HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



field and follow the rules of the treatment of surfaces that are pre- 

 sented by the style of the Northwest Coast art. 



When we compare the art of the North Pacific coast, which has 

 developed this tendency to an extreme degree with our modern art, it 

 might appear that the principles are fundamentally opposed to each 

 other. Nevertheless it is easy to show that modern art is only slowly 

 and by degrees emancipating itself from the idea that the representa- 

 tion of a three-dimensional object should contain the essential perma- 

 nent characteristics of the object. If we remember that the imagina- 

 tion of the primitive artist is given its direction by the desire to repre- 

 sent all the essential parts of his subject, no matter whether they may 

 be visible at a given moment or not, we can see that the paintings of 

 the middle ages, in which different scenes of the same incident are 

 represented in the same painting, follow out to a certain extent the 

 same idea. Thus if we see in one painting Adam and Eve in Paradise on 

 the left, the serpent in the middle, and the expulsion from Paradise on 

 the right, it is clear that the artist followed in a way the same principle 

 of showing the essential scenes in the same painting, although they do 

 not belong to the same visual impression. But we can go a step far- 

 ther. Large groups, like those of the Dutch painters, in which, on a 

 large canvas, many individuals are shown with equal distinctness, do 

 not represent the momentary visual impression. We see with distinct- 

 ness only a small part of the visual field, while the rest appears blurred, 

 and the painting therefore represents, not a momentary visual impres- 

 sion, but a picture reconstructed from a succession of impressions that 

 are obtained when the eye moves over the whole field of vision. The 

 discrepancy between the momentary impression and the painting is 

 particularly striking in those cases where the picture itself is small and 

 can be taken in at a single glance. Then the sharpness of outline with 

 which all the figures stand out is contradicted by our everyday 

 experience. It is only quite recently that pictorial art has used this 

 phenomenon to any extent in order to compel the viewer to direct 

 his attention to that point that is prominent in the mind of the painter. 



Similar observations may be made in regard to color. We find that 

 almost throughout, the colors which are utilized are those in which an 

 object appears to us permanently. It is only with difficulty that most 

 of us get accustomed to green faces, such as appear in the shadow of a 

 tree, or red faces that may be produced by red curtains or the reflec- 

 tion of a brick wall. In these cases the abstraction from the momen- 

 tary impression is so strong that most of us are not even aware that 

 we actually do see these passing color effects. 



It appears from this point of view that the principle of painting 



[22] 



