Evolution in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs

by Alfred C. Haddon

The fact that there is life in the original of the biomorph appears in most cases to exert an influence on the biomorph itself, so that it comes to have what might almost be described as a borrowed vitality.

The distinctive activities or qualities of any living being, more especially in the case of animals, very often cause them to be taken as symbolic of that particular quality. For example, the harmless, gentle, and affectionate dove, which only busies itself with parental cares, has come to be symbolic of peace. There are other reasons to which allusion will be made which have conspired to render biomorphs very important in decorative art.

Biomorphs partake of one characteristic of their originals. They have a life-history. All organisms are born, they grow, they die. During their growth they all pass through greater or less changes. Sometimes these changes, as in the metamorphoses of most insects, have attracted the attention of the least observant, and have appeared to be of such significance as to have been utilised for the illustration of religious doctrines. Whether taking place in full daylight, open to casual observation, or hidden in obscurity, or encapsuled within an egg-shell, marvellous transformations invariably accompany the earlier stages of the development of animals, from the egg stage. The development records an evolution, the history of which is being worked out in detail by the patient investigators of one of the most fascinating of all branches of study—embryology.

We have now to trace the birth, the evolution, and the decay of biomorphs, and we shall find that the subject is scarcely less suggestive and interesting than that of the very animals themselves.

Biomorphs are represented for varied purposes, and with other representations may be classified according to the diagram given in the introductory section (p. [8]).

A. Representation of Abstract Ideas of Life.

Even such an abstract idea as the Principle of Life, or Vital Energy, has been indicated in decorative art. “On every class of food- and water-vessels, in collections of both ancient and modern Pueblo pottery (except on pitchers and some sacred receptacles), it may be observed as a singular, yet almost constant feature, that encircling lines, often even ornamental zones, are left open or not, as it were, closed at the ends,” writes Cushing[57] (p. 510), who adds, “I asked the Indian women, when I saw them making these little spaces with great care, why they took so much pains to leave them open. They replied that to close them was ‘fearful!’—that this little space through the line or zone on a vessel was the ‘exit trail of life or being.’ How it came to be first left open, and why regarded as the ‘exit trail,’ they could not tell. When a woman has made and painted a vessel she will tell you with an air of relief that it is a ‘Made Being’; as she places the vessel in the kiln, she also places in and beside it food. The noise made by a pot when struck or when simmering on the fire is supposed to be the voice of its associated being. The clang of a pot when it breaks or suddenly cracks in burning is the cry of this being as it escapes or separates from the vessel. That it has departed is argued from the fact that the vase when cracked never resounds as it did when whole. This vague existence never cries out violently unprovoked; but it is supposed to acquire the power of doing so by imitation; hence, no one sings, whistles, or makes other strange or musical sounds resembling those of earthenware under the circumstances above described during the smoothing, polishing, painting, or other processes of finishing. The being thus incited, they think, would surely strive to come out, and would break the vessel in so doing.” In their native philosophy and worship of water, the latter is supposed to contain the source of continued life, hence life also dwells in a vessel containing water, and having once held water, and in virtue of having done so, it contains the source of life. “If the encircling lines inside of the eating bowl, outside of the water jar, were closed, there would be no exit trail for this invisible source of life, or for its influence or breath.” In attempting to arrive at the origin of this, Cushing points out that it is very “difficult to smoothly join a line incised around a clay pot while still soft, and that this difficulty is greater when the ornamental band is laid on in relief. It would be a natural outgrowth of this predicament to leave the ends unjoined, which indeed the savage often did. When paint instead of incision or relief come to be the decorative agent, the lines or bands would be left unjoined in imitation. As those acquainted with Tylor’s Early History of Mankind will realise, a ‘myth of observation’ like the above would come to be assigned in after ages.”