The Greeks used for beauty in art the same word, as for order, or the perfect arrangement of the universe. The word κόσμος {kosmos} (from which we have ‘cosmetic,’ any beautifying application) may teach us how we should look upon works of art, which ought to be a reflection of the general laws ruling nature.
Two forces guide our material and intellectual life. We possess two means of acquiring knowledge and of practising art: reason and experience. Impressions from without are the everlasting source of all our conceptions. Hunger and thirst drive us to seek nourishment, to become fishers, hunters, herdsmen, or agriculturists. Cold and heat force us to seek a shelter, to construct wigwams, huts, dwellings on piles, cottages, houses, palaces, and temples.
Though order and harmony prevail in the outer world, every atom of the universe is endowed with an unconscious will or life of its own. Atoms seek atoms according to inherent laws, or fly from or annihilate one another. The whole process of life around us appears to be one never-ending struggle. Apparently there rules only the law of chance and might; what cannot conquer is conquered.
History is one long catalogue of appearing and disappearing nations, of devouring and devoured kingdoms and empires. It is as though generation after generation had emerged from the spectral past into the sanguinary present, to destroy or to be destroyed. This conflict in the outer world is seconded by everlasting conflicts in our inner world. Fear, hope, love—passions of all kinds, imagination and reality, ignorance and knowledge, pride and humility, prejudice and wisdom, form an intellectual hurricane not less destructive than the warfare of the cosmical elements. Religion, Science, and Art, this divine triad, step in. Religion excites in us the hope of higher and better morals; science creates consciousness of the laws according to which we are governed; the link between cause and effect is traced, and the rule of arbitrary chance narrowed. Lastly, art throws its beautifying halo on everything. Thus these three are instrumental in elevating our mind, expanding our intellectual powers, and bringing harmony and beauty into the eternal conflict. Faith is the element of religion, experience the element of knowledge, and beauty the element of art. Whilst faith and experience are possible without an artistic elevation of the mind, art must combine the elements of religion and science, and form through beauty a visible link between these elements.
The sublime, as we have said, rules in the universe. Clouds chase one another and are subject to everlasting changes. Trees cover the surface of our globe, forming woods at random. Mountains are towered up, as if hurled together by chance. Seas form a bewildering variety of coasts. Streams wind their paths through mountains and valleys with capricious irregularity. All these phenomena confuse and oppress us, they engender an incomprehensible, indistinct feeling in us. But so soon as we begin with our intellectual force to sift, to separate, and to detach single phenomena from the general mass—as soon as choice begins to work, the isolated phenomenon displays at once its symmetrical beauty.
This is the case with crystallisations, the first artistic products of unconscious nature. If we look at a vast plain covered with snow, a feeling of sublime cold and wretchedness overcomes us; but if we take up one isolated snow-flake, and place it under a microscope, we find that the elements of the crystallised drop of water surround with harmonious regularity a common centre, which is the body, from which radiate as integral parts the diversified forms of the flake. In studying snow-flakes, we find that the three dimensions of space—height, breadth, and depth, limited by symmetry, proportion and direction—are the principal elements of every form which in itself has to represent a detached total. In all the crystallisations there is one ‘momentum’ of formation—the centre, from which all the parts emanate perfectly well-balanced and complete in themselves. The elements of which all artistic works, whether natural or produced by men, are composed, are the straight line and the waving line. With these elements we can obtain the three principal conditions of every work of art—symmetry, proportion, and direction. Snow-flakes may be used in any direction, and therefore they may be set down as without distinct direction. The rays with their radiation, however, are formed according to the principal law of the universe. They represent the dynamic force; they strive at isolation from the centre which must be looked upon as their static momentum. Thus in the first artistic products of nature positive and negative, or rather dynamic and static forces are clearly perceptible. The horizontal line is the representative of the static, whilst the vertical line is the indicator of the dynamic force.
Symmetry is a perfect equality of form to the right and left of a vertical line on a horizontal base.
Eurythmy consists in a repetition of variegated forms.
In order to produce eurythmy we must confine symmetry within a certain compass; for this purpose we have the frame. Our doors are nothing but frames for the entering or departing individuals; as our windows are frames for the landscape, sky, or walls on which we look, or for ourselves when seen from without. The frame, whether it be real or imaginary, as the correct limitation of forms, is of the very highest importance in decorative and pictorial art.