Line and Form (1900) Part 8

These systems of line in organic nature have been adopted and adapted by art, and are found throughout the historical forms of ornament which, as we have good reason to believe, were often derived from mechanical structures, ill.u.s.trating the same principles; which, again, the logic of geometry enforces in drawing on plane surfaces.

All organic structures teach us the same lesson of relation and recurrence of line. The bones of all vertebrate animals, from _fish_ to _man_, ill.u.s.trate the constant repet.i.tion in different degrees of the same character and direction of line. The vertebral column itself is an instance, and the recurring spring of the ribs from it, like the branches from the stem of a tree, further expressed in the ramification of the jointed bones of the limbs and extremities. The principle may be followed out in the structure of the muscles in their radiating fibres, which the delicate contours and flowing lines of the surface of the body only combine in a greater degree of subtlety (see ill.u.s.tration, p.

142[f081a]).

[Ill.u.s.tration (f081a): Radiating, Recurring and Counterbalancing Lines in the Structure of the Skeleton and the Muscles.]

Look at the anatomy of any tree, as it is disclosed to us in its wintry leaflessness, a beautiful composition of line rather than of form (see ill.u.s.tration, p. 143[f081b]).

[Ill.u.s.tration (f081b): General Principles of Line and Form in the Branching and Foliage Ma.s.ses of Trees.]

Here we see organic life and structure expressed in the vigorous spring of inter-dependent and corresponding curves, from the rigid sinuous column of the main stem springing from the ground, presently divided into the main forks of the branches, which again subdivide and subdivide into smaller forks, so that the tree may sustain and spread its life in the air and the sun, both supporting and continuing its existence by this wonderful economic system of co-operative, subdivided, and graduated helpfulness.

The ma.s.sive green pavilion of summer, which this delicate vaulting of branch-work sustains, gives us another, more sumptuous, but perhaps not a greater beauty in the combination or subst.i.tution of form and ma.s.s for line composition.

[Form and Ma.s.s in Foliage]

We might express, in an abstract way, the principle of the line-structure of the ramifying tree by super-imposing vertically fork upon fork in gradually diminis.h.i.+ng scale, either curvilinear or rectangular; and the principle of the ma.s.s-structure in the formation of the foliage might be expressed by a series of overlapping curves, suggestive of scales or cloud ma.s.ses: to both of which indeed they correspond in principle, ill.u.s.trating the scale principle in detail and the cloud principle in the ma.s.s; thus repeating the same general law of natural roofing, or covering, in different materials (see ill.u.s.tration, p. 145[f082]).

[Ill.u.s.tration (f082): Principles of Structure in Foliage Ma.s.ses.]

In a ma.s.s of foliage each leaf falls partly over the one below it, as by the system of their growth and suspension upon the stem they are of course bound to do, whether symmetric or alternate in their arrangement, the gaps caused by decay or accident being generally filled by new shoots. Each shoot, eager to expand its leaves in the light, ever spreading, forms ma.s.s after ma.s.s of the beautiful green panoply--the coat armour of the forest, arboreal man's first form of domestic architecture.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f083): Albert Durer: Detail from 'The Prodigal Son.']

The principle of structure here is just the same as the overlapping principle of the tiles and slates upon our ordinary house-roofs; but each leafy tile is different, being alive, and in the ma.s.s infinitely varied and beautiful in form and colour, instead of being mechanical and uniform, as we try to make our artificial roofs.

[German Roofs]

Very pretty and varied effects are produced in the old roofs of southern Germany by the use of different coloured glazed tiles--red, green, and yellow--arranged in simple patterns. One of the old towers at Lindau has such a roof, and the colour effect is very rich and striking.

But I must not be led into a disquisition upon roofs further than in so far as they ill.u.s.trate the subject of composition of line and form, and from the painter's point of view they frequently do in a very delightful and instructive way.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f084): Albert Durer: St. Anthony.]

What, for instance, can be more varied and charming than the compositions we constantly meet with in the rich backgrounds of Albert Durer? Those steep barn roofs, and those quaint German towns inclosed in walls with protecting towers--nests of steep tiled gables of every imaginable degree--which give so much character and interest to his designs, as in the background of his copper-plates "The Prodigal Son"

and "St. Anthony" here given. Their prototypes still exist here and there in Germany, in such towns as Rothenburg, practically unchanged since the sixteenth century, and give one an excellent idea of what such houses were like. A visit there is like a leap back into the Middle Ages. Every street is a varied and interesting composition. No two houses are alike. They were built by the citizens to really pa.s.s their lives in. The town is strongly placed upon the crest of a hill, with a river at its foot, and well fortified and protected by ma.s.sive encircling walls and towers and deep gates, which give it so strong and picturesque a character, while the timber and tile-roofed gallery for the warders still exists along the inside of the walls. Such cities arose by the strength of the social bond among men--the necessity for mutual help in the maintenance of a higher standard of life, and mutual protection against the ravages of sinister powers.

[The Mediaeval City]

Strong externally, internally they were made as home-like and full of the varied delight of the eyes, as if the people had reasoned, "Since we must live close together in a small place, let us make it as delightful and romantic as we can." We know that the idea of Paradise and the New Jerusalem to the imagination of the Middle Ages was always the fair walled garden and the fenced city. The painters embodied the idea of security and protection from the savage and destructive forces of nature and man--a sanctuary of peace, a garden of delight.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f085): Roof-lines: Rothenburg.]

We have in modern times turned rather from the city as a complete and beautiful thing, to the individual home, and to the interior of that, and, in the modern compet.i.tive search for the necessary straws and sticks to make our individualist-domestic composition of comfort and artistic completeness, bowers are too often built upon the ruins of others, or are fair by reason of surrounding degradation. The common collective comfort and delight of the eyes is too often ignored, so that it comes about that, if our modern cities possess any elements of beauty or picturesqueness, it is rather owing to accidents and to the transfiguring effects of atmosphere than to the beauty or variety of architectural form and colour. We have to seek inspiration among the fragments of the dead past in monuments and art schools.

[Organic and Accidental Beauty]

The modern development of the munic.i.p.ality and extension of its functions may, indeed, do something, as it has done, and is doing, something to protect public health and further public education; but we have yet to wait for the full results, and everything must finally depend upon the public spirit and disinterestedness of the citizens, and in matters of art upon a very decided but somewhat rare and peculiar sympathy and taste, as well as enthusiasm.

The absence of beauty of line, form, and proportion from the external aspects of daily life in towns has probably a greater effect than we are apt to realize in deadening the imagination, and it certainly seems to produce a certain insensibility to beauty of line and composition, since the perception must necessarily be blunted by being inured to the commonplace and sordid. The instinct for harmony of line and form becomes weakened, and can only be slowly revived by long and careful study in art, instead of finding its constant and most vital stimulus in every street.

For all that, however, an eye trained to observe and select may, even in the dullest and dingiest street, find artistic suggestions, if not in the buildings, then in the life. And where there is life, movement, humanity, there is sure to be character and interest. Groups of children playing will give us plenty of suggestions for figure composition.

Workpeople going to and from their work, the common works going on in the street, the waggons and horses, the shoal of faces, the ceaseless stream of life--all these things, whether we are able to reproduce them as direct ill.u.s.trations of the life of our time, or are moved only to select from them vivid suggestions to give force to ideal conceptions, should all be noted--photographed, as it were, instantaneously upon the sensitive plate of the mind's vision. We can only learn the laws of movement by observing movement--the swing and poise of the figure, the relation of the lines of limbs and drapery to the direction of force and centre of gravity, so important in composition. We must constantly supplement our school and studio work by these direct impressions of vivid life and movement, and neglect no opportunity or despise no source or suggestion.

There are still in England to be found such old-world corners as the quaint street of Canterbury (p. 153[f086]), which forms an excellent study in the composition of angular and vertical lines.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f086): St. Margaret St Canterbury Aug: 27 1894]

[Formal Composition]

We may perceive that there are at least two kinds of composition, which may be distinguished as:

I. Formal.

II. Informal.

I. Under the head of Formal may be cla.s.sed all those systems of structural line with which I started, and which are found either as leading motives or fundamental plans and bases throughout ornamental design. Yet even these may be used in composition of figures and other forms where the object is more or less formal and decorative, as governing plans or controlling lines.

The radiating ribs of a fan, for instance, might be utilized as the natural boundaries and inclosing lines of a series of vertical figures following the radiating lines. A strictly logical design of the kind would be a series of figures with uplifted arms, forming radiating lines from the shoulders, somewhat in the position of Blake's well-known and beautiful composition of the Morning Stars in the Book of Job, already ill.u.s.trated.

Using the overlapping vertical scale plan we should get relative positions for a formal composition of three figures, although they need not necessarily be formal in detail. A typical design of three a.s.sociated ideas treated emblematically would be the most natural use of such an arrangement--as Faith, Hope, and Charity; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; Science, Art, and Industry; or the three G.o.ddesses Here, Pallas, and Aphrodite, as choice and purpose might decide. A semicircular scale plan would not only repeat in a safe and sound manner, but would afford suggestive shapes in which to throw designs of figures, and could be effectively utilized either for a wall or ceiling repeat.

The inclosure formed by two spiral lines gives a graceful ornamental shape for a half-reclining figure; while a series of floating or flying figures linking their hands would be appropriately governed by similar spiral lines, uniting them with the meandering wave line (see ill.u.s.tration, p. 155[f087]).

[Ill.u.s.tration (f087): Formal Composition: Figure Designs Controlled by Geometric Boundaries.]

Upon a series of semicircles or ellipses, alternating horizontally, might be arranged a little frieze of children with skipping ropes, or Amorini with pendent garlands; the up-and-down movement in the former case being conveyed by a variation, each alternate semicircle being struck upwards. This would restore the emphatic wave or spiral line, which always conveys the sense of rhythmic movement in a design.

Such a line, vertically employed, will give again a good plan for a series of seated figures, say emblematic of the Hours, where similarity of att.i.tude and type would be appropriate, while the emblems and accessories might be varied. A severer treatment would be suggested by making the controlling line angular (see ill.u.s.tration, p. 156[f088]).

[Ill.u.s.tration (f088): Formal Composition: Figure Designs Controlled by Geometric Boundaries.]

Such are a few ill.u.s.trations of what I have termed formal composition, in which the geometric and structural plans of pure ornament or ornamental line maybe utilized to combine, control, or even suggest figure designs.

[Informal Composition]

II. While formal compositions, though naturally falling into cla.s.ses and types, may be varied to a very great extent, when we come to informal compositions the variations are unlimited, and a vista of extraordinary and apparently endless choice, invention, and selection opens out before the designer, co-extensive with the variety of nature herself.

In seeking harmonious and expressive composition in the pictorial direction the guides are much less definite and secure. Individual feeling and instinct, which must have an important influence in all kinds of designing, are in this direction paramount. Yet even here, if we look beneath the apparent freedom and informality, we find certain laws at work which seem to differ only in degree from the more definite and constructive control of line which we have been considering. In the first place, there are our direct impressions from nature; and, secondly, our conscious aims and efforts to express an idea in our minds. We have the same restricted and definite forms of language and materials in each case--line, form, s.p.a.ce, brushes, pencil, colour, paper, canvas, or clay. We are taken by some particular scene: the composition of line and form at a particular spot attracts us more than another. We do not stop as a rule to ask why, since it usually takes all our time and our best skill to get into shape what we are seeking--and carry away with us an artistic record of the place. We have seen that in the case of certain natural structures, sh.e.l.ls, leaves, flowers, the fundamental structural lines are so beautiful that they not only form ornament in themselves, but furnish the basis for whole types and families of ornament. When we look at a landscape, putting aside for the moment all the surface charms of colour and effect, and concentrating our attention upon its lines of structures, we shall find that it owes a great part of its beauty to the harmonious relation of its leading lines, or to certain pleasant contrasts, or a certain impressiveness of form and ma.s.s, and at the same time we shall perceive that this linear expression is inseparable from the sentiment or emotion suggested by that particular scene.

A gentle southern landscape--undulating downs, and wandering sheep-walks; the soft rounded ma.s.ses of the sheep upon smooth cropped turf--all these are so many notes or words in the language of line and form which go to express the idea of pastoral life. They are inextricably bound up with inseparable a.s.sociations conveyed by such lines and forms. The undulating lines of resting or dancing figures would only give point, true emphasis, and variety, and a note of contrast in the forms would serve to bring out the general sentiment more strongly.

Subst.i.tute rugged rocks, swollen torrents, wind-tossed trees and stormy skies, and all is changed. Such things cannot be expressed without much more emphatic lines and ma.s.ses, and the use of opposing angles and energetic curves of movement which would be destructive of the sentiment of peace, in other cases. Yet even then to convey the expression of energy and rapid movement, concerted groups of lines are none the less necessary (see ill.u.s.tration, p. 159[f089]).

[Ill.u.s.tration (f089): Informal Composition: Expression of (1) Storm and (2) Calm In Landscape.]

Such comparisons indicate not only that there is a necessary a.s.sociation of ideas with certain lines and forms, but also that certain relations and a.s.sociations of line of a similar character are necessary to produce a harmonious composition, and one which conveys a definite and pervading sentiment or emotion, just as we saw that the controlling lines of structural curves, spirals, and angles require to be in relation, and to be re-echoed by the character of the design they inclose or which is built upon them.

The same law holds true in figure composition. The sense of repose and restfulness necessary to sitting or reclining groups depends upon the gentle declivities of the curves and their gradual descent to the horizontal.