Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory, Hugo Münsterberg [top fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

it seems not unreasonable to

suppose that the tendency to rest the eyes above the center of the

picture directly induces the associated mood of reverence or worship.

Thus the pyramidal form serves two ends; primarily that of giving

unity; and secondarily, by the peculiarity of its mass, that of

inducing the feeling-tone appropriate to the subject of the picture.

 

Applying this principle to the so-called ‘active’ pictures, we see

that the natural movement of attention between the different ‘actors’

in the picture must be allowed for, while yet unity is secured. And it

is clear that the diagonal type is just fitted for this. The attention

sweeps down from the high side to the low, from which it returns

through some backward suggestion of lines or interest in the objects

of the high side. Action and reaction—movement and return of

attention—is inevitable under the conditions of this type; and this

it is which allows the free play—which, indeed, constitutes and

expresses the activity belonging to the subject, just as the fixation

of the pyramid constitutes the quietude of the religious picture. Thus

it is that the diagonal composition is particularly suited to portray

scenes of grandeur, and to induce a feeling of awe in the spectator,

because only here can the eye rove in one large sweep from side to

side of the picture, recalled by the mass and interest of the side

from which it moves. The swing of the pendulum is here widest, so to

speak, and all the feeling-tones which belong to wide, free movement

are called into play. If, at the same time, the element of the deep

vista is introduced, we have the extreme of concentration combined

with the extreme of movement; and the result is a picture in the

‘grand style’—comparable to high tragedy—in which all the

feeling-tones which wait on motor impulses are, as it were, while yet

in the same reciprocal relation, tuned to the highest pitch. Such a

picture is the Finding of the Ring, Paris Bordone (1048), in the

Venice Academy. All the mass and the interest and the suggestion of

attention is toward the right—the sweep of the downward lines and of

the magnificent perspective toward the left—and the effect of the

whole space-composition is of superb largeness of life and feeling.

With it may be compared Titian’s Presentation of the Virgin (107),

also in the Academy, Venice. The composition, from the figure moving

upward to one high on the right, to the downward lines, waiting groups

and deep vista on the left, is almost identical with that of the

Bordone. Neither is pure diagonal—that is, it saves itself at last by

an upward movement. Compare also the two great compositions by

Veronese, Martyrdom of St. Mark, etc. (1091), in the Doge’s Palace,

Venice, and Esther before Ahasuerus (566), in the Uffizi, Florence.

In both, the mass, direction of interest, movement and attention are

toward the left, while all the lines tend diagonally to the right,

where a vista is also suggested—the diagonal making a V just at the

end. Here, too, the effect is of magnificence and vigor.

 

If, then, the pyramid belongs to contemplation, the diagonal to

action, what can be said of the type of landscape? It is without

action, it is true, and yet does not express that positive quality,

that will not to act, of the rapt contemplation. The landscape

uncomposed is negative; and it demands unity. Its type of composition,

then, must give it something positive besides unity. It lacks both

concentration and action; but it can gain them both from a space

composition which shall combine unity with a tendency to movement. And

this is given by the diagonal and V-shaped type. This type merely

allows free play to the natural tendency of the ‘active’ picture; but

it constrains the neutral, inanimate landscape. The shape itself

imparts motion to the picture: the sweep of line, the concentration of

the vista, the unifying power of the inverted triangle between two

masses, act, as it were, externally to the suggestion of the object

itself. There is always enough quiet in a landscape—the overwhelming

suggestion of the horizontal suffices for that; it is movement that is

needed for richness of effect; and, as I have shown, no type imparts

the feeling of movement so strongly as the diagonal and V-shaped type

of composition. It is worth remarking that the perfect V, which is of

course more regular, concentrated, quiet, than the diagonal, is more

frequent than the diagonal among the ‘Miscellaneous Religious’

pictures (that is, it is more needed), since after all, as has been

said, the final aim of all space composition is just the attainment of

repose. But the landscapes need energy, not repression; and so the

diagonal type is proportionately more numerous.

 

The square and oval types, as is seen from the table, are far less

often used. The oval, most infrequent of all, appears only among the

‘active’ pictures, with the exception of landscape. It usually serves

to unite a group of people among whom there is no one especially

striking—or the object of whose attention is in the center of the

picture, as in the case of the Descent from the Cross. It imparts a

certain amount of movement, but an equable and regular one, as the eye

returns in an even sweep from one side to the other.

 

The square type, although only three per cent. of the whole number of

pictures, suggests a point of view which has already been touched on

in the section on Primitive Art. The examples fall into two classes:

in the first, the straight lines across the picture are unrelieved by

the suggestion of any other type; in the second, the pyramid or V is

suggested in the background with more or less clearness by means of

architecture or landscape. In the first class are found, almost

exclusively, early examples of Italian, Dutch and German art; in the

second, pictures of a later period. The rigid square, in short, is

found only at an early stage in the development of composition.

Moreover, all the examples are ‘story’ pictures, for the most part

scenes from the lives of the saints, etc. Many of them are

double-center—square, that is, with a slight break in the middle, the

grouping purely logical, to bring out the relations of the characters.

Thus, in the Dream of Saint Martin, Simone Martini (325), a fresco

at Assisi, the saint lies straight across the picture with his head in

one corner. Behind him on one side, stand the Christ and angels,

grouped closely together, their heads on the same level. Compare also

the Finding of the Cross, Piero della Francesca (1088), a serial

picture in two parts, with their respective backgrounds all on the

same level; and most of the frescoes by Giotto at Assisi—in

particular St. Francis before the Sultan (1057), in which the actors

are divided into parties, so to speak.

 

These are all, of course, in one sense symmetrical—in the weight of

interest, at least—but they are completely amorphous from an æsthetic

point of view. The forms, that is, do not count at all—only the

meanings. The story is told by a clear separation of the parts, and

as, in most stories, there are two principal actors, it merely happens

that they fall into the two sides of the picture. Interesting in

connection with this is the observation that, although the more

anecdotal the picture the more likely it is to be ‘double-centered,’

the later the picture the less likely it is to be double-centered.

Thus the square and the double-center composition seem often to be

found in the same picture and to be, both, characteristic of early

composition. On the other hand, a rigid geometrical symmetry is also

characteristic, and these two facts seem to contradict each other. But

it is to be noted, first, that the rigid geometrical symmetry belongs

only to the Madonna Enthroned, and general Adoration pieces; and

secondly, that this very rigidity of symmetry in details can coexist

with variations which destroy balance. Thus, in the _Madonna

Enthroned_, Giotto (715), where absolute symmetry in detail is kept,

the Child sits far out on the right knee of the Madonna. Compare also

Madonna, Vitale di Bologna (157), in which the C. is almost falling

off M.‘s arms to the right, her head is bent to the right, and a monk

is kneeling at the right lower corner; also Madonna, Ottaviano Nelli

(175)—all very early pictures. Hence, it would seem that the symmetry

of these early pictures was not dictated by a conscious demand for

symmetrical arrangement, or rather for real balance, else such

failures would hardly occur. The presence of geometrical symmetry is

more easily explained as the product, in large part, of technical

conditions: of the fact that these pictures were painted as

altarpieces to fill a space definitely symmetrical in character—often,

indeed, with architectural elements intruding into it. We may even

venture to connect the Madonna pictures with the temple images of the

classic period, to explain why it was natural to paint the object of

worship seated exactly facing the worshipper. Thus we may separate the

two classes of pictures, the one giving an object of worship, and thus

taking naturally, as has been said, the pyramidal, symmetrical shape,

and being moulded to symmetry by all other suggestions of technique;

the other aiming at nothing except logical clearness. This antithesis

of the symbol and the story has a most interesting parallel in the two

great classes of primitive art—the one symbolic, merely suggestive,

shaped by the space it had to fill, and so degenerating into the

slavishly symmetrical, the other descriptive, ‘story-telling’ and

without a trace of space composition. On neither side is there

evidence of direct æsthetic feeling. Only in the course of artistic

development do we find the rigid, yet often unbalanced, symmetry

relaxing into a free substitutional symmetry, and the formless

narrative crystallizing into a really unified and balanced space form.

The two antitheses approach each other in the ‘balance’ of the

masterpieces of civilized art—in which, for the first time, a real

feeling for space composition makes itself felt.

 

*

 

THE ÆSTHETICS OF UNEQUAL DIVISION.

 

BY ROSWELL PARKER ANGIER.

 

PART I.

 

The present paper reports the beginnings of an investigation designed

to throw light on the psychological basis of our æsthetic pleasure in

unequal division. It is confined to horizontal division. Owing to the

prestige of the golden section, that is, of that division of the

simple line which gives a short part bearing the same ratio to the

long part that the latter bears to the whole line, experimentation of

this sort has been fettered. Investigators have confined their efforts

to statistical records of approximations to, or deviations from, the

golden section. This exalts it into a possible æsthetic norm. But such

a gratuitous supposition, by limiting the inquiry to the verification

of this norm, distorts the results, tempting one to forget the

provisional nature of the assumption, and to consider divergence from

the golden section as an error, instead of another example, merely, of

unequal division. We have, as a matter of fact, on one hand,

investigations that do not verify the golden section, and, on the

other hand, a series of attempts to account for our pleasure in it, as

if it were, beyond dispute, the norm. In this way the statistical

inquiries have been narrowed in scope, and interpretation retarded and

misdirected. Statistically our aim should be to ascertain within how

wide limits æsthetically pleasing unequal divisions fall; and an

interpretative principle must be flexible enough to include persistent

variations from any hypothetical norm, unless they can be otherwise

accounted for. If it is not forced on us, we have, in