Viewing page 151 of 207

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

In this conception of [[underlined]] pictorial form [[/underlined]] we are at extreme difference with Japan and China. The Orient (Persia, Egypt, Siam, Moors) conceives only flat color [[underlined]] the Japanese [[/underlined]], later, proceed to tone contrasts of color in order to express distance, air; but they ignore [[underlined]] form [[/underlined]]. Instead [[underlined]] they pattern surfaces [[/underlined]] hence their entire pictorial art is to our eye [[underlined]] ornamental [[/underlined]]. Dresses, armor, rugs, roofs, trees, grass and fields, every object and surface in their prints or on their pottery is [[underlined]] decoratively [[/underlined]] characterized. This is so much at variance with our mind, that we cannot imitate them. Hence the attempts of the [[underlined]] "ultraimpressionists" [[/underlined]] to day, are [[underlined]] wrong [[/underlined]] in drawing again heavy outlines around each pictorial mass or figure. It is degeneration, since it contradicts our scientific superiority, as a race, the whole run of our mental evolution since Hellas. (Leonardo on Effacing outlines).
A [[underlined]] new form of expression [[/underlined]], or a new and typical [[underlined]] style of art [[/underlined]] is what Modernity calls for; the objects of painting do not change so much; in poetry the motifs or emotions remain ever the same; since human nature is the source of all art. But the change of conditions, with every age, race, climate, is shown in a specific and new form of art, every time. More exact knowledge, or science, has so far given us only the dissatisfaction and breach with

(115