The feature photoplay

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION FOREWORD

PART I— THEORY L— THE FEATURE PHOTOPLAY ... 3 Evolution ; Viewpoints of Audience, Producer and Writer; the Exhibitor's Problems ; Types and Duration ; Essentials.

Part Ii— Technique Ix.— The Big Idea 93

Technique as Interpreter ; the Purpose of Art and Photodrama ; Eternal Coddling ; Visualized Emotion ; Popular Psychology ; Thematic Requirements ; Impressionism ; What is a Big Idea ; Endurance.

X.— PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT ... 98 Definition ; Materials ; Sources; Problem of Originality ; What is Counterplot; Differentiation; Germ, Fragment, and Complete Plot.

XL— DRAMA'S CONVERGING LINES . . 105 Contrast ; in Terms of Emotion ; Emotion vs. Feeling ; Conflict, Struggle, Conquest ; Dramatic Unities ; the Dra-

iv

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

raatic Sense; the Dramatic Opportunity ; the Diagram ; the Ever Tightening Lines.

XII.— LIFE-GIVING MOTIVATION . . . 118 Planting Motivation ; Contrast Again ; the Part of Interest; Organism vs. Organization ; the Snappy Beginning ; the Effect of Counterplot ; Action and Movement ; Reason for Things ; Happenings ; Compression ; Deeds ; the Lead Motivates ; Expectation ; Idea in Action ; Appeal to Sensations ; Action and Reaction.

XIII.— SEQUENCE, SUSPENSE AND CON- SEQUENCE 124

Producing in Sequence ; the Surprise ; Chronological and Logical Sequence ; the Snappy Beginning ; Counter Plot ; Inevitable Consequence ; Interest ; the Obstacle ; Suspense Breeders ; the Line of Least Resistance.

XIV.— COINCIDENCE, CRISIS AND CLI- MAX 135

Necessity of Cumulative Effect; Establishing Coincidents ; Crisis Incomplete ; Dangers of Coincidence ; Crisis and Situation ; Anti-Climax ; the Punch ; Importance of Climax; Harmony; Beginning with the Climax ; Appealing to the Sensations ; Preparation for the Event.

PART III.— PRACTISE XV.— THE VALUE OF AN OUTLINE . . 147 Visualization ; Art and Psychology ; Coincidence Again ; Mechanical Plus

CONTENTS

Artistic ; Impressionism ; Elements of Interest ; Contrast and Motivation ; Beginning, Middle, and End ; Harmony ; Repetitive Effects.

XVI.— DEFINITIONS OF WORKING TERMS 157 Title ; Motive ; Cast ; Outline ; Synopsis ; Continuity ; Scenario ; Manuscript ; Photoplay ; Photodrama ; Plot, Complete Plot, Plot Fragment, Plot Germ.

XVII.— CASTING CHARACTERS .... 162 Characters vs. Actors ; Not Pantomime ; Expression, Not Acting ; Husks or Spirit ; Symbols Again ; Interpreters Only ; Spiritual Meetings ; Star System ; Revealing Motif ; "Character" Roles ; Expression Emphatic but not Exaggerated; Differentiation; Leads and Good and Bad Characters ; Interplay ; Naturalness.

XVIII.— BUILDING BY PARTS 173

Beginning with the Climax ; Plotting Methods ; Questions to be Answered ; Part Building ; Diagram and Counterplotting ; Climaxes ; Motivation.

XIX.— THE READABLE SYNOPSIS ... 178 Mental Building ; Visualization Again ; Importance of Character ; Silent Drama ; Length of Synopsis ; Suggestion ; Motivation ; Immediacy ; Paragraphic Sequences ; Harmony ; Vision ; Desire and Struggle ; Style and Tempo ; Literary Garnishings ; Readibility ; Play of an Hour; All There is to Tell; Concrete Action.

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CONTENTS PART IV— DEMONSTRATION

CHAPTER PAGE

XX.— THE WORKING SCENARIO ... 205 Test of a Scene ; Texture of Ideas ; Scene and Set ; Action and Reaction ; Crying Need ; Location and Environment ; Interpreters Only ; Interest and Coincident ; Motivation and Plausibility ; Captions ; Technique ; Sequence and Harmony ; Nothing Static ; Emphatic but not Exaggerated ; Progressive Play ; Movement and Action ; Tempo ; Methods ; Naturalness ; Diagram and Counterplot; Use of Dialogue.

XXL— SEVERAL EFFECTIVE CASTS . . 218 "The Romance of a Self-Made Widow" ; "The Princess from the Poorhouse" ; "Heiress for a Day."

XXIL— AN ACCEPTED SYNOPSIS ... 226 "Pierre Le Grand."

XXIIL— SCENARIOS THAT HAVE BEEN

DONE 268

"One of Us" ; "Just a Song at Twilight" ; "Bonnie Annie Laurie"; "The Red Republic."

Introduction

DURING my ten years of daily print contact with the ever-growing motion-picture world, several facts have been poignantly outstanding.

The foremost of these facts has been an insatiable hunger for motion-picture knowledge. A department has been maintained by demand from the first issue of my publications, known as "The Answer Man." No fact is too small, no detail too trivial, no incident too personal, for the inquisitiveness of motion-picture "fans."

But there have been many serious inquiries as well. One of the most persistent of these has been, "What is a Photoplay?" On first thought, an adequate answer seems obvious. Why, a Photoplay is — is — We can, and have, answered it in a dozen or more ways. But the answers were never broad comprehensive, nor profound enough. To define the Photoplay in a word or two, is like trying to girt the earth with a tape-measure.

It is because this Photoplay is such a great and wonderful subject, that defies a brief or a hasty definition, that it has become the great medium of universal entertainment.

And this persistent question is being asked just as much in studios everywhere today: What is a Photoplay? There are nods, there are shakes of

INTRODUCTION

the head, there are grave replies and flippant responses — but there is also a wide awaking to the fact that one is not quite so sure after all just exactly what is the nature of this Eighth Wonder of the world. A dozen people will give you a dozen answers — all different.

There have been many books written about the screen in general, and there have been scores written telling aspirants How to Write Photoplays. But I do not know one that has even approached the text that follows this Introduction, in delving into the darkest depths of Photodrama and emerging triumphant with a clear, concise, yet well-rounded, answer to the baffling question — which I have often found myself repeating — What is a Photoplay?

But this text offers a rare additional service, which cannot go unappreciated, for it tells How to Write a Photoplay!

Eugene V. Brewster

A Picture is one thing, Drama another; one is the still re-presentation of an Image that was in the mind of an Artist, the other is the living presentation of an Emotion that is in the heart of an Audience.

SEVERAL years have elapsed since the publication of my first book on the cinema art — "The Photodrama." These have been years of sunshine and harvest. All that I had dared to dream of the newest Art has been justified by an occasional glimpse of new buds of promise that have contained some of the imperishable grandeur of the perfect flower.

The Spectacle of "Intolerance" will never fade from the human vision that has once glimpsed it. Therein millions of spectators sensed the bigness of their own littleesteemed souls as they peered back a thousand years through the ten-acre sweep of a great genius's vision ensnared on a mite of a screen.

The greatest canvas painted by the greatest artist never gave us half the breath-taking perspective of some of those scenes of "Intolerance." The greatest dramatic Spectacle or Pageant ever before staged never put half so many people in action. Fiction only attempts to stimulate the imagination by suggesting the presence of such great numbers of people spread over such a great area.

Thus we find three of the greatest of the Fine Arts would be beggared in trying to furnish a vision similar to that to be found in a single expression of a single phase of the Art of the Photodrama.

But we find something in this newest of the Arts that none other of the Fine Arts has ; that is, the animated deed — the verisimilitude of Life itself!

It is no less idle to contend that the Photodrama will usurp the spheres of other mediums of artistic expression, than it is to insist that the Photodrama is ephemeral and but the whim of a restless public.

The Arts are etern«i verities; and because we have lived to see the miracle of a new medium of artistic expression emerge from the brain of science, like a latter-day Athena, there is no reason to conclude, like the yokel who gazed for the first time on the unbelievable lines of the camel, that it is "Impossible! There is no such animal!"

The painted canvas is one thing; the animated screen another. The expression of the technical artist in fashioning either of them to produce even a similar impression on a spectator, is as different as night from day. One has the glory of the sun — take your choice — another the glory of the moon, and still others have the glory of the stars. Let us thank heaven for the number and range of the Fine Arts.

We have lived, then, to see not only the birth of a new Art, but also its day of acclamation. We are privileged to be contemporaneous with the arrival of a new medium for the expression of the infinite. We may now see with our eyes the eternal, living vision just as it was created in the soul of Man- With-A-Message.

Let him who doubts the birth of a new Art, stand outside the cinema theaters of the world, at noon, at dusk, or at night, and try to count — if he can during the years of his life — the millions that enter in the span of a single day!

If he still doubts, let him enter one of the lowliest of these temples of the new Art. In that single shrine he will find sufficient emotion released to shatter the soul of the strongest man God has created, if it were housed in a single breast. And if he still doubts, let him witness "Civilization," "The

Birth of a Nation," "The Barrier" — any one of them. Let him count the tears that fall, if he can. Then let him stand up and if he dares declare, "This is all fol-de-rol!"

And if he still doubts — and there are those who do — he is a fool. For that which daily can move a million to laugh and cry is, verily, nothing short of a Fine Art.

A strange paradox has risen, however, in that the small number of possible doubters are not always to be found among the vast audience that daily witness the new Drama, but among the manufacturers who make it possible to produce the Photodrama.

There seems to be a doubt of the classification of the cinema Art. Is it a matter of progressive Pictures or one of cumulative Drama, that is the question?

Thus we find producers who are subordinating the principle of Drama to the practice of employing fine Pictures. The idea seems to be that an unbroken series of pleasing Pictures are more essential than a chain of gripping situations that may have nothing scenically pleasing about them. Scenes are only a means to our dramatic end.

That a director has at his command a splendid estate that may be photographed, or an actress a dozen handsome gowns spoiling to be worn, or an actor a fine riding horse that needs exercising, or the studio a ballroom set all ready for a glittering dance, are quite aside from the question of putting on a play the dramatic action of which calls for scenes laid exclusively among the po' whites in the mountains of Kentucky. Many an enterprising producer is prone to the temptation of subverting his Drama to meet the employment of his immediate Scenic Equipment.

Thus do we witness many a fine dramatic idea that has been garbled to afford a vehicle for the scenery and settings at hand. One company used to have a menagerie that was continually eating its head off unless the wild beasts could appear daily — which they did in the most amazing places. Several other companies have expensive screen children who are forced upon parents who were never dramatically constituted to have children.

Beautiful Pictures on the screen are only animated photographs, unless they enhance the dramatic atmosphere, suspense or climax. Appropriate beauty is always a desirable attribute of Art.

Next we have the sensational Pictures in which the thrilling sensation is supposed to take the place of the Dramatic Situation. For instance, an entire passenger train is run into an open draw-bridge in order that the villain may wreak vengeance on the hero. Hundreds of innocent passengers are scenically destroyed — but the hero is rescued! Thus we prove that the scene was devised as a scenic sensation and not as a dramatic contingency at all.

On the other hand, it would have been highly dramatic for the villain to set out to kill our hero and to meet with some accident that imperils his life and then to be rescued by a man at the risk of his life — who turns out to be our hero!

It is not beyond the imagination of a child to conceive the aforesaid railroad wreck; in fact, this is the child's way of obtaining effects. The Dramatic Situation is not so easy and demands the knowledge, execution and foresight of the Artist. The one calls for the risk of both life and property; the other, an exercise of simple histrionic talent. The one calls for a Spectacle, a mob, fury, a blare of trumpets; the other needs only a Keynote Scene, two people, the gentlest of emotions, the fading notes of a piano.

Finally, in the Spectacle, or the multiplereel Super-Feature Play, we have been wont to find all of the aforementioned defects. Glaring emphasis has been laid on Picture and sensationalism; little thought or anxiety has been spent on Dramatic cohesion and effect.

Never has such a Spectacle been devised as "Intolerance." Yet that marvelous series of pictures reveals to us Mr. Griffith's shortcoming — of which like so many other director-geniuses he does not seem to have been aware — namely, his want of sheer Dramatic cohesion. Mr. Griffith sadly needs a collaborator. Yoke with him a dramatist of the first rank and the two could make the artistic world tremble.

There is no reason, then, why the Super Motion Picture, the sensational Picture, and the Spectacle Picture may not eventually become welded into the fabric of the Feature Photoplay. While there are today a few companies only that realize the distinction between Pictures and Photoplays, it is to be hoped that all will soon come to feel the shortcomings of the former and seriously strive to attain the latter's degree of perfection.

In the hope of making that distinction clear in the minds of those who seek the information and knowledge, I am writing this, the first book to appear dealing with the construction and contradistinctions of The Feature Photoplay.

Henry Albert Phillips.

I

THEORY

Whether or not a given product shall be deemed a Feature is left to the Producer to decide; that it be first and last a Play is the only concern of the Writer.

CHAPTER I evolution; viewpoints of audience, producer and writer; the exhibitor's problem; TYPES AND DURATION; ESSENTIALS.

TODAY and forever all those concerned in the making of photoplays may well say, "The world is ours!"

This is the mere statement of a commonly accepted fact. Two powerful conditions, fortunately, govern that possessive pronoun "ours"; namely, Business prowess and Artistic merit. These conditions impose competition, which is the commercial prescription for a healthy life.

The survival of the fittest has always seemed a cruel law to the unfit and fh<t unfitted, who in consequence are ejected from the high places they may have usurped by reason of their brilliant audacity. What really happens is, that that slow acting creature, the Intelligent Public, rebels when it realizes that the Industry is being belittled by its products, or the Art is being outraged by its interpreters.

The world-wide audience ot the Photodrama has come to comprehend its infinite capacity for entertainment and now recognizes its claim to a niche among the Fine Arts. With this recognition comes the intermittent demand of the multitude that the constructive parts of the produced Photoplay be equal to the artistic whole of the Photodrama.

Cinematography occupied nearly twenty years in passing from the dark confines of a mere mechanical curiosity to the dazzling heights of a new and permanent Art.

The mechanical phenomenon of animated photographs was destined to be short-lived as a form of entertainment. Curiosity alone prompted the expenditure of the required admission fee, and that curiosity was forever satiated by the murky presentment of some person or object in some commonplace motion on which most of the audience would not waste its attention, in actual life.

It took several years for the Cinema to progress from the simulation of mere motion to the imitation of Real Life. It was still mechanics, but the new element attracted a new audience. Several years again passed before episodes of pursuit, peril, and comic sequence began to appear. Curiosity had been supplanted by sensation. More than half the world loves a sensation when it can get it, and most of these became acquainted with sensation in the well-named "moving" pictures.

Another long period of experimentation, and suddenly the imitation of life in general, was merged into the portrayal of a single life, or group of lives, in particular. Pictures grew into stories! A miracle had happened. Curiosity had been whetted, senses thrilled, to be sure. But now — greater by far than either of these phenomena — the emotions were stirred.

Exactly what happened from now on does not concern us so much, for that is mere history. What we students are seeking is enlightening psychology. For we must have recognized some analogy, in the groping progress of Photoplay evolution, to the revealing of the spark of our own talent that glimmered through the years of our mechanical periods of endeavor. Once within sight of the divine fire, however, then we know that our tiny spark is nothing less, and our steadfast aim shall be to lift our spark of true inspiration into an intense, mighty conflagration of perfect effort.

And so it is with Photoplay production. Now that we have arrived at a stage in its psychology where we catch an occasional glimpse of its dramatic potentiality and its pictorial possibility, our audiences will not remain contented with any exhibition that is totally devoid of artistic value.

It has become necessary at this point of the Cinema's development to turn from its mechanical organization to its artistic organism. In the mere fact that the emotions of miscellaneous groups of people had been stirred again and again, lay amazing possibilities. In the Cinema's emotional appeal alone its artistic leanings might have been vaguely sensed though its depth of feeling, ultimate breadth of appeal, and heights of magnificence were as yet unknown quantities.

In the early analyses of the nature of the entertaining qualities of cinema presentation, an error crept in that has been a common stumbling block ever since. The aforesaid error grew out of the misconception that

Moving Picture presentation was nothing more or less than a new and artistic rendering of other Arts, or semi-arts, of long established reputation.

(EXAMPLE i.) We saw repeated efforts to reproduce, almost verbatim, the Novel ("Tess of the D'Urbervilles") ; the Short Story (O. Henry's); the Poem ("The Children's Hour"); the Song ("After The Ball"); the Drama ("Arizona"); Pantomime (the majority of early efforts were nothing more); Vaudeville (Charlie Chaplin, in "One A. M." particularly) ; Slap-Stick (Keystone Comedy) ; Extravaganza ("Wizard of Oz") ; Spectacle ("Cabiria") ; the Circus ("When The Circus Broke Loose") ; History ("Joan The Woman") ; — with what lack of gratification to the audience the reader is left to judge.

Re-presentation at its best is only imitation. An imitation may be artistic to an esthetic degree, but it is never Art. Art implies creation, originality, effective presentation. By creation, we do not mean the creation of an Idea; that is impossible, once we form our Ideas from concepts that rush into our minds. Art does demand, however, the creation of a unique medium for the expression of Ideas (the older and more universal the Ideas are, the better) in terms or symbols of emotional understanding. Art demands a treatment that conforms to the high standards of its specific mediums and an original Developi.ient of a subject-matter, on the part of the Artist, that is inspired. Art demands of both its craftsmen and their selection and treatment of subject-matter that they conform with those exigencies of expression that govern a given medium and contribute to its effective presentation

To appreciate a work of Art, one needs to be endowed only with a sympathetic heart brought into service through an intelligent mind. To build a work of Art, or to essay sound criticism of such, one must be gifted with a fine feeling for Beauty plus a practical knowledge of the mechanics essential to giving it effective expression. A knowledge of its Technique is a prerequisite to the comprehension of a given form of Art.

Technique is governed by rules that restrain the untutored mind. Art is guided by laws that liberate the refined emotions.

Not until Photoplay producers — editors, directors, governing boards and proprietors ; actors and playwrights — come to a full comprehension of the nature, construction, and limitations of the new form of Art expression, may we expect it to take its rightful place among the Fine Arts.

For Photodrama is a distinct form of artistic expression as essentially different in its construction and expression from other forms, as existing forms differ from each other.

(EXAMPLE 2.) Take the Famous Players Company. This company had for its raison d'etre rich treasures in stage plays collected for several decades by the most astute and successful producer our stage has known. "Famous Players interpreting Famous Playzvrights," was its slogan. Moving pictures were to ascend to their sublime destiny without delay! What really happened was nothing at all. Several stage plays were reproduced with results more flat than flattering. Soon the same company sent forth a piercing cry for material that would be adaptable to the screen.

Accepting Photodrama, then, as an individual Art, we will consider the problems that led to the creation of the Feature Photoplay as their solution.

Just as the first crude attempts to create material for the screen came from the mechanics of the film manufactories, so did the first blind steps to dictate the length of the plays come from the merchants at the box offices.

Artistic temperament chafes under the restraint of the horny hand of trade, but it is usually this same rough hand that makes the impractical dream of the Artist an everyday Art for the people. Manufacturers had ushered an Art into being and exhibitors had brought together audiences eager to see its presentation. It was left to the play-makers to study and standardize the new Art, to master its potential and esthetic moods, and finally to meet and blend both the peculiar limitations of production with the world-wide boundaries of presentation.

The human audience is much the same the world over. It must first appreciate the entertainment it is being offered. If that entertainment is good, the audience should enjoy it. Yet every audience has its limitation of enjoying its favorite entertainment. That limitation being reached, any play will begin to pall.

As the quality of Cinema production improved and Pictures began to grow into Plays, it was evident that audiences would not only acquiesce to longer productions, but that they actually relished them. They were gradually given as much as they could stand, until today every audience in the world would clamor for the longer play if it were taken away from them.

(EXAMPLE 3.) Primitive exhibits began with short strips of film upon which any animated objects were jerkily seen to move (a flag waving, etc.) Then followed 200-foot subjects wherein a definite movement was carried out from beginning to ena (a horse race). Followed 600 to 1,000 feet as the reel became a standard of measurement (humaninterest began its development through exploits). The split-reel began to fill a current need (storyinterest became timidly apparent in half-reel lengths that were supplemented by educational subjects to fill out the reel). Story interest supplanted all other "entertainment" motives (the one-reel play became a standard length). Two-reel subjects were essayed (one reel of which generally consisted of the inevitable "chase"). With the advent of the threereelers, the craze for the Spectacle began that seems likely to crop up periodically (spectacles zigzagged between 6-, 8-, and even 12-reel offerings. Into the midst of these vague gro ping s-ab out for an effective, comfortable, and perfect form of picturestory expression that would fit the manufacturers' reel-standardization, that would satisfy the commercial problems of the exhibitors, and that would gratify the audiences because of its pleasing, length, and form, the 5-reel Photoplay sprang into immediate popularity.

The pioneer exhibitor had constantly sought something about the numerous short plays that would stand out as a special "feature." He had to choose either a bill composed entirely of short subjects or of a single elephantine spectacle — if indeed his contract permitted any choice in the matter at all.

The 5-reel, or Feature Photoplay, as we shall term it hereafter, fortunately made its bid for favor at a time when exhibitors began to enjoy a more liberal and independent service by the breaking up of the existing monopoly among the manufacturers. They saw at once that they could retain their short pictures, musical offerings, and what not, but furthermore they could offer in addition a 5-reeler as a special feature.

Now we have arrived at a point where we may intelligently examine and discuss The Feature Photoplay.

Standard Form ts not an arbitrary Detail of a passing Mood, but a composite Assemblage of all that has proved effective in past Expression.

CHAPTER II Dividing the Play into Parts — and Why

comparisons; the play of the hour; precedents; MECHANICAL HARMONY; PSYCHOL- OGY OF INTEREST.

JUST as variety is said to be the spice of life, so is variation the secret of continued attention. As huge solid bodies repel physical effort, so does any unbroken mass weary the human powers of interest. All forms of genuine entertainment are therefore subject to the laws of esthetic fragmentation.

(EXAMPLE 4.) Music has its rhythm, recurring motif, and refrain; Literature has its sentence, paragraph and chapter; Poetry has its meter, verse, and stanza; Drama has its lines, scenes, and acts.

A book without punctuation, paragraphs, or even chapters would be an appalling tome despite the most alluring contents. A stage play of an hour or more, presented in continuous sequence without regard to acts, or crises, curtains or scenes, would fail to gratify.

Yet the primitive days of all Arts saw them making their first appeal in massive inarticulateness that at length became divided into harmonious Parts, just as the sculptor begins with a crude piece of stone and ends with a perfect human counterpart so cunningly sub-divided as to make a convincing whole.

The Feature Photoplay is subject to the same law of limited consecutive attention and prolonged interest. Its mile of film, composed of 14,000 "frames" and divided into 200 to 600 Scenes, corresponds to a book, for example, of 14,000 words (or frames), and punctuated with 200 to 600 Scenes. Call the Captions paragraphs and the Inserts extra punctuations, if you will. We still have, however, the equivalent of the Novel without chapter divisions.

Sentences, paragraphs, and punctuation are after all concerned more with the intrinsic unities of the matter of which a composition is made up, than with the esthetic harmony of the emotions on which the appeal depends. Any technical device that deepens the emotional appeal and adds to the esthetic value of an Art-work, automatically becomes an essential to its Art-life.

With its 5,000 feet of film, its multitudinous Scenes, its connecting Captions, and its dividing Inserts, the Feature Photoplay still lacks the most potential device at its command for obtaining dramatic effects; namely, a further division into larger units, or Parts, that is in many ways like that employed in the construction of Acts in the Stage Play. It is the division into Acts that makes the Stage Play the delightful vehicle it has become, just as it is the division of the book into Chapters that so greatly adds to the pleasure of reading it. The same technique applied to the construction of the Feature Photoplay, wherein the Part is made an effective device, will be a long step toward the upbuilding of a perfect Photodrama.

On first thought, the conscious dividing of the Feature Photoplay into concrete Parts, may strike one as inviting an unnecessary artificiality. Second thought will disclose that Art in general, and the Art of the Photodrama in particular, is an artificial design from beginning to end, simulating Life through the stimulation of Vision. Every process, small or large, is an artificial device seeking out the approval and the co-operation of the mind and the emotions of man-alive. The progressive writer is ever seeking new means to his end of heightening effects that will induce greater reality.

Accepting our medium — the Photodrama — as an Art, any device employed in its expression should meet two tests. The first is the esthetic, or the test of Beauty; the second is Power, or the test of appeal. One concerns the effect on the mind, the other the effect on the emotions.

Let us take the first. It is commonly called "form," or good form. No work, or achievement, is perfect that is not in good form. Good form implies symmetry. Symmetry means balance. But it does not mean mathematical balance, with precisely two and two on either side of each equation. While the whole of Art is equal to the sum of all its parts, just as Mathematics is, it arrives at its equations in a less hackneyed, though none the less absolute, manner. Art's progress in symmetry is measured by cycles, recurrence, and periodicity.