The modern arbitrary division of Painting into Representative and
Decorative has put composition into the background and brought forward
nature‐imitation as a substitute. The picture‐painter is led to think of
likeness to nature as to the most desirable quality for his work, and the
designer talks of “conventionalizing”; both judging their art by a
standard of Realism rather than of Beauty.
In the world’s art epochs there was no such division. Every work of space‐
art was regarded as primarily an arrangement, with Beauty as its raison
d’etre. Even a portrait was first of all a composition, with the facts and
the truth subordinate to the greater idea of aesthetic structure. Training
in the fundamental principles of Composition gave the artists a wide
field—they were at once architects, sculptors, decorators and picture‐
painters.
Following this thought of the oneness of art, we find that the picture,
the plan, and the pattern are alike in the sense that each is a group of
synthetically related spaces. Abstract design is, as it were, the primer
of painting, in which principles of Composition appear in a clear and
definite form. In the picture they are not so obvious, being found in
complex interrelations and concealed under detail.
The designer and picture‐painter start in the same way. Each has before
him a blank space on which he sketches out the main lines of his
composition. This may be called his Line‐idea, and on it hinges the
excellence of the whole, for no delicacy of tone, or harmony of color can
remedy a bad proportion. A picture, then, may be said to be in its
beginning actually a pattern of lines. Could the art student have this
fact in view at the outset, it would save him much time and anxiety.
Nature will not teach him composition. The sphinx is not more silent than
she on this point. He must learn the secret as Giotto and della Francesca
and Kanawoka and Turner learned it, by the study of art itself in the
works of the masters, and by continual creative effort. If students could
have a thorough training in the elements of their profession they would
not fall into the error of supposing that such a universal idea as Beauty
of Line could be compressed into a few cases like the “triangle,” “bird’s‐
wing,” “line of beauty,” or “scroll ornament,” nor would they take these
notions as a kind of receipt for composing the lines of pictures.
Insistence upon the placing of Composition above Representation must not
be considered as any undervaluation of the latter. The art student must
learn to represent nature’s forms, colors and effects; must know the
properties of pigments and how to handle brushes and materials. He may
have to study the sciences of perspective and anatomy. More or less of
this knowledge and skill will be required in his career, but they are only
helps to art, not substitutes for it, and I believe that if he begins with
Composition, that is, with a study of art itself, he will acquire these
naturally, as he feels the need of them.
Returning now to the thought that the picture and the abstract design are
much alike in structure, let us see how some of the simple spacings may be
illustrated by landscape.
Looking out from a grove we notice that the trees, vertical straight
lines, cut horizontal lines,—an arrangement in Opposition and Repetition
making a pattern in rectangular spaces. Compare the gingham and landscape
on page 22. This is a common effect in nature, to be translated into terms
of art as suggested in the following exercise.
[No. 34. Landscape Reduced to its Main Lines.]