Man has devoted ages to developing harmonies in the combination of air waves, and he has reduced sound music to a science.
He has devoted all the ages of his being to the use of color in one way and another to please his eye, but only of late has he made any attempt to understand the science of light and color music.
The material civilization we have attained in comparison with the spiritual civilization we should attain is fairly well indicated by the vast difference between the crude and natural art of sound effects which is, so far, man’s most abstract achievement in art, and the incomparably finer and more ethereal art of light and color effects which will be one of the crowning achievements of man’s nobler future.
The painter of easel pictures arrogates to himself the name artist and to his work the phrase fine art. He looks down upon the house painter, the dressmaker, and the interior decorator.
Yet as compared with those who clothe our bodies and decorate our homes in harmonies of line and color the painter of easel pictures cuts very little figure in life; he plays his part but much of his inspiration is drawn from the work of the other two.
It should never be forgotten that in all the great portraits of the world the clothes and the interiors that furnish the beautiful color schemes preceded the pictures often by generations.
The costumer and the decorator work year in and year out, from generation to generation, throughout the centuries, with not so much as a thought of the painter in the corner with his little canvas, faithfully copying.
Now and then a great painter, a great sculptor, takes off his coat, turns workman for the moment and makes sculptures for buildings, paints pictures on walls, devises costumes, and contributes to making our environment more beautiful.