Arizona weekly citizen., 1891-11-28
Ar OF PRIMITIVE HEn.
LuO Totally Distinct Types Are Found
Among Uncuitured Races.

y
Among Uncuiturej Races.
Whoever has examined the handicraft
of savage peoples knows well that from
q very early age two totally distinct
types of art arise spontaneously among
uncultured races. One is initiative, the
other decorative. Paleolithic mentor
example, the cave dweliers of prehistoric
Europe before the glacial epOch-had al
art of their own OF purely initiative
and pictorial character. They repre-
sented on fragments of bone and nam
moth ivory realistic scenes of their OWE
hunting existence.
Here, naked and hairy brave, fin!
spear in hand, stalks wild horses undis-
mayed in the grassy plain; there, a-cou
pie Of reindeer engaged in desperate
fight with their antlers hard locked III
deadly embrace; yonder, again, a mann
moth charges unwieldly with wide open
mouth, or a snake gide5 unseen beneath
the shOeless feet of an unsuspecting saw
age. All their rude works OF art repro
duce living objects, and tell, in their
naive way, u distinct story. They are
pictorial records of things done, things
seen, things suffered.
Paleolithic men were essentially
dranghtsmen, not decorators. But their
neolithic SUCCESSORS, of a totally different
race-the herdsmen who supplanted
them in post glacial Europe-had an art
of an entirely different type, purely and
solely decorative. Instead of making
pictures they drew concentric circles
and ornamental curves on their boats
and dwellings; they adorned their wea p
ons and their implements with KNOBS
and hicks, with crosses and bosses; the
wrought beautiful patterns in me- y
work as soon as ever they advanced to
the bronze using stage, and they de-
signed brooches and bracelets of e.
quisite elegance, but they seldom intro-
duced into their craft any living object;
they initiated nothing, and they never
in any way -. :: pictorial story.
Now these two types of art-the esser-
TALLY initiative or pictorial and the es-
sentialIy decorative or aeSthetic-pers.st
throughout In various human races, and
often remain 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
a beautiful object. The first is to speak
historical, the second ornamental.
In developed forms you get the ex-
treme case of tie one in the galleries at
Versailles; you get the extreme case Of
the other in the ALEXANDRIA at Granada.
The modern Esquimau and the modern
Bushman resemble the ancient cave
jewellers in their love of purely pictorial
or story telling art; man in kayak
happening u whale; a man with an
assegai spearing a springDok; these are
the subjects that engaged will not say
their pencils - but their sharp flint
knives or their Jumps Of red ocher.
On the other hand, most central AZ
Hcan 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 1T the arts and crafts in the
new gallery. Everywhere racial taste
and racial faculty tend most in the one
or the other direction. A tribe, horde,
d nation, Is pictorial, or else it is deco
rative Rarely or never Is it both alike
in an equal degree of native excellence.
Fortnightly Review.