Josi. Ugh!... It’s a very intereshting shtory; but I don’t happen to want to buy de picture—even with Mr. Wiowani thrown in.
Han. That’s a stupid story, you know. What business has a picture with any perspective? You might as well talk of walking into a piece of music as walking into a picture!
Hiti. Ah! you are an old-fashioned purist, Han-Kin.
Han. I’m not: I am simply a scientist. Latest science says that you can’t tell whether a thing is flat or round at twenty feet distance from the eye. Stereoscopic sight is a mere accident, and only means that you have got too close to an object to treat it artistically. Paint your foregrounds as if they were twenty feet away, and keep your distances as flat as the palm of your hand,—and there you have art and science rolled into one!
Tee. Ah, Han-Kin has been reading the old legend—the oldest of all—and he calls himself a scientist!
Han. What old legend?
Tee. How the gods of the first creation made everything flat, and put it into a picture-book which they called the Book of Life, so that they could just turn over the leaves and amuse themselves without any trouble.
Lil. Yes,—and then one day they left it out in the rain, and it got wet and began to push out of bounds, and grow and swell in all directions. And so we got the world as it is—full of ups and downs, and behinds and befores, and corners that you can’t see round. Horrible, untidy, disgusting!
New. Well, but what can an artist do? He must copy it!
Lil. Copy it! Where does Repeating-pattern find art in that? Mere pig on pork I call it. What art has to do is—put things back into shape as the gods originally intended. Make your picture submissively flat—and there you’ve got religious art. A picture that looks as if you could walk into it makes me sick. Who wants to walk into it? Wiowani was an exalted ass to my thinking.