Excerpt from The History of Ancient Mexican Art, Vol. 8: An Essay in Outline
It is incumbent on the history of art to work upon fixed basic principles applicable to the manifestations of many peoples.
Culture is creative. Civilization is exhausted. The former is productive. The latter paramountly reproductive. Thus civilization tends both to syncretism and archaism.
The creative part of culture is inherent in that which is artistic. The essence of art raises both the question of generalities and particularities. All art should be judged, examined and comprehended simultaneously from the point of view of humanity, as well as of a people and its representative, the creative artist.
No matter the art of which people be examined, it will always be found on closer investigation of phenomena, either similar or dissimilar, that the path leads to something common and superior to both: the enigma of art manifestation per se.
The final approach must be the task of philosophy beyond historical and ethnographical investigation. The enigma is rooted in the soul.
Indeed, every form of art is the expression of either the individual soul, or that of a generality. And here we discover a very peculiar reciprocity between both. The individual artist is able to move the masses. On the other hand the indistinct sentient life of a nation crystalizes in the artist Though it is not necessary that his name be handed down to posterity. Nor is this the case with folk-songs for instance. Personal art is always imbued with the impersonal. For the genius of the artist and that of a people, if united, always finds its ultimate human expression in creations which, as something eternal, outlasts the mutation of time.
What is eternal? - The ideas which are the foundation of all universal phenomena, and therefore evolve the form problems of art.
Art is the power to embody ideas in a creative form, and to erect something permanent, though perishable in its exterior in the ever-flowing course of time.
A general view of man's multifarious art expression shows, in spite of all the peculiarities of peoples, that there are certain characteristics which permit us to speak of art styles, and great periods in the history of art. It is perhaps a moot question as to how far it is permissible to speak here of a history of development, although an irrefutable sequence is recognizable, showing an historical course in a given movement which we term time.
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