to be a drawing by Chin-nan-pin. I have chosen at haphazard, but the
choice is perhaps all the better. We shall have no example of a great
man to deal with, but merely the work of a remarkable Chinaman who,
somewhere in the early eighteenth century, happened to come to Japan, or
to be born there, so as to fit into a certain Chinomania then prevalent.
The photograph that I send you is a poor one. You can merely discern the
pattern, or what might be called the masses, of the design. A horse is
tied to a tree,--a horse of Japan,--and a monkey slides down the trunk
and clutches at the halter that prevents escape. I need not ask you to
admire the stealthy and yet confident step of the ape, and the motions
and repugnance and fright of the horse. I don't think that they could be
better given. Withal, there is a gravity of general outline and
appearances, and a pleasantly managed balance of the full and empty
spaces. But these decorative points are not those I wish to refer to
just now.
What I wish to indicate now is that this subject, which might have
suited a Dutchman for realism and for its choice of the accidental, will
mean, if you wish to see it, the natural resistance and struggle of the
inferior nature against a superior mastery which it does not understand,
and which at first appears capricious and unreasonable. Without being
quite certain of the accuracy of my definition, I know that the design
is based upon a like convention.
[Illustration: PAINTING BY CHIN-NAN-PIN.]
This may not be spirituality, but how far it is from what we call
realism, and how wise the acceptance by the artist of a convention which
allows him to give all his energies to a new interpretation, through his
own study of nature! As with those who have chosen distinctly religious
subjects, and whose vitality and personality can triumph and coexist
with the absence of novelty in the theme, so the artist in more ordinary
subjects may be wise in keeping to themes which are known to those whom
he addresses, and in which they can fully grasp and enjoy his success.
These general themes allow a stricter individuality in the artist who
uses them, when he is capable, and make his want of individuality
tolerable, and even laudable and pleasant, when, like most of us, he has
little of his own. Then he can never be so offensive if we do not like
him. Those that we do not like are often offensive because their
personal vanity appears upon a solid ground of their own stupidity.
Perhaps this is why the Japanese _objet d'art_ never offends, at least
in the older work done under the general influences that have obtained
with the race.
Hence, also, their astonishing variety. A thousand times, many thousand
times, you will have seen the same subject, but never the same
rendering, never the same _object_, twice repeated. That is to say, that
whenever it is worth while we can get at the most valuable and costly
part of the work of art, the humanity that made it, the love of
something that went with the work. It is this that makes the mystery of
the charm of innumerable little pieces of older work, like the
metal-work that belongs to the old swords, any one of which is superior
to anything that we do, unless in the rare cases when we bring in the
expensive life of a great master to rival it--some part of the work left
by a Barye, a Cellini, a Pisano.
All that our great men have done is exactly opposite to the tendency of
our modern work, and is based on the same ground that the Japanese has
lived and worked on--_i. e._, the reality and not the appearance, the
execution and not the proposition of a theme. The whole principle is
involved in the analysis of, say, a successful study from nature--a
beautiful painting, for instance, of a beautiful sky. In such a case the
subject is all provided; the importance of the result depends upon the
artist's sensitiveness to the facts supplied to him, upon his use of his
hereditary and acquired methods of recording them, and upon his personal
variation of those methods. No one dreams of praising the art of the sky
itself, that is to say, the fact that the facts existed; to praise the
artist for the thing having occurred from which he worked. It is this
apparent want of comprehension of the first principles of the plastic
arts in our poor work, and in a vast proportion of our best, that makes
any reasonable man a pessimist as to our near future. Every poor element
of our civilization is against it, and our influences are now
deteriorating the art of Japan. We value material or the body instead of
workmanship or the right use of the body; and instead of style and
design, the intellect and the heart. To us a gold object seems
spiritually precious, and we hesitate at working in other than costly
materials. To the Japanese workman wood and gold have been nothing but
the means to an end. We had rather not do anything than do anything not
enduring, so that when our materials are difficult, the life has flown
that was to animate them; the Japanese is willing to build a temporary
architecture, and make a temporary lacquer, which holds more beauty and
art than we to-day manage to get in granite or in metal.
And when the Oriental workman takes the hardest surfaces of steel or of
jade, he has had the preparations for using it with mastery; it is again
plastic and yielding for him, as the less abiding materials have been
before. Nor would the Japanese artist understand the point of view of
many of our men, who do their best to put an end to all art, so lost are
they in our vanity of "advertisement." The Japanese would never have
invented the idea of doing poorly the work one is forced to do to live,
so as to reserve vast energy for more important or influential work that
might draw attention to him. The greater part of our "decoration" is
carried out just the contrary way to his. Our artists accept as a
momentary curse the fact that to live they may have to draw patterns, or
work in glass, or paint or model subsidiary ornamentation. They look
forward to the glorious time when they may wreak their lofty souls in
the dignity of paint mixed with the sacred linseed oil, or in the statue
done in bronze or carved in marble by other hands than theirs. And yet
if their nature be not too far removed from ours, the habit of doing
less than their best, the habit of doing poorly, the scorn of anything
but the fine clothes of a fine material, will never be gotten over, and
throughout this little cheapness of soul, this essential snobbishness,
will be felt to puzzle and disconcert those who wish to admire.
That is to say, that they too often do not look to the end, but to the
means, while to the artist the means are a mere path--as with the
Greeks, whose work will live, even if its very physical existence is
obliterated, because it is built in the mind, in the eternity of
thought. So Greek art existed, and has lived, and lives, the most
flourishing and richest that we know of--with less to represent it than
we turn out daily. So it lived, when it had no longer anything of its
own body to represent it, in everything that was done in every country
which kept its lessons; and lives still, without examples to refer to,
even into the very painting of to-day. It is the principle of the proper
place of means that makes the little piece of Japanese metal-work--for
instance, the sword-guard or the knife-handle--an epitome of art,
certainly a greater work of art than any modern cathedral. And as
certainly we shall never even produce good ordinary ornamental work
until we feel the truth that I have lamely indicated.
"I might perhaps do as well as this," said an intelligent architect, as
we looked at some excellent but not noblest details of French
Renaissance, "but how could I spend the time on it? And not only that,
but how could I have spent the time previous to this in doing other
similar work to train me? I can only make a project, have it carried out
by the best commercial firm, not anxious to change the course of trade,
and shut my eyes to the result. I should never be criticized, because I
did not give more than my bargain." And yet to give more than your
bargain is merely to give art.
Look at this little _netsuke_,[5] or _inro_,[6] or sword-guard, and
follow the workman as you admire each detail of the execution. He has
chosen some subject or some design which may have an associated meaning,
or may be of good omen, and bear good wishes, or he may have chosen out
of the entire world of observation, of fancy, or of tradition; and may
have chosen just as much because it fits well the space which he has to
cover.
He will take as well a design that has been used a hundred times as a
newer one. For he has to _reinvent_ it in execution, even as the Greek
sculptor who recut again the "egg and dart," or the orator who is to
expound and carry out to success some argument all ready in his mind--as
the old architect who rebuilt a glorious Greek temple upon the rules and
canons of proportion that others had used before him. But he has to see
that this design in his mind--or nearer yet, perhaps on paper--shall fit
the spaces of the material and of the object which he is to make, so
that it shall be made, as it were, for that place only. He will then go
again to nature,--perhaps working directly from it, perhaps only to his
memory of sight,--for remember, that in what we call working from
nature--we painters--we merely use a shorter strain of memory than when
we carry back to our studios the vision that we wish to note. And more
than that, the very way in which we draw our lines, and mix our
pigments, in the hurry of instant record, in the certainty of successful
handling, implies that our mind is filled with innumerable memories of
continuous trials.
The workman then goes to nature, and finds in it the reality and the
details of his design, even, let us say, to the very markings of a tree
trunk that he has chosen: they are all there, since they exist in the
design, and the design is good. But they exist only in so far as they
exist also in the ivory that he cuts--in the veining of the
tortoise-shell or malachite that is to render it. Now with patient
pleasure he can hunt out these associations; he can use gold, or silver,
or vulgar lead, or lacquer, or the cutting and filing of steel, or the
iridescence of mother-of-pearl for his leaves, or his stems, or the
water, or the birds,--for the clouds or the moonlight,--for the sunshine
and the shadow,--for the light and dark,--for the "male and female" of
his little manufactured world.
These he will model, chisel, sink, or emboss as the story needs, and do
it coarsely, or loosely, or minutely, or delicately, as the unity of his
little world requires. And he will work in a hurry, or work slowly, he
will varnish it and rub it down, and polish it again, and bake it many
times, and let it weather out of doors, or shut it up carefully from the
smallest track of dust, or bathe it in acids or salts, and all this for
days and months in the year. And when he has finished,--because to do
more or less would not be to finish it,--he has given me, besides the
excellency of what we call workmanship, which he must give me because
that is the bargain between us--he has given me his desires, his
memories, his pleasures, his dreams, all the little occurrences of so
much life. As you see, he is following the law of _Tao_, so that however
humble his little world, it has a life of its own which cannot be
separated from its materials; no picture of it, no reproduction, will
give its full charm, any more than a photograph gives that of a human
being. Take out the word Japanese wherever I have put it, take out the
actual materials that I have mentioned, and the description and the
reasoning will apply. That is all there is to any work of art. It does
not exist in a fine abstract of intention--nor again in the application
of some method of toil--to define "technic," as so many young idiots
most excusably try to persuade themselves. It exists in an individual
result with origins so powerful and deep that they are lost in shade.
To go on, I wish to put it that the same reasons will cause the artist,
then, to elaborate profusely, to work in long patience, to use precious
materials, to work slightly or carelessly, to finish his work with
minute details, or to sketch rapidly with the end of a brush filled with
the single color of India ink.
There is no difference in reality; there is only the question of the
kind of interest he wishes to evoke, the sort of relation he wishes to
establish between himself and his work, and incidentally to me, the
looker-on.
I am afraid that this hazy weather is affecting the sequence of my
dreaming, or what I am pleased to call my thought, so that you may not
clearly understand me.
Again I wish you to remark that in all fullness of work other things are
suggested than those directly represented, upon the same principle, for
the same reasons, that the successful sketch, as I said before, is
richer than it looks. Hence the suggestion of color when there is really
but black and white; hence the suggestion of modeled light and shadow
when there is really but flat color and outlines. Hence the success of
all great periods in what we call decorative work, because there was no
separation; there was merely art to be used to fill certain spaces, and
to recall the fact that it was so used.
Many years ago I used to read Mr. Ruskin, when "my sight was bad, and I
lived within the points of the compass," and also the works of other
men, who laid down the exact geography and the due distances, north and
south, of a certain department or land of art which they called
"Decoration." Some of them are not yet dead. The light of _Tao_ fell
upon the subject from the words of a child who had been listening to a
talk in which I and others wiser than myself were trying to follow out
these boundaries that outlined "true" methods of decorative art, and
kept to the received instructions of abstention from this and that, of
refraining from such and such a reality, of stiffening the flow of
outline, of flattening the fullness of modeling, of turning our backs on
light and shade, of almost hating the surface of nature; and we wondered
that when our European exemplars of to-day had fulfilled every condition
of conventionality, had carefully avoided the use of the full methods of
art, in the great specialties of painting and sculpture, their glorious
work had less stuff to it than a Gothic floral ornament or a Japanese
painted fan. "Father," said the child, "are you not all making believe?
Is the Japanese richness in their very flat work so different from what
you can see in this sketch by my little brother? See how his tree looks
as if it had light and shadow, and yet he has used no modeling. He has
used only the markings of the tree and their variation of color to do
for both. He has left out nothing, and yet it is flat painting."
Nor have the Japanese _left out_ things. They have not been forced to
overstudy any part, so as to lose the look of free choice, to make the
work assume the appearance of task-work--the work of a workman bored,
nobly bored perhaps, but still bored, a feeling that is reflected in the
mind of the beholder. The Japanese artist makes his little world,--often
nothing but an India-ink world,--but its occupants live within it. They
are always obedient to all the laws of nature that they know of.
However piercing the observation of actual fact, its record is always a
synthesis. I remember many years ago looking over some Japanese drawings
of hawking with two other youngsters, one of them now a celebrated
artist, the other a well-known teacher of science. What struck us then
was the freedom of record, the acute vision of facts, the motions and
actions of the birds, their flight, their attention, and their resting,
the alertness and anxiety of their hunters, and the suggestions of the
entire landscapes (made with a few brush-marks). One saw the heat, and
the damp, and the dark meandering of water in the swamps; marked the dry
paths which led over sounding wooden bridges, and the tangle of weeds
and brush, and the stiff swaying of high trees. All was to us realism,
but affected by an unknown charm.
Now this is what the artist who did this realism has said, as well as I
can make it out: "The ancient mode must be maintained. Though a picture
must be made like the natural growth of all things, yet it lacks taste
and feeling if it simulates the real things."
Evidently the painter had not learned our modern distinctions of the
realist and the idealist.
* * * * *
If you wished to know what I admire most in these forms of art, I might
say to you, keeping, I hope, within the drift of what I have been
writing, that it is their obedience to early rules which were once based
on the first primeval needs of the artist. And if you pushed me further,
and wished to make me confess what I thought that these necessities
might be, and to make me give you a definition of them, and thereby
force me into a definition of art itself, I should hesitatingly state
that I do not like to define in matters so far down as causes. But if
you would not tell, or take advantage of my having been drawn into such
a position of doctrine, I might acknowledge that I have far within me a
belief that art is the love of certain balanced proportions and
relations which the mind likes to discover and to bring out in what it
deals with, be it thought, or the actions of men, or the influences of
nature, or the material things in which necessity makes it to work. I
should then expand this idea until it stretched from the patterns of
earliest pottery to the harmony of the lines of Homer. Then I should say
that in our plastic arts the relations of lines and spaces are, in my
belief, the first and earliest desires. And again I should have to say
that, in my unexpressed faith, these needs are as needs of the soul, and
echoes of the laws of the universe, seen and unseen, reflections of the
universal mathematics, cadences of the ancient music of the spheres.
For I am forced to believe that there are laws for our eyes as well as
for our ears, and that when, if ever, these shall have been deciphered,
as has been the good fortune with music, then shall we find that all
best artists have carefully preserved their instinctive obedience to
these, and have all cared together for this before all.
For the arrangements of line and balances of spaces which meet these
underlying needs are indeed the points through which we recognize the
answer to our natural love and sensitiveness for order, and through this
answer we feel, clearly or obscurely, the difference between what we
call great men and what we call the average, whatever the personal charm
may be.
This is why we remember so easily the arrangement and composition of
such a one whom we call a master--that is why the "silhouette" of a
Millet against the sky, why his placing of outlines within the rectangle
of his picture, makes a different, a final, and decisive result,
impressed strongly upon the memory which classifies it, when you compare
it with the record of the same story, say, by Jules Breton. It is not
the difference of the fact in nature, it is not that the latter artist
is not in love with his subject, that he has not a poetic nature, that
he is not simple, that he has not dignity, that he is not exquisite; it
is that he has not found in nature of his own instinct the eternal
mathematics which accompany facts of sight. For indeed, to use other
words, in what does one differ from the other? The arrangement of the
idea or subject may be the same, the costume, the landscape, the time of
day, nay, the very person represented. But the Millet, if we take this
instance, is framed within a larger line, its spaces are of greater or
more subtle ponderation, its building together more architectural. That
is to say, all its spaces are more surely related to _one another_, and
not only to the _story told_, nor only to the _accidental occurrence_ of
the same. The eternal has been brought in to sustain the transient.
For fashions change as to feelings and sentiments and ways of looking at
the world. The tasks of the days of Angelico, or of Rubens, or of Millet
are not the same; religions live and disappear; nations come and go in
and out of the pages of history: but I can see nothing from the earliest
art that does not mean living in a like desire for law and order in
expression. It is, therefore, because we consciously or unconsciously
recognize this love of the unwritten harmonies of our arts, the power of
recalling them to us, in some painter or in some architect, that we say
that such a man is great. He is great because he is the same as man has
been, and will be; and we recognize, without knowing them by name, our
ancestral primordial predilections.
Yes, the mere direction or distance of a line by the variation of some
fraction of an inch establishes this enormous superiority--a little more
curve or less, a mere black or white or colored space of a certain
proportion, a few darks or reds or blues. And now you will ask, Do you
intend to state that decoration--? To which I should say, I do not mean
to leave my main path of principles to-day, and when I return we shall
have time to discuss objections. Besides, "I am not arguing; I am
telling you."
* * * * *
This is the unity, this is the reality, which disengages itself from the
art of Japan, even as we know it in common, through what we usually call
"bric-à-brac." Our introduction to it is rather curious when one comes
to think of it. Suddenly, owing to enormous social changes in Japan,
involving vast fluctuations in fortunes, most of all that was portable
was for sale, and flooded our markets. Ignorant dealers held in masses
small treasures of temples, adornments of the wealthy, all the odds and
ends of real art, along with the usual furniture, along with all the
poor stuff that would naturally be made for us barbarians, and had been
made for us for centuries through the trade of Holland. It was as if
Paris or London had suddenly been unloaded of everything portable, from
works of art to household furniture. Naturally the main-spring of it
all,--the works of great draftsmen, for instance,--being more debatable,
more inexplicable, more useless, in a word, or detained by stronger
bands, just as it would be with us, have somewhat escaped the drain. Our
perceptions have been confused in all this mixture by repetitions,
imitations, which in every form of art, as we know so well in
literature, degrade the perception and enjoyment of what is good. I can
only wonder that the world has not been tired out and disgusted with
Japanese bric-à-brac. And had we not been in such bad straits of taste
ourselves, such would have been the case. I have always considered that
the artist needed to be forgiven for his turn toward bric-à-brac; not
for his liking to have odds and ends for help and refreshment, but for
having too many; because his life is to make, not to collect. To others,
that can be forgiven easily; for the pieces of the past are a
consolation of the present, and one would like to feel that a man's
likings are his important self, and are betrayed by his choices.
"Dis-moi ce que tu aimes--je te dirai ce que tu es."
If one had time and did not do, what pleasure it might be to describe
forever the innumerable objects and things that might be found here,
even though words are a poor rendering of sight. And what pleasure it
might be to try to describe the greatest of all bric-à-brac, the
greatest remains of the higher arts--sculpture and painting.
I have begun some such letter for you, but I fear that it may never be
finished. Nor do I see any way of giving an account of the history of
painting in Japan, which would have to stand for a still further
explanation. Should I study it further, can I do more than to increase
my own knowledge,--and all knowledge is a burden,--and to give you
cursory proof, by names and a few examples, that the art of painting and
the art of sculpture are very old here? I should have to begin to ask
myself for you if the earliest remains do not already prove still
earlier schools and accepted or debated tradition, and I should then
have still one thousand years of design to account for.
I shall probably leave my letter to you unfinished. It has already
become unwieldy, and I could give you only my own impressions. And then
in the history of art everything is needed.
[Illustration: SIGNATURE OF HOKUSAI.]