also a wild tulip
ex Vernon Lee and C. Anstruther-Thomson, Beauty & Ugliness and other studies in psychological aesthetics (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1912)
*
(caption rescaled relative to objects)
from which (facing page) this —After such experiments on mere preference as such (the experimental subjects being asked to place the specimen forms in the order of their liking and disliking) there might be experiments on the reasons of such preference, and others intended merely to elicit verbal description (e.g.
This shape is lumbering, that line is swift, jerky, smooth,
etc., That arrangement lifts up or presses down,
etc. etc.) containing references to movement and energy and affective modes attributed to visible shapes. These experiments on the subjective side might be, should be, tested by objective examination and classification of the types of visual shape recurring and dominating in all times and countries in ornaments, pottery, textile fabrics, and every possible object susceptible of undergoing alteration of its merely practically required shape to suit individual or traditional liking.
Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856-1935) treated at wikipedia and — usefully for me, in connection with ekphrastic telegraphy — in Lynda Nead her Velocities of the Image c. 1900,
Art History 27:5 (November 2004): 745-769
8 May 2012
tags: