Part 5 (2/2)

If the line of the shoulders and pectorals slopes fro) the line across the hips takes the reverse slope, and is followed by that of the knees, while the line of the first echoes that of the shoulders

Thus we get the rhyth play of planes Michael Angelo so turns the body on itself that he reduces the four to two big planes, one facing, the other swept round to the side of the block” That is, he gets geon And, in fact, there is no sculpture which is ain ”It has been said that the 'Bourgeois de Calais' is a group of single figures, possessing no unity of design, or at best affording only a single point of view Those who say so have never exauresthemselves, as the spectator walks round, so as to produce fro lines, each of the a dozen parts at once, is surely one of thein the history of art is exactly comparable with it”

<1> D S MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, 1902, p 101

In short, it is the design, for all his words, that Rodin cares for He calls it Nature, because he sees, and can see Nature only that way But as he said to soer in too close devotion to Nature, ”Yes, for a e new beauty, ”the unedited poses,” ”the odd beautiful huddle<1> of lines,” in a stopping or squatting form, that all these wild and subtle moments are portrayed The limbs must be adjusted or surprised in some pattern beyond their own The ideas are the occasion and the excuse for new outlines,--that is all

<1> Said of Degas MacColl

This is all scarcely less true of Millet, e have known above all as the painter who has shown the simple common lot of labor as divine But he, too, is artist for the sake of beauty first He sees two peasant woots ”From far off, they are superb, they balance their shoulders under the weight of fatigue, the twilight ss their forreat as a myster”<1>

<1> Sensier, _Vie et Oeuvre de J-F Millet_

The idea is, as I said, froer and subtler the idea, the inal the forures, the more chance to surprise them in some new lovely pattern It is thus, I believe, that wetrend of modern sculpture, and so much, indeed, of all modern art, to the ”expressive beauty” path

”The reat artist will pursue his idea for the sake of the new beauty it will yield

Thus it see blocks in the way of our theory are not insurmountable after all From every point of view, it is seen to be possible to transmute the idea into a helpmeet to the form Visual beauty is first beauty to the eye and to the frame, and the mind cherishes and enriches this beauty with all its own stored treasures The stianism alone can make one thrill to visual fore the whole man, and be reinforced froht to note a borderland in which the concern is professedly not with beauty, but with ideas of life Aristotle's lover of knowledge, who rejoiced to say of a picture ”This is thatas opposed to the art of visual form

It is not beauty we seek fros and woodcuts, froer, down to Leech and Keene and Du Maurier; it is not beauty, but ideas,-- information, irony, satire, life-philosophy Where there is a conflict, beauty, as we have defined it, goes to the wall

We hly increased aiven, and required, in the black and white Even to understand such a picture demands such an enormous amount of unconscious mental suppleravity in that element

The first conditions of the work, that is, deterination in our vision of an etching is and inative part which outweighs the given Nor do we desire the given to infringe upon the ideal field Thus do we understand that for ue and formless is the desideratuical moments, as they are handled by Goya, for instance, with barbarically round which is scarcely indicated, with few strokes, which barely suggest space, he impales like a butterfly the human type, mostly in a moment of folly or wickedness The least definition of surrounding would blunt his (the artist's) keenness, and er, _Malerei u Zeichnung_, 1903, p 42

This theory of the aim of black and white is confir is composed for the size in which it is painted, and becomes another picture if reproduced in another s is relatively indifferent; reduced or enlarged, the effect is approxiiven to the eye is such a small proportion of the whole experience The picture is only the cue for a complete structure of ideas

Here is a true case of Anders-Streben, that ”partial alienation from its own limitations, by which the arts are able, not indeed to supply the place of each other, but reciprocally to lend each other new forces”<1> It is by its success as representation that the art of the burin and needle--Griffelkunst, as Klinger na that it ree,--only that this beauty of form is not its characteristic excellence

<1> W Pater, _The Renaissance: Essay on Giorgione_

In what consists the beauty of visual form? If this question could be answered in a sentence our whole discussion of the abstract formula for beauty would have been unnecessary But since we knohat the ele about the aesthetic experience, it has been the aies to sho those elements must be deteranism, must be favorably stimulated; these, and such colors, combinations, lines as we have described, are fitted to do it It ht to repose; these, and such relations between lines and colors as we have set forth, are fitted to do it, for reasons we have given It is to the eye and all that waits upon it that the first and the last appeal of fine art ing to a picture or a statue waits upon the eye, in so far does it enter into the characteristic excellence, that is, the beauty of visual form

B spacE COMPOSITION AMONG THE OLD MASTERS

I

THE preceding pages have set forth the concrete facts of visible beauty, and the explanation of our feelings about it

It is also interesting, however, to see how these principles are illustrated and confirmed in the masterpieces of art A statistical study, undertaken so thus with the hypothesis of substitutional syiven abundance of material, which I shall set forth, at otherwise disproportionate length, as to a certain extent illustrative of the methods of such study It is clear that this is but one of ical theories may be further illuminated The text confines itself to pictures; but the functions of the elements of visual form are valid as well for all visual art destined to fill a bounded area The discussion will then be seen to be only ostensibly liht always be read space arrangeinal experiee 111, the elements of form in a picture were reduced to SIZE or Mass, DEPTH in the third dimension, DIRECTION, and INTEREST Direction was further analyzed into direction of MOTION or ATTENTION (of persons or objects in the picture), an ideal element, that is; and direction of LINE For the statistical study, a given picture was then divided in half by an i on each side of this line were set off against each other to see how far they lent themselves to description by substitutional symmetry Thus: in B van der Helst's ”Portrait of Paul Potter,” the head of the subject is entirely to left of the central line, as also his full face and frontward glance

His easel is right, his body turned sharply to right, and both hands, one holding palette and brushes, are stretched down to right Thus the greater eneral direction of line is to the right; eleht This may be schematized in the equation (Lt)M+I=(Rt)I+L

Pieter de Hooch, ”The Card-Players,” in Buckinghaht of the central line, all facing in to the table between theht , screened, and high on the wall to the extreoes to eht side

On the left, which is otherwise e on a brightly lighted courtyard, froht streaht” on the right, the effect of this deep vista on the left and of its brightness is to give a coestion of line froure, a roughly outlined V, which serves to bind together all the elements Equation, (Lt)V+I