Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin:
The Attributes of the Arts and the Rewards Which Are Accorded Them (1766)

Gallery Notes: This picture may appear to reproduce the casual clutter of an 18th-century tabletop. Not so. Chardin carefully selected objects to convey specific meanings. A palette with brushes, placed atop a paint box, symbolizes the art of painting. Building plans, spread beneath drafting and surveying tools, represent architecture. An ornate bronze pitcher alludes to goldsmithing, and the red portfolio symbolizes drawing. The plaster model of J. B. Pigalle's Mercury, an actual work by a friend of Chardin's, stands for sculpture.

The cross on a ribbon is the Order of Saint Michael, the highest honor an artist could then receive. Pigalle was the first sculptor to win it. So this painting sends multiple messages: it presents emblems of the arts and of artists' glory and honors a specific artist, Pigalle.

A still life (or painting of objects), which is composed from scratch by its creator, can be used to convey complex meanings.

"Decency doesn't rise to the bait that indecency always hides its hook within."

Decency has never been continuously rewarding. It attracts its critics and delivers disappointments. Anyone could complain about “times like these,” for every age has harbored indecent actors who have risen to influential positions, and Decency never seems to hold an overwhelming hand. It goes about its work humbly, primarily for its own sake, if only because it’s its own reward and other approaches seem unthinkable. If popular support doesn’t define Decency’s success, what does? I argue that a different metric determines a Win when considering Decency. In any standard competition, the simple accumulation of acclaim determines a Win. Decency, though, doesn’t quite qualify as a competitive sport. It remains a choice and sometimes seems most effective when administered too sparingly ever to accumulate enough points to win any standard competition.

Those who play Decency competitively diminish it and themselves. Further, counting points seems distinctly beside the point of any Decent practice. Motive might not ever consider how popular a Decency might be, and focusing there might steadfastly miss any vital point. True Decency appears to lose by most measures, being steadfastly uninterested in competing. Any flashier practitioner easily denigrates it. One might wonder why indecency overspends on media, touting alternative perspectives. These often try to reframe Decency into some more aggressive form and complain about the lack of patriotism or passion the Decent bring to what they can’t see as competition. A curious “game” results, one with only one team competing with themselves and, even more curiously, usually ultimately losing.

First, the “competition” completely ignores Decency, at least publicly. They might notice but refuse to comment. If pushed, they will disclose that they’ve never heard of it. Even when they have heard of it, they will feign ignorance to amplify the utter insignificance of Decency’s influence. This phase will last until it becomes more convenient for the indecent to start making fun of Decency, for it does things differently. It will never matter what they decide to choose to criticize; they will always be trumped up charges, more true about themselves than about anyone else. The contradictions swarm, however, as they equate Decency with its more prominent opposites and villify what’s obviously better behavior than in which they’ve ever been accused of engaging. Kindness becomes a mortal sin and generosity, indictable. They equate being Decent with being a traitor.

Then the indecent attack. They fight with unnecessary ferocity against an utterly imaginary enemy. No accusation seems too petty. No infraction too imaginary. They bring out their biggest guns to defend against their invented phantoms. It’s as if they’re embarrassed to be so starkly contrasted. They indict themselves. They try to goad Decency into engaging in what for them would be routine indecencies, and beneath the pressure they exert, some will find they cannot help themselves from retaliating as indecency hoped they would. Indecency will tout that one turned soul as exemplifying Decency as a whole, and amplify their media message. So much noise: First, they ignore, then they denigrate, then they attack, and then THEY lose. It was a competition of their own invention, mainly occurring in the vast space between their ears. There was never more than one competitor involved, and they lost.

Decency sometimes demands almost inhuman patience. It requires a thicker skin and a more tender soul than indecency ever does. Don’t get me wrong, Decency sometimes aches to get even, as if parity might even be possible with Indecency competing with itself. Indecency relies upon trumped competition. It inhabits a win/lose universe where it’s destined to fail. Decency, though, was never destined to win, for when it enters into competition, it enters alien territory unfriendly to its kind. Decency must mostly let Indecency define the terms of engagement, for they’re the ones framing their existence as competition. They never suspect their tactics predispose them to lose, for they can see no further than win/lose, and they seek only Decency’s humiliation. Decency succeeds by being incapable of humiliation, by understanding that the best indecency can muster is an inevitably losing strategy. With enemies as reliable as indecency, who needs friends? Decency doesn’t rise to the bait that indecency always hides its hook within.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Decency, #PureSchmaltz