File:History of art (1921) (14780954994).jpg

Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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Buddhist Art. Lacquered wood. (Louvre.) concealed from Western eyes the true nature of Japan,the Occident was astonished at the speed with which entire chapter, as also all the others treating of the non-European arts, inthe volume devoted to the Middle Ages, which should be looked upon as astate of mind rather than as a historical period. It is to be observed, how-ever, that Japanese individualism tends, from the fifteenth century onward,as in the Occident, to detach itself from the religious and philosophic synthesis which characterizes the mediaeval spirit. JAPAN 103 Japan assimilated the external form of the Europeancivilizations. At a bound it covered the road that wehad taken four hundred years to travel. The Occident
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Buddhist Art. Buddha. Wooden statue. (Louvre.) could not understand. It thought the effort dispro-portionate to the means and destined to failure. Ittook for servile imitation the borrowing of a methodwhose practical value Japan could appreciate before 104 MEDIAEVAL ART she utilized it, because old habits of artistic and meta-physical abstraction had prepared the mind of thepeople for Western ideas. Under her new armamentof machines, of ships, and of cannons, Japan retainedthe essentials of what had constituted and what stillconstitutes her strength — her faith in herself, hercontrolled passion, her spirit of analysis and recon-struction. The reproach addressed to Europeanized Japan isnot new. She had been accused of acquiring from China—and through China from India—her religion, herphilosophy, her art, and her political institutions,whereas she had transformed everything, recast every-thing in the mold of a savagely original mind. If onewere to go back to the sources of history

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