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Show istering the beautiful, and to provide another example of the stultification that comes from the confusion of the curious with the beautiful. Education seems to leave modern man less able than the savage to draw the line between these qualities. A KNOWLEDGE of cause and effect in line, color and form, as found in organic na- ture, furnishes guide lines within which an artist may sift materials, test motives and direct aims, thus roughly blocking out, at least, the rational basis of his ideas and ideals. Great artists do this by instinct. The thing is felt or divined, by inspiration perhaps, as synthetic analysis of their works will show. The poetry which is prophecy is not a matter to be demonstrated. But what is of great value to the artist in research of this nature is knowledge of those facts of relation, those qualities of line, form and color which are themselves a language of sentiment, and characterize the pine as a pine as distinguished from those determining the willow as a willow; those characteristic traits which the Japanese seize graphically and unerringly reduce to simple geometry; the graphic soul of the thing, as seen in the geometrical analyses of Holkusai. Korin was the conscious master of the essential in whatever he rendered, and his work stands as a convincing revela- tion of the soul of the thing he portrayed. So it will be found with all great work,--with the paintings of Velasquez and Frans Hals; with Gothic architecture: organic character in all. By knowledge of nature in this sense alone are these guiding principles to be estab- lished. Ideals gained """"education."""" within these limitations are never lost, and an artist may defy his If he is really for nature in this sense, he may be """"a rebel against his time and its laws, but never lawless."""" The debased periods of the world's art are far removed from any conception of these principles. The Renaissance, Barok, Rococo,, the styles of the Louis, are not developed from within. out. There is little or nothing organic in their nature; they are put on from with- The freedom from the yoke of authority which the Renaissance gave to men was seemingly a great gain: but it served only to bind them senselessly to tradition, and to mar the art of the Middle Ages past repair. One cannot go into the beautiful edifices of this great period without hatred of the Renaissance growing in his soul. tonly destructive thing in its hideous perversity. It proves itself a most wan- In every land where the Gothic or Byzan- tine, or the Romanesque, that was close to Byzantine, grew, it is a soulless blight, a warning, a veritable damnation of the beautiful. nature or when it was least itself, What lovely things remain, it left to us in spite of its It was not a development:--it was a disease. This is why buildings growing in response to actual needs, fitted into environment by people who knew no better than to fit them to it with native feeling,--buildings that grew as folk-lore and folk-song grew,--are better worth study than highly self-conscious academic attempts at the beautiful; academic attempts which the nations seem to possess in common |