to himself, “Shall I write or paint so that others will understand, or
shall I express myself in my own way even though no one but myself
comprehends and even I fail at times?”
It is just as bad to paint with the sole purpose of being
understood--_commercialism_--as it is to paint with the sole purpose of
being misunderstood--_charlatanism_.
VIII
COLOR MUSIC
Color music is no new idea, but of late it is finding new expression.
While painters are beginning to paint color harmonies that are
independent of the representations of natural objects, others are
seeking the same emotional effects with colored lights.
A “color organ” has been invented[60] which deals with color for its own
sake as music does with sound, thereby opening up a new world of beauty
and interest as yet to a great extent unexplored.
When you enter Mr. Rimington’s English studio you see at one end of
it a curious instrument with a keyboard and stops, while at the
other end is a white screen, hung in folds to give greater depth
and life to the colors playing upon it. What happens when the
instrument is played is thus described by Mr. Rimington:
“Imagine a darkened concert room. At one end there is a large
screen of white drapery in folds, surrounded with black and framed
by two bands of pure white light. Upon this we will suppose, as an
example of a simple color composition, that there appears the
faintest possible flush of rose color, which very gradually fades
away while we are enjoying its purity and subtlety of tint, and we
return to darkness. Then, with an interval, it is repeated in three
successive phases, the last of which is stronger and more
prolonged.
“While it is still lingering upon the screen, a rapid series of
touches of pale lavender notes of color begin to flit across it,
gradually strengthening into deep violet. This again becomes shot
with amethyst, and afterward changing gradually into a broken tint
of ruby, gives a return to the warmer tones of the opening passage.
“A delicate primrose now appears, and with little runs and flushes
of pulsation leads through several passages of indescribable
cinnamon
[Illustration: PICASSO
Old Woman]
[Illustration: GIRIEUD
Woman Seated]
color to deep topaz. Then suddenly interweavings of strange green
and peacock blue, with now and then a touch of pure white, make us
seem to feel the tremulousness of the Mediterranean on a breezy
day, and as the color deepens there are harmonies of violet and
blue green which recall its waves under a Tramontana sky. More and
more powerful they grow, and the eye revels in the depth and
magnificence of the color as the executant strikes chord after
chord among the bass notes of the instrument.
“Then suddenly the screen is again dark and there is only a
rhythmic and echoing beat of the dying color upon it. At last this
disappears also, and there is another silent pause, then one
hesitating tint of faded rose as at the opening of the composition.
“Upon this follows a stronger return of the color, and as the
screen once more begins to glow with note after note of red and
scarlet, we are prepared for the rapid crescendo which finally
leads up to a series of staccato and forte chords of pure crimson
which almost startle us with the force of their color before they
die away into blackness!
“This,” says Mr. Rimington, “is an extremely simple example, but it
may suffice to show the kind of effect produced by an unadorned
form of mobile color not accompanied by music. In some cases a
musical accompaniment was found to add greatly to the interest of a
color composition. The nearest approach to color music in nature is
to be found in certain sunsets.” Of the emotional and aesthetic
effect of color music on various beholders we read:
The amount of pleasure and interest derived from color compositions
varies immensely with individuals. An interesting instance of this
was the case of a well-known London doctor, who told the author,
after first seeing a recital of color-music, that he was absolutely
unappreciative of any form of “sound music;” that it was, in fact,
a pain to him, and that he had always detested it. “But,” he said,
“from the moment that I first saw a display of mobile color, I
realized what I had missed all my life through my inability to
appreciate music. It opened up a new world of sensations to me and
gave me the greatest mental pleasure I have ever experienced.” This
clearly shows that to some persons mobile color would, or does,
fill the place which music can not occupy in their lives.
On the other hand, there can be little doubt that to some, though
they would hardly own it, color of any kind is more or less
unpleasant, and they would prefer to live in a monotonic world. One
must therefore be prepared for a great variety of opinions with
regard to any such art as that of mobile color. The majority of
people will probably derive a moderate but increasing pleasure from
it.
There are many to whom it at once provides a surpassingly
interesting source of enjoyment and education, and some to whom,
like my medical friend, it will open up an entirely new world of
sensations; and there are others, again, to whom it will be
supremely distasteful. It is well to recognize this to avoid
disappointment, and be prepared for very divergent expressions of
opinion about it.
Speaking broadly, it appeals most to those who have had an artistic
training into which color has entered, and it is less attractive to
those whose interests center in music. This is not what the author
personally expected. He imagined that the connection with music
being so close on some points, those who would take the greatest
interest in mobile color would be musicians; but, with some
striking exceptions among distinguished musicians, the musical
world, as far as it has yet come into contact with color-music, has
been at first inclined to see points of divergence rather than
those of analogy and to look upon the art as a possible rival. A
similar attitude is often adopted toward any new departure in
science or art, and there is no reason for resenting it; it merely
makes the cooperation of those among musicians who are able to take
a sympathetic view and welcome the endeavor to open up new fields
of investigation all the more valuable.
* * * * *
From time immemorial child and man have taken the keenest delight in
fireworks and colored lights which are after all a species of light
music.
Since the adoption of electricity for lighting it is comparatively easy
to produce the most wonderful effects both indoors and out.
As yet little thought has been given to producing harmonious light
effects on streets--save in advertising signs. For the most part the
lighting is garish in the extreme, often positively painful to the eyes,
but in time this will be corrected. Public authorities cooperating with
private owners will work out schemes for lighting streets and shops that
will yield charming effects.
* * * * *
Already much has been done in the theater, especially in Russia and
Germany. The value of light effects is being recognized. Soft music is
often played to enhance the effect of a tender or pathetic scene, and it
is quite common for the lights to change in harmony.
By the use of light alone as an accompaniment to a love scene the same
effect on the audience can be secured as by the use of soft music.
So far all this has been done crudely and for the most part
unscientifically. Producer and electrician have worked together in a
haphazard way, often with great success, sometimes with most
disagreeable results.
The very term “stage lighting” is not inspiring, but the art of light
music will be developed and be taught in theory and practice. Masters of
the art will come and men will realize that it is just as great an art
to satisfy the eye with light melodies as it is to please the ear with
sound melodies.
There yet may be entertainments where only light music is played as
there are concerts where only sound music is played.
And why not? Just ask yourself the question--Why not?
Of all the organs of sense the eye is the most delicate and the most
wonderful. The ear responds to _air_ waves that travel at the rate of
1,100 _feet_ per second and vary in frequency from 16 to 32,000 per
second. The musical notes vary from 32 to 5,000 beats per second.
The eye responds to _ether_ waves that travel at the rate of 182,000
_miles_ per second and vary in frequency from 400 millions millions--the
lowest red of the spectrum--to 750 millions millions (red
400,000,000,000,000; violet 750,000,000,000,000) the highest violet.
* * * * *
Man has devoted ages to developing harmonies in the combination of air
waves, and he has reduced sound music to a science.
He has devoted _all_ the ages of his being to the use of color in one
way and another to please his eye, but only of late has he made any
attempt to understand the _science_ of light and color music.
* * * * *
The _material_ civilization we _have_ attained in comparison with the
_spiritual_ civilization we _should_ attain is fairly well indicated by
the vast difference between the crude and natural art of _sound_ effects
which is, so far, man’s most abstract achievement in art, and the
incomparably finer and more ethereal art of light and color effects
which will be one of the crowning achievements of man’s nobler future.
* * * * *
The painter of _easel_ pictures arrogates to himself the name artist and
to his work the phrase _fine art_. He looks down upon the house painter,
the dressmaker, and the interior decorator.
Yet as compared with those who clothe our bodies and decorate our homes
in harmonies of line and color the painter of easel pictures cuts very
little figure in life; he plays his part but much of his inspiration is
drawn from the work of the other two.
It should never be forgotten that in all the great portraits of the
world the clothes and the interiors that furnish the beautiful color
schemes _preceded_ the pictures often by generations.
The costumer and the decorator work year in and year out, from
generation to generation, throughout the centuries, with not so much as
a thought of the painter in the corner with his little canvas,
faithfully copying.
Now and then a great painter, a great sculptor, takes off his coat,
turns workman for the moment and makes sculptures for buildings, paints
pictures on walls, devises costumes, and contributes to making our
environment more beautiful.
But not infrequently the sculptor and the painter upset the equilibrium
of the work of others by doing things which are out of key or out of
proportion. The “fine artist” _may_ bring the work of decorating to a
standstill by painting spotty _easel_ pictures on walls that should be
treated in harmony with the entire building and with its uses.
* * * * *
The time will come when art schools will teach pure color composition as
well as drawing and the painting of pictures.
Why should not prizes be offered for color harmonies?
As it is now pupils are taught everything _except_ the use of color _for
the sake of color_.
* * * * *
What is a “still life”? Simply a painting of a number of objects
selected and arranged primarily for their color notes. Why not paint the
notes without the fruit and dishes?
So far as the color harmony is concerned the _figure_ of an orange, an
apple, a banana is not essential; in reality the photographic
realization distracts. But the public is not accustomed to _pure_ color
music, it is not accustomed to seeing canvases that contain only color
harmonies with no suggestion of object or form, it demands that the note
of yellow shall be a lemon or a banana, that the note of purple shall
assume the shape of a plum and so on, and so on; yet all the time the
enjoyment derived from a fine “still life” is from the harmony that
results from the combination of colors, and in no sense from the objects
arbitrarily and artificially grouped together.
* * * * *
The use of line and color _imitatively_ to depict objects is one thing.
The use of line and color _freely_ to produce pure line harmonies and
pure color harmonies, with no reference to objects is quite another, and
in a sense, a far higher art--a more abstract art.
It is toward the development of this more abstract art that the modern
experiments are tending. The net result in the long run will be the
education of a considerable fraction of the public to the appreciation
of pure line and color music and a consequent demand for paintings that
are simply pure line and color compositions.
With this development of a taste for a very abstract art all the arts
and crafts are certain to be beneficially affected.
The study of line for the sake of line, and of color for the sake of
color if systematically pursued will make all draftsmen greater masters
of line, and all painters--to the humblest house painter--greater
masters of color.
IX
ESORAGOTO
Neither the Cubists nor Kandinsky troubled a very distinguished Japanese
expert who spent many days at the exhibition.
“The principles of all this are old, very old, in Japan.”
He was far more interested in the extreme drawings and paintings than in
the more academic. Pointing to a drawing that seemed scarce more than a
few careless strokes, he said, “That is quite in the spirit of the best
Japanese art.”
Of the “King and Queen” he said, “I like that very much,” and so on,
passing from one Cubist picture to another, commenting upon each
seriously and intelligently.
* * * * *
To either copy or be in the slightest degree hampered by nature is a
mark of inferiority in Chinese and Japanese art.
The very abstract art of the Orient has its elaborate conventions, but
those conventions are all in the direction of _pure_ art, whereas the
conventions of our art (music always excepted) are all in the direction
of imitation.
It was a theory of the great Chinese teacher, Chinanpin, and
particularly enforced by him, that trees, plants, and grasses take
the form of a circle, called in art _Rin kan_; or a semi-circle,
_Han kan_; or an aggregation of half circles, called fish-scales,
_Gyo sin_; or a modification of these latter, called moving
fish-scales, _Go sin Katsu_.[61]
* * * * *
In regard to painting moving waters, whether deep or shallow, in
rivers or brooks, bays or oceans, Chinanpin declared it was
impossible for the eye to seize their exact forms because they are
ever changing and have no fixed, definite shape; therefore, they
cannot be sketched satisfactorily; yet, as moving water must be
represented in painting, it should be long and minutely
contemplated by the artist and its general character--whether
leaping in the brook, flowing in the river, roaring in the
cataract, surging in the ocean or lapping the shore--observed and
reflected upon, and after the eye and the memory are both
sufficiently trained and _the very soul of the artist is
saturated_, as it were, with this one subject, and he feels his
whole being calm and composed, he should retire to the privacy of
his studio and with the early morning sun to gladden his spirit
there attempt to reproduce the movement of the flow; _not by
copying what he has seen_, for the effect would be stiff and
wooden, but by symbolizing according to certain laws _what he feels
and remembers_.
* * * * *
It begins to be plain why the Japanese expert was profoundly interested
in the modern pictures and drawings.
* * * * *
One of the most important principles in the art of Japanese
painting--indeed a fundamental and entirely distinctive
characteristic--is that called living movement, _sei do_, or
_Kokoro machi_, it being, so to say, the transfusion into the work
of _the felt nature_ of the thing to be painted by the artist.
Whatever the subject to be translated--whether river or tree, rock
or mountain, bird or flower, fish or animal--the artist at the
_moment of painting it must feel its very nature_, which, by the
magic of his art, he transfers into his work to remain forever,
affecting all who see it with the same sensations he experienced
when executing it.
This is not an imaginary principle, but a strictly enforced law of
Japanese painting. The student is insistently admonished to observe
it. Should his subject be a tree he is urged when painting it to
_feel_ the _strength_ which shoots through the branches and
sustains the limbs; or if a flower to try to _feel_ the grace with
which it expands or bows its blossoms. Indeed, nothing is more
constantly urged upon his attention than this great _underlying
principle_ that it is _impossible to express in art what one does
not first feel_.
* * * * *
“Waga kokoro waga te woyaku
Waga te waga kokoro ni ozuru.”
Our spirit must make our hand its servitor;
Our hand must respond to each behest of our spirit.
[Illustration: SOUSA CARDOZA
Stronghold]
The Japanese artist is taught that even to the placing of a dot in
the eyeball of a tiger, he must _first feel_ the savage, cruel,
feline character of the beast, and only under such influence should
he apply the brush. If he paint a storm he must at the moment
_realize_ passing over him the very tornado which tears up trees
from their roots and houses from their foundations. Should he
depict the seacoast with its cliffs and moving waters, at the
moment of putting the wave-bound rocks into the picture he must
_feel_ that they are being placed there to resist the fiercest
movement of the ocean, while to the waves in turn he must give an
irresistible power to carry all before them. Thus, by this
sentiment called living movement (_sei do_), _reality_ is imparted
to the inanimate object. This is one of the marvelous secrets of
Japanese painting handed down from the great Chinese painters and
based on psychological principles--_matter responsive to mind_.[62]
* * * * *
In the light of the foregoing, one begins to understand why Winslow
Homer painted such wonderful realizations of the sea and rocky
coasts--he _lived_ removed from men, his most intimate friends the rocks
and waves.
One also begins to understand how painters who show great strength and
promise in their earlier works, based upon surroundings they know, lose
both strength and promise when, flushed by prosperity or attracted by
tinsel and glitter, they establish their studios in cities and still try
to paint the sea or the country.
* * * * *
Japanese artists are not bound down to the literal presentation of
things seen. They have a canon, called _esoragoto_, which literally
means an invented picture, or a picture into which certain fictions
are painted.
Every painting to be effective must be _esoragoto_; that is there
must enter therein certain artistic liberties. It should aim not so
much to reproduce the exact thing as its sentiment, called _kokoro
mochi_, which is the moving spirit of the scene; it must not be a
facsimile.
* * * * *
It is related that Okubo Shibutsu, famous for painting bamboo, was
requested to execute a kakemono representing a bamboo forest.
Consenting, he painted with all his well-known skill a picture in
which the entire bamboo grove was in red. The patron upon its
receipt marveled at the extraordinary skill with which the painting
had been executed, and, repairing to the artist’s residence, he
said:
“Master, I have come to thank you for the picture; but, excuse me,
you have painted the bamboo red.”
“Well,” cried the master, “in what color would you desire it?”
“In black, of course,” replied the patron.
“And who,” answered the artist, “ever saw a black-leaved bamboo?”
This story well illustrates _esoragoto_. The Japanese are so
accustomed to associate true color with what the _sumi_ [the black
so commonly used in Japan] stands for, that not only is fiction in
this respect permissible but actually missed when not employed.
* * * * *
_Esoragoto_ is a very good word for the Post-Impressionists to
appropriate. We have no word in English and I know of none in French
that is anywhere near its equivalent.
Impressionism is painting with a minimum of _esoragoto_;
Post-Impressionism is painting with a maximum of _esoragoto_.
The pendulum in art and literature swings from less _esoragoto_ to
more--from realistic transcription with a minimum of self, to idealistic
compositions with a _maximum_ of self.
* * * * *
All the great art of the world is _esoragoto_.
The greatest paintings in the world are indoor not outdoor
paintings--_in-self_ not _out-self_.
All the great Italian paintings and frescoes are creations of the
imagination. The portraits of Velasquez, Rembrandt, Hals are
_esoragoto_. They are the sitters idealized by the genius of the
artists. They are far removed from photographic realism.
Why are the portraits of the same man or woman painted by different
artists so unlike? Because each is more or less _esoragoto_--more or
less the reflection of the painter rather than the sitter.
* * * * *
For a long time we have been so influenced by the theories of the
Impressionists, the realists, the _plein-air_ school, that we resent it
when an artist says, “I will paint something more beautiful than nature;
I will paint nature herself more beautiful than she is. I will paint the
spirit of nature. I will paint trees that do not look like trees, but
will give you the feeling, the dignity, the power of trees. I will paint
the earth, not as it looks, but in a way that will give you an
impression of its fertility and fecundity. I will paint you flowers, not
by faithfully copying them as they are in the field, but as they bloom
and blossom in your memory. I will paint you men and women, not as you
see them on the street and in the drawing room--superficial
resemblances--but as they really are to you and to me, human beings the
true significance of which is not expressed in the drooping of a
moustache, the lifting of an eyebrow. I will paint them in black or
brown or red or blue, or in gold or bronze, as does the sculptor; I will
paint them in a way so strange you have never seen the like before, but
I will make you _feel_ their _humanity_.”
* * * * *
To illustrate the arbitrary manner which the great oriental artists use
colors to produce harmonious results irrespective of nature, I once used
a number of old Chinese paintings borrowed from a famous collection--in
each of which the hair of the figures was painted _blue_.
And why not? Black, brown, or flaxen would not have given the effect the
painter desired, any more than C, D, or E would take the place of F in a
chord.
The Oriental needs a note of blue and so paints the hair blue. And when
one comes to think of it, next to some marvelous shades of red, blue
hair is far more positive and picturesque than gray, or yellow, or any
black but a glossy raven.
We never think of resenting a terra cotta horse in a print by Hokusai;
it does not disturb us because we instinctively recognize the fact that
a strong note of terra cotta is needed precisely where it is used--a
terra cotta horse, or rock, or man, it matters not.
* * * * *
Human faces of gold, silver, bronze, even marble--that ugliest of all
stones, in its natural state--do not worry us.
In fact when we look at marble sculpture we are in the attitude of the
man who ordered the painting of the bamboo forest. We are so accustomed
to seeing ghostly white marble busts and statues we actually resent it
if the sculptor _stains_ or _colors_ the marble not to make it more
realistic, but to make it _more beautiful_.
Yet all Greek sculpture was painted or treated with wax in such a manner
the harshness of the stone was modified. The sensitive vision of the
Greeks could not tolerate the cold, hard whiteness.
Much of our enjoyment of ancient sculpture is due to its discoloration,
to what time and the elements have done to its surfaces.
* * * * *
Our appreciation of art will never be true until we can gaze with
unprejudiced eye upon any combination of lines and colors the artist
chooses to use.
So long as we demand that he shall use only those combinations we are
accustomed to, just so long do _we_ by _our_ attitude check his
development.
The average man is bewildered by the new and the strange; he is
bewildered by new cities, new countries, new peoples, new pictures, new
sculpture, new architecture, new music, new books, new ideas--because he
is not used to them and does not understand them; he does not know
whether to like them or not so he condemns them in order to make a
pretense of knowing.
* * * * *