Books: The Psychology of Beauty
E >>
Ethel D. Puffer >> The Psychology of Beauty
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16
From this point of view the justification of the metaphor of
mechanical balance is quite clear. Given two lines, the most
pleasing arrangement makes the larger nearer the centre, and
the smaller far from it. This is balanced because the spontaneous
impulse of attention to the near, large line equals in amount
the involuntary expenditure to apprehend the small, farther one.
We may thus think of a space 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 noble 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 substitutional 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
space, 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 analysis<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 transmutation. 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 associations, and these
associations constitute 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 constitute 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 pushing 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 masses 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 Titan's
frame, we get the same effect plus the associations 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 circumstances; 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 Titan, the additional elements of understanding are not due
to sympathetic reproduction. They are not parallel with the
motor suggestions; they are simply an associational 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 association. 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, associational)
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
shimmers. 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 altitude by the passionate 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 grass,
the other with fagots. "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 transmute 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, associative 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
space, he impales like a butterfly 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. SPACE 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 illustrated and confirmed in the masterpieces of art. A
statistical study, undertaken some years ago with the purpose
of dealing thus with the hypothesis of substitutional symmetry
in pictorial composition, has given abundance of material,
which I shall set forth, at otherwise disproportionate length,
as to a certain extent illustrative 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
space arrangement within a frame.
In the original experimental study of space arrangements, the
results of which were given at length on page 111, the elements
of form in a picture were reduced to SIZE or MASS, DEPTH in the
third dimension, DIRECTION, and INTEREST. Direction was further
analyzed 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
substitutional 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 mass 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, mass, 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.
=(Rt.)M.+I.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16