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Color Correction for Video Using Desktop Tools to
Perfect Your Image 2nd ed Edition Steve Hullfish Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Steve Hullfish, Jaime Fowler
ISBN(s): 9781578202010, 1578202019
Edition: 2nd ed
File Details: PDF, 31.37 MB
Year: 2008
Language: english
Color Correction
for Video

Second Edition
This page intentionally left blank
Color Correction
for Video
Using Desktop Tools
to Perfect Your Image

Second Edition

Steve Hullfish
Jaime Fowler

AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON • NEW YORK • OXFORD

PARIS • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hullfish, Steve.
Color correction for video : using desktop tools to perfect your
image / by Steve Hullfish and Jaime Fowler. — 2nd ed.
    p. cm.
Previous ed. published under title: Color correction for digital video.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-240-81078-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Digital video—
Editing—Data processing. 2. Video tapes—Editing—Data processing.
3. Color computer graphics. I. Fowler, Jaime. II. Hullfish, Steve. Color
correction for digital video. III. Title.
TR899.H85 2009
778.59′3—dc22

2008030500
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-240-81078-2

For information on all Focal Press publications

visit our website at www.elsevierdirect.com

09 10 11 12 13 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in China

Working together to grow

libraries in developing countries
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contents
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Chapter 1 Getting Started with Color Correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Quick Start. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Goals of Color Correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Spreading the Tonal Range. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Balancing the Colors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Chapter 2 Analyze This—Your Monitor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Monitor Environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
The Eyes Have It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Setting Up Your Computer Monitors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Calibrating Your Video Monitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Alternative Methods for Video Monitor Calibration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Chapter 3 Using Scopes as Creative Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Choosing Your Scope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Waveform Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Chip Chart and Waveform Monitor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Proper Levels for Each Tonal Range. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
A Wave of Waveforms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Vectorscope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
A Diamond in the Rough. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Chapter 4 Other Methods to Analyze Footage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Info Palettes and Other Numeric RGB Readouts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Histograms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Chapter 5 Colorists’ Tools—Primary Color Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Tonality Rules! (Or Colors Drool). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Hammer and Saw of Color Correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
vi  contents

Basic Black. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

Throw Caution to the Wind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Back to Black. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Value of 100IRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
How to Get to 100. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Math Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Gamma Quadrant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
In or Out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Tool Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Level Playing Field. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Hue and Hue Offset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Luma Ranges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
The Basics of Curves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Precision Control When You Need It Most. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Chapter 6 Secondary Color Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Vector-Based Secondaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Secondary Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Vignettes or Spot Color Corrections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Unqualified Use of Secondaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Chapter 7 Tutorials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

In the Dark—Improperly Exposed Video. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Bright and Flat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Casting for Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
On the Fence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
That’s Blue—And I’m Not Lion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Chapter 8 Advanced Color Correction Tutorials. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Matching Colors at the Art Institute. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Rosy Cheeks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Day for Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
 contents  vii

Creating Looks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

The Importance of Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Creating Story Looks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Other Cool Looks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Apple Color’s Color FX Room. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
More Experiments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Chapter 9 The History and Role of the Colorist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Video-to-Video Color Correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Telecine Color Correction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
From Color Corrector to Colorist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Datacine and DI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Diplomacy and Client Skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
The Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

Chapter 10 Vision and Color Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

The Science of Color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
It’s All in Your Head. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Source Light. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Modifiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Detectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
How Eyes Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
The Two Kinds of Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Perception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Color Dynamics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Viewing Environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Adaptive White Points and Chromatic Adaptation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Surround Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Additive and Subtractive Color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Color Spaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Space versus Gamut—What’s the Difference? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Stimulus-Specific Color Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Device-Dependent Color Space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Video Color Spaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
viii  contents

Bit Depth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Beyond the 8-Bit Standard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Subsampling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Chapter 11 Built-in Software and Plug-in Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Adobe Premiere and After Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Avid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Color Finesse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Final Cut Pro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Plug-Ins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
GenArts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Acknowledgments

Although writing is a fairly solitary task, the production of a

book is not. We want to acknowledge the efforts of many people
for their contributions to bringing this book to print.
Many experts from around the world generously offered their
knowledge and wisdom, in particular Roy Wagner, Tal at Chain-
saw, Stephen Nakamura at Technique, Bob Sliga, Randy Starnes,
Mike Most, Peter Mavromates, Ed Colman of SuperDailies, Craig
Leffel at Optimus, Alex Scudiero at I3, Robert Lovejoy at Shooters,
Rob Currier of Synthetic Aperture, Andre Brunger of 3-Prong, and
Karl Sims of GenArts. For great assistance with all things “wave
and vectorscope,” we send a special thanks to John Pierce of Tek-
tronix and that company’s brilliant engineers. My neighbor and
friend, Greg “Tech Support” Gillis, provided invaluable support
and guidance. I’d also like to thank Thomas Madden from Kodak
for his careful review of the theoretical aspects of the book and for
providing invaluable technical expertise and guidance.
For great contributions of video examples, I’m lucky to know
Gary Adcock, an international expert on video and data cameras
and workflow. Also, to Susannah director Evan Nicholas for his
footage.
I’d like to thank my original editor at DV magazine, Jim Feeley,
for buying the original pitch that a series of articles on color cor-
rection would be something that would interest his readers. That
original series was the impetus for CMP Publications to begin
discussions for this book.
I would like to thank the book’s original editor, Dorothy Cox, for
providing a guiding hand through the creative process. Also for
the revised edition, the folks at Focal Press, including Paul Temme,
Dennis McGonagle, Lianne Hong, Anais Wheeler, and their very
capable team took on the task of turning lots of words and images
into a final, marketable product.
I would like to thank my parents, William and Suzanne Hullfish,
for instilling in me the importance of writing and creative thought.
They also taught me that any journey begins with a single step and
that the journey itself is often more wondrous and fulfilling than
the destination. Those were important lessons to have tucked
under my belt during the making of this book.
My coauthor, Jaime Fowler, was a constant source of support
and a great sounding board and cheerleader. Jaime’s experience
as an author, editor, and teacher is evident throughout the book.
In a field where being a storyteller is one of the biggest compli-
ments someone can pay another person, Jaime is one of the best
storytellers I know.

ix
  Acknowledgments

Finally, my wife, Jody, was the greatest force behind this book.
She endured many months of being a de facto single parent to our
two children, and she was more sympathetic to the strains and
struggles that this book placed on our family than I had a right to
expect. Without her patience, love, and understanding, I would
not have been able to complete this book. Thank you, Jody.
Thanks also to many of the colorists and directors of photogra-
phy that I interviewed for my second color correction book, The
Art and Technique of Color Correction, for their knowledge that
made its way into this new edition in one form or another and to
the people who provided footage for the tutorials and examples,
including Torey Loomis at Silverado, for acting as the conduit for
the “Susannah” footage, and Julie Hill at Artbeats.
Steve Hullfish

My wife, Peggy, and children, Lauren, Brendan, and Joshua, all

helped by leaving me be during the crunch stage of the book,
feeding me leftovers, and basically letting me take over the dining
room table again for a few crucial months.
My colleague and coauthor, Stephen Hullfish, managed to
motivate and occasionally talked me down from writing “theory”
into writing in the “real world.” Steve was also great for our first-
time collaboration. It was kind of fun—in an evil sort of way—to
watch him go through the same pain as I did during the writing
of my first book. More important, I hope his wife, Jody, and the
kids will let me borrow him for a few other concepts that are in
the hopper.
Dorothy Cox was amazingly patient. She knew we had the right
stuff and just waited for it to come out. Also I must thank Trish
Meyer for quietly championing this book. Trish was our behind-
the-scenes promoter—I can’t thank her enough for that.
The colorists in this book are amazing. My special thanks to Jim
Barrett and Julius Friede for shining light on the black art and to
my friend and fellow editor, Lisa Day, who has always been very
kind and helpful to me. Also thanks to DK and the Buda Bunch for
occasionally bringing some “colorful” memories to light. Special
thanks to Steve Bayes, whose cat analogy was borrowed for this
book.
Joel Fowler (no relation) has been a teacher and mentor who
never gave up and was always inspiring to me. Dave and Bettie
Fowler (yes, they’re my parents) have always been my guiding
light, telling me to do what I want and have fun—pretty much
what I’ve always done since Day One.
Jaime Fowler
INTRODUCTION

Who Should Read This Book?

Any good communicator will tell you that knowing and under-
standing your audience are the most important things in com-
munication. The original audience for this book, originally written
in 2002, was very easy to define: nearly everyone. That’s because
very few people had been exposed to the small array of tools that
allowed real color correction power at the desktop level. Avid and
Final Cut Pro released their first versions of applications with color
correction tools within months after Jaime Fowler and I first signed
the deal to write this book. At the time, Avid Symphony was prob-
ably the only piece of gear under $250,000 with much color cor-
rection power.
Since then, numerous companies have started delivering color
correction systems, hardware, software, plug-ins, and workflows.
The list of players at this point is extensive. However, in the spirit
of the original publication, this book is aimed at an audience who Big Iron
This is industry
wants to understand how to do good color correction “on the
jargon that
desktop.” With that said, if you are a beginning colorist or student indicates an
who aspires to play with the “big iron” systems, this is also a good expensive and
starting place for you because the basic concepts are identical. very powerful system. In
Beginning colorist is a term that can easily be applied to plenty of the color correction
veteran editors and effects artists. Even if you know how to use the industry, the historical Big
interface of your color application but you don’t always get the Iron system would be the
results you want as quickly as you would like, this is the book for da Vinci 2K.
you.
The difficulty in understanding the audience for this revised
edition is that the audience has matured a bit and has been
exposed to more options in the last few years. However, it’s diffi-
cult to assess every individual reader’s body of knowledge. Even
skilled and seasoned professionals probably have something to
learn. After the first edition came out, I received plenty of emails
from veteran colleagues who learned things about video levels,
setting up monitors, and using waveform and vectorscopes that
they were amazed that they didn’t know. The book also found a
wide following among After Effects users, which was a completely
unintended audience.
So to answer the question of the book’s intended audience, let
me tell my personal story of learning color correction. I was one
of the original beta testers for Avid’s Symphony. In an early release,
Symphony included a powerful color correction mode. When I
first saw it, it looked intimidating. There were lots of controls that
could deliver a huge amount of power, but I had no idea where to

xi
xii  INTRODUCTION

start. The instruction manual covered all the basics of what the
knobs and buttons did, but I didn’t know what I was looking for
in the image itself or how to use the power that had been delivered
to me. If that describes you, you should read this book.
If you have ever wondered how you can make your productions
look “network ready,” this book is for you, too. As I learned color
correction at the feet of some very talented senior colorists, notably
Bob Sliga, the one big “take away” that I got from my training was
that understanding what all the knobs and buttons do is not nearly
as important as training your eye to see the deficiencies and
strengths of each image and understanding where the image
wants you to take it or how far you can push it from its intended
direction. This is the origin of the impression that color correction
is some “unlearnable” black art. The breakthrough that this book
delivers is that there are several tricks to learning exactly what to
look for.
This book is also designed to be “product and platform agnos-
tic.” In other words, we don’t care what color correction applica-
tion or NLE you use or on which computer operating system you
are running it. The book is based on principles that should be
applicable to any gear that can do color correction. Because of the
general nature of the book, it is not a substitute for reading the
color correction section of your user’s manual for your applica-
tion. However, one of the criticisms of the original edition that we
seek to repair with this edition is the complaint that specific step-
by-step instruction was lacking. Therefore, throughout the book
we show step-by-step tutorials for a number of applications. I’ll
try to hit several of them, but we’ll stick to the ones with the most
widespread acceptance and distribution. That includes Final Cut
Pro, Apple’s Color, Avid, and Color Finesse (which often ships as
an included plug-in with Adobe’s After Effects and Premiere). If
you are using an application other than one of those, you should
see that the interface that your application uses is probably very
similar to these.

How to Use This Book

The structure of this revised edition is quite changed from the
original. In this edition, we want to quickly get you started making
your first corrections, so we start the book with a couple of quick
tutorials that will get you off to a good start with the basics. After
that, the book follows in a specific order with more detailed expla-
nations that should probably be read “linearly.” The order of the
book after the first chapter should help you build one skill on top
of the other.
The first edition started out with a several chapters of theoreti-
cal knowledge. That information is still included in this book, but
 INTRODUCTION  xiii

in this edition, some of that theory is introduced “as needed”

throughout the book. The rest of the content of the first three
chapters are left for Chapters 9 and 10.
Also, instead of delivering the glossary as a whole unit in the
back of the book, we’ve included the glossary items in the margins,
usually on the same page where the words are encountered in the
body text. Each glossary item is also referenced in the book’s
index, so the index can be used almost as a standard glossary.

Throughout the book you will see three icons. The icon

indicates a running glossary throughout the book, the

icon indicates video tutorials available on this book’s DVD, and

the icon indicates a tip or important advice.

The Icons Used in This Book

Glossary Item—Provides definitions of industry jargon and

technical terms.

Video Tutorials—Check out the DVD included with this book

to watch more than two hours of video tutorials. Plus, there are
additional tutorials on the DVD that are not referenced in the
book. All tutorials are iPod ready.

Technical Tips—How-to’s or important advice on how to get

the job done.

A Note about The Color Images in This Book

Color video is additive. As a result, some of the images in this
book—which is printed subtractively with color inks—might not
reproduce accurately on the printed page. For a more complete
explanation of this issue, please refer to the “Additive and Sub-
tractive Color” section in Chapter 10 of this book.
This page intentionally left blank
 1
GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR
CORRECTION

Quick Start
Nobody wants to wade through the entire text of a book before
they feel they’ve learned anything, so this first chapter of the book
is designed to get you started color correcting quickly. We’ll gloss
over a few important details in this chapter, but we’ll cover those
things in more depth in the remaining chapters. This chapter is
an overview of the chapters to follow. The goal of this chapter is
for you to make as much progress as quickly as possible.
The goal of this chapter is for you to make as much progress
as quickly as possible.

The Goals of Color Correction

There are two primary objectives in basic color correction:
spread your tonal range and balance the colors.
There are two primary objectives in basic color correction:
spread your tonal range and balance the colors. There are a lot of
other important goals, including matching shots from one to
another, helping to tell the story, and making the images “pop” or
“read.” But we’ll focus on spreading the tonal range and balancing
colors in this initial chapter.
Spreading the tonal range means that you take full advantage
of the tonal range of your display medium. In most cases this
means maximizing the number of levels of gray between the
deepest black and the brightest white that your display or broad-
cast specifications can reproduce. For most people reading this
book, that means a TV screen or maybe a computer display. It can
also mean prepping the image for a digital intermediate transfer
to film. Tonal range corrections do not always have to spread
completely from 0% black to 100% white, but oftentimes they do.
The other goal of tonal range corrections is determining if certain
parts of the tonal range should be compressed while other parts


  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

should be expanded. We’ll do a quick tutorial on this in a

Tonal Range
moment.
Tonal range is
sometimes also
Balancing the colors means that any unwanted color casts are
called the eliminated. The reason for the term “balancing” will become more
dynamic range, obvious as we start to examine and analyze our images with a
luminance range, or number of different tools. Color casts in images are sometimes
contrast range, though desired, for example, the warm, red tones of a sunset or the sad,
these terms can have blue, coolness of a rainy day. These are color casts that often serve
slightly different technical the story, so we need to be careful not to eliminate them. Exam-
definitions. The tonal ples of color casts that are undesirable are usually caused by video
range is the difference cameras that haven’t been white balanced properly or film footage
between the brightest and shot with the wrong filter for the combination of film stock and
darkest areas of the
light temperature.
image. The tonal range
of the image—and how
those tones are spread
throughout the tonal
range—defines its
Spreading the Tonal Range
contrast. For some Much of the information that viewers use to understand and
applications of this phrase, interpret the image is based on the tonal range or contrast between
tonal range indicates the brights and darks. In most cases we want to give viewers as much
actual number of levels of information as possible, but sometimes you don’t, like the case of
tones that a recording a thriller or horror movie where you may be trying to hide things
medium can record (256 in the shadows.
per channel in the case of
The first step in determining the proper tonal range where
RGB 8 bit, or 1025 per
channel in the case of
your image should “live” is setting the proper level for blacks
RGB 10 bit). For our or shadows.
purposes, we will refer to The first step in determining the proper tonal range where your
tonal range (singular) as image should “live” is setting the proper level for blacks or shadows.
the range of tones Setting the black level is almost always the place where any expe-
between brightest and rienced colorist starts a correction. So the question for a beginner
darkest. Ansel Adams and is, “Where do I set the proper black level, and how do I know what
other proponents of the I should set it to?”
Zone System break the This book is product and platform agnostic. In other words, this
tonal range of an image book is less about what buttons to push on specific pieces of
into 11 distinct tonal
hardware or software and more about understanding the process
ranges.
so that you can feel comfortable color correcting on almost any
application that exists now or in the future. Because of that, I’ll
show you the right buttons in a few applications. Hopefully you’re
using one of the apps that I used as an example. Otherwise, look
for similar parameters in the software or hardware that you use.
Blacks are also known as shadows, pedestal, set-up, or lift,
depending on the application.
Blacks are also known as shadows, pedestal, set-up, or lift,
depending on the application. Setting the black level usually
involves adjusting a slider called either “blacks,” “shadows,” “set-
up,” “lift,” or “pedestal,” such as the controls in the screen shots
that are shown here from several of the most widely distributed
applications with color correction capabilities.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  

Figure 1-1 FCP Color Corrector. Figure 1-2 Color Primary room Basic Tab.

Figure 1-3 Color Finesse HSL Controls Master Tab.

Figure 1-4 Avid HSL Hue Offsets tonal controls. Figure 1-5 Premiere Luma Corrector.
  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

Waveform Monitor How to Determine the Proper Black Level

A waveform When I started to learn color correction, the biggest mystery to
monitor displays me was simply “How do you know what’s right?” To set black levels
the amplitude you need some tools for proper analysis of the black level. Basi-
level— cally that means a waveform monitor, though there are other tools
brightness and darkness—
that would work. We’ll get into the full range of analytical tools
along the vertical axis with
the dark parts of the
later in the book. For now, a simple waveform monitor will do.
image near the bottom Don’t panic. You don’t need to be an A/V geek or slide rule engi-
and the brighter parts of neer to understand this display. We just need to know how low we
the signal near the top. can go legally, and that’s pretty simple.
Technically, the horizontal Firstly, you need to know what “legal black” is on your system
axis of the waveform or waveform monitor. For most waveform monitors, black is at 0
displays time, but IRE or 0% or 0 millivolts. In the United States, which defines black
practically speaking, the as 7.5 IRE for composite analog NTSC signals, black can mean 7.5
horizontal axis of the IRE or 0 IRE depending on the type of video signal. The easiest
waveform corresponds to way to tell which is right for your system is to feed “filler” (the
the horizontal placement
black signal your system generates whenever it doesn’t have real
of picture elements across
the image with no regard
video to send) to the waveform monitor.
to the vertical placement of The easiest way to tell which is right for your system is to
elements in the image. The feed “filler” (the black signal your system generates when-
waveform monitor also ever it doesn’t have real video to send) to the waveform
displays chroma levels, but monitor.
these are easier judged on If “filler” is 0 IRE, then your goal in most color correction shots is
a vectorscope. to get at least some portion of the picture down to 0 IRE. If you get
black lower than 0 IRE, your program may not pass quality control
(QC) if you are sending it for broadcast or mass duplication.
Some waveform monitors have configuration settings that allow
you to choose whether black displays as 0 IRE or 7.5 IRE (some-

Figure 1-6 This figure shows a waveform monitor displaying Figure 1-7 This figure shows a waveform monitor displaying
blacks at 0 IRE. All waveform and vectorscope images are blacks at 7.5 IRE.
captured courtesy of a Tektronix WFM7120, which can be
viewed as a traditional external scope or can be monitored
remotely via a web browser.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  

More on Waveform Monitors

External Scopes versus Internal Scopes

Figure 1-8 Tektronix
WFM7120 external video
scope.

I always suggest that color correction be done with external scopes, such as those by Tektronix, Leader, VideoTek,
OmniTek, and others.
I always suggest that color correction be done with external scopes, such as those by Tektronix, Leader, VideoTek,
OmniTek, and others. These scopes generally have more power and information than internal scopes and give you a true
sense of the levels coming out of your system because they are downstream from the video card. All internal monitoring,
such as the scopes in Color or Final Cut or Avid, do not represent the actual video signal as it has left your system, and
software scopes usually do not represent the entire signal. Due to limitations in the amount of computational power
required for these displays, software companies often only display every other line or only every fourth line of video.
Sometimes, having real time scopes enabled on your chosen NLE (non linear editing system) can actually impede the
performance of the NLE itself as it tries to do the important tasks that it is actually designed for. So you can make your
editor or compositing software run better by turning off the internal scopes and running with a good external scope.

Flat Pass versus Low Pass (Luma)

External waveform monitors have a button that allows you to “filter” the incoming signal so that the display shows
either luma only (Low Pass), or whether the signal includes chroma information (Flat Pass). In Flat Pass, the chroma
information can make the trace (the squiggly lines representing the signal) appear to go beyond legal. When you are
trying to determine the luminance of your signal on a waveform monitor, you should be in Low Pass, not Flat Pass. Look
at the two images of a waveform display fed by color bars in Low Pass and Flat Pass to understand the difference.
  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

times called “with NTSC setup”). The Tektronix WFM7120 that I

Vectorscope use is configurable, and I have it set to display blacks at 0 IRE. This
A vectorscope is how I will display black throughout the book unless otherwise
displays noted.
chrominance
If your black levels are generally higher than 0 IRE, then your
and hue. The
saturation (or gain) of
picture may look washed out and flat. We’ll get more into the
the chroma (or color) is complexities of the waveform monitor later in the book.
measured by how far it
extends from the center of
the scope. Neutral images
(black, white, and all
levels of gray) register as
a dot in the middle of the
vectorscope. Hue is
indicated by the position
of the trace around the
perimeter of the circle.
Vectorscopes have
graticules that show each
of six different colors (red,
green, blue, magenta,
cyan, and yellow) in a
different, fixed vector
(position) around the
vectorscope. Color
includes a cool 3D
vectorscope that allows
you to rotate the
vectorscope in 3D space Figure 1-9 Waveform monitor with color bars fed to it in Low Pass.
to see luminance displayed
as well. 2D vectorscopes
cannot display luminance
information.

Watch the video

tutorial
“Spreading the
tonal range” on
the DVD.

Figure 1-10 Waveform monitor with color bars fed to it in Flat Pass.

 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  

Setting the Black Level Legal Levels

Using your waveform monitor in luma only mode, and knowing Legal levels
where your black level should be by looking at filler, you can use apply to video
one of the tools in Figures 1-1 to 1-5 to set your black level to the images that will
proper position on some real video. be broadcast or
duplicated. There are
You can use your own video footage for this exercise, or load
“legal” limits for black
one of the video examples from the DVD. For the purpose of this levels, white levels, and
tutorial, we’ll use the FCP Color Corrector filter and the file from the strength of colors
the DVD called “ChromaDuMonde_overbal.mov.” (saturation). These limits
are determined by
international committees
and national governing
bodies, such as the FCC.
They can be further
stipulated by specific
broadcasters, such as PBS
or the Discovery Channel.
If you are creating a
program for broadcast,
check with your outlet for
specifics. Some replicators
or duplicators also have
legal levels that videotape
masters must adhere to.

IRE
This is a unit of
Figure 1-11 CamAlign ChromaDuMonde Color bar/Gray Scale/Resolution Test Pattern measure for
chart. Copyright 2004/06 by DSC Laboratories. Used with permission. Shot with a waveform
Panasonic HVX200. This is commonly called a “chip chart” because of the “chips” of monitors. It is
various colors and shades. named for the Institute of
Radio Engineers, which
defined the unit. The scale
starts in negative numbers
and goes beyond 100 IRE.
I suggest you drag all of the tutorial video files to your internal
hard drive or a media drive from the DVD now.
1. Launch Final Cut Pro (or whatever application you want to Millivolts
This is another
use to follow along with the tutorial)
unit of measure
2. Import the “ChromaDuMonde_overbal.mov” file, dropping
for waveform
it into a sequence. monitors. It is
3. Then go to Effects>Video Filters>Color Correction>Color not as easy to use as the
Corrector. simple IRE scale or a
4. Go to Tools>VideoScopes to call up your internal scopes if simple percentage scale,
you do not have external scopes. so we will not use this
5. In the Viewer, switch to the Filters tab to see the controls scale to describe video
for the effect. You can view this filter in either Numeric levels.
mode or Visual mode.
  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

Trace
The trace is the
portion of the
waveform or
vectorscope that
indicates the levels of the
video signal. It is the
portion that responds to
level adjustments. On most
scopes, the trace tends to
be green or sometimes
white. Sometimes the trace
is actually referred to as
the “waveform,” while the
actual device that displays Figure 1-12 Open button in Canvas.
it is referred to as the
“waveform monitor.” The
traditional color for the
trace is green. More
colorists don’t like the
green trace, so on many
monitors the color of the
trace is user selectable.
Many colorists choose a
neutral gray or white color
for the trace.

Figure 1-13 Color Correction Filter in Numeric Mode.

Graticule
The graticule
is the fixed
lines on the
waveform and
vectorscope that provide
scale and positioning
information, for example,
the IRE lines on the
waveform monitor or the
color targets on the
vectorscope. The graticule
is often orange as a
contrast to the green of the
trace. This word is not
limited to video. Graticule
also defines the network of
longitude and latitude lines
on a map.
Figure 1-14 Color Correction Filter in Visual Mode.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  

6. Adjust the “Blacks” slider down until the shape at the

bottom of the center of the waveform monitor reaches the
bottom orange line labeled “Black” or 0%.

Figure 1-15 This shape at the

arrow represents the starting
point for the pure black
“chip” in the middle of the
ChromaDuMonde camera chart. It
should be on the “black” line
(0 IRE) of the waveform monitor,
not above or below it.

Figure 1-16 This figure

represents the image when the
black level has been brought
down too low. The flattening of
the shape at the arrow indicates
clipping or crushing of the signal,
which results in a lack of detail
in the shadows.

Figure 1-17 This figure

represents the proper black level.
The signal is neither too high
above the black (0 IRE) line nor is
it crushed.
10  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

The ChromaDuMonde chart is really a test pattern. Bring

Chip Chart
in a real world image from your own footage or from the
A camera test
chart with small
DVD that accompanies this book and try to set the black level.
“chips” of Remember to watch the bottom of the waveform monitor as
different colors you slowly lower the black level, making sure that you don’t
and shades. Each small “flatten out” the trace of the waveform monitor along the
block of color is called a bottom. Try to keep the basic shape of the trace from distorting
chip. The charts used too much.
throughout this book are In future lessons, we will break this rule about not flattening out
high quality camera charts the waveform shapes as we attempt to create certain looks, such
from DSC Laboratories. as blown out highlights and crushed blacks, but for now, the goal
is to maintain as much detail as we can in our video images, and
that means that the shape of the trace on the waveform monitor
should not flatten out.
TIP
By selecting
“Open” (the center
icon at the top of
your Canvas is a pulldown
Determining the Proper White Level
menu) on your Canvas, Determining the proper white level is a little easier because
your Viewer will stay there aren’t any strange choices about black levels being at differ-
linked to your Canvas, ent legal levels depending on your country or type of video signal.
updating effects status as With white level it’s always 100 IRE or 100%.
you move in your timeline, There are certainly times when you may not want to bring your
making it easier to color level up as high as 100%. You need to look at the image itself and
correct multiple shots. determine if there’s anything that actually deserves to be com-
pletely bright white. Sometimes, with a simple head shot inter-
view, for example, the brightest part of the image should be a
highlight on someone’s skin, which may not belong past 80% or
90%.
TIP
With your black level set, you can bring your white level up to
Adjusting levels
the maximum legal level and see if the image appears too con-
when color
correcting is like trasty or harsh. If it does, then back it down to a comfortable level.
focusing a camera. You On the other side of that, if your image appears to be underex-
can never really be sure posed or flat, then the white level should be brought up to its
you’re “in focus” unless highest legal level. Also, remember that the white level—or high-
you pass the proper point, light level—is not the final adjustment that we’ll make to deter-
so pull down your black mine the overall brightness of the image, so if you’re not happy
level until the shape starts with the brightness of your image at this point, or if it seems like
to flatten out at the bottom your white levels are correct but your skin tones are now too
or goes past the line that bright, we will fix that in another step.
indicates 0 IRE or 0%
Another special circumstance to consider when determining
black. Then bring it back
white level is if your footage was shot overexposed, the whites and
up to the proper level.
other bright highlights will be clipped. This can be seen as a thin,
bright line along the top of the waveform monitor. In this case,
you can attempt to bring your video levels down somewhat to cut
the glare, but you shouldn’t bring your levels much below 100%
because having a clipped signal that is much lower than 100% will
look very strange.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  11

Crush
When the black
level is lowered
so that the
shadows lose
detail, this is known as
crushing the signal or
creating a crushed look. It
is a form of clipping or
taking a signal beyond its
correct range.

Figure 1-18 This sky on the left side is overexposed to the point of being clipped.

Figure 1-19 The waveform shows the clipped sky as a thin white line on the left side of
the trace as indicated by the arrow. The sky on the right side is also bright, but it is not
heavily clipped because the waveform doesn’t form a thin, compressed line.

Setting the Proper White Level Clip (clip, clipping,

Setting the white level is very similar to setting the black level. clipped)
Let’s go back to our “ChromaDuMonde overbal” clip in Final Cut A clipped signal
Pro using our same Color Corrector filter that is already applied. means that the
image was
1. Using either the Numeric view or the Visual view, adjust the
exposed too
Highlights slider (as it is called in Numeric view) or the bright for the imaging
Whites slider (as it is called in Visual view) until the bright- technology or recording
est portion of the signal sits no higher than the 100% line technology. The result is a
in the waveform monitor. loss of detail that can be
2. Drag an RGB Limit effect or Broadcast Safe effect on to the identified on a waveform
clip. Now, instead of having the white levels go beyond monitor by a thin, sharp
100% you’ll see the upper portions of the trace begin to line at the top of the trace.
distort or flatten out as you move them up near the 100%
line. As with “crushing” the black levels, you want to avoid
12  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

this distortion because it indicates that the signal is clip-

ping and losing highlight detail. With this specific
ChromaDuMonde file, you want to make sure that the ratio
or steps between the lines of the trace that represent the
brightest chips doesn’t change. If you go too high, the lines
representing the chips will actually flatten out to be on the
same level.

Figure 1-20 These whites are

set correctly. Though they don’t
quite go all the way to 100%,
any higher setting caused the
highlights to begin to compress,
especially on the right side,
which was lit slightly brighter
than the left. I stopped raising
the whites when the area near
the arrow began to compress into
a thin line.

3. You may have noticed that your black levels have come up
a bit. Use your blacks slider to put them back where they
were before you raised your white levels. This is a little
dance that you will always have to do if you are color cor-
recting with a mouse or single trackball. Professional color-
ists usually use a color correction interface similar to the
JLCooper Eclipse or Tangent Devices CP-200-BK that allows
them to simultaneously adjust black and white levels, so as
they bring white levels up, they are holding down the black
levels with another control.

Figure 1-21 This is JLCooper’s

Eclipse CX panel. The rings
indicated by the arrows allow
simultaneous adjustment of the
whites, mids, and blacks.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  13

Determining the Proper Gamma or Mids Level Gamma

With your white and black levels set (sometimes referred to as This term has
your highlight and shadow levels) the next step is to determine two meanings
your “mid” or “gamma” levels. With the brightest and darkest por- that are
tions of the picture often determined by legal levels, the gamma somewhat tied
or midrange is the portion of the tonal range that can be set to to each other. One
give the shot its true overall tone. meaning for gamma is the
With the brightest and darkest portions of the picture often curve or transition between
white and black. The other
determined by legal levels, the gamma or midrange is the
meaning describes the
portion of the tonal range that can be set to give the shot its middle of the tonal range
true overall tone. between shadows and
There are several reasons for changing the gamma or mids. One highlights. The reason that
is that raising the mids can make a shot that already has the whites these meanings are tied
set as high as they can go seem brighter. Another is that lowering is that by altering the
gamma can help provide additional richness to an image that position of the midtones,
already has blacks set as low as they can go. Additionally, it is pos- the curve between white
sible to “play” the gammas against either the highlights or the and black is also altered.
shadows so that a specific portion of the tonal range exhibits
greater contrast. This can be accomplished in the shadows, for
example, by crushing the blacks down and stretching the mids
up—to accomplish greater contrast in the lower mids—or by clip-
ping the highlights up and stretching the mids down—to accom-
plish greater contrast in the upper mids.
Think of your tonal range as a rubber band.
Think of your tonal range as a rubber band. First you want to
stretch the top and bottom out to their safe or legal limits. Then
you can grab the middle of the rubber band and stretch and com-
press the top or bottom within those limits. We’ll deal with this
concept in greater depth in later chapters.

Setting the Proper Gamma or Mids Level

Returning to Final Cut Pro and the same Color Correction filter
that we started working with to set the blacks and whites, we’ll
finish the tonal correction on the file by adjusting the gamma, or
mid, slider.
For now, let’s just set the gamma or midrange of the image so
that it looks pleasing. For our ChromaDuMonde file, we want the
middle gray tones (the thick band of the trace that extends all the
way across the middle of the waveform monitor) to average out to
50%. With our blacks set to 0% and our whites set to 100%, the
middle grays are between 55% and 65% (similar to Figure 1-20).
Drag the Mids slider (which may be called the gamma slider in
some other software) so that the waveform monitor looks more
like Figure 1-22, with the average closer to 50%.
When you are done adjusting the mids down, you may find that
it’s necessary to adjust the blacks and whites up a little bit.
14  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

Figure 1-22 Note that the

midtone grays are now between
40% and 60% with the center
gray chip, indicated at the arrow,
around 55%. Note that the tonal
range is spread out between 0%
and 100% and that the steps
between the lines representing
the chips on the chart are much
more evenly distributed than in
the original waveform image
(Figure 1-15). Also note that no
portions of the image are clipped
or crushed.

Now look at the waveform monitor and the image itself as you
check and uncheck the Color Correction check mark at the top left
of the filter in the viewer. When it is unchecked, you are seeing the
original camera image. When it is checked, you are looking at your
correction. Your correction should be much more pleasing.
My final settings for the numeric view of the filter were:
Highlights: 276
Mids: 80
Blacks: −27
Try setting the tonality of a different video clip. With the camera
chart, the instructions that came with the chart indicated where
the gray should be positioned on a waveform monitor. With a real
world image, the choice is not quite so cut and dried. The position-
ing of the gamma or mids is set completely by eye with most images
TIP because there is no legal level for the middle of the image. Setting
When you are the gamma is done “to taste” or can be done to help better match
adjusting any the current shot to the surrounding shots in the sequence.
specific tonal
range (shadows, mids,
highlights) you need to
focus more of your Balancing the Colors
attention on the portion of With the tonal range set nicely, the next step in most color
the picture that has those correction is to balance the colors.
kinds of tones. Look at
With the tonal range set nicely, the next step in most color cor-
what happens to the
rection is to balance the colors. This means that any unwanted
shadows as you adjust the
blacks. Look at the color casts are removed. When I started doing color correction, I
midtones (skin tones, for didn’t understand how to see unwanted color casts unless they
example) as you adjust were pretty obvious. Some people are very good at doing this
your mids. And look at the without any training. Some people need some practice. The good
brightest portions of the thing is that the tools to analyze color casts are always right at the
picture as you adjust the colorist’s fingertips, so if someone says, “The blacks look a little
highlights. green,” and you don’t really see what they’re talking about, don’t
worry. I’ll show you several ways to check out these color casts.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  15

Analyzing Color with the Vectorscope

Please do not get freaked out by scopes. Think of the waveform
and vectorscope as creative tools. They are there to help you.
A vectorscope is a simple analytical tool with the sole purpose
of analyzing the strength and hue of colors in the video signal. It’s
easiest to understand by superimposing a color wheel on top of
the vectorscope.

Figure 1-23 A vectorscope with

a color wheel superimposed on
top. Note that the unsaturated
colors are in the center of the
scope.

The strength or saturation of the color is relative to the distance

of the trace from the center of the vectorscope. The direction of
the trace around the perimeter of the circle tells what hue it is.
Think of the vectorscope in terms of a clock face. If part of the
trace extends toward 11:00, that means it’s red. Toward 1:30 is
magenta, 3:00 is blue, 5:30 is cyan, 7:30 is green, and 9:00 is
yellow.
So with that knowledge in hand, you might ask, Where is white?
Where is gray? And where is black? The seemingly bizarre answer
is that black, white, and gray are all exactly in the middle because
they are completely neutral. Remember: Saturation is indicated
by the distance from the middle. Because black, white, and gray
have no saturation at all, that means they are all in the exact
middle of the vectorscope.
Because black, white, and gray have no saturation at all, that
means they are all in the exact middle of the vectorscope.
Balancing colors in color correction means that colors that
are supposed to be neutral are neutral.
Balancing colors in color correction means that colors that are
supposed to be neutral are neutral. And because neutral colors are
so easy to define on a vectorscope—they’re in the middle—
balancing them should be easy to do. You just center neutral colors
16  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

on the vectorscope. This does not mean that a perfectly balanced

TIP
image doesn’t have portions of the trace that extend out toward
Centering the
trace on the
red or blue or green. You want those colors if there are skin tones
vectorscope is or grass or sky in your picture. It just means that most images have
usually easiest to do when neutral tones in them, and those tones should be centered on the
the gain or zoom on the vectorscope.
vectorscope is increased
so that it’s easier to see
the center. All good Analyzing Color with the RGB Parade Waveform
external scopes have a When I wrote The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction,
way to increase the gain I interviewed dozens of great colorists. One of the questions I
or the zoom on the asked them was: “If you were stranded on a desert island with only
vectorscope, but not all
one scope, which would it be?” Most of them said they’d want an
software scopes can do
this.
RGB Parade waveform.
What is the advantage of the RGB Parade waveform monitor? It
gives you information on brightness (tone) as well as important
information on color balance, so it’s the one scope that can really
do it all.
The RGB Parade works very similarly to the waveform monitor
that we used earlier in this chapter already, except that it displays
each of the channels of color information—red, green, and blue—
individually in a “parade” across the display. The first image or
“cell” shows the red channel, the second shows the green channel,
and the third shows the blue channel.

Figure 1-24 This is a graphic I created in Photoshop and

}
}
}

imported into Final Cut Pro.

Red Cell Green Cell Blue Cell
Figure 1-25 This is the RGB waveform display of Figure
1-24. Note that in the first red cell, only the RED word is
displayed, in the green cell, the GREEN word is predominant,
and in the blue cell the BLUE word is predominant. Because
each word was created only from a pure color, the smaller,
or inversed, words are probably only showing up due to an
error in the way the color spaces were translated when the
file was imported.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  17

We’re still talking about needing to balance the colors, and the
Cell
RGB Parade gives some great information when it comes to bal-
The display of
ancing colors. As I mentioned, each of the cells is similar to the the individual
regular waveform monitor that you already used, except that each color channels
cell only gives a level for one color. of the RGB
The thing to realize with video is that when the three Parade waveform monitor
color channels (red, green, and blue) are equal, there is no are referred to as cells.
“color.” Equal levels of red, green, and blue means there is no There are three cells:
saturation. red, green, and blue.
Equal levels of red, green, and blue means there is no Sometimes there is a
saturation. fourth cell for Y or luma.
So when you are looking at an RGB Parade waveform display, That cell is usually
displayed first in left to
you usually want the top and bottom of all three cells to line up.
right order, followed by
That indicates balanced colors. red, green, and blue.

Figure 1-26 This is a properly white balanced Figure 1-27 This is an improperly white balanced
ChromaDuMonde chart displayed on an RGB Parade ChromaDuMonde chart displayed on an RGB Parade
waveform. The image is balanced and neutral. Note that all waveform. The image is warm. Note that the red cell is
three cells are essentially the same levels. Remember: From higher than the green and blue cells.
left to right, the three waveforms are red, green, and blue.

Analyzing Color with the Eyedropper

It is also possible to analyze colors with an eyedropper in many
applications. This is a popular method amongst Photoshop
retouchers. Analyzing color with an eyedropper is similar to using
the RGB Parade waveform. You sample a color that should be
neutral (a black, white, or neutral gray) with the eyedropper and
then take note of any color channel that is higher or lower than
the others.
There are some tricks to this technique because the RGB values
that you will get from an eyedropper can vary quite a bit from one
pixel to the next, so you have to kind of average them out in your
head as you drag around an area that you feel should be neutral.
18  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

Let’s analyze three images with an eyedropper. You can do this

Retouchers
in Apple’s Color, Color Finesse, or in almost any Adobe applica-
A retoucher is
the print
tion. I will do this in Avid’s color correction mode.
equivalent to a On the DVD are three files of a DSC Labs Grayscale Test Pattern
colorist in the chart shot with a Panasonic HVX200. The files are called “gray-
film and TV world. The scale_neutral.mov,” “grayscale_warm.mov,” and “grayscale_cool.
tools of the retoucher are mov.” They are all HD files. Import them into your color correction
often analogous to the application of choice and look for a way to sample colors with
colorist’s tools, but your eyedropper. I will walk you through this with specific instruc-
sometimes the retoucher tions if you’re on an Avid, but you should be able to follow along
can do things that colorists with other applications.
cannot do because of the After importing the three shots into the Avid, cut them into a
static nature of print.
sequence and go into color correction mode or choose Toolsets >
Color Correction.

Figure 1-28 To sample with the eyedropper, click on either of the two color patches indicated by the red circle. Your cursor
will change to an eyedropper, and you can click and drag to a color in one of the monitors in the Composer window.

Click and drag from one of the color patches in the upper right
TIP corner of the Color Correction window to a neutral color in the
You can opt-drag Current window and release. This will save the RGB values of that
(Mac) or alt-drag
color temporarily.
(PC) the color
swatch you just saved into
For the purposes of this tutorial, let’s sample a black, gray, and
a bin for later matching or white “chip” from the grayscale_neutral chart. I’ll sample the
reference. middle gray chips and the black and white chips that are right in
the center of the chart. These are 8-bit RGB values.
My RGB values for the grayscale_neutral.mov are:
White: 205, 226, 237
Gray: 140, 136, 140
Black: 27, 33, 37
(Your values may be slightly different. Mine varied between 3
and 7 values inside of each of the three chips as I dragged
Watch the around.)
video tutorial
The preceding numbers tell us that the white balance on our
“Analyzing
“neutral” image is not really quite neutral. In the whites and blacks,
with the Avid
eyedropper” on the DVD. the blue is slightly elevated (237 for whites and 37 for blacks), and
red is a little deficient (205 for whites and 27 for blacks). If you
really wanted to get this image looking absolutely neutral, you’d
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  19

need to add some red in the whites and the blacks and maybe pull
back on the blues in the whites and the blacks as well. In the grays,
as I dragged around, the blues and greens were pretty similar most
of the time, with red a little lower, so maybe you could add just a
touch of red in the midtones as well, though the preceding sample
would indicate that adding a little green is the right thing to do.
Remember that you’re never going to get all of these numbers to
match, so we’re just looking to get a general idea of which colors
are slightly stronger or weaker.
Let’s also sample the warm and cool chip charts. Here are the
numbers I came up with:
Grayscale_cool
White: 146, 226, 253
Gray: 81, 133, 192
Black: 23, 33, 51
Grayscale_warm
White: 254, 204, 127
Gray: 162, 120, 72
Black: 32, 28, 25
These values give you a real clue about what’s wrong with these
images. In the cool file, blue is elevated across all three tonal
TIP
ranges. Red is also more deficient than green, and green is also Color casts are
lower than blue. In the warm file, the red channel is elevated in rarely the same
the whites and grays, though the blacks are actually pretty close strength across all
between the lowest and highest channel. three tonal ranges. This
So what about yellow casts, cyan casts, and magenta casts? How means that each tonal
do you know if you have one of those? Take a look at a vectorscope range should be balanced
(Figure 1-29). The primary colors of red, green, and blue form a separately.
triangle on the vectorscope. The secondary colors—cyan, magenta,

Figure 1-29 Note the position of

the primary colors of red, green,
and blue on the vectorscope.
Note the position of the
secondary colors of magenta,
cyan, and yellow between the
primary colors. And note the
secondary colors that are
opposite the primary colors.
Memorize these relationships. If
memorizing these are difficult,
remember that you can always
see these relationships on a
vectorscope.
20  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

and yellow—are positioned between each of the primary colors.

TIP The secondary colors are made up of equal amounts of each of
If you find a bright the primary colors that they’re between. Yellow is equal parts red
or dark patch in and green, cyan is equal parts green and blue, and magenta is
some video that
equal parts red and blue. If you look at the gray values of the pre-
you’re sampling, and the
numbers don’t move much
ceding grayscale_neutral clip, you will see that the red and blue
as you scrub around in values are equal to each other and higher than green. That means
the area, that is an that there could be a slight magenta cast (red + blue = magenta)
indicator that that area is to the midtones. Another way to check on secondary colors is to
clipped. If all of the whites look at the color directly opposite the primary color on the vec-
are pegged at 235 or 255 torscope. In the case of the gray values in our neutral image, if you
or the blacks bottom out at look opposite of green, which is slightly low, you see magenta, so
0 or 16, then that area once again you know that there could be a slight magenta cast to
has no detail because it is the midtones of that image.
clipped.

Balancing with the Color Wheels (Color Balance

Controls, Hue Offset Wheels)
The tools that colorists are being exposed to in the last several
years have changed fairly dramatically. For most experienced col-
orists, the “real” tool for fixing color casts are the color wheels.
For most experienced colorists, the “real” tool for fixing color
casts are the color wheels.
Most of these experienced colorists practiced their craft on the
gold standard da Vinci telecine/color systems. The three trackballs
in the various da Vinci models basically did the same thing that
the color wheels do in so many software color correctors now. As
a matter of fact, several manufacturers, such as Tangent Devices
and JLCooper, make manual user interfaces that allow the manip-
ulation of the color wheels in many applications with triple track-
balls (see Figure 1-21).
Using the color wheels to balance colors is very easy if you are
looking at a vectorscope or eyeballing your corrections just looking
at your monitor. Using the color wheels while monitoring an RGB
Parade waveform monitor or while sampling with an eyedropper
is a bit more challenging, but it is worth the effort and practice.
Using the color wheels while monitoring a vectorscope is simply
a matter of grabbing the cursor in the middle of the color wheel.
In Avid and Color Finesse, these are called the Hue Offset wheels,
in Final Cut Pro’s Color Corrector 3 Way effect they’re called Color
Balance controls. Apple’s Color also calls them Color Balance con-
trols. Adobe products refer to them as Color wheels.
Let’s balance the cool gray chip chart using the Color Balance
controls in Apple’s Color. Once again, you can follow along in any
application that has similar wheels.
In Color, import the “grayscale_neutral.mov,” “grayscale_
warm.mov,” and “grayscale_cool.mov” that we just used in
the eyedropper exercise.
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  21

Select the Grayscale_neutral clip in the time line and go in to

the Primary In room (tab) of Color (Figure 1-30). Take a look Watch the video
at the RGB Parade waveform monitor and the vectorscope. tutorial “Balance
We’re going to try to match the warm and cool grayscale Grayscale with
Color Wheels”
images to this one.
on the DVD.
Select the Grayscale_cool clip in the time line. Notice that the
vectorscope on the neutral image creates a nice dot in the center
of the scope, while vectorscope of the cool image is more of a
streak that extends out between the blue and cyan “targets” (Figure
1-31). Also on the red cell of the RGB Parade, the level is low, while
in the blue cell, the levels are so high that they are clipped along
the top. If you are doing this exercise in Color, you can see in the
cool 3D vectorscope that the neutral image stays very close to the
center line between white and black, while the cool image swoops
away.
To balance the cool image, we’ll use the Color Balance
wheels in Color’s Primary In room (tab). Start with the
Shadow wheel (to the left) and drag the center crosshairs
away from blue while watching the vectorscope image.
You will see that the part of the trace that is closest to the
center of the vectorscope will get even closer. Notice the
effect you have on the center portion of the trace as you
drag around in that Shadow wheel. The goal is to get it into
the center.
Now we’ll balance the highlights with the Highlight wheel (to
the right). This time we’re trying to drag the far end of the
trace back to the middle. This will take a much more extreme
move because the highlights are farther away from “normal”
than the shadows were. Keep your eyes on the white chips
on the chart to make sure they don’t become too red or
yellow.
Finally, we’ll balance the midtones (the center wheel). Try to
create the same nice tight point in the vectorscope that you
saw when you were looking at the neutral clip. You won’t be
able to match them perfectly because the blue highlights
clipped and some color data was permanently lost when
that happened.
It will take a little bit of work going back and forth between
the shadow, midtone, and highlight wheels to get this
file looking good. You’ll notice on the RGB Parade that
the blown out highlights in the blue cell can’t really be
recovered, but the levels for the gammas all match
across all cells, and the levels of the shadows also match
across all three cells (Figure 1-32). A screen grab of
the trackballs from my final correction are also included
(Figure 1-33). Note that I also moved the Master Lift down
a bit and the Master Gain up a bit to stretch the contrast
a little.
22  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

Figure 1-30 Apple Color’s displays for the neutral grayscale image.

Figure 1-31 Apple Color’s displays for the cool grayscale image.

 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  23

Figure 1-32 Apple Color UI with

RGB Parade indicating clipped
highlights in the blue cell
(farthest to the right in bottom
corner).

Figure 1-33 Apple Color UI of the Primary In room showing positions of the Color Wheel corrections and Master Lift and
Master Gain corrections.

Try this same exercise with the warm chart and with any of your
own footage that has a color cast in it.
Balancing with the Color Balance controls is much easier to
do while watching the vectorscope.
Balancing with the Color Balance controls is much easier to do
while watching the vectorscope. With experience and practice,
you’ll be able to balance using the wheels while watching the RGB
Parade waveform, but until then it’ll be a little like trying to draw
a circle on an Etch A Sketch®.

Balancing with RGB Levels

Another way to correct color balance is to use red, green, and
blue levels controls. Basically these are controls—usually sliders—
24  Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION

that allow you to adjust the highlight, midtone, and shadow

amounts of each of the color channels individually. In Color, this
is done in the Primary In room by clicking on the Advanced Tab
along the right side. In Final Cut Pro, you would use the Video
Filters>Color Correction>RGB Balance effect. In Color Finesse,
you would use the RGB Master tab. In Avid (other than Symphony
and DS) there are no controls to do this, though using Curves is
similar, as you will see in the next section of the book. In Adobe
Premiere and After Effects, these controls are in Effects>Levels
(Individual Controls). Then inside the effect, spin down the
“twirlies” for red, green, and blue to reveal the individual sliders
for black, white, and gamma for each color channel.
Using these sliders seems very intimidating and way too techni-
cal, but if you watch the RGB Parade waveform monitor while
adjusting these controls, you’ll see how very easy this is to do.
If you didn’t read the earlier part of this chapter recently, you
may want to go back and check out the section on Analyzing Color
Watch the video with the RGB Parade Waveform.
tutorial “Balance Let’s use the same files we just used in the Balancing with the
grayscale with Color Wheels section. You can continue to work in Color, if you
RGB sliders” on have access to it, by using the Advanced Tab in the Primary In
the DVD. room, but I will do the rest of this tutorial in Color Finesse (plugged
in to Final Cut Pro).
1. Import the “grayscale_neutral.mov,” “grayscale_warm.
mov,” and “grayscale_cool.mov” into Final Cut Pro—or any
NLE that has Color Finesse as a plug-in, like Adobe Pre-
miere or After Effects—and cut the files into a sequence.
Select the “grayscale_warm.mov” clip in the time line and
select it. Add an Effects>Video Filters>Synthetic Aperture>SA
Color Finesse 2 effect to the clip. In the Filters tab, choose
the Full Interface for the Color Finesse effect (or you can
drag way down on the list of controls to RGB Master where
you will see gamma, pedestal, and gain controls for each
color channel.
2. When balancing a chip chart that is essentially all neutral
tones, the goal is to make each of the three color channels,
or cells, on the RGB Parade waveform match one another.
You can also use these sliders while analyzing your image
with the eyedropper. While most real world images have
colors that are of different levels of red, green, and blue, you
can still balance colors using the same technique. You just
need to be cognizant of the differences that should be kept
between the color channels, for example, a blue sky will
make the blue channel higher than red or green and it
should be that way. A predominant skin tone (for example
in a close up) will have higher red and yellow channels. But
if there is something black and something white in the
frame, you can balance the three color channels to those
 Chapter 1 GETTING STARTED WITH COLOR CORRECTION  25

Figure 1-34 Color Finesse RGB Sliders as a Final Cut Pro filter.

Figure 1-35 Color Finesse’s full user interface. The RGB sliders are in the RGB tab.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
CENTAUR AND DRYAD
BY PAUL MANSHIP
 The small bronze has then its two separate manifestations. It
may present itself either as a reduction from some much larger work
worthy of wide recognition and ownership, or as a spontaneous first-
hand offering of a sculptural thought well-suited for expression
within modest confines. In either shape, its cost is not prohibitive for
many of our private citizens as well as for our museums. The cause
of art and the delights of possession are advanced side by side.

III
Whether we look at a little book-end bear in bronze, or at a
heroic equestrian statue in bronze and stone, or at a colossal
monument in granite or marble, the importance of fine
craftsmanship is evident. The artist is the last person in the world
who can afford to underrate the craftsman.
Not long ago in reading an essay on literary criticism, I was
confronted with this impressive query: What has the navel done for
modern life? Of course modern literature in its desire to be
impressive asks many curious questions of the reader, but this one
about the navel seemed unduly wide of the mark. I was disturbed
until I suddenly perceived that the printer had used an a for an o;
the luckless author had meant to ask about the novel, not the navel.
But the artist in words suffers less often at the hands of his helping
craftsman than does the artist in paint or clay. The sculptor in
particular runs grave risks. Even the forces of nature conspire
against him; the fair-faced marble hypocritically hides her blemishes
until weeks of carving lay them bare. Even chemistry betrays him;
the bronze that should be perfect everywhere has perhaps a spongy
place or a “tin spot” or a treacherous seam just where it does the
greatest possible damage to his statue.
One of the advantages of the ancient apprentice system was
that the beginner in art could learn all the tricks, and not only the
tricks but the very serious difficulties of the various trades that help
to bring the artist’s work to completion. Our American sculpture,
which after all began timidly enough as a kind of craftsmanship, has
at certain periods of its immaturity forgotten the importance and
dignity of the crafts on which it depends for a fair presentation.
Bronze casting has indeed advanced greatly through the fact that
modern sculpture has become largely an expression in clay, to be
made permanent in bronze; sculptors have demanded good casting,
and they have obtained it. In general, the sculptors of the world are
no longer masters who release from stone, either hard or soft, the
image circumscribed within. To reach their results, they do not as a
rule start from the assumption of Michelangelo, as Symonds
translates it:

The best of artists hath no thought to show

Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include:

They look on their work as a building-up in clay, rather than as a

cutting-down in stone. Well, why not? If the word plastic keeps its
old meaning of something shaped, and glyptic its meaning of
something carved, surely the sculptor may without reproach choose
his approach; always provided that this approach is the one best
suited to the matter in hand.
But even here, changes are already visible. On both sides of the
Atlantic a few sculptors are harking back to the fine old Gothic
tradition which animated Michelangelo, that spirit who was at once a
late fruit of the Gothic and a great flowering of the Renaissance.
Perhaps we owe to Rodin this modern return from plastic to glyptic?
At any rate, the movement is but lightly sketched, except as seen in
some of the enormous monuments of Middle Europe, and in
particular in the powerful works of the Serbian Mestrovic, as well as
in those of recent insurgent followers of Rodin. An odd fact is, that
some of these last, in seeking the titanic, have attained the Teutonic,
especially when their theory of deformation has betrayed them. And,
of course, any new style, vital or not, will breed new errors.
Criticism has had of late a tendency to scold sculptors for not
seeing things as Michelangelo did, or as the artist of “Le Beau
Sourire de Reims” did. It is perhaps surprising that the eloquent
mediæval craftsmanship suitable for Caen stone or limestone, and
beautiful in its place, has not attracted a larger interest and a wider
experiment among us. However, Miss Hoffman has just completed
an important and unusual War Memorial in Caen stone. Mr.
MacMonnies’s great Washington monument at Princeton is of
limestone, most thoughtfully carved, and not at all in the impetuous
new manner; it may prove to be a forerunner of other ambitious
enterprises in this material. But ours is an unkind climate. The
sculptured forms of Italy and France have not had to endure the
extreme changes of heat and cold well-known here. We have
interesting varieties of marble and granite, and have made but a
beginning in the exploration of their possibilities as adapted to our
weather. A very beautiful tradition in marble-cutting has been built
up in our country by the Piccirilli family, six brothers among whom
are distinguished sculptors and distinguished craftsmen. Their
output, which includes both their own original works and their
faithful renderings in stone of the works of other sculptors, is known
throughout the country, and has inspired good craftsmanship.
Thus in the major crafts of bronze casting and of marble-cutting,
American sculpture is fairly fortunate today. In the one, we have
come a long way from that first attempt in 1847; in the other, we
have craftsmen who for large work to be seen at a distance can
sufficiently well translate into stone the sculptor’s finished models.
We have also for our salvation a few sculptors, who, like Chester
Beach, are peculiarly gifted in wresting from the marble, and with
their own hands, their own visions. But Mr. Beach is different again
from most of his contemporaries, in that he is successful in his
command over all the final materials in which a sculptor’s work may
be presented, whether terra-cotta, stone, or bronze. With a modern
and highly interesting vision of beauty, and with an absolute
understanding of the principles of sculpture, this artist respects both
the art and the craft of sculpture. Sometimes it would seem that the
finer the artist, the finer his appreciation of craftsmanship.
Of course if one were to judge by the pictures in the Sunday
supplements, all sculptors carve their marbles themselves; they
seem to do little else. That is not true, alas. Certainly a busy sculptor
may well save himself for other matters besides roughing-out a block
of marble. But a serious sculptor will generally wish to give the
finishing strokes, few or many, a matter of weeks or of months, to
any marble work that leaves his hands. In modern stone-cutting, the
pneumatic tool is indeed a miracle-worker; and for that very reason,
it bears constant watching from the sculptor whose work it
translates. Mr. John Kirchmayer, an artist in the field of wood-
carving, has described in a recent article the mischief wrought for
this art by too great a dependence on the machine, a dependence
that atrophies the native genius of the craftsman. His counsel is the
same that all arts and crafts must follow: Use the machine but do
not abuse it. When the cheapening of production means the
debasing of the product, it is time for art and the machine to part
company.
 CHAPTER X
THE NATIONAL SCULPTURE SOCIETY

Other gifts besides those commonly acknowledged as the artist’s

peculiar possession are needful if the advancement of art and the
status of the artist are to be fitly assured. These other gifts belonged
to the painter Morse when in defending the interests of art-study he
played his important part in founding our National Academy of
Design in 1825. They belonged to the artists who, in espousing the
cause of the young Saint-Gaudens half a century later, broke away
from the Academy to form the Society of American Artists. They
belonged also to those later spirits who, perceiving the weakness of
that disunion, managed somehow to gather the Society back into
the bosom of the Academy, to the chastening of both factions. And
they belong in good measure to Mr. F. W. Ruckstull, an American
sculptor of widely recognized ability, who in 1893, with the help of
Mr. Charles de Kay and others, was foremost in assembling the body
since known as the National Sculpture Society. Mr. Ruckstull and the
other charter members had no personal tocsin of revolt to sound;
they simply saw, as intelligent artists and citizens, that their art and
their country needed such an organization, “to spread the
knowledge of good sculpture.”
To begin with, sculpture is not easy to exhibit. Far more than any
living painter has ever acknowledged, it suffers acutely from
unfriendly lighting. The old proverb that good sculpture looks well
anywhere ought to be amended to add, it looks its best only in its
chosen light and space. Sculpture’s appetite for space, at times
modest, is at times illimitable. The Academy, always hard-pressed for
space in its annual exhibitions, cannot afford to give up large well-lit
areas for sculptures of heroic size. The Architectural League is
hospitable toward sculpture, but, the aims of this body being many
and diverse, it certainly cannot favor the sculptors above all other
comers. Once in a while, if not oftener, our sculpture should be
shown under the happiest conditions. Again, sculpture, even more
than painting, has active contacts with the worlds of government,
whether municipal, state or federal; it should be able to present
itself with the authority naturally vested in an honored group of
experts. And sculptors, quite as much as painters and architects,
must stand together lest personal interest wrong the general good,
and lest individuals fall into misunderstandings either among
themselves, or with the public, to whose intelligent opinion they, like
other citizens, must commonly submit.
The Society, founded in 1893, and incorporated in 1896, has had
from the first an extraordinarily vivifying influence in matters of
sculpture. It has labored for the public good, in harmony with
various private committees, with Municipal Art Commissions, and
with the Federal Commission of Fine Arts. Its first president, John
Quincy Adams Ward, believed enthusiastically in its work and
destiny. His first annual report emphasizes the fact that its
“reputation will be established by its deeds, not by empty promises.”
In the Society’s second year, Ward was called upon, in association
with Warner and Saint-Gaudens, to give counsel as to the sculptural
decorations for the Library of Congress, the architecture of this
building being at that time in the hands of Edward P. Casey. Mr.
Casey showed a fine zeal in getting the best possible sculpture for
the Library; besides the usual structural ornament, his scheme called
for fountains, three pairs of bronze doors, and for a circle of twelve
imposing bronze statues by almost as many sculptors. The results
were in general very happy, and at once established a high standard.
And this is important, because the fine public building enhanced by
sculpture is of service in the progress of art, as we see from the
Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the Cleveland Court
House.
 Among the “deeds” foreshadowed by Mr. Ward were certain
memorable exhibitions of sculpture, enterprises of genuine value to
the community. These exhibitions were wisely and enthusiastically
arranged in collaboration with landscape architects and florists;
beautiful works fitly shown proved a surprise and a joy to both
public and connoisseurs. The public was reminded that sculpture is a
living art, with roots and branches; that it is not dedicated entirely to
pediments, portrait statues, and other monumental grandeurs; and
that sculptured forms may charm the eye of the home-maker and
the garden-lover, in intimate possession.
In 1899 Charles R. Lamb, a charter member, born with a vision
of the City Beautiful and working always toward the realization of
that great dream, conceived the thought of the Dewey Arch as a
dignified free-will offering from our sculptors,—an offering that
would take a central and beautiful part in New York’s public tribute
to the hero of Manila. That idea somehow captured the fancy of Mr.
Lamb’s fellow-artists. Immediately and unreservedly, they gave
themselves to the sculptural decorations of this arch and its
approaches; Mr. Ward, full of years and honors, set the pace by his
vigorous design for the crowning group of Naval Victory. It was
rightly said that the names of those sculptors who dedicated
themselves to this Arch constituted a roll of honor. The result of their
labors was impressive beyond expectation. The Dewey Arch, though
a temporary structure, lives in our remembrance; it is vivid in our
annals as an example of whole-hearted artistic co-operation; it gave
a precedent for our later historic transformation of Fifth Avenue into
the Avenue of the Allies, an enterprise to which our sculptors once
more devoted their gifts. These rousing masculine gestures of civic
pride have a value. At the very least, they keep the world from
falling into the belief that Fifth Avenue is no more than a bright shop
where beautifully painted flower-face girls choose endless bubbles of
adornment, only to speed away self-regarding yet unsatisfied on
their tiptoe silvery shoes.
It is true that of late there has been grumbling as to the choice
of any arch as a monumental form fitted to express the tribute of
our citizens to patriotism. This disapproval is sometimes warranted,
sometimes merely superficial. The arch, as we shall doubtless see
within the next generation, has its own place in our time;
collaboration between sculptor and architect has never been better
understood than at present. To reject an arch because it obstructs
traffic, because it is out of scale, because it does not fit its
surroundings, because it is needlessly magnificent, because it does
not express the emotion it pretends to express,—all this is very wise,
and important when true. But is it not stupid to reject the arch just
because the Romans liked it? However, discussion as to the value of
the arch in our coming War memorials is beside the mark in looking
back on the Dewey Arch as a fine example of artistic co-operation.
A valuable activity has been the sending out of small sculptures
on tour throughout the country. Commenting on the universal public
need of something with increased beauty to replace the story-telling
Rogers groups of other days, a president of the Society wrote in
1913: “The time was ripe when some four years ago the National
Sculpture Society carefully selected and sent out as a traveling
exhibition nearly two hundred small bronzes which made a circuit of
the museums in some eight or ten of the important cities. The
responsive interest was as immediate as it was unexpected, and
thousands of people gave expression to their pleasure in seeing
what had hardly been known to exist. In Chicago alone, over thirty
thousand persons visited this first exhibition.... This year, under
similar auspices, and the management of the Pittsburgh Art Society,
another collection of entirely different bronzes is passing from one
museum to another, and meeting the same warm reception from the
public.”
Established in New York, the Society has proved by work of this
kind that it is truly National in its aims. Earnest inquiries and knotty
problems are sent to it from all quarters of the United States. At one
time it will be asked to “prepare the program for the competition for
the $100,000 American Baseball Monument.” Again, it will be found
considering the question, “What will it cost to produce 30,000
medals within three weeks?” Only a great moral earnestness joined
to a knowledge of art and some acumen in judging human nature
can properly answer some of the queries submitted.
The Society’s professional membership includes nearly all
persons in the United States who practise the art of sculpture with
dignity and merit; it is safe to say that any renowned sculptor
remaining aloof from the organization is an individualist, doubtless
with a congenital distaste for organized effort. The Society’s lay
membership is an unusually large and distinguished group, made up
in the main of disinterested lovers of art. In addition to the
proverbial reward of virtue, the lay members receive from time to
time some tangible souvenir, such as a small bronze designed by a
sculptor member, or a monograph. These tokens occur often enough
to attest good will, but not so often as to lose the charm of the
unexpected.
The list of professional members reveals a surprisingly large
number of names of women. It will be remembered that Mr. Ward,
that figure of virility personified, cordially invited women sculptors to
become members of the Society, and to join in the deliberations of
the council-table. Chesterton, in his story of Victorian literature, has
emphasized the importance of women writers in the development of
the English novel. In our country, the importance of women engaged
in sculpture as a gainful occupation has steadily increased during the
past half-century. “Enter the race,” said Mr. Ward, “asking no odds!”
Commissions for statues were once given to women, it must be
confessed, out of what Dr. Johnson might call “Pure ignorance,
Madam.” How otherwise can we explain the spectacle of our
chivalrous Congressmen entrusting to a girl of fifteen the making of
a statue of Lincoln? It is indeed said that “all the great sculptors of
the period submitted models, but that the committee, after careful
study, decided that the model of the little Ream girl surpassed all
others.” The child surely had genius; she had the further advantage
of quiet half-hours of study of Lincoln from life.
But to-day,—well, it isn’t supposed to be done! Thanks to the
National Sculpture Society, such competitions are at present
generally conducted with even-handed justice. Nowadays, women
who receive really important sculptural commissions are expected to
deserve them out of the fullness of experience. In 1911, I was
unwise enough to write, apropos of the monumental equestrian
statue, that this field was for man’s working, and that it would not in
the near future offer any very large place aux dames. But it chanced
that the fifth centenary of Jeanne d’Arc fell due soon after, and Miss
Hyatt, paying no attention to my grotesque observation, began work
on her equestrian statue of the Maid. Rarely has any such statue
been studied with as fine a vision of the relative claims of art and
archæology. In 1915, Miss Hyatt’s work was unveiled on Riverside
Drive. It is one of the best-loved monuments in the city of New York;
and from the day of its unveiling, I have forsworn prophecy.
Otherwise, I might be tempted to add that at present, given the
tradition of apprenticeship still keeping its last stronghold in some of
the studios, and given the ease with which assistance may be
obtained for the ruder manual labor, there is no reason why women
may not be trained to solve with success the usual sculptural
problems. “Because they are conscientious, and because they have
imagination,” were the reasons given by a sculptor who employed
women assistants.
The National Sculpture Society’s ideals, to be valuable and
enduring, must concern themselves with the ethical as well as the
artistic side of various questions brought before the body. On the
ethical side, it has, not without inherent difficulties, established its
Code governing Competitions, the Code itself being governed by the
Society’s avowed principle of fostering art with integrity. Year by
year, the good work of this Code is shown by the larger clarity of
purpose and of statement, and the larger conscientiousness in
endeavor now expected alike from committees, competitors, and
juries of award.
Some of the thoughtful idealists of the Society have long wished
that it could undertake as part of its work an enterprise that might
prove of untold value in the arts. “If instead of wrangling so long
and so devotedly over our Code,” said one of these idealists, “we
could have given the time to establishing a workshop for scientific
experiments with our various materials, what immense practical
good might have been accomplished! But it would take money, more
money than our Society has ever had at its disposal.”
The field for such experiment is boundless. Science properly
applied could help the sculptor at every step.
Think what it would mean to the sculptor if he had a plastic
material which by the magic of chemistry could be at once converted
into an imperishable material, exactly as it leaves his hands; or if the
metallurgist would find him an alloy of metals which would take on,
or even hold, a beautiful patine when exposed to our atmosphere; or
if the chemist could explain some of the strange antics and prevent
the misbehavior of that go-between, common plaster, which plays
such a vital part in a sculptor’s work from the clay model to the final
marble or bronze. Plaster is indispensable, in spite of its
shortcomings; could not this lifeless, chalky stuff be transformed into
a substance both durable and interesting? And marble, that
sovereign among materials, is there no way by which its fine white
crystals could be made to take on other tones than those nature has
given? The questions are legion. With the amazing advance of
practical chemistry within the last few years, many of them might be
definitely settled by scientific experiment. It is to be hoped that in
the near future the National Sculpture Society will acquire its needed
research workshop, and put out publications of the results obtained,
so that science may assist art as generously as in an allegory of
mural decoration.
We have spoken of idealists. No member of the Society has
proved himself a more practical idealist than Mr. Lorado Taft, long an
enthusiastic teacher of the modeling classes at the Chicago Art
Institute, and to-day a force for art not only in the Middle West, but
throughout the country. Mr. Taft is the sculptor of the Black Hawk
monument, the grandiose fountain of Time, and other works well-
known indeed, but not because he himself in his thousands of
lectures and in his two important books on sculpture has ever taken
the opportunity to advertise his own talent. The fact is ironic, even
grotesque; by voice and pen Mr. Taft has for years disclosed the
merits of all sculpture save his own. Lesser artists than himself have
been genially interpreted in his vivid and conscientious expositions.
His public service for sculpture, a service now widely welcomed, was
begun in the Middle West, a part of our country which because of its
early settlement by Americans, Germans, and Scandinavians of
enlightened stock, was early interested in artistic endeavor, and
which today has some of our strongest art schools and museums.
Nowhere else could his work have been begun so usefully. As
sculptor, traveler, lecturer, writer, Mr. Taft gives himself with unfailing
zest to that first avowed object of the Society, “to spread the
knowledge of good sculpture.”
During the World War, and throughout the subsequent period of
striving to wrest world betterment out of world bewilderment, the
Society has remained active in its chosen work. The Spring of 1918
saw the opening by the Metropolitan Museum of a permanent
exhibition of contemporary American sculpture; and to quote from a
Bulletin of that time, Mr. French, the honorary president of the
Society, “to whose gallant initiative and untiring endeavor the
success of the undertaking is largely due, is as truly an American
patriot as if he were a very young man with a very new rifle, now
gazing eagerly toward the coast of France.” Robert Aitken and Sherry
Fry, sculptors already distinguished in their profession before serving
abroad with our Army, have doubtless through their military
experience gained something of value to them as artists and as
citizens. By the death of Harry Thrasher, killed near Rheims, the
Society has lost one of its promising members; one who, having
richly profited by his advanced studies at the American Academy in
Rome, seemed at the outbreak of the War to stand on the threshold
of high achievement in art. Those who knew him well have said that
in his work as a sculptor, varied though this was, his genius was
seen at its best in spacious and heroic conceptions, and that had he
been spared, the heroic would have been as fully expressed in his
art as it has been expressed in his life and its final sacrifice. The
recent untimely death of Solon Borglum, an artist in whom a winning
personality was joined to integrity of purpose and originality of
outlook, was doubtless hastened by hardships met during his
devoted service in France. Such men well illustrate the hope of the
National Sculpture Society as to the quality of its membership; as
sculptors and as citizens, they gave themselves to their art and to
their country.
In the stimulating opportunity for exhibition offered to American
sculptors through the courtesy of the group of learned Societies
housed in stately fashion in upper Broadway, the National Sculpture
Society desires once more to show, in a creditable manner and to a
discerning public, the beauty and serviceableness of the art its
members practise. Broadway at 156th Street is unlike any other
Broadway in the world. The air is finer and clearer there than
elsewhere, yet not too fine and good for human nature’s daily
breathing. Very hospitable are the terraces and galleries of the
Hispanic Society, the Numismatic Society, the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, the American Geographical Society, the Heye
Foundation. The National Sculpture Society counts on a dignified
setting such as it has never before enjoyed, together with a
sympathetic collaboration such as it has always appreciated, to
achieve a worthy revelation of sculptured form.
 CHAPTER XI
INFLUENCES, GOING AND COMING

“Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas.”

I
Sometimes we talk as if the present state of things were a sort of
terminus; as if by many roads we had at last reached Rome. Would
it not be wiser to look upon the Olympian Washington and the
Adams Memorial and the lately-discussed Civic Virtue as so many
figures marking stations of a journey by no means finished? We have
had competent leaders in the immediate past of our sculpture; is
there anything in our American way of life and our American view of
art that will prevent our having competent leaders in the future? We
are too close to that question to answer it, beyond saying that we
are full of hope. And art is one of those matters concerning which
despair is criminal. Certainly the chaos resulting from the World War
is not as yet sufficiently transformed for the wisest to know from
what Ark, high and dry on what Ararat, will issue the new hopes of
all mankind. We can only cry out with Galsworthy, not yet are there
enough lovers of beauty among us.
Our introductory chapter noted with some emphasis the fact that
through Jefferson’s hands the realism of France and the idealism of
Italy came to the aid of our new-born plastic art. Houdon happened
to be a greater sculptor than Canova; it was our good fortune that
we had Houdon at all. And Jefferson drew the curtain for a steadily
unfolding act in the drama. Since his day, France and Italy have
always been our chief allies in our sculpture. Because of this, and
because of the Roman origin of most of the British culture our early
settlers brought with them, bred in the bone, it follows that the main
current of American sculpture, in thought, in feeling, and even in
workmanship, has been fed from the boundless streams of
Mediterranean civilization. Now and again, a Celtic influence, a
German influence, a Scandinavian influence has made itself felt, for
better or for worse.
Each new influence as it comes we shall prize for what it is, after
the gloss or shock of novelty is worn off. Each may have an
importance we can but guess at. Saint-Gaudens was deeply
conscious that he had received his legacy of artistic sensitiveness
quite as much from his Irish mother as from his French father, born
in Southern France not far from those sculptured mountains on
which many a French poet and artist opened infant eyes. Perhaps
Celtic glamor was all that made his vision of man somewhat different
from that of many of his comrades at the petite école,—just different
enough to give his later work a chance at immortality, while the
images they shaped had to go back dumb to the clay-pit again. It is
a great gift, the Celtic eye, though making small boast of seeing
things steadily and seeing them whole; ah, nothing so prosaic as
that! Celtic melancholy and Celtic mirth raise up a kind of
shimmering rainbow-dust through which an image is seen in glorious
parts; and Celtic exasperation loves stir more than steadiness. But
the plodders need the seers; and ever since the time of Crawford
and his Past and Present of the Republic, our sculpture has been
graced and enlivened by many a Mac and O; never more so than to-
day. The Wren epitaph fits them even during their lifetime:—
Circumspice.
So in our country as in Britain, the Scottish and the Irish and the
Welsh strains in the blood key up the English-speaking peoples in
their arts of vision and expression. Yet when all such things are said,
(and much more might be said, with unmannerly talk of “creeping
Saxons” and the like) the fact remains that the future art of the
United States is even less easy to foreknow than that of the British
Isles; and this because of what we call our “melting-pot” population,
with all its benefits and drawbacks, its clamorous and conflicting
ideals in art and in morality. The great American alembic is still
seething. Newer forces than any that have come from Britain and
France and Italy are now stirring here. What of these? Mr. Sloane, in
his address on the sculptor Ward, reminded us of the slow evolution
of sculpture, of the long journey between the Memnon and the
Hermes, of the swifter travel between Greek art and our own, and of
our recent return, not only to the classic, but to the oriental. That
inquiring look toward the Orient, a corner of the earth always
revered in occidental art, was never so general as at present. Some
time ago, the studies of our sculptors at the American Academy at
Rome led them to the eastern borders of that richly intricate rim of
the Mediterranean basin; a rim from which we are still plucking
jewels of hitherto unimagined splendor, such as those of Tut-ankh-
Amen’s tomb. But before pressing still farther eastward, let us glance
a moment at the familiar influences of recent formative years.

II
We differentiate too rudely if we say offhand that American
sculpture has learned its art from France, its craft from Italy. The
truth cannot be told so simply as that. For instance, the Piccirillis,
American artists and craftsmen of Italian ancestry, are but a few out
of many talented American sculptors of Italian birth. Again, we went
to France for lessons in casting bronze, as well as in making our
weekly “bonhomme” at the école. Yet for the whole Western world
of sculpture during the past forty years, the strongest general
influence has been that of the French school, and the strongest
single influence that of a Frenchman aloof from the school, Auguste
Rodin. No thinking sensitive person who uses clay to shape his
visions and earn his living has failed to feel Rodin’s influence; it is
already so deeply imbedded in consciousness that many of those
who most imitate this master are least aware of so doing. It would
be a mistake to suppose, because the shouting is over, that this
powerful influence has wholly waned.
We have spoken of the uses of collaboration. But there are souls
that would perish rather than collaborate. Some of these belong in
the ranks of genius, others are distinctly due elsewhere. Of the
former class was Rodin, never willing or able to subject himself to
any architectural tradition. Even while writing of Rodin’s consistent
refusal of collaboration, I hear the ironic voice of M. Anatole France,
a veteran in one art speaking of a veteran in another: “Et surtout,
avouons-le, il collabore trop avec la catastrophe.” And he adds, with
that sparkle of malice veterans allow themselves but not others to
use when speaking of veterans, “Il abuse du droit de casser ce qui,
dans une œuvre, est mal venu.” According to M. France, Rodin
collaborates, and even too much; not with architecture, as a more
conventional soul might, but with architecture’s logical opposite,
catastrophe. It is more fruitful to dwell on the gifts of genius than on
its limitations; yet the limitations also must be noted, whenever blind
worship confuses defects with qualities. It was a limitation (and so
the Société des Gens de Lettres found it) that Rodin could not bring
himself to any architectural conception of his Balzac:—Balzac, more
architecturally minded than even the English novelist Hardy; Balzac,
who will not let you once look at Père Goriot until you have a clear
understanding of the plan and elevation of the sordid pension where
the poor man lives; Balzac, who jealously hides Eugénie Grandet
from you until you have mastered every arch and cornice of the
gloomy mansion that shelters her; Balzac, who insists that you must
know period and style and galleries and window-glass of la maison
Claes before you can peer at Madame Claes. Balzac built his novels
that way because to his mind man’s architecture is part of his life,
his fate, his rôle in the Comédie Humaine. So what Rodin did lacked
basic fitness. In that portrait statue, the Rodin of it was more
precious to him than the Balzac of it; he could make no compromise.
 Now an advancing civilization will make its honorable
compromises; and it seems to me that Saint-Gaudens’s way of
letting the significant winds and waves play about the architectural
pedestal or deck that Farragut bestrides is more civilized than
Rodin’s far simpler way of letting the magnificent head of his Balzac
emerge from monstrous shapelessness to splendor. The Balzac looks
splendidly begun, the Farragut splendidly brought to completion.
There is indeed a charm in things greatly begun. Such things
suggest the untamed glory of the human spirit, and give skyey space
for the beholder’s imagination to dip its wings in. The poorest of us
in looking at them can at least conjecture, if not create. And a very
present refuge for the sculptor is that lump of marble which says
nothing but suggests much in Rodin’s portraits of women, and in
many of his ideal groups with certain surfaces of soft flesh
exquisitely carved in their emergence from the hard stone. Those
melodious modulations of light and shade in flesh are Rodin’s secret;
here his genius is forever happy. That woman’s marble back, for
instance; one thinks that if one should touch it, the skin would yield
and pale and redden again. Rodin himself, in his talk of his own work
and of the classic masterpieces he loved, constantly uses the word
“esprit” rather than “chair,” and from his point of view there is no
inconsistency in that. Gratefully we acknowledge that this master
has showed the wonders of both flesh and spirit. It was well for
American sculpture to applaud both triumphs. What next?
Next, there were certain mannerisms better left unlearned by
our students; for example, that use of large extremities, a choice
announcing a healthy abhorrence of prettiness. We have seen in our
land many a Bertha Broadfoot and many a Helen of the Large Hand
created by those who had not Rodin’s excuse for this avoidance of
conventional proportion; they were not revealing the scarce-finished
new beings of Paradise, or the muscular striding bulk of a John the
Baptist in the wilderness. There is yet another mannerism filched by
admiring disciples; perhaps it is something less superficial than a
mannerism. We need not take M. France too seriously when he says
of M. Rodin, “Il me sémble ignorer la science des ensembles.” It is a
saying fitter to live in the flow of talk than to be embalmed in print;
yet it draws blood, too, with its prickly edge of truth. Rodin’s
ensembles are his own, not those of sane tradition; his imitators’
ensembles are often pitifully less good than those of either Rodin or
the school. That is serious! At the present moment, many American
War monuments are in the making; too many, perhaps, are casting
away collaboration and tradition. Their creators seem unaware that
they are under an influence; they think they are showing originality,
preaching the gospel of simplicity, and in a really messianic way,
calling architecture to repentance.
But, nowhere is the architectural conception of work more
necessary than in a new country. Without that conception, these
United States would be besprinkled with productions richer in the
one virtue of individuality than in the many virtues of order, unity,
harmony, an underlying sense of natural evolution and continuity.
Our civilization is not yet jaded, and does not yet need prickings
toward variety. For American sculpture, the lesson of Rodin’s genius,
as distinct from the lesson of the school, is that of the titanic
conception and the exquisite morceau, but not that of harmonious
collaboration. Meanwhile, it is cheering to see that the singular
doctrine of deformation distilled in France by vigorous modern
followers of Rodin is at present neglected here; when we turn
modernist, as sometimes happens, we choose the path of
abstractions, seeking perhaps Epstein’s “form that is not the form of
anything,” rather than form amplifying itself into ugliness, in defiance
of classic balance and measure. In fact, a recent piece of the new
poetry, written about a recent piece of the new sculpture tells us
that

“the immaculate
conception
of the inaudible bird
occurs
in gorgeous reticence.”
Gorgeous reticence is perhaps preferable to gorgeous loquacity.

III
For a long time, and without conspicuous success, Mr. Howells
tried to show his friends the beauty of Russian realism. Apparently
much of the American appreciation that did not go out to Turgenev
was being saved for Chekhov, and for those later realists whose
writings chime with the discords and disillusions of the
“expressionism” now making itself felt in various arts. Both here and
in England, the Russian influence is visible in literature. But sculpture
is slower than literature to accept the exotic; sculpture’s magisterial
weight and bulk, and its supposed permanence, help to make it
more self-contained and less mercurial in its reactions. And indeed
all the Russian influence our sculpture has hitherto met has been of
the Gallic variety; Troubetskoy’s brilliant pleinairiste modeling is as
French as Marie Bashkirtseff’s painting. Meanwhile, Russian peasant
drama is having its brightly colored successes here, in our richest of
American cities, especially among those of our intelligentsia who can
afford the price of admission, or who as critics make their living by
appraising novelties in art. Since American criticism is often created
by youth and for youth, its various impregnable positions shift with a
rapidity that has a certain advantage for a listening public; no one
who is guided by a youthful Mentor needs to remain long in any one
error. But Heaven forbid that youth, and most of all opinion-shaping
youth, should abandon a generosity of outlook toward foreign
products of the mind!
To speak seriously, it will be interesting to know just how the
increasing Slavic element in our population will influence our
country’s arts in general, and our self-contained art of sculpture in
particular. When a teacher of art remarks, in some dubiety, “So
many of our students have names that end in ‘sky’,” the only gallant
retort is, “It is our business to be sure that they make no worse end
than that.” Not the least of art’s problems here in America is that
universal American problem of the unassimilated alien. Optimists and
pessimists can unite in one opinion; that our latest immigrants, no
less than those of the Mayflower, have certain native qualities that
need alteration for the benefit of the human race. The Puritan has
altered for the better. Later comers must do likewise. Some of these
have a far harder task than the Puritans, with less ability to perform
it; but they have infinitely more help.
Mr. John Corbin, in one of his penetrating studies of dramatic
art, has pointed out “two stages of American provincialism.” One
stage rejects all foreign culture; the other embraces anything
foreign, provided that it is abundantly subversive of domestic ideals
and labors and attainments. Both stages are hostile to truth and to
progress, and to the only freedom there is, freedom of the spirit.
The first type wilfully stunts growth; the second invites destruction
of growth already accomplished by costly effort. Surely American
sculpture, which has borrowed eagerly abroad and developed
soundly at home, should not fall into either of these degenerate
modes of thinking.
“Quid quisque vitet,” says Horace, with his canny Roman
philosophy,—“What hourly to avoid is known by none.” What hourly
to accept is our modern question. Since a man’s foes may be of his
own household, what if our own home-grown materialism were after
all the worst enemy of our art? It will do little good to fly feverish
alien contacts if at the same time things of the spirit are allowed to
languish at our own ancestral firesides. Sometimes the firesides
themselves seem less frequent, as ancestors diminish in the world’s
esteem. True, our tawdry and vehement self-advertising has its
magnificent dreams, and our childlike faith in the dollar its occasional
glorious hour of justification; we cannot help seeing that some of
our transatlantic co-workers in art and letters come among us
remembering those things. And it is a healing principle of civilization
that we shall borrow our light from one land, and divide our loaf
with another; even though loaves are wasted thereby. Every lover of
our country will wish its culture to remain at once hospitable and
self-respecting; both characteristics may dwell harmoniously
together.
In spite of superficial indications such as those offered by the
names in a city telephone directory, the core and nucleus of general
culture in the United States remains English-speaking; more, it
remains true to ideals of human conduct and human responsibility
that have been fruitfully developed and cherished by the English-
speaking peoples. Whatever lightly-accepted beliefs there may be in
regard to this matter, I am persuaded that the broad basis of
American culture is and will be our Puritanism. Not the narrow,
mote-seeking Puritanism of past story, but an enlightened, liberating
Puritanism, with perceptions and pardons for others, and with
questionings as to its own supposed superiorities; a Puritanism that
has gained in grace and goodness through native development and
happy alien contacts. How often we have mumbled an ancient
shibboleth to the effect that art and morality have nothing in
common! On the contrary, they have the one supreme aspiration of
human beings in common; the benefit of the race. It is the little
artist who proclaims himself different from other men, and so not
subject to their laws; the great artist strives to bring his personality
and his work into harmony with the best that he knows of human
effort. Magnanimous men and women unconsciously reveal their
longing that their work may live after them for the happiness of
mankind. Ward on his death-bed, finally assured that all is well with
the great equestrian that had engaged his last thoughts, whispers to
his wife, “Now I can go in peace.” Saint-Gaudens in the later pages
of his Memoirs writes of the knowledge of the beautiful: “I know it is
a question whether such a knowledge increases the general
happiness and morality of a community. I firmly believe it does, as I
believe that any effort to do a thing as well as it can be done,
regardless of mercenary motives, tends to the elevation of the
human mind.”
 VICTORY
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
THE GILLISS PRESS
 Transcriber’s Notes
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forms retained here.
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