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

by Alfred C. Haddon

Once born, the design was acted upon by constraining and restraining forces which gave it, so to speak, an individuality of its own. In the great majority of representations the life-history ran its course through various stages until it settled down to uneventful senility; in some cases the representation ceased to be—in fact it died.

In the following pages I shall endeavour to trace the life-history of a few artistic ideas as moulded by suggestion and expectancy along the lines of the four needs, and I have attempted in the accompanying diagram to visualise this method of studying art.

It will be found that the decorative art of primitive folk is directly conditioned by the environment of the artists; and in order to understand the designs of a district, the physical conditions, climate, flora, fauna, and anthropology, all have to be taken into account; thus furnishing another example of the fact that it is impossible to study any one subject comprehensively without touching many other branches of knowledge.

All human handiwork is subject to the same operation of external forces, but the material on which these forces act is also infinitely varied. The diverse races and people of mankind have different ideas and ideals, unequal skill, varied material to work upon, and dissimilar tools to work with. Everywhere the environment is different. So we get that bewildering confusion of ideas which crowd upon us when inspecting a large ethnographical collection or a museum of the decorative arts.

		[STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT.]
		ORIGIN.	EVOLUTION.	DECAY.
		Solitary Decorative Figures.	Pictures.	Degeneration of Pictorial Art through incompetent Copying.		ART.
			Groups.	Conventional Treatment for Decorative Purposes.
			Series or Patterns.	Simplification through repeated Copying.
REALISM.			Combinations or Heteromorphs.	Degradation resulting from the Monstrous in Art.
		Pictographs.	Phonograms.	Alphabetical Signs.		INFORMATION
			Conventionalised or Abbreviated Pictographs.	Arithmetical Signs.
			Emblems.	Personal and Tribal Signs or Symbols.
		Useful Objects.	Ornamented Useful Objects.	Personal Ornaments and Objects emblematic of Power or Status.		WEALTH.
			More or less Conventionalised Models of Useful Ornaments.	Money.
		Realism.	Symbolism and Conventionalism.	Auspicious and Magical Signs.		RELIGION.

The conclusion that forced itself upon me is that the decorative art of a people does, to a certain extent, reflect their character. A poor, miserable people have poor and miserable art. Even among savages leisure from the cares of life is essential for the culture of art. It is too often supposed that all savages are lazy, and have an abundance of spare time, but this is by no means always the case. Savages do all that is necessary for life; anything extra is for excitement, æsthetics, or religion; and even if there is abundance of time for these latter, it does not follow that there is an equivalent superfluity of energy. The white man, who has trained faculties and overflows with energy, is apt to brand as lazy those who are not so endowed. In the case of British New Guinea it appears pretty evident that art flourishes where food is abundant. One is perhaps justified in making the general statement that the finer the man the better the art, and that the artistic skill of a people is dependent upon the favourableness of their environment.

The relation of art to ethnology is an important problem. So far as our information goes, it appears that the same processes operate on the art of decoration whatever the subject, wherever the country, whenever the age—another illustration of the essential solidarity of mankind. But there are, at the same time, numerous and often striking idiosyncrasies which have to be explained. Many will be found to be due to what may be termed the accidents of locality. Natural forms can only be intelligently represented where they occur, and the materials at the disposal of the artist condition his art.

The ethnological aspect of decorative art is too complex a problem to be solved at present, as sufficient data have not yet been collected. So far as I am aware, Dr. H. Stolpe of Stockholm was the first to seriously attack this subject. It was not until I had definitely entered on the same line of research that I found I was following in the footsteps of the Swedish savant; fortunately, our work did not really overlap.