Another pair of tendencies opposed to each other which have much significance in the explanation of decorative design is the tendency to convert the simple lines of an original design into a drawing representing some animal or plant shape. At the end of the last chapter I distinguished this as the "naturalizing" tendency, contrasting it with the grammatizing or simplifying tendency. A good example of it is seen in Fig. 50. In A of that figure we see a circle divided into three cones by curved lines; this is a known design. It is called a "triskelion" (meaning a three-legged figure), or is more correctly termed "a three-branched scroll." The curves are converted into angles and straight lines in B, and then the stiff rectilinear "triskelion" is subsequently developed into three human legs, as shown in C, Fig. 50. It is naturalized. Were the change to proceed in the other way from the three human legs to the simple lines, we should have an example of the opposed tendency, namely, that of converting drawings of natural objects—by a degenerative or reducing process—to the simplest lines representative of them. This tendency, which we call "grammatizing" (from gramma, the Greek for a line), is far commoner in early art than the naturalizing tendency which sets in when the artist is exuberant, self-confident, and imaginative. We see a "naturalizing" tendency in the flamboyant and arabesque decorative work of the renascence, but it is also found among the happy Minoan, or Ægæan, island folk who decorated great pots and basins in Cyprus and Crete with forms suggested by birds, sea-creatures, and climbing plants, and worshipped the great mother Nature as Aphrodite, the sea-born goddess.
Fig. 50.—Diagrams of the "triskelion" or figure formed by the division of a circle into three equal bent cones as in A. B is the rectangular form derived from it. C is a "naturalized" form derived from it, namely, the three conjoined legs used as the badge of Sicily and of the Isle of Man.
The triangular island of Sicily (called also Trinacria) had in ancient times (even as far back as 300 B.C.) the conjoined three legs (shown in Fig. 50, C) as its badge or armorial emblem. An ancient Greek vase found at Girgenti has this badge painted on it. Ancient Lycia had a triskelion formed by three conjoined cocks' heads stamped on its coins. Though it has no direct connection with the Swastika, the introduction of the "three legs" as the armorial emblem of the Isle of Man is worth relating, as it is not known to most of those who are familiar with the device, with its motto, "Quocunque jeceris stabit" on the copper pence minted for that island up to as late a date as 1864, and current in Great Britain. King Alexander III of Scotland expelled the Norse Vikings from the Isle of Man in A.D. 1266, and substituted for their armorial emblem in the island, which was a ship under full sail, the three legs of Sicily. Frederick II, King of Sicily, married Isabella, the daughter of Henry III of England. Alexander III of Scotland married Margaret, another daughter of Henry, and Henry's son, Edmund the Hunchback, became King of Sicily, in succession to his brother-in-law Frederick. Alexander of Scotland was thus brother-in-law both of Frederick II and of Edmund, successive kings of Sicily. It was in this way that he was led, when he added the Isle of Man to his kingdom, to replace the former Norse emblem of the island by the picturesque and striking device of that other island—Sicily—with which he had so close a family connection.
The tendency for drawings of men and animals when used as decorative designs to degenerate, in the course of time and repetition, into more and more simple lines, to become more and more "grammatized" and simplified, till at last their origin is hardly recognizable, is both a very remarkable and a very usual thing. The process of degeneration, step by step, can often be traced, and curious remnants of important parts of the original drawing are found surviving in the final simplified design. The paddles and other carvings of some of the South Sea Islanders show very curious "degenerations" of this kind. A carved human head with open mouth becomes by repeated copying and simplification a mere crescent or hook, which is the vastly enlarged mouth of the original face. It alone survives, and is of enormous size, when all other features and detail have been abandoned. In some carvings of a face the tongue is shown projecting as an indication of defiance. In course of simplification in successive reproductions the face becomes a mere curved surface with a large pointed piece standing out from it; it is the tongue. That one significant thing—suggesting defiance—alone persists. The study of this process in human art covers a very wide field, including all races and all times. An excellent example is that given in Fig. 51. It shows the step by step "grammatizing" of a favourite decorative drawing—that of an alligator, as painted by the Chiriqui Indians of Panama on pottery. We start in Fig. 51, A, with an alligator, already considerably "schematized" or conventionalized. The Indians could do better than that, but it served for pottery decoration. The figures B, C, D show three stages of further "grammatizing" of the design (from different parts of the surface of a pot) till, in D, we get the alligator reduced to a yoke-like line and a dot!
Fig. 51.—Four stages in the simplification of a decorative design—the Alligator—as painted on pottery by the Chiriqui Indians. (Holmes.)
Familiar modern examples of this reduction of an animal figure to one or two lines, with mysterious-looking branches (representing limbs or horns), are seen in the scattered devices on the Turkey carpets so largely used at the present day. A comparison of various examples of such carpets of different age and locality reveals the true nature of these queer-looking patterns as representations of animals! Another familiar instance of the grammatizing of an animal form is that shown in Fig. 52, D, which is the common symbol in modern European art for a flying bird. Fig. 52 shows, however, some more important simplifications of animal form. The series marked E are a few examples from hundreds painted on the walls of caves in Cantabria (Spain) by prehistoric men. They start with a clearly recognizable figure of a man—many such, an inch or two high, occur on some parts of the cave-walls—and then we have all sorts of simplifications and deviations from the more naturalistic initial design, as shown by the rest of the series, ending in a T—a primitive symbol often arrived at by savage decorative artists in various parts of the world by reducing and grammatizing the human figure. The letters of many alphabets have been simplified in this way from original picture-like signs or pictographs.