Huysmans dreamt of symphonies of liqueurs, concertos of perfumery.
And the new century, when it came, showed that it was no deliberately
assumed thing, this fusion of Oriental and Occidental modes of feeling,
showed that it was a thing arising deep in the being. Something that had
long lain inert had been reborn at the contact in Western men. A part of
personality that had lain dead had of a sudden been suffused with blood
and warmth; light played over a hemisphere of the mind long dark. The
very hand that drew, the very mouth that matched words, the very body
that beat and curved and swayed in movement, were Western and Eastern at
the same time. It was no longer the Greek conception of form that
prevailed on the banks of the Seine, or wherever art was produced. Art
was become again, what the Orientals had always known it to be,
significant form. It was as though Persia had been born again in Henri
Matisse, for instance. A sense of design and color the like of which
had hitherto been manifest only in the vases and bloomy carpets of
Teheran dictated his exquisite patterns. Hokusai and Outamaro got in
Vincent Van Gogh a brother. The sultry atmosphere and animal richness of
Hindoo art reappeared in Gauguin's wood-cuts. One has but to go to any
really modern art, whether produced in Paris or in Munich or in New
York, to see again the subtle browns and silvers and vermilions, the
delicate sensuous touch, the infinitely various patterns, the forms that
carry with them the earth from Arabia to Japan.
Pages:
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288