We are all inclined to be quick with the verdict that 'things do not look like that'. We have a curious habit of thinking that nature must always look like the pictures we are accustomed to. ... Not one of these people seems to have noticed what it 'really looks like' when a horse runs. Pictures and sporting prints usually showed them with outstretched legs in full flight through the air. ... these snapshots proved that both the painters and their public had been wrong all the while. No galloping horse ever moved in the way which seems so 'natural' to us. ... And yet, when painters began to apply this new discovery, and painted horses moving as they actually do, everyone complained that their pictures looked wrong.引自 Introduction
Nothing, perhaps, is more important than just this: that to enjoy these works we must have a fresh mind, one which is ready to catch every hint and to respond to every hidden harmony: a mind most of all, not cluttered up with long high-sounding words and ready-made phrases. It is infinitely better not to know anything about art than to have the kind of half-knowledge which makes for snobbishness.引自 Introduction
... It is very much as if children played at pirates or detectives till they no longer knew where play-acting ended and reality began. ... For the primitive there is no such other world to spoil the illusion, because all the members of the tribe take part in the ceremonial dances and rites with their fantastic games of pretence. They have all learned their significance from former generations and are so absorbed in them that they have little chance of stepping outside them and seeing their behaviour critically. We all have beliefs which we take as much for granted as the 'primitives' take theirs - usually so much so that we are not even aware of them unless we meet people who question them. 引自 1. Strange Beginnings... what matters then is not whether the sculpture or painting is beautiful by our standards, but whether it 'works', that is to say, whether it can perform the required magic. ... They are not expected to change these things, but only to apply all their skill and knowledge to the execution of their work. .... Yet even within the prescribed rites and customs of our lives, there remains a certain element of choice and scope for taste and skill. 引自 1. Strange Beginnings
...the whole story of art is not a story of progress in technical proficiency, but a story of changing ideas and requirements. 引自 1. Strange Beginnings
Their method, in fact, resembled that of the map-maker rather than that of the painter. 引自 2. Art for EternityEverything had to be represented from its most characteristic angle. 引自 2. Art for Eternity
The art of Mesopotamia ... is less well known to us than the art of Egypt. This is at least partly due to accident. There were no stone quarries in these valleys, and most buildings were made of baked brick which, in course of time, weathered away and fell to dust. Even sculpture in stone was comparatively rare. ... The main reason is probably that these people did not share the religious belief of the Egyptians that the human body and its likeness must be preserved if the soul is to continue. 引自 2. Art for Eternity
(Greek) Painters made the greatest discovery of all, the discovery of foreshortening. It was a tremendous movement in the history of art when, perhaps a littble before 500 BC, artists dared for the first time in all history to paint a foot as seen from in front. ... It meant that the artist no longer aimed at including everything in the picture in its most clearly visible form, but took account of the angle from which he saw an object.
Greek artists still tried to make theri figures as clear in outline as possible, and to include as much of theri knowledge of the human body as would go into the picture without doing violence to its appearance. They sitll loved firm outlines and balanced design. They were far from trying to copy any casual glimpse of nature as they saw it. The old formula, the type of human form as it had developed in all these centuries, was still their starting point. Only they no longer considered it sacred in every detail. 引自 3. The Great Awakening
In fact, the very reason why nearly all the famous statues of the ancient world perished was that after the victory of Christianity it was considered a pious duty to smash any statue of the heathen gods. The sculptures in our museums are, for the most part, only secondhand copies made in ROman times for travellers and collectors as souvenirs, and as decorations for gardens or public baths.
... but unless we use our imagination these weak imitations can also do much hard. They are largely responsible for the widespread idea that Greek art was lifeless, cold and insipid, and that Greek statues had that chalky appearance and vacant look which reminds one of old-fashioned drawing classes. 引自 3. The Great Awakening
...They were mostly made of bronze and were probably melted down when metal became scarce in the Middle Ages. Only in Delphi has one of these statues been found, the figure of a charioteer. ... His head is amazingly different from the general idea one may easily form of Greek art when one only looks at copies. The eyes, which often look so blank and expressionless in marble statues or are empty in bronze heads, are marked in coloured stones - as they always were at that time.
... We can see that the artist was not out to imitate a real face with all its imperfections but that he shaped it out of his knowledge of the human form. 引自 3. The Great Awakening
...They had forgotten that Myron's statue is not a 'still' from a sports film but a Greek work of art. ... Like the Egyptian painters, Myron has given us the trunk in front view, the legs and arms in side view; like them he has composed his picture of a man's body out of the most characteristic views of its parts. ... Instead of fitting these views together into an unconvincing likeness of a rigid pose, he asked a real model to take up a similar attitude and so adapted it that it seems like a convincing representation of a body in motion. Whether or not this corresponds to the exact movement most suitable for throwing the discus is hardly relevant. What matters is that Myron conquered movement just as the painters of his time conquered space. 引自 3. The Great Awakening
