NATURE IS HAPHAZARD: ART IS ARRANGEMENT
We have seen that the characteristic of nature is abundance, while that
of art is selection. Now let us note another difference between the
two--nature is haphazard, art is arrangement.
I do not forget that nature works by laws; that the workings of nature
are not accidental, but the result of certain causes which produce
certain effects; so that the operations of nature produce an endless
chain of cause and effect. Thus in the fall, because the sap flows
downward in the tree, the fiber of the leaf’s stalk is gradually
weakened, until the leaf by degrees loses its hold on the branch, and,
because everything obeys the law of gravitation, falls to the ground.
But where will it fall? That may depend upon the force and direction of
the wind. It may happen that the wind is from the north or from the
west; that its breath is soft, or that it blows a gale. I say it “may
happen” so or so; for this is our habit of speech. When we don’t
understand the cause from which an effect springs, we use the word
“happen,” as if the affair were an accident or chance.
But a scientific man would say that such words as “accident” and
“chance” are inaccurate, and would tell us why the wind was blowing from
a certain direction at a certain moment, and tell us why it was soft or
fierce. And yet, why should the tiny leaf have been ready to let go just
at the moment when the breeze came? Upon what particular spot will the
dandelion seed, after floating far in the air, alight? We may believe
that the moment and the place are controlled by one Great Mind to whom
everything is plain. But to our finite minds, whose capacity to
understand is limited, such things are not plain. They seem to us like
chance, and their results appear to our eyes haphazard.
Compare, for example, the appearance of nature with that of a well-kept
garden. The latter has straight paths, intersecting one another; trim
borders with rows of lettuces and radishes; separate plots, reserved for
peas, corn, spinach, potatoes, and other crops. Even the straggling
vines of the cucumbers are kept within certain bounds. Everywhere is an
appearance of order and arrangement, beside which the tangle of growth
in the woods, or even the dotting of trees on the hillside, seems
haphazard. Or look out into the street, which, as you remember, in the
painter’s sense of the word is a part of nature. The city authorities
have laid out the lines of the street, but the buildings vary in size
and style; each one according to what happened to be the need and the
taste of the man who built it. And the appearance of the sidewalk and
roadway will vary from day to day and hour to hour, according to what
may be the number and the character of the people and of the vehicles,
as they happen to move or stand still. Compared with that garden, the
appearance of the street is haphazard.
Compare two parlors. One is a medley of furniture and bric-a-brac, of
all sorts of sizes and shapes and colors, picked up at auction sales, or
in the shops, each because it happened to be a bargain or to strike a
moment’s whim, and then set in the parlor where there happened to be
room for it. The other parlor, on the contrary, shows signs of order and
arrangement. There are fewer objects in it, and they have been carefully
chosen and arranged for the double purpose of making the room
comfortable and agreeable to the eye. It is an illustration of good
taste in _selection_ and _arrangement_.
The haphazard of nature we enjoy. But the confusion of the parlor
distresses us, if we have any sense of selection and arrangement. This
sense the artist possesses in a marked degree, and on it he bases the
making of his picture.
We have already noticed how he selects, but may have to mention it again
in describing how he arranges, since the two acts are mixed up together,
as when you select some flowers and then arrange them in a vase.
When we first made the acquaintance of the artist in the previous
chapter, he had already, you will remember, “roughed in” with his
charcoal the objects he was going to paint. We were so interested in
what he had selected, that we paid little attention to the arrangement
of the objects. It is this that we are now going to study.
His canvas is on the easel, its bare white surface inclosed within the
four sides. He is going to fill this space, not only for the purpose of
suggesting to us the appearance of the scene he has selected, but in
such a way that the actual arrangement of the objects--the pattern which
they make upon the canvas--shall give us pleasure. This he calls his
composition. The word, as you know, if you have studied Latin, means
simply “putting”, or “placing together.” But, as the artist uses it, it
always means that the placing together shall produce an effect that is
_pleasing to the eye_. It is only when it does, that the result can
properly be called a work of art. For you will recall what we said in
the first chapter, that the artist is one who fits his conception with a
beautiful form. And this form is his composition.
Now, before we go any farther with the artist’s method of composition,
let me invite you to do a little composing on your own account. That
wall in your special room or den where you hang your favorite
photographs--how is it arranged? Are the photographs pinned up
higgledy-piggledy, so as to crowd as many as possible on the wall? Is
your only idea just to hang them up where you can see them? Or have you
placed them together in such a way that their actual arrangement, as
they spot the open space of your wall, is agreeable to your eye? For, in
a way, your wall, before you hung the photographs, was like the bare
canvas of the artist. The four edges inclosed it; the space is yours to
do with it what you wish.
Suppose, now, that you are starting with the wall bare. Your family has
moved into a new house, or the old one is being repaired. There is your
plaster wall, as white as the artist’s canvas. You are allowed to decide
what shall be done with it. What will _you_ do with it?
Oh! you are going to choose a paper. Well, what shall it be? Yes,
pretty, of course. But pretty by itself, or when your pictures are hung?
For, if you choose a paper with a large pattern of many bright colors,
it may interfere with the effect of the pictures. You don’t wish to do
this? Then it will be well to choose a paper that is not too prominent;
one that has a small pattern, or none at all, only a single tint. Some
people prefer a neutral tint; one, that is to say, which is neither one
thing nor the other; not very green, or blue, or red, or yellow, but
rather so; some color that is difficult to define. For, because this
paper does not attract particular attention, it allows the photographs,
hung upon it, to show up more prominently.
However, the papering is your affair, and you have made your selection.
At last the workmen, their ladders, their paste pots, and shavings are
cleared out of the room and you can begin to arrange it. You have placed
the furniture where it best fits in, looks best, and seems most
comfortable, and now you turn your attention to each of the four walls.
Once more, is the placing of the photographs to be higgledy-piggledy,
“any-old-how,” just to show them, or are you going to arrange them
carefully, so as to make each wall a pleasing composition?
We will suppose you decide upon the latter plan. How will you proceed? I
can imagine you choosing one of two ways.
Either you will select your biggest picture, or the one you prize most,
and place it in the middle of the wall, and then place the others on
each side of it, so as to balance one another. Or, you will feel that
such an arrangement would be too stiff and formal, too obviously
balanced, and will sprinkle the pictures over the wall space, so that
their arrangement is irregular and looks as if it were accidental, and
yet seems balanced. For, if you are trying to arrange your pictures in
the way in which they seem to you to look best, consciously or
unconsciously you are working to secure a balance.
Yes, one of the principles of artistic composition is balance. Like all
the principles, adapted by artists, it is founded on an instinct of
human nature. Have you ever noticed that when a man carries a bucket of
water, he holds the free arm away from his body? He does it by instinct,
to offset the drag of the bucket on his other arm and to balance his
body. Have you ever walked upon the steel rail of a railroad track? Most
of us have, I imagine. We tread pretty firmly for a little while, and
then we totter. Out go our arms immediately to restore our balance. We
walk up and down the deck of an ocean liner, when the sea is rough, and
slope our bodies to the movement of the vessel. Why? To keep our
balance. If we lose it we are hurled across the deck in a very
undignified fashion. On the contrary, what a beautiful spectacle is
presented when a good skater balances backward and forward; perhaps an
even more beautiful one, when a good dancer who feels the joy of
movement sways to the rhythm of the music.
So, to maintain a balance is an instinct of human nature; to lose it
produces ugly results; while beautiful ones may be secured from it,
especially if the balance is rhythmic.
Another principle, then, of artistic composition is rhythm, and this,
too, is founded on an instinct of human nature. Let us see what rhythm
is. A small boy has found an old pot, catches up a stick, and begins to
belabor the pot and make himself a nuisance. By and by he gets tired of
his own noise, imagines his pot a drum, and hits it with rhythmic
strokes, one following the other in measured beats. Watch how his legs
begin to move to the time of the strokes, and how the other youngsters
fall in behind him. Left, right, left, right, on they march; their legs
and shoulders swinging to the rhythmic beat. I wonder if they know they
are following an instinct, pretty nearly as old as humanity. Probably
they don’t, and wouldn’t care if they did. All they know is that they
are having a good time. That’s just it! And they are having the same
sort of good time that the primitive man gave his friends, when he first
hit on the idea of clapping his hands together in rhythm. Later on he
found he could get more stirring effects and save his hands by rhythmic
hammering of one piece of wood upon another. Then came along a primitive
Edison who perfected the principle and put tom-toms on the market. And
so, in time, music came to be invented. For the basis of music and of
the pleasure that is received from it is its measured beat or rhythm.
It is, however, not only from the actual measured beat, appealing to our
ear, that we gain pleasure, but also from the suggestion of rhythm to
our sense of sight.
A man stone deaf can enjoy watching a dance. He has never heard a sound
in his life, but his sense of sight is stirred to pleasure by the
spectacle of measured repetition of the movements. Similarly, the
measured repetitions of stationary objects gives us pleasure,--the
measured repetition, for example, presented by the West Point cadets, as
they suddenly halt, either in close formation or in open ranks. “How
beautiful!” we exclaim. And it is because the Athenians realized the
beauty of measured repetition and the pleasure that it gives to the
sense of sight, that they surrounded their great temple, the
_Parthenon_, with ranks of columns, arranged at equal distance from one
another. For, though they may have learned the beauty of repetition from
studying the tree stems in the woods, yet, when they built their work of
art, they avoided the haphazard of nature, and introduced order and
arrangement by making the repetitions measured.
Behind the columns, however, high up on the outside of the temple wall
they set a frieze or band of figures. It extended clear around the
temple, representing a procession of people on their way to the great
festival of the goddess Athene. The remains are now in the British
Museum; but, doubtless, you have seen casts of portions of it, and will
recall some in which young men are riding, the head of each horse
overlapping the body of the one in front of it. There is here no longer
an actual measured repetition, as in the case of the columns. The bodies
are not separated by exact intervals, nor do they repeat the same forms.
The youths differ, so do the horses, and the actions of the forms are
dissimilar. And yet the arching of the horses’ necks, the prancing of
the forelegs, and the bodies of the youths swaying to the movement of
the horses are so arranged, that there is no break or interruption or
confusion, but the whole _seems_ to flow up and down regularly. There
are no actual, measured intervals or actual repetitions, yet the feeling
of both is suggested. The arrangement of the forms is rhythmic, in that
it _suggests_ rhythm. And the principle of this also the Greeks found in
nature, as you may, if you watch the waves rolling shoreward.
But all this while the artist’s canvas is standing white and bare upon
the easel, and must continue to stand. For, when he gets to work, I want
you, not only to see what he does, but feel the meaning of his
intention. And we can best enter into another person’s feeling, if we
have experienced something of his feeling in ourselves. So, I have
rummaged among our own experiences, in order to make you feel how much
we have in common with the artist. He and ourselves are creatures of
like nature, with similar senses, similar sources of pleasure and pain,
and similar instincts leading us to do and to like similar things. Only
the artist has keener senses, and has cultivated his instincts and study
of nature, and has drawn from them certain practical hints to help him
create his work of art.
Among the instincts that we share with him are, as I have tried to
show--first, an instinctive preference for order and arrangement;
secondly, the need of balance and the pleasure we receive from it;
thirdly, the increased pleasure we derive from balance, when it is
accompanied with rhythmic repetitions. These are the principles on which
he relies when he makes his composition. For let me repeat, and not for
the last time, that the purpose of his composition is not only to
suggest some scene of nature, but to make the composition itself a
source of pleasure to our sense of sight.