IX Esoragoto
Neither the Cubists nor Kandinsky troubled a very distinguished Japanese expert who spent many days at the exhibition.
“The principles of all this are old, very old, in Japan.”
He was far more interested in the extreme drawings and paintings than in the more academic. Pointing to a drawing that seemed scarce more than a few careless strokes, he said, “That is quite in the spirit of the best Japanese art.”
Of the “King and Queen” he said, “I like that very much,” and so on, passing from one Cubist picture to another, commenting upon each seriously and intelligently.
To either copy or be in the slightest degree hampered by nature is a mark of inferiority in Chinese and Japanese art.
The very abstract art of the Orient has its elaborate conventions, but those conventions are all in the direction of pure art, whereas the conventions of our art (music always excepted) are all in the direction of imitation.
It was a theory of the great Chinese teacher, Chinanpin, and particularly enforced by him, that trees, plants, and grasses take the form of a circle, called in art Rin kan; or a semi-circle, Han kan; or an aggregation of half circles, called fish-scales, Gyo sin; or a modification of these latter, called moving fish-scales, Go sin Katsu.61
In regard to painting moving waters, whether deep or shallow, in rivers or brooks, bays or oceans, Chinanpin declared it was impossible for the eye to seize their exact forms because they are ever changing and have no fixed, definite shape; therefore, they cannot be sketched satisfactorily; yet, as moving water must be represented in painting, it should be long and minutely contemplated by the artist and its general character—whether leaping in the brook, flowing in the river, roaring in the cataract, surging in the ocean or lapping the shore—observed and reflected upon, and after the eye and the memory are both sufficiently trained and the very soul of the artist is saturated, as it were, with this one subject, and he feels his whole being calm and composed, he should retire to the privacy of his studio and with the early morning sun to gladden his spirit there attempt to reproduce the movement of the flow; not by copying what he has seen, for the effect would be stiff and wooden, but by symbolizing according to certain laws what he feels and remembers.
It begins to be plain why the Japanese expert was profoundly interested in the modern pictures and drawings.
One of the most important principles in the art of Japanese painting—indeed a fundamental and entirely distinctive characteristic—is that called living movement, sei do, or Kokoro machi, it being, so to say, the transfusion into the work of the felt nature of the thing to be painted by the artist. Whatever the subject to be translated—whether river or tree, rock or mountain, bird or flower, fish or animal—the artist at the moment of painting it must feel its very nature, which, by the magic of his art, he transfers into his work to remain forever, affecting all who see it with the same sensations he experienced when executing it.
This is not an imaginary principle, but a strictly enforced law of Japanese painting. The student is insistently admonished to observe it. Should his subject be a tree he is urged when painting it to feel the strength which shoots through the branches and sustains the limbs; or if a flower to try to feel the grace with which it expands or bows its blossoms. Indeed, nothing is more constantly urged upon his attention than this great underlying principle that it is impossible to express in art what one does not first feel.
“Waga kokoro waga te woyaku
Waga te waga kokoro ni ozuru.”
Our spirit must make our hand its servitor;
Our hand must respond to each behest of our spirit.
The Japanese artist is taught that even to the placing of a dot in the eyeball of a tiger, he must first feel the savage, cruel, feline character of the beast, and only under such influence should he apply the brush. If he paint a storm he must at the moment realize passing over him the very tornado which tears up trees from their roots and houses from their foundations. Should he depict the seacoast with its cliffs and moving waters, at the moment of putting the wave-bound rocks into the picture he must feel that they are being placed there to resist the fiercest movement of the ocean, while to the waves in turn he must give an irresistible power to carry all before them. Thus, by this sentiment called living movement (sei do), reality is imparted to the inanimate object. This is one of the marvelous secrets of Japanese painting handed down from the great Chinese painters and based on psychological principles—matter responsive to mind.62
In the light of the foregoing, one begins to understand why Winslow Homer painted such wonderful realizations of the sea and rocky coasts—he lived removed from men, his most intimate friends the rocks and waves.
One also begins to understand how painters who show great strength and promise in their earlier works, based upon surroundings they know, lose both strength and promise when, flushed by prosperity or attracted by tinsel and glitter, they establish their studios in cities and still try to paint the sea or the country.
Japanese artists are not bound down to the literal presentation of things seen. They have a canon, called esoragoto, which literally means an invented picture, or a picture into which certain fictions are painted.
Every painting to be effective must be esoragoto; that is there must enter therein certain artistic liberties. It should aim not so much to reproduce the exact thing as its sentiment, called kokoro mochi, which is the moving spirit of the scene; it must not be a facsimile.
It is related that Okubo Shibutsu, famous for painting bamboo, was requested to execute a kakemono representing a bamboo forest. Consenting, he painted with all his well-known skill a picture in which the entire bamboo grove was in red. The patron upon its receipt marveled at the extraordinary skill with which the painting had been executed, and, repairing to the artist’s residence, he said:
“Master, I have come to thank you for the picture; but, excuse me, you have painted the bamboo red.”
“Well,” cried the master, “in what color would you desire it?”
“In black, of course,” replied the patron.
“And who,” answered the artist, “ever saw a black-leaved bamboo?”
This story well illustrates esoragoto. The Japanese are so accustomed to associate true color with what the sumi [the black so commonly used in Japan] stands for, that not only is fiction in this respect permissible but actually missed when not employed.
Esoragoto is a very good word for the Post-Impressionists to appropriate. We have no word in English and I know of none in French that is anywhere near its equivalent.
Impressionism is painting with a minimum of esoragoto; Post-Impressionism is painting with a maximum of esoragoto.
The pendulum in art and literature swings from less esoragoto to more—from realistic transcription with a minimum of self, to idealistic compositions with a maximum of self.
All the great art of the world is esoragoto.
The greatest paintings in the world are indoor not outdoor paintings—in-self not out-self.
All the great Italian paintings and frescoes are creations of the imagination. The portraits of Velasquez, Rembrandt, Hals are esoragoto. They are the sitters idealized by the genius of the artists. They are far removed from photographic realism.
Why are the portraits of the same man or woman painted by different artists so unlike? Because each is more or less esoragoto—more or less the reflection of the painter rather than the sitter.
For a long time we have been so influenced by the theories of the Impressionists, the realists, the plein-air school, that we resent it when an artist says, “I will paint something more beautiful than nature; I will paint nature herself more beautiful than she is. I will paint the spirit of nature. I will paint trees that do not look like trees, but will give you the feeling, the dignity, the power of trees. I will paint the earth, not as it looks, but in a way that will give you an impression of its fertility and fecundity. I will paint you flowers, not by faithfully copying them as they are in the field, but as they bloom and blossom in your memory. I will paint you men and women, not as you see them on the street and in the drawing room—superficial resemblances—but as they really are to you and to me, human beings the true significance of which is not expressed in the drooping of a moustache, the lifting of an eyebrow. I will paint them in black or brown or red or blue, or in gold or bronze, as does the sculptor; I will paint them in a way so strange you have never seen the like before, but I will make you feel their humanity.”
To illustrate the arbitrary manner which the great oriental artists use colors to produce harmonious results irrespective of nature, I once used a number of old Chinese paintings borrowed from a famous collection—in each of which the hair of the figures was painted blue.
And why not? Black, brown, or flaxen would not have given the effect the painter desired, any more than C, D, or E would take the place of F in a chord.
The Oriental needs a note of blue and so paints the hair blue. And when one comes to think of it, next to some marvelous shades of red, blue hair is far more positive and picturesque than gray, or yellow, or any black but a glossy raven.
We never think of resenting a terra cotta horse in a print by Hokusai; it does not disturb us because we instinctively recognize the fact that a strong note of terra cotta is needed precisely where it is used—a terra cotta horse, or rock, or man, it matters not.
Human faces of gold, silver, bronze, even marble—that ugliest of all stones, in its natural state—do not worry us.
In fact when we look at marble sculpture we are in the attitude of the man who ordered the painting of the bamboo forest. We are so accustomed to seeing ghostly white marble busts and statues we actually resent it if the sculptor stains or colors the marble not to make it more realistic, but to make it more beautiful.
Yet all Greek sculpture was painted or treated with wax in such a manner the harshness of the stone was modified. The sensitive vision of the Greeks could not tolerate the cold, hard whiteness.
Much of our enjoyment of ancient sculpture is due to its discoloration, to what time and the elements have done to its surfaces.
Our appreciation of art will never be true until we can gaze with unprejudiced eye upon any combination of lines and colors the artist chooses to use.
So long as we demand that he shall use only those combinations we are accustomed to, just so long do we by our attitude check his development.
The average man is bewildered by the new and the strange; he is bewildered by new cities, new countries, new peoples, new pictures, new sculpture, new architecture, new music, new books, new ideas—because he is not used to them and does not understand them; he does not know whether to like them or not so he condemns them in order to make a pretense of knowing.
The rare man is not bewildered by the new and the strange at home or abroad, in art or life. He is interested and at once sets about learning and comprehending. He loves the new and the strange instinctively because they excite his curiosity and pique his intelligence. He loves to meet the new and the strange as an archeologist loves to find an inscription in an unknown tongue—for the hidden significance.
This chapter may be concluded appropriately by four warnings which Chinese wisdom pours into the ears of art students. Many of the modern painters should ponder these precepts.
“Ja, Kan, Zoku, Rai.”
“Ja refers to attempted originality in a painting without the ability to give it character, departing from all law to produce something not reducible to any law or principle.
“Kan is producing only superficial pleasing effect without any power in the brush stroke—a characterless painting, to charm only the ignorant.
“Zoku refers to the fault of painting from a mercenary motive only—thinking of money instead of art.
“Rai is the base imitation of or copying or cribbing from others.”