Note † — Chapter XVIII · On Looking at a Picture

One other aspect of the picture-space needs consideration. It is not necessarily a fixed and static construction, but may in several ways contain elements of movement. Some of these may be eye movements, or kinæsthetic images of eye movements. As the eye wanders imaginally from point to point the relations between the parts of the picture-space change; thus an effect of movement is induced. Equally important are the fusions of successive visual images which may be suggested by drawing. As we watch, for example, an arm being flexed, the eye receives a series of successive and changing retinal impressions. Certain combinations of these, which represent not the position and form of the arm at any instant, but a compromise or fusion of different positions and forms, have an easily explicable capacity to represent the whole series, and thus to represent movement. The use of such fused images in drawing may easily be mistaken for distortion, but when properly interpreted it may yield normal forms in movement. Many other means by which movement is given in Painting might be mentioned. One means by which colour, may suggest it, for example, is well indicated in the following description by Signac of Muley-abd-er Rahman entouré de sa garde: “la tumulte est traduit par l’accord presque dissonant du grand parasol vert sur le bleu du ciel, surexcité déjà par l’orangé des murailles†”. It need hardly be pointed out that the response made to the picture-space varies enormously according to whether the forms in it are seen as in rest or in movement.