Principles of literary criticismRichards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Philosophy
Principles of literary criticism
Richards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Criticism
as common in the criticism of painting as with any other of the
arts.
One other aspect of the picture-space needs consideration. It
is not necessarily a fixed and static construction, but may in
several ways contain elements of movement. Some of these may
be eye movements, or kinæsthetic images of eye movements. As
the eye wanders imaginally from point to point the relations
between the parts of the picture-space change; thus an effect
of movement is induced. Equally important are the fusions of
successive visual images which may be suggested by drawing. As
we watch, for example, an arm being flexed, the eye receives
a series of successive and changing retinal impressions. Certain
combinations of these, which represent not the position and form
of the arm at any instant, but a compromise or fusion of different
positions and forms, have an easily explicable capacity to represent
the whole series, and thus to represent movement. The use of
such fused images in drawing may easily be mistaken for distortion,
but when properly interpreted it may yield normal forms in movement.
Many other means by which movement is given in Painting might
be mentioned. One means by which colour, may suggest it, for
example, is well indicated in the following description by Signac
of _Muley-abd-er Rahman entouré de sa garde_: “la tumulte
est traduit par l’accord presque dissonant du grand parasol vert
sur le bleu du ciel, surexcité déjà par l’orangé des murailles[53]”.
It need hardly be pointed out that the response made to the picture-space
varies enormously according to whether the forms in it are seen
as in rest or in movement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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