The Beautiful Necessity | Page 9

of gravity; and the lintel, or horizontal member, which succumbs to it; they are vertical lines, which are aspiring, effortful; and horizontal lines, which are restful to the eye and mind.
It is desirable to have an instant and keen realization of this sex quality, and to make this easier some sort of classification and analysis must be attempted. Those things which are allied to and partake of the nature of time are masculine, and those which are allied to and partake of the nature of space are feminine: as motion, and matter; mind, and body; etc. The English words "masculine" and "feminine" are too intimately associated with the idea of physical sex properly to designate the terms of this polarity. In Japanese philosophy and art (derived from the Chinese) the two are called In and Yo (In, feminine; Yo, masculine); and these little words, being free from the limitations of their English correlatives, will be found convenient, Yo to designate that which is simple, direct, primary, active, positive; and In, that which is complex, indirect, derivative, passive, negative. Things hard, straight, fixed, vertical, are Yo; things soft, curved, horizontal, fluctuating, are In--and so on.
[Illustration 6: WILD CHERRY; MAPLE LEAF]
[Illustration 7: CALLAS IN YO]
In passing it may be said that the superiority of the line, mass, and color composition of Japanese prints and kakemonos to that exhibited in the vastly more pretentious easel pictures of modern Occidental artists--a superiority now generally acknowledged by connoisseurs--is largely due to the conscious following, on the part of the Japanese, of this principle of sex-complementaries.
Nowhere are In and Yo more simply and adequately imaged than in the vegetable kingdom. The trunk of a tree is Yo, its foliage, In; and in each stem and leaf the two are repeated. A calla, consisting of a single straight and rigid spadix embraced by a soft and tenderly curved spathe, affords an almost perfect expression of the characteristic differences between Yo and In and their reciprocal relation to each other. The two are not often combined in such simplicity and perfection in a single form. The straight, vertical reeds which so often grow in still, shallow water, find their complement in the curved lily-pads which lie horizontally on its surface. Trees such as pine and hemlock, which are excurrent--those in which the branches start successively (i.e., after the manner of time) from a straight and vertical central stem--are Yo; trees such as the elm and willow, which are deliquescent--those in which the trunk dissolves as it were simultaneously (after the manner of space) into its branches--are In. All tree forms lie in or between these two extremes, and leaves are susceptible of a similar classification. It will be seen to be a classification according to time and space, for the characteristic of time is succession, and of space, _simultaneousness_: the first is expressed symbolically by elements arranged with relation to axial lines; the second, by elements arranged with relation to focal points (Illustrations 6,7).
The student should train himself to recognize In and Yo in all their Protean presentments throughout nature--in the cloud upon the mountain, the wave against the cliff, in the tracery of trees against the sky--that he may the more readily recognize them in his chosen art, whatever that art may be. If it happens to be painting, he will endeavor to discern this law of duality in the composition of every masterpiece, recognizing an instinctive obedience to it in that favorite device of the great Renaissance masters of making an architectural setting for their groups of figures, and he will delight to trace the law in all its ramifications of contrast between complementaries in line, color, and mass (Illustration 8).
[Illustration 8: THE LAW OF POLARITY CLEOPATRA MELTING THE PEARL. BY TIEPOLO]
With reference to architecture, it is true, generally speaking, that architectural forms have been developed through necessity, the function seeking and finding its appropriate form. For example, the buttress of a Gothic cathedral was developed by the necessity of resisting the thrust of the interior vaulting without encroaching upon the nave; the main lines of a buttress conform to the direction of the thrust, and the pinnacle with which it terminates is a logical shape for the masonry necessary to hold the top in position (Illustration 9). Research along these lines is interesting and fruitful of result, but there remains a certain number of architectural forms whose origin cannot be explained in any such manner. The secret of their undying charm lies in the fact that in them In and Yo stand symbolized and contrasted. They no longer obey a law of utility, but an abstract law of beauty, for in becoming sexually expressive as it were, the construction itself is sometimes weakened or falsified. The familiar classic console or modillion is an example: although