borrowing.
All buildings, in every architecture, have supports known as columns. But does this element of conformity between, for example, Chinese and Indian architecture prove that the one borrowed from the other? Before drawing this conclusion, we must examine the character, system and kind of their columns. And if we find that they are not only different but indeed contrasting in their forms, proportions and essential mode of being, we should conclude that completely different types presided over their formation. Imitation of tents is inscribed into every limb of Chinese architecture. Its curved roofs, its cut‐out effects,1 its narrow supports and coloured decorations together declare that their houses imitated the primitive dwelling of the former pastoral state – and this is consistent with the most reliable information that we have on the early lifestyle of the Chinese, who were, like all Tartars, nomads or tent‐peoples, that is, they camped with their flocks before they had towns.
The pavilion‐shaped roofs of China and the gabled roofs of Greece are, moreover, objects that have no relation other than the general one of covering and capping. The Greek gable or pediment belongs to a system of construction independent of any other. Like every other part and arrangement of this architectural tradition, it is connected to the principle of the wooden frame and to a faithful imitation of the wooden cabin, whose imprint has survived in so authentic a fashion in the productions of the highly developed art as to guarantee its originality.
In Egyptian architecture, too, a native principle must be acknowledged. And if, in all its buildings, both overall and in every detail, we find a perfect resemblance with the taste and nature of underground dwellings, it will be concluded, that, having an origin so very different to that of Greek architecture, it could not easily have communicated its tastes and principles to that tradition. It follows that Greek borrowings from Egypt can only have been of details and accessories alien to the constitution of its architecture.
It may also follow that the two traditions should be considered devoid of any generic mutual relationship, like two species distinct in their essential conformation. That the one should have preceded the other – even were this as clearly demonstrated as it is, in fact, difficult to show – would be an argument of little value in this field. The date of their birth is, indeed, of little importance if each was born of a different seed.
IIC13 Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) from his Discourses 1776 and 1786
In line with the expanded remit of art history in the contemporary period, writers have begun to show interest in the work of certain European artists, including figures hitherto marginal in established art histories, because their work evidences interaction with other cultures. Examples include William Hodges (cf. IIb8)], who travelled to Oceania on the second Cook voyage and later worked in India, and the Irish artist Thomas Hickey, who also worked in India for many decades. Mutatis mutandis, the work of more canonical figures has likewise been scrutinized for evidence of what has been called an ‘imperial aesthetic’: to find traces, or encoded forms, in both visual and textual representations of assumptions about the priority of the academic tradition over the visual forms of other cultures; in a word, of Eurocentrism. The contents of Part II have shown ample evidence of such biases, indeed it would be strange if it were otherwise. Nonetheless, for all his centrality to the academic establishment of British art in the period, it has to be said that the published writings of Joshua Reynolds have very little to say about the art and culture of other countries. Reynolds was an avowed classicist, and leading advocate of the Grand Style, but he says little about its Others. In his Discourse VI, delivered on 10 December 1774, Reynolds does make a fleeting reference to artists needing to acquire knowledge ‘from the East and from the West’, but the context makes it clear that this is little more than a figure of speech. Nowhere in that Discourse’s discussion of the models which an artist must imitate in order to achieve excellence does he venture beyond classical antiquity, the Italian Renaissance and the post‐Renaissance European canon. However, two partial exceptions to this general rule can be found in addresses a decade apart, in 1776 and 1786. In his Discourse VII, delivered on 10 December 1776, against a background of homage to Greece and Rome, Reynolds discusses the personal adornment of both Native Americans and the inhabitants of Tahiti. Reynolds had some experience of both. He had encountered a delegation of Cherokee Indians in London in 1762, and his full‐length portrait of Omai, the Tahitian who travelled to England with James Cook, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776. In terms of fine art, Reynolds maintained absolute standards of taste and decorum, but in what were to him altogether slighter areas of ornament, he is surprisingly pluralistic about different canons of taste, even though ‘art’ and ‘ornament’ exist on a demonstrable continuum. In our second extract, from Discourse XIII, given on 11 December 1786, late in his career, Reynolds appears to be prepared to countenance the use of motifs drawn from outside the classical canon in order to bolster the imaginative aspects of art and its consequent impact on the spectator. In this respect he refers to the architect Vanburgh’s use of the Gothic, and William Hodges’ images of Indian – principally Mughal – architecture (cf. IIB8). For Reynolds, this is risky territory, but it seems that so long as the permitted cultural eclecticism remains in check, it may yet serve the higher ends of Art. It goes without saying that for Reynolds, those ‘higher ends’ would have remained sacrosanct. Our extracts are taken from Sir Joshua Reynolds. Discourses, edited with an introduction and notes by Pat Rogers, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 196–8 and 296–7. (Further extracts from Reynolds’ writings can be found in Art in Theory 1648–1815, IIIB9, IVA7 and VA2, pp. 532–8, 651–61 and 749–52.)
discourse vii
In poetry or eloquence, to determine how far figurative or metaphorical language may proceed, and when it begins to be affectation or beside the truth, must be determined by taste; though this taste, we must never forget, is regulated and formed by presiding feeling of mankind, – by those works which have approved themselves to all times and all persons. Thus, though eloquence has undoubtedly an essential and intrinsic excellence, and immoveable principles common to all languages, founded in the nature of our passions and affections; yet it has its ornaments and modes of addresses, which are merely arbitrary. What is approved in the eastern nations as grand and majestic, would be considered by the Greeks and Romans as turgid and inflated; and they, in return, would be thought by the Orientals to express themselves in a cold and insipid manner. […]
To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which there is allowed to be a good or bad taste. The component parts of dress are continually changing from great to little, from short to long; but the general form still remains; it is still the same general dress, which is comparatively fixed, though on a very slender foundation; but it is on this which fashion must rest. He who invents with the most success, or dresses in the best taste, would probably, from the same sagacity employed to greater purposes, have discovered equal skill, or have formed the same correct taste, in the highest labours of art.
I have mentioned taste in dress, which is certainly one of the lowest subjects to which this word is applied; yet, as I have before observed, there is a right even here, however narrow its foundation, respecting the fashion of any particular nation. But we have still more slender means of determining, to which of the different customs of different ages or countries we ought to give the preference, since they seem to be all equally removed from nature. If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it; and after having rendered them immoveable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity; if, when thus attired, he issues forth, and meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red oker on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever of these two despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his country, which ever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.
All these fashions are very innocent; neither worth disquisition, nor any endeavour to alter them; as the charge would,
