Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2007, is an unabridged republication of the ninth edition—revised and enlarged with new illustrations and color plates—originally published in 1920 by Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, under the title Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. The first edition was published in 1899 by J.M. Bowles, Boston.

The only significant alteration for the Dover reprint consists in reproducing all the color illustrations in black and white in their original positions in the book, as well as in a full-color insert facing page 58. Regrettably, some of the handwritten captions on the plates in the original were nearly illegible; with one exception (page 30), they are reproduced here as is.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dow, Arthur W (Arthur Wesley), 1857-1922.

Composition : understanding line, notan and color / Arthur Wesley Dow.

p. cm.

Originally published: 9th ed. New York : Doubleday, Page & Co., 1920.

9780486133645

ISBN-10: 0-486-46007-X

1. Composition (Art) 2. Drawing—Technique. I. Title.

NC740.D7 2007

741.2—dc22

2007014042

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

46007X03

www.doverpublications.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Note.—The author gratefully acknowledges the courtesy of those named below in according him permission to use photographs of certain paintings and objects of art as illustrations for this book.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Metropolitan Museum, New York

The National Gallery. London

Musée de Cluny, Paris (J. Leroy, photographer)

Musée de Sculpture Comparée. Paris

Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, Boston (permission to photograph Japanese paintings)

Mr. Frederick W. Gookin (use of photographs from Kenzan and Kano Gyokuraku, made specially for Mr. Gookin, Boston M. F. A.

Giacomo Brogi, Florence

Fratelli Alinari. Florence

D. Anderson, Rome

W. A. Mansell & Co., London

F. Rothier, Reims, France, and

Kaltenbacher, Amiens, France (the Ruskin photographer)

License to use photographs was also obtained from the Autotype Fine Art Company, Limited, London (the Michelangelo drawing, page 51). and from Baldwin Coolidge, Boston.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BEGINNINGS

THE THREE ELEMENTS

LINE DRAWING

PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION

LINE

NOTAN

COLOR

COMPOSITION

Art Instruction

Dover Books on Art & Art History

Medieval Art through Eighteenth-Century Art

Nineteenth-Century Art

Twentieth-Century Art

Art and Design from Many Cultures

BEGINNINGS

IN writing this book my main purpose is to set forth a way of thinking about art. The most that such a book can do is to direct the thoughts, awaken a sense of power and point to ways of controlling it.

The principles of art teaching here outlined might be illustrated in other ways and with better examples. I hope the reader will see how each chapter can be developed into many sets of lessons. The progressions can be varied, materials changed, lessons amplified and different designs chosen, providing there is no sacrifice of essentials.

The book is based upon my experience in painting and teaching for more than twenty years. The first edition of Composition was published in 1899. In this revision I have made many additions and used new illustrations without departing from theory or principles.

Composition was chosen as a title because that word expresses the idea upon which the method here presented is founded—the putting together of lines, masses and colors to make a harmony. Design, understood in its broad sense, is a better word, but popular usage has restricted it to decoration.

Composition, building up of harmony, is the fundamental process in all the fine arts. I hold that art should be approached through composition rather than through imitative drawing. The many different acts and processes combined in a work of art may be attacked and mastered one by one, and thereby a power gained to handle them unconsciously when they must be used together. If a few elements can be united harmoniously, a step has been taken toward further creation.

Only through the appreciations does the composer recognize a harmony. Hence the effort to find art-structure resolves itself into a development of appreciation. This faculty is a common human possession but may remain inactive. A way must be found to lay hold upon it and cause it to grow. A natural method is that of exercises in progressive order, first building up very simple harmonies, then proceeding on to the highest forms of composition. Such a method of study includes all kinds of drawing, design and painting. It offers a means of training for the creative artist, for the teacher or for one who studies art for the sake of culture.

This approach to art through Structure is absolutely opposed to the time-honored approach through Imitation. For a great while we have been teaching art through imitation—of nature and the historic styles—leaving structure to take care of itself; gathering knowledge of facts but acquiring little power to use them. This is why so much modern painting is but picture-writing; only story-telling, not art; and so much architecture and decoration only dead copies of conventional motives.

Good drawing results from trained judgment, not from the making of fac-similes or maps. Train the judgment, and ability to draw grows naturally. Schools that follow the imitative or academic way regard drawing as a preparation for design, whereas the very opposite is the logical order—design a preparation for drawing.

Soon after the time of Leonardo da Vinci art education was classified into Representative (imitative), and Decorative, with separate schools for each—a serious mistake which has resulted in loss of public appreciation. Painting, which is essentially a rhythmic harmony of colored spaces, became sculptural, an imitation of modelling. Decoration became trivial, a lifeless copying of styles. The true relation between design and representation was lost.

This error is long-lived. An infinite amount of time is wasted in misdirected effort because tradition has a strong hold, and because artists who have never made a study of education keep to old ruts when they teach.

This academic system of art-study ignores fundamental structure, hence the young pupil understands but few phases of art. Confronted with a Japanese ink painting, a fresco by Giotto or a Gothic statue he is unable to recognize their art value. Indeed he may prefer modern clever nature-imitation to imaginative work of any period.

Study of composition of Line, Mass and Color leads to appreciation of all forms of art and of the beauty of nature. Drawing of natural objects then becomes a language of expression. They are drawn because they are beautiful or because they are to be used in some art work. Facility in drawing will come more quickly in this way than by a dull routine of imitation with no definite end in view.

The history of this structural system of art teaching may be stated in a few words; and here I am given the opportunity to express my indebtedness to one whose voice is now silent.

An experience of five years in the French schools left me thoroughly dissatisfied with academic theory. In a search for something more vital I began a comparative study of the art of all nations and epochs. While pursuing an investigation of Oriental painting and design at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts I met the late Professor Ernest F. Fenollosa. He was then in charge of the Japanese collections, a considerable portion of which had been gathered by him in Japan. He was a philosopher and logician gifted with a brilliant mind of great analytical power. This, with rare appreciation, gave him an insight into the nature of fine art such as few ever attain.

As imperial art commissioner for the Japanese government he had exceptional opportunities for a critical knowledge of both Eastern and Western art. He at once gave me his cordial support in my quest, for he also felt the inadequacy of modern art teaching. He vigorously advocated a radically different idea, based as in music, upon synthetic principles. He believed music to be, in a sense, the key to the other fine arts, since its essence is pure beauty; that space art may be called visual music, and may be studied and criticised from this point of view. Convinced that this new conception was a more reasonable approach to art, I gave much time to preparing with Professor Fenollosa a progressive series of synthetic exercises. My first experiment in applying these in teaching was made in 1889 in my Boston classes, with Professor Fenollosa as lecturer on the philosophy and history of art. The results of the work thus begun attracted the attention of some educators, notably Mr. Frederic B. Pratt, of that great institution where a father’s vision has been given form by the sons. Through his personal interest and confidence in these structural principles, a larger opportunity was offered in the art department of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Here during various periods, I had charge of classes in life drawing, painting, design and normal art; also of a course for Kindergarten teachers. Professor Fenollosa continued his lectures during the first year.

The growth of the work and its influence upon art teaching are now well known.

In 1900 I established the Summer School at Ipswich, Massachusetts, for the purpose of obtaining a better knowledge of the relation of art to handicraft and manual training. Composition of line, mass and color was applied to design, landscape and very simple hand work in metal, wood-block printing and textiles. Parts of 1903 and ’04 were spent in Japan, India and Egypt observing the native crafts and gathering illustrative material.

In 1904 I became director of fine arts in Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. The art courses are now arranged in progressive series of synthetic exercises in line, dark-and-light and color. Composition is made the basis of all work in drawing, painting, designing and modelling—of house decoration and industrial arts—of normal courses and of art training for children.

After twenty years’ experience in teaching I find that the principles hold good under varying conditions, and produce results justifying full confidence.

They bring to the student, whether designer, craftsman, sculptor or painter an increase of creative power; to the teacher, all this and an educational theory capable of the widest application.

To all whose