104 
The MACBETH GALLERY 
The Morning Room' 
PAINTINGS by AMERICAN ARTISTS 
The picture on the wall is the first element of decoration 
to catch the eye. It may easily spoil an otherwise 
perfect room. Its selection should be the result of 
careful thought supplemented by professional advice. 
Art Notes" will he found suggestive. May we send it to you? 
Jncorfyoraled 
(at Fortieth Street) 
450 Fifth Avenue 
of Lady Cordon and Child 
Sir Thomas Lawrence 
\n die codeciion. of 
567 FIFTH AVENUE 
CTVcio'^orfc 
10 rueFaumautin 
^/?aris 
47 Old Bond St. 
j^nUon 
Old and Modern Masters 
American Paintincs.Etchincs 
Mezzotints,Spobtinc Prints 
I 
House & Garden 
Ancient Chinese Art for Moderns 
{Continued from page 102) 
We have grown somehow to regard 
sculpture as older than painting. This 
probably is not true. The oldest sur¬ 
viving specimens of pure art in the 
world are paintings—those sketches of 
reindeer, beautifully limned, in caves in 
France, that date back to the time 
when Southern Europe was in the glacial 
epoch, variously estimated at from 200,- 
000 to 500,000 years ago, when man, 
seemingly, should have been in his ‘‘in¬ 
fancy”. However, in China sculptures 
constitute the oldest surviving art. 
They have the form of stone and pot¬ 
tery effigies, and date back to the Chow 
dynasty, from 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. 
Their origin is interesting. 
Prior to the great Chow dynasty, 
which really brought civilization to the 
Chinese, it was the custom when a man 
died to bury with him his wife, his 
horse, his poultry, and other cherished 
property. The wife and the animals 
and birds were buried alive with him. 
Later there came a time when the mind 
revolted against this cruel practice, and, 
instead of burying the. poor victims 
alive, they were merely shut up in caves, 
while stone and pottery ef^ies were 
vicariously placed in the grave. Still 
later, they were not even confined, and 
the effigies were allowed to take their 
place entirely. Even to this day, a 
trace of this custom survives and effigies 
are cut out of paper and burned as an 
offering at the funeral. 
Ancient Images 
Many of these ancient images sur¬ 
vive, having been taken from the tombs, 
and hundreds have found their way to 
Europe and America, where they have 
grown to be prized for their decorative 
value. In these early sculptures the 
subjective and abstract quality of the 
Chinese mind manifests itself in the 
fullest. Unconsciously these early sculp¬ 
tors"'eliminated unnecessary details and 
obtained broad and imaginative effects. 
They did the same thing which Rodin 
latterly has done and which many of 
our modern painters have done—such 
as Corot, Inness, Whistler, Monet and 
Twachtman—by suppressing analysis 
and striving for synthesis. And now 
that our art concepts have been de¬ 
veloped under this guidance, we can 
appreciate the work of these sculptors 
of 3,000 years ago, who were con¬ 
strained even while expressing a super¬ 
stition to carry with it an esthetic re¬ 
lief, forgetful of self in contemplation 
of the abstract. It was only when 
China had her influxes of conquerors, 
men with nomadic and objective minds, 
that her art became more realistic and 
less great. But these alien periods would 
pass, swallowed up in the great maw of 
Chinese abstraction. 
Proponents of modern extremism un¬ 
doubtedly will draw comfort from the 
growing appreciation of Chinese art, 
and try to claim kinship with it. In 
some cases the claim will be just, but 
in the exception, rather than the rule. 
The abstractions of the saner cubists, 
such as Picabia, and the simplifications 
in form of some of the Post-Impression¬ 
ists, such as Cezanne and Matisse, will 
stand the test, but as a usual thing the 
mental acrobatics of the modernists are 
anything but akin to the ancient Chi¬ 
nese art. Instead of leading to quiet con¬ 
templation and gentle play of the im¬ 
agination, they demand of the beholder 
a violent mental exercise that strains 
the mind to the utmost. They are part 
and parcel with modern complexity, and 
there is nothing restful or philosophical 
about them. Just as soon imagine a 
football game among students in ancient 
China 1 
Modernism is not a reaction against 
the stress and strenuousness of modern 
occidental life, but rather a concomitant 
and an expression of that life. On the 
contrary, the appreciation of ancient 
Chinese art may be regarded truly as a 
reaction against modern jangle, just as 
this ancient art itself was undoubtedly a 
reaction against an earlier more strenu¬ 
ous and more objective mode of ex¬ 
istence. The man or woman who has 
learned to love old Chinese paintings 
and sculpture sufficiently to place them 
in the home and enjoy them there, has 
obtained a haven from the strain of 
modern life. 
How to Use Chinese Art 
And this brings us to the question of 
how to use Chinese painting and sculp¬ 
ture in the home. There is no need 
to tell how to use Chinese porcelains, 
because for two centuries they have 
been a part of European decoration, 
and their employment has become axio¬ 
matic among decorators. The paintings 
and sculpture, however, are compara¬ 
tively new means of decoration with 
us, and many who have tried to use 
them have fallen into mistakes. 
There are some fundamental differ¬ 
ences between the decorative uses of 
Chinese paintings and European paint¬ 
ings. The latter, being objective, liter¬ 
ally make holes in the walls of a room; 
in other words, they open up vistas of 
the outside world, and make rooms 
larger. They are the antitheses of 
privacy. Quite the contrary with Chi¬ 
nese paintings; they make no vistas; by 
their flatness they are a part of the 
room itself, and by their abstraction 
and subjectiveness they turn the mind 
in on itself, shutting out the world. 
These paintings cannot be used in | 
our homes exactly as they were used in 1 
China. Chinese walls are white, there¬ 
fore the scrolls, or backings, which take : 
the place of our frames, are usually ' 
white so as not to jar the color scheme. 
Therefore the Occidental owner is at 
liberty to stain this scroll, or to remove ‘ 
it altogether and actually “frame” the : 
pictures, so as to obtain harmony, since i 
manifestly it is not possible or desirable ' 
to construct Chinese houses to accom¬ 
modate them. 
Hanging the Landscapes 
Most imaginative of all are the old j 
landscapes, and these are usually in : 
pale colors, if not almost in monotone. 
These will probably be preferred by ' 
those persons who truly love Chinese 
art because of its imagination and its ; 
gentle quality of soul. Those who are j 
more frankly looking for decorations i 
probably will think more of the por¬ 
traits of noblemen and noblewomen of 
the Ming period and earlier, whose red 
robes, pale with age, make indescribably 
beautiful and refined color notes in a 
room. 
Whoever has tried to use a Chinese 
painting as a decoration simply by 
hanging it on the wall, just as it came 
from China, has found that by its habit 
of swaying in the wind, thereby en¬ 
dangering itself, it has been anything 
but soothing to the nerves. To nail it 
to the wall would be sacrilege. What 
then? The Chinese method was to 
place tacks in the wall just outside of 
its margin, then by means of "silk cords 
passing over the margins to hold it as 
firmly to the wall as if it grew there. 
Sculpture presents quite another prob¬ 
lem. The first big thought for the 
guidance of the Occidental who uses it 
is to keep in mind the fact that, because ' 
of the imaginative element that dis¬ 
tinguishes it, Chinese sculpture must j 
have room and must have privacy. The [ 
effigy of a horse 18" high placed in the < 
middle of a mantelpiece is likely to fill 
completely that section of the room. If 
anything additional is needed it will not 
be more than a small fi.gurine on each I 
side. The same can be said of an image ■ 
of Buddha and the usual two attendants, | 
which may be flanked by two simple 
pottery monochrome incense burners. 
