The Gate of Appreciation: Studies in the Relation of Art to LifeNoyes, Carleton Eldredge
Philosophy
The Gate of Appreciation: Studies in the Relation of Art to Life
Noyes, Carleton Eldredge
Aesthetics; Art appreciation; Art criticism
be the overflow of some human spirit, a mind and heart touched to
expression.
IX
REPRESENTATION
BEFORE me is a little bowl of old Satsuma. As I look at it there
wakens in me a responsive rhythm, and involuntarily my fingers
move as if to caress its suave and lovely lines. The rich gold and
mingled mellow browns of its surface pattern intricately woven are a
gracious harmony and a delight. Gradually, as I continue to look on
it, a feeling is communicated to me of the maker's own joy in his
work; and the bowl, its harmonies and rhythms, and all that it
expresses, become part of me. There it is, complete in itself,
gathering up and containing within itself the entire experience. My
thoughts, sensations, feelings do not go beyond the bowl.
Another time I am standing in the hall of the Academy in Florence.
At the end of the corridor towers a superb form. I see that it is the
figure of a youth. His left hand holds a sling drawn across his
shoulder; his right arm hangs by his side, his hand grasping a pebble
close to his thigh; calm and confident, his head erect, his strength
held in leash waiting to be loosed, he fronts the oncoming of the foe.
The statue is the presentation of noble form, and it wakens in me an
accordant rhythm; I feel in myself something of what youthful
courage, life, and conscious power mean. But my experience does
not stop there. The statue is not only presentation but representation.
It figures forth a youth, David, the Hebrew shepherd-boy, and he
stands awaiting the Philistine. I have read his story, I have my own
mental image of him, and about his personality cluster many
thoughts. To what Michelangelo shows me I add what I already
know. Recognition, memory, knowledge, facts and ideas, a whole
store of associations allied with my previous experience, mingle
with my instant emotion in its presence. The sculptor, unlike the
potter, has not created his own form; the subject of his work exists
outside of him in nature. He uses the subject for his own ends, but in
his treatment of it he is bound by certain responsibilities to external
truth. His work as it stands is not completely self-contained, but is
linked with the outer world; and my appreciation of it is affected by
this reference to extrinsic fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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