The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-03-29
PRIMITIVE MAN.
TYD0S Of Art Which Arose Among The UR
cultured Races.

Whoever has examined the handicraft Of
savage people knows well that from very
early age two totally distinct types of art
arise spontaneously among uncuitured races.
Que is initiative, the other decorative.
Paleolithic men. for example, the cave
jewellers of prehistoric Europe before the
glacial epoch-had an art of their own of a
purely initiative and pictorial character.
They represented on fragments OF bone or
mammoth ivory realistic scenes of their
own hunting existence. Here, a naked and
hairy brave, fl int spear in hand, stalks wild
horses undismayed in the grassy plain
there, couple of reindeer engage in des-
perate fight, with their antlers hard locked
in deadly embrace; yOnder, again, man.
moth charges, unwieldy, with wide-0Den
mouth, or a snake gldes unseen beneath the
shoeless feet of an uhsuspectng savage All
their rude works of art reproduce living OBJ
iectS, and tell, in their half way, a distinct
story. They are pictorial records Of things
done, things seen, things suffered
Paleolithic men were essentially draughts-
men, not decorators. But their neOlithic
successors, of totally different race-the
herdsmen who SUI planted them in post
glacial Europe-had an art OF an entirely
different type. purely and solely decorative.
Instead of making pictures they drew &C.
centric circles aud ornamental curves on
their boats and dwellings; they adorned
their weapons and their implements with
knobs and knickS, crosses aud bosses; they
wrought beautiful patterns In metal work
as soon as ever they advanced tn the bronze
using stage; and they designed brooches
and bracelets of exquisite elegance, but they
seldom introduced into their craft any liv-
ing object; they initiated nothing, and they
never in any way told pictorial story.
Now, these two types Vt art-the essen
TALLY initiative or pictorial and the essen
TALLY decorative or esthe tic-perSist through
out in various human races, and often re-
main as entirely distinct as in the typical
instances here quoted. The great aim of
the one is TO narrate fact; the great aim
of the other Is to produce beautiful
object; the first is to speak, historical, the
second, ornamental. In developed forms
you get the extreme case of the one
in the galleries at Versailles; you get the
extreme case of the other in the Alhgmbra
at Granada. The modern ESQulmau and the
modern Bushman resemble the ancient
cave daellers in their love of purely
pictorial or Storytelling art; mau in q
kayak harpooning a whale; mau with
an assegai spearing SpringbOk-theSe are
the subjects that engage. l Will not say
their pencils, but their sharp flint knives
or their Jumps Of red ocher. On the other
hand, most Central African races have no
initiative skill. They draw figures and
animals i'll or not at all, but they produce
decorative pottery and other ornamental
objects which would excite attention at
Versailles, and be well placed at the Arts
and Crafts in the New G. llery. Everywhere
racial taste and racial faculty tend most in
the one or the other direction. A tribe,
horde, nation is pictorial. or else 1t Is
decorative Rarely or never is it both alike
in an equal degree of native excellence
The Furtnightly Review.