Fig. 333.
CONVENTIONAL FIGURE OF ALLIGATOR
CROWDED INTO A SMALL GEOMETRICAL FIGURE.
Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 265.
I shall now call attention to some important individualized or well-defined agencies of convention. First, and most potent, may be mentioned the enforced limits of the spaces to be decorated, which spaces take shape independently of the subject to be inserted. When the figures must occupy a narrow zone, they are elongated; when they must occupy a square, they are restricted longitudinally, and when they occupy a circle, they are of necessity coiled up. Fig. 265 [[fig. 333] of the present paper] illustrates the effect produced by crowding the oblong figure into a short rectangular space. The head is turned back over the body and the tail is thrown down along the side of the space. In fig. 266 [[fig. 334] of the present paper] the figure occupies a circle and is, in consequence, closely coiled up, giving the effect of a serpent rather than an alligator. * * *
Fig. 334.
CONVENTIONAL FIGURE OF
ALLIGATOR CROWDED
INTO A CIRCLE.
Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report
of the Bureau of Ethnology,
fig. 266.
I present five series of figures designed to illustrate the stages through which life forms pass in descending from the realistic to highly specialized conventional shapes. In the first series (fig. 277) [[fig. 335] of the present paper] we begin with a, a meager but graphic sketch of the alligator; the second figure, b, is hardly less characteristic, but is much simplified; in the third, c, we have still three leading features of the creature—the body line, the spots, and the stroke at the back of the head; and in the fourth, d, nothing remains but a compound yoke-like curve, standing for the body of the creature, and a single dot.
The figures of the second series (fig. 278) [[fig. 336] of the present paper] are nearly all painted upon low, round nodes placed about the body of the alligator vases, and hence are inclosed in circles. The animal figure in the first example is coiled up like a serpent [[fig. 334]], but still preserves some of the well-known characters of the alligator. In the second example [[fig. 336]b] we have a double hook near the center of the space which takes the place of the body, but the dotted triangles are placed separately against the encircling line. In the next figure the body symbol is omitted and the three triangles remain to represent the animal. In the fourth there are four triangles, and the body device being restored in red takes the form of a cross. In the fifth two of the inclosing triangles are omitted and the idea is preserved by the simple dots. In the sixth the dots are placed within the bars of the cross, the triangles becoming mere interspaces, and in the seventh the dots form a line between the two encircling lines. This series could be filled up by other examples, thus showing by what infinitesimal steps the transformations take place. * * *
We learn by the series of steps illustrated in the annexed cuts that the alligator radical, under peculiar restraints and influences, assumes conventional forms that merge imperceptibly into these classic devices.