Contact with the best works of art is an essential part of art education,
for from them comes power and the stimulus to create. The student hears
and reads much that passes for art criticism but is only talk about the
subject of a picture, the derivation and meaning of a design, or the
accuracy of a drawing. These minor points have their place in discussing
the literary and scientific sides of a masterpiece; they relate to art
only superficially, and give no key to the perception of fine quality.
The most important fact about a great creative work is that it is
beautiful; and the best way to see this is to study the art‐structure of
it,—the way it is built up as Line, Notan, Color,—the principle of
composition which it exemplifies. See what a master has done with the very
problem you are trying to work out.
This method of approach will involve a new classification of the world’s
art, cutting across the historical, topical and geographical lines of
development. The instructor in composition will illustrate each step with
many examples differing as to time, locality, material and subject, but
alike in art‐structure.
Museum collections might be used for a series of progressive studies based
upon composition; taking up one principle at a time and seeking
illustrations in a group of wide range,—a picture, sculpture,
architecture, Gothic carving, metal work, old textile, bit of pottery,
Japanese print.
The beauty of simple spacing is found in things great and small, from a
cathedral tower to a cupboard shelf.
The campanile of the Duomo of Florence (No. 30) designed by that master of
architecture and painting, Giotto, is a rectangular composition of
exceeding beauty. Its charm lies chiefly in its delicately harmonized
proportions on a straight‐line scheme. It is visual music in terms of line
and space. The areas are largest at the top, growing gradually smaller in
each of the stories downward. The graceful mouldings, the window tracery,
the many colors of marble and porphyry are but enrichments of the splendid
main lines.
[No. 30. Giotto’s Tower (traced from a photograph).]
The Ca’ d’Oro of Venice (No. 31, A) presents this rectangular beauty in an
entirely different way. First, a vertical line divides the facade into two
unequal but balanced proportions; each of these is again divided by
horizontal lines and by windows and balconies into smaller spaces, the
whole making a perfect harmony—each part related to, and affected by every
other part.
The tokonoma of a Japanese room (No. 31, B) is arranged in a similar
rectangular scheme. A vertical line, as in the Venetian palace facade,
divides the whole space into two; one of these is divided again into
recesses with shelves or sliding doors; the other is for pictures
(kakemono), not more than three of which a hung at a time. No. 31, C shows
three of these sets of shelves. The Japanese publish books with hundreds
of designs for this little recess. The fertility of invention combined
with feeling for good spacing, even in such a simple bit of craft, is
characteristic of the Japanese. Their design books, from which I have
copied many examples for this volume, are very useful to the student of
art.
Style, in furniture, is a matter of good spacing, rather than of period or
person. The best designs are very simple, finely balanced compositions of
a few straight lines (No. 31, D).
Book covers with their lettering and decorations, and book pages with or
without illustrations are examples of space cutting,—good or commonplace
according to the designer’s feeling for line‐beauty, In the early days of
printing the two pages of an open book were consider together as a single
rectangular space. Into this the type was to be set with the utmost care
as to proportion and margin.