JAPANESE ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 166, 15 July 1924, Page 8

JAPANESE ART.

SYMBOLS AND" COLOUR SCHEMES. At the monthly meeting of the Society of Arts Sketch Club, held in the Arts Building last evening, a very interesting address was given to members by Miss Alma Karlin, of Yiigo-slavia, upon the history of art in Japan. Mr. A. Geddes briefly introduced the speaker. Miss Karlin explained that art to the' Japanese was a very different thing to art to a. Western mind. With the Japanese it expressed the ideal thought and with us the material world. The Japanese, through his religion which teaches him that there are more lives than one, is never hurried. He feels that he can pursue one idea to its artistic conclusion while we race about after various things feeling that the time is short. This accounts for the Japanese artist taking one thought and presenting it alone, and never as we do with its surroundings. To them lineal perspective does not exist, because they are presenting the inner idea. They like pictures to have more symbolism in them and thus leave all irrclavent things out of the composition. This is why they paint a small pine bough simply against the sky, because their whole life is made up of symbolism. The first day of the year they symbolised by tiie piue bough, which shows that thy are working for a life. The plum blossom branch. suggests to the Japanese the fulfilment of life, and is an emblem of womanhood. The cherry brancli expresses eomething of the beauty of women. The chrysanthemum expresses the idea of royalty, because its- leaves do not fall to the ground apart but crumple up and disappear. The speaker went on to explain how the houses of the Japanese with their cream-coloured paper walls, their pale green tatami, or mats, and brown stained woodwork trained the taste of the people in harmonious colours, and that the gay "colouring was kept for the children, who are the gayest thing in life. Delicate greys and blacks were for the aged, and thus their colour sense allied to the symbol was carried on throughout all the life of the nation.