[Japanese Ramma, Fret‐saw work.]
If time had preserved for us the sketches of Pheidias, of the architect of
St. Mark’s, of the great designers of the early ages, we should know how
these creators planned the line and mass, the simple structural schemes of
their immortal works. In later days when paper was common, artists’
drawings were in a less perishable form and many can now be seen in our
museums. Some have been published and are fairly within reach, though
often in costly editions. But Japanese art comes to the aid of the student
of composition with abundant material—sketch books, design books, drawings
and color prints. The learner should seek for genuine works of the best
periods, avoiding modern bad reproductions, imitations, carelessly re‐cut
blocks, crude colors, and all the hasty and commonplace stuff prepared by
dealers for the foreign market.
The Japanese knew no division into Representative and Decorative; they
thought of painting as the art of two dimensions, the art of rhythm and
harmony, in which modelling and nature‐imitation are subordinate. As in
pre‐Renaissance times in Europe, the education of the Japanese artist was
founded upon composition. Thorough grounding in fundamental principles of
spacing, rhythm and notan, gave him the utmost freedom in design. He loved
nature and went to her for his subjects, not to imitate. The winding brook
with wild iris (above) the wave and spray, the landscape, No. 51, were to
him themes for art to be translated into terms of line or dark‐and‐light
or color. They are so much material out of which may be fashioned a
harmonious line‐system or a sparkling web of black and white.
The Japanese books of most value to the student of composition are those
with collections of designs for lacquer, wood, metal and pottery, the
Ukiyo‐ye books of figures, birds, flowers and landscape, and the books by
Kano artists, with brush‐sketches of compositions by masters. It was a
common practice with the Japanese to divide a page into sections of equal
size and place a different design in each section, p. 55. This is of great
importance to the student for it illustrates at once the principles of
space‐filling and notan, and gives an idea of the infinite possibilities
of artistic invention. I have reproduced examples from the three classes
of books mentioned above, selected in this case for their brilliancy of
notan. Let the student copy them enlarged, then make original designs of
similar motives. Good reproductions of many Japanese design books can now
be obtained at low prices. They are very stimulating, for they point to
the best way of studying nature and of translating her beauty into the
language of art; pp. 57, 62, 64, 76—79.
[No. 50. Japanese Ramma Fret‐saw Work. Japanese design for embroidered
kimono.]
[No. 51. Japanese landscape compositions for color printing.]
[No. 52. Japanese botanical work. Each page a composition in two values.]