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Show LX ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR sified, and illustrated from examples never before presented. The accessible material on the subject shows that in America there is opportunity for the study of the origin of art beyond any hitherto enjoyed in the Eastern Hemisphere. In the order of evolution, the character of the specimens now under examination ends where classic art begins, and though the recent discoveries by Schliemann and others have brought to notice the lower archaeologic substratum of the East, its productions are few and meager compared with the multitudes of representative objects of the same general character already in the National Museum. These now open to the student the advantage of a method which examines into the beginnings of art in reference to form and ornamentation, as well JIS into the earliest traces of manufacture or construction and of function, which show a widely different evolutionary line. Mr. Holmes does not consider that he has made more than a partial and tentative paper on the subject, and he is preparing a monograph on a comprehensive basis. The present summary is confined to the geometric side of the study. Otherwise considered, it is the non- ideographic side continued upwards until it reaches the point where it meets the ideographic side, the history and evolution of which are distinct. The general observation to be deduced from the subject, as now presented, is that no metaphysical law of beauty is to be ascertained. The aesthetic principle is not to be found directly in or from nature, but is an artificial accretion of long descended imitations of objective phenomena. Objects are not made because they are essentially pleasing, but are actually pleasing because they have been customarily made. The primitive artist does not deliberately examine the departments of nature and art, and select for models those things which are most agreeable to an independent fancy, nor even those which simple reasoning would decide upon as most convenient Neither does he experiment with any distinct purpose to invent new forms. What he attempts in improvement is what happens to be suggested by some preceding form familiar to him. Each step is not only limited but prescribed by what he already possesses in nature or in art, and knowing his resources his results can be k. |