DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0360
340
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
painting of an ass, but was indignant at the price asked for it,
when he could buy a real ass for the tenth part of the money.
If painting were mere imitation, he would be right. Painter
and sculptor in return for what they lose in the representation
of life are bound to put in something of value. What they insert
must be something human and subjective. They must man-
age to touch the imagination and emotion of the beholder.
The purchaser values a picture because he can hang it in his
home, and as often as he looks at it, it will arouse in some
measure the same emotions with which he first saw it.
This subjective and human element the painter contributes
from his own personality. He must have felt the emotion which
he rouses in others. It is his style, his personal way of looking
at things, which gives interest to his works.
I have already shown to what extent works of early Greek
art, like all works of primitive art, are based on memory and
an imaginative reconstruction. As art matures, nature is
studied more and more closely, and there is a continual approxi-
mation of the work of art to the objective facts of nature. But
the subjective element which comes into art at the first never
leaves it. All art has in it much of the humanist element, which
in the case of any great art becomes an ideal element.
Naturalism or realism is an attempt to mimic the details of
visible things. This is an attempt which lies very much in the
way of a modern artist. Of the anatomist he learns the forms,
not of the outward appearance of man, but of the inner struc-
ture underlying that appearance. From photography he learns
the precise lines of natural objects, and carries them with him
into his studio. Instantaneous photography reveals the inti-
mate ways of motion so swift that observation cannot follow it.
So he is tempted to spend his life in struggling to learn more
and more of the details of nature, in order that he may embody
them in his art. Realism in art has in many schools been
carried to a great length. Some careful study of natural fact
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
painting of an ass, but was indignant at the price asked for it,
when he could buy a real ass for the tenth part of the money.
If painting were mere imitation, he would be right. Painter
and sculptor in return for what they lose in the representation
of life are bound to put in something of value. What they insert
must be something human and subjective. They must man-
age to touch the imagination and emotion of the beholder.
The purchaser values a picture because he can hang it in his
home, and as often as he looks at it, it will arouse in some
measure the same emotions with which he first saw it.
This subjective and human element the painter contributes
from his own personality. He must have felt the emotion which
he rouses in others. It is his style, his personal way of looking
at things, which gives interest to his works.
I have already shown to what extent works of early Greek
art, like all works of primitive art, are based on memory and
an imaginative reconstruction. As art matures, nature is
studied more and more closely, and there is a continual approxi-
mation of the work of art to the objective facts of nature. But
the subjective element which comes into art at the first never
leaves it. All art has in it much of the humanist element, which
in the case of any great art becomes an ideal element.
Naturalism or realism is an attempt to mimic the details of
visible things. This is an attempt which lies very much in the
way of a modern artist. Of the anatomist he learns the forms,
not of the outward appearance of man, but of the inner struc-
ture underlying that appearance. From photography he learns
the precise lines of natural objects, and carries them with him
into his studio. Instantaneous photography reveals the inti-
mate ways of motion so swift that observation cannot follow it.
So he is tempted to spend his life in struggling to learn more
and more of the details of nature, in order that he may embody
them in his art. Realism in art has in many schools been
carried to a great length. Some careful study of natural fact