Shape

“ It follows that we are in the heart of a hollow sphere of loveliest blue, spangled with light. Now the sphere is the one perfect geometrical form. Over and round us then we have the one perfect shape. ”

“ The shape which is no more than a shape is a simple attribute of some substance, while the Shape that subsists in itself is superior to shape. Thus, that which participates in beauty was a shape; but beauty itself has none. ”

“ A further illustration of the principle that shape-perception is a combination of active measurements and comparisons, and of remembrance and expectations, is found in a fact which has very great importance in all artistic dealings with shapes. ”

“ But the common sensibles are all reducible to quantity. As to size and number, it is clear that they are species of quantity. Shape is a quality about quantity, since the notion of shape consists of fixing the bounds of magnitude. Movement and rest are sensed according as the subject is affected in one or more ways in the magnitude of the subject or of its local distance, as in the movement of growth or of locomotion, or again, according as it is affected in some sensible qualities, as in the movement of alteration; and thus to sense movement and rest is, in a way, to sense one thing and many. ”

“ As to variety of shape, many things that were said about lines apply equally to the spaces enclosed by them. It is impossible to write of the rhythmic possibilities that the infinite variety of shapes possessed by natural objects contain, except to point out how necessary the study of nature is for this. Variety of shape is one of the most difficult things to invent, and one of the commonest things in nature. ”

“ And it is this making up of shapes, this grasping or taking in of their constituent relations, which is an active process on our part, and one which we can either perform or not perform. When, instead of merely seeing a colour, we look at a shape, our eye ceases to be merely passive to the action of the various light-waves, and becomes active, and active in a more or less complicated way ”

“ Shape, size, manner of flight, or maybe note, is the reply. Yes, but there is something more; something definite yet indefinable, something which instantly registers identity in the brain, though how or what is seen remains unspecified. ”

“ The colors upon a body are different, according to its figure, its shape, and its size. But the sensations of color and what we may here, for brevity, call the sensations of extension, of figure, of distance, have been so often united, felt in conjunction, that the sensation of the color is never experienced without raising the ideas of the extension, the figure, the distance, in such intimate union with it, that they not only cannot be separated, but are actually supposed to be seen. ”

“ Such empathic, attributed, movements of lines are therefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception has called them forth in our imagination and feeling; and being qualities of the shapes, they inevitably change with every alteration which a shape undergoes, every shape, actively perceived, having its own special movement of lines; and every movement of lines, or combination of movements of lines existing in proportion as we go over and over again the particular shape of which it is a quality. ”

“ Of all reflexions of the same shape, size, and strength, that will be more or less strong, which terminates on a ground more or less dark.
The surface of those bodies will partake most of the colour of the object that reflects it, which receive that reflexion by the most nearly equal angles. ”

“ We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our own shape, and in shapes more or less analogous to our own. These are perpetually changing the mode of their existence relatively to us. To express the varieties of these modes, we say, we move, they move; and as this motion is continual, though not uniform, we express our conception of the diversities of its course by—it has been, it is, it shall be. ”

“ Unless this demand for sensorially, intellectually and empathically desirable shapes be complied with a work of art may be interesting as a diagram, a record or an illustration, but once the facts have been conveyed and assimilated with the rest of our knowledge, there will remain a shape which we shall never want to lay eyes upon. ”

“ THE necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the Shape to the Thing, from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and practical thinking. But, as the foregoing chapter itself suggests, the real order of precedence, both for the individual and the race, is inevitably the reverse, since without a primary and dominant interest in things no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in shapes. ”

“ Accordingly the exterior form and shape is manifested, not as such by its separation from other material, or as an impression mechanically related to aims which are foreign to it, but as the form of reality wherein the notion accommodates itself out of its own stuff and substance. ”

“ We judge of the figure or shape of bodies, chiefly by the variations of light and shade; and our associations taken thence are so strong, as that we are easily imposed upon by a just imitation of the light and shades belonging to each shape and figure, in their several situations with respect to the quarter from which the illumination proceeds. ”

“ Everything, in fact — the grouping of certain Shapes in the middle of an empty space and around a motionless Shape, the actions performed, the cutting up of that isolated Shape — suggested that there was an execution in progress, the taking of a life. ”

“ But if, as a matter of course, they say that every body is certainly fashioned according to some definite shape, we shall ask them if they can point out and describe to us the shape of a spiritual body ”

“ Having thus seen how it is possible to describe the properties of the simplest shape in four dimensions, it is evident that the mental construction of more elaborate figures is simply a matter of time and patience. ”

“ And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as well as true shape, and that we are going to draw from Nature at our pleasure, other considerations enter into the business, which are by no means confined to first practice, but extend to all practice ”

“ We learn, therefore, to react to a visual shape in a manner corresponding to how it would appear if it were in the centre of the field of vision, provided we do not immediately focus153 upon it, which is what we naturally do when anything visible interests us. ”

“ Very few lines are used in Figure 1, yet they are so placed that you know at once the animal that is represented, its attitude, and its shape. Lines that tell the important facts about an object are called leading lines. The skeleton figures we have been studying show us the leading lines in certain attitudes of people and animals. ”

“ Thus, whether the masses consist of{147} light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact and of a pleasing shape: to this end, some parts may be made darker and some lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant. ”

“ We get it when we pass from a short vertical line to a long horizontal one, from a small square to a large circle, as well as when we pass between those figures whose shapes are congruous. But when the shapes are congruous our consciousness of the relation is a good deal more distinct, and it is most distinct of all when, in the exercise of our analytic attention, we notice, first, a part, and then the whole, of a single line or shape. ”

“ What determines the shape assumed and how the transformation is effected is not clear. One may speculate as to the influence of human thought, individual or in the mass, and quite probably the explanation when found will include this influence as a factor—but I am intent here not on theorizing, but on a narrative of observed happenings. One thing is clear—the nature-spirit form is objective—objective, that is, in the sense in which we apply that term to a stone, a tree, and a human body. ”

“ Since we can see the relative position of things, we can see figure, which is but the relative position of the different parts of the boundary of the object. And thus the whole visible world exhibits to us a scene of various shapes, coloured and shaded according to their form and position, but each having relations of position to all the rest; and altogether, entirely filling up the whole range which the eye can command. ”

“ Some of these shapes would be so dull, increasing the tediousness of chipping and filing or of laying strand over strand; others so alert, entertaining and likeable, as if they were helping in the work; others, although equally compatible with utility, fussing or distressing one, never doing what one expected their lines and curves to do. To these suppositions I would add a few more suggestions regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of man's perfunctory and semi-automatic seeing of "Things." ”

“ In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once to contain and to conceal. ”

“ Fig. 212
Here are five outlines, very different in shape-character. Let us see what can be done with them. A lot of experiments have to be tried, to find out what connections, what arrangements, what effects are possible. The possibilities cannot be predicted. Using tracing-paper, a great many experiments can be tried in a short time, though it may take a long time to reach the best possible results. [Pg 121]
Fig. 213
In this example I have tried to make a good composition with my five outlines. ”

“ The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. ”

“ Now the first peculiarity distinguishing things from shapes is that they can occupy more or less cubic space: we can hit up against them, displace them or be displaced by them, and in such process of displacing or resisting displacement, we become aware of two other peculiarities distinguishing things from shapes: they have weight in varying degrees and texture of various sorts. Otherwise expressed, things have body, they exist in three dimensional space ”

“ And the influence of these habitual movements on the form of the features themselves will invariably mould them into individual shapes away from the so-called perfect type, whatever may have been nature's intention in the first instance. ”

“ The other Shape— If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb; ”

“ The shapes which the pressure of the brush gives us, will enable us with ease to trace the evolution of pattern from the primitive zig-zag or dot and line to the subtly graceful scrolls and meanders of later times. ”

“ To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size. ”

“ Curvature: all beautiful objects are bounded by infinite curves, that is to say, of infinitely changing direction, or else made up of an infinite number of subordinate curves. Radiation: illustrated in leaves and boughs and in the structure of organic bodies. Contrast: of shapes and substances and of general lines; being the complement of the law of continuity, contrast of light and shade not being enough. ”

“ Whenever we have the perception of light, we habitually have, along with it, the perception of objects; that is, of all sorts of colours, all sorts of shapes, all sorts of magnitudes, all sorts of distances, and so on. With the idea of light, then, are indissolubly associated the ideas of all sorts of objects; of extension in all its modifications, colour in all its modifications, motion in all its modifications; the word light, therefore, serves as a name, not merely of the fluid which acts upon the eye, but of that along with its innumerable associations. ”

“ These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wrought into new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified, and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but no one had the temerity to touch it. ”

“ curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires. ”

“ Our earliest ideas of form are probably derived through the different colours of objects around us, by which they are thrown into relief upon the background, or against other objects; and, as I mentioned in the first chapter, we reach outline by observing the edges of different masses relieved as dark or light upon light or dark grounds, so now, in my last, we come again to the consideration of the definition of line and form by colour, and their relief and expression upon different planes or fields of colour. ”

“ I.It seems not absurd to conceive that at the first Production of mixt Bodies, the Universal Matter whereof they among other Parts of the Universe consisted, was actually divided into little Particles of several sizes and shapes variously mov’d. ”

“ The different positions of the several parts of the body with regard to the eye, when put together, make a real figure, which is truly extended in the length and breadth, and which represents a figure that is extended in length, breadth, and thickness. In like manner, a projection of the sphere is a real figure, and hath length and breadth, but represents the sphere, which hath three dimensions. ”

“ It will of course be understood that by the term Symmetry I here intend, not that more indefinite attribute of form which belongs to the domain of the fine arts, as when we speak of the ‘symmetry’ of an edifice 68 or of a sculptured figure, but a certain definite relation or property, no less rigorous and precise than other relations of number and position, which is thus one of the sure guides of the scientific faculty, and one of the bases of our exact science. ”