File:Painters, pictures and the people (1918) (14761089991).jpg

Identifier: painterspictures00neuh (find matches)
Title: Painters, pictures and the people
Year: 1918 (1910s)
Authors: Neuhaus, Eugen, 1879-1963
Subjects: Painting Art
Publisher: San Francisco : Philopolis press
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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its bear the jiames of individuals, theirabstract beauty is so compelling as to make usforget the personality represented. Often thesenoble forms are a type of beauty, an idealizedexpression of what probably did not in realityexist, either then or todav. All of the statues ofApollo or of Venus possessed in common certainqualities of beauty which frequently assumedalmost the character of an artistic convention.This conventional treatment may be summedup in the term—classic style. What, then, more definitely, is this classicstyle and why do we seem so lacking in it? In-dubitably it was not a faithful reproduction of oneparticular figure, but rather the result of obser-vations of a great many models, each contribut-ing in its way to stimulate the artists sense ofform and proportion. The classic statues havebeen analyzed by the philosophically inclinedarchaeologist and a canon of beauty laid downas representing the fundamental artistic require-ments of the human proportions in art. Any-
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THE PALACE OF FINE ARTS, SAN FRANCISCO PLATE XXVII From the Oil Painting by Colin Campbell Coopek, N. a. THE NUDE IN ART 161 body may have access to this table of measure-ments nowadays. It is the common property ofall artists. And still our nudes, in sculpture orin painting, are scarcely as good as the classicfigures. I take it that the idea of physical repre-sentation, or rather imitation, never guided thegreat Greek artist in his work. The naturalisticfigure is a creation of the modern dime-museum,the most nefarious agency for the perversion ofpublic taste. Possibly the great sculptor of thepast, if he had had at his command the technicalfacilities of the modern age, might have beentempted to imitate with the idea of absolute de-ception. However, imitation did not appeal tohim, neither of form nor of colour, and stillartist and lay-public alike admire the beauty ofclassic sculpture. People even rave over it whensadly diluted into small machine-made replicasin marble from Italian sc

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