On Drawing and Painting (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... combined with other motives similarly derived from Nature and the combination developed. The glass may be taken from the lady, the slice of lemon from the glass, and another motive may be discovered in the radial symmetry of the slice of lemon. The two motives may then be combined with one another in a sequence of repetitions and alternations which in Music might be described as a fugue. In painting, it is a fugue or flight in tone and space-relations, and it may be quite as interesting and delightful to the eye as any that was ever composed for the ear by Handel or by Bach. In producing compositions in Pure Design the painter follows the law of his palette and the forms and modes of Design precisely as the musician follows the laws of the musical scale and its keys, and the rules of Counterpoint and of Harmony. Neither the musician nor the painter in Pure Design should be satisfied until he has achieved the particular kind of perfection which be-, longs to the art which he practices. When Henschel was studying composition with Brahms, Brahms said to him: "That is a pretty song but it seems to me that you are too easily satisfied. One ought never to forget that by actually perfecting one piece one learns more than by beginning or half-finishing ten. Let it rest, let it rest, and keep going back to it and working at it, over and over again until it is completed, as a finished work of art, until there is not a note too much or too little, not a bar you could improve upon. Whether it is beautiful, also, is an entirely different matter, but perfect it must be... perfect and unassailable." l That is the idea of Music and it is the idea of Pure Design. The very last thing for the painter who would be an artist to think of is originality....