FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  
e young and bustling empire be heard. Shiba Kokan, the pupil of Harunobu, says in his "Confessions": "In Occidental art objects are copied directly from nature; hence before a landscape one feels as if one were placed in the midst of nature. There is a wonderful apparatus called the photograph, which gives a facsimile copy of the object, whatever it is, to which it is directed. Nothing which has not actually been seen is sketched, nor is a nameless landscape reproduced, as we often see done in Chinese productions.... A painting which is not a faithful copy of nature has neither beauty nor is worthy of the name." And this is the considered judgment of that popular modern painter Okio: "The use of art is to produce copies of things, and if an artist has a thorough knowledge of the properties of the thing he paints, he can assuredly make a name.... Without the true depiction of objects there can be no pictorial art. Nobility of sentiment and suchlike only come after a successful delineation of the external form of an object." Such men would be very much at home at an Academy banquet or in the parlour of a suburban stockbroker and less so in the world of art than a saint would be in Wall Street. For whereas the saint would perceive the spark of the universal in the particular stockjobber, the stockjobber and his friends, Mr. Okio, the delineator, and the philophotographic Mr. Kokan, are blind to anything that is not on the surface. Japan, we are told, is to shape the future of the Eastern hemisphere. Japan is "forging ahead." Already she has set her hand to the task of civilizing, that is to say Europeanizing, China--just at the moment when Europe is coming to loathe her own grossness. Time is the master of paradox. Who shall say what surprises are too fantastic for his contriving? Can the classic distinction between East and West, that venerable mother of trite reflections and bad arguments, be, after all, mutable? Is the unchanging East changeable? Is Mr. Kipling's thrilling line no more than the statement of a geographical truism? England they tell us was once a tropical forest; London may yet be the spiritual capital of the world, while Asia--rich in all that gold can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of police regulations, glorious in all material glories--postures, complacent and obt
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
nature
 

stockjobber

 

object

 

landscape

 

objects

 
Europeanizing
 
railways
 

bodies

 
promulgator
 

civilizing


moment

 

grossness

 
master
 

builder

 
loathe
 

Europe

 
coming
 
paradox
 

surface

 

postures


glories

 

material

 

complacent

 

delineator

 

philophotographic

 

glorious

 

Already

 

regulations

 

forging

 

future


Eastern

 
hemisphere
 

police

 

fantastic

 

truism

 
England
 

geographical

 
statement
 

thrilling

 
forest

spiritual
 

London

 
tropical
 
capital
 

Kipling

 

changeable

 
distinction
 

classic

 
contriving
 

venerable