Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
will readily recognise in that art the development of a system of
ornament like that of the Maoris. Classical Greece, on the other hand,
followed more in the track of the ancient system of straight and slanted
lines, and we do not find in the later Greek art that love of interlacing
coils and spirals which is so remarkable among the Celts, and which is
very manifest in the ornaments of the Mycaenean hoards--that is, perhaps,
of the ancient Greek heroic age. The causes of these differences in the
development of ornament, the causes that made Celtic genius follow one
track, and pursue to its aesthetic limits one early motif, while
classical art went on a severer line, it is, perhaps, impossible at
present to ascertain. But it is plain enough that later art has done
little more than develop ideas of ornament already familiar to untutored
races.
[Fig. 6. From a Maori's Face: 287.jpg]
It has been shown that the art which aims at decoration is better adapted
to both the purposes and materials of savages than the art which aims at
representation. As a rule, the materials of the lower savages are their
own bodies (which they naturally desire to make beautiful for ever by
tattooing), and the hard substances of which they fashion their tools and
weapons. These hard substances, when worked on with cutting instruments
of stone or shell, are most easily adorned with straight cut lines, and
spirals are therefore found to be, on the whole, a comparatively late
form of ornament.
[Fig. 7. Bushman Dog: 290.jpg]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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