Some issues remain concerning Dow?s proposals in his book, Composition. Is there any reason why Dow emphasized the concept of notan (dark-and-light), the second element in his synthetic method of teaching art? He devoted half of his book to identifying and defining its conception. It is easy to understand why Dow defined the concept of line as the first element of teaching art, because Chinese and Japanese traditional ink-painting has emphasized lines. The concept of notan has not come from Chinese traditional painting, but has been borrowed from Japanese art. His book includes illustrations, all of which were from Japanese traditional brush drawing.
Three American and British researchers refer to the concept of notan. Logan (1955) defines it as describing ?value, or dark and light? (p.110). Wilson (1974) regards it as ?describing the contrast of light and dark? (p.258). Macdonald (1970) says much the same thing, that ?Notan, so dominant in Japanese art, is the balance of light and dark areas, a different concept from representation of natural light and shades as understood by nineteenth-century teachers? (p.348). These various interpretations of notan illustrate the confusion that Westerners have had about this esoteric Japanese concept.
The original Japanese word notan actually consists of two Chinese words: ?No? and ?Tan.? ?No? means degrees such as depth, darkness, thickness, concentration, strength, or density. ?Tan? has the meanings of light, faint, pale, fleeting, or transitory. Thus, notan means the degree or gradation of subtle tone, excluding pure white and pure black, by which subjective feelings are represented and fused together. I think Macdonald's definition is closest to Dow?s intention in adopting the Japanese word notan. What notan expresses is aesthetic awareness of tone sensibility. It is not mechanically or systematically structured but subjectively organized in a state of composing or fusing light and dark on the surface of a drawing. Saunders provides a description closer to the real meaning of the word Notan than Macdonald does. Saunders (1966) writes: ?Notan is not just black and white (a two-value system) but includes gray in a three-value system or degree of gray in a more than three-value system? (p.9).
I will now make reference to the 1913 edition of Dow?s Composition. In the book, Dow makes a careful distinction between notan as ?an element of universal beauty? and light and shadow as ?a single fact of external nature? (p.8). It is clear that Dow used the term notan in the broadest sense possible, which entails much more than does in the term ?value? as an element of modern design in the German Bauhaus system of design education. He carefully added two hyphens to translate Notan: ?Dark-and-Light.? Dow regards painting as visual music. The quality of making the natural scene a good subject for a picture is ?the ?visual music? that the Japanese so love in rough ink paintings of their masters where there is but a hint of facts? (Dow, 1913, p.54). The idea of visual music was borrowed from Fenollosa.
The characteristics of dark and light (notan) are artistic, not scientific. The artistic character of notan has come from the interaction of ink, paper, and water through brush strokes. Yashiro (1969) called it ?a sense of stained quality,? which contributes to various aspects of Japanese art. He concludes that the artist engaging in the work of ink-painting would experience a complete transformation of his/her attitudes towards art from representatism to spiritualism.
In an effort to philosophically generalize the specific term notan, Dow (1913) termed it as the ?essential quality.? It needs to integrate ?dark and light space,? to construct ?tone-composition,? and to build up ?harmony.? He valued the importance of ?Notan-beauty? much more than line and color because half of his book Composition is devoted to an explanation of the term notan. Dow says that the fundamental fact is that synthetically related masses of dark and light convey an impression of beauty, which is entirely independent of the categorical meaning, but dependent on the aesthetic and qualitative response to a hint of facts.
When one looks unfocused at the surface of a thing, one may find something like a chaos of dark and light. Dow (1913) calls it ?tone-composition.? Whether before or after you recognize it as something like a patch of damp, a tea mark, or an ink stain, its subtle quality of dark and light reminds you of an imaginative object or associative event. Both are enlarged by ?the power and mystery? into an organic whole of association (Dow, 1913, p.53). Complex tones of dark-and-light in ink-painting are more valued than coloring in oil painting. Dow recognized such pervasive quality not through European but through Oriental art, especially Japanese pre-modern traditional painting. He believed that the term notan was suitable for representing the essential quality in teaching aesthetic appreciation.
The term notan becomes one property. Dow used it to talk about the structural method of art teaching. Thus, ?art,? says Dow (1911), ?is studied in this way in Japan? and ?designers for the great Japanese industries of lacquer, metal, and textile, are trained by the pure Japanese (synthetic) method? (p.232). Notan becomes a center of the effort to synthesize ?the action of the human mind in harmony building? (p.231). It is too mechanical to specify the quality of harmony as ?visual music.? The meaning of notan is close to something that is qualitatively felt. Viewing a phenomenon of notan, such as an ink-stain, can disclose the quality of harmony as visual music. Saunders (1966) sees the word notan as haveing ?only historical meaning? (p.9). Notan, however, makes us see an exploratory model for the vividness of quality in a work of art.