THE DOMINION OF ART OVER NATURE: PAINTING
In literature, as we observed in our last two chapters, nature does
not find aesthetic expression on its own account. In the lyric, nature
appears only as the reflection of personal moods and thoughts, in the
drama and novel and epic only as the theater of human action or the
determiner of human fate. In painting and sculpture, on the other hand,
the expression of nature is the primary aim. Of course, in so far as
this expression is aesthetic, it is an expression not of nature alone,
but of our responses as well; but nature is the starting point, not
emotion as in lyric poetry, nor the effect upon destiny as in the epic.
Because they are expressions of nature, and because the copying of the
human body, of trees, clouds, and the like is an indispensable part
of their practice, painting and sculpture have seemed to give support
to the theory of art as imitation. Yet, although the activity of
imitation is a means to the creation of picture and statue, the mere
fact of being a copy is not the purpose of the completed work nor the
ground of our pleasure in it. Not its relation to anything outside
itself, no matter how important for its making, but its own intrinsic
qualities constitute its aesthetic worth.
This was true of the earliest efforts in these arts. The primitive
artist copied not for the sake of copying, but because he ascribed a
magical power to images. In the image he believed he somehow possessed
the object itself, and so could control it; to the image, therefore,
was transferred all the value and potence of the object. The object
represented was deeply significant; it was perhaps the animal upon
which the tribe depended for its food, its totem or guardian divinity;
or else, as among the Egyptians, it was the man himself, of whom the
image was meant to be an enduring habitation for the soul. If primitive
men had copied indifferent objects, then we might infer that the mere
making of an image was the end in view; but this they did not do, and
it has never been the practice of any vigorous group of artists. Only
when the means are valued instead of the end--technique in place of
beauty--does this occur. Through such a mistaking of aims, new
instruments of expression may be discovered, useful for a future genius,
but no genuine art is produced. The genuine artist copies, not for the
sake of copying, but in order to create a work of independent beauty.
This same transference of value to the image, with the consequent
freeing of the image from the model, can be observed even in
commemorative art. A king desires, perhaps, to perpetuate his memory;
how better than through some enduring likeness in stone or paint? While
he is alive and after his death this image will remind his subjects
of him and his valorous deeds. The relation to the model seems to be
fundamental; but in proportion to the success of the artist in making
a likeness, the stone or paint will be made to seem all alive, and for
those who cannot come into direct relations with the monarch, he will
be effectively present in the statue or picture, even when, through
death, he is removed from all social and practical relations. Who does
not feel that Philip the Fourth is present on the Velasquez canvas;
where else could one find him so alive? If the work is artistic, the
spectator's interest will center in feeling the life in the color and
line or sculptured form; that it happens to be an imitation of something
else will become of secondary importance. This is clearest when the
name of the subject is not known; then surely it is the life before
us that can alone concern us. Any feeble copy would serve as a reminder,
but a living drawing or statue brings the man or woman into our
presence. The aesthetic interest in the work as living supervenes upon
the interest in it as a mere reminder of life.
This freedom from the model and attainment of intrinsic worth in the
work of art itself is furthered through the realization of beauty in
the medium of expression. The colors, lines, and shapes which the
artist uses have a direct appeal to the eye and through the eye to
feeling; hence arise preferences for the most agreeable and expressive.
The artist discovered that he could express his emotion not only through
representing its object, but through the very colors or lines or shapes
used in the delineation. These effects, found by chance perhaps in the
first instance, would later be striven for consciously. In this way,
through some grace of line, or symmetry of form, or harmony of color,
the statue or picture would acquire a power to please quite independent
of any ulterior use or purpose; once more, it would become alive and
of value on its own account.
We shall begin our study of the representative arts with drawing and
painting--representation in two dimensions--not because they preceded
sculpture historically, but because, being more complex arts, a solution
of the problems which they raise makes a subsequent survey of the
similar problems of the simpler art relatively easy.
The media of pictorial expression are color and line, and expression
is attained through them in a twofold fashion. In a picture, every
element of color or line is expressive directly, just as color and
line, of some vague feeling or mood, and, in addition, chiefly through
its resemblance, represents some action or object. The former kind of
expression is indispensable. No matter how realistic the imitation,
unless the picture thrill like music, through its mere colors or lines,
it is aesthetically relatively ineffective. It is not sufficient that
the picture move us through the vicarious presence on the canvas of
a moving object; it must stir us in a more immediate fashion through
the direct appeal of sense. For example, a picture which presents us
with a semblance of the sea will hold us through the power which the
sea has over us; but it will not hold us so fast as a picture of the
same subject which, in addition, grips us through its greens and blues
and wavy lines. The one sways us only through the imagination, the
other through our senses as well.
Sensitiveness to color as such, so self-evident to one who possesses
it, seems to be wanting, except in rudimentary fashion, in a great
many people. They are probably few, however, who do not feel some
stirrings when they look through the stained glass of a cathedral
window or upon the red of Venetian glass, or who are entirely
indifferent to the color of silk. The reason for emotional
color-blindness is probably not a native incapacity to be affected,
but rather a diversion of attention; color has come to be only a sign
for the recognition and subsequent use of things, a signal for a
practical or intellectual reaction. In our haste to recognize and use
we fail to see, and give ourselves no time to be moved by mere seeing.
But when, as in art, contemplation, the filling of the mind with the
object, is the aim, the power to move of the sensuous surface of things
may come again into its rights.
The emotional response to color, vague and abstract and objectless,
is, like music, incapable of adequate expression in words, and for the
same reason. Words are capable of expressing only the larger and fairly
well-defined emotions; such subtle shadings and complex mixtures of
feeling as are conveyed by color and sound are mostly beyond their
ken. Colors make us feel and dream as music does in the same
incommunicable fashion. Or rather the only possibility of communicating
them is through the color schemes arousing them. And for one who
appreciates color this is sufficient; he can point to the colors and
say--that is what I feel. To render his feeling also in words would
be a superfluous business, supposing they could be adequate to express
it; or, if they were adequate, that would make expression through color
superfluous. The value of any medium consists in its power to express
what none other can. Nevertheless, it is possible to find rough verbal
equivalents for the simpler colors. Thus every one would probably agree
with Lipps and call a pure yellow happy, a deep blue quiet and earnest,
red passionate, violet wistful; would perhaps feel that orange partakes
at once of the happiness of yellow and the passion of red, while green
partakes of the happiness of yellow and the quiet of blue; and in
general that the brighter and warmer tones are joyful and exciting,
the darker and colder, more inward and restful.
To explain the expressiveness of color sensations is as difficult as
to account for the parallel phenomenon in sounds. Here as there resort
is had to the principle of association. Colors get, it is thought,
their value for feeling either through some connection with emotionally
toned objects, like vegetation, light, the sky, blood, darkness, and
fire, or else through some relation to emotional situations, like
mourning or danger, which they have come to symbolize. And there is
little doubt that such associations play a part in determining the
emotional meaning of colors--the reticence and distance of blue, the
happiness of yellow, for example, are partly explained through the
fact that blue is the color of the sky, yellow the color of sunlight;
the meaning of black is due, partly at any rate, to association with
mourning. Yet neither of these types of association seems sufficient
to explain the full emotional meaning of colors. The conventional
meanings of colors seem rather themselves to need explanation than to
serve as explanations--why is red the sign of danger, purple royal,
white a symbol of purity, black a symbol of mourning? Is it not because
these colors had some native, original expressiveness which fashion
and habit have only made more definite and turned to special uses? And
if we can explain the reticence of blue through association with the
sky, can we thus explain its quietness? Can the warmth of fire and the
excitement of blood explain quite all the depth of passionate feeling
in red? The factors enumerated play a part in the complex effect, but
there seem to be elements still unaccounted for.
In order to explain the total phenomenon we must admit, as in the case
of tones, some direct effect of the sensory light stimulus upon the
feelings. Rays of light affect not only the sensory apparatus, causing
sensations of color; their influence is prolonged into the motor
channels, causing a total attitude of the organism, the correlate of
a feeling. It would be strange if any sensory stimulus were entirely
cut off by itself and did not find its way into the motor stream. But
these overflows are too diffuse to be noticed in ordinary experience;
they are obscured through association or are not given time to rise
to the level of clear consciousness, because we are preoccupied with
the practical or cognitive significance of the colors; only in the
quiet and isolation of contemplation can they come into the focus. Of
course the student of the evolution of mind will want to go behind
these color emotions and inquire why a given color is connected with
a given reaction. He may even want to connect them with instinctive
responses of primitive men. But here we can only speculate; we cannot
know.
The problem is further complicated through the fact that private color-
associations are formed obscuring the aesthetic meanings, which can
be rediscovered only through the elimination of the former. Color
preferences are often determined in this way; yet sometimes they spring
from another and more radical source--an affinity between personal
temperament and the feeling tone of the preferred color. A consistent
choice of blues and grays indicates a specific kind of man or woman,
very different from the chooser of yellows and reds.
Although single color tones are expressive, they seldom exist alone
in works of art. Significant expression requires variety. The invention
of original and expressive color combinations is a rare gift of genius.
Rough rules of color combination have been devised from the practice
of artists and from experiment, the following of which will enable one
to produce faultless patterns, but without genius will never enable
one to create a new expression. Color combinations are either harmonious
or balanced, the former produced by colors or tones of colors very
close to one another, the latter by the contrasting or widely sundered.
In the one case, we get the quiet commingling of feelings akin to each
other; in the other, the lively tension of feelings opposed. Compare,
for example, the effect of a Whistler nocturne with a Monet landscape.
The colors that do not go well together are such as are not close
enough for union nor far enough apart for contrast. They are like
personalities not sufficiently at one to lose themselves in each other,
yet not sufficiently unlike to be mutually stimulating and enlarging,
between whom there can be only a fruitless rivalry turning into hate.
Such are certain purples and reds, certain greens and blues. Yet,
through proper mediation, any two colors can be brought into a
composition. All colors are brought together in nature through the
sunlight, and in painting or weaving by giving to rival colors the
same sheen or brightness. Or again, the union may be effected by
combining the two with a third which is in a relation of balance or
harmony with each, as in the favorite scheme of blue, red, and green.
Despite their ability to express, colors cannot stand alone; they must
be the colors of something, they must make line or shape. Lines, on
the other hand, seem to be independent of color, as in drawings and
etchings; yet there is really some color even there--black and white
and tones of gray. That color and line are independent of one another
in beauty, is, however, shown by works, such as Millet's, which are
good in line but poor in color. Lines have, as we have already seen,
the same duality of function as colors: they express feeling directly
through their character as mere lines and they represent objects by
suggesting them through resemblance.
There is, in fact, for those who can feel it, a life in lines of the
same abstract and objectless sort as exists in colors and tones. Lines
give rise to motor impulses and make one feel and dream, as music does.
There are many who are cold to this effect; yet few can fail to get
something of the vibration or mood of the lines of a Greek vase
painting, a Botticelli canvas, or a Rembrandt etching. The life of
lines is more allied to that of tones than of colors because it
possesses a dynamic movement quality which is absent from the latter.
This life is, in fact, twofold: on the one hand it is a career, with
a beginning, middle, and end, something to be willed or enacted; on
the other hand it is a temperament or character, a property of the
line as a whole, to be felt. These two aspects of aesthetic lines are
closely related; they stand to one another much as the temperament or
character of a man stands to his life history, of which it is at once
the cause and the result. Just as we get a total impression of a man's
nature by following the story of his life, so we get the temperamental
quality of lines by following them with the eye; and just as all of
our knowledge of a man's acts enters into our intuition of his nature,
so we discover the character of the total line by a synthesis of its
successive elements.
It is as difficult, more difficult, perhaps, to put into words the
temperamental quality of lines as to do the parallel thing with colors.
Lines are infinite in their possible variations, and the fine shades
of feeling which they may express exceed the number of words in the
emotional vocabulary of any language. Moreover, in any drawing, the
character of each line is partly determined through the context of
other lines; you cannot take it abstractly with entire truth. It is,
however, possible to find verbal equivalents for the character of the
main types of lines. Horizontal lines convey a feeling of repose, of
quiet, as in the wall-paintings of Puvis de Chavannes; vertical lines,
of solemnity, dignity, aspiration, as in so much of the work of
Boecklin; crooked lines of conflict and activity, as in the woodcuts
of Durer; while curved lines have always been recognized as soft and
voluptuous and tender, as in Correggio and Renoir. The supposition
that the curved line is the sole "line of beauty" is the result of a
narrow and effeminate idea of the aesthetic; yet it must be admitted
that this form, since it permits of the greatest amount of variation,
has the highest power of expression; but in many of its more complex
varieties it loses much of its soft feminine quality, and takes on
some of the strength of the other forms.
The expressiveness of lines is determined by several--at least three--
factors. In the first place, the perception of lines is an active
process. In order to get a line we have to follow it with the eye; and
if we do not now follow it with our fingers, we at least followed
similar lines thus in the past. Now this process of the perception of
a line requires of us an energy of attention to the successive elements
of the line as we pass over them and a further expenditure of energy
in remembering and synthesizing them into a whole. This energy, since
it is evoked by the line and is not connected with any definite inner
striving of the self, is felt by us to belong to the line, to be an
element in its life, as clearly its own as its shape. For example, a
line with many sudden turns or changes of direction is an energetic
and exciting line because it demands in perception a constant and
difficult and shifting attention; a straight line, on the contrary,
because simple and unvarying in its demands upon the attention, is
monotonous and reposeful; while the curved line, with its lawful and
continuous changes, at once stimulating yet never distracting attention,
possesses the character of progressive and happy action. This, the
primary source of the vital interpretation of lines is supplemented
by elements derived from association. Lines suggest to us the movements
of our bodies along paths of similar form, and we interpret them
according to the feeling of these movements; in the imagination, we
may seem to move along the very lines themselves as paths. Every skater
or runner knows the difficulty of moving along a path full of sudden
turns and angles, a difficulty which, if he is in good trim, may
nevertheless afford him pleasure in the overcoming; the delightful and
various ease of moving along curved lines; the monotony of a long,
straight path, but the quick triumph of going right to the end along
a short and terminal line of this character. But lines suggest to us
not only the movements, but also the attitudes of our bodies. They may
be straight and rising,--rigid or dignified or joyously expanding;
they may be horizontal and lie down and rest; they may be falling and
sorrowful; or the shapes whose outlines they form may be heavy or
light, delicate or ungainly or graceful, as bodies are. Finally, the
interpretation of lines may be further enriched as follows: The sight
of a line suggests the drawing of it, the sweep of the brush that made
it; we ourselves, in the imagination once more, may re-create the line
after the artist, and feel, just as he must have felt, the mastery,
ease, vigor, or delicacy of the execution into the line itself. Few
can fail to get this effect from the paintings of Franz Hals, for
example, where the abounding energy of the artist is apparent in each
stroke of the brush. Artists feel this life in execution most strongly;
yet, since almost every one has had some practice in drawing lines,
it is potentially a universal quality in a painting.
Lines may be unified according to the three modes of harmony, balance,
and evolution. The repetition of the same kind of line confers a
harmonious unification upon a drawing, as in Tintoretto's "Bacchus and
Ariadne," where the circle is to be found repeated in the crown and
ring, in the heads of the three figures, in the breasts of Ariadne.
Similar to this sameness of form is sameness of direction or parallelism
of lines. Another kind of harmonious unification of lines is continuity,
where out of different lines or shapes a single line is made. The
classical geometrical forms of composition, as the circular or
pyramidal, are good examples of this. The "Odalisque" of Ingres, where
all the lines of the body constitute a single line, is a notable case.
What Ruskin has called "the approach, intersection, interweaving of
lines, like the sea waves on the shore,"--the conspiracy of all the
lines in a drawing to form one single network, of which illustrations
could be found in the work of every draftsman, is a kind of harmony
of line. Symmetrically disposed shapes, and lines whose directions are
opposed, have the balanced form of unity. Here, from a given point as
center, the attention is drawn in contrary yet equal ways. Examples
of this type of composition are abundant among the Old Masters; as a
rigid form it is, however, disappearing. That the dramatic type of
unity is to be found in lines will be confirmed by every one who has
observed the movement, the career of lines. Whenever shapes are so
disposed that they form a line leading up to a given shape, wherever,
again, lines converge to a single point, there is a clear case of
evolution; we begin by attending to the line at a certain point, proceed
in a certain direction, then reach a terminal point, the goal of the
process. In Leonardo's "Last Supper," the convergence of the perspective
lines and the lines formed by the groups of Apostles is a case of
evolution. The different types of unification are, of course, not
exclusive. In the painting just referred to, all three are present:
Christ and the Apostles are arranged along a single line, the two ends
of which, despite their symmetrical and balanced disposition, converge
to one central point, the Christ. Every pyramidal form of composition
is a combination of balance between the elements at the bases of the
triangle, convergence towards the apex, and harmony through the
participation of the three elements in a single form. One of the most
interesting and complex types of organization of lines is rhythm--the
balanced, harmonious movement of lines. A line is rhythmical when there
is a balanced alternation of direction in its movement, a turning now
to the right and now to the left, or vice versa; proportion in the
length of the segments made by the turns; and general direction--a
tending somewhere.
As is assumed in the preceding paragraph, the elements of lines may
be shapes or masses, as well as points. That is, not only do lines
made up of points form shapes, but shapes in their turn, when arranged
on a surface, necessarily make lines. Such lines are, as a rule, not
continuous; yet since the eye takes the shapes successively and in a
given direction, they are nevertheless true lines and possess the
qualities of ordinary simple lines. The arrangement of masses in an
undulating line, say in a landscape painting, has essentially the same
value for feeling as a similar continuous line; compare this with a
horizontal arrangement of masses, which has all the quiet and repose
of a simple horizontal line.
Colors and lines, relying on the direct expressiveness which we have
been studying, may stand by themselves, as in an oriental rug; yet in
painting they have another function: to represent. And even in the
purely ornamental use of color and line, the tendency towards
representation is apparent everywhere; either the lines are derivatives
of schematized pictures of men and plants and animals, or else such
objects are introduced as motives without disguise. In painting,
therefore, the color red has value not only as so much red, but as
standing for the red of a girl's lips or cheeks; and that curved line
is of significance, not as mere line alone, but as the curve of her
limbs. In this way the native value of the sense symbols becomes
suffused and enriched with the values of the things they represent.
The two functions of color and of line should never be indifferent to
each other; representation should not become a mere excuse for
decoration, the objects represented having no value in themselves; nor
should color and line be used as mere signs of interesting objects,
without reference to their intrinsic value. On the contrary, the two
functions should play into each other's hands. If, for example, the
human body is represented, the colors and lines employed should be so
disposed that they decorate the surface of the picture and hold us
there through their sheer rhythm and quality; yet, at the same time,
and through their very ornamental power, they should make us feel the
more keenly the values of the object they represent. Between the
immediate values of the colors and lines there should exist unity:
stimulating colors should go with stimulating lines, quiet colors with
quiet lines; and the resulting feeling tone of the medium should be
in harmony with the feeling of the objects represented; the one should
give the other over again, and so each enforce the other.
Since it is not the purpose of any art to represent mere things, but
to express concrete "states of the soul," the center of which is always
some feeling, exact fidelity in the representation of objects is not
necessary for good painting or drawing. Only so much of things needs
to be represented as is necessary to give back the life of them.
Necessary above all is the object as a whole, for to this our feelings
are attached; now this can usually be far better represented through
an impressionistic sketch, which gives only the significant features,
than by a painstaking and detailed drawing. Since, furthermore, the
life of things can be conveyed through color and line as such, a certain
departure from realism is legitimate for this end. Without some freedom
from the exact truth of the colors and lines of things, the artist is
unable to choose and compose them for expressive purposes; when exactly
like the objects which they represent, they tend to lose all expressive
power of their own, becoming mere signs or equivalents of things. A
certain amount of variation from the normal may be necessary in order
that the sense symbols shall call attention to themselves, in order
that we be prevented, as we are not in the ordinary observation of
nature, from looking through them to the things which they mean.
Whenever, moreover, the artist wishes to render a unique reaction to
a scene, he can do so only through a courageous use of the subtle
language of color and line, which may require a distortion of the
"real" local qualities of things; for, if he makes a plain, realistic
copy of the scene itself, he can evoke, and so express, only the normal
emotional responses to it.
When such departures from the truth of things are properly motivated,
no one can be offended by them, any more than when the brilliant hues
of nature appear black and white in a charcoal drawing. The amount of
realism in any work of art is largely a matter of tacit convention.
An artist may, if he wishes, use color with no pretense at giving back
the real colors of objects, but for purely expressive purposes alone,
relying on line for purposes of representation. This is often done in
Japanese prints. All that is necessary is that we should understand
what the artist is doing and find what he presents to us real and
alive. On the other hand, an expressive use of color and line leading
to a distortion of objects out of all possibility of recognition, or
even a use which makes them seem unreal and awry, is without excuse.
For since colors and lines are employed to bring things before the
imagination, they should be made to serve this purpose successfully;
the value which belongs to the things should have a chance to appear;
but this can happen only if they seem to be actually present before
us. Painting is not a mere music of color and line expressive of
abstract and objectless emotions alone, but a poetry, which, through
the picturing of objects to which emotions are attached, renders the
latter concrete and definite. Not mere feeling, such as a color or a
line by itself can convey, but feeling in the presence of nature, which
can be expressed only when color and line are made into a recognizable
image of nature, is the substance of painting. One cannot express the
feeling of the weight and bulk of objects, of their distribution in
three dimensions, or the value of their shadows or atmospheric
enveloping, without the representation of weight and bulk and shadow
and atmosphere and perspective. Every increase in the power to represent
nature, every advance in the mastery of the object, adds a new power
over the expression of feeling, which varies with the object. The
realist is, therefore, right in his demand that nature itself be
painted; only he should remember that the nature which presents itself
in art is never the naked object, but veiled in feeling; and, as so
veiled, may sometimes be seen pretty much as it really is; then again
with parts concealed, and sometimes even transformed. Both a realism
that tries to unite fidelity to the full qualities of the object with
musical expression in the medium, and so to render the more typical
responses to nature, which depend, for the most part, on the object
itself, and a symbolism or expressionism that sacrifices fidelity for
the expression, through the mere medium, of more personal responses,
are in their rights. Only the limits of both tendencies are
illegitimate--the use of color and line to produce mere images of
things on the one hand, or purely musical effects on the other.
The subject matter or content of painting is determined by its language,
color, and line. These, as we have seen, by an imitation more or less
exact, represent nature, the world of concrete things as directly
presented to us in vision, colored and shapely. The inner world is
expressed only so far as it is revealed in the gestures and attitudes
of the bodies of men or so far as it is a mood attached to things and
their colors and shapes. Now space is the universal container in which
all elements of the visible world are disposed. Every painting,
therefore, should include a representation of space; it should never
represent things as if they stood alone without environment or relation.
Even in the portrait of a single individual some relation to space
should be indicated; this is accomplished by the background, in which
the figures should be made to lie, and to which they should seem to
belong. In front, the space of a picture is limited by the plane of
the surface on which it is painted; everything should appear to belong
in the space back of this; nothing should seem to come forward out
towards the spectator. But behind this, backwards, the space represented
is unlimited, and its infinite depths may well be indicated by the
convergence of perspective lines and the gradual fading of the outlines
and colors of objects.
The represented space of the picture is not, of course, the real space
of the canvas or of the room in which the picture hangs. The former
is infinite, while the latter is only so many square feet in area. The
frame serves the purpose of cutting off the represented space from all
relation to the real space, of which the frame itself is a part. A
confusion of these two spaces is sometimes found in crude work and in
the comments of people upon genuine works of art. I have, for example,
seen a picture of a lion with iron bars riveted to the frame and
extending over it,--a represented lion in a real cage! And I once heard
a man criticise one of Degas' paintings on the ground that "if the
dancing girl were to straighten her bent body she would bump her head
on the frame!" The rule that the color of the frame should harmonize
with the main tones of the picture is no proof that they belong
together; its purpose is merely to protect the colors of the painting
from being changed through their neighborhood with those of the frame.
Although painting is essentially a spatial art, it includes a temporal
element, the "specious present," the single moment of action or of
motion. The lines are not dead and static, but alive; they progress
and vibrate; by their means a smile, the rippling of a stream, the
gesture of surprise, the movement of a dance, may be depicted.
Successive moments, the different phases of an action or movement,
cannot, however, be represented. Strict unities of space and time
should be observed in painting. Only contiguous parts of space and
only one moment of time should be represented inside a single frame.
Both these unities were violated in old religious paintings where
sometimes the Nativity, Flight into Egypt, Crucifixion, and Resurrection
were all portrayed on one canvas.
The space of painting is no abstract aspect of things such as the
geometer elaborates. To be in a common space with other things, implies,
for the pictorial intuition of the world, to be played upon by the
same light and to be enveloped in the same atmosphere. Space, light,
and air constitute the milieu in which everything lives and moves and
has its being in painting. To every difference in the arrangement and
foreshortening of objects, to every variation in their lights and
shadows and aerial quality, the sensitive soul responds. The close
proximity of objects in a tiny room has an effect upon feeling very
different from their wide distribution over a broad space. An equal
difference depends upon whether light is concentrated upon objects or
evenly distributed over them; upon whether it is bright or dim; upon
whether they are near and clear in a thin air or far and hazy in a
thick and heavy cloud. The masters of light and air, Rembrandt, Claude,
Turner, evoke myriad moods through these subtle influences. A long
development and the following of many false paths was necessary before
painting discovered its true function as an expression of the elements,
the once hard outlines of things softening in their enveloping embrace.
The representation of space, which painting alone of all the arts can
achieve, does not imply, however, a representation of the full plastic
quality of individual objects, which is the function of sculpture.
This, to be sure, can be done in painting, as the great
sculptor-painters of the Renaissance have shown; but it cannot be done
so well as in sculpture; and when done tends to interfere with other
things. It makes objects stand out too much by themselves, destroying
their felt unity with other elements on the canvas, so that when
provided with all the colors of life, they seem rather real than
painted, and look as if they wished to leave the world of
representation, where they belong, and touch hands with the spectator.
The depth and the extent of space, the distance and the distribution
of objects, light and shade and air, are all independent of the
plasticity of individual things, which tends to disappear in proportion
as they are emphasized. Only when attention is directed to the
individual object does its full plasticity appear; see it as an element
of the environing whole, and it flattens out to view.
There are, in fact, two ways of seeing, to each of which corresponds
a mode of painting. On the one hand, we may see distributively, holding
objects as individuals each in our attention, neglecting light and
space and air. Or else we may see synthetically, first the whole which
light and space and air compose, and then individual things as bearers
of these. The one is the more practical way of seeing; because, for
practical purposes, the separate thing that can be grasped and used
is all important, and the film of light and air and the neighborhood
of other things are of no account. The other is more theoretical and
sthetic; for to a pure vision which does not think of handling, there
are no separate things, but only differences of shape and color and
location in a single object, the visible whole. [Footnote: Cf. Lipps,
_Aesthetik_, Bd. 2, s. 165, et seq.]
In the type of painting corresponding to the first way of seeing,
objects are represented more as we think them to be, or as we should
find them on further exploration, than as they actually appear to sight
at any given moment; the outlines are clear and sharp and detail is
emphasized. This mode of painting is most in place for interiors where
there is an even distribution and no striking effects of light and
shade, as in so many genre pictures of the Dutch school; but above all
when the human significance of objects or their dramatic relations,
which depend upon their being taken as separate things, is to be
expressed. For example, to get the expression of the action of a woman
pouring water into a jug, it is necessary that we feel the shape and
color of the latter as aspects of a tangible reality having a distinct
purpose, that of holding water; and this purposefulness makes of the
object a separate, individual thing. Yet a too great distinction of
objects and a too great elaboration of detail, as in Meissonier and
the English Pre-Raphaelites, is inartistic; the picture breaks up into
separate parts and all feeling of unity is lost. In the work of the
Flemish and Dutch, on the contrary, we take delight in the perspicuity
of things without losing the sense of wholeness; for there is a sameness
and simplicity of color tone which unites them. A genuine and unique
sthetic value is possessed by such work,--that of clear intuition of
the visual detail and human significance of things.
Very often the unification in painting of this type is dramatic
chiefly--some link of action or of symbolism which the elements of
the picture have as meanings, a unity of content, therefore, and not
a coloristic or a linear unity. The colors are essentially local colors,
serving first to characterize and distinguish the objects properly,
and then to lend to them severally high value through brightness and
temperament; although harmonizing as mere colors, they are held together
more through some connection in what they mean than through a unity
of pure expression. The dominance of any one mass, too, depends more
upon its superior significance as meaning than upon its claim upon the
attention through any intrinsic quality of color. Nevertheless, even
if secondary, the unity and dominance through color and line must be
present, and should be consonant with the unity and subordination in
the meanings. The painting of the great Italian masters was of this
character. In a Madonna picture, for example, the elements representing
the Holy Family are united through the spiritual oneness of the objects
which they represent, and the Madonna is dominant through her superior
significance for the religious life. The colors serve to characterize
and distinguish the figures; yet between the former there is a harmony
corresponding to the inner harmony of the latter; the spiritual
dominance of the Madonna is expressed in a purely formal fashion through
her larger size, central position, and more brightly gleaming garments.
In painting which corresponds to the synthetic way of seeing, all
particular objects are subordinated to space and light and air; their
outlines are melting, suggested rather than seen, and there is little
emphasis on detail. Turner's painting of light and the more recent
examples of impressionism afford abundant examples of this. In this
style, unification is effected almost wholly through color and line
as such, and through the light and space and air which they represent.
Just to live in the same atmosphere or in the path of the same light,
to be enveloped in the same darkness or shadow, or merely to participate
in a single composition of colors or rhythm of lines serves to unite
objects. The relative importance of elements, too, is determined rather
by some intrinsic quality which arrests attention than by any supremacy
as meanings.
Through such materials and methods as we have described, the
possibilities and limits of expression in painting are determined.
First of all, painting has the power, through color and line as such,
to express the purely musical emotions; this we demand of painting
just as we demand music of verse: without word-music, there is no
poetry, no matter how high the theme; so without color and line music,
no matter how skillful the representation or how noble the subject,
there is no picture. Painting may give little more than this. In much
of still-life painting, for example, the values attached to the objects
represented are borrowed from the music of the medium. And even when
the objects represented have a value in themselves, the superiority
of their representation over the mere perception of them in nature
comes from this source. Why, for example, does the painting of flowers
by a real master afford a richer aesthetic experience than real flowers?
Painted flowers have no perfume, rightly called the soul of flowers.
It is because in painting the expressiveness of the purer and more
subtly harmonious colors more than compensates for the lack of odor.
Through the music of color and line we are made responsive to common
things which otherwise would leave us cold, or if we are responsive
to them, our sensitiveness becomes finer and keener. It is largely
because he is so accomplished a musician in color and composition that
Jan Vermeer can make the inside of a room or some commonplace act by
a commonplace person the object of an intense and sympathetic
contemplation.
For the beauty of landscape also, which the art of painting has created
and which during the last century has become its favorite theme, the
music of color is equally essential. In its highest form, that beauty
requires emotional responsiveness combined with the power accurately
to observe and reproduce the qualities of things; without observation
and reproduction, the feeling is incommunicable; without feeling, the
imitation is lifeless. Love of the object, which at once reveals and
makes responsive, mediates the highest achievements of the art. By
translating the object into the language of abstract color and line,
it is purified for feeling; for those qualities toward which feeling
is indifferent are eliminated; only so much as can enter into an
expressive color or line composition survives. The artist gives us the
illusion that he is reproducing our familiar world all the while that
he is glorifying it through the beauty of the colors in which he paints
it. The painting of the human body, especially the nude human body,
belongs to the same class of subjects as the painting of landscapes.
For the human body unclothed, and as unclothed severed from the
conventional social world, is a part of nature and speaks to us as
nature does through form and color. To bring that object before us
with all its expressive detail; to make us, in the imagination, move
with it and touch it; to caress it with our eyes; to awaken that
passionate interest which makes us see and feel it more vividly than
anything else in the world, yet to subdue passion wholly to a glowing
contemplation, this is one of the highest achievements of pictorial
art. And the artistic right to represent it in the woods by lake or
stream, or in the meadow among other natural things, must be accorded
to the artist despite all protests of convention and habit; we never
actually find it there, to be sure, yet there it belongs for imaginative
feelings. The maidens in Corot's paintings, for example, seem to belong
as naturally to the landscape as the very trees themselves.
But the painter can depict the human body not merely as something
sensuously beautiful, but as expressive, through gesture and pose and
countenance, of character and thought. The complex psychic life of man
is thus open to him for delineation. In the portrait, through the
attentive study of the many varying expressions of the inner life,
leading to the selection of some characteristic pose or action, the
artist concentrates into a single image what seems to him to be the
distinctive nature of the man. And he can express this nature over
again, and so more effectively reveal it, in the mere colors and lines
which he uses. Thus Franz Hals has embodied the abundance and good
cheer of his burghers in the boldness and brightness of the lines and
colors with which he paints them; and Hogarth, in the "Shrimp Girl,"
through the mere singularity of line and color, has created the eerie
impression which we attach to the girl herself. The best portraits
subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the
painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls
of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which
must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the
same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and
if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the
portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal
characters; ideal, not in the sense of good, but in the sense of more
highly complex and unified than actually existing persons. Such pictures
symbolize for us the quintessence and highest level of definite types
of life. Manet's "Olympia" and Goya's "Maja" belong here equally with
Leonardo's "Christ" or "Mona Lisa," with Raphael's Madonnas and
Michelangelo's gods and angels. In them is attained the most intense
concentration of psychic life possible.
It is now pretty generally recognized that the unities of time and
space exclude from the sphere of painting story telling and history,
which require for effective representation more than the single moment
included in painting. In order to tell a story in painting, one has
to supplement what is seen with ideas which can be obtained only from
a catalogue or other source external to the picture; one has to add
in thought to the moment given on the canvas the missing moments of
the action. But a work of art should be complete in itself and so far
as possible self-explanatory; it should not lead us away from itself,
but keep us always to itself. If the scene represented be a part of
a story, the story should be so well known that its connection with
the picture can be immediately recognized without external aid, and
should admit of a certain completeness in its various parts. The life
of Christ is such a story; everybody knows it and can interpret a
picture portraying it forthwith; its various incidents and situations
have each a unique and complete significance in themselves. Historical
paintings are not necessarily bad, of course, but the good ones are
good despite the history, and a proof of their excellence consists in
the fact that when we see them they make us forget for the moment our
historical erudition.
This norm does not exclude from the sphere of painting the expression
of the relation of man to his fellows; it simply confines painting to
the delineation of momentary and self-sufficient glimpses of social
life. Pictures representing a mother and child, a pair of lovers, a
family group, festival, tavern scene, or battle charge are
illustrations. In Dutch painting the social life of Holland in the
seventeenth century found its record; yet there is little or no
anecdote. The genre, the representation of a group of people united
by some common interest and with an appropriate background, has the
same legitimacy, if not the same eminence, as the portrait. It does
not possess the rank of the portrait because, since the interest is
rather in the action or the situation portrayed, the figures are more
merely typical, being developed only so far as is necessary to carry
the action; seldom is a subtle and individualized inner life portrayed.
Objections are rightly raised, however, against pathetic, sentimental,
and moralistic painting. Here color and line, the whole picture in
fact, counts for little or nothing except to stir an emotion, usually
of grief or pity or love, or to preach a sermon; the unity of form and
content is sacrificed, the one becoming a mere means to the other.
But, as we know, it is never the purpose of art merely to stir feeling;
its purpose is to objectify feeling; if the art be painting, to put
feeling into color and line, and only when feeling is experienced as
_there_ is it aesthetic feeling at all. And what shall we think
of a picture like the "Doctor" of Luke Fildes', which is so pathetic
that one cannot bear to look at it? Surely a picture should make one
want to see it! Of course I do not mean that an artist cannot paint
pathetic and sentimental subjects. The great painters of the Passion
would disprove that with reference to the former and Watteau with
reference to the latter. But a power to achieve beauty of color and
line and to objectify pathos and sentiment through them was possessed
by these painters to a degree to which few others have attained. For
moralistic painting, however, there can be no excuse. You can paint
visible things and as much of the soul as can appear through them; you
cannot paint abstract ethical maxims. Of course a painter may intend
his picture to be an illustration of some moral maxim, or may even,
as Hogarth did, paint it to expose the sins of his age and create a
beautiful work notwithstanding; but only if, in the result, this purpose
is irrelevant and the concrete delineation everything.