The Many Ways of Seeing: An Introduction to the Pleasures of Art

Citation preview

THE MANY WAYS OF SEEING An

Introduction to the Pleasures of Art Janet Gaylord

Moore

THE MANY WAYS OF SEEING An

Introduction to the Pleasures of Art

by Janet Gaylord Moore

Over eighty black-and-white re-productions and fhotographs; over thirty fullcolor re-productions

In this beautiful book, an

with and enjoyed

art for

who

artist

many

has Hved

years discusses

with great perception and clarity the ways of

viewing great paintings and other works of

art,

both in and out of museums. Line, form, color,

and texture is

are lucidly explained,

encouraged

for

to try

many

and the reader

fascinating techniques

himself— making prints and

collages, pen-and-

ink drawing, sculpture, photography, painting—

and

as well as to explore art in nature

in the

world around him.

With

over eighty black-and-white illustrations

and thirty-two pages of superb tions of great paintings

color reproduc-

from Giotto

to Picasso,

as well as student photographs and drawings, this is

a

book

to

experienced

amateur

be treasured by the beginning and artist,

collector,

the world of

the student of art history, the

and anyone who

finds joy in

art.

^..

Os sd-

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY Cleveland and

New York /

THE MANY WAYS OF SEEING An

Introduction to

the Pleasures of Art

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2011

http://www.archive.org/details/manywaysofseeingOOmoor

THE MANY WAYS OF SEEING An

Introduction to

the Pleasures of Art

Janet Gaylord

Moore

^ THE

WORLD

PUBLISHING

Cleveland and

New

COMPANY

York

PUBLISHED BY THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY 2231 WEST IIOTH STREET, CLEVELAND, OHIO 44I02

PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CANADA BY NELSON, FOSTER & SCOTT LTD.

Library of Congress catalog card numher: 67-23348

Text copyright

©

1968 by Janet Gaylord Moore

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, except for

All rights reserved.

brief passages included in a review appearing in a

magazine. Printed in the United States of America.

Designed by Marilyn Granald

newspaper or

Acknowledaments

The this

writer

book

to

would

like to express a sense of

many members

Art; to the Director,

indebtedness in the preparation of

of the curatorial staff at the Cleveland

Sherman

Museum

of

E. Lee; to James R. Johnson, Curator, Depart-

ment of Art History and Education; and to Thomas Munro, the former Curator. Her thanks go also to Janet Mack, Margaret Marcus, Martin Linsey, Merald VVrolstad, to Richard Godfrey who made most of the black-and-white photographs, and to Ann Daniels and Dolores Filak for their help in preparing the manuscript.

Some

of the ideas expressed

grew out of

a

dozen teaching years

in the spacious

studios at Laurel School in Shaker Heights. Others go back to student days

under the painter George Grosz. Several chapters were written within view of a rather compelling slice of

nature where,

From

the wide

The white

sails

window towards still

fly

the granite shore

seaward, seaward flying-

Unbroken wings

— T. J. G.

M.

Stonington,

Maine

August, 1967

S. Eliot

To

who

all

the students

have been

my

teachers

1

Contents

Acknowledgments

5

Introduction

1

1

Observation and Perception

13

2

What

16

3

On

4

Hov\' an Artist

5

Why

the Artists

Looking

Is

Interlude:

the

A

at

Have Taught Us To See

Paintings

20

Holds Our Attention: Line, Color, and Form

23

New

Always

Difficult?

Collage of Pictures and Quotations

44 49

Hand

73

and the Collector

87

6

The

7

The Amateur

8

Materials and Techniques of the Artist

90

9

The

Home

102

10

Seeing Eye, the Thinking Artist

Traveler at

The Immense Design

and Abroad

117

Color Illustrations

Jean Anguste Dominique Ingres

Eugene Delacroix

Reclining Odalisque

George and the Dragon

St.

Fan K'uan Traveling Among Streams and Mountains /.

M. W. Turner

Titian

Rain, Steam, and Speed

The Entombment Wheat

Field

With Cypresses

The Pigeon Tower

Paul Cezanne

Edouard Manet The

Montbriand

at

Fifer

in the

Remhrandt van Rijn The

The

Artist in

Emanuel de Witte

Interior

Jan Vermeer

Piet

The

38

His Studio

61

With

62

a

Harpsichord

63

i

65

With Apples

65

Still

Paul Gauguin

The House

Life

His Studio

59

60

Skate

Paul Cezanne

Arras Tapestry Scene

37 38

40

Snow

Artist in

Mondrian Painting No.

Jean Simeon Chardin

35

39

Self-portrait

Hunters

Pieter Brueghel

34

39

Claude Monet Antibes

Rembrandt van Rijn

33

36

Mark Rothko Brown and Black on Plum Vincent van Gogh

33

of the

From

a

Maori

Novel

66

67

The Holy

Virgins (mosaic)

68

The Holy

Martyrs (mosaic)

69

2 1

Kitagawa Utamaro

One

Women

of the Seven

Seen

in a

Mirror

70

Pahlo Picasso Girl Before a Mirror

Liang K'ai Li Po Chanting a

Greek Vase Painting

71

Poem

72

(detail)

105

Georges Braque Herakles Georges Braque

105

Musical Forms

Amhrosius Bosschaert the Elder

105 Still

106

Life

Paul Klee Arab Song

107

Paul Klee Before the Gates of Kairouan

107

Giotto

Joachim's

Fra Angelico

Dream

The

Diego Velazquez

108

Coronation of the Virgin (detail)

The

Infanta Margarita in a Blue

Gown

108 (detail)

109

Edgar Degas Racehorses

109

Eugene Delacroix Notebook Page

1 1

Eugene Delacroix Algerian

Women

in

Their Quarters

Pahlo Picasso Three Musicians

Funeral Procession Painting on

1 1

1

Tomb

(panel)

o

12

1 1

Introduction

There

are

lectual

many ways

of seeing:

with

detachment, with emotional

involvement.

There

possible to separate these three.

observation, with intel-

scientific

Indeed

personal ways of thinking and feeling that the master

At

different times in your

wave lengths a language

hopes

few

to provide a

The

purpose of

and

learning,

is

to suggest

ways

ways

of the

which we look back and

in

nature to the world of

through which

people imagine.

for

which

It

book

this

of sharpening visual aware-

ness and of cultivating perception in the visual

some

art

many

clues.

book

this

and

present to us.

artists

But the language of

finish

hardly

is

will find yourself attuned to the

not an open book as

is

we never

that

you

life

of different artists.

these artists speak to us is

own

it

are also the highly individual

Since

art.

it

is

arts; it is also to

suggest

from the world of

forth

important that looking should not

who own

be altogether passive, there are simple exercises provided for those

have stage fright in front of

blank sheet of paper, or

a

who

find their

doodling somewhat monotonous. Pencils, pastels, or crayons and paper, along with that excellent instrument the camera, can help us find out

what we

see,

Although

can reinforce our seeing. this

anyone planning

is

a

to

book

for

become

young people,

it

is

a professional artist.

not meant as a text for

The

training necessary

for a painter, sculptor, architect, or designer should begin in

matic ways,

Our tising,

more

move more slowly and with more depth and discipline. bombarded with thousands of images from

eyes today are

moving

pictures,

and

television. All this

ever the task of cultivating a selective II

makes more

and discriminating

syste-

adver-

difficult

eye.

than

The ways

in

which you look

at the

world of nature and the world of

art

you understand yourself and what kind of person you choose

Your own experiences understanding of

this

of life can,

in

language of the

12

turn, arts.

to

can help

become.

broaden and deepen your

I

Observation and Perception

What do you on

see

when you Your

a rainy evening.

look? Suppose you are standing at the

against the outside of the pane, forming

diagonal patterns. But

if

window

attention might be caught by raindrops sHding

and reforming

you begin looking through the

and

in vertical

you might see

glass,

the wet, dark streets beyond, the pools of color; crimson, yellow, and blue

neon

reflections of

the lighted shops.

and

of glass

lights; cars It is

and people moving

in dark silhouette against

impossible to look with equal attention at the pane

bevond.

at the distance

The

eye

selects, or is

the

it

mind

that

chooses?

In the same field of vision,

consciousness

way

that the dark cars

and trucks

other aspects of the city at night

—some

sense of rainy nights

perhaps curiosity about the

little

slide in

and out of your

may swim through your

remembered

in

other

cities,

group of people huddled in the lighted

doorway. Another level of your mind, half hypnotized by the changing lights,

may

see flower shapes in the

anemones with

—how

wet pavement, purple and crimson

their dark centers. Looking, thinking, feeling,

are they related?

Can we

remembering

ever separate them?

Do two people looking out over the same landscape see the same scene? Do our eyes constantly compose and recompose what is before us, focus down on detail and then open up for a wider view? What of the mysterious thought that the artist Franz Marc suggests: how does the world look to the eye of an animal?

We

know that the seeing. The scientist structure details

—

eye can be trained and disciplined to

many

kinds of

observing the most intricate variations in a complex

either with his

and relationships

own

that

eyes or with a powerful instrument

would escape the 13

rest of us.

The

—

pilot

sees

and

the

sailor,

from long experience, are able

wind, weather, and water. There ness of eye

is

is

observe every hint and sign of

to

the skillful tennis player

equaled by quickness of hand. There

whose quick-

whose

the artist

is

per-

ception of certain relationships of form and color enables him, not to copy

what

is

before him, but to construct a pictorial equivalent for a landscape

or a figure.

The

sometimes sees these relations of color and form

artist

much

without paying too

attention to

He

sees,

the poet Paul Valery said,

He may

be able

and see dark pattern against

light

less

important than color, angle,

light-

we may

say,

with an "innocent eye." "To see,"

to sit in

wall so that the meaning "chair"

and-dark pattern.

represent.

is

something

to forget "chair" as

what they

"is to

forget the

name

one

of the thing

sees."

Sometimes the familiar can be made more extraordinary or unfamiliar bv a

change of

A

scale.

magnifying

glass or

and

X

shell, a

world.

The mar-

modern photography with microscopes and

telescopes

new and amazing

handful of pebbles, or a beetle into a velous resources of

microscope can change a

rays astonish us with unsuspected patterns

But you yourself can

also

change the

and shapes.

scale simply

by lying down

in the

long grass and getting an ant's-eye view of the jungle close around you.

Perhaps you can remember

and ferns fenced

The

in a

as a child

some

secret lair

airplane provides us with patterns of earth

of clouds that have never

tomed not only

grasses

and

and water and forms

cities

seen from the

air.

new

We

much

in

look of earth and

have become accus-

and patterns of earth from the

to the textures

is

air

but also

freewheeling angles of vision provided by aerial photography.

to the It is

at six

tall

been seen until our century. There

the art of our time that seems to be related to this sea, rivers, forests,

where

hidden and private world.

true that

we can sometimes

hundred miles an hour

possible that people

who had

see extraordinary effects

when

or even at sixty miles an hour, but to

walk or

traveling it is

were more observant, more thoughtful, more imaginative than we long walk alone in the city sketchbook,

is still

just

ride horseback in order to travel are.

A

or the country, perhaps with a camera or a

one of the best ways of finding out what you are seeing,

thinking, feeling, remembering. If

you

live in a city

it is

important

to get

park, into the woods, onto the water,

contact with the world of nature. is

The

out into the country, or into a

anywhere where you

infinite variety of the

a counterbalance to our mass-produced culture.

are in direct

forms of nature

Without such

a personal

awareness of nature's forms, sculpture,

The but

it

and architecture

painter John

many

will

of die delights

be forever

and rewards

of painting,

lost to you.

Marin was speaking about

artists

when he wrote

this,

really applies to us all:

Seems

to

me

the true artist must perforce go from time to time to

the elemental big forms, Sky, Sea, Mountain, Plain pertaining thereto,

to

sort

battery. For these big forms

have

to love these, to

of

re-true

—and those things

himself up,

have everything. But

to

recharge the

to express these

be a part of these in sympathy.^

John Marin

maine islands

you

What

Us To See

Taucjht

First

we

in the

see the hills in the painting, then

Whether we

are

aware of

whose names

see the painting

or

it

Chinese, seventeenth century

ways of seeing are

or not, our

work we may never have known.

opportunity to see original works of art in

probably look television.

we

hills.

—Li Li-Weng, artists

Have

the Artists

at

This

is

museums and

by

galleries,

you

reproductions in books, magazines, newspapers, or on

what the French

writer

Andre Malraux

seum Without Walls," the "Musee Imaginaire." Very suspecting it, you are seeing at second or third hand ideas the truly original artists

affected

you have no

If

artists

have been the

first

to express,

the

calls

often

"Mu-

without

or images that

ideas that other

or designers, illustrators or advertisers, have appropriated

and have

spread far and wide. In the

out his

half of our century, the

first

own

Dutch painter

and spare language

austere

of forms

everything superfluous had been stripped away. speaks to us

is

made

precision in stripes

of horizontals

and

and rectangles

verticals

Piet

and

Mondrian worked colors

The language

from which in

which he

balanced with extraordinary

of red, yellow, blue, black,

and white

(see page 63). For nearly fifty years industrial designers and illustrators

have been borrowing ideas from Mondrian for everything from kitchen linoleums to advertising lavout and,

secondary use of the

style of

an

artist

more

recently,

for

fashion.

This

or a group of artists often obscures

for us the inventor's true originality.

There

are other

ways

that artists affect the world

16

around them.

It is

easy to imagine that Renoir's day

all

women and

the

must have had round

Renoir's son

tells

us that the vision

enchanting that after a while the

in

girls

the Paris of Auguste

faces, shining eyes,

and small

was indeed

the artist created

women and

girls

noses.

with their soft hair,

bright eyes, and ruffled costumes did begin to look like the paintings.

might paraphrase the quotation see the

women

Pierre

A

Auguste Renoir

few years

ago,

I

beginning of

at the

in the paintings, then

we

was standing on

a

dock

in

for the water-bus to

exasperation, the priest looked

and

said,

Venice

called the Biennale.

young people were waiting at his feet

we

women."

the luncheon of the boating party

is

linoleum

We

this chapter: "First

see the paintings in the

big international exhibit that

wall and they would

so

down

after looking at a

A priest

come

and

a

group of

along. In obvious

at the splattered, paint-stained, torn

"You could put

call it a painting."

17

He

six

square feet of this on the

was very nearly

right.

But with-

out the kinds of paintings at which the group had been looking so scorn-

might never have noticed what was under

fully they

their feet

—

that extra-

ordinary variety of spattered color and texture glistening in the gray light

wet Venetian afternoon.

of a

Once, on

and

girders

now and

a night train, as I looked out every

signal towers against shifting lights,

seemed

I

then

black

at

the strong

to see

black forms, the thrust and weight of paintings by Pierre Soulages, the exhibit

New

had seen before leaving

I

mean when he made the

York. This does not

Soulages was thinking of railways at night his paintings are untitled. It

would be nearer the

last

at all that

paintings;

truth to say that the broad

black strokes have to do with force and thrust and structure and balance,

but the impact of such a painting can

around

There She

a story

is

about a

girl

on

an extraordinary

sat opposite

window and

of the

So she

did.

London,

man who

little

staring into the rain

Some weeks

this

same

girl

anything

kept putting his head out

of the

window and

said to her,

what

see

see."

I

Royal Academy in

heard a group of pompous gentlemen exclaiming in

by

like that?" said

J.

one of them.

made me peer out

man on

a train

steam.

looked at what he saw and

I

in the 1840's.

and smoke. Finally he

later at the exhibition of the

great indignation over a painting

painting

world

in the

England

a railway train in

"You must absolutely put your head out

Pierre Soulages

up resonances

set

us, can bring variety and interest to an ordinary journey.

M. W.

"I did," replied the girl.

window

of the it

was exactly

and Speed," which

talking about "Rain, Steam,

Turner. "Whoever saw

at the rain

like that."

now

is

"A

gentle-

and the

They were

considered one of

the masterpieces of English painting (see page 35).

A

thousand years ago in China there were landscape painters

at great vertical

mountains with

foliage half hiding

their cliffs

and

Buddhist temples and village

also the tiny figure of a lonely

woodchopper

waterfalls,

roofs.

or a

who

looked

their

dense

They sometimes saw

wandering scholar on

a

remote mountain path. By means of brush and ink, through a subtle and

complex language of symbols, those painters were able ness of nature, the

harmony

in such a compelling as well,

have looked

way

of

with rock and

that Chinese artists,

work

at their

through the centuries, other tions

man

That

is

why

and

inspiration.

have quite consciously practiced

on these great "mountain and water

landscape paintings, of the

clouds and stream,

and many Japanese painters

as a living source

artists

to express the vast-

tree,

pictures," as the

Down varia-

Chinese

call

say, "First

we

Sung Dynasty.

a seventeenth-century

Chinese writer could

(Opposite) Ch'ien Hsuan

early

autumn

(detail)

we

see the hills in the painting, then painter's vision of the landscape

see the painting in the hills."

became the Chinese idea

Tlicre were also painters in China and Japan

boo in the wind, about insects.

They

set

tions of painters

new

insight

down

fish

and poets could look

artists,

we

birds or peonies or

at these smaller

forms of nature with

and appreciation. still

a

new

discovery for

and very stimulating. In 1880, Vincent van Gogh wrote

Theo:

to his brother

If

about bam-

their observations so masterfully that later genera-

In the nineteenth centurv, Japanese art was

European

of landscape.

who thought

swimming upstream, about

The

we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? In

study Japanese art

philosophic

studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying Bismarck's policy? No.

But

this

human

him to draw every plant and then the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the

figure. .

.

studies a single blade of grass.

blade of grass leads

seasons, the

whole.

He

So he passes

his life,

and

life is

too short to

do the

.

And you cannot study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becommuch gayer and happier, and we must return to nature in spite of

ing

our education and our work in

a

world of convention.^

»

I

:

On Is a

Looking

painting a picture

at Paintings

window through which we

look? Is

it

an object in

itself?

Let us look at a painting by

and

Van Gogh and

think about what he saw

the world of nature and what he adapted for his

felt in

from the world of

art.

Out

own

purposes

he made the paintings that are

of this fusion

much admired today, paintings that seemed impossibly wild and strange when they were new. About the picture reproduced on page 38, Van Gogh so

wrote

have a wheat

I

canvas

The

cypresses are always occupying

make something it

very yellow and very light, perhaps the lightest

field,

have done.

I

astonishes

me

of

them

my

thoughts,

that they have not been

done

the writer inserted a pen sketch of a cypress It is as

And

because

them. [Here

tree.]

Mack

splash of

in a

sunny landscape, but

it

is

one of the

difficult to hit off exactly

can imagine.

I

But then you must

see

them

against the blue, in the blue rather.

paint nature here, as everywhere, you

time.

as I see

the green has a quality of such distinction.

It is a

To

should like to

beautiful in line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk.

most interesting black notes, and the most that

I

like the canvases of the sunflowers,

.

.

must be

in

it

a

long

}

In the brilliant

air of

Southern France, so dazzling

to a painter

from

Northern Europe, Van Gogh became obsessed with the idea of sunlight.

The

intensity of his

tional

movement

own

feeling led

of the brush

and

him

to a

20

to a strongly rhythmical,

emo-

high-keyed expressive use of color

forms of tree and cloud and

for the

teenth century. But

it

may be

he came

mented

At the same

new

Gezanne landscape than

to

Van Gogh

and

experi-

of working, the personal style that

feelings.

at

longer and more thoughtfully at a

to look

one painted by Van Gogh. Cezanne

himself

set

with small planes of color the crystalline

difficult task: to express

structure of the forms

seems

Later, in

ideas about color

of rocks,

mountain, or sky. (His

slopes,

trees,

approach was the same whether painting landscape,

He

as

time, in another part of Provence lived a quite diff^erent

Paul Cezanne. You have

more

where he grew up.

as the Impressionists.

own way

own innermost

could express his

still

Van Gogh began

that

Southern France, he found, in a few short

in the bright sunlit landscape of

a

I

with some of the Impressionist methods. But, in Provence,

briefly

years of driving energy, his

artist,

know

lolland,

I

much,

sense this

about painting in the nine-

in contact with the challenging

group of painters known

light of a

at all

interesting to

a painter of dark peasant interiors in Paris,

Anyone can

field.

whether or not he knows anything

think,

have dissolved the landscape into

a

life,

still

or figures.)

thousand fragments and

yet has united the forms into a harmonious whole.

On

the

white canvas, Cezanne was able

flat

to create a sense of geo-

metric forms or volumes in deep space by sensitively juxtaposing small

patches of color. At the same time he was able to preserve the

flat vertical

quality of the surface of the canvas. This creates a tension, a pull between

the deep space and the vertical surface so that a constant shift

before our eyes which makes the painting always seem alive. tried to suggest

hard enough

is

to grasp,

an understanding of Cezanne's

somehow always same way. This

has a

is

life

of

ing that lives no matter what

Our to

much

its

we

to

is

never see

this: it

of Cezanne's search for order

expressive

a particular to

view in nature,

renew

itself

it

twice in quite the

is

and emotional

easier style

and harmony.

In some sense, then, painting, especially a landscape,

power

a fine painting

painting since their time

Van Gogh's

look.

have

begun with Van Gogh and Cezanne

if

window through which we

I

period or date.

what has happened think of

We

What

only the beginning of

compelling quality, the secret of a paint-

of

understand

and

own.

its

discussion of painting has

because

But the point

art.

its

the secret of

and yet

it is

going on

is

But

if

that

is all it is,

may be

will soon lose interest for us,

before our eyes.

The

a picture

the reproduction of it

will

have no

underlying order or organization,

the echoes and repetitions of forms and colors, the rhythmical interweaving

21

of lines,

A

these are elements an artist uses to

all

to arouse

enough

of the Prado

Spain, to

may announce

painting

close

I

was

to

make out

our attention and

Museum

itself across a

Madrid, that wonderful collection of the kings of

in

abstract.

among the old From a distance I

deep blues, the shadowy forms closer

I

saw

"Entombment"

wide gallery even before we are

the actual subject matter. In one of the galleries

startled to see

be entirely

came

command

our feelings.

masters a painting that appeared felt

in a strange

the rich, sonorous reds, the

and somber harmony.

was indeed an old master painting,

that this

(see page 36). Before

it

was

When

I

Titian's

possible to discern the subject,

the atmosphere of the painting had sent out deep chords like the opening notes of a great symphony.

The

small color reproduction of the Titian

"Entombment"

give you only a partial impression of the painting there

The

the question of

is

mysterious

material

itself, oil

color

The

size.

movement

original painting

movement

the Titian, the

is

can, of course,

In the

first

place

nearly seven feet wide.

and out of shadow, the sense of the

of color in

on canvas with the melting edges of each tone, the

appearance of depth in the layers of color right the

itself.

down

to the canvas beneath,

of the brush or touch of the artist's hand, so different in

Van Gogh, and

the

Cezanne

some

are all lost to

may be. And it is exactly through meaning and mood of this painting, its drama and

extent in a reproduction, however fine these qualities that the

—these

it

pathos, are best conveyed.

You can understand, of art

whenever you

dead surface compared

Greek

why it is The surface

then,

can.

to the living

important

to see the original

works

of a plaster cast, for instance,

is

a

marble, carved and polished by the

sculptor himself, even though the stone

may have been damaged

in the course of centuries.

But there study, since in

is

we

also a great

advantage to the reproduction as a means of

can make investigations and comparisons that are impossible

any other way. Through the study of reproductions, we may be able

build

up experience which

awareness

when we have

a

will enable us to look longer

chance to see the original works of

22

to

and with more art.

How

Our Attention and Form

an Artist Holds Line, Color,

Let us go back

sentence in Chapter

to a

organization, the echoes

interweaving of

repetitions of forms

lines, all these are

elements an

and

artist

order or

rhythmical

colors, the

command our

uses to

arouse our feelings." Reduced to their simplest terms, these

attention

and

elements

may be

to

and

"The underlying

3;

described as line, color, and form.

LINE

you make

If

a

dot and then place a scries of dots right next to

succession, you will have a line.

We

can also say that a dot

away from

us.

Hold

represents a line.

By it

is

We

turn

it

you can see

so that

closing one eye as you look at

full

is

in close

a projected dot.

the end view of a line that moves directly

a pencil so that

Now

can say that a line

it

it,

its full

length.

The

pencil

you can see only the sharpened

vou can see the pencil

as a dot.

tip.

Turn

length again and you have a line.

Some lines seem to lie on the surface of the paper. Others appear to dive down into space, to surface again, to express movement and direction. It can be said that

somewhere and

a line has derivation it

and destination,

it

going somewhere. In his teaching

is

School in Germany, the painter Paul Klee used to say

"Take

a

walk with

a line."

page and move with

He

probably meant,

a lively curiosity over the

start

is

coming from

at

the Bauhaus

Some moving

lines, especially

rapidly. Lines

to express a

pen

lines,

made by

somewhere on your

whole surface

in

show the nervous energy

a soft

and out

as

of a

hand

Chinese brush weighted with ink

crescendo and a diminuendo as the brush

23

LINE

to his students,

one might ramble about on a country walk.

seem

POINT

is

guided

PLANE

through large slow curves or steered swiftly about. Other a ruling If

pen

or a

you draw

side

by

area.

A

hard pencil, are

a line

straight, sure,

and imagine one

you would have what we

side,

plane

may be

tilted or

it

and

lines,

drawn with

accurate.

line next to another tightly call a plane, a

may be

packed

plane surface, or

flat

irregular in shape, but the surface,

the direction of the surface, does not vary. If

you remove the paper from

crayon

—on

its

have a more or

With

side, less

and draw

it

a

crayon

—

or better, use a lithographic

sideways across a sheet of paper, you will

even tone representing a plane.

these resources

—

a point, a line, a plane

—

the draftsman and the

printmaker can produce work of great variety and richness.

Jean Honore Fragonard

SCENE IN A PARK

(detail at left)

As children, our

first

conlacl with the materials of an

with a crayon or a pencil scribbled round and round little later

we make

artist is

bounding contour or

in

outline.

The

lines

may

line as a

contour line can be used with great

or with the most delicate subtlety, but

which

A

outlines that represent head, body, arms, legs, or house.

But there are many adults who never get beyond the idea of

power

usually

in a gleeful tangle.

it

is

only one of

many ways

represent thoughts, ideas, and feelings.

Chao Meng-fu bamboos, rocks, and LONELY ORCHIDS (detail)

COLOR

How

would you describe color to a person who has never been able to What would you say for instance about red? What comes to your mind see? when you hear the word? Is it the red of the blood in our veins, the red of roses, of

fire

engines, of sunsets, of a

25

traffic light?

We

can hardly use the

word blue without being vaguely aware familiar idea of "feeling blue." all in a

The

melancholy mood. Yellow

with radiance, with gold.

It is

and

of sky

air.

But there

is

also the

paintings of Picasso's "blue period" are is

we

the color

associate with sunlight,

China where the

the imperial color in

palaces in Peking are roofed in bright )'ellow

great

covered with ears of

tile as if

golden corn, row upon row.

We

speak of red, yellow, and blue

you cannot make

red, yellow,

primary

as the three

and blue out

of

any other

colors; that

colors.

is,

Anyone who

has experimented with a box of colors knows that red and yellow blue and yellow make

orange, that violet.

Orange, green, and

Sometime when the sun should one say look softly?

violet are is

green, and that red

known

therefore as secondary colors.

shining and rain

—

at a

make and blue make

is still

rainbow. See

if

point red turns to orange, yellow to green, blue to

falling, look

hard

you can decide violet.

The sun

at

rainbow then are pure

light.

But

artists

or

shining

through the raindrops breaks up light into the colors of the spectrum. colors of the

—

what

The

must work with

pigments, ground-up colors, which cannot be mixed with the brilliance and purity of light

white

All the colors of the spectrum

mixed together make

With pigments, however, when we combine

light.

colors, red

itself.

and green, blue and orange, yellow and

the complementary

we get varying made without any

violet,

shades of gray instead of pure white. (These grays, addition of black, are most useful to painters.)

Most

color charts place red, yellow,

color wheel.

When

and blue equidistant on a

colors are arranged in

this

way, one can

circle or

easily see the

pairing of opposites or complementary colors at any point on the color

wheel. Skillful painters

know how

to

enhance

a

color

by placing

its

RED

ORANGE

BLUE

YELLOW

(Opposite) Albert Pinkhmn Ryder

the

RACE TRACK OR DEATH ON A PALE HORSE

GREEN

complementary color

close by. It

vibrant color effects.

Van Gogh

is

these oppositions that

[)iodu(.c'

the must

can hardly paint a yellow-green

said, "I

without painting a blue-violet." You can experiment with complementary colors for yourself

by staring

and then closing your

eyes.

will appear as a green

at a bright

The

red square for a full minute or two

afterimage on the inside of your eyelids

square, the opposite or complementary color of

the red.

Colors within the red-yellow-orange group are colors.

The

distinction

between,

commonly

called

warm

blue-green-violet group arc designated as cool colors. This broad is

fairly

obvious, but there are also most subtle distinctions

say, a cool silvery gray

and

a

warm

pearly gray.

It is

generally

held that cool colors tend to recede into the distance, that the reds and

may appear

oranges appear to advance. Thus, colors

within what this

is

movement

called pictorial space.

A

to

advance or recede

knowledgeable painter commands

of color within pictorial space in

that an orchestra conductor controls the sounds

somewhat the same way

and volume of the

instru-

ments.

When we in the scale

want

to

speak of the relative lightness or darkness of a color

from white

to black

and many paintings depend

we

speak of values. Drawings and prints

for their effect not so

relative values, the relation of tones

from

much on

light to dark

and proportion

of light

and dark

tones.

for

its

on the

and the placement

of these tones in the design or structure of the composition.

Ryder painting reproduced below depends

color as

The

Albert P.

impact on the placement

Physicists

and physiologists can

The

us a great deal about the scientific

and how our eyes distinguish

aspects of color

something deep color,

tell

in

But

color.

still

there

is

our feelings that responds emotionally to qualities of

something elusive that even the psychologists can never quite explain.

great masters of color, from the mosaic artists of early Christian days

to the designers of medieval stained glass, painters

Monet and Matisse

Titian in the Renaissance to

known by

intuition

and investigation how

to

from Fra Angelico and in

modern times have

evoke these seemingly magical

properties of color.

Some

people

haps unwilling

who to

are disturbed or baffled

open

their

minds

to

by modern painting

the experience of color

—

to

are per-

respond

to color as naturally as they respond to certain kinds of music.

FORM number

In any large dictionary you will find a

word art.

Two

"form."

The

first is

rectangles

of

of these

form

meanings concern us

as "shape."

the photograph

light background.

We

We

may

meanings given

for the

works of

say that in each of the small

below there

sometimes speak of

of

in understanding

a

is

dark shape

this as figure

against

a

and ground. The

apparent forms or shapes are actually broken windowpanes, each one an interesting study in figure

and ground.

We

speak also of three-dimensional

forms. In the "Torso" by Constantin Brancusi

the

human body have been reduced

we may

say that the forms of

to their simplest terms.

7' E

F

k9^ t

'

m

kk^^

^^^f

'

""^

'

^i

m

mr yu Uk

LNJ]^

Claude Monet

antibes

39

Rembrandt van Rijn

40

self-portrait

too involved with subject matter, but will concentrate on tbe llowing spiraling

You

movements

that give the jxiinting

its

and

special character or style.

will find the contours less sharply defined than in the Ingres.

After that preliminary diagram, lay tracing paper over the picture, and indicate the boundaries of the painting. Again turn the book upside

and for

let

your hand move freely over the light and dark areas

whatever gives continuity

you

to the

forms witiiin

have

painting as dark as

this,

time to time.)

interesting to take a ruler

It is

will

to look

down

as you search

(With

this composition.

a

under the tracing paper from

and look

for

anchorage points

or accents that hold your eye to a definite vertical, horizontal, or diagonal

the skeleton or structure underneath the

line. It takes practice to see

obvious subject matter of the painting.

We

we have The master

should never suppose

discovered an exact plan on which a painting

laid out.

is

method

painters are too subtle, too full of surprises for us to analyze their so easily.

Go

more

But the search can sharpen your own seeing.

back

to

your studies of linear movement in the two paintings. Lay

the diagrams over the reproduction and trv indicating their forms with an even tone.

to

You

add the main dark areas by are investigating

still

another

element in the formal design, the pattern of light and dark shapes. You can also

try to see the

of the eye in depth.

The

Ingres

is

clearly

than the Delacroix.

flatter

You should be two

movement

artists.

able to sense that color

is

used in different ways by these

In the Ingres "Odalisque" the colors of each area are held

within clear boundaries. There are no exaggerations, no daring liberties taken with the color.

The

subordination of color to the drawing and to the

carefully planned composition are characteristic of the neoclassical style to

which

this

a style that

painting belongs.

was thought

to

The term

means "new

neoclassical

Roman discipline after The only exaggera-

be a revival of Greek and

the exuberant frivolities of eighteenth-century court tions are in the

drawing of the

figure, the

the length of the spinal column. Ingres

classical,"

art.

long drawn-out curve of the body,

drawing was more im-

felt that

portant than color, which he said was a mere icing on the cake. In the painting by Delacroix, on the other hand, color moves, leaps, sparkles, subsides, dissolves,

drawing, color. is

if

The

and builds up again. The

they ever existed, are

composition

is

restless,

lost in

clear outlines of the

the transitions and interactions of

dynamic,

full of

drama and energy. This

characteristic of the "romantic" style in painting.

The

art

historian

Heinrich WolfHin made current the pair of words 41

and "painterly," which are useful

"linear" ing. It

not hard to see that

is

word

style of Ingres, the

two ways

of work-

could apply the word "linear"

works of

art. First

style of his time,

there

and

is

the style of an individual

third, the perception

We

artist,

second, the

one

is

of

an individual

style of

artist

in speaking of

usually a certain personal, recognizable quality that distinguishes

work from beginning

artist's

end.

to

You may compare

this to

the

handwriting or the special tone of voice that are characteristic

distinctive

of individuals throughout their lives. style of a painter,

and

nounced,

work

We

work

that a musician interprets a musical score.

Van Gogh and Cezanne, of Ingres and Delacroix. Although way of working may change and evolve as he grows older,

artist's

there

same way

have touched on the

Titian, of

an

the

and experience that the viewer

brings to the activity of seeing. In a sense the viewer re-creates a art for himself in the

an

to

"painterly" to the style of Delacroix.

has been said that three elements enter into the experience of looking

It

at

we

in defining

as in the

need

a

artist gives

find

it

of El

We

be able

like to

easiest of course

where

to recognize the

style

is

most pro-

Greco or Van Gogh.

more general background

to recognize the

ways

expression to the time and place in which he

in

which

lives, to see

how an artist's work fits into the style of his period and his country. He may express the general ideas of his time, he may look backward and sum up what has gone before, or he may look forward and so seem strange and

contemporaries.

difficult to his

Everything you can learn about history and religion, about literature

and music

will contribute to

thought and stance, this

lived

felt

an understanding of the way people lived and

in other times:

or seventeenth-century

in eighteenth-century France,

Holland, or Renaissance Florence.

knowledge can help you understand and appreciate the and worked during these

The

teen-ager

who

once remarked

And who

to

me

while looking is

this

—

it

at a slide of

seems

to

be some

bachelor party?" must have been completely insensitive to the

atmosphere of the painting

itself;

and knowledge provided no clue Christian

artists

periods.

Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," "What sort of a

for in-

art.

Eve Cast Out

The

unfortunately, her limited experience to

of Paradise"

the meaning of a masterpiece of

who examined and said "LIgh! What

four-year old

Masaccio's

"Adam and

did they do>" was more

discerning. It

is

only by knowing something about the seventeenth century in

42

which Rembrandl hved (1606-1669) and about that

we can

his cuunliy,

i

lollaiid,

recognize the greatness and originahty of Rembrandt the man.

His work might fascinate

us,

we would

but

not reahze

how much Rem-

brandt created that had never been expressed before in just this way, so

moving, so human, so luminous that the drawings and paintings

still

speak to us directly today, across three hundred years. Naturally, no one can expect to grasp without effort and study the

inner meaning of works of art that deal with mythology or religion, or that give expression

to

pieces of Buddhist and

knowledge of the culture

the

life

of a people.

For some of the master-

Hindu art we need an open mind and as much as we can absorb. The four arms of the great god

Shiva, Lord of the Dance, were as natural, as vivid a symbol to people of

Hindu

faith in

medieval India as were the wings of the Angel Gabriel to

Christians in medieval Europe. Study in turn sends us back to the works of art

with more perceptive questions, with more ability to sense what the

artists are

saying through the language of line, color, and form. For not

everything that patterns;

is

thought and

music and

nuances that may

felt

by

human

art are other languages,

slip

through the

web

beings will

fit

into verbal

capable of shades of feeling, of

of words.

South Indian, eleventh century

shiva nataraja

Why About

a

Is

New

the

Always

Difficult?

hundred years ago the French painter Edouard Manet began

to

rethink the long-accepted convention of painting forms or volumes by

modeling with light and shade (a technique known

was convinced that figures

and

this

was not the way we

So when he painted "The

faces seen out of doors.

broke with a tradition that goes

Leonardo da Vinci and even

all

as chiarosciiro^

He

.

really see the world, especially Fifer,"

he

way back to the Renaissance painter You can see how the picture is built up

the

earlier.

You can see this in the face of the boy; you can see also that no distinction is made between the ground and distance, or perhaps it is floor and wall. When Manet painted the "Luncheon on the in rather

Grass"

was

a

it

tones.

flat

was not only the nude lady

new way

who

at a picnic

of seeing that upset people, the

flat

caused the scandal,

it

lighting without the

familiar modeling of forms from light into a rather colorless

shadow (see

page 45).

The way was open Claude Monet, began short,

choppy

to

The new was

A rise,"

critic,

to break

of seeing.

up the shadows

Another French

But newspaper

them the

too difficult for

seizing on the

gave the

critics

destruction of

title

them

all

painter,

as well as the sunlight into

strokes of juxtaposed color that brought a

sparkle into painting.

what seemed

new ways

to

new

lightness

and

and angry crowds attacked

they had admired in painting.

to accept.

of a painting by Monet, "Impression: Sun-

name Impressionism

in scorn to the

group of painters work-

ing and exhibiting together in the 1870's and i88o's. Monet, Camille Pissarro, Renoir,

sometimes Manet and Edgar Degas, with Berthe Morisot,

Alfred Sisley, and the American

Mary

ciated with Impressionism.

44

Cassatt are

among

the

artists asso-

Now of

after

two world wars we look back

Monet and Renoir and

their friends

could have shocked anyone and

why

gay and charming world

at the

and wonder how

their paintings

and perservering

these devoted

artists,

the Impressionists, had to live through such hard years of stmggle before the public began to catch

up with them.

Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin are usually called Post-Impressionists.

Each

of

them brought

a

new

interpretation to the Impressionist

use of color: Cezanne in his lonelv pursuit of formal order, Gauguin with his symbolic

and decorative color (best known

paintings), and

Van Gogh with

his emotional

these three painters pursued his

own

At the time Van Gogh died no one wanted

creative artist.

To

and one or two

color.

Each

of

Van Gogh and Gauguin. to

buy

his paintings.

loyal friends believed in

him

Only

as a serious,

the average taste of his time, Vincent van Gogh's paint-

ings were rough, wild, unfinished,

have only

the South Seas

vision in the face of great difficulties,

almost insurmountable material difficulties for

his brother Tlieo

to us in

and expressive

to look at the

and showed an unbalanced mind. You

painting by

expected toward the end of the

last

Gerome century.

to

see

what most people

They admired what they

considered accomplished drawing, and a finished technique in

oil colors.

They

liked pretty

no

at all,

and scenes of luxury

and pleasant

subjects: girls in white dresses or

in Oriental courts.

Obviously

ing was not what they expected and so thev rejected troubled and searching and deeply poetic

it.

dresses

Van Gogh's

paint-

Vincent van Gogh's

mind could not accept the

obviously superficial.

Leon Gerome

pygmalion and galatea

Edouard Manet

luncheon on the grass

In one of his

So

I

am

letters to his brother,

he wrote:

always between two currents of thought,

difficulties,

turning round and round to

study of color.

am

I

always in hope of

express the love of two lovers by a colors, their

wedding

To

express the thought of a

of a light tone against a

express hope by

some

something that actually

which the

real

brow by the radiance

star,

the eagerness of a soul by a sunset

no delusive realism

is

in that,

but

isn't

it

exists?^

Along about 1908 came another major in

two complementarv

somber background.

radiance. Certainly there

Cubism,

of

mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations

of kindred tones.

To

the material

first

make a living; and second, making a discovery there, to

direction

in

painting called

world of figures or guitars or bowls of

fruit

and

pipes seems to disappear entirely into tilting planes and shifting space in

low-keyed

color; this

is

in the long tradition of

a

way

of painting

Western

Juan Gris are the most important

art.

which has taken

its

place firmly

Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and

artists associated

with the innovations of

this style.

Again, after the upheaval of

York

felt that it

wanted

Willem de Kooning

to

figure

make

World War

was impossible a

new

to

II,

a

group of

artists in

go on in the established paths.

beginning, to

start

New They

with the very most deeply

felt

and of

intuitive

New

others

—

York

meanings

—

gave to

Ihese Abstraet Expressionist painters

in painting.

Jackson Pollock, Willcm de Kooning, Franz Kline, and

country our

this

first

and

truly original

influential style of

painting.

You may always

certain vein

and stale

ask

artists

full of

and

why art cannot new ways of

with

comes

to

meaning

in the

repetitious in the

as

who

seeing and doing.

be exhausted.

interests of society as a scientists

continue repeating

partly because a

once was fresh and stimulating

shift

first

to

Also the attitudes and

later imitators.

and change, and

it is

the artists and the

provide intimations of this change. Just

people are beginning to grow accustomed

new

It is

there are

hands of strong and original painters becomes hands of

whole

are often the

What

why

itself,

to

the

artists'

ways of seeing,

a

generation of painters comes along to upset the familiar vision, and

change

is

In our

no such vanced

difficult for the

own

majority of people.

time, in this second half of the twentieth century, there

clearly defined opposition

art as there

was

Claude Monet began

a

between conventional

taste

is

and ad-

hundred years ago when Edouard Manet and

to paint.

There

seeing and working, and they involve

have what may be called "instant

are instead artists all

art."

What

is

many

styles,

many ways

of

We seem

to

over the world.

new

in

New

York or Paris

appears simultaneously in San Francisco or Tokyo or Buenos Aires or

London. Sometimes catchwords

like

optical) art confuse the public by

"pop" (or popular)

lumping together

artists

art

and "op" (or

who work

in the

Edwin Mieczkowski

Roy Lichtenstein

waverly place

portrait of holly

Frank Gallo

same general manner, without distinguishing the

who

are trying to

Some

chmb on

male image

serious artists

from those

the bandwagon.

people are afraid of missing anything that might possibly become

important, and therefore accept everything without discrimination. Others

shut their eyes to everything that has happened in the half century. to

But

with an open mind

for those

be young and an

artist,

it is

arts in

the last

an adventurous time

or collector, a student of art history, or just an

interested observer.

In

Dag Hammarskjold's

words:

All first-hand experience

looking for closed

mind

it

is

will

is

one day find

a weakness,

and he who has given up that he lacks what he needs: a

valuable,

—

and he who approaches persons

or poetry without the youthful ambition to learn a so gain access to

someone

else's

perspective on

48

or painting

new language and

life, let

him beware.^

Interlude:

A

Collage of

Pictures and Quotations

Seeing the immense design of the world, one image of wonder mirrored by another image of

wonder

— the pattern

of fern

and of feather by

the frost on the window-pane, the six rays of the snowflake mirrored in

—seeing

the rock-crystal's six-rayed eternity

the pattern on the scaly legs

of birds mirrored in the pattern of knot-grass,

I

asked myself, were those

shapes molded by blindness? Are not these the "correspondences," a phrase of Swedenborg,

quote

"whereby we may speak with angels"?

—Edith

5°

to

Sitwell

FERN IN RAIN, MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK Photogra-ph hy Ansel

Adams

51

from Lapis Lazuli

Two

Chinamen, behind them

Are carved

in lapis lazuli.

Over them

flies

A

a third,

a long-legged bird,

symbol of longevity;

The

third, doubtless a serving-man.

Carries a musical instrument.

Every discoloration of the stone. Every accidental crack or dent.

Seems

a water-course or

Or lofty Though

where

slope

doubtless

Sweetens the

little

an avalanche.

it still

plum

snows

or cherry-branch

half-way house

Those Chinamen climb towards, and Delight

to

I

imagine them seated there;

There, on the mountain and the sky.

On One

all

the tragic scene they stare.

asks for

mournful melodies;

Accomplished

lingers begin to play.

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their

Their ancient,

eyes.

glittering eyes, are gay.

—William Butler Yeats

5^

Wu

Pin GREETING THE SPRING (detail)

53

)

baby in a red chair

American, nineteenth century

On

the Birth of His Son

Families,

Want I,

it

when to

a child

is

born

be intelligent.

through intelligence,

Having wrecked my whole

Only hope

life.

the baby will prove

Ignorant and stupid.

Then he

will

By becoming

—

54

Sii

crown a

a tranquil life

Cabinet Minister.

Tung-p'o

(

1

036-110 1

Pablo Picasso

the old guitarist

Jrom

The Man With the Blue Guitar The man

A

bent over his blue guitar

shearsman of

sorts.

They said, "You have a You do not play things

The man

replied,

The day was blue guitar, they are."

as

"Things

as they are

Are changed upon the blue

And

guitar."

they said then, "But play, you must,

A

tune beyond

A

tune upon the blue guitar

Of

green.

us, yet ourselves,

things exactly as they are."

—Wallace Stevens 55

Woods on

Stopping by

Whose woods His house

He

is

these are

Snowy Evening think

I

I

know.

in the village though;

will not see

To watch

a

his

me

stopping here

woods

fill

up with snow.

My

little

To

stop without a farmhouse near

horse must think

it

queer

Between the woods and frozen lake

The

He

darkest evening of the year.

gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods But

And And

I

are lovely, dark

have promises

and deep,

to keep,

miles to go before

I

sleep,

miles to go before

I

sleep.

—Robert

56

Frost

Not

a shelter to stop the steed

In the snowy dusk

at

Sano no Watari

—Fujiwara Teika

SotatSU

CROSSING AT SANO (sANO NO WATARl)

57

The Hunters The icy

in the

over-all picture

Snow

winter

is

mountains

in the

background the return

from the hunt from the

it

is

toward evening

left

sturdy hunters lead in their

pack the inn-sign

hanging from a broken hinge

is

a stag a crucifix

between

his antlers the cold

inn yard

is

deserted but for a huge bonfire that flares wind-driven tended

women who about

it

the hill

cluster

to the right

is

by

beyond

a pattern of skaters

Brueghel the painter concerned with a winter-struck

it all

bush

has chosen for his

foreground to

complete the picture

.

.

.

—William Carlos Williams

58

Pieter

Bmeghel

hunters in the snow

59

Only through

art

can

we

view of the universe which

get outside of ourselves

is

which would otherwise have remained unknown on the moon. Thanks see

it

multiply until

ginal artists space. or

—more

And many

Vermeer,

is

and know another's

not the same as ours and see landscapes to us like the

landscapes

to art, instead of seeing a single world, our

we have

different

before us as

many

own, we

worlds as there are

ori-

from each other than those which revolve in

centuries after their core, whether

we

call

it

Rembrandt

extinguished they continue to send us their special rays.

—Marcel Proust

Rembrandt van Rijn

the artist in

his studio

>3)tr,

.-^