.~ ____________________________~x 0 -" " December 1978 RAIN Page 13 "The representation of a man, for example, must really correspond to the idea of the man, but must not look so like him as to deceive the eye; for the work of art, as regards its form, is a mind-made thing and aims at the mind, but an illusion is no more intelligible than the natural object it mimics." "More concretely, the master painter is said to be one who can depict the dead without life and the sleeping possessed of it. Essentially the same conception of art as the manifestation of an informing energy is expressed in China in the first of the Six Canons of Hsieh Ho, which requires that a work of art should reveal the operation of the spirit in Jiving forms , the word here used for spirit implying the breath of life rather than a personal deity (cf. Greek pneuma, Sanskrit prana). The Far Eastern insistence on the quality of brush strokes follows naturally; for the brush strokes, as implied in the second of the Canons of Hsieh Ho, form the bones or body of the work; outline, per se, merely denotes or connOteS, but living brushwork makes visible what was invisible. It is worth noting that a Chinese ink pain ting, monochrome bu t far from monotone, has to be executed once and for all time without hesitation, without deliberation, and no correction is afterwards permissible or possible. Aside from all question of subject matter, the painting itself is thus closer in kind to life than an oil painting can ever be." "Here there is no distinction of a "fine" from an "applied" art, but only one of a "free" from a "servile" operation, which operations are not allotted to different kinds of men, but to every artificer, whatever it may be that he makes or arranges; the painter, for example, working freely in the conception of the work to be done, and working as a laborer, as soon as he begins to use his brush. In other words, there is no such thing here as a "useless" art, but only a freedom of the artificer to work both "by a word conceived in intellect" and by means of tools controlled by his hands. Nor was it conceived that anything could be made otherwise than " by art." To bring into being an industry without art remained for us. We nowadays think of what we call "art" as useless only because we have no use for art; we have found out how to live by bread alone." Plato : "For all well-governed peoples there is a work enjoined upon each man which he must perform." "Leisure" is the opportunity to do this work without interference." "A 'work for leisure' is one requiring undivided attention." (Republic 406c, 370c, and Andromache 552) - from Vol. I ::CIAL KIND OF ARTIST For me, the volume on metaphysics-tying together the common threads in Asian and Medieval European traditions- was difficult reading. But the volume on art has a number of really mind-twisting essays and is well-recommended except for its price. The biographic volume contains as well a valuable list of his writings. Many earlier ones are less overwhelmingly scholarly and more readable, and worth some digging out. - TB Ananda Coomaraswamy: Vol. I-Traditional Art and Symbolism, $30 Vol. II-Metaphysics, $30 (Vol. I & II, $50) Vol. IV-His Life & Work, $17.50 from : Princeton University Press Princeton, NJ 08540
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