The Psychology of Beauty Part 5

We may thus think of a s.p.a.ce to be composed as a kind of target, in which certain spots or territories count more or less, both according to their distance from the centre and according to what fills them. Every element of a picture, in whatever way it gains power to excite motor impulses, is felt as expressing that power in the flat pattern. A n.o.ble vista is understood and enjoyed as a vista, but it is COUNTED in the motor equation, our "balance,"

as a spot of so much intrinsic value at such and such a distance from the centre. The skillful artist will fill his target in the way to give the maximum of motor impulses with the perfection of balance between them.

It is thus in a kind of subst.i.tutional symmetry, or balance, that we have the objective condition or counterpart of aesthetic repose, or unity. From this point of view it is clearly seen in what respect the unity of Hildebrand fails. He demands in the statue, especially, but also in the picture, the flat surface as a unity for the three dimensions. But it is only with the flat s.p.a.ce, won, if you will, by Hildebrand's method, that the problem begins. Every point in the third dimension counts, as has been said, in the flat. The Fernbild is the beginning of beauty, but within the Fernbild favorable stimulation and repose must still be sought. And repose or unity is given by symmetry, subjectively the balance of attention, inasmuch as this balance is a tension of antagonistic impulses, an equilibrium, and thus an inhibition of movement.

From this point of view, we are in a position to refute Souriau's interesting a.n.a.lysis<1> of form as the condition for the appreciation of content. He says that form, in a picture for instance, has its value in its power to produce (through its fixation and concentration of the eye) a mild hypnosis, in which, as is well known, all suggestions come to us with bewildering vividness. This is, then, just the state in which the contents of the picture can most vividly impress themselves. Form, then, as the means to content, by giving the conditions for suggestion, is Sourieau's account of it. In so far as form--in the sense of unity--gives, through balance and equilibrium of impulses, the arrest of the personality, it may indeed be compared with hypnotism. But this arrest is not only a means, but an end in itself; that aesthetic repose, which, as the unity of the personality, is an essential element of the aesthetic emotion as we have described it.

<1> _La Suggestion en l'Art_.

VI

There is no point of light or color, no contour, no line, no depth, that does not contribute to the infinite complex which gives the maximum of experience with the minimum of effort and which we call beauty of form. But yet there is another way of viewing the beautiful object, on which we touched in the introduction to this chapter. So far, what we see is only another name for HOW we see; and the way of seeing has proved to contain enough to bring to stimulation and repose the psychophysical mechanism. But now we must ask, what relation has meaning to beauty? Is it an element, coordinate with others, or something superposed? or is it an end in itself, the supreme end? What relation to the beauty of form has that quality of their works by virtue of which Rembrandt is called a dreamer, and Rodin a poet in stone? What do we mean when we speak of Sargent as a psychologist? Is it a virtue to be a poet in stone? If it is, we must somehow include in our concept of Beauty the element of expression, by showing how it serves the infinite complex. Or is it not an aesthetic virtue, and Rodin is great artist and poet combined, and not great artist because poet, as some would say? What is the relation of the objective content to beauty of form? In short, what place has the idea in Beauty?

In the preceding the place of separate objects which have only an ideal importance has been made clear. The gold-embroidered gauntlet in a picture counts as a patch of light, a trend of line, in a certain spot; but it counts more there, because it is of interest for itself, and by thus counting more, the idea has entered into the spatial balance,--the idea has become itself form. Now it is the question whether all "idea," which seems so heterogeneous in its relation to form, does not undergo this trans.m.u.tation. It is at least of interest to see whether the facts can be so interpreted.

We have spoken of ideas a parts of an aesthetic whole. What of the idea of the whole? Corot used to say he painted a dream, and it is the dream of an autumn morning we see in his pictures.

Millet portrays the sad majesty and sweetness of the life near the soil. How must we relate these facts to the views already won?

It has often been said that the view which makes the element of form for the eye alone, in the strictest sense, is erroneous, because there is no form for the eye alone. The very process of apprehending a line involves not only motor memories and impulses, but numberless ideal a.s.sociations, and these a.s.sociations const.i.tute the line as truly as do the others. The impression of the line involves expression, a meaning which we cannot escape. The forms of things const.i.tute a kind of dialect of life,--and thus it is that the theory of Einfuhlung in its deepest sense is grounded. The Doric column causes in us, no doubt, motor impulses, but it means, and must mean, to us, the expression of internal energy through those very impulses it causes. "We ourselves are contracting our muscles, but we feel as if the lines were pulling and piercing, bending and lifting, pressing down and pus.h.i.+ng up; in short, as soon as the visual impression is really isolated, and all other ideas really excluded, then the motor impulses do not awake actions which are taken as actions of ourselves, but feelings of energy which are taken as energies of the visual forms and lines."<1> So the idea belonging to the object, and the psychophysical effect of the object are only obverse and inverse of the same phenomenon.

And our pleasure in the form of the column is rather our appreciation of energy than our feeling of favorable stimulation.

Admitting this reasoning, the meaning of a picture would be the same as its beauty, it is said. The heroic art of J.-F. Millet, for example, would be beautiful because it is the perfect expression of the simplicity and suffering of labor.

<1> H. Munsterberg, _The Principles of Art Education_, p. 87.

Let us examine this apparently reasonable theory. It is true that every visual element is understood as expression too. It is not true, however, that expression and impression are parallel and mutually corresponding beyond the elements. Suppose a concourse of columns covered by a roof,--the Parthenon. Those psychophysical changes induced by the sight now mutually check and modify each other. Can we say that there is a "meaning,"

like the energy of the column, corresponding to that complex?

It is at least not energy itself. Ask the same as regards the lines and ma.s.ses of a picture by Corot. In the sense in which we have taken "meaning," the only psychologically possible one, our reactions could be interpreted only by some mood. If the column means energy because it makes us tower, then the picture must mean what it makes us do. That is, a combination of feathery fronds and horizontal lines of water, bathed in a gray- green silvery mist, can "mean" only a repose lightened by a grave yet cheerful spirit. In short, this theory of expressiveness cannot go beyond the mood or moral quality. In the sense of INFORMATION, the theory of Einfuhlung contributes nothing. Now, in this limited sense, we have indeed no reason to contradict it, but simply to point out that it holds only in this extremely limited sense. When we see broad sweeping lines we interpret them by sympathetic reproduction as strength, energy. When those sweeping lines are made part of a t.i.tan's frame, we get the same effect plus the a.s.sociations which belong to distinctively muscular energy. Those same lines might define the sweep of a drapery, or the curve of an infant's limbs. Now all that part of the meaning which belongs to the lines themselves remains constant under whatever circ.u.mstances; and it is quite true that a certain feeling-tone, a certain moral quality, as it were, belongs, say, to Raphael's pictures, in which this kind of outline is to be found. But as belonging to a t.i.tan, the additional elements of understanding are not due to sympathetic reproduction. They are not parallel with the motor suggestions; they are simply an a.s.sociational addition, due to our information about the power of men with muscles like that. That there are secondary motor elements as a reverberation of these ideal elements need not be denied. But they are not directly due to the form. Now such part of our response to a picture as is directly induced by the form, we have a right to include in the aesthetic experience. It will, however, in every work of art of even the least complexity, be expressible only as a mood, very indefinite, often indescribable. To make this "meaning," then, the essential aim of a picture seems unreasonable.

It is evident that in experience we do not, as a matter of fact, separate the mood which is due to sympathy from the ideal content of the picture. Corot paint a summer dawn.

We cannot separate our pleasure in the sight from our pleasure in the understanding; yet it is the visual complex that gives us the mood, and the meaning of the scene is due to factors of a.s.sociation. The "serene and happy dream," the "conviction of a solemn and radiant Arcadia," are not "expression" in that inevitable sense in which we agreed to take it, but the result of a most extended upbuilding of ideal (that is, a.s.sociational) elements.

The "idea," then, as we have propounded it, is not, as was thought possible, an integral and essential part, but an addition to the visual form, and we have still to ask what is its value. But in so far as it is an addition, its effect may be in conflict with what we may call the feeling-tone produced by sympathetic reproduction. In that case, one must yield to the other. Now it is not probably that even the most convinced adherents of the expression theory would hold that if expression or beauty MUST go, expression should be kept.

They only say that expression IS beauty. But the moment it is admitted that there is a beauty of form independent of the ideal element, this theory can no longer stand. If there is a conflict, the palm must be given to the direct, rather than the indirect, factor. Indeed, when there is such a conflict, the primacy must always be with the medium suited to the organ, the sensuous factor. For if it were not so, and expression WERE beauty, then that would have to be most beautiful which was most expressive. And even if we disregard the extraordinary conclusions to which this would lead,--the story pictures preferred to those without a story, the photographic reproductions preferred to the symphonies of color and form,--we should be obliged to admit something still more incendiary. Expression is always of an ideal content, is of something to express; and it is unquestioned that in words, and in words alone, can we get nearest to the inexpressible. Then literature, as being the most expressive, would be the highest art, and we should be confronted with a hierarchy of arts, from that down.

Now, in truth, the real lover of beauty knows that no one art is superior to another. "Each in his separate star," they reign alone. In order to be equal, they must depend on their material, not on that common quality of imaginative thought which each has in a differing degree, and all less than literature.

The idea, we conclude, is then indeed subordinate,--a by-product, unless by chance it can enter into, melt into, the form. This case we have clearest in the example, already referred to, of the gold-embroidered gauntlet, or the jeweled chalice,--say the Holy Grail in Abbey's pictures,--which counts more or less, in the spatial balance, according to its intrinsic interest.

We have seen that through sympathetic reproduction a certain mood is produced, which becomes a kind of emotional envelope for the picture,--a favorable stimulation of the whole, a raising of the whole harmony one tone, as it were. Now the further ideal content of the picture may so closely belong to this basis that it helps it along. Thus all that we know about dawn--not only of a summer morning--helps us to see, and seeing to rejoice, in Corot's silvery mist or Monet's iridescent s.h.i.+mmers. All that we know and feel about the patient majesty of labor in the fields, next the earth, helps us to get the slow, large rhythm, the rich gloom of Millet's pictures. But it is the rhythm and the gloom that are the beauty, and the idea reinforces our consciousness thereof. The idea is a sounding-board for the beauty, and so can be truly said to enter into the form.

But there are still some lions in the path of our theory. The greatest of modern sculptors is reputed to have reached his present alt.i.tude by the pa.s.sionate pursuance of Nature, and of the expressions of Nature. And few can see Rodin's work without being at once in the grip of the emotion or fact he has chosen to depict. A great deal of contemporary criticism on modern tendencies in art rests on the intention of expression, and expression alone, attributed to him. It is said of him: "The solicitude for ardent expression overmasters every aesthetic consideration.... He is a poet with stone as his instrument of expression. He makes it express emotions that are never found save in music or in psychological and lyric literature."<1>

<1> C. Mauclair, "The Decorative Sculpture of August Rodin,"

_International Monthly_, vol iii.

Now while the last is undoubtedly true, I believe that the first is not only not true, but that it is proved to be so by Rodin's own procedure and utterances, and that, if we understand his case aright, it is for beauty alone that he lives. He has related his search for the secret of Michael Angelo's design, and how he found it in the rhythm of two planes rather than four, the Greek composition. This system of tormented form is one way of referring the body to the geometry of an imagined rectangular block inclosing the whole.

<1>"The ordinary Greek composition of the body, he puts it, depends on a rhythm of four lines, four volumes, four planes.

If the line of the shoulders and pectorals slopes from right to left (the man resting on his right leg) 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 rhythm ABBA, and the balancing volumes set up a corresponding 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 geometrical enveloping lines for his design. And, in fact, there is no sculpture which is more wonderful in design than Rodin's. I quote Mr. MacColl again. "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 examined it with attention. The way in which these figures move among themselves, as the spectator walks round, so as to produce from every fresh angle sweeping commanding lines, each of them thus playing a dozen parts at once, is surely one of the most astounding feats of the genius of design. Nothing in 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 some one who suggested that there might be a danger in too close devotion to Nature, "Yes, for a mediocre artist!" It is for the sake of the strange 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, whom we 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 women, one laden with gra.s.s, the other with f.a.gots. "From far off, they are superb, they balance their shoulders under the weight of fatigue, the twilight swallows their forms. It is beautiful, it is great as a myster."<1>

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

The idea is, as I said, from this point of view, a means to new beauty; and the stranger and subtler the idea, the more original the forms. The more unrestrained the expression of emotion in the figures, the more chance to surprise them in some new lovely pattern. It is thus, I believe, that we may interpret the seeming trend of modern sculpture, and so much, indeed, of all modern art, to the "expressive beauty" path.

"The mediocre artist" will lose beauty in seeking expression, the great artist will pursue his idea for the sake of the new beauty it will yield.

Thus it seems that the stumbling blocks in the way of our theory are not insurmountable after all. From every point of view, it is seen to be possible to trans.m.u.te 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 stimulation and repose of the psychophysical organism alone can make one thrill to visual form; but the thrill is deeper and more satisfying if it engage the whole man, and be reinforced from all sources.

VII

But we ought 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 that man," is the inspirer of drawing as opposed to the art of visual form.

It is not beauty we seek from the Rembrandt and Durer of the etchings and woodcuts, from Hogarth, Goya, Klinger, 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 may trace, perhaps, the ground of this in the highly increased amount of symbolic, a.s.sociative power given, and required, in the black and white. Even to understand such a picture demands such an enormous amount of unconscious mental supplementation that it is natural to find the aesthetic centre of gravity in that element.

The first conditions of the work, that is, determine its trend and aim. The part played by imagination in our vision of an etching is and must be so important, that it is, after all, the imaginative part which outweighs the given. Nor do we desire the given to infringe upon the ideal field. Thus do we understand that for most drawings a background vague and formless is the desideratum. "Such a tone is the foil for psychological moments, as they are handled by Goya, for instance, with barbarically magnificent nakedness. On a background which is scarcely indicated, with few strokes, which barely suggest s.p.a.ce, he impales like a b.u.t.terfly the human type, mostly in a moment of folly or wickedness.... The least definition of surrounding would blunt his (the artist's) keenness, and make his vehemence absurd."<1>

<1> Max Klinger, _Malerei u. Zeichnung_, 1903, p. 42.

This theory of the aim of black and white is confirmed by the fact that while a painting is composed for the size in which it is painted, and becomes another picture if reproduced in another measure, the size of drawings is relatively indifferent; reduced or enlarged, the effect is approximately the same, because what is given 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 names it--ought first to be judged. This is not saying that it may not also possess beauty of form to a high degree,--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 know what the elements of visual form must do to bring about the aesthetic experience, it has been the aim of the preceding pages to show how those elements must be determined and related. The eye, the psychophysical organism, must be favorably stimulated; these, and such colors, combinations, lines as we have described, are fitted to do it. It must be brought 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 must be made; and in so far as the emotion or the idea belonging 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. s.p.a.cE 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 ill.u.s.trated and confirmed in the masterpieces of art. A statistical study, undertaken some years ago with the purpose of dealing thus with the hypothesis of subst.i.tutional symmetry in pictorial composition, has given abundance of material, which I shall set forth, at otherwise disproportionate length, as to a certain extent ill.u.s.trative of the methods of such study. It is clear that this is but one of many possible investigations in which the preceding psychological 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 limited in its reference. For picture might always be read s.p.a.ce arrangement within a frame.

In the original experimental study of s.p.a.ce arrangements, the results of which were given at length on page 111, the elements of form in a picture were reduced to SIZE or Ma.s.s, DEPTH in the third dimension, DIRECTION, and INTEREST. Direction was further a.n.a.lyzed 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 imaginary vertical line, and the elements appearing on each side of this line were set off against each other to see how far they lent themselves to description by subst.i.tutional 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 ma.s.s is to the left, and the general direction of line is to the right; elements of interest in the head, left; in implements, right. This may be schematized in the equation (Lt.)M.+I.=(Rt.)I.+L.

Pieter de Hooch, "The Card-Players," in Buckingham Palace, portrays a group completely on the right of the central line, all facing in to the table between them. Directly behind them is a high light window, screened, and high on the wall to the extreme right are a picture and hanging cloaks. All goes to emphasize the height, ma.s.s, and interest of the right side.

On the left, which is otherwise empty, is a door half the height of the window, giving on a brightly lighted courtyard, from which is entering a woman, also in light clothing. The light streams in diagonally across the floor. Thus, with all the "weight" on the right, the effect of this deep vista on the left and of its brightness is to give a complete balance, while the suggestion of line from doorway and light makes, together with the central figure, a roughly outlined V, which serves to bind together all the elements. Equation, (Lt.)V.+I.