The key to Oriental decoration may be expressed by the word individualism. The artist did draw from the “depths of his moral consciousness,” and did not copy blindly. He seems to have expressed what he felt, rather than what he saw. His perception and arrangement of color seem to have been inspired, not learned. He is daring; he does not hesitate to hang his ladies in a balcony up in the air above the procession passing beneath, as may be seen in a very ancient vase belonging to Mrs. Gridley Bryant, of Boston; he does not fear to put blue leaves to his trees, or to make a green horse; his butterfly is as large as a man, if he wishes to show a figure or a mass of color; his boats are smaller than the passenger, if that suits his fancy; he attempts little perspective, and it is, we may say, impossible on a china bowl; symmetry he abhors; pairs do not exist.
What is the result? We see it in the porcelain of China and Japan, the shawls and carpets of India, the pottery of the Persians and the Moors, the architecture of Karnak and the Alhambra, all of which are satisfying to the eye and to the taste.
I believe they had no schools of art; they were not taught to do what some one else had done, to copy a master or to copy Nature, or to think symmetry beauty, or the circle the perfect line.
The artist was, as he ought to be, a law to himself; he saw what he saw, and felt what he felt, and he expressed these in his own way; not in Titian’s way, or Rembrandt’s way, or Giorgione’s way. There is, therefore, a freedom, a freshness, an abandon about this work that we find nowhere else, and a charm which never tires.
We are intellectualists rather than artists; and, moreover, we are ruined by cheap and incompetent criticism, the whole gospel of which is, “Always condemn, never praise.” Too much writing about art and too little doing it, is the fashion of to-day; and he who does least finds most fault with him who creates. The artist is the creator, the critic the destroyer; and yet the last values himself most! The “third estate” did not rule in China.
If we are to have a true and high artistic expression, our artists, must dare; and we must allow them to dare; we must encourage rather than discourage.
We must, above all, get rid of the base old notion that head-work is divine and “gentlemanly,” hand-work ignoble and vulgar: both are divine, and when the two are combined we shall see the finest possible man—an artist, whether he works with paint, marble, wood, clay, or metal.
Marks, etc.—The following copies of marks, as translated by Mr. Franks, will be found useful:
