DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0122
AMERICAN ART
forms to combinations of the right angle and the half right angle such
as almost inevitably occurs if one translates natural forms into textile
patterns (ioi).
Having once achieved this elementary stylization the Indian artist
tended to cover surfaces with endless repetitions and combinations of
the same forms. You see this clearly enough not only in their hiero-
glyphic writing but also in their illuminated manuscripts. This seems to
indicate a rather indolent industry on the part of Indian artists, as well
as a curious indifference to natural forms. Moreover, this tendency to
rectangularity at once prevents almost any display of sensibility on the
artist’s part. A very great deal of the pottery both in Central and South
America is decorated in a similar way, producing a certain decorative
richness of effect, but with a depressing incoherence and monotony and
with no trace of sensibility in the line which repeats rather slackly these
predominantly rectilinear forms (102).
Even the sculpture in the round frequently shows the same influence;
in this statue (103) not only is there an extreme adherence to the four
frontal aspects, but every shape is made as nearly rectangular as possible.
Certainly a rather disquieting vitality seems somehow to persist and
animate even this extreme reduction of the natural form to its bare
rectangular elements.
In these stone masks, of Aztec origin (104, 105), we see the same bias
in favour of a rectangular system, but here it has a different effect. In
the left-hand mask the geometrical system does no doubt still hamper
the artist’s full expression of his sensibility—the plastic form of the eye-
orbits is scarcely felt and the transition from the planes of the nose to the
cheek is made too mechanical. But in the right-hand one we find a most
subtle sensibility. We feel here that the geometrical principle merely
serves to sustain and control the artist’s sensibility, to hold it firm and
give it the coherence and dignity of an austere style.
In the finest works of the Maya culture which preceded the Aztec, we
find a much more surprising freedom from the rectilinear geometric
bias. The head from Copan (106) is dated about a.d. 300, and here we
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forms to combinations of the right angle and the half right angle such
as almost inevitably occurs if one translates natural forms into textile
patterns (ioi).
Having once achieved this elementary stylization the Indian artist
tended to cover surfaces with endless repetitions and combinations of
the same forms. You see this clearly enough not only in their hiero-
glyphic writing but also in their illuminated manuscripts. This seems to
indicate a rather indolent industry on the part of Indian artists, as well
as a curious indifference to natural forms. Moreover, this tendency to
rectangularity at once prevents almost any display of sensibility on the
artist’s part. A very great deal of the pottery both in Central and South
America is decorated in a similar way, producing a certain decorative
richness of effect, but with a depressing incoherence and monotony and
with no trace of sensibility in the line which repeats rather slackly these
predominantly rectilinear forms (102).
Even the sculpture in the round frequently shows the same influence;
in this statue (103) not only is there an extreme adherence to the four
frontal aspects, but every shape is made as nearly rectangular as possible.
Certainly a rather disquieting vitality seems somehow to persist and
animate even this extreme reduction of the natural form to its bare
rectangular elements.
In these stone masks, of Aztec origin (104, 105), we see the same bias
in favour of a rectangular system, but here it has a different effect. In
the left-hand mask the geometrical system does no doubt still hamper
the artist’s full expression of his sensibility—the plastic form of the eye-
orbits is scarcely felt and the transition from the planes of the nose to the
cheek is made too mechanical. But in the right-hand one we find a most
subtle sensibility. We feel here that the geometrical principle merely
serves to sustain and control the artist’s sensibility, to hold it firm and
give it the coherence and dignity of an austere style.
In the finest works of the Maya culture which preceded the Aztec, we
find a much more surprising freedom from the rectilinear geometric
bias. The head from Copan (106) is dated about a.d. 300, and here we
< 86 >