DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0152
i32 Effect in the Arts of Form part ii
stone, however, despised this embellishment, and one could
not conceive of Michelangelo painting or gilding the
‘ David ’ or the figures on the Medici tombs. Modem
sculpture in marble down to our own time has depended on
form alone, but there has been of late a revival of a feeling
for polychrome effects, which will probably for a time come
again into favour, though for purely decorative and not
realistic reasons.
§ 86. The Elements of effect in the Graphic Art.
In turning now to the consideration of the visual
impressions produced by the graphic art, we may say at
the outset that though in strictness there are two forms of
graphic delineation, painting proper and expression in black
and white, yet these follow in the main the same laws, with
the difference that painting makes use of the element of
colour. The two forms of the graphic art may therefore be
for the present considered together. When we pass from
architecture and sculpture in the round to painting, we
transfer ourselves to quite a different region of art, to
which sculpture in relief only to a small extent serves as a
transition. The first two arts express themselves in a
perfectly clear and intelligible manner, so that every one
can see what they are doing; but about the graphic art
there is from the first something out-of-the-way that puzzles
the untutored intelligence, and it is owing to this that the
first steps in the development of painting are so hesitating
and slow, and that the art is the latest of all the arts of
form to arrive at a knowledge of its own capabilities. While
architecture and sculpture were perfected in the ancient
world, the mysteries of painting had not been fully explored
until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries A.D. Of
these mysteries the first is the indication upon a flat surface
stone, however, despised this embellishment, and one could
not conceive of Michelangelo painting or gilding the
‘ David ’ or the figures on the Medici tombs. Modem
sculpture in marble down to our own time has depended on
form alone, but there has been of late a revival of a feeling
for polychrome effects, which will probably for a time come
again into favour, though for purely decorative and not
realistic reasons.
§ 86. The Elements of effect in the Graphic Art.
In turning now to the consideration of the visual
impressions produced by the graphic art, we may say at
the outset that though in strictness there are two forms of
graphic delineation, painting proper and expression in black
and white, yet these follow in the main the same laws, with
the difference that painting makes use of the element of
colour. The two forms of the graphic art may therefore be
for the present considered together. When we pass from
architecture and sculpture in the round to painting, we
transfer ourselves to quite a different region of art, to
which sculpture in relief only to a small extent serves as a
transition. The first two arts express themselves in a
perfectly clear and intelligible manner, so that every one
can see what they are doing; but about the graphic art
there is from the first something out-of-the-way that puzzles
the untutored intelligence, and it is owing to this that the
first steps in the development of painting are so hesitating
and slow, and that the art is the latest of all the arts of
form to arrive at a knowledge of its own capabilities. While
architecture and sculpture were perfected in the ancient
world, the mysteries of painting had not been fully explored
until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries A.D. Of
these mysteries the first is the indication upon a flat surface