To make a more elaborate showing of what is meant by
architecture-in-motion, let us progress through the centuries and suppose
that the builder has this enthusiasm for France, that he is slowly
setting about to build a photoplay around the idea of the Maid.
First let him take the mural painting point of view. Bear in mind these
characteristics of that art: it is wall-painting that is an organic part
of the surface on which it appears: it is on the same lines as the
building and adapted to the colors and forms of the structure of which it
is a part.
The wall-splendors of America that are the most scattered about in
inexpensive copies are the decorations of the Boston Public Library. Note
the pillar-like quality of Sargent's prophets, the solemn dignity of
Abbey's Holy Grail series, the grand horizontals and perpendiculars of
the work of Puvis de Chavannes. The last is the orthodox mural painter of
the world, but the other two will serve the present purpose also. These
architectural paintings if they were dramatized, still retaining their
powerful lines, would be three exceedingly varied examples of what is
meant by architecture-in-motion. The visions that appear to Jeanne d'Arc
might be delineated in the mood of some one of these three painters. The
styles will not mix in the same episode.
A painter from old time we mention here, not because he was orthodox, but
because of his genius for the drawing of action, and because he covered
tremendous wall-spaces with Venetian tone and color, is Tintoretto. If
there is a mistrust that the mural painting standard will tend to destroy
the sense of action, Tintoretto will restore confidence in that regard.
As the Winged Victory represents flying in sculpture, so his work is the
extreme example of action with the brush. The Venetians called him the
furious painter. One must understand a man through his admirers. So
explore Ruskin's sayings on Tintoretto.
I have a dozen moving picture magazine clippings, which are in their
humble way first or second cousins of mural paintings. I will describe
but two, since the method of selection has already been amply indicated,
and the reader can find his own examples. For a Crowd Picture, for
instance, here is a scene at a masquerade ball. The glitter of the
costumes is an extension of the glitter of the candelabra overhead. The
people are as it were chandeliers, hung lower down. The lines of the
candelabra relate to the very ribbon streamers of the heroine, and the
massive wood-work is the big brother of the square-shouldered heroes in
the foreground, though one is a clown, one is a Russian Duke, and one is
Don Cæsar De Bazan. The building is the father of the people. These
relations can be kept in the court scenes of the production of Jeanne
d'Arc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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