Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/161

Rh this painting is nothing else than clearness of statement. A photograph with every detail perfected lacks the clearness of this powerful portrait, where the insignificant is blurred or omitted in order that we may grasp at sight the significant. The careful reasoning of a school text-book is not as lucid as the proverbs of "Poor Richard," which cause the mind to leap to a sure conclusion. In a picture the essential quality is clarity; easy recognition is our experience of it.

This is true even in a modern landscape where the rocks and trees of nature are but half revealed by morning mists. Though it seem that the charm lies in the very opposite of clearness, really the artist has presented the clearest possible statement of the conditions of nature which are the spirit of misty dawn. Every element in the landscape which would be the same at any time of day, in all weathers, in all of nature's varying humors, these he has almost obliterated in order that we shall see and feel what he saw and felt that early morning in the shimmering light. Now a man to whom a morning mist is only an obscurity will probably seek in this picture trees and rocks, and the mist will be to him a weariness of the soul; the picture to him is not clear and he finds no pleasure in it. A photograph is more like the place. On the other hand, we might be bored by the photograph's insistent detail, which dissipates the expression of any nature quality; and we should find the painting a jewel of direct presentation of the subject.

The theories of most of those ultra-modern painters who are grouped under the meaningless term "Post-impressionist" are elaborate explanations of a similar aim to isolate some phase of our experience of nature for its simpler, and therefore clearer, presentation. Such a phrase as "the expression of our plastic consciousness" implies but the effort of the Cubist painter to communicate with extraordinary simplicity and force the perception of volume. It is of no importance to this discussion if the artist does not accomplish his purpose; it is the aim that we are seeking.

Narrative pictures introduce an extension of this principle. Here is Carpaccio's "St. George and the Dragon," told with delightful vivacity. We do not believe in dragons, and we may know nothing of St. George; but here is a fight with the hero triumphant, and if we have any imagination we push on that spear as eagerly as we lean down the course while watching a hundred-yards' dash—with this difference, that we doubt the outcome of the race, but feel sure of St. George. All the relations are clear.

Our physical vision is satisfied with easy recognition of hero, horse, dragon and rescued princess; our mental vision interprets and relates these separate objects with unusual facility. Now as intellect is no less the product of evolution than is sight; as the primitive man who enjoyed its exercise developed at the expense of the lazy man; so to-day we are