Part 6 (2/2)

_Relief_ then is a matter of contrast, as is shown especially in the mosaics of Taj Mahal; but its nature is easily seen if we compare prose with paint:--

'He stood at the edge of the sea while the waves crept towards him, nearer and nearer, sinuously flowing and ebbing, but ever nearer.

Ever.'

I give this as an instance, not as a fragment of literature. The lonely 'ever' gives _relief_ to the sentence of twenty-four words if we a.s.sume that another long sentence follows. (If no sentence follows, 'ever' is no longer _relief_ but _culmination_, see Group C.) The painter renders the same effect by a more vivid line of foam in the middle distance, the musician by interposing a treble motif between ba.s.ses. Thus, if we find variety of sentence, variety of tone, we have _relief_.

_Density_ and _Depth_ need not detain us long. Flaubert, the Psalms, Jacob Epstein's _Oscar Wilde_, the Eroica and Velasquez all give the sensation we call by those names; we mean by them that the work contains a suggestion of something behind. Atmospheric quality, then, together with thought withdrawn, echo unheard and s.p.a.ce unlimned, are the bases on which the two terms rest. The suggestion that this 'behind' exists is of course essential, for we must not conclude that where there is nothing to be seen there is something to be guessed: there must be no guessing, but if a feeling of reserve is created then _density_ and _depth_ exist.

Group B. (Linear). The quality of _linking_ is opposed to the quality of discord, though a discord may prove to be a link. The most perfect instances of _linking_ and _continuity_, for I almost identify the terms, are the solar spectrum and the song of the lark, but in the field of art we must be content with the gamut, the sequence of shades and the concatenation of phrases. In prose:--

'The bird rose up into the air, and its wings beat slowly. The air was laden with mist. The bird rose towards the clouds ...' is an instance where there is a solution of continuity, which could be remedied if the second sentence were related to the flight of the bird. And the same lack of continuity would exist if the painter of a harlequin were to make his skull-cap brown, if in a pause of some work of Locatelli the musician interposed (however skilfully and gradually) some characteristic Grieg chords.

It does not, of course, follow that a discord is discontinuous.

Providing it recurs within the scheme of the work, as the clashes in _Elektra_, the sequence of discords becomes a sequence of links, and we arrive at this paradox, that it is the solutions of continuity provide the continuity, while the apparently continuous portions of the work are carried by the discordant sections. Thus there is continuity in the Louvre Ghirlandajo because equivalent, if minor, discords repeat the motif of the red mantle in two other portions of the picture. The relation of the discords is sometimes vital to more than continuity, namely to _rhythm_ (Group C.).

With Group C. (Kinetic) we touch the most vital portion of the subject, for the kinetic quality in art amounts to the quality of life in man.

And its chief component is _rhythm_. If _rhythm_ be taken as a condition of internal movement within the inanimate, as a suggestion of expanding and retracting life, of phrases (musical, pictorial, or literary) that come to an inevitable resolution, it is seen that its presence in a work of art must baffle until it is realised under what guise it appears. A simple instance of prose rhythm is:--

'The wayfarer stopped by the well. He looked within its depths and the water was far below. Idly he dropped a pebble between the walls; and it seemed minutes while he waited until the water sped its thanks.'

This is not metrical but rhythmic prose, and it would be wearisome if the rhythm were not altered from paragraph to paragraph; short sentences alternate with long at fixed intervals, or pa.s.sive verbs are inset between actives, while Gothic words, juxtaposed to Latin, or adjectival combinations produce the same effect of rise and fall. The rhythm may be regular as the movement of a woman's breast or spasmodic within the regular as the flight of a gull.

Pictorially _rhythm_ is best gauged by certain tapestries based on the flower backgrounds of Fergusson and Anne Estelle Rice. a.s.sume a black square of cloth; if the flowers are grouped thus from left to right: dark red, pink, white, there is no rhythm, for the mental line is a mere downgrade; if they are grouped: dark red, light blue, dark green, there is no rhythm, for the mental line is a mere curve, a circular or perhaps parabolic basin; but if the grouping amounts to: dark red, pink, light blue, black, light green, cream, dark brown, there is a succession of ebb and flow, rise and fall, _rhythm_. And this applies to drawing also, if we accept that colour is indicated by line, that lines are colours and that colours are tenses. That line can indicate colour is beyond denial, for we accept that colour is not material while tone is material. Colour being the _relation_ between an impression and the impression of colourlessness, and tone being the resultant translation of the intensity of the colour, then it is feasible to reproduce a red and blue combination by a green and yellow combination of equal contrast.[9] Therefore a combination of blacks may be made to balance a combination of even seven colours, provided the relative intensity (amount) of the blacks is in a true relation, in tone, with the relative intensity of the colours. C. R. W. Nevinson achieves this with grays and blacks, while Wyndham Lewis forgoes it.

[Footnote 9: Hence, _if the colour relations are maintained_, it is correct to represent a blue-eyed rubicund man by red eyes and a violet face.]

The quality of _rhythm_ being obvious in music needs no discussion; it is the only form of rhythm the popular can recognise, but if we accept the principles of grouping in phrase and colour, no musician will fail to recognise a sarabande in a dance of Matisse or in the posturings of Kellermann's clown.

As for _intensity_, with which goes _reaction_, for the first cannot exist without the second, it is naturally brought about by the rhythmic focusing of the subject's attention upon words, colours or notes.

Intensity is marked, for instance, by the triplets of the Venusberg music, their continual slow billowing; it can be found, less easily, in phrases and colours, but it must exist if the work is art. In prose it is marked by a general nervousness of form and word:--

'Upon the crag the tower pointed to the sky like a finger of stone, and about its base were thick bushes, which had burst forth into flower patches of purple and scarlet. The air was heavy with their scent.'

Here the _intensity_ is confined within the simile and the colour scheme; the intervening s.p.a.ce corresponds to the background of a picture, while the final short sentence, purposely dulled, is the _reaction_. Evidently (and all the more so as I have chosen a pictorial effect) an a.n.a.logous intensity could be obtained in a painting; the flower patches could be exaggerated in colour to the uttermost limit of the palette, while the reagent final sentence was figured by a filmy treatment of the atmosphere. The limit to _intensity_ is the _key_ in which the work is conceived. But the word _key_ must not be taken in its purely musical sense; obviously, within the same piece the governing motif must not be andante at the beginning and presto at the end, but in artistic generalisations it must be taken as the spirit that informs rather than as the technical rule which controls. Thus, in literature, the _key_ is the att.i.tude of the writer: if in one part of the book his thought recalls Thackeray and in another Paul de k.o.c.k the _key_ has been changed; and again if the left side of the picture is pointillist, the right side cubist, the _key_ has been changed. I choose exaggerated, almost absurd instances to make the point clear; in practice, when the writer, the musician, or the painter appears to have seen consistently, the key he has worked in is steadfast.

It should be said that uniformity of _key_ does not imply absence of _reaction_; there is room, while the _key_ remains uniform, for the juxtaposition of burlesque and romance, just as there is room in Holbein's 'Amba.s.sadors' for the incomprehensible object in the foreground, said to embody a pun (Hohl Bein). But the _key_ needs to be kept in mind as its maximum expression is the _culmination_ of the effect. The _culmination_ of a speech is in its peroration; of a poem in its incorporated envoi. Thus in the _Arab Love Song_, the culmination is:--

'And thou what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?'

There is no difficulty there. But in painting the _culmination_ is more subtle. It consists in the isolation of the chief object. Say that we have from left to right: Black, yellow, dark brown, light blue, dark red; then add on the extreme right, crimson, then gold. The picture _culminates_ on the extreme right, with the result that attention is directed there and that any object in that section of the picture benefits by an influence about equivalent to that of footlights.

_Culmination_, involves the painter in great difficulties, for there must be _culmination_, while an effect in the wrong place may destroy the _balance_ of his work. This appertains to

Group D. (Static). Its chief quality, _balance_, is easily defined in painting. Where there is correspondence between every section of the picture, where no value is exaggerated, _balance_ exists. Hence the failure of Futurism. While the Futurists understand very well _intensity_, _reaction_, and _relief_, they refuse to give _balance_ any attention at all; leaving aside the absurdity of rendering the mental into terms of the pictorial, and taking as an instance one who was once less Futurist than the Futurists, Severini, we see in his 'Pan-pan Dance' how he detached himself from his school: he attained _balance_ by giving every object an equal _intensity_. Such is also the tendency of Wadsworth. Evidently if there are no clashes of tone-values, there must be _balance_, and the instance serves to show that where there are clashes of tone-values _balance_ must be ensured by the artist's hand.

There is always _balance_ in the purely decorative; in the realistic there is _balance_ if the attention of the beholder is directed simultaneously to the several points of _culmination_ indicated by the _rhythm_ of the picture. Thus there is _balance_ in Rothenstein's 'Chloe' because the rocks on the right repeat the significance of the rocks on the left.

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