The decorative periods . he understanding, however, of one versed in the philoso-phy of such design this creature is beautiful; for here dwell apeople who, when the sun or moon is eclipsed, believe the lumi-nous orb has been swallowed by some monster, and they comewith cans and kettles to make rough music and thus cause a dis-gorging of the luminary. These mythical monsters are jiicturedby the artists as only people who believe in dragons and that sortof thing can ever hope to present them. I can scarcely imagine a disbeliever can produce such mar-velous examples of the chimerical; it takes an
The decorative periods . he understanding, however, of one versed in the philoso-phy of such design this creature is beautiful; for here dwell apeople who, when the sun or moon is eclipsed, believe the lumi-nous orb has been swallowed by some monster, and they comewith cans and kettles to make rough music and thus cause a dis-gorging of the luminary. These mythical monsters are jiicturedby the artists as only people who believe in dragons and that sortof thing can ever hope to present them. I can scarcely imagine a disbeliever can produce such mar-velous examples of the chimerical; it takes an artist saturated inthe belief in them. The difference between the Celtic and the Japanese andChinese grotesqueries rests in the treatment. The Celtic ispurely decorative. The drawing of an animal figure is clearlysubordinated to the decorative necessities, while the figures ofJapan and China are so full of detail as to suggest a minutestudy of the real thing, and the design surroundings-are subordi-nated to the JAPANESE The Decorative Periods 35 It has been said by Monsieur \on Brandt that a China-man is born a Confucionist, Hves as a Taoist and dies a Budd-hist, which simply means that while a nominal adherent of theold State religion he is all his life much given to superstitiouspractices and at his death is surrounded b) the ceremonies ofBuddhism. The State religion consists of certain rites laid down in tiiccode of the Empire. The altar to heaven is round ; that toearth is square. When the Kmperor worships heaven he wearsa robe of blue, and blue is the color depicting celestial he worships the earth his robes are yellow, and yellow isthe color pertaining to all worldly affairs ; when the sun, he wearsred ; when the moon, white. Dr. Morrison says Buddhism in decried by thelearned, laughed at by the profligate, yet followed by all. Never-theless, there is a Mohammedan influence which has affected thedesign character and the arts as practiced i
Size: 1474px × 1694px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdecorationandornamen
