XI.—TWO VALUES—GOTHIC SCULPTURE JAPANESE DESIGN BOOKS. APPLICATIONS OF TWO VALUES
Sculpture, a line-art, when designed to enrich architectural spaces, may have the aid of notan in the form of relief and shadow. The range of tone is narrow and the field seems limited, but the masters have shown that the creative imagination knows no bounds. They have expressed every emotion-divine calm, serenity, excitement, fury, horror; and effects of light, atmosphere, distance.
The pediment and metopes of the Greek temple owed as much to notan as to line; we can infer from the restorations what the original scheme was. Greek architecture, however, did not admit of extensive enrichment with sculpture; there were few spaces to fill, and those not advantageous as to position, shape or lighting. As the temple evolved into the Christian church, the new forms of building and the new story to tell called for sculpture. Through Byzantine and Romanesque it took a fresh start, pushing upward and outward until it flowered abundantly in Gothic. Although the church selected the themes, the sculptor might interpret form and facial expression as his imagination directed, and compose his groups as he chose. Old conventions were abandoned; the artist might now seek motifs in his own mind or in nature. The result of this liberation of individual creative power was great art. The Gothic designer used notan with dramatic invention and magical strangeness. The French cathedrals of the best period (XI to XIV century) notably Paris, Chartres, Amiens and Reims, show how sculptural traditions were boldly broken and the most daring effects accomplished without forgetting the character of stone or the architectural requirements. The stone-cutter was an artist as long as his restraint was self-imposed—as long as he held to unity of the whole composition and kept details in their own place—as long as he carved harmonies, not mere stories; pp. 8, 11, 29, 51, 52.
The masterpieces of Gothic sculpture may be studied from photographs and from reproductions published by the Musée de Sculpture Comparée, Paris. Sketch in the masses with brush and ink in two values. Draw freely, at arm's length, on gray or low-toned paper, observing the character of shapes of dark; No. 49, opposite. New avenues of tone-thought will now open, through appreciation of the power and beauty of the stone cutter's art of the middle-ages.
JAPANESE DESIGN BOOKS
If time had preserved for us the sketches of Pheidias, of the architect of St. Mark's, of the great designers of the early ages, we should know how these creators planned the line and mass, the simple structural schemes of their immortal works. In later days when paper was common, artists' drawings were in a less perishable form and many can now be seen in our museums. Some have been published and are fairly within reach, though often in costly editions. But Japanese art comes to the aid of the student of composition with abundant material—sketch books, design books, drawings and color prints. The learner should seek for genuine works of the best periods, avoiding modern bad reproductions, imitations, carelessly re-cut blocks, crude colors, and all the hasty and commonplace stuff prepared by dealers for the foreign market.