DOI article:
Charles E. S. Rasay, 291—Its Meaning to Me
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31336#0017
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“plate”—a flat wall with pointed openings simply “cut out” to admit light.
Instead of birds and flowers and leaves cunningly carved, there were spears
and shields and helmets and gloves and boots and the skulls of animals.
The soul had changed its form of expression.
In literature there was a time when thought must be beautifully rendered.
Form was everything. Even the thought was not greatly valued if the form
were faulty. An unbalanced sentence in prose,—an “imperfect” line in
poetry,—were sins against “correct taste” that could not be forgiven. But
the restless human soul could not always find pleasure in the balanced pomp
of Johnson, the “correctness” of Addison, nor even in the musical sentences
of De Quincy and Ruskin; and the school of poetry of which the “cloying
sweetness” of Swinburne was the climax, became utterly distasteful. Carlyle,
in a savage fury, abandoned his early, smooth style, and hacked out sen-
tences for his grim and turgid thought as were he wielding the axe of Odin;
while Browning's broken and unpolished lines have been no small factor in
the forming of that cult which seems to regard the reading of his poems as
a religion, and the understanding of them a mystery.
So, too, in painting, the form of soul-expression continually changes, as
does the attitude. The look is now backward to the ancients, now forward
to the unknown. One age regards color of supreme importance, to another
age the one consideration is form. At one time everything must be painted
with painstaking smoothness and delicacy of coloring, and then a reaction
demands boldness and positive coarseness of execution. It was only a hun-
dred years ago, more or less, that “color” was thought to be a hindrance to
painting! The feeling was strongest in Germany, where Cornelius wrote
“The brush has become the ruin of our art.” Certain events drew attention
to Greece, and at once “classic form” became all important. Men argued that
Greek statues were colorless yet were supremely beautiful, hence the essence
of beauty was form. Color distracted the sense and hindered the true apprecia-
tion of beauty. And so, though color had attained to a refinement that was
marvelous, it was cast aside and abstract beauty of line was cultivated with
an astonishing intensity. There was a revolution in the world of painting, and
the slogan of it was “Outline, outline!” And truly there were wonderful things
done. Not willingly would we lose the cartoons of Carstens,Genelli, and others;
yet color soon came to its own again, even where the new school had its beginning.
We ourselves are living in a time of revolutionary upheaval. The great
soul of humanity is strung to an amazing activity. This is evidenced every-
where: in the agitating of matters long since thought to be settled, in the
questioning of beliefs long held sacred, in a rebellion against “canons” and
“laws” long considered binding. Today nothing is unchallenged; and when
one talks of “regular” or “normal” conditions, the question comes at once,
“What is ‘normal,’—what is ‘regular’?” The art world could not escape
this “storm of newness,” as one has called it. Nay, the art-world must feel
it most of all, because art is soul-expression. Strange things have been done
in music, in dancing, in painting, in all of “The seven arts,”—possibly the
strangest in painting and in photography.
13
Instead of birds and flowers and leaves cunningly carved, there were spears
and shields and helmets and gloves and boots and the skulls of animals.
The soul had changed its form of expression.
In literature there was a time when thought must be beautifully rendered.
Form was everything. Even the thought was not greatly valued if the form
were faulty. An unbalanced sentence in prose,—an “imperfect” line in
poetry,—were sins against “correct taste” that could not be forgiven. But
the restless human soul could not always find pleasure in the balanced pomp
of Johnson, the “correctness” of Addison, nor even in the musical sentences
of De Quincy and Ruskin; and the school of poetry of which the “cloying
sweetness” of Swinburne was the climax, became utterly distasteful. Carlyle,
in a savage fury, abandoned his early, smooth style, and hacked out sen-
tences for his grim and turgid thought as were he wielding the axe of Odin;
while Browning's broken and unpolished lines have been no small factor in
the forming of that cult which seems to regard the reading of his poems as
a religion, and the understanding of them a mystery.
So, too, in painting, the form of soul-expression continually changes, as
does the attitude. The look is now backward to the ancients, now forward
to the unknown. One age regards color of supreme importance, to another
age the one consideration is form. At one time everything must be painted
with painstaking smoothness and delicacy of coloring, and then a reaction
demands boldness and positive coarseness of execution. It was only a hun-
dred years ago, more or less, that “color” was thought to be a hindrance to
painting! The feeling was strongest in Germany, where Cornelius wrote
“The brush has become the ruin of our art.” Certain events drew attention
to Greece, and at once “classic form” became all important. Men argued that
Greek statues were colorless yet were supremely beautiful, hence the essence
of beauty was form. Color distracted the sense and hindered the true apprecia-
tion of beauty. And so, though color had attained to a refinement that was
marvelous, it was cast aside and abstract beauty of line was cultivated with
an astonishing intensity. There was a revolution in the world of painting, and
the slogan of it was “Outline, outline!” And truly there were wonderful things
done. Not willingly would we lose the cartoons of Carstens,Genelli, and others;
yet color soon came to its own again, even where the new school had its beginning.
We ourselves are living in a time of revolutionary upheaval. The great
soul of humanity is strung to an amazing activity. This is evidenced every-
where: in the agitating of matters long since thought to be settled, in the
questioning of beliefs long held sacred, in a rebellion against “canons” and
“laws” long considered binding. Today nothing is unchallenged; and when
one talks of “regular” or “normal” conditions, the question comes at once,
“What is ‘normal,’—what is ‘regular’?” The art world could not escape
this “storm of newness,” as one has called it. Nay, the art-world must feel
it most of all, because art is soul-expression. Strange things have been done
in music, in dancing, in painting, in all of “The seven arts,”—possibly the
strangest in painting and in photography.
13
