Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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entury). Triumphal Way. Monster. human fertilizer for it, getting his food and the food forhis family and his beasts out of the smallest space,always bending over his soft soil and often livingbeneath its surface, his whole skin, his feet, and hishands impregnated with that soil—the Chinese knowsits weight, its consistency, its degree of moisture anddryness, its very taste. He hears the dull murmurthat stirs it when seed is sprouting. One would saythat his whole sensual imagination has concentrated inthe desire to handle that unctuous earth and the sub-stances that he takes from it, the fat jade, cornelianstone, crystal, agate, chalcedony, the hard stoneswhose spots he knows how to utilize, whose veins he 96 MEDIEVAL ART knows how to follow, the kaolin and the flint, the whiteearth, the copper and the tin that he melts together toproduce his black bronze. He knows his material sowell, he is acquainted to such a degree with its habitsand customs and peculiarities, that he can melt or
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Tomb of the Mings (xv Century). Triumphal Way. Elephant. boil it by holding back or by forcing the fire, so as torender it more or less hard, more or less brittle, to veinit, to mix it with other materials; he causes powderedmetal that has been liquified by heat to flow through it,or breaks its surface with a crackle. His brass isdeeply mottled with the green gold that he runs throughit, with yellow, red, or violet gold, and with irisedblues that have an appearance of danger, like sleepingwaters. As he works his brass, weighty, dense, sonor-ous, and hard, the metal flattens and swells and takeson the aspect of solid blocks; the incrustations on itsrough outside, with all the interlacings of slimy skins, ofspines and tentacles, still leave its heavy profile intactand pure. His bloated dragons aroused by the rum- CHINA 97 bling and writhing of the sea monsters, his snails andhis toads swollen with pustules, are brought fromwithin the metal by repoussé, and with so sure a strokeof the h

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