DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42067#0095
Representative art
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other, are brought into contact, or in copies of designs in which the
scenes or designs depicted on a cylinder, a vase, or a spherical pot
are developed on a flat surface in order to show at a single glance
the interrelations of the decorative forms. In drawings of objects
for scientific study we may also sometime adopt a similar viewpoint,
and in order to elucidate important relations, draw as though we
were able to look around the corner or through the object. Different
moments are represented in diagrams in which mechanical move-
ments are illustrated and in which, in order to explain the operation
of a device, various positions of moving parts are shown.
In primitive art both solutions have been attempted: the perspec-
tive as well as that showing the essential parts in combination. Since
the essential parts are symbols of the object, we may call this method
the symbolic one. I repeat that in the symbolic method those
features are represented that are considered as permanent and
essential, and that there is no attempt on the part of the draftsman
to confine himself to a reproduction of what he actually sees at a
given moment.
It is easy to show that these points of view are not by any means
absent in European art. The combination of different moments in
one painting appears commonly in earlier art,— for instance when
in Michel Angelo’s painting Adam and Eve appear on one side of
the tree of knowledge in Paradise and on the other side of the tree
as being driven out by the angel. As a matter of fact, every large
canvass contains a combination of distinct views. When we direct
our eyes upon a scene we see only a small limited area distinctly,
the points farther away appear the more blurred and indistinct the
farther removed they are from the center. Nevertheless most of
the older paintings of large scenes represent all parts with equal
distinctness, as they appear to our eyes when they wander about
and take in all the different parts one by one. Rembrandt forced
the attention of the spectator upon his main figures by strong lights,
as upon the swords in the great scene of the conspiracy of Claudius
Civilis and his Batavians against the Romans, but the distant figures
73
other, are brought into contact, or in copies of designs in which the
scenes or designs depicted on a cylinder, a vase, or a spherical pot
are developed on a flat surface in order to show at a single glance
the interrelations of the decorative forms. In drawings of objects
for scientific study we may also sometime adopt a similar viewpoint,
and in order to elucidate important relations, draw as though we
were able to look around the corner or through the object. Different
moments are represented in diagrams in which mechanical move-
ments are illustrated and in which, in order to explain the operation
of a device, various positions of moving parts are shown.
In primitive art both solutions have been attempted: the perspec-
tive as well as that showing the essential parts in combination. Since
the essential parts are symbols of the object, we may call this method
the symbolic one. I repeat that in the symbolic method those
features are represented that are considered as permanent and
essential, and that there is no attempt on the part of the draftsman
to confine himself to a reproduction of what he actually sees at a
given moment.
It is easy to show that these points of view are not by any means
absent in European art. The combination of different moments in
one painting appears commonly in earlier art,— for instance when
in Michel Angelo’s painting Adam and Eve appear on one side of
the tree of knowledge in Paradise and on the other side of the tree
as being driven out by the angel. As a matter of fact, every large
canvass contains a combination of distinct views. When we direct
our eyes upon a scene we see only a small limited area distinctly,
the points farther away appear the more blurred and indistinct the
farther removed they are from the center. Nevertheless most of
the older paintings of large scenes represent all parts with equal
distinctness, as they appear to our eyes when they wander about
and take in all the different parts one by one. Rembrandt forced
the attention of the spectator upon his main figures by strong lights,
as upon the swords in the great scene of the conspiracy of Claudius
Civilis and his Batavians against the Romans, but the distant figures