I remember being told when I was a young girl: "If you want to interest
the person you are talking to, pitch your voice so that only that one
person will hear you."
That small axiom, apart from its obvious application, contains nearly
all there is to say about Taste.
That a thing should be in scale--should be proportioned to its
purpose--is one of the first requirements of beauty, in whatever order.
No shouting where an undertone will do; and no gigantic Statue of
Liberty in butter for a World's Fair, when the little Wingless Victory,
tying on her sandal on the Acropolis, holds the whole horizon in the
curve of her slim arm.
The essence of taste is suitability. Divest the word of its prim and
priggish implications, and see how it expresses the mysterious demand of
eye and mind for symmetry, harmony and order.
Suitability--fitness--is, and always has been, the very foundation of
French standards. Fitness is only a contraction of fittingness; and if
any of our American soldiers in France should pause to look up at the
narrow niches in the portal of a French cathedral, or at the group of
holy figures in the triangle or half-circle above, they are likely to be
struck first of all by the way in which the attitude of each figure or
group is adapted to the space it fills.
If the figure is cramped and uncomfortable--if the saint or angel seems
to be in a straitjacket or a padded cell--then the sculptor has failed,
and taste is offended. It is essential that there should be perfect
harmony between the natural attitude of the figure and the space it
lives in--that a square saint should not be put in a round hole. Range
through plastic art, from Chaldæa to France, and you will see how this
principle of adaptation has always ruled composition.