Depictions of the Muses were a popular subject in Western art from the time of the Renaissance. In Greek mythology, the Muses were originally nymphs who presided over springs that had the power to give inspiration. There were nine Muses which influence different forms of the arts. The arts they claimed to influence were all performing arts, music, poetry, dance and comedy but not painting and sculpture.
At the beginning of the 20th century depictions of the Muses became less common, yet, I have noticed that the Muses of that period often give direction to a young boy or a Muse is represented as a young girl. I believe works like Julio Romero de Torres’ painting Genius and Inspiration may have been created as a reaction to the school conditioning they received as youth. John Taylor Gatto accounted for the psychological effects of the Prussian Model educational system which developed during the 19th century. Industrialists developed the system to condition the public to be passive efficient functionaries within the industrial machine. The gloomy agenda was put forth by William Torrey Harris who was the U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906 in The Philosophy of Education (1893):
“The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places…. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.”
Gatto recognized that self-alienation was the secret for conditioning society to function within the industrial machine. To tolerate working at a computer for hours requires one to be able to withdrawn from life. But his conditioning had a devastating effect on the perception of human nature and art. The Muses were originally beautiful nymphs who lived in the springs. The Muses’ connection with nature reflects ancient belief that inspiration and the discernment of the Good can come by physical nature. But Harris’ presumptions of the “inborn savagery” of youth was in complete conflict with the ancient view (not only in conflict with Western tradition but with the Eastern Taoist philosophy of the flow state). His prescription for education which marginalized the value of physical being lead to reductionist view of beauty. Beauty was no longer seen as a reflection of the Good or divine creation, rather, it was claimed to be “just” the sensate reaction from brain chemistry.
The reductionist view of human nature is apparent in contemporary art. For example, Mark Ryden’s Meat Boy depicts a young boy kneeing with a slab of beef. Ryden is apparently playing with irony, the cynic suggests that the little boy isn’t really innocent, he’s like a wild animal with savage hunger. C.S. Lewis foresaw the the danger of such ignorance;
“Men (and, still more, boys) like to call themselves disillusioned because the very form of the words suggests that they have had the illusions and emerged from them—have tried both worlds. The claim, however, is false in nine cases out of ten. The world is full of imposters who claim to he disenchanted and are really unenchanted: mere “natural” men who have never risen so high as to be in danger of the generous illusions they have claimed to escape from … We need to be on guard against such people. They talk like sages who have passed through the half-truths of humanitarian benevolence, aristocratic honor, or romantic passions, while in fact they are clods who have never yet advanced so far.”
Contemporary society is plagued by “natural” men and women which assume the “inborn savagery” of human nature due to the modern system’s program of self-alienation. But over a century ago there was an awareness the of the effects of modernization. Much of the beautiful art that was created at the time of the formation of industrial system reflected resistance to the “dark, airless, ugly places.” In such an ugly place of gray steel and calculation where could an artist find the Muse? Often the Muse was rendered as a young girl because an artist could imagine that someone who was young had not been disenchanted by the industrial machine. Many artists were inspired by the joyful state of being outside of what Max Weber called the iron cage.