Pictography

“ The very illusory powers of photography serve to define the true sphere of art, which is a product of the human mind as well as of the eye and hand.
There is another form of pictorial appeal which has, owing to the association of art with commercial enterprise, attained such vast proportions as to count as a popular education of the eye—for good or for evil. I mean the pictorial poster, which might be said to be the most original flourishing and vigorous type of popular art existing, and the only popular form of mural painting. ”

“ I wondered next, how it would work to make a picture of my fancy. I doubted not for a moment that it would not make an ordinary picture. An every-day painting is a mere reproduction, on a piece of silk or canvas of what one sees around, as it is, or else after filtering it [99] through an æsthetic eye. A picture has done its part, when a flower looks the flower it is, the water as it reflects in the eye, and human characters animate as in life. ”

“ In 1710, D’Aviler defines the word picture (tableau) as a subject of painting, usually in oil on canvas or wood, and contained in a frame or border. “Pictures greatly contribute to the decoration of the interior of buildings. The big ones figure in churches, drawing-rooms, galleries and other big places. Those of medium size called easel-pictures are placed in the spaces above the chimney-piece, above the doors and in the panels of the walls, or else on the tapestry against the walls. ”

“ The impressionist painters adhere to a style of composition that apparently ignores all previous laws. They depict life in scraps and pigments, as it appears haphazard in the finder or on the ground glass of the camera. The mechanism of the camera is essentially the one medium which renders every interpretation impressionistic, and every photographic print, [Pg 164] whether sharp or blurred, is really an impression.
How did the impressionistic painters arrive at this new style of composition? Permit me two questions. When was impressionism introduced into painting? In the sixties. ”

“ Now a picture is a thing of paint upon a flat surface, and a drawing is a matter of certain marks upon a paper, and how to translate the intricacies of a visual or imagined impression to the prosaic terms of masses of coloured pigment or lines and tones is the business with which our technique is concerned. The ease, therefore, with which a painter will be able to remember an impression in a form from which he can work, will depend upon his power to analyse vision in this technical sense. ”

“ A photographic artist strives for the same end and in two points only does he fall short of the painter—in color and in the ability to render so accurately the relative values, although this is to a great extent compensated by the tone of the picture. How then is photography superior to etching, wood-cutting, charcoal drawing? The [pg 178] drawing of the lens is not to be equalled by any man. There is ample room for selection, judgment and posing, and, in a word, in capable hands a finished photograph is a work of art. ”

“ You may use water colors on the first glass with good effect.
“By this simple process any person unaccustomed to painting, and ignorant of art, may color photographs, and produce with rapidity and little trouble, effective, permanent, and beautiful pictures, so soft and delicate as to closely resemble painting on enamel; may render the treasured family portrait doubly valuable by adding the warm tints of life to the faithful but cold and deathlike production of the photographer, and produce a pleasing as well as a truthful representation. ”

“ Photography has been a considerable aid to the pictorial side of book illustration, and has, on the other hand, been a great help to designers of decorative illustration, for by the use of photography the designer is enabled to have the work of his hand reproduced in facsimile, as in the process block method, which has been such a powerful rival and competitor to all kinds of engraving that it has now almost crushed them out of existence. ”

“ The study of painting as an art is based on three considerations, form, light and shade, and color. I will now treat of color—the form, and light and shade being furnished for us in the photograph. Photography as a means of art education in its influence on the public is salutary. In spite of all its falsity it is the best teacher of the first elements of criticism and knowledge of the facts of form and light and shade. Photography does not produce color, so that we will add the one link to the chain that is wanting. ”

“ Today, pictorial illustration depends on photography, and there is apparently little or nothing in life beyond the reach of photographic art. It discloses the internal arrangements of human anatomy; it makes a record of the affairs of the heavenly bodies; it pictures things that the human eye cannot see ”

“ The rules of composition which may be found to apply in one of the pictorial arts must necessarily apply equally in the others, and so therefore to pictorial photography which at least aspires to be considered an art. If on a sheet of paper a rectangular space is given us wherein to draw the likeness of anything, the most natural course to pursue would be to draw that figure in the centre or thereabouts, and if then we are asked to add the likeness of two or three more objects we should naturally place these near the first object. ”

“ One spot or circumference there should be toward which through the suppression of other parts the eye is led at once. When there, even though the vision has passed far into the canvas, one is at the focal point only, the true goal of the pictorial intention. Any element which proves too attractive along this avenue of entrance is confusing to the sight and weakening to the impression. ”

“ For the production of a pictorial newspaper a large staff of draughtsmen and engravers is required, who must be ready at a moment’s notice to take up any subject, and, if necessary, work day and night until it is done. The artist who supplies the sketch has acquired by long practice a rapid method of working, and can, by a few strokes of his pencil, indicate a passing scene by a kind of pictorial shorthand, which is afterwards translated and extended in the finished drawing. ”

“ The basis for the preparation of a photo-litho is as a rule a photographic negative on glass or gelatine, which, as the word negative implies, when examined by transmitted light, must have all its tones reversed, that is to say, the drawing or the lines, strokes or points which must in the print be black, must look transparent, whilst the other part of the negative which forms the groundwork must be covered or opaque. ”

“ I would strongly deprecate the habit of painting pictures up to exhibition pitch. Paint them up to the pitch you see in nature, and you will have quite enough to do. Exasperation is not force, and although a soberly-colored work may be eclipsed on the exhibition walls by a dazzling neighbor, yet it will more than hold its own when removed from the glare and glitter of its surroundings.{201}
Color, as understood by many people, means violent contrasts of reds, blues, and yellows. ”

“ In sculpture, for instance, casting is the process by which a faithful and minute impression of a model is obtained, and certainly a good cast is not equal to a good statue. Again, and in another domain, photography is the art which completely reproduces with lines and tints on a flat surface, without possible mistake, the forms and modelling of the object imitated. Photography is undoubtedly a useful auxiliary to painting, and is sometimes tastefully employed by cultivated and intelligent men ”

“ And our landscape-painters of to-day are equally painters of pictures. Some of them might be thought, by a modern taste, too conventionally painters of pictures—too much occupied with composition and tone and other pictorial qualities at the expense of freshness of observation—while our briskest and most original observers have, many of them, a power of design and a manner of casting even their freshest observations into pictorial form that is as admirable as it is remarkable. ”

“ As the problems to the maker of pictures by photography are the same as those of the painter and the especial ambition of the former's art is to be painter-like, separations have been thought unnecessary in the address of the text. It is the best wish of the author that photography, following painting in her essential principles as she does, may prove herself a well met companion along art's highway,—seekers together, at arm's length, and in defined limits, of the same goal. ”

“ But fortunately it does not lie within the compass of the pen to depict trees, and rising grounds, and dells, and ravines, and gentle vales, so as to convey an adequate and just idea of a landscape. The brush of the painter is far better suited to this task, and by the aid of perspective and colouring, light and shade, he may present a picture which, if not altogether so true as a photograph, nevertheless enables a spectator to realise a large conception of the characteristics and the beauties of a particular view. ”

“ The aim. We wish from the first to make it clearly understood as to what is our object in comparing photography with the other pictorial arts. It is not to condemn any of the other arts as inadequate for artistic expression, for we hold that good art, as expressed even by a lead pencil, is better than bad art expressed on the largest of canvases, but our object is to inquire what position the technique of photography takes when regarded side by side with the methods and limits of each of the pictorial arts. ”

“ The group of mouldings cutting against the head in a portrait, or the lines of a column used to accentuate the curved forms of a face or 138figure, are well-known instances; and the portrait painter is always on the look out for an object in his background that will give him such straight lines. You may notice, too, how the lines drawn across a study in order to copy it (squaring it out, as it is called) improve the look of a drawing, giving a greater beauty to the variety of the curves by contrast with the variety lacking in straight lines. ”

“ Light to be manipulated at will, lenses to grasp objects in and out of the present focus with equal intensity and proportion: as a painter places objects upon his canvas at what distance and under what shadow he pleases, so I think the photographer will yet do, and that before long, as he will, I am sure, yet be able to reproduce by the camera and his chemicals all the colours in the object set up before him, as he sees it reflected upon his ground-glass focussing plate. ”

“ Quite so; and it is in just such a light that engraving is or ought to be regarded. A picture, whether illustrating [69] a story or recording an artistic impression, is never so great as when it enchants the imagination with an ideal presence. Absolute realism is not always desirable either in pictorial art or pictorial expression. No matter how realistic it may be, it is a doubtful gain to introduce into the composition of a picture a mass of detail which might only prove disconcerting, and distract attention from the main issues of the subject. ”

“ We shall now discuss the relation of pictorial art to nature, and shall show the fallacy of calling the most scientifically perfect images obtained with photographic lenses artistically true. They are not correct, as we have shown, and shall again show, but what is artistically true is really what we have all along advocated; that is that the photographer must so use his technique as to render a true impression of the scene. ”

“ With this discovery, however, of making available even the roughest drawing, the simplest blot in color or a scratch in charcoal, and photographing its exact textures upon a wooden block, the camera reducing it in size and thus perfecting it, the artist immediately took the place of the draftsman, and at the same time introduced into the work an artistic quality, a dash, a vim and spirit entirely unknown before. ”

“ The purpose of this preliminary psychologic analysis is to explain the militant attitude of the Western pictorialist in his pursuit of the art of the camera. His extremely prolific production, manifesting itself in liberal contributions to the salons and exhibitions of the world photographic, rises not from vanity but from super-enthusiasm—from the great joy he derives in making his picture, from the creation of the beautiful, and from the playing of the game as it is best played. ”

“ We are not now speaking of such qualities as unity, emphasis, balance, and rhythm. They are indeed fundamental needs in pictorial composition, and yet a photoplay may have all of those qualities without possessing any strong appeal as art. A motion picture, like a painting, must possess other, more subtle, qualities if it is to make any lasting impression upon our souls. ”

“ The day may come when our exhibitions will show masses of color on their walls which will make the water-colorists and the miniaturists green with envy, but that day is not yet. And I for one would be sorry to see it come. There is to me a charm about good monotone photography that is all its own and that puts it on a plane with etching, engraving, lithography, and other monotone processes. Of course some artists, strictly so called, object to regarding photography as anything but a mechanical process, but the number of those who would make art a close corporation is happily diminishing. ”