The Dalles times-mountaineer. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1882-1904, 1896-12-19
JAPANESE ART.
Queer Effects of Tradition Upon
the Native Artists.
Methods Of the Masters Carried Out to m
Exaggerated Extent by the Disciples
of Their Respective Schools-Pe-
culiarities OF Flower Work.

Japanese drawings Of fowers-and
they usually draw them beautifully
are often influenced in some way by a
tradition. The man who invented the
method was true impressionist, writes
Alfred Parsons in Harper's Magazine.
lie seized what appeared to him char
acteristic of the plant, and insisted on
that to the exclusion of other truths,
thus founding mannerism which all
following artists initiated. In time,
what he saw as characteristic became
exaggerated by his disciples, who
looked ct nature only through his eyes
served that the flowers which are most
frequently drawn are not so like the
originals as those less popular ones de-
picted in books of botany and such
like, for drawing which there is no rec
ognized method, and where the
draughtsman relied entirely on his
own observation for his facts. Take,
for example, the spots on the lotus
stems; if You look very closely you can
see that there are spots, but certainly
they could not strike every artist as
marked feature of the plant, for they
are not visible three yards away. But
some master noticed them many years
ago and spotted his stems, and now they
all spot them, and the spots gcS bigger
and bigger; and SO it will be until some
original genius arises VINO will not be
content with other peoples eyes, but
will dare to look for himself, and he
may perhaps, without abandoning Jap
anese methods, get nearer to nature
and start renaissance in Japanese
art. The Japanese treatment of land
seape is not more conventional that Of
Claude or David Cox, or than the short
hand of our pencil sketches, but it re-
cords facts in different way.
The everlasting question in art is the
imitation of nature; it has never been
carried farther in certain directions
than by Millais and his pre-Raphaelite
brethren, or in others than by Manet,
Monet and the modern French, but no
one can put in everything; look at
simple bunch of leaves in sunlight
against wall, and think how long 1t
would take to really initiate all their
complexities of form, color, and light
and shade; some facts can only be given
by ignoring others, and the question
what is the important thing which must
be insisted on is the personal affair of
each individual artist in every country
where art is unfettered and alive. But
in japanese, as in byzantine and other
eastern arts, this question is still de-
cided by the practice of past genera
tions, and it will take all the vitality
of a strong man TO infuse new life into
1t without destroying its many ex-
quisite qualities. Perhaps when jap
snese artists absorb it's spirit instead
Of merely trying to initiate its methods,
western art may help in the direction
of freedom; ut present fear that its
influence has done more harm than
good. The people are so quick torecog-
nize the meaning of few lines, and to
understand the poetic idea which they
suggest, that it is q wonder the artists
ever learned to draw at all; they might
have been content with symbols, for a
few lines are enough to convey all the
poetry that is associated in their minds
with any of the well-known art mo-
tiyes.