presence around him, and lives in the hope — sometimes despaired of but never relinquished — that they will come at last to understand him. It is his function to pour out his being, to give as much as he can of his life, to demand of others that they also give him as much as they can of themselves, to realize with them — in an obscure and magnificent collaboration — a harmony all the more impressive that a greater number of lives have participated in it. The artist, to whom men give everything, returns in full measure what he has taken from them.
Nothing touches us except what happens to us or what can happen to us. The artist is ourselves. He has behind him the same depths of humanity, whether enthusiastic or depressed; he has about him the same secret nature, which each of his steps broadens. The artist is the crowd, to which we all belong, which defines us all, with our consent or despite our resistance. He has not the power to gather up the stones of the house which he builds us (at the risk of crushing in his breast and of tearing his hands), on any road save that on which we travel at his side. He must suffer from that which makes our suffering, and we must make him suffer. He must feel our joys and he must derive them from us. It is necessary that he live our griefs and our inner victories, even when we do not feel them.
The artist can feel and dominate his surroundings only when he considers them as a means of creation. Only then does he give us those permanent realities which all acts and all moments reveal to those who know how to see and how to live.
—Elie Faure, translated from the French by Walter Pach, History of Art, Volume I: Ancient Art, 1921
