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highroad of painting development, and even to-day far surpassing in volume the new schools of painting, abundant even in the neighbourhood of Picasso and Leger as petty-bourgeois oleographs in most concierge offices of the world I
In this " narrative " group of painting the 1 :1.5 proportion is certainly predominant, but this fact is absolutely unreliable if considered from the point of view of pictorial composition. These proportions in themselves are " borrowed goods " — entirely unconnected with pictorial space organisation, which is a painting problem. These proportions are barefacedly borrowed — not to say stolen ! — from . . . the stage.
The stage composition each of these pictures intentionally or unintentionally reproduces, a process in itself quite logical, since the pictures of this school are occupied not with pictorial problems but with " representing scenes " — a painting purpose even formulated in stage terms !
I mention the 19th century as specially abounding in this type of picture, but I do not wish to convey the impression that other periods are entirely lacking in them ! Consider, for example, the Hogarth series Marriage a la Mode — satirieallv and scenicallv in their " represented " anecdotes a most thrilling series of pictures . . . and only.
It is remarkable that in another case, where the author of the painting was, practically and professionally, at the same time stage composer (or " art director " as we would say in Hollywood) this phenomenon has no place. I mean the case of the mediaeval miniature. Authors of the tiniest filigree brushwork in the world, on the leaves of gilded bibles or livres d'heures (do not confound with hors d'ceuvres !), they were at the same time architects of the various settings of the mysteries and miracles. (Thus Fouquet and an innumerable mass of artists whose names have been lost to posterity.) Here, where, owing to subject, we ought to have the closest reproduction of the aperture of the stage — we miss it. And find a freedom entirely void of such bounds. And why ? Because at that time the stage aperture did not exist. The stage was then limited far off to right and left by Hell and Heaven, covered with frontally disposed parts of settings (the so-cal'ed mansions) with blue unlimited sky overshining them — like in many Passion Plays of to-day.
Thus we prove that the supposedly " predominant " and characteristic form of the painting bv itself belongs properly to another branch of art.
And from the moment in which painting liberates itself by an impressionistic movement, turning to purely pictorial problems, it abolishes every form of apertura and establishes as example and ideal the framelessness of a Japanese impressionistic drawing. And, symbolic as it may be, it is the time to dawn for . . . photographv. Which, extraordinary to remark, conserves in its later metempsvchosis, the moving picture, certain (vital this time) traditions of this period of the maturity of one art (painting) and the infantilism -of a following art (photography). Notice the relationship between Hokusai's