Crease

“ ORIGIN OF ORNAMENT.
The birth of the embellishing art must be sought in that stage of animal development when instinct began to discover that certain attributes or adornments increased attractiveness. When art in its human sense came into existence ideas of embellishment soon extended from the person, with, which they had been associated, to all things with which man had to deal. ”

“ There are many ways beside skin marks in which the idea of image making might have suggested itself to primitive man, inheriting as he perhaps did from an animal ancestry a strong instinct for imitation—the shadow, reflection in water, actual fossils of animals, the etching of sunburn, the silhouette of a tree or animal against the horizon, natural stone forms, tracks in clay, etc.—but in skin marks, natural or artificial, we see the transition process in actual operation. ”

“ The Creation is, as it were, a Poem in the Sublime: Every Species of created Beings is a Stanza, and every individual Creature, a Verse in it, as a certain learned Divine expresses it. Creation here is not stiled εργον, which is a Work of manual Labor, but ποιημα [333] , a Work of Skill; not so much the Operation of the Hand, as of the Head and Heart: No Creature so small and mean, but glitters with a Beam of divine Skill. ”

“ If we build a woman out of that literal clay, she would be square-shouldered, big-limbed, stout-bodied, sharp-boned, and pachydermatous, with a skin of bronzed leather tightened over knobs of cheek-bones, hairs woven in a wire-mill, and eyebrows like two heavy dashes from the circus charcoal. ”

“ The Creator, a grand and terrific figure, ancient and winged, like some monument of an Oriental imagination, clothed about the body with flowing drapery, his hair streaming behind, with all the agony of creation upon his face, is forming Adam, who lies prostrate below him, out of the four elements. ”

“ Look over the whole Creation, and you shall see that the Band or Cement that holds together all the Parts of this great and glorious Fabric is Gratitude, or something like it: you may observe it in all the Elements, for does not the Air feed the Flame? and does not the Flame at the same time warm and enlighten the Air? Is not the Sea always sending forth, as well as taking in? And does not the Earth quit scores with all the Elements, in the noble Fruits and Productions that issue from it? ”

“ Lastly, he made man. Turning the clay of the Nile upon his wheel, he fashioned the last and greatest of created things, and having “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” made man the cornerstone of the fabric of creation. ”

“ This may be further illustrated by the human body, in which we may see an image of creation. There is a continuous connection from the heart to the skin through the viscera, which is the intermediate. The skin, as an ultimate, holds all things interior in connection and order, for were the skin, against which the air presses, removed, the fluids of the body would pass away, and the body would be destroyed. ”

“ Whether we are discussing music, poetry, painting, sculpture or architecture, we are forced to speak as though certain physical objects—vibrations of strings and of columns of air, marks printed on paper, canvasses and pigments, masses of marble, fabrics of freestone, are what we are talking about. ”

“ They stand as the models of art and intellect—each unapproached—solitary and beautiful,—the human eye contemplates them with the chaste wonder of Creation's daughter—Eve, when from the banks of Eden's limpid waters, she first gazed upon the mirrored image of herself! ”

“ We, my dear, are in ourselves evidence of a design in creation. For we are the last word of creation. It has taken all the efforts, all the birthpangs of all the ages to evolve—you and me. [18] And, being evolved, we are intellectually so perfectly and so divinely fashioned to dovetail together. And, physically too, are we not divinely meant the one for the other? ”

“ And here we have (as I think will be seen one day) the whole rationale of Creation—we have the conception which brings into line the phenomena of the visible and material world and their genesis, with the genesis of thoughts in our own minds, and their passage into visibility and expression; we have the conception which unites the mental and material, and which makes the whole Creation luminous with meaning. ”

“ In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, I look back for the era of this creation not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough—a morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation, where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted. ”

“ No doubt it is to us a most grotesque notion that the posterior end of the body should be coloured for the sake of ornament even more brilliantly than the face; but this is not more strange than that the tails of many birds should be especially decorated. ”

“ Offer to it the lightest suggestion, and there springs forth from that abyss a figure corresponding, or a dozen figures, or a whole procession! The mere delight of creation calls them forth. Could anything be more wonderful? What a strange glimpse it gives us of the possibilities of Creation. ”

“ The commencement, as a fact, I must learn from testimony; I have no means whatever of inferring it from phenomena.
Permit me, therefore, to repeat, as having been proved, these two propositions:—
All organic nature moves in a circle.
Creation is a violent irruption into the circle of nature. ”

“ Taking, then, these natural embryonic beginnings as our starting point, I would be inclined to trace out the living value of art and ornament somewhat upon these lines: Exuberance—the emergence of beauty and adornment, in addition to the mere functional grace arising out of fitness for use—has always been going on through the whole process of creation among animate nature. ”

“ The generative profile of that torso helps us to understand, reveals to us the proportions of the world. And the miracle is in this, that the assembled profiles, in the sense of depth, of length, and of width, express, by an incomprehensible magic, the human soul and its passions, and the character that shapes the heart of beings.
13The ancients have obtained by a minimum of gesture, by their modelling, both the individual character and the grace borrowed from grandeur that relates the human form to the forms of the universal life. ”

“ Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us; it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven by many forces; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group them—a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it. ”

“ Hearken, therefore, O matchless artificer! it is now our will that thou make for us a vase having the tint and the aspect of living flesh, but—mark well our desire!—of flesh made to creep by the utterance of such words as poets utter,—flesh moved by an Idea, flesh horripilated by a Thought! ”

“ Protoplasm. All this fabric was built up under life, but only a small portion of it is at any one time alive. As growth proceeds, life is passed on from the old to the new parts, much as it has passed on from parent to offspring, from generation to generation in unbroken continuity. ”

“ The deep-seated rhythms of growth which, as I venture to think, are the chief basis of morphological heredity, bring about similarities of form, which endure in the absence of conflicting forces; but a new system of forces, introduced by altered environment and habits, impinging on those particular parts of the fabric which lie within this particular field of force, will assuredly not be long of manifesting itself in notable and inevitable modifications of form. ”

“ Suppose one were to find a shapeless mass of clay, to mould it with his hands, and give it the form of a living creature; the head in one figure, the hands and feet in another, the eyes and cheeks in a third, and so to fashion the ears, the mouth and nose, the breast and shoulders, according to the rules of the plastic art. ”

“ We have learned that the narrative is an allegory of the regeneration of the human mind. The heaven and the earth were found to be symbols of the two minds of man, or if you prefer the expression, the two regions of his mind, its heavenly and its earthly, or in other words, its spiritual and its natural. Creation symbolizes the regeneration, that is the rebirth, or new creation of the spiritual nature. ”

“ What a beautiful sermon or essay might be written on the growth of prophecy!—from the germ, no bigger than a man's hand, in Genesis, till the column of cloud gathers size and height and substance, and assumes the shape of a perfect man; just like the smoke in the Arabian Nights' tale, which comes up and at last takes a genie's shape. ”

“ All depends, then, on what is meant by such terms as "created," "let there be," "let the earth bring forth," &c. Perhaps it has occurred to but few of my readers seriously to examine into their own mental conception of an "act of creation." Some will readily answer, "Of course it means only that at the Divine fiat, any given species—say an elephant—appeared perfect, trunk, tusks, and all the peculiar development of skull and skeleton, where previously no such creature had existed." ”

“ For all the members of creation form, as it were, the links of one great chain, and were but one removed, though it might perchance be only some poor weed or lowly moss, yet might it cause the whole to be annihilated ”

“ In my opinion, a thorough and exhaustive thinking is not well possible otherwise than pen in hand.
The fixed form for reproduction through sight is drawing. The reproduction of a visible object must, firstly, seize the figure of that object with those innumerable and often imperceptible transitions from one shape into the other that we so often observe in objects of nature, while the drawing of the figure will testify as to the correct seizing and reproducing. The reproduction must, secondly, reproduce the size of the object. ”

“ The engraving was becoming to me the shrine of God manifest in the flesh, and I understood the growth of idolatry. The visible symbol is at first a symbol and nothing more; it assists thought; it stirs passion. ”

“ It has become a habit with drawing-masters to confuse this particular science of anatomy with their own art of drawing, though they confuse no other science with that art. Admit that, in order to draw a tree, you should have a knowledge of botany: Do you expect me to teach you botany here? ”

“ In Art, the surface appearance of a representation not of textiles only, but of the other parts of a picture—wood, marble, skin, hair, &c. Gerard Dow excels in texture.
Thalamifera, Gr. A term applied, in describing ancient sculpture, to kneeling figures supporting tablets, on which figures of the gods or inscriptions are carved. ”

“ In the generation by metamorphosis forms are created as if by the impression of a seal, or, as if they were adjusted in a mould; in truth the whole material is transformed. But an animal which is created by epigenesis attracts, prepares, elaborates, and makes use of the material, all at the same time; the processes of formation and growth are simultaneous. ”

“ He imagines that animals grow like webs, ropes, sacks, or baskets, each of which has, woven on to its end or margin, other material similar to that of which it was originally composed. But this, most sapient sir, is not growth, but genesis! ”

“ I will paint the earth, not as it looks, but in a way that will give you an impression of its fertility and fecundity. I will paint you flowers, not by faithfully copying them as they are in the field, but as they bloom and blossom in your memory. ”

“ The old view of creation, which represented it as single and instantaneous, made each creature or each organ seem like a mere piece of molded mechanism, with no history, no puzzle, and no recognizable relation to its like elsewhere. But the new view, which represents creation as continuous, progressive, and regular, teaches lis to see in every species or every structure a result of previous causes, an adaptation to preexisting needs. ”

“ The fact that at the very outset of Creation light was flashed across the earth represents that at the very outset of regeneration, in the case of each one, light is thrown upon his mind as to the superiority of spiritual life and knowledge over that which is merely natural. The development of the firmament or natural heaven, typifies the opening of the higher or heavenly mind of spiritual observation and thought. ”

“ He has, generally, illustrated the various parts of the Mosaic Creation, with perspicuity and precision, and then applied the whole to the production and support of vital piety in the heart of the reader. So that while the astonishing magnificence, glory, and wisdom of creation, fills the contemplative mind with admiration, the heart also is fired with an ardent and rational devotion. ”

“ Amongst the works on Science and Natural Philosophy, a general view of Creation is embodied in Dr. Kemp's Natural History of Creation, and in his Indications of Instinct remarkable facts in natural history are collected. ”

“ If the Power floods down into our minds with sufficient strength for actual form, to note the outline of such form, and from your drawing model it later in permanent substance. Then we should have means of evoking it at will, for we should have its natural Body—the form it built itself, its signature, image, pattern. ”

“ Nor is it wonderful if God the Creator in the beginning made types, from which forms and species may now be expressed. But this is similar to that, that in the beginning God created insensible elements, which He might use for forming and developing all other things. But even those who form statues, first make a mould of clay or wax, and from it the figure of the statue is produced. ”