Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Heft 41))

surface of beauty which inspired contemplation vanished and there remained,
under the light of reason, the powerful force which has compelled man to the
plastic expression of thought. The Artist no longer wants to be mystified by
mystery, but wants to be enlightened by knowledge; he wants to see clearly
in order to understand fully. He does not want to be captivated by poetry,
but convinced by reason.
Not until the present time has man studied Form in its abstract repre-
sentation, making the quantitative and qualitative analysis of its expression.
But in order to attain the comprehension of Form, it has been necessary for
him to know it in all its manifestations as realized by man. He has had to
abandon the complex study of realistic form, to which he had limited him-
self for so many centuries, and turn to the imaginative and fantastic expres-
sions of Form in order to have a complete understanding of the possibilities
of its expression.
Professor P. A. Haddon writes: “The artistic expression of a highly
civilized community is a very complex matter, and its complete unravelment
would be an exceedingly difficult and perhaps impossible task. In order to
gain some insight into the principles which underlie the evolution of decorative
Art, it is necessary to confine one’s attention to less specialized conditions; the
less the complication, the greater the facility for a comprehensive survey. In
order, therefore, to understand civilized art we must study barbaric art, and,
to elucidate this, savage art must be investigated.”*
Professor Grosse, treating the same subject, observes: “All sociological
schools have, one after another, attempted to find new roads; the science of
art alone pursues its mistaken methods. All others have eventually recognized
the powerful and indispensable aid that ethnology can afford to the science of
civilization; it is only the science of art which still despises the rough pro-
ductions of primitive nations, offered by ethnology. The science of Art is
not yet capable of resolving the problem under its more difficult aspect. If
we wish sometime to arrive at a scientific comprehension of the art of civilized
nations, we must, to begin with, investigate the nature and conditions of the
art of the non-civilized. We must know the multiplication table before
resolving problems of higher mathematics. It is for this reason that the first
and most pressing task of the science of Art consists in the study of the art
of primitive nations.”f What these two Professors write about Art in general,
has been practically demonstrated in regard to Form in the last state of the
evolution of the plastic arts.
Studying the art of the primitive races in relation to what we know of
their psychology, we find that their production of Form is more in direct
relation to their feelings than that of the higher art; also that the conception
of the representation of the human body has many more manifestations among
the primitive races than among the higher ones.

*P. A. Haddon. “Evolution of Art.”
tE. Grosse. “Les Debuts de l’Art.”

45