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Miscellanies by Oscar Wilde
page 92 of 312 (29%)
rejects the 'hole in the wall' idea, and will have nothing to do with the
'false windows of a picture.'

Three things differentiate designs. First, the spirit of the artist,
that mode and manner by which Durer is separated from Flaxman, by which
we recognise the soul of a man expressing itself in the form proper to
it. Next comes the constructive idea, the filling of spaces with lovely
work. Last is the material which, be it leather or clay, ivory or wood,
often suggests and always controls the pattern. As for naturalism, we
must remember that we see not with our eyes alone but with our whole
faculties. Feeling and thought are part of sight. Mr. Crane then drew
on a blackboard the naturalistic oak-tree of the landscape painter and
the decorative oak-tree of the designer. He showed that each artist is
looking for different things, and that the designer always makes
appearance subordinate to decorative motive. He showed also the field
daisy as it is in Nature and the same flower treated for panel
decoration. The designer systematises and emphasises, chooses and
rejects, and decorative work bears the same relation to naturalistic
presentation that the imaginative language of the poetic drama bears to
the language of real life. The decorative capabilities of the square and
the circle were then shown on the board, and much was said about
symmetry, alternation and radiation, which last principle Mr. Crane
described as 'the Home Rule of design, the perfection of local
self-government,' and which, he pointed out, was essentially organic,
manifesting itself in the bird's wing as well as in the Tudor vaulting of
Gothic architecture. Mr. Crane then passed to the human figure, 'that
expressive unit of design,' which contains all the principles of
decoration, and exhibited a design of a nude figure with an axe couched
in an architectural spandrel, a figure which he was careful to explain
was, in spite of the axe, not that of Mr. Gladstone. The designer then
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