The Psychology of Beauty Part 4

II

The simplest element of visual experience is of course found in light and color, the sensation of the eye as such. Yet there is no branch of aesthetic which is so incomplete. We know that the sensation of light or color, if not too weak or too violent, is in itself pleasing. The bright, the glittering, shining object, so long as it is not painful, is pleasantly stimulating. Gems, tinsel, lacquer, polish, testify to this taste, from the most primitive to the most civilized man. Color, too, if distinct, not over-bright, nor too much extended in field, is in itself pleasing. The single colors have been the object of comparatively little study. Experiment seems to show that the colors containing most brightness--white, red, and yellow--are preferred.

Baldwin, in his "dynamogenic" experiments,<1> based on "the view that the infant's hand movements in reaching or grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of its sensory experiences," finds that the colors range themselves in order of attractiveness, blue, white, red, green, brown. Further corrections lay more emphasis upon the white. Yellow was not included in the experiments.

Cohn's results, which show a relative dislike of yellow, are contradicted by other observers, notably Major and Baker,<2> and (unpublished) experiments of my own, including the aesthetic preferences of seven or eight different sets of students at Radcliffe and Wellesley colleges. Experiments of this kind are particularly difficult, inasmuch as the material, usually colored paper, varies considerably from the spectral color, and differences in saturation, hue, and brightness make great differences in the results, while the feeling-tone of a.s.sociation, individual or racial, very often intrudes. But other things being equal, the bright, the clear, the saturated color is relatively more pleasing, and white, red, and yellow seem especially preferred.

<1> _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, 1895, pp. 39, 50, ff.

<2> E. S. Baker, _Univ. of Toronto Studies, Psychol. Series_, No. 4; J. Cohn, _Philos. Studien_, vol. X; Major, _Amer. Jour.

of Psychol._, vol. vii.

Now, according to the Hering theory of color, white, red, and yellow are the so-called "dissimilating" colors in the three pairs, white-black, red-green, and yellow-blue, corresponding to three hypothetical visual substances in the retina. These substances, that is, in undergoing a kind of chemical disintegration under the action of light-rays, are supposed to give the sensations white, red, or yellow respectively, and in renewing themselves again to give the sensations of black, green, and blue. The dissimilating process seems to bring about stronger reactions on the physiological side, as if it were a more exciting process. Thus it is found<1> that as measured by the increase in strength of the hand grip under the stimulation of the respective colors, red has particularly exciting qualities, but the other colors have an a.n.a.logous effect, lessening, however, with the descent from red to violet. The pleasure in bright red, or yellow, for instance, may thus well be the feeling-tone arising in the purely physiological effect of the color. If red works like a trumpet call, while blue calms and cools, and if red is preferred to blue, it is because a sharp stimulation is so felt, and so preferred.

<1> Ch. Fere, _Sensation et Mouvement_, 1887, p. 80.

The question of the demands of the eye in color combination is still more complicated. It has been traditional to consider the complementaries black-white, red-green, blue-yellow, and the other pairs resulting from the mixtures of these as the best combinations. The physiological explanation is of course found in the relief and refreshment to the organs in successive alternation of the processes of a.s.similation and dissimilation, and objectively in the reinforcement, through this stronger functioning of the retina, of the complementary colors themselves. This tendency to mutual aid is shown in the familiar experiment of fixating for some moments a colored object, say red, and then transferring the gaze to a white or gray expanse. The image of the object appears thereon in the complementary green. Per contra, the most complete lack of contrast makes the most unpleasing combination, because instead of a refreshing alternation of processes in the retina, a fatiguing repet.i.tion results. Red and orange (red-yellow), or red and purple (red-blue), successively stimulate the red- process with most evil effect.

This contrast theory should, however, not be interpreted too narrowly. There are pairs of so-called complementaries which make a very crude, harsh, even painful impression. The theory is happily supplemented by showing<1> that the ideal combination involves all three contrast factors, hue, saturation, and brightness. Contrast of saturation or brightness within the same hue is also pleasant. For any two qualities of the color circle, in fact, there can be found degrees of saturation and brightness in which they will form an agreeable combination, and this pleasing effect will be based on some form of contrast.

But the absolute and relative extension and the s.p.a.ce-form of the components have also a great influence on the pleasurableness of combinations.

<1> A. Kirschmann, "Die psychol.-aesthet. Bedeutung des Licht und Farbencontrastes," _Philos. Studien_, vol. vii.

Further rules can hardly be given; but the results of various observers<1> seem to show that the best combinations lie, as already said, among the complementaries, or among those pairs nearer together in the color circle than complementaries, which are "warmer." The reason for this last is that, in Chevreul's phraseology, combinations of cold colors change each other's peculiar hue the most, and of warm colors the least; because the complementaries of these cold colors are "warm," i.e.

bright, and each, appearing on the field of the neighboring cold color, seems to fade it out; while the complementaries of the juxtaposed warm colors are not bright, and do not have sufficient strength to affect their neighbors at all. With a combination of blue and green for instance, a yellow shade would appear in the green and a red in the blue. Such a result fails to satisfy the demand, already touched on, for purity and h.o.m.ogeneity of color,--that is, for unimpeded seeing of color.

<1> Chevreul, _De la Loi du Contraste Simultane des Couleurs_.

E.S. Banker, op. Cit.

What significance have these abstract principles of beauty in the combination of colors for representative art? In the choice of objects with a definite local color, of course, these laws will be found operative. A scheme of blues and yellows is likely to be more effective than one of reds and violets.

If we a.n.a.lyze the masterpiece of coloring, we shall find that what we at first supposed to be the wonderful single effects of color is really the result of juxtapositions which bring out each color to its highest power.

III

While all this may be true, however, the most important question has not yet been asked. Is truth of color in representative art the same thing as beauty of color? It might be said that the whole procedure of the so-called Impressionist school, in fact the whole trend of the modern treatment of color, took their ident.i.ty for granted. Yet we must discriminate. Truth of color may be truth to the local color of the given objects, alone or together; in this case we should have to say that beauty did or did not exist in the picture, according as it did or did not exist in the original combination. A red hat on a purple chair would set one's teeth on edge, in model or picture. Secondly, truth of color may be truth to the modifications of the enveloping light, and in this case truth would make for beauty.

For the colors of any given scene are in general not colors which the objects themselves, if isolated, would have, but the colors which the eye itself is forced to see. The bluish shadow of an object in bright sunlight (yellowish light) is only an expression of the law that in the neighborhood of a colored object we see its complementary color. If such an effect is reproduced in a picture, it gives the same relief to the eye which the original effect showed the need of. The eye fatigued with yellow sees blue; so if the blue is really supplied in the picture, it is not only true, but on the road to beauty, because meting the eye's demand. The older methods of painting gave the local color of an object, with an admixture of white for the lights, and a warm dark for the shadows; the modern--which had been touched on, indeed, sporadically, by Perugino and Vermeer, for instance,--gives in the shadow the complementary color of the object combined with that of the light falling upon it--all conditions of favorable stimulation.

Further favorable stimulation of the eye is given in the method of the Impressionists in treating "values," that is, comparative relations of light and shade. The real tones of objects including the sky, light, etc., can never be reproduced. The older schools, conscious of this, were satisfied to paint in a scale of correspondence, in which the relative values were fairly kept. But even by that means, the great differences of intensity could not be given, for the brightest spot of any painting is never more than sixty-six times brighter than the darkest, while the gray sky on a dull rainy day is four hundred and twenty times brighter than a white painted cross-bar of a window seen against the sky as background.<1> There were various ways of combating this difficulty. Rembrandt, for instance, as Kirschmann tells us, chose the sombre brown tone, "not out of caprice or an inclination for mystic dreaming (Fromentin), but because the yellow and orange side of the color-manifold admits of the greatest number of intervals between full saturation and the darkest shade." The precursors of the Impressionists, on the other hand, succeeded in painting absolute values, confining themselves to a very limited gamut; for this reason the first landscapes of the school were all gray-green, dull, cloudy. But Monet did not stop there. He painted the ABSOLUTE VALUES of objects IN SHADE on a sunny day, which of course demands the brightest possibilities of the palette, and got the lighted objects themselves as nearly as he could,--thus destroying the relative values, but getting an extraordinary joyous and glowing effect; and one, too, of unexpected verisimilitude, for it would seem that in a sunlit scene we are really attentive to the shaded objects alone, and what becomes of the others does not so much matter. This effect was made still more possible by the so-called dissociation of colors,--i.e. the juxtaposing of tints, the blending of which by the eye gives the desired color, without the loss of brightness which a mixing of pigments would involve. Thus by putting touches of black and white side by side, for instance, a gray results much brighter than could have been otherwise reached by mixing; or blue and red spots are blended by the eye to an extraordinarily vivid purple. Thus, by these methods, using the truth of color in the sense of following the nature of retinal functioning, Monet and his followers raised the color scale many degrees in brightness. Now we have seen that the eye loves light, warmth, strong color-effects, related to each other in the way that the eye must see them.

Impressionism, as the name of the method just described, makes it more possible than it had been before to meet the demands of the eye for light and color, to recover "the innocence of the eye," in Ruskin's phrase. Truth to the local color of objects is relatively indifferent, unless that color is beautiful in itself; truth to the reciprocal relations and changes of hue is beauty, because it allows for the eye's own adaptations of its surroundings in the interest of its own functioning. Thus in this case, and to sum up, truth is synonymous with beauty, in so far as beauty is const.i.tuted by favorable stimulation of an organ. The further question, how far this vivid treatment of light is of importance for the realization of depth and distance, is not here entered on.

<1> Kirschmann, _Univ. of Toronto Studies, Psychol. Series_ No.

4, p. 20.

IV

The moment we touch upon line-form we are already, in strictness, beyond the elements. For with form enters the motor factor, which cannot be separated from the motor innervations of the whole body. It is possible, however, to abstract for the moment from the form as a unit, and to consider here only what may be called the quality of line. A line may be straight or broken, and if curved, curving continuously or brokenly, etc. That this quality of line is distinct from form may be shown by the simple experiment of turning a spiral--a logarithmic spiral, let us say--in different ways about its focus. The aesthetic effect of the figure is absolutely different in the different positions, and yet the feeling about the character of the line itself seems to remain the same. In what sense, and for what reasons, does this curved line satisfy the demands of the eye?

The discussion of this question precipitates us at once into one of the burning controversies of aesthetics, which may perhaps best be dealt with at this point.

An early answer to the question would have been, that the eye is so hung in its muscles as to move most easily in curved lines, and this easy action in following the curve is felt as favorable stimulation. But recent experiment<1> has shown that the eye in fact moves by most irregular, angular leaps from point to point of the figure. The theory is therefore remodeled by subst.i.tuting for the movement sensations of the eye, the tendencies corresponding to those early movements of touching imitative of the form, by which we learned to know a form for what it is, and the reproduction of feeling-tones belonging to the character of such movement. The movements of touching and feeling for a smooth continuous curved object are themselves pleasant. This complex of psychical factors makes a pleasurably stimulating experience. The greater the tendency to complete reproduction of these movements, that is, the stronger the "bodily resonance," the more vivid the pleasure.

Whether we (with Groos) designate this as sympathetic reproduction, or (with Lipps) attribute to the figure the movements and the feelings which resound in us after this fashion, or even (with Witasek) insist on the purely ideal character of the reproduction, seems to me not essential to the explanation of the pleasing character of the experience, and hence of the beauty of the object. Not THAT we sympathetically reproduce ("Miterleben"), or "feel ourselves into" a form ("Einfuhlen"), but HOW we do so, is the question.

<1> G.M. Stratton, _Philos. Studies_, xx.

All that Hogarth says of the beauty of the serpentine line, as "leading the eye a kind of chase," is fully in harmony with this view, if we add to the exploiting movements of the eyes those other more important motor innervations of the body. But we should still have to ask, WHAT kind of chase? Sharp, broken, starting lines might be the basis of a much more vivid experience, --but it would be aesthetically negative. "The complete sensuous experience of the spatial" is not enough, unless that experience is positively, that is, favorably toned. Clear or vivid seeing made possible by the form of the object is not enough. Only as FAVORABLY stimulating, that is, only as calling up ideal reproductions, or physical imitations, of movements which in themselves were suited to the functions of the organs involved, can forms be found positively aesthetic, that is, beautiful.

Moreover, we have to note here, and to emphasize, that the organs involved are more than the eye, as has already been made plain. We cannot separate eye innvervations from bodily innervations in general. And therefore "the demands of the eye"

can never alone decide the question of the beauty of visual form. If it were not so, the favorable stimulation combined with repose of the eye would alone make the conditions of beauty. The "demands of the eye" must be interpreted as the demands of the eye plus the demands of the motor system,--the whole psychophysical personality, in short.

It is in these two principles,--"bodily resonance," and favorable as opposed to energetic functioning,--and these alone, that we have a complete refutation of the claim made by many artists to-day, that the phrase "demands of the eye" embodies a complete aesthetic theory. The sculptor Adolph Hildebrand, in his "Problem of Form in the Plastic Art" first set it forth as the task of the artist "to find a form which appears to have arisen only from the demands of the eye;"<1> and this doctrine is to-day so widely held, that it must here be considered at some length.

<1> _Das Proablem der form in d. bildenden Kunst_, 1897.

It is the s.p.a.ce-form, all that is seen, and not the object itself, that is the object of vision. Now in viewing a plastic object near at hand, the focus of the eye must be constantly changed between the nearer and further points. In a more distant view, on the other hand (Hildebrand's "Fernbild"), the contour is denoted by differences of light and shadow, but it is nevertheless perceived in a single act of accommodation. Moreover, being distant, the muscles of accommodation are relaxed; the eye acts at rest. The "Fernbild" thus gives the only unified picture of the three-dimensional complex, and hence the only unity of s.p.a.ce- values. In the perception of this unity, the author holds, consists the essential pleasure which the work of art gives us.

Hildebrand's treatment is difficult, and lends itself to varying interpretations, which have laid stress now on unity as the essential of art,<1> now on "the joy in the complete sensuous experience of the spatial."<2> The latter seems in harmony with the pa.s.sage in which Hildebrand says "all pleasure in Form is pleasure in our not being obliged to create this clearness for ourselves, in its being created for us, nay, even forced upon us, by the form itself."

<1> A. Riehl, _Vierteljahrschr. f. wissenensch. Philos._, xxi, xxii.

<2> K. Groos, _Der Aesthetische Genuss_, 1902, p. 17.

But supposing the first interpretation correct: supposing s.p.a.ce-unity, conditioned by the unified and reposeful act of seeing, to be the beauty we seek--it is at once clear that the reduction of three dimensions to two does not const.i.tute unity even for the eye alone; how much less for the motor system of the whole body, which we have seen must be involved. Hildebrand's "demands of the eye" resolves itself into the stimulation plus repose of the ciliary muscle,--the organ of accommodation. A real unity even for the eye alone would have to include not only s.p.a.ce relations in the third dimension, but relations of line and ma.s.s and color in the flat. As for the "complete sensuous experience of the spatial" (which would seem to be equivalent to Berenson's "tactile values"), the "clearness" of Hildebrand's sentence above quoted, it is evident that completeness of the experience does not necessarily involve the positive or pleasurable toning of the experience. The distinction is that between a beautiful and a completely realistic picture.

A further extension or restatement of this theory, in a recent article,<1> seems to me to express it in the most favorable way. Beauty is again connected with the functioning of our organs of perception (Auffa.s.sungorgane). "We wish to be put into a fresh, lively, energetic and yet at the same time effortless activity.... The pleasure in form is a pleasure in this, that the conformation of the object makes possible or rather compels a natural purposeful functioning of our apprehending organs." But purposeful for what? For visual form, evidently to the end of seeing clearly. The element of repose, of unity, hinted at in the "effortless" of the first sentence, disappears in the second. The organs of apprehension are evidently limited to the eye alone. It is not the perfect moment of stimulation and repose for the whole organism which is aimed at, but the complete sensuous experience of the spatial, again.

<1> Th. A. Meyer, "Das Formprinzip des Schouen," _Archiv. f.

Phil._, Bd. x.

Hildebrand, to return to the more famous theorist, was writing primarily of sculpture, and would naturally confine himself to consideration of the plastic, which is an additional reason against making this interesting brochure, as some have done, the foundation of an aesthetics. It is rather the foundation of the sculptor's, perhaps even of the painter's technique, with reference to plastic elements alone. What it contains of universal significance, the demand for s.p.a.ce-unity, based on the state of the eye in a union of rest and action, ignores all but one of the possible sources of rest and action for the eye, that of accommodation, and all the allied activities completely.

On the basis of the favorable stimulations of all these activities taken together, must we judge as pleasing the so- called quality of line. But it is clear that we cannot really separate the question of quality of line from that of form, figure, and arrangement in s.p.a.ce. The motor innervations enter with the first, and the moment we have form at all, we have s.p.a.ce-composition also. But s.p.a.ce-composition means unity, and unity is the objective quality which must be translated, in our investigations, into aesthetic repose. It is thus with the study of composition that we pa.s.s from the study of the elements as favorably stimulating, to the study of the beauty of visual form.

V

We may begin by asking what, as a matter of fact, has been the arrangement of s.p.a.ces to give aesthetic pleasure. The primitive art of all nations shows that it has taken the direction of symmetry about a vertical line. It might be said that this is the result of non-aesthetic influences, such as convenience of construction, technique, etc. <1>It is clear that much of the symmetry appearing in primitive art is due (1) to the conditions of construction, as in the form of dwellings, binding patterns, weaving and textile patterns generally; (2) to convenience in use, as in the shapes of spears, arrows, knives, two-handled baskets or jars; (3) to the imitation of animal forms, as in the shapes of pottery, etc. On the other hand, (1) a very great deal of symmetrical ornament maintains itself AGAINST the suggestions of the shape to which it is applied, as the ornaments of baskets, pottery, and all rounded objects; and (2) all distortion, disintegration, degradation of pattern- motives, often so marked as all but to destroy their meaning, is in the direction of geometrical symmetry. The early art of all civilized nations shows the same characteristic. Now it might be said that, as there exists an instinctive tendency to imitate visual forms by motor impulses, the impulses suggested by the symmetrical form are in harmony with the system of energies of our bilateral organism, which is a system of double motor innervations, and thus fulfill our demand for a set of reactions corresponding to the organism as a whole. But we should then expect that all s.p.a.ce arrangements which deviate from complete symmetry, and thus suggest motor impulses which do not correspond to the natural bilateral type, would fail to give aesthetic pleasure. Such, however, is not the case. Non-symmetrical arrangements of s.p.a.ce are often extremely pleasing.

<1> The following is adapted from the author's _Studies in Symmetry, Harvard Psych. Studies_, vol i, 1902.

This contradiction disappears if we are able to show that the apparently non-symmetrical arrangement contains a hidden symmetry, and that all the elements of that arrangement contribute to bring about just that bilateral type of motor impulses which is characteristic of geometrical symmetry.

A series of experiments was arranged, in which one of two unequal lines of white on a black background being fixed in an upright position a certain distance from the centre, the other was shifted until the arrangement was felt to be pleasing.

It was found that when two lines of different sizes were opposed, their relative positions corresponded to the relation of the arms of a balance, that is, a small line far from the centre was opposed by a large one near the centre. A line pointing out from the centre fitted this formula if taken as "heavy,"

and pointing in, if taken as "light." Similarly, objects of intrinsic interest and objects suggesting depth in the third dimension were "heavy" in the same interpretation. All this, however, did not go beyond the proof that all pleasing s.p.a.ce- arrangements can be described in terms of mechanical balance.

But what was this mechanical balance? A metaphor explains nothing, and no one will maintain that the visual representation of a long line weights more than a short one. Moreover, the elements in the balance were so far heterogeneous. The movement suggested by an idea had been treated as if equivalent to the movement actually made by the eye in following a long line; the intrinsic interest--that is, the ideal interest--of an object insignificant in form was equated to the attractive power of a perspective, which has, presumably, a merely physiological effect on the visual mechanism.

I believe, however, that the justification of this apparent heterogeneity, and the basis for explanation, is given in the reduction of all elements to their lowest term,--as objects for the expenditure of attention. A large object and an "interesting" object are "heavy" for the same reason, because they call out the attention. And expenditure of effort is expenditure of attention; thus, if an object on the outskirts of the field of vision requires a wide sweep of the eye to take it in, it demands the expenditure of attention, and so is felt as "heavy." But what is "the expenditure of attention" in physiological terms? It is nothing more than the measure of the motor impulses directed to the object of attention. And whether the motor impulse appears as the tendency to follow out the suggestions of motion in the object, all reduces to the same physiological basis.

It may here be objected that our motor impulses are, nevertheless, still heterogeneous, inasmuch as some are toward the object of interest, and some along the line of movement. But it must be said, first, that these are not felt in the body, but transferred as values of weight to points in the picture,--it is the amount and not the direction of excitement that is counted; and secondly, that even if it were not so, the suggested movement along a line is felt as "weight" at a particular point.

From this point of view the justification of the metaphor of mechanical balance is quite clear. Given two lines, the most pleasing arrangement makes the larger nearer the centre, and the smaller far from it. This is balanced because the spontaneous impulse of attention to the near, large line equals in amount the involuntary expenditure to apprehend the small, farther one.