EXAMPLES OF RECTANGULAR DESIGN.
Contact with the best works of art is an essential part of art education, for from them comes power and the stimulus to create. The student hears and reads much that passes for art criticism but is only talk about the subject of a picture, the derivation and meaning of a design, or the accuracy of a drawing. These minor points have their place in discussing the literary and scientific sides of a masterpiece; they relate to art only superficially, and give no key to the perception of fine quality.
The most important fact about a great creative work is that it is beautiful; and the best way to see this is to study the art-structure of it,—the way it is built up as Line, Notan, Color,—the principle of composition which it exemplifies. See what a master has done with the very problem you are trying to work out.
This method of approach will involve a new classification of the world's art, cutting across the historical, topical and geographical lines of development. The instructor in composition will illustrate each step with many examples differing as to time, locality, material and subject, but alike in art-structure.
Museum collections might be used for a series of progressive studies based upon composition; taking up one principle at a time and seeking illustrations in a group of wide range,—a picture, sculpture, architecture, Gothic carving, metal work, old textile, bit of pottery, Japanese print.
The beauty of simple spacing is found in things great and small, from a cathedral tower to a cupboard shelf.
The campanile of the Duomo of Florence (No. 30) designed by that master of architecture and painting, Giotto, is a rectangular composition of exceeding beauty. Its charm lies chiefly in its delicately harmonized proportions on a straight-line scheme. It is visual music in terms of line and space. The areas are largest at the top, growing gradually smaller in each of the stories downward. The graceful mouldings, the window tracery, the many colors of marble and porphyry are but enrichments of the splendid main lines.
The Ca' d'Oro of Venice (No. 31, A) presents this rectangular beauty in an entirely different way. First, a vertical line divides the facade into two unequal but balanced proportions; each of these is again divided by horizontal lines and by windows and balconies into smaller spaces, the whole making a perfect harmony—each part related to, and affected by every other part.
The tokonoma of a Japanese room (No. 31, B) is arranged in a similar rectangular scheme. A vertical line, as in the Venetian palace facade, divides the whole space into two; one of these is divided again into recesses with shelves or sliding doors; the other is for pictures (kakemono), not more than three of which a hung at a time. No. 31, C shows three of these sets of shelves. The Japanese publish books with hundreds of designs for this little recess. The fertility of invention combined with feeling for good spacing, even in such a simple bit of craft, is characteristic of the Japanese. Their design books, from which I have copied many examples for this volume, are very useful to the student of art.