Art Principles with Special Reference to Painting. Ernest Govett

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СКАЧАТЬ In dealing with the divine the artist need place no limit to his imagination in the presentation of his picture, whereas with the superman he must circumscribe his fancy within the limits of what may appear to the senses to be possibly natural. It is true that the poet may use the supernatural as distinguished from the divine, to enable him to extend his imaginative scope, and so give us beautiful pictures which would be otherwise unpresentable. Shakespeare makes us imagine Puck encircling the earth in forty minutes, and Shelley shows us iron-winged beings climbing the wind, but we immediately recognize these pictures as figures of fancy, or as in the nature of allegory, and they do not impress us so deeply as the miraculous flight of a goddess of Homer, or an assemblage of the satellites of Satan in the Hell of Milton, for we involuntarily regard these events as compatible with the religious faith of great nations, and so as having a nearer apparent semblance of truth. Sacred art therefore, being capable of providing beauty of a much higher kind than any other form, should be placed in a separate section for the purpose of considering the law under discussion. Only poetry among the arts is capable of appropriately representing divine actions, and only sculpture of producing a form so perfect as to bring a divinity to mind. Hence these arts are alone concerned with the Law of Recognition as applied to the first section of the Associated Arts.

      The law applies to all the Associated Arts, and to all sections of them, except the lowest form of painting—that represented by harmony of colour without appeal to the mind of any kind—but this form is so weak and exceptional that it need hardly be considered in the general proposition. Indeed we might reasonably argue that it does not come within the fine arts, as it is produced by a mechanical arrangement of things with fixed and unalterable physical properties.

      The law cannot apply to music and architecture, for the effects of these are purely emotional, and so directly vary with conditions of time and place respectively. A work of architecture may seem more beautiful in one place than in another; and a work of music more or less beautiful according as it more or less synchronizes with emotional conditions of human activity surrounding the hearer at the time of the performance.

      While this law is unvarying in the Associated Arts, there are artificial restrictions which must be considered in order that apparent deviations from it may be understood. Special restrictions in relation to the higher poetry and sculpture are mentioned later on, but there is also an important general restriction. The sense nerves and the imagination, like all other functions, must be exercised in order that normal healthy conditions may be retained; but a large section of the people, by force of circumstances or want of will, have neglected this exercise, and so through disuse or misuse these functions are often in a condition which is little more than rudimentary. Hence such persons are practically debarred from appreciation of many forms of art, and particularly those wherein intellectual beauty is a marked feature. In discussing the operation of this law amongst people in general therefore, the writer must be understood to refer only to that section of the community whose sense nerves and imaginations may be supposed to be in a healthy, active condition.

      Experience with all the Associated Arts has clearly demonstrated the validity of this law. The strength of the devices used by the poet lies in simplifying the presentation of his pictures. Metaphor is necessary to the poet, for without it he would be powerless to present pictures made up of a number of parts, but he also uses it for the purpose of throwing simple images upon the mind more rapidly, and consequently more forcibly, than would be possible if direct means were employed; and the beauty of the metaphor appears the greater according as it more completely fills in the picture which the poet is desirous of presenting. When other artifices than metaphor or simile are applied, the result only appears very beautiful when the condensation of the language used is extreme, and when there is no break in the delineation of the action. A few supreme examples of beauty derived from the principal devices of the poet for presenting his pictures may be instanced, and it will be found that in each case the power of the image is directly due to the brevity of expression, the simplicity of description and metaphor, or the unimpeded representation of action.

More than three thousand years have passed since the period assigned to Helen of Troy, and yet each generation of men and women as they learn of her, have deeply sealed upon their minds the impression that she was of surpassing beauty, almost beyond the reach of human conception. We have practically no details of her appearance from Homer or Hesiod, except that she was neat-ankled, white-armed, rich-haired, and had the sparkling eyes of the Graces, but already in the time of Hesiod her renown "spread over the earth." What was it then that established the eternal fame of her beauty? Simply a few words of Homer indicating the startling effect of her appearance before the elders of Troy. We are allowed to infer that these dry, shrunken-formed sages, shrill-voiced with age, became passionately disturbed by a mere glance at her figure, and nervously agreed with each other that little blame attached to the Greeks and Trojans for suffering such long and severe hardships on account of her, for only with the goddesses could she be compared. How wondrous must be the beauty when a glimpse of it suffices to hasten the blood through shrivelled veins, and provoke tempestuous currents to awake atrophied nerves! Without the record of this incident, the vague notices of Helen's appearance would be very far from sufficient to account for the universal recognition of her marvellous beauty.22

       PLATE 7 Greek Sculpture, 4th Century B.C. Attributed to Scopas Greek Bronze, 3d Century B.C. Heads of Demeter

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      One of the finest lines of Shakespeare is, "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank." The beauty of the line rests entirely upon the use of the word "sleeps" to express something which could not be otherwise said without the use of many words. The moonbeam is apparently perfectly still, the atmosphere calm, and there is nothing in the surroundings to disturb the natural tranquillity, these conditions inducing a feeling of softness and rest in the observer. If it had been necessary to say all this, Shakespeare would certainly have omitted reference to the moonlight, but his powerful imagination brings to mind the word "sleeps" to express the conditions, and we are overwhelmed with a beautiful picture suddenly thrown on the brain as if by a brilliant flash of light.

      Among the many illustrations of the point which may be found in the Bible, is the great passage, "And God said, 'Let there be Light,' and there was Light." This is described by Longinus as nobly expressed, but he does not suggest any cause for its æsthetic effect. It is true that nothing could be finer, but the nobility of the expression is derived from its brevity—from the extreme rapidity with which so vast and potent an event as an act of creation is pictured on the brain.23 A description of an act of creation, although involving psychological considerations of sublimity, is not necessarily so beautiful in expression as to be a work of art.

      In the case of lyric poetry, brevity of expression, though still of high importance, is not of so much moment as in epic or dramatic verse, because the substance is subordinated to beauty of expression and musical form. Devices are used chiefly for strengthening the sensorial element, the appeal to the mind being in most cases secondary. Nevertheless the lyric poet wastes no words. Take for example Sappho's Ode to Anactoria. The substance of these amazing lines is comparatively insignificant, being merely the expression of emotion on the part of an individual consequent upon disappointment, yet the transcendent beauty of the poem has held enthralled fourscore generations of men and women, and still the world gasps with astonishment at its perfection. Obviously the beauty of the ode rests mainly on qualities of form which cannot be reproduced in translation, but the substance may be, and it will be observed that the description of the action is unsurpassable. The picture, the whole picture, and nothing but the picture, is thrown on the mind rapidly and directly; so rapidly that the movement of the brush is scarcely discernible, and so simply that not a thought is required for its elucidation. With the chain of symptoms broken or less closely connected, the passion indicated would be comparatively feeble, whatever the force of the artifices in rhythm and expression which Sappho knew so well СКАЧАТЬ