VII. COMPOSITION IN REPRESENTATION

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In academic art teaching representation is the starting-point. This means that one must first of all “learn to draw”, as power in art is thought to be based upon ability to represent accurately and truthfully either nature's facts or historic ornament. I use the word “academic” to define all teaching founded upon representation. The theory may be summed up in two points:

1. Store the mind with facts, to be used in creative work later on.
2. Technique is best acquired by the practice of object and figure drawing. The first is a purely scientific process, a gathering up of data, with no thought of harmony or originality; hence drawing with such an end in view is not strictly art-work. Nor does the artist need to lumber up his mind; nature is his storehouse of facts. The second point has more reason, but when the aim is for mere accuracy, only a limited amount of skill is acquired and that often hardly more than nice workmanship—not art-skill. The powerful drawing of the masters is largely derived from other masters, not from copying nature. It is an interpretation with the purpose of attaining a high standard. Such drawing aims to express character and quality in an individual way—a thing quite different from fact-statement.

Nature-drawing, wrongly placed and misunderstood, has become a fetich in our modern teaching. Our art critics talk of “just” rendering, “true” values, “conscientious” painting and the like; terms that belong to morals, not art, and could not be applied to Architecture, Music or Poetry. These stock-phrases are a part of that tradition of the elders—that eighteenth century academism still lingering. Representation has but a small place in the art of the world. This is roughly shown in the two lists below:

NON-REPRESENTATIVE

Architecture—Furniture.
Wood carving.
Pottery.
Modelling,—mouldings and pattern.
Metal work.
Inlay,—mosaic, etc.
Geometric design, including Egyptian, Peruvian and Savage.
Ginghams, plaids and much textile pattern.
Mohammedan art (one great division) etc.

REPRESENTATIVE

Painting and Sculpture of Figures, Portraits, Animals, Flowers, Still Life, Landscape Painting.
[pg 50]

The nature-imitators hold that accurate representation is a virtue of highest order and to be attained in the beginning. It is undeniably serviceable, but to start with it is to begin at the wrong end. It is not the province of the landscape painter, for example, to represent so much topography, but to express an emotion; and this he must do by art. His art will be manifest in his composition; in his placing of his trees, hills and houses in synthetic relations to each other and to the space-boundary. Here is the strength of George Inness; to this he gave his chief effort. He omits detail, and rarely does more than indicate forms.

This relation among the parts of a composition is what we call Beauty, and it begins to exist with the first few lines drawn. Even the student may express a little of it as he feels it, and the attempt to embody it in lines on paper will surely lead to a desire to know more fully the character and shapes of things, to seek a knowledge of drawing with enthusiasm and pleasure.

These things are said, not against nature-drawing—I should advise more rather than less—but against putting it in the wrong place.

The main difference between Academic and Structural (Analytic and Synthetic) is not in the things done, but in the reason for doing them, and the time for them. All processes are good in their proper places.

The relation of representative drawing to a synthetic scheme is this: One uses the facts of nature to express an idea or emotion. The figures, animals, flowers or objects are chosen for the sake of presenting some great historical or religious thought as in della Francesca's Annunciation (No. 36), for decoration of an architectural space (Reims capital, No. 38), because the landscape has special beauty as in Hiroshige's print (No. 8), or because the objects have form and color suggesting a high order of harmony, as in Chinese and Japanese paintings of flowers, or Leonardo's drawings of insects and reptiles.

Another reason for drawing is found in the use of the shapes or hues in design. Desire to express an idea awakens interest in the means. Observation is keen, close application is an easy task, every sense is alert to accomplish the undertaking. This is quite different from drawing anything and everything for practice only.

Mere accuracy has no art-value whatever. Some of the most pathetic things in the world are the pictures or statues whose only virtue is accuracy. The bare truth may be a deadly commonplace. Pupils should look for character; that includes all truth and all beauty. It leads one to seek for the best handling and to value power in expression above success in drawing.

Composition is the greatest aid to representation because it cultivates judgment as to relations of space and mass. Composition does not invite departure from nature's truth, or encourage inaccuracies of any kind—it helps one to draw in a finer way.

[pg 51]
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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