File:History of art (1921) (14803168163).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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smitted the essen-tials of its acquirements. It is the wonder and theconsolation of our human nature. By this solidarity,which rises victorious above all the wars, all the disas-ters, and all the silences, everyone who bears the nameof man understands the language of man. Chaldeafructified Assyria; Assyria transmitted Chaldea toPersia and, through Persia, stretched forth its hand toIndia and to Islam. Egypt educated Greece, Greeceanimated Italy and, across the Middle Ages, guidedthe modern Occident. The Middle Ages of Europerejoined the Arabs, through Byzantium and the Orient.China, which had felt the contact—by way dfIndia—of Egypt, of Assyria, and especially of Greece—Chinacarried over all these mingling forces to Japan that thelatter might make such disposition of them as theteachings of her soil and her passion should dictate. When, at about the time of Europes conversion toChristianity, Korea transmitted Buddhism to Japanand with it the philosophy and the art of the Chinese
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KoBO Daishi (ix Century). Wooden statue. (IJArt du Japon, publ. by Brunqff.) 1U6 MEDIAEVAL ART and the Indians, the island empire occupied the sameposition that Dorian Greece did in relation to Egyptand western Asia. Silent, as early Greece had been,Japan did not know, any more than Greece, that shewould have found the traces of her ancient life if shehad sought the formless statuettes in her tombs.Although Shintoism deified the forces of nature, ithad proscribed images. This was doubtless a matterof dogma that was foreign to the soil of Japan and thatcame, like Buddhism, from one of those ethnic elements—Mongol, Malay, or Ainu—which contributed to theformation of the race. It is certain that Japan acceptedit only half-heartedly. As soon as Buddhism hadopened its sanctuaries to all the Shinto gods, and fixedtheir look in bronze and wood, the Japanese recognizedthe image of their real desires in them. But so long as the original materials of the racecohered, its artists did not fre

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