originally from ancestral forms which were definitely symbolic; so that
art, which we now call purely ornamental, once was made expressive of
mental ideas,--like Persian and Arabic texts in Eastern carpets and
tiles, where language and ornament are often one and the same thing.
The descent of our Alphabet itself has been traced in a direct line
back to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic signs; and these again were
formed into a species of alphabetical system from an earlier form of
picture or emblem writing. Even after they had been systematised into
the equivalent of an alphabet, pure symbols are used for the expression
of abstract notions, such as thirst, for instance, where a calf is
figured above the zigzag lines which signify water.
The hart drinking from a stream is a well-known early Christian symbol;
we see it in mosaic in the churches at Ravenna, with the vine and the
peacock. These last, too, seem to have been a favourite device to
carve upon marble sarcophagi, and it may well be contrasted with later
Christian taste, in its choice and treatment of symbols in the modern
graveyard; and what a strange medley of emblems meet us there!
Not less mixed is the symbolism of commerce, as exemplified in the
variations of the modern trade-mark. Æsop and the Bible are again drawn
upon, as well as Pagan mythology; but here again perhaps the less said
about art the better. It is only interesting as showing the value in
the purely practical sense a figurative device may have, something
which is distinctive and easily identifiable. It is in some sense a
survival of picture-writing or hieroglyphic, without its old Egyptian
ornamental sense and distinction of style.
Philosophy, too, in her most modern dress has recourse to symbol.
The high priest of Evolution adopted a device for the cover of his
book, showing a plant springing upwards from earth, and putting forth
leaf, bud, and finally flower; a caterpillar among the leaves, a
chrysalis pendent from the bud, and a butterfly hovering over the
open blossom. Nothing could well be more tersely, and at the same
time comprehensively, expressive of perhaps the greatest and most
far-reaching theory of our time.
Nothing, then, appears to be beyond or beneath the range of expression
in figurative design; no touch or conception of life but is made more
emphatic and comprehensible by being cast into a concrete image--a
kind of visible and picturesque logic to satisfy the eye as well as
the mind. But while vigorous design, Atlas-like, can sustain the
world of thought upon its shoulders, no breath of thought can quicken
dead art into life again. It is the true test of really vital design
that it should carry without effort its own intention, and never be
over-weighted.
This vigorous mental vitality as manifested in art is always
characteristic of the great periods. Nor is it spent in one direction
only, but, like the life-blood, circulates freely through the whole
body of art; so that the chased pattern upon a piece of armour or a
watch-plate, the design of a dress fabric or the woodcut ornaments
of a printed book, no less than the frescoed or tapestried wall and
the highly-wrought easel picture, declare the same nervous energy and
endless untiring inventiveness in beautiful and fertile design.
[Illustration]
SCULPTURE: FROM A DECORATOR’S POINT OF VIEW
An age in which the ornamental sense in art is so little understood--an
age which cares only for superficial picturesqueness or photographic
naturalism is certainly not favourable to any high development of
sculpture, which in times past has been the noblest and most expressive
of the decorative arts. We have to recognise the fact that sculpture,
in common with all art and all forms of life, lives by its capacity
of adaptability to circumstances. Perhaps she has a harder struggle
for existence than her sisters, and in the absence of zeal for great
monumental works it is perhaps not altogether surprising that she
sometimes is content to furnish toys for the drawing-room, and finds
the perpetuation of nonentities more lucrative than the pursuit of
heroic design.
That love of picturesqueness, of naturalism, too, which in our day
asserts itself in season and out of season, and, unfortunately,
often quite regardless of material or place, has left its mark on
sculpture, as in painting. Perhaps it would be truer to say that it has
revolutionised, or at least made a formidable insurrection in both;
so much so that sculpture and painting, in some instances, appear to
be striving to change places--painters sacrificing everything for an
altitude of relief which suggests departure from the canvas altogether,
and sculpture vying with painting in the imitation of textures and
scenic effects which cry out for the palette.
For in sculpture, at least in marble, despite all the resources of
tangible relief and rotundity, it is curious that naturalism of
treatment should be far less suggestive of nature than the same thing
in painting. The most elaborate imitation of textures and surfaces
(such as we see among the modern Italians) has, in the absence of local
tint, an exaggerated and, consequently, unreal look; and if there is
no strong element of design to counterbalance the elaboration--which,
indeed, is offered in its place--the failure as a work of art is
complete.
The importance of designing power in sculpture is obvious enough when
we consider that a sculptor, in designing a figure or group in the
round, has really to make, or ought to make, not one design merely, but
a whole series, in order that his work shall be expressive from every
point of view. This necessity, which is one of the difficulties, is
also one of the advantages of sculpture, and develops its capabilities
for expressive design to the utmost. Thus, while the witchery of
imitative skill may lead painters astray, in sculpture we are forced
back to what may be called the more purely artistic qualities of design
of style; terms which imply much--which comprehend, perhaps, all the
essentials of good art. Without distinction in these the craze for
imitative naturalism, or whatever we like to call it, only ends, so far
as I am aware, in attempts more or less unsuccessful to turn sculpture
into portrait painting or _tableaux vivants_.
It is very much the difference between imitation and expression, or
repetition and creation in art; and this means of course all the
difference in the world, both as regards the artist and his public.
Imitation only requires industry, but design demands inventive power.
Design might be defined as the constructive sense controlled by the
sense of beauty. One may have plenty of energy, plenty of frank
naturalism in a work, but if we have not the sense of beauty in art it
profiteth nothing.
This is of course obvious enough as applied to art with a distinctly
decorative purpose, but it seems curious that while it is taken for
granted that you cannot do without grace or charm of some sort in this
direction, as regards what may be called pictorial art, whether in
painting or sculpture, given plenty of force and fact, grace and charm
seem often quite secondary considerations, hardly missed if altogether
absent.
To me, I confess, such distinctions seem artificial and injurious to
art. A statue, or a picture, or a pattern must be an organic whole,
whether it is itself a whole or a part. It must agree with itself, or
it will agree with nothing, whether it be a frieze, a string-course, or
a bust.
And after all it is this humanising and controlling sense--this
sense of beauty, balance, decorum--this sixth or artistic sense,
in short, manifested in so many different materials, methods, and
styles, varying with climate and character, but articulate in every
tongue--which is the really permanent quality. Without it you may have
science, archæology, antiquarianism, imitation of nature--many things
very useful in their way, but not art.
[Illustration]
PAINTING AT THE PRESENT DAY: FROM A DECORATOR’S POINT OF VIEW
I will ask you to figure to yourselves an aspiring decorator, filled
with the latter-day enthusiasm for beautifying human surroundings,
and recognising a manifest, if superficial, improvement in domestic
architecture and adornment,--recognising the excellent and sympathetic
work that has been done by certain individual workers, or associated
workers, in various arts and crafts, and still undaunted by the
rapacity with which competitive commerce and the modern industrial
system seize upon and spoil their ideas, and like
----the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said,--
undaunted, I say, let us suppose our decorator filled with this fine
enthusiasm, so as to have almost persuaded himself that we are on the
brink of a second Renaissance; let us suppose him to turn for a moment
from his all-engrossing studies in stained glass, tapestry, _repoussée_
metal work, wood-carving, pottery, and the like, amid which he may
have become possibly oblivious of the progress of painting; to turn
from wall-hanging and wall-paper to what might be supposed to be the
crown and summit of its decoration, the wall picture, or, to speak
figuratively, from the courts of South Kensington to the galleries of
Burlington House--I mean in the time of its May blossoming.
He enters the exhibition hoping to find his aspirations stimulated, if
not satisfied, by some show of what he has been accustomed to consider
the higher aims and influences in art--primarily the search for beauty
of line, colour, and execution, where indeed they are practically
unfettered, in the technical sense, except by the four sides of a frame
(which in itself might contribute as the setting to the gem). Here,
as our decorator would reasonably suppose, these qualities would be
considered the prime necessities, the indispensable ingredients of the
work, whatever sort of pathetic, dramatic, or high poetic expression a
picture might bear.
But what are the actual evidences that meet his eye? To begin with,
he is appalled by the effect of the galleries as a whole--a number
of odd-sized painted panels in gilt mouldings, jostled together
with scarcely any reference to scale or harmony, either of subject
or colour. Here, perhaps, a life-sized human head and shoulders in
startling relief appears almost bursting through some silvery retiring
landscape distance; there tragedy and farce side by side, and on the
same wall tradition on crutches next the most naked naturalism, with
“no language but a cry,” or perhaps some piece of sentimentality
leaning, as it were, on the shoulder of the coldest academic style.
Supposing our decorator to have at least partially recovered from the
first shock of this impressionistic picture, and to have sufficient
presence of mind to go more into detail, what does he find? Much
ability certainly, much energy, much industry, but wasted for the
most part upon objects and subjects either unrewarding or repulsive,
and squandered in aimless, and therefore inartistic imitation; much
striving after instantaneous photographic effects both in figures and
landscapes--miscalled Realism; much academic learning and archæology;
much sentimental as well as melo-dramatic feeling; plenty of domestic
and quasi-historical incidents, some symptoms of war fever breaking out
in red coats; plenty of sporting and animal life--live and dead stock;
a superabundance of the personal element as in individual portraits,
although the term portrait might often be more justly claimed by
landscape painters, portraits so called being as often as not treated
as if they were landscapes, and landscapes as portraits, in these days.
In these, and such as these, then, our decorator will haply discover
the leading tendencies in modern painting. But he will reflect it
does not need that men should be specially painters to exhibit such
qualities as these. For any strong evidence of any feeling for, or
search after style, design, composition, beauty of form, beauty
of colour, or perfection of workmanship, not to speak of poetic
expression--for those qualities, in short, most peculiarly and
distinctively artistic--qualities at least inseparable from art with
any title to be called decorative--our decorator might look long and
far without finding much to cheer his drooping spirits.
He will depart from the exhibition a sadder, if not a wiser man; but
he will say to himself, “It was not always so.” He will go into our
national collection, and there he will find abundant evidence that
painting was once what he fondly hoped it might be again, at the head
of the decorative arts. Then perhaps he would go down to his house
justified, possibly to dream, and, especially if he had an impression
of Dürer’s “Melancholia” in his room, his dream might take some such
shape as this (were it possible to conceive in an emblematic spirit
such a being): The genius of modern painting would appear amidst the
ruins and relics of ancient art attired in the last Paris fashion,
leaning upon a photographic camera, with canvas and palette set, and
looking in her paint-box for an idea. Instead of Amorini should flit
around her the bats and owls of criticism, uttering discordant cries,
and one flying with a scroll on which should be inscribed, “There is no
beauty but where you would least expect to find it; there is no truth
but literalism.”
[Illustration]
ON THE STRUCTURE AND EVOLUTION OF DECORATIVE PATTERN
Man might be distinguished from other animals by his pronounced love of
ornament alone, or at least by the capacity for producing it. Evidences
of the impulse to ornament are found mixed up with his earliest traces
on the earth, and some of his most elaborate efforts have been upon
his own person. In North Borneo, for instance, I believe, to this day
a very elaborate system of tattooing is still practised by special
artists, a great part of the body being covered with elaborate patterns
of fantastic animals and other devices.
From the poetic or artistic side pattern might be defined as the
Notation of silent music. Certain decorative units are the keynotes.
Primitive patterns, like primitive music, consist of very simple
elements--of very few notes. Repetition is the chief factor in the
development of both--Repetition and Rhythm. If music was discovered
by blowing into a hollow reed, design might have begun by experiments
with a stick on the sand or soft clay. “Here is a sound,” says the
musician, “let us make music.” “Here is a surface,” says the designer,
“let us make a pattern.”
The art of pattern-making might be defined as the constructive sense
applied to surfaces. The ornamental designer is not so absolutely bound
by structural laws as the architect; but the fact that the structural
laws which govern his art are more mental than physical does not
make them less binding or less real. Designing is not mathematics or
geometry, but there appears to be a certain logic of line and colour in
design which, given certain fundamental forms and characters, demands
certain necessary sequences.
The system on which a design is built bears much the same relation to
it as the skeleton does to the outward human form, and a knowledge
of the skeleton is considered indispensable to the student of the
figure. If a pattern, for instance, be rectangular in its general plan,
however enriched by detail, the law of its fundamental construction
must be acknowledged. Every line, every form, demands a reason for
its existence. The designer commits himself to a curve; that curve
cannot remain as an isolated fact, or it would be meaningless. It
leads naturally to a counterbalancing curve, and then probably asks
to be repeated; for in dealing with curves and angles we are really
dealing with forms of a most expressive language, and one which
cannot be clearly articulated even, unless we have something to
say. The character of a pattern, then, is governed by its plan; and
although there is no limit to the diversity and variety of a design,
this organic necessity will make itself felt--much as a backbone is
a necessity to a vertebrate. Beyond this the character of a design
must be determined by the physical conditions of its execution and its
ultimate purpose.
It is obvious that a design intended to extend horizontally, as,
for instance, a running border or frieze, is naturally governed by
different laws from one intended to repeat and spread itself vertically
as well as horizontally over a large field, such as a wall-pattern.
And a design fitted for a hanging will not adapt itself to a floor
or ceiling. A pattern, a design, should at once speak for itself.
Its plan should declare its purpose, and its treatment acknowledge
the limitations and necessities--the characteristics, in short, of
the material in which it is produced, and the method by which it is
worked. Such considerations as these, we all know, are necessary to
the successful existence of a pattern, and when they are successfully
met we have only another instance of the survival of the fittest.
For it happens in practice that a pattern which precisely fits such
mechanical conditions has a longer life than one which, though perhaps
more beautiful, in some details does not adapt itself to its position
or to the necessities of reproduction so well. This applies more
particularly to patterns intended for reproduction by processes of
handicraft or manufacture, but it holds good also, though in a lesser
degree perhaps, in all applied art, and can never be left out of
account by the designer. Perfect fitness and beauty ought, of course,
always to accompany each other--as a matter of fact, other conditions
being equal, they do, as beauty is really organic; but mistakes are
sometimes made by introducing in design elements which properly belong
to other provinces of art,--for instance, when a carver or a weaver
aims at superficial _imitation_ of natural forms in his work rather
than their constructive value in design, or ornamental effect as
pattern. For pattern, in its simplest form, and regarded solely in its
abstract technical sense, apart from symbolism or imitation of natural
form, is nothing but a series of modifications in the structure and
correlation of line, such modifications being suggested or determined
by the necessities of adaptation to spaces, objects, and materials.
Taking line, then, as the basis of ornament, a simple horizontal
line forms, as it were, the primal decorative unit. Repeat it in
parallels, and we get at once the type of a whole series of the
simplest, but perhaps the most widely-used of patterns. It gives us
the banded courses of brick and marble, the reeded mouldings and
strings in architecture, the endless linear borders in ceramics;
whilst in textiles it seems, in the ever-recurring barred and striped
patterns, as if it were the Alpha and Omega of design, and that like
Hope--slightly to alter the well-known line--it
----springs eternal on the human _vest_.
But probably the same reasons for its perpetuation are found cogent
both in building and weaving--that is to say, the fundamental
structural necessities of both lend themselves naturally to that system
of varying the surface, and it seems universally pleasing to the human
race.
But we are not very far on the road of invention. Satisfactory as
bands, bars, and horizontal mouldings may be, cunningly proportioned
and nicely placed, man cannot live by parallels alone. He needs
other decorative units to make him happy. It is not known who struck
the first circle. The inventor of the compasses--the prehistoric
Giotto--remains in obscurity. Perhaps the hollow reed is again the
medium; and the circular mark which would be left by the impression
of the cut end of a reed on the soft earth might have given the circle
to design. So, perhaps, Pan is the father of the arts of design.
However this may be, with spheres all around, the idea must soon have
germinated. Man needed to look no farther than the sun and the sea to
find the genesis of pattern; nay, he had its elements in his own frame,
which, as Vitruvius demonstrates, comprises, or is comprised in, both
square and circle; and these may be said to divide the responsibility
for the whole race of pattern systems between them--to stand in the
world of design as a kind of Cœlus and Terra to an endless offspring.
The types of pattern to which they give rise are suggestive, too,
of different characteristics of race, language, and civilisation.
Broadly speaking, the square with its derived chequers, zigzags, and
diapers might almost stand as a symbol of the ornament of the northern
nations, associated as these forms are with Scandinavian and Gothic
pattern work; while, on the other hand, the circle, with its derived
scrolls and spirals, seems figurative of the greater suppleness and
sensitiveness to beauty of the Southern; and it is to ancient Greece
and to Italy that we must look for their most perfect types.
Square and angular patterns strike at once by their emphasis and rigid
logic; while the circular and curvilinear types appeal rather to sense
of grace and rhythm. For richness and intricacy we must go to where
both perhaps came from--to the home of the Arabesque--to the East--the
fountain-head of patterns, poured forth in a continual stream of
imaginative energy and inventive subtlety. While the Frank has spent
himself in the pursuit of the superficial facts of nature, and of the
portrayal of life and character, seeking energy rather than beauty,
and fact rather than ideal expression, the Asiatic has been content
to wrap himself in a mesh of delicate fancy; and if he regards nature
it is rather through a series of carefully-chosen symbolic forms that
subserve his subtle ornamental sensibility.
Returning to our primitive square and circle, we find that they not
only give us patterns and pattern systems by simply reproducing
themselves, but that, by subdivision and extension, they give us
certain offshoots which form universal decorative units, as well as
fundamental geometric plans or governing systems of the whole race of
what may be called organic patterns.
The leading forms of these offshoots from the square and circle
are--from the square--the Chequer, the Fret, the Zigzag, the Diaper.
From the circle--the Scroll, the Spiral, the Fan, the Scale, the Oval.
These are not only decorative units and linear patterns complete in
themselves, but furnish the system, scaffolding, or skeleton on which a
multitude of rich and varied designs are built; as the beautiful lines,
curves, and contours of the human figure are built upon the strong and
symmetric framework of the bones, and form together an organic whole.
These forms, too,--these decorative units which are geometrically
evolved from the square and the circle,--are also constructive in their
origin. The simplest of all patterns arise naturally from certain
necessities of construction. Even the linear (alternating) arrangement,
produced by the ordinary method of laying bricks, is in some sort a
pattern, as well as those more specialised methods in masonry such as
opus reticulatum and herring-bone work, for instance. The lattice work
of the joiner and engineer also; the patterns formed by the plaiting
of grass or rushes in matting, which give us the chequer; the spirals
in the twisting of the strands of a rope, and the radiating ribs of a
fan,--these all may be looked upon as the sources of our decorative
units, and have their prototypes in the natural world, where, above
all, we find constructive strength united with beauty and fitness,
governed by adaptability to circumstance.
The Fan, indeed, holds universal sway, not only in the hands of
women, but in the worlds both of nature and design.[1] In structure
and system the Fan seems to be one of the first principles of organic
construction, and is illustrated everywhere--from a bird’s wing to
a vaulted ceiling, and in decorative art spreads from the Greek
Anthemion to the Japanese screen. The Japanese artist is never tired
of demonstrating its fitness for every ornamental purpose. It is his
dearest decorative unit, and he certainly proves himself a master in
its use.[2]