Part 12

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.

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.

* * * * *

The rare man is not bewildered by the new and the strange at home or abroad, in art or life. He is interested and at once sets about learning and comprehending. He _loves_ the new and the strange _instinctively_ because they excite his curiosity and pique his intelligence. He loves to meet the new and the strange as an archeologist loves to find an inscription in an unknown tongue--for the hidden significance.

* * * * *

This chapter may be concluded appropriately by four warnings which Chinese wisdom pours into the ears of art students. Many of the modern painters should ponder these precepts.

“Ja, Kan, Zoku, Rai.”

“_Ja_ refers to attempted originality in a painting without the ability to give it character, departing from all law to produce something not reducible to any law or principle.

“_Kan_ is producing only superficial pleasing effect without any _power_ in the brush stroke--a characterless painting, to charm only the ignorant.

“_Zoku_ refers to the fault of painting from a mercenary motive only--thinking of money instead of art.

“_Rai_ is the base imitation of or copying or cribbing from others.”

X

UGLINESS

The modern movement is in the direction of greater freedom, freedom to produce beautiful things in one’s own way.

_Unhappily many of the things produced are not beautiful now_--not nearly so dignified and beautiful as thousands upon thousands of old pictures.

One’s _first_ impression on entering an exhibition of extreme modern works is not an impression of beauty but of _ugliness_.

There is no denying that, and it takes even the most impartial and sympathetic observer a long time to pick out the things which are fine in color and line and to readjust his notions of beauty.

Many of the pictures are brutal and most of them are crude, but while the first impression may be one of ugliness it is more, it is one of _exceeding vitality_.

There is nothing musty about the moderns, their canvases are so alive _they scream_.

As compared with the subdued tones of an academic exhibition a modern seems like a babel of discordant sounds, but the confusion is more apparent than real. By going day after day one gets accustomed to the newness, the freshness, the strangeness of it all and begins to understand and appreciate the one big, dominant note--_vitality_.

* * * * *

Then, too, when we say the _first_--and last for most people--impression is one of ugliness, we must not forget

that our appreciations are primarily the result of environment and habit, and only secondarily, and with comparatively few, the result of intelligent discipline.

We like what we are accustomed to and dislike what we are not accustomed to. Few take the pains to discipline their likes and dislikes.

* * * * *

Seventy years ago public and critics thought Turner ugly in the extreme.