Line
IV — Composition in Squares and Circles
After working with the principles long enough to understand their nature, and to see what can be done with them, the student is ready for problems in composition. Practice in line arrangement is a preparation for all kinds of art work, be it design, painting, sculpture or architecture. Choose an enclosed area of definite and regular shape, and break it up into a harmonious group of smaller areas by drawing lines. For these elementary exercises in composition the square and circle are best because their boundaries are unchangeable, and attention must be fixed upon interior lines. Take first the square, using straight lines of equal thickness drawn with the brush as suggested in chapter II. The result should be a harmony of well-cut space, a little musical theme in straight lines and grouped areas. Make many trial arrangements, sketching lightly with charcoal on “bogus” or lining paper. Select the best, correct them, and draw with brush and ink over the charcoal lines. From these choose the most satisfactory, place thin Japanese paper over them and trace in firm black lines, freehand, with the Japanese brush. Avoid hard wiry lines and all that savors of rule and compass or laborious pains-taking. Use no measure of any kind; sizes, shapes and directions must be decided upon without mechanical aids.
Never try to erase an ink line,—if a mistake occurs begin again. Tracing, for the art-purpose of improving proportions and acquiring an expressive brush-touch, is a most valuable help to the production of good work. Architects use tracing-paper for changes in plans. Japanese artists trace again and again until satisfied with the quality of touch and strength of drawing. Straight line is chosen for elementary practice because of its simplicity, and because it prepares for work with curves. The finest curve is measured by a series of straight lines in harmonic relations of rhythm and proportion (p. 42). After some experience with straight line, cut areas with curved,—geometric, flower, fruit, landscape or figure.
Equal thickness of line is advisable now, to fix attention upon direction, touch and spacing. Variation in width will come later in notan of line (page 54) and in representative drawing (page 51) where texture and modelling are to be indicated. The main purpose of this and all exercises in this book is the creation of harmony, hence if the result has but a slight degree of line-beauty it can be considered a first step in Art.
The examples are chosen from students’ work, from Japanese books, from design, craft and architecture. They illustrate various ways of treating squares and circles according to principles of composition.
1. Copy these enlarged, with brush.
2. Select one, as a theme, and make many variations.
3. Originate new line-schemes in squares and circles.
Applications
1. Ginghams, plaids, embroidery, stencil.
2. Panelling, window sashes, leading for glass, inlaid wood, mosaic, enamel on metal.
3. Incised lines in wood, clay or metal, low relief modelling.
Study of the principle precedes application in all cases. It is true that the limitations of material must be recognized in making designs for special purposes. The substance or surface for which the design is intended will itself suggest the handling; but material teaches us nothing about the finer relationships. First study the art of design; develop capacity by exercise of the inventive and appreciative faculties; then consider the applications in craft or profession.
V — Composition in Rectangles — Variation
In the search for finer relations there must be every opportunity for choice; the better the choice, the finer the art. The square and circle allow choice only as to interior divisions, but the rectangle is capable of infinite variation in its boundary lines.
The scientific mind has sought, by analysis of many masterpieces, to discover a set of perfect proportions, and to reduce them to mathematical form, for example, 3:5, or 4:7. The secret of spacing in Greek art has been looked for in the “golden mean”, viz: height is to length as length is to the sum of height and length. Doubtless such formulae were useful for ordinary work, but the finest things were certainly the product of feeling and trained judgment, not of mathematics. Art resists everything that interferes with free choice and personal decision; art knows no limits.
Poverty of ideas is no characteristic of the artist; his mind is ever striving to express itself in new ways.
The personal choice of proportions, tones and colors stamps the work with individuality. A master in art is always intensely individual, and what he does is an expression of his own peculiar choices.
The beauty of proportion in your rectangle is measured by your feeling for fine relations, not by any formula what ever. No work has art-value unless it reflects the personality of its author, What everybody can do easily, or by rule, cannot be art.
The study of Variation tends to lead the mind away from the conventional and humdrum, toward original and individual expression. Variation has no place in academic courses of art teaching, but in composition it is a most important element.
The masters of music have shown that infinite possibilities of variation—the same theme appearing again and again with new beauty, different quality and complex accompaniment. Even so can lines, masses and colors be wrought into musical harmonies and endlessly varied. The Japanese color print exemplifies this, each copy of the same subject being varied in shade or hue or disposition of masses to suit the restless inventive energy of its author. In old Italian textiles the same pattern appears repeatedly, but varied in size, proportion, dark-and-light and color. In times when art is decadent, the designers and painters lack inventive power and merely imitate nature or the creations of others. Then comes Realism, conventionality, and the death of art.
Some experience in choice of proportions and the cutting of rectangular spaces may be gained from the following
Exercise
1. Design some simple theme in vertical and horizontal lines and arrange it in several rectangles of the same size, varying the spacing in each, No. 29a.
2. Compose a straight-line theme in several rectangles of different proportions, No. 29b.
3. Choose the best and trace with brush and ink.
In the first case there is variation of interior lines only; in the second all lines are changed. This exercise admits of great expansion, according to age of pupils and limits of time.
Examples of Rectangular Design
Contact with the best works of art is an essential part of art education, for from them comes power and the stimulus to create. The student hears and reads much that passes for art criticism but is only talk about the subject of a picture, the derivation and meaning of a design, or the accuracy of a drawing. These minor points have their place in discussing the literary and scientific sides of a masterpiece; they relate to art only superficially, and give no key to the perception of fine quality.
The most important fact about a great creative work is that it is beautiful; and the best way to see this is to study the art-structure of it,—the way it is built up as Line, Notan, Color,—the principle of composition which it exemplifies. See what a master has done with the very problem you are trying to work out.
This method of approach will involve a new classification of the world’s art, cutting across the historical, topical and geographical lines of development. The instructor in composition will illustrate each step with many examples differing as to time, locality, material and subject, but alike in art-structure.
Museum collections might be used for a series of progressive studies based upon composition; taking up one principle at a time and seeking illustrations in a group of wide range,—a picture, sculpture, architecture, Gothic carving, metal work, old textile, bit of pottery, Japanese print.
The beauty of simple spacing is found in things great and small, from a cathedral tower to a cupboard shelf.
The campanile of the Duomo of Florence (No. 30) designed by that master of architecture and painting, Giotto, is a rectangular composition of exceeding beauty. Its charm lies chiefly in its delicately harmonized proportions on a straight-line scheme. It is visual music in terms of line and space. The areas are largest at the top, growing gradually smaller in each of the stories downward. The graceful mouldings, the window tracery, the many colors of marble and porphyry are but enrichments of the splendid main lines.
The Ca’ d’Oro of Venice (No. 31, A) presents this rectangular beauty in an entirely different way. First, a vertical line divides the facade into two unequal but balanced proportions; each of these is again divided by horizontal lines and by windows and balconies into smaller spaces, the whole making a perfect harmony—each part related to, and affected by every other part.
The tokonoma of a Japanese room (No. 31, B) is arranged in a similar rectangular scheme. A vertical line, as in the Venetian palace facade, divides the whole space into two; one of these is divided again into recesses with shelves or sliding doors; the other is for pictures (kakemono), not more than three of which a hung at a time. No. 31, C shows three of these sets of shelves. The Japanese publish books with hundreds of designs for this little recess. The fertility of invention combined with feeling for good spacing, even in such a simple bit of craft, is characteristic of the Japanese. Their design books, from which I have copied many examples for this volume, are very useful to the student of art.
Style, in furniture, is a matter of good spacing, rather than of period or person. The best designs are very simple, finely balanced compositions of a few straight lines (No. 31, D).
Book covers with their lettering and decorations, and book pages with or without illustrations are examples of space cutting,—good or commonplace according to the designer’s feeling for line-beauty, In the early days of printing the two pages of an open book were consider together as a single rectangular space. Into this the type was to be set with the utmost care as to proportion and margin.
Exercise
The few examples given here show how varied are the applications of a single principle. The study of these will suggest a field for research. If possible the student should work from the objects themselves or from large photographs; and from the original Japanese design books. These tracings are given for purposes of comparison.
1. Copy the examples, without measuring. An attempt to copy brings the pupil’s mind into contact with that of a superior, and lets him see how difficult it is to reach the master’s perfection. Copying as a means of improving one’s style is the opposite of copying as a substitute for original work.
2. After making the best possible copies, invent original variations of these themes,—keeping the same general plan but changing the sizes.
COMPOSITION OF POTTERY FORMS. Makers of modern commercial ware usually leave beauty of line out of account, thinking only of utility,—of the piece of pottery as a feeding-dish, or as a costly and showy object. The glaring white glaze, harsh colors and clumsy shapes of common table-ware must be endured until there is sufficient public appreciation to demand something better; yet even this is less offensive than the kind that pretends to be art,—bad in line and glittering with false decoration.
Pottery, like other craft-products, is truly useful when it represents the best workmanship, combined with feeling for shape, tone, texture and color,—in a word, fine art.
Such quality is found, to mention only a few cases, in some of the “peasant wares”; in the best Japanese pottery, ancient and modern; in Chinese, especially of the Sung period (A. D. 960-1280) in Moorish, Persian, Rhodian and Greek. When each maker tried to improve up older models, and had the taste and inventive genius to do it, the art grew to supreme excellence; even fragments such handicraft are now precious. The difference between the contours a really great piece of pottery and ordinary one may seem very slight, but in just this little difference lies the art.
Exercise
One good way to stimulate invention in composing pottery shapes is to evolve them from rectangles. In the straight line there is strength; a curve is measured by a series of straight lines connected in rhythm. No. 32a. This principle is recognized in blocking out a freehand drawing,—a process often misunderstood and exaggerated.
Curved profiles are only variations of rectangular forms, for example the bowl in No. 32b.
Change the height and a series of new shapes will result. As the top and bottom lines remain the same we have to compare the curved sides only. Another effect (c) comes from varying the width; and still another (d) by changing both height and width. In No. 33 are students’ drawings of pottery profiles evolved from rectangles. For brushwork, in this exercise, it is well to indicate the lines of the rectangle in pale red, the pottery in black. Make many sketches, select the best profiles, improve them by tracing in ink, and compare with historic pieces. Drawing from the finest examples of pottery, and making original variations of the forms, will aid in drawing from the cast or the nude, because of the intimate study of the character of curves.
FLOWERS and other forms as LINE-MOTIVES. The rectangular space may be subdivided, as was the square, by a simple line-motif,—flower, fruit, still life, animal or figure,—following some Principle of Composition. In chapter III, under Subordination, an exercise was suggested and illustrated; it could be taken up again at this point, with new subjects, for a study of Variation. As rectangular compositions will be found under Notan and Color, it is not necessary to consider them further here as pure line, except in the case of Landscape, to which a special chapter is given.
VI — Landscape Composition
The modern arbitrary division of Painting into Representative and Decorative has put composition into the background and brought forward nature-imitation as a substitute. The picture-painter is led to think of likeness to nature as to the most desirable quality for his work, and the designer talks of “conventionalizing”; both judging their art by a standard of Realism rather than of Beauty.
In the world’s art epochs there was no such division. Every work of space-art was regarded as primarily an arrangement, with Beauty as its raison d’etre. Even a portrait was first of all a composition, with the facts and the truth subordinate to the greater idea of aesthetic structure. Training in the fundamental principles of Composition gave the artists a wide field—they were at once architects, sculptors, decorators and picture-painters.
Following this thought of the oneness of art, we find that the picture, the plan, and the pattern are alike in the sense that each is a group of synthetically related spaces. Abstract design is, as it were, the primer of painting, in which principles of Composition appear in a clear and definite form. In the picture they are not so obvious, being found in complex interrelations and concealed under detail.
The designer and picture-painter start in the same way. Each has before him a blank space on which he sketches out the main lines of his composition. This may be called his Line-idea, and on it hinges the excellence of the whole, for no delicacy of tone, or harmony of color can remedy a bad proportion. A picture, then, may be said to be in its beginning actually a pattern of lines. Could the art student have this fact in view at the outset, it would save him much time and anxiety. Nature will not teach him composition. The sphinx is not more silent than she on this point. He must learn the secret as Giotto and della Francesca and Kanawoka and Turner learned it, by the study of art itself in the works of the masters, and by continual creative effort. If students could have a thorough training in the elements of their profession they would not fall into the error of supposing that such a universal idea as Beauty of Line could be compressed into a few cases like the “triangle,” “bird’s-wing,” “line of beauty,” or “scroll ornament,” nor would they take these notions as a kind of receipt for composing the lines of pictures.
Insistence upon the placing of Composition above Representation must not be considered as any undervaluation of the latter. The art student must learn to represent nature’s forms, colors and effects; must know the properties of pigments and how to handle brushes and materials. He may have to study the sciences of perspective and anatomy. More or less of this knowledge and skill will be required in his career, but they are only helps to art, not substitutes for it, and I believe that if he begins with Composition, that is, with a study of art itself, he will acquire these naturally, as he feels the need of them.
Returning now to the thought that the picture and the abstract design are much alike in structure, let us see how some of the simple spacings may be illustrated by landscape.
Looking out from a grove we notice that the trees, vertical straight lines, cut horizontal lines,—an arrangement in Opposition and Repetition making a pattern in rectangular spaces. Compare the gingham and landscape on page 22. This is a common effect in nature, to be translated into terms of art as suggested in the following exercise.
Exercise
No. 34 is a landscape reduced to its main lines, all detail being omitted.
Make an enlarged copy of this, or design a similar one. Then, in the attempt to find the best proportion and the best way of setting the subject upon canvas or paper, arrange this in rectangles of varying shape, some nearly square, others tall, others long and narrow horizontally as in No. 35. To bring the whole landscape into all these will not, of course, be possible, but in each the essential lines must be retained.
Draw in ink after preliminary studies with pencil or charcoal, correcting errors by tracing.
Then find in nature other similar subjects; sketch and vary in the same way.
Pictures Composed on Rectangular Lines
Great architects and designers were not the only ones to use this simple line-idea; the masters of pictorial art have based upon it some of their best work; (opposite page).
These tracings from a variety of compositions, old and new (No. 36), show that this combination was chosen either to express certain qualities and emotions,—majesty, solemnity, peace, repose, (Puvis de Chavannes)—or because such a space division was suited to tone-effects (Whistler’s Battersea Bridge), or to color schemes (Hiroshige). These should be copied exactly in pencil, then drawn enlarged. Find other examples in museums, illustrated books, or photographs, and draw in the same way.
The student must, however, be warned against mistaking a mere geometric combination of lines for an aesthetic combination. There is no special virtue in a rectangular scheme or any other in itself; it is the treatment of it that makes it art or not art. Many a commonplace architect has designed a tower similar to Giotto’s, and many a dauber of oil paint has constructed a wood interior on a line-plan resembling that of Puvis. So the mere doing of the work recommended here will be of little value if the only thought is to get over the ground, or if the mind is intent upon names rather than principles. The doing of it well, with an artistic purpose in mind, is the true way to develop the creative faculties.
Landscape Arrangement — Variation
Leaving now the rectangular scheme, take any landscape that has good elements, reduce it to a few main lines and strive to present it in the most beautiful way—for example one from No. 61, or one drawn by the instructor, or even a tracing from a photograph. Remember that the aim is not to represent a place, nor to get good drawing now; put those thoughts out of the mind and try only to cut a space finely by landscape shapes; the various lines in your subject combine to enclose spaces, and the art in your composition will lie in placing these spaces in good relations to each other. Here must come in the personal influence of the instructor, which is, after all, the very core of all art teaching. He can bring the pupils up to the height of his own appreciation, and perhaps no farther. The best of systems is valueless without this personal artistic guidance.
At this stage of landscape composition, the idea of Grouping (Subordination) can be brought in, as a help in arranging sizes and shapes. There is a certain beauty in a contrast of large and small. It is the opposite of Monotony. For instance, compare a street where there is variety in the sizes of buildings and trees, with another of rows of dull ugly blocks. Ranges of hills, spires and pinnacles, clumps of large and small trees, clusters of haystacks, illustrate this idea in landscape.
Exercise
To discover the best arrangement, and to get the utmost experience in line and space composition, the landscape should be set into several boundaries of differing proportions, as in Chapter V, and as shown in the examples, keeping the essential lines of the subject, but varying them to fit the boundary. For instance, a tree may be made taller in a high vertical space than in a low horizontal space, (No. 37 below). After working out this exercise the pupil may draw a landscape from nature and treat it in the same way. Let him rigorously exclude detail, drawing only the outlines of objects.
VII — Composition in Representation
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.
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.