Part 5
In garments made of single pieces of fabric, or in sewed basketry (fig. 56) we find the seams sometimes decorated so that the seam becomes a decorative element. In other cases seams are accompanied by decorative bands. In leggings and shirts of American Indians the seams are often emphasized by the attachment of fringes.
In other objects prominent places are elaborated by the addition of decorative elements.
In clay pots, the handles are so treated (fig. 57). On shields the central knob becomes an object of decoration. The handles of canes or other knob-like terminations are often elaborated as decorative elements.
Sometimes fields without natural breaks, such as wall surfaces, are treated as units. Examples of this kind are our modern wall papers, or the painted walls of ancient Egyptian buildings. Often the tendency to break up the decorative field is so strong, that even where a natural division is not given it may be broken up into smaller parts. We may notice particularly that the marginal lines which emphasize or limit the form, develop exuberantly and thus encroach more and more upon the body of the object. In baskets from the interior of British Columbia the marginal pattern has grown to such an extent that it occupies the whole upper half or even more of the basket and is itself subdivided into a number of fields that follow the outline of the margin (fig. 58). Similar conditions are found on the margins of blankets of the New Zealanders (see Plate VIII, p. 182) and on the bronze work of ancient Scandinavia.
Thus we reach the conclusion that a number of purely formal elements, some of which are more or less closely connected with technical motives, others with physiological conditions of the body and still others with the general character of sense experience are determinants of ornamental art. From this we conclude that a fundamental, esthetic, formal interest is essential; and also that art, in its simple forms, is not necessarily expressive of purposive action, but is rather based upon our reactions to forms that develop through mastery of technique. The same elements play also an important role in highly developed art forms. If it is true that these elements are in part not purposive, then it must be admitted that our relation to them is not essentially different from those we have towards esthetically valuable phenomena of nature. The formal interest is directly due to the impression derived from the form. It is not expressive in the sense that it conveys a definite meaning or expresses an esthetic emotion.
It might be thought that this condition prevails only in the domain of decorative art, and that representative art, dance, music, and poetry must always be expressive. This is to a great extent true so far as representative art is concerned, for the term itself implies that the art product represents a thought or an idea. It is also necessarily true in poetry, in so far as its materials are words that convey ideas. Nevertheless a formal element may be recognized in these also, a form element quite analogous to the one we found in decorative art. It determines certain aspects of the characteristic style. So far as representative art is ornamental, the formal principles of decorative art enter into the composition and influence the representative form. In dance, music and poetry, rhythm and thematic forms follow stylistic principles that are not necessarily expressive but that have objectively an esthetic value. We shall discuss these questions more fully at another place[41].
[41] See p. 301.
REPRESENTATIVE ART
While the formal elements which we have previously discussed are fundamentally void of definite meaning, conditions are quite different in representative art. The term itself implies that the work does not affect us by its form alone, but also, sometimes even primarily, by its content. The combination of form and content gives to representative art an emotional value entirely apart from the purely formal esthetic effect.
If has been customary to begin the discussion of representative art with a consideration of the simple attempts of primitive people or of children to draw objects that interest them. I believe that the art problem is obscured by this procedure. The mere attempt to represent something, perhaps to communicate an idea graphically, cannot be claimed to be an art; just as little as the spoken word or the gesture by means of which an idea is communicated, or an object,—perhaps a spear, a shield or a box,—in which an idea of usefulness is incorporated, is in itself a work of art. It is likely that an artistic concept may sometimes be present in the mind of the maker or speaker, but is becomes a work of art only when it is technically perfect, or when it shows striving after a formal pattern. Gestures that have rhythmical structure, words that have rhythmic and tonal beauty are works of art; the implement of perfect form lays claim to beauty; and the graphic or sculptural representation has an esthetic, an artistic value, when the technique of representation has been mastered. When a tyro attempts to create a work of art, we may recognize and study the impulse, but the finished product teaches only his vain efforts to master a difficult task. When man is confronted with a new problem like the building of a house of new, unfamiliar material, he is apt to find a solution, but this achievement is not art, it is a work adapted to a practical end. It may be that the solution is intuitive, that is, that it has not been found by an intellectual process, but after having been solved it is subject to a rational explanation.
Just so when man has to represent an object, he is confronted with a problem that demands a solution. The first solution is not an artistic but a practical achievement. We are dealing with a work of art only when the solution is endowed with formal beauty or strives for it. The artistic work begins after the technical problem has been mastered.
When primitive man is given a pencil and paper and asked to draw an object in nature, he has to use tools unfamiliar to him, and a technique that he has never tried. He must break away from his ordinary methods of work and solve a new problem. The result cannot be a work of art,—except perhaps under very unusual circumstances. Just like the child, the would-be artist is confronted with a task for which he lacks technical preparation, and many of the difficulties that beset the child beset him also. Hence the apparent similarity between children’s drawings and those of primitive man. The attempt of both are made in similar situations. A most characteristic case of this kind was told to me by Mr. Birket-Smith. He asked an Eskimo of Iglulik to draw with a pencil on a piece of paper a walrus hunt. The native was unable to accomplish this task and after several attempts he took a walrus tusk and carved the whole scene in ivory, a technique with which he was familiar.
The contrast between representation for the sake of representation and representation as a work of art appears clearly in many cases. I select a few examples. The Indians of the mountains of northwestern Mexico wear beautifully embroidered or woven clothing, the designs of which are largely based on Spanish motives. Heraldic patterns and isolated animal figures combined with geometrical forms are the constituent elements (fig. 59 _a_). Besides these embroidered and woven fabrics, which are of excellent workmanship, we find small embroidered rags (fig. 59 _b_), which are attached to arrows and serve the purpose of representing a prayer to a deity. A roughly outlined figure of a child expresses a prayer for the health of the child; that of a deer, a prayer for success in hunting. The arrows with the attached rags are stuck into the thatched roof of a temple where they are allowed to decay. They are not intended as works of art but only as representations that serve a temporary purpose; hence the disregard of form and of exactness of workmanship.
Quite similar observations may be made on the clothing of the Amur tribes. The skin clothing worn by the people, particularly on festive occasions, is beautifully ornamented in appliqué, or by painting. The ornaments are in part geometrical, in part representative. Figures of birds and fish abound (fig. 60). On the other hand the painted dresses of shamans are roughly executed (Plate VI). They represent mythological concepts and have a value solely on account of their meaning. The interest does not center in the form. As compared to wearing apparel they are crudely done, for the beauty of execution is of minor importance.
A third example is found among the North American Indians of the Great Plains. Their representative art, in the strict sense of the term, is almost entirely confined to a crude form of picture writing. They have not developed a high technique of painting and the forms of horses, men, buffaloes and tents are merely reminders of incidents in the life of the people. The figures (fig. 61) are in no way ornamental and bear no relation to the object on which they are depicted. They are made for the purpose of representation only. They are not art in the rigid sense of the term. Judging from the character of the figures and their use we may safely say that the artistic interest is entirely absent. We may even apply this observation to the picture writing of the ancient Mexicans (fig. 62), which, as compared to their sculpture, is of inferior value. The importance of communicating ideas outweighs the artistic interest. We shall see later on that nevertheless there is a definite relation between artistic style and the forms of inartistic painting (see p. 164).
Incidentally it may be remarked here that the difference in interest sometimes leads to contrasting art styles, provided the representative work is also executed in a perfectly controlled technique. Thus the Northwest Americans who have a very characteristic style of art sometimes make carvings that are intended to deceive by their realism. In one of their ceremonies a person is apparently decapitated and after the decapitation the head is shown held by the hair. This head is carved in wood and done with great care in a most realistic fashion. It is entirely free of the stylistic characteristics of Northwest coast carving and painting (see fig. 156, p. 185).
We revert now to a consideration of the simple, crude representative drawings. The most important inference that may be drawn from the study of such representations, graphic as well as plastic, is that the problem of representation is first of all solved by the use of symbolic forms. There is no attempt at accurate delineation. Neither primitive man nor the child believes that the design or the figure he produces is actually an accurate picture of the object to be represented. A round knob on an elongated cylinder may represent head and body; two pairs of thin, straight strips of rounded cross section, arms and legs; or in a drawing a circle over a rectangle may suggest head and body; straight lines, arms and legs; short diverging lines at the ends of arms and legs, hand and feet.
The break between symbolic representation and realism may occur in one of two ways. The artist may endeavor to render the form of the object to be represented in forceful outline and subordinate all consideration of detail under the concept of the mass as a whole. He may even discard all details and cover the form with more or less fanciful decoration without losing the effect of realism of the general outline and of the distribution of surfaces and of masses. On the other hand, he may endeavor to give a realistic representation of details and his work may consist of an assembly of these, with little regard to the form as a whole.
An excellent example of the former method is the Filipino wood carving, fig. 63 _a_. Head and chest show the concentration of the artist upon the delimiting surfaces and an utter disregard of detail. The same method is used in the figure of a harpist belonging to the ancient art of the Cyclades (fig. 63 _b_).
In fig. 64, an African mask, the surfaces of forehead, eyes, cheeks and nose are the determinants of the form which has been treated decoratively with the greatest freedom. There are no ears; the eyes are slits with geometrical ornaments; the mouth a circle enclosing a cross. In fig. 65, representing a painted carving from New Guinea, the outline of the face, emphasized by the hair line, eyes, and mouth, is easily recognized, but all the other parts are treated purely decoratively.
The opposite method is found, for instance, in Egyptian paintings and reliefs in which eyes, nose, hands, and feet are shown with a fair degree of realism, but composed in ways that distort the natural form and which are perspectively impossible (fig. 66). A still better example is the drawing, fig. 67, an attempt of one of the best Haida artists from Northern British Columbia to illustrate the story of an eagle carrying away a woman. The face of the woman is evidently intended as a three-quarter view. Facial painting will be noticed on the left cheek; the left ear only is shown as seen in profile; the mouth with teeth is placed under the nose in mixed full profile and front view, and has been moved to the right side of the face. In the lower lip is a large labret shown _en face_, for only in this view was the artist able to show the labret with its characteristic oval surface. The nose seems to be drawn in profile although the nostrils appear _en face_.
In a graphic representation of objects one of two points of view may be taken: it may be considered as essential that all the characteristic features be shown, or the object may be drawn as it appears at any given moment. In the former case our attention is directed primarily towards those permanent traits that are most striking and by which we recognize the object, while others that are not characteristic, or at least less characteristic, are considered as irrelevant. In the latter case we are interested solely in the visual picture that we receive at any given moment, and the salient features of which attract our attention.
This method is more realistic than the other only if we claim that the essence of realism is the reproduction of a single momentary visual image and if the selection of what appears a salient feature to us is given a paramount value.
In sculpture or modelling in the round these problems do not appear in the same form. Here also attention may be directed primarily towards the representation of the essential, and the same principles of selection may appear that are found in graphic art, but the arrangement of the parts does not offer the same difficulties that are always present in graphic representation. As soon as man is confronted with the problem of representing a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface and showing in a single, permanent position an object that changes its visual appearance from time to time, he must make a choice between these two methods. It is easily intelligible that a profile view of an animal in which only one eye is seen and in which one whole side disappears may not satisfy as a realistic representation. The animal _has two_ eyes and _two_ sides. When it turns I see the other side; it exists and should be part of a satisfying picture. In a front view the animal appears foreshortened. The tail is invisible and so are the flanks; but the animal has tail and flanks and they ought to be there. We are confronted with the same problem in our representations of maps of the whole world. In a map on Mercator projection, or in our planiglobes, we distort the surface of the globe in such a way that all parts are visible. We are interested only in showing, in a manner as satisfactory as possible, the interrelations between the parts of the globe. We combine in one picture aspects that could never be seen at one glance. The same is true in orthogonal architectural drawings, particularly when two adjoining views taken at right angles to each other, are brought into contact, or in copies of designs in which the scenes or designs depicted on a cylinder, a vase, or a spherical pot are developed on a flat surface in order to show at a single glance the interrelations of the decorative forms. In drawings of objects for scientific study we may also sometime adopt a similar view-point, and in order to elucidate important relations, draw as though we were able to look around the corner or through the object. Different moments are represented in diagrams in which mechanical movements are illustrated and in which, in order to explain the operation of a device, various positions of moving parts are shown.
In primitive art both solutions have been attempted: the perspective as well as that showing the essential parts in combination. Since the essential parts are symbols of the object, we may call this method the symbolic one. I repeat that in the symbolic method those features are represented that are considered as permanent and essential, and that there is no attempt on the part of the draftsman to confine himself to a reproduction of what he actually sees at a given moment.
It is easy to show that these points of view are not by any means absent in European art. The combination of different moments in one painting appears commonly in earlier art,—for instance when in Michel Angelo’s painting Adam and Eve appear on one side of the tree of knowledge in Paradise and on the other side of the tree as being driven out by the angel. As a matter of fact, every large canvass contains a combination of distinct views. When we direct our eyes upon a scene we see only a small limited area distinctly, the points farther away appear the more blurred and indistinct the farther removed they are from the center. Nevertheless most of the older paintings of large scenes represent all parts with equal distinctness, as they appear to our eyes when they wander about and take in all the different parts one by one. Rembrandt forced the attention of the spectator upon his main figures by strong lights, as upon the swords in the great scene of the conspiracy of Claudius Civilis and his Batavians against the Romans, but the distant figures are distinct in outline, although in dark colors. On the other hand, Hodler, in his painting of a duel draws compelling attention to the points of the swords which are painted in sharp outline while everything else is the more indistinct the farther removed it is from the point on which the interest of the artist centers.
Traits considered as permanent characteristics play a rôle even in modern art. Until very recent times the complexion of man was conceived as essentially permanent. At least the strong changes that actually occur in different positions have not been painted until very recent times. A person of fair complexion standing between a green bush and a red brick wall has certainly a face green on one side and red on the other, and if the sun shines on his forehead it may be at times intensely yellow. Still we are, or at least were, not accustomed to depict these eminently realistic traits. We rather concentrate our attention upon what is permanent in the individual complexion as seen in ordinary diffuse daylight. We are accustomed to see the accidental momentary lights weakened in favor of the permanent impression.
In primitive, symbolic representations these permanent traits appear in the same way, sometimes strongly emphasized. It will be readily seen that children’s drawings are essentially of the character here described. They are not memory images, as Wundt claims, except in so far as the symbols are remembered and reminders, but compositions of what to the child’s mind appears essential, perhaps also as feasible. A person has two eyes which have their most characteristic form in front view, a prominent nose which is most striking in profile; hands with fingers which are best seen when the palms are turned forward; feet the form of which is clear only in profile. The body is essential and so is the clothing, hence the so-called Röntgen pictures in which covered parts are drawn. These drawings are a collection of symbols held together more or less satisfactorily by a general outline, although single traits may be misplaced. The same traits prevail commonly in primitive drawings. When Karl von den Steinen had the South American Indians draw a white man, they placed the moustache as a characteristic symbol on the forehead, for it sufficed to place it as a symbol on the most available space. The Egyptian paintings with their mixture of profile and front views and transparent objects through which hidden parts may be seen (fig. 68) must be viewed in the same manner. They are not by any means proof of an inability to see and draw perspectively; they merely show that the interest of the people centered in the full representation of the symbols.
When exceptionally great weight is attached to the symbol, so that it entirely outweighs the interest in the outline, the general form may be dwarfed and forms originate that, from our perspective point of view, lose all semblance of realism. The most characteristic case of this kind is found in the art of the Northwest coast of America, in which the whole animal form is reduced to an assembly of disconnected symbols. A beaver is adequately represented by a large head with two pairs of large incisors and a squamous tail (see pp. 186 et seq.). However, in this case we are no longer dealing with crude representations, but with a highly developed art. Its form proves that in its development symbolic representation has been of fundamental importance.