There is found in most art shows a type of carved wood gargoyle where the
work and the subject are at one, not only in the color of the wood, but
in the way the material masses itself, in bulk betrays its qualities. We
will suppose a moving picture humorist who is in the same mood as the
carver. He chooses a story of quaint old ladies, street gamins, and fat
aldermen. Imagine the figures with the same massing and interplay
suddenly invested with life, yet giving to the eye a pleasure kindred to
that which is found in carved wood, and bringing to the fancy a similar
humor.
Or there is a type of Action Story where the mood of the figures is that
of bronze, with the æsthetic resources of that metal: its elasticity; its
emphasis on the tendon, ligament, and bone, rather than on the muscle;
and an attribute that we will call the panther-like quality. Hermon A.
MacNeil has a memorable piece of work in the yard of the architect Shaw,
at Lake Forest, Illinois. It is called "The Sun Vow." A little Indian is
shooting toward the sun, while the old warrior, crouching immediately
behind him, follows with his eye the direction of the arrow. Few pieces
of sculpture come readily to mind that show more happily the qualities of
bronze as distinguished from other materials. To imagine such a group
done in marble, carved wood, or Della Robbia ware is to destroy the very
image in the fancy.
The photoplay of the American Indian should in most instances be planned
as bronze in action. The tribes should not move so rapidly that the
panther-like elasticity is lost in the riding, running, and scalping. On
the other hand, the aborigines should be far from the temperateness of
marble.
Mr. Edward S. Curtis, the super-photographer, has made an Ethnological
collection of photographs of our American Indians. This work of a
life-time, a supreme art achievement, shows the native as a figure in
bronze. Mr. Curtis' photoplay, The Land of the Head Hunters (World Film
Corporation), a romance of the Indians of the North-West, abounds in
noble bronzes.
I have gone through my old territories as an art student, in the Chicago
Art Institute and the Metropolitan Museum, of late, in special
excursions, looking for sculpture, painting, and architecture that might
be the basis for the photoplays of the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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