Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1908 (Heft 21))

sounds, and upon the spacing between them. What is termed rhythm is
another factor. Poetry, although considered an entirely different art from
music, appeals largely in the same way — sounds controlled by time spacing
and rhythm act through the ear upon the intelligence. In addition, then,
to its musical components it contains thought, and this thought-element
plays upon the sentiments, either directly, through association, by arousing
the imagination, or indirectly, through the reasoning faculties. Painting
addresses through the sense of sight. It contains no elements of time, but
representations of space. Its symbols of expression are colored or black-
and-white imitations of fragments of nature. Though quite unlike poetry,
some classes of painting, called illustrative, as the old Italian, possess a
certain amount of the “thought” or literary element—even if notexpressed
in words — and act upon us in part like poetry. There are kinds of paint-
ing, however, in which the literary component does not exist, and these
please purely through color, light and shade, and line. The art of sculpture,
instead of dealing in representations of space, as does painting, deals in
actual space quantities, which manifest themselves through light and shade,
and line. Sculpture, curiously, although at first sight not obviously so, is
dependent upon the time-element. Any single view of a piece of modeled
clay or marble from a single point is not sufficient to its complete under-
standing—itis necessary that there should combine in the mind innumerable
different impressions, and these impressions are only obtainable through a
series of successive views. Further, these successive views must be presented
to the mind in a logical time-sequence, such as that obtained by slowly
walking around the piece of sculpture, and this, because much of the beauty
of sculpture is due to what may be called the rhythmic appearing, changing,
and disappearing of lines, and if the time-sequence of the successive views is
not logical, the proper rhythm will not be produced, and much of the effect
will be lost. The fine art of dancing, although enhanced by the color of the
dancer, is really largely the same as sculpture, only the time-element is as
important as in music.
It will be seen from this analysis that the fine arts differ from each other,
not in that their components are totally unlike each other, but more in that
the proportions of these components vary in quantity. Music and dancing
have much to do with time; poetry, a little less; sculpture, still less, and
painting, not at all. Poetry has much to do with literary thought; painting,
a great deal less; dancing, and sculpture, still less, and music, not at all.
Poetry and music are independent of the space-element; sculpture and
dancing could not existwithout it, and painting makes believe it possesses it.
None of the fine arts possess all of the possible qualities, but each has at
least one quality in common with another, and thus they all blend into each
other, sometimes so subtly that it is impossible to tell where one begins and
the other ends.
It would appear, however—at least according to the dictum of many
learned philosophers of many ages — that there is one quality which all arts
must possess, and that is what is termed the personal touch. I concede the
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