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Title: Cubists and Post-impressionism
Author: Eddy, Arthur Jerome
Language: English
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CUBISTS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM
[Illustration: GLEIZES
Man on Balcony]
Cubists and
Post-Impressionism
BY
ARTHUR JEROME EDDY
Author of “Delight, the Soul of Art,” “Recollections and Impressions
of James A. McNeill Whistler,” etc.
With Twenty-three Reproductions in Color of
Cubist and Post-Impressionist Paintings,
and Forty-six Half-Tone
Illustrations
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1914
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1914
Published March, 1914
W. F. HAL. PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO
_TO THAT SPIRIT_
_the beating of whose restless wings is heard in every land_
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. A Sensation 1
II. Post-Impressionism 11
III. Les Fauves 33
IV. A Futile Protest 50
V. What is Cubism? 60
VI. The Theory of Cubism 90
VII. The New Art in Munich 110
VIII. Color Music 140
IX. Esoragoto 147
X. Ugliness 154
XI. Futurism 164
XII. Virile-Impressionism 191
XIII. Sculpture 202
XIV. In Conclusion 207
Appendix I. Exhibitions at 291 Fifth Avenue 211
Appendix II. Two Comments 214
Bibliography 223
Index 239
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
BALLA, _Dog and person in movement_ 164
BECHTEJEFF, _Fight of the Amazons_ 53
BLOCH, _Summer night_ 92
_The duel_ 93
BOCCIONI, _Head, houses, light_ 184
_Spiral expansion of muscles in action_ 204
BRANCUSI, _M’lle Poganey_ 202
CARDOZA, SOUSA, _Marine_ 4
_Leap of the rabbit_ 84
_Stronghold_ 148
CÉZANNE, _Portrait of self_ 26
_Village street_ 27
_Still life_ 36
CHABAUD, _The laborer_ 16
_Cemetery gates_ 108
CHARMY, _Landscape_ 200
DERAIN, _Forest at Martigues_ 154
DOVE, _Based on leaf forms and spaces_ 48
DUCHAMP, _Chess players_ 64
_King and queen_ 72
ERBSLOH, _Young woman_ 207
GAUGUIN, _Portrait of self_ 128
_Farmyard_ 129
_Scene in Tahiti_ 132
GIRIEUD, _Woman seated_ 141
GLEIZES, _Man on balcony_ _Frontispiece_
_Original drawing for man on balcony_ 70
GRIS, _Still life_ 133
HERBIN, _Landscape_ 96
_Still life_ 186
JAWLENSKY, _Head of a girl_ 158
KANDINSKY, _Village street_ 20
_Landscape with two poplars_ 105
_Improvisation No. 29_ 116
_Improvisation No. 30_ 124
KLEE, _House by the brook_ 88
KROLL, _Brooklyn Bridge_ 198
_Still life_ 210
LEGER, _The chimneys_ 61
LEHMBRUCK, _Kneeling woman_ 203
MARC, _The steer_ 104
MATISSE, _The dance_ 44
_Woman in red madras_ 112
_Portrait heads_ 205
_Back of woman_ 206
METZINGER, _The taster_ 60
MÜNTER, _The boat ride_ 172
_The white wall_ 173
PICABIA, _Dance at the spring_ 68
PICASSO, _Woman with mandolin_ 74
_The poet_ 75
_Drawing_ 100
_Old woman_ 140
ROUSSEAU, _Portrait of self_ 12
_Landscape_ 13
RUSSOLO, _Rebellion_ 178
SEGONZAC, _Pasturage_ 182
_Forest_ 192
SEVERINI, _The milliner_ 80
VAN GOGH, _Portrait of self_ 40
_Cafe_ 56
_Woman with frying pan_ 120
_Chair with pipe_ 121
VAN REES, _Still life_ 89
_Maternity_ 168
VILLON, _Young girl_ 32
VLAMINCK, _Village_ 136
WEREFKIN, _The country road_ 52
ZAK, _The shepherd_ 8
CUBISTS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM
ALAS! ALAS!!
“It is unlikely that any painters will ever again have to face the
hostility which was manifested against the Impressionists. The
repetition of such a phenomenon would be impossible. The case of the
Impressionists, in which withering scorn yielded place to admiration,
has put criticism on its guard. It will surely stand as a warning, and
ought to prevent the recurrence of a similar outburst of indignation
against the innovators and independents whom time may yet bring forth.”
--“Manet and the French Impressionists,”
by Theodore Duret, pp. 180, 181.
Cubists and Post-Impressionism
I
A SENSATION
Since the exhibit at the Columbian Exposition (1893) nothing has
happened in the world of American art so stimulating as the recent
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. New York and Chicago, spring of
1913.[1]
“Stimulating” is the word, for while the recent exhibition may have
lacked some of the good, solidly painted pictures found in the earlier,
it contained so much that was fresh, new, original--eccentric, if you
prefer--that it gave our art-world food for thought--and heated
controversy.
* * * * *
Art thrives on controversy--like every human endeavor. The fiercer the
controversy the _surer_, the _sounder_, the _saner_ the outcome.
* * * * *
Perfection is unattainable. As man in his loftiest flight stretches
forth his hand to seize a star he drops back to earth. The finer, the
purer the development of any art the more certain the reaction, the
return to elemental conditions--to begin over again.
* * * * *
The young sculptor looks at the chaste perfection of Greek sculpture and
says, “What is the use? I will do something different.” The young
painter looks at the great painters of yesterday and exclaims, “What is
the use? I cannot excel them in their way; I must do something in my own
way.” It is the same in business; the young merchant studies the methods
of the successful men in his line and says, “It is idle for me to copy
their methods. I will do something different, something in my own way,”
and he displays his goods differently, advertises differently, conducts
his business differently, and _if successful_ is hailed as a genius, if
a failure he is regarded as a visionary or an eccentric--the result
making all the difference in the world in the verdict of the public.
Painting today is a terrible problem to an absolutely sincere,
honest, and yet ambitious mind.
Fired to set forth something of his very own, to avoid plagiarism
and give the world something it has never yet received, the artist,
in whatever direction he advances, finds the horizon bounded by a
great master whom he cannot hope to surpass. Well, indeed, may he
ask what is the use of trying to do what Van Eyck, Botticelli,
Vermeer, Rembrandt, Veronese, Michael Angelo, Velasquez--nay, even
what Constable, Corot, Claude Monet, and Signac have done to
perfection?
In despair at surpassing the limits set by the great masters of
progress he harks back, as the pre-Raphaelites did, to the painters
before Raphael. Alas, Fra Lippi and Taddeo Gaddi are soon found to
be too sophisticated. He goes back farther, to Giotto, to Orcagna,
even to the Egyptians, and with the same result. At last he takes
his courage in his hands and, throwing overboard the whole cargo of
art history, ancient and modern, he seeks to forget that picture
was ever painted, and with eyes freed from traditional vision he
seeks to recreate the barbaric art of infancy.
Call this man an extremist if you like, but do not lightly dub him
insincere and charlatan. He is the counterpart in art of the
extremist in politics, the man who has no patience with palliative
measures, who demands the whole loaf and nothing but the loaf, who
kicks savagely away the fragments of bread tendered him by the
moderate and respectable. A dangerous man he may be, but he is no
trifler; and, if he succeeds in his purpose, as extremists
sometimes do, the whipped world at his feet hails him as reformer
and benefactor of humanity.[2]
* * * * *
The Columbian Exposition gave American art a tremendous impetus forward,
but of late it has been getting a little smug; the International
Exhibition came and gave our complacency a severe jolt.
The net result is that American art has received another impulse
forward; it will do bigger and finer and saner things. It will not copy
the eccentricities, the exaggerations, the morbid enthusiasms of the
recent exhibition, because America as yet is not given to eccentricities
and morbidness--though it may be to a youthful habit of exaggeration.
America is essentially sane and healthful--say quite practical--in its
outlook, hence it will absorb all that is good in the extreme modern
movement and reject what is bad.
Neither our students nor our painters will be carried off their feet but
they will be helped onward. They will be helped in their technic, and
they will see things from new angles, they will be more independent, in
short they will be better and bigger painters.
They will not be Cubists, Orphists, or Futurists, but they will absorb
all there is of good in Cubism, Orphism, Futurism--and other “isms;” and
bear in mind it is the _ist_ who is always blazing a trail somewhere; he
may lose himself in the dense undergrowth of his theories but he at
least marks a path others have not trodden.
The recent exhibition was not an isolated movement. There are no
_isolated_ movements in life. The International Exhibition was just as
inevitable as the Progressive political convention of 1912 in Chicago.
The world is filled with ferment--ferment of new ideas, ferment of
originality and individuality, of assertion of independence. This is
true in religion, science, politics as well as in art. It is true in
business. _New thought_ is everywhere. The most radical suggestions are
debated at the dinner table. In politics what would have been considered
socialistic twenty years ago is accepted today as reasonable. To the
conservative masses these new departures may seem like a wild
overturning of all that is sacred, but there is no need for fear; all
that _is really sound_ will gain in the end.
* * * * *
Neither Cubism, Futurism nor any other “ism” troubles the really great
painter; it is the little fellow who fumes and swears.
The poise of the great man is not at all disturbed by the eccentric and
the bizarre; on the contrary he looks with a curious eye to see if
something of value may not be found.
Whistler would not have painted Cubist pictures, but having known the
man I can say that nothing there may be of good in Cubism would have
gotten by the penetrating vision of that great painter.
It is characteristic of the little man to ridicule or resent everything
he does not understand; it is characteristic of the great man to be
silent in the presence of what he does not understand.
* * * * *
Just now the older men are violently opposed to the newer; there is no
attempt at understanding and there is abundant ridicule instead of
sympathy.
[Illustration: SOUSA CARDOZA
Marine]
This is inevitable and quite in accord with human nature, but it is a
pity. The old and the new are not rivals; the new is simply a departure
from the old, simply an attempt to do something different with line and
color. The older men should watch the younger with keenest interest;
they may feel sure the new is foredoomed to failure, but that is no
cause for rejoicing; on the contrary the older man should always be
sorry to see the soaring flights of youth come to grief.
* * * * *
Because a man buys a few Cubist pictures it must not be assumed he is a
believer in Cubism.
Because a man has a few books on socialism or anarchism in his library
we do not assume he is a socialist, or an anarchist; on the contrary it
is commonly assumed he is simply broadly and sanely interested in social
and political theories. The radical may not convince me he is right, but
he may show me I am wrong.
The man who flies into a passion at pictures because they are not like
the pictures he owns is on a par with the man who flies into a passion
at books because they are not like the books he owns--the world is
filled with such men, unreceptive, unresponsive; many intelligent in
their narrow way, but bigoted.
To most men a new idea is a greater shock than a cold plunge in winter.
Personally I have no more interest in Cubism than in any other “ism,”
but failure to react to new impressions is a sure sign of age. I would
hate to be so old that a new picture or a new idea would frighten me.
I would like to own Raphaels and Titians and Rembrandts and Velasquezes,
but I can’t afford it. I say I would like to _own_ them; no, I would
not, for I have the conviction that no man has _the right_ to
appropriate to himself the work of the great masters. Their paintings
belong to the world and should be in public places for the enjoyment and
instruction of _all_.
It is the high privilege of the private buyer to buy the works of _new
men_, and by encouraging them disclose a Rembrandt, a Hals, a Millet, a
Corot, a Manet, but when the public begins to want the pictures the
private buyer, instead of bidding against the public, should step one
side; his task is done, his opportunity has passed.
* * * * *
Most men buy pictures not because they want them, but because some one
else wants them.
The man who gives half a million for a Rembrandt does so not because he
knows or cares anything about the picture, but solely because he is made
to believe some one else wants it $450,000 worth.
Read this:
The crowning event of the day was the sale of Rembrandt’s
“Bathsheba.” The bidding started at 150,000 francs and within a
couple of minutes a perfect whirlwind of bids had carried the price
to 500,000 francs offered by a dealer, Mr. Trotti.
Already the smaller fry among the bidders had been eliminated and
the contest was circumscribed to a small group, Messrs. Duveen,
Wildenstein, Tedesco, Muller and Trotti being the most ardent in
the battle.
“Six hundred thousand!” cried Mr. Duveen.
“Six hundred and fifty thousand,” said Mr. Wildenstein.
Mr. Duveen replied with a nod which meant the addition of another
50,000. Then with bids of 10,000 and 25,000 the price mounted, the
struggle developing into a duel between Mr. Wildenstein and Mr.
Duveen. Eight hundred thousand francs was reached and left behind;
900,000 francs in turn was passed.
“Nine hundred and fifty thousand,” rapped out Mr. Duveen.
“Nine hundred and sixty thousand,” responded Mr. Wildenstein.
Then came “nine hundred and seventy thousand” and “nine hundred
and eighty thousand.” By this time the entire gathering was
spellbound by the spectacle of the gladiatorial contest for the
picture.
“Nine hundred and ninety thousand,” said Mr. Wildenstein.
There was an instant of silence.
“A million!”
Every eye turned from the speaker, Mr. Duveen, to gaze on Mr.
Wildenstein expectantly. Then there was silence, signifying his
withdrawal from the fight.
A mighty hubbub arose. The Rembrandt had been knocked down to Mr.
Duveen for a million francs, or, with the commission, 1,100,000
francs. Never has such a price been given for a Rembrandt.
This is not dealing in art, it is art on the horse-block.
Here is the record of that one painting:
1734--Sold at Antwerp for $ 109
1791--Sold at Paris for 240
1814--Sold at London for 525
1830--Sold at London for 790
1831--Sold at London for 792
1832--Sold at London for 1,260
1841--Sold at Paris for 1,576
1913--Sold at Paris for 220,000
* * * * *
During the exhibition in New York and Chicago the pictures were the one
topic of conversation; for the time being it was worth while to dine
out; society became almost animated.
I recall one delightful and irascible old gentleman, critic and painter,
who had not had a fresh appreciation for twenty-five years. For him art
ended with the Barbizon school. Whistler, Monet, Degas had no sure
places.
* * * * *
We all have the courage of _others_’ convictions.
The new, however good, is always queer; the old, however bad, is never
strange.
Most people laugh at new pictures because they are afraid if they don’t
laugh at the pictures, other people will laugh at _them_.
Now and then a man laughs at a queer picture because he can’t help it,
_he_ is a _joy_.
Laughter is the honest emotion of the child, on the grown-up it is often
a mark of ignorance.
It is so easy to ridicule what one does not understand and _dares_ not
like.
Laughter never stops to think--if it did there would be less laughter.
If you _feel_ like laughing at a picture, laugh by all means, it will do
you good, but be sure you _really feel_ like laughing, and to make sure
ask yourself this question, “If that picture were the only one in the
room and I were alone with it would it strike me as laughable?”
* * * * *
It always takes just about so many years. What happened with the
Barbizon School happened with Impressionism; what happened with
Impressionism, will happen with Post-Impressionism; what will happen
with Post-Impressionism will surely happen with post-post-Impressionism,
and so on. One movement follows another, as season follows season. Life
is rhythm.
Each generation thinks itself unique in its experiences.
We go to an exhibition of cubist pictures and we think nothing like that
ever happened before, hence we feel safe in denouncing them.
We admit England was wrong when it ridiculed Turner, that France was
wrong when it ridiculed Corot, that Paris was wrong when it derided
Millet, Manet, Monet, Degas, and a host of other great men, but _we_ are
_not_ wrong when _we_ deride the new men. Why? Because we think they are
newer and stranger than the men named.
[Illustration: ZAK
The Shepherd]
We accept Wagner as a genius, but Strauss--oh, no, he is _too_ strange,
but there are stranger composers than Strauss already at work and we
must travel fast to keep up with the procession.[3]
Be very sure the Cubists, the Futurists, and all the other queer “ists”
would not make the impression they are making if there were not a good
reason for it, if the times were not ripe for a change.
* * * * *
Broadly speaking we are changing from the _perfections_ of Impressionism
to the _imperfections_ of Post-Impressionism; from the _achievements_ of
a school, a movement, that has done the best it could, to the
_attempts_, the _experiments_, the _gropings_, of new men along new
lines.
It is the purpose of this book to describe some of the changes that are
taking place and _try_ to explain them in plain, every-day terms.
The curse of art literature and professional art criticism is
_art-jargon_.
Every department of human activity from sport to science, baseball to
philosophy, speedily develops its own jargon and the tendency is for the
jargon to become denser and denser and so more and more obscure its
subject, until some man with horse-sense--like Huxley in science and
William James in philosophy--restores the use of every-day English.
Some jargon like that of the baseball reporter is intensely vivid and
amusing, it is language in the making, but the jargon of the art critic
is deadly, it is neither vivid nor interesting--it is simply hypnotic.
It is only when the critic gets so angry he forgets his jargon that he
becomes intelligible--and betrays himself.
The reputation of many a preacher, many an orator, depends wholly upon
his command of jargon, his ability to utter endless phrases which are
either stock ideas, old as the hills, or which _sound_ as if they meant
something but on analysis prove quite barren.
II
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Post-Impressionism means exactly what the prefix means--the
art-development _following_ Impressionism. It does not mean a further,
or a higher, or a more subtle form of Impressionism, but it means
something radically different, it means a _reaction_ from Impressionism.
* * * * *
The evolution of the new movement has been logical and inevitable.
After the Barbizon school with its romantic representation of nature,
there came inevitably the realistic painters, headed by Courbet, later
by Manet--men who painted things not romantically but realistically,
pitilessly, brutally. There was the same rage against these men as
against the Cubists today. Both Whistler and Manet were in the Salon des
Refuses of 1864.
Along with the men who painted _things_ as they saw them, came naturally
men like Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, who tried endless
experiments in the effort to paint _light_ as they saw it.
So that the final twenty-five years of the last century were given up in
France to attempts to paint _things_ and _light_ as they really are.
After the painting of _things_ and _light_ one would say the art of
painting had touched its limits, that there was nothing more to do. But,
no, there is the painting of _neither_ things nor light--the painting of
_emotions_--the painting of pure line and color compositions for the
sake of the pleasure such harmonies afford--_the expression of one’s
inner self_.
It was while Manet was painting _things_ as they are, and Monet was
painting _light_ as it is, that Whistler was painting both things and
light but with an entirely different object in view, namely, the
production of _color harmonies_ superior to either thing-effects or
light-effects.
To the following résumé it is obvious another paragraph must be added to
bring the record down to date.
* * * * *
Painting in France in the nineteenth century followed a course
parallel with that of the intellectual life of the country, it
adapted itself to the various changes in modes of thought, it took
upon itself a succession of forms corresponding to those which were
evolved in literature.
At the beginning of the century, under the Empire, painting was
classical. It was primarily engaged in rendering scenes borrowed
from the antique world of Greece and Rome, subjects derived from
fable and mythology. Historical painting formed the essence of high
art. It was based upon the nude, treated according to the classical
model. Two masters--David and Ingress--were its loftiest
expression. After them classical art was continued in an enfeebled
condition by painters of only secondary importance.
The new spirit of romanticism, however, which had arisen in
literature, also made its appearance in painting. Delacroix was the
master in whom it found its most complete expression. The tones of
classical art, sober, restrained, and often cold, gave place in his
work to warm and brilliant coloration. For the nicely balanced
scenes of classical antiquity, he substituted compositions
tumultuous with movement. Romanticism developed freedom of action
and expressiveness of pose to their utmost limits.
Painting was then conquered by realism, which had also invaded
literature. Courbet was its great initiator. He painted the life he
saw around him in a direct, robust manner. He also painted
landscape with a truthfulness that was informed by a powerful
emotion. At the same time, Rousseau and Corot had also brought
landscape painting into close touch with nature. They had
rediscovered its soul and its charm. Finally, crowning, as it were,
the work of their predecessors, came Manet and the
Impressionists.[4]
[Illustration: ROUSSEAU
Portrait of Self]
[Illustration: ROUSSEAU
Landscape]
Turner was the forerunner of Impressionism, the father of attempts to
paint brilliant _light_ effects, Whistler was the forerunner of
Post-Impressionism, the father of attempts to paint _line and color_
compositions.
Turner did not carry his theories to the scientific extremes of the
Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists; Whistler did not carry his
attempts to the abstract extremes of the Compositionalists and the
Cubists; but in their work are found the seeds of all there is in
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
* * * * *
“Do you say that this is a correct representation of Battersea Bridge?”
“I did not intend it to be a ‘correct’ portrait of the bridge. It is
only a moonlight scene, and the pier in the center of the bridge may or
may not be like the piers at Battersea Bridge as you know them in broad
daylight. As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks
at it. To some persons it may represent all that is intended; to others
it may represent nothing.”
“The prevailing color is blue?”
“Perhaps.”
“Are those figures on the top of the bridge intended for people?”
“They are just what you like.”
“Is that a barge beneath?”
“Yes. I am very much encouraged at your perceiving that. My whole scheme
was only to bring about a certain harmony of color.”[5]
* * * * *
Most painters are so intent upon the _subjects_ of their work they give
little thought to color harmonies. Whistler was the one great modern
exception; his first thought was to produce _beautiful effects_ in line
and color, hence his titles, “Nocturnes,” “Symphonies,” “Arrangements,”
and so on. He did not like to give his portraits the names of his
sitters. Where other painters emphasize the “subjects” and the “stories”
of their pictures he tried to suppress both and direct the attention of
the beholder to the painting. He was the forerunner of recent attempts
to do with line and color what the musician does with sound. He was the
leader of the revolt against the “story-telling” picture.
* * * * *
Millet is a good illustration of the painter to whom “subject” was
everything, and technic of quite secondary importance. I think it is
generally conceded that as a painter, a master of technic, he did not
rank very high, but he had a faculty for painting subjects, scenes from
life, that grip. As a painter Whistler was incomparably superior to
Millet, but just because he was a great master of technic and quite
indifferent to the story-telling side of his pictures he did not become
so popular.[6]
* * * * *
There are many actions and reactions in art, many evolutions and
involutions, but the great rhythmical sweep of the pendulum is from, let
us say, _studio_-art to _nature_-art, and back from _nature_-art to
_studio_-art.
From works of _observation_ to works of _imagination_, and back from the
use of the _imagination_ to the use of _observation_.
For a time men work feverishly in the seclusion of their closets
painting, writing, modelling, composing beautiful things, pure products
of their imaginations, then comes the reaction and they feel the need of
renewing their vigor by touching heel to earth. They draw aside their
curtains, throw open their doors and go out into the sunlight to breathe
the fresh air and gain new inspirations from contact with nature.
That is what happens in art once in so often.
The Barbizon school was a studio school. It walked the streets and the
fields; it looked at men and women at work and at play, but when it came
to paint it did not paint outdoors with object and easel in close
contact; it retired within its doors and transformed life and nature as
great romantic story-tellers translate their impressions into
fairy-tales and romances.
* * * * *
It seems a far cry from Millet to Chabaud but in some aspects of their
attitude toward art they are nearly akin. Between the two there
intervened Impressionism, that is all. Millet painted _labor_. And what
is the painting by Chabaud, “The Laborer,” but a more elemental Millet?
It lacks the romantic, the poetic qualities of Millet’s “Labor,” for
instance, or his “Sower”--paintings famous in prints and reproductions,
but it is none the less a vivid representation of labor.
To the admirers of Millet it may seem sacrilegious to even mention
Chabaud in comparison, but, confining our attention to the one painting
reproduced herein, there is no question that in its elemental strength,
its simplicity, it possesses a quality, a certain bald dramatic quality
that Millet lacks, though Millet’s “Sower” may possess qualities you
like more.
However it is with no intention to make a comparison between two men so
very different, that I mention them, but rather for the purpose of
pointing out that the attitude of both to their art is fundamentally the
same--they use art to _express themselves_ and not to imitate what they
see.
This is the way Millet worked. “He himself went about Barbizon like a
peasant. And he might have been seen wandering over the woods and fields
with an old, red cloak, wooden shoes, and a weather-beaten straw hat. He
rose at sunrise, and wandered about the country as his parents had done.
He guarded no flocks, drove no cows, and no yokes of oxen or horses; he
carried neither mattock nor spade but rested on his stick; he was
equipped with only the _faculty_ of _observation_ and _poetic intention_
... he leant on the garden wall with his arms crossed on his breast, and
looked into the setting sun as it threw a rosy veil over field and
forest. He heard the chime of vesper bells, watched the people pray and
then return home. And he returned also, and read the Bible by lamplight,
while his wife sewed and the children slept. When all was quiet he
closed the book and began _to dream_.... _On the morrow he painted._”[7]
This is the method of all the very great art the world has ever
known--first _to see_; and then _to dream_ and then _on the morrow to
paint_.
Impressionism cut out the _dreams_--it painted what it _saw_.
There were never in the world peasants such as Millet painted, or woods
such as Daubigny painted. People thought there were until the
Impressionists came and turned on the light.
Corot’s silvery glades have a closer relationship to nature. He felt the
reaction that was in the air. He was almost an
[Illustration:
CHABAUD
The Laborer
]
Impressionist but not quite. One feels the _poetic_, the
_imaginative_--that is, the _studio_ quality in his work. He sought
nature but not in the spirit displayed by the Impressionists.
* * * * *
The reaction began with Courbet and was given a powerful impetus by
Manet who painted things not as he _imagined_ them but as he _saw_ them,
and he did not try to see interesting people and things, he did not look
for the _picturesque_ but he painted anything he happened to see upon
the theory that the value of a work of art depends not upon its subject
but upon its technic; that the worth of a painting is to be found in the
painting and not in the object that happens to be painted.
* * * * *
Manet painted very few pictures outdoors. In the literal sense he did
not belong to the _plein air_ school. Almost all his work was done
indoors. But it was in no sense studio-art as we have used the term. He
painted in his studio as directly as Monet painted outdoors. He painted
a sitter with the same realism that Monet painted a haystack; and if he
painted a bull fight from memory or from a sketch, he did it with the
_intention_ to reproduce the scene literally.
Whistler had his literal moods, so to speak; his moments when with clear
eye and vision unaffected by any conscious play of the imagination he
would make marvellously faithful transcripts from life and nature,
transcripts so faithful that Monet’s at their best pale in comparison. I
recall three exquisite marines which were painted in a boat, the
canvases propped against a seat.
But for the most part he painted indoors and with the one end in
view--the composition of line and color harmonies more beautiful than
anything found in nature, just as the musician seeks to compose
harmonies more beautiful than any sounds found in nature.
In the clearness of his vision and the faithfulness with which he
painted the things and people with which he came in contact Whistler was
an Impressionist--an Impressionist long before Monet, but in his search
after color and line music, in his attempts to do things beyond and
above nature, he was a _Post_-Impressionist.
* * * * *
From a psychological point of view it is not difficult to see how these
movements come about.
Given exhibitions year after year filled with paintings of the
imagination, with idealized peasants such as Millet’s, and idealized
landscapes such as Rousseau’s, it is morally certain the younger
painters will feel a restless longing to return to the realities of
life, just as the reading or theater going public after being fed too
long on fairy-tales and romances demand more realistic representations
of life.
Every man who reads much has his fairy-tale period and his romantic
period followed by a strong taste for realism, which in turn is followed
by a new and finer appreciation of purely imaginative literature.
In his beliefs the normal man passes through a similar series of
reactions from the acceptance of the marvellous in his childhood and
youth to the sceptical rejection of the miraculous and the acceptance of
only the literal and material in his buoyant manhood, thence to the
profounder philosophy and mystical speculations of riper age.
The old, old conflict between _materialism_ and _idealism_, between
_seeing-knowing_ and _thinking-feeling_, between the cruder actualities
of the senses and the finer actualities of the imagination!
It is not that all men at a given time are idealists and at another
realists, any more than all painters in one decade are Impressionists,
in another Post-Impressionists. Life does not move that way.
* * * * *
Between 1874 and 1900 Impressionism forged to the front and monopolized
the attention of the art world, yet during that period there were
painted more pictures of the Pre-Impressionist schools than ever before.
The Impressionists made all the noise, the Pre-Impressionists did most
of the work.
The net result was a large amount of absorption by the older schools of
the good things in Impressionism, and a noticeable improvement in
painting generally.
Just now the Post-Impressionists occupy the center of the stage and are
making themselves so conspicuous the public is almost led to believe
that both Impressionists and Pre-Impressionists no longer exist, that
everything once considered good in art is being relegated to the
storehouse.
Again, as a matter of fact, with all the noise made by the
Post-Impressionists, it is beyond question true that never before were
so many Impressionist and Pre-Impressionist pictures painted as now.
The stream of Pre-Impressionist and Impressionist pictures goes right on
and in time history will repeat itself, the good in Post-Impressionism
will be absorbed and the main current that supplies the great public
with art will be _Pre_-impressionist + _Impressionist_ +
_Post_-impressionist, with as many more prefixes as the ingenuity of the
artist can devise to describe his vagaries.
* * * * *
Painters are a good deal like inventors, each of whom thinks his
invention sure to revolutionize the world, to find in the end that his
supposed invention is either not new or if new not valuable.
Now and then a painter like an inventor does do something that is
revolutionary, but these geniuses are not common, and with even them
critical research invariably finds they have simply built upon the
labors of others. An Edison, a Bell, a Marconi appears only when
electrical science has reached a stage where the inventions rather than
the men are inevitable. All this is statistically demonstrated in the
records of patent offices.
* * * * *
We talk of this and that “period” in the work of a painter, a poet, a
sculptor. Often the changes in mood and technic are marked and the
transitions sharply defined. For the most part they are the turning from
the imagination to observation and _vice versa_.
The brain is not unlike a factory; when filled to overflowing with raw
material it must close its doors and work up its stock; when it has
exhausted its store of impressions it must open its five senses to
receive new.
* * * * *
According to Hegel, the great German philosopher, there are three
movements of the historical pendulum; for example, we have an age
of materialism followed by an age whose sole interest is in
psychical phenomena; this followed by an age which extracts the
truth from both of these opposite hypotheses, the golden mean.
Thus, in art, we have the classical spirit for the thesis, the
modern art movement, its antithesis, and we may confidently expect
and hope for an age which shall select the bold, fresh spirit of
the modern movement and infuse it into the proportion of classical
art, which shall be the great synthesis of the artistic future.
Thus the extravagant and apparently insane movement of the Futurist
and Cubist will be of the greatest value in reviving art, putting
red blood into art again.[8]
[Illustration:
KANDINSKY
Village Street
]
A man can understand what is going on about him only by a knowledge of
what has happened in the past--the wider his knowledge of past events,
the clearer his understanding of present.
Space does not permit the printing in detail the ridicule that greeted
Turner, Millet, Corot, Courbet, but it is important to open the eyes of
the reader to the _fact_ that men whose pictures are considered
masterpieces today, and command fabulous sums, were met with the _same_
scorn and derision that the new men of today meet.
History repeats itself--we accept as fine what our fathers laughed at;
our sons will accept as fine what we laugh at, and so on to the end of
time.
You readers and especially you museums, who are paying tens of thousands
for pictures by Manet, Monet, Renoir and a host of other innovators,
take to heart what follows.
* * * * *
In 1874 the Impressionists held their first exhibition in a room rented
from a photographer, 35 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. They called
themselves, _Société anonyme, des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et
Graveurs_.
There were about thirty exhibitors in all; among them, Pissarro, Monet,
Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin, who might be called
the extremists; Degas, Bracquemond de Nittis, Brandon, Boudin, Cals,
Gustave Collin, Labouche, Lépine, Rouart, and others were invited to
take the edge off the novelties of the first named.[9]
Monet exhibited a picture named “_Impression; soleil levant_.” In
derision Louis Leroy called an article on the exhibition in
“Charivari”[10] “_Exposition des Impressionists_,” and in spite of the
protests of the painters themselves the name stuck--just as the name
_Cubists_, derisively applied by Matisse, has stuck.
* * * * *
This exhibition, which marked an epoch in French art, was a failure so
far as immediate results went. The ridicule was such that the better
known artists, ashamed of being caught in the company of the new men,
“took good care not to run the risk a second time.”
The pictures were subjected to all sorts of petty insults, “such as the
placing of small coins upon the frames in derision, and jokes and
jibes.”
* * * * *
The next year the Impressionists held no exhibition, but under dire need
had a sale at the Hotel Drouot.
Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cals, Cézanne, Degas,
Guillaumin, de Nittis, and Pissarro were represented. There were
some seventy pictures. The pictures were disliked and for some
unknown reason the artists were considered as hardened members of
the community. They only received laughable prices. Even the
attempt to carry out the auction-room trick of having friends bid
up the prices was not carried out successfully and many of the
pictures were bid in by the penniless friends in this way, and
withdrawn. Including these mistakes and the real sales they
realized not much more than $2,000. In this sale of 1875, Renoir’s
“Avant le bain” brought $28; “La Source,” $22 (afterwards sold for
$14,000); “Une vue du Pont neuf” brought all of $60; Claude Monet’s
twenty pictures averaged from $40 to $60 each.
The writer was offered “Avant le bain” in 1894 for $1,200; it has since
sold for $25,000. In a recent letter from M. George Durand-Ruel he says:
All the fine works of the Masters of the Modern French School have
advanced very much in value. The “Portrait of the Charpentier
Family,” which is now in the Metropolitan Museum, was ordered from
Renoir for three hundred francs; “La Source,” also by Renoir, was
sold in a sale in 1878 for 110 francs. It has been since bought by
the Prince de Wagram for 75,000 francs, and would be worth today
double the amount. The “Port de Boulogne,” by Manet, was bought
from Manet by my father for 800 francs and sold to Faure, who later
on sold it to Comte de Camondo for 70,000 francs. It would be worth
today about 250,000 francs. “Le Déjeuner dans l’Atelier,” which my
father bought from Manet and which we had on exhibition at 389
Fifth Avenue in 1895, asking price at that time $7,000, was sold
afterwards to M. Pellerin and bought two years ago for the Munich
Museum for $60,000.
Daubigny was one of the few men who appreciated Monet; he bought his
pictures and urged others to buy.
When he died in 1878 a sale of his effects was held. Duret says:
I knew the “Canal à Saardam,” which seemed to me one of the most
beautiful things Monet had painted; I made up my mind to go to the
auction and try to buy it. The sale took place but the picture was
not put up. I supposed that the heirs had decided to keep it as a
work they understood and appreciated. One Sunday, fifteen days
later, happening by chance in L’Hôtel Drouot I went into a room
filled with unfinished works, old and grimy canvases, and a mass of
stuff--in a word, all the worthless debris of a studio--and there
at one side the “Canal à Saardam” of Claude Monet.... I inquired
and learned that the room contained the scourings of Daubigny’s
studio, sent in for sale anonymously. It was there the heirs had
sent the picture of Monet, excluding it from the regular sale
because they thought it would bring discredit. It was knocked down
to me at the auction for $16. In 1894, when my collection was sold,
the picture was bought by M. Durand-Ruel for $1,100. In 1901 it was
withdrawn from a sale at the price of $6,000.
* * * * *
The second exhibition was held in 1876 in the galleries of Durand-Ruel.
In passing, tribute should be paid to this great dealer and remarkable
man who backed his belief in the new men with all he possessed, to the
jeopardizing of his business, and who, happily, still lives to enjoy the
confirmation of his judgment.
Of this exhibition Albert Wolff, in “Figaro,” said:
The Rue Peletier is unfortunate. Following upon the burning of the
Opera House, a new disaster has fallen upon the quarter. There has
just been opened at Durand-Ruel’s an exhibition of what is said to
be painting. The innocent passerby enters, and a cruel spectacle
meets his terrified gaze. Here five or six lunatics, of whom one is
a woman (Berthe Morisot) have chosen to exhibit their works. There
are people who burst out into laughter in front of these objects.
Personally I am saddened by them. These so-called artists style
themselves Intransigeants, Impressionists. They take paint, brushes
and canvases; they throw a few colors on to the canvas at random,
and then they sign the lot. In the same way the inmates of a
madhouse pick up the stones on the road and believe they have found
diamonds.
All of which recalls what Ruskin said of Whistler, and the following
choice bits about Turner.
They (referring to two of his famous pictures) “mean nothing. They are
produced as if by throwing handfuls of white and blue and red at the
canvas, letting what chanced to stick, stick, and then shadowing in some
forms to make the appearance of a picture.”
Another picture “only excites ridicule.” “No. 353 caps all for
absurdity, without even any of the redeeming qualities of the rest.” ...
“the whole thing is truly ludicrous.”[11]
Again of Turner,
“This gentleman has on former occasions chosen to paint with cream,
or chocolate, yolk of egg, or currant jelly--there he uses his
whole array of kitchen-stuff.... We cannot fancy the state of eye
which will permit anyone cognizant of art to treat these rhapsodies
as Lord Byron treated “Christabel;” neither can we believe in any
future revolution which shall bring the world round to the opinion
of the worshipper, if worshippers such frenzies still possess.”[12]
In 1877 the Impressionists held their third exhibition, again in
Durand-Ruel’s galleries. This proved more audacious than the first.
“It gave rise to an extraordinary outburst of laughter, contempt,
indignation, and disgust. It became a notable event in Parisian life. It
was talked about in the cafés of the boulevards, in clubs, and in
drawing rooms, as some remarkable phenomenon. Numbers of people went to
see it. They were not attracted by any sort of artistic interest; they
simply went in order to give themselves that unpleasant thrill which is
produced by the sight of anything eccentric and extravagant. Hence there
was much laughter and gesticulation on the part of the visitors. They
went in a mood of hilarity; they began to laugh while still in the
street; they laughed as they were going up the stairs; they were
convulsed with laughter the first moment they cast their eyes upon the
pictures.”
A critic in “La Chronique” said:
They provoke laughter, and yet they are lamentable. They display
the profoundest ignorance of drawing, of composition, and of color.
When children amuse themselves with a box of colors and a piece of
paper they do better.
Cézanne was the one among them who both now and for a long time
afterwards excited the most detestation. It is not too much to say that
he was regarded almost as something monstrous and inhuman.
After the close of the exhibition a sale was had at the Hotel Drouot.
“Forty-five canvases of Caillebotte, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir
realized only $1,522--an average of less than $34 each. The sale
took place in the presence of an amused and contemptuous public,
who received the pictures, as they were put up at auction, with
groans. They amused themselves with passing several of them round
from hand to hand, turned upside down.”
Sixteen Renoirs brought $400. The next year “le Pont de Chateau” sold
for $8, “Jeune fille dans un Jardin” for $6, and “La Femme au Chat” for
$16.
Sisley sold eleven for 1,387 francs, or $25 each. These prices meant
disaster and the painter was in great distress. In 1878 he wrote
Theodore Duret a pathetic letter asking if Duret could not find some
friend who would have enough confidence in his, Sisley’s, future to pay
$100 per month for six months and receive in return thirty pictures.
“At the expiration of six months, if he is not disposed to keep the
thirty pictures, he can take the chances on a sale of twenty, get
back the money he paid me, and have ten pictures left for nothing.”
* * * * *
During the New York Exhibition the Metropolitan Museum bought a Cézanne
for something like $8,000. The price of a more important was $46,000. In
the seventies in Paris there was a dealer in artists’ materials called
Père Tanguy who had a little shop in rue de Navarin. In 1879 when
Cézanne left Paris for the country he left his pictures for Père Tanguy
to sell. Duret went there to buy some. He found them stacked against the
wall, piled according to their dimensions, the small ones $8 each, the
large ones $20.
* * * * *
This is an old, old story--the story of nearly every great artist of
whom we have any knowledge.
The world seems to need perspective to appreciate a great man.
* * * * *
We are prone to think the great men have just passed away; we do not
realize that men just as great in one way or another are being born
every day.
The great man usually differs from the ordinary man only in his _one_
greatness. On many sides he may be a very commonplace man, a petty man,
but on his great side he is so far
[Illustration: CEZANNE
Portrait of Self]
[Illustration: CÉZANNE
Village Street]
out of the ordinary that it is almost impossible to understand him close
to. The fact that he is doing things in an _extra_-ordinary way causes
us instinctively to distrust and condemn him.
* * * * *
One of the early buyers of Impressionist pictures was a distinguished
Chicago woman, and her collection today contains some of the finest
Monets, Renoirs, and Degases in existence. When her friends heard she
had bought some forty or fifty Monets they shook their heads in dismay
at such folly. This was not many years ago, less than thirty, and now
the pictures are in demand the world over and worth ten, fifteen, twenty
times what they cost.
The same ladies and gentlemen who shook their heads at the Monets in
1890 shook their heads at the Cubists in 1913. If they live another
quarter of a century they will once more shake their heads at the new
art of that day--for such is life.
* * * * *
Neo-Impressionism was the logical outcome of Impressionism. It was
simply the attempt to paint light in still more scientific fashion, by
the use of the primary colors laid on in fine points in such a manner
that at the proper distance the points fuse and produce the tone
desired.
The use of small dabs or points of color instead of brush strokes gained
for the movement the name “_Pointillism_.”
Neo-Impressionism was not a reaction from Impressionism but an attempt
to advance still further the painting of light effects.
Seurat and Signac simply attempted to out-Monet Monet.
They were the last word in Impressionism. After them the
reaction--_Post-Impressionism_, something fundamentally different from
and opposed to the very theory of Impressionism.
It is, perhaps, a national characteristic of the French to be
intense on all they undertake, and if there is one quality common
to the generation of painters who followed the earlier
impressionists it is intensity. This earnest passionateness has
produced developments in two main directions, towards more intense
luminosity and towards more intense simplification. The first is
exemplified in the work of _the Pointillists_, who carried it to
its logical conclusion, the division of tones, and built up their
pictures with points or square touches of pure colour. Paul Signac,
for example, is dazzling in his scientific presentment of the power
of light. It is difficult to believe that luminosity can be carried
further than in his radiant canvases whose force makes the most
brilliant Turner appear pale and weak in comparison. Signac’s
method, it may be noted in passing, is a square touch of pure
colour as opposed to the circular spots of Seurat, the inventor of
Pointillism, Theo van Rysselberg, and the late Henri-Esmond Cross.
If Signac has reached the limit in intense luminosity, Henri
Matisse, Otho Friesz, and André Derain, among others, stand for
intense simplification. But it is still a little too early to deal
with their astonishing works, and any one sincerely desirous of
comprehending the aims of these revolutionary painters may be
recommended to commence his course of initiation by a serious study
of the works of Cézanne and Gauguin. These two deceased painters
are to their younger comrades what Marx and Kropotkin are to the
young social reformers of today.[13]
We are constantly led astray by words--at best they are imperfect
instruments of thought.
As has been often noted in the literature of painting, all art is
_impressionistic_ in the broad and fine sense of the term. Hence to
divide painters into Impressionists and Non-Impressionists involves a
contradiction.
In painting his _purely imaginative_ creations of light effects Turner
was as much of an Impressionist as Monet in painting his _closely
observed_ light effects.
In painting his _ideal_ peasants Millet yielded as freely to his
impressions as did Manet in painting his bull-fighters.
From one point of view the difference is one of degree rather than of
kind, namely, the degree to which the painter lets his impressions _sink
in_ and become a part of him.
Monet attempted to paint light _exactly as he saw it_, reducing the
personal equation--that is, himself--to the lowest possible
significance. Turner painted light as he saw _and imagined_ it; he
allowed his impressions to sink in, to become a part of him, then he
_created_ a picture. And his pictures vary greatly in the proportion of
observation to imagination; in some he painted almost as direct and as
coldly from nature as Monet, in others he barely used his observations
as groundwork upon which to let his imagination run riot.
It is not strange that so erratic, so eccentric a genius bewildered the
public and the critics of his day, for in the painting of light he was a
generation ahead of his time, and in the attempt to paint pure color
harmonies he was two generations ahead.
* * * * *
Take, for instance, his “Sunrise, with a Sea Monster,” and “Sunrise,
with Boat between Headlands,” in the Tate Gallery. If these pictures had
been hung anonymously in the International Exhibition in New York they
would have excited more laughter than any of the Cubists. They are
simply color schemes compared with which an “Improvisation” by Kandinsky
is a legible message.
A Turner in the National or Tate Gallery is accepted as a masterpiece;
the same picture hung anonymously with a lot of extreme
Post-Impressionists in the Grafton Gallery would be the occasion of much
hilarity.
* * * * *
While all painting is more or less impressionistic, in the art
literature of the day the term “Impressionists” is appropriated to the
school of men who paint in the open direct from nature, and who attempt
to record faithfully, many almost mechanically, their visual
impressions of objects and light-effects.
Hence the term _Post_-Impressionism means not an accentuation or a
further development of Impressionism such as _Neo_-Impressionism or
“pointillism,” but a _reaction_.
When Impressionism has had its day and done its best, then something
different must come, and logically that something different is a return
to the art that is the antithesis of Impressionism--the art of the
_imagination_--a _creative_ art.[14]
* * * * *
For a generation the poetic, the imaginative work of the Barbizon
School--to use this one school as typical of the painting of practically
the entire western world in the sixties and seventies--held sway.
Then came the return to nature, the Impressionists, and for a generation
they held sway.
Now, apparently, we are at the beginning of a new movement, a return to
imaginative art, and the evidences of this return are seen not only in
painting but in decoration, in sculpture, in music, in drama, in
literature, in fiction, in philosophy, in medicine, in business, in
politics.
_There is a demand_ for _ideals_ as distinguished from _results_.
* * * * *
We have learned that the proper end of poetry is the expression of
emotion, to which all reasoning and statement of fact should be
subsidiary; but we have not learned that painting should have the
same end, using representation only as a means to that end, and
representing only those facts of reality which have emotional
associations for the painter. In primitive pictures, it is true, we
look for the expression of emotion rather than for illusion, and
that is the reason why so many people get a real pleasure from
primitive art. They judge it by the right standard, and ask of it
what it offers to them. But from modern pictures they demand
illusion--that is to say, the kind of representation they are used
to; and when they do not get it they accuse the artist of
incompetence.[15]
* * * * *
In painting this reaction, this tendency--call it what you please--has
taken many forms, one of which is _Cubism_.
While this book devotes much space to Cubism, it is solely because in
its extreme development it is, from a coldly critical point of view, the
_most abstract_ word yet uttered in painting, it is the farthest removed
from impressionism, and therefore serves admirably to illustrate a
discussion of the philosophy of _Post-Impressionism_.
In a book like this, written as an off-hand comment upon what is now
going on in the world of art--in the world generally, for that
matter--it would be quite impracticable to follow the development of
even the principal lines of human activity;[16] hence the works and
theories of the Cubists have been chosen as typical of radical and
revolutionary ideas and the attempt is made to find wherein these works
and ideas are not so radical and extravagant as they seem, but are, in
fact, only an illustration of what is going on in the minds of men
generally.
If the painter who laughs at a Cubist painting and denounces it will
only stop to think he will find one of two things true, he himself is
either advancing in his art or he is not. If he is not, there is nothing
further to be said, his attitude toward the Cubist painting is quite
consistent; but if he is advancing, if his style, his technic, his point
of view are changing, _however slightly_, from year to year, then he
should be exceedingly cautious how he ridicules or condemns, for without
knowing it he may be traveling the highroad, one of the interesting
byways of which is Cubism.
Most painters of sixty who are now Impressionists and who ridicule
Cubists, if cross-questioned would be obliged to confess that
thirty-four years ago they ridiculed the men in whose footsteps they
have since followed and whom they now recognize as masters.
* * * * *
In the course of our discussion we shall have occasion to speak of the
Futurists and other extremists, for they all are part of the one big
reaction, they are all _Post-Impressionists_, and all have something to
say worth hearing, but the Cubists serve our purpose best because their
pictures, from an argumentative point of view, are more tangible, and
their theories have been worked out in print in plain terms.
[Illustration: VILLON
Young Girl]
III
LES FAUVES
Every development bears within the seeds of its dissolution and the
germs of its succession.
The seeds of the dissolution and the germs of the succession of
Impressionism were _Les Fauves_--the Savages, the Wild Ones, as you
please.
The philosophical student of the history of art has no trouble in
tracing at any time the following currents:
_A._ The main stream which includes _all_ art developments from the
profoundest and most permanent to the most fleeting and superficial,
from the soberest to the most extravagant.
_B. B._ +. Within the main current lesser currents of such magnitude
that they frequently seem to dominate--and often do obscure the
direction of--the main current; as, for instance, Impressionism
dominated the art of France and influenced the art of the entire western
world in the final years of the last century. These lesser currents have
their effect on the main current, though their ultimate effect is never
so revolutionary as their enthusiasts believe; the good in them is
absorbed, the meretricious rejected.
_C. C. C._ +. Surface manifestations of all kinds, often so violent they
disguise not only the main current, but the important subsidiary
currents, and lead men to believe for the moment that art is reversing
itself, that all that has been done is being undone, that chaos is
taking the place of order. These subsidiary movements are with us
always, evident in every exhibition; they are the experiments, the
extravagances of each generation, of each decade, of each year. Some of
them contain so much of truth they develop into _B._--larger
currents--“movements;” others are of such ephemeral importance they
cause their sensations of the hour and pass away, leaving behind scarce
distinguishable traces.
It is these last movements which, because they are new and strange, so
impress critics and public that observation loses its sense of
proportion; the force of the main current (_A._) is lost sight of, and
the strength of subsidiary currents (_B. B._ +) is overlooked.
The newest movements (_C. C. C._ +) are usually either too bitterly
denounced or too widely praised, their true relationship is not
perceived; all sense of perspective is lost in the immediate presence of
the startling.
There are no hard and fast lines dividing any of these currents and
movements. When and where they begin no one can say; when and where they
end no one can tell.
* * * * *
Impressionism is identified with Monet more than any other painter,
because all his life long he has been the steadfast and consistent
exponent of extreme theories regarding the painting of light effects.
But Impressionism, even the painting of light effects, had its beginning
long before Monet; with the beginning of painting itself, the germs were
there.
Likewise the germs of every other movement, however extravagant and
superficial, could probably be found in the work of some man or men in
another age and country.
What happens is that a combination of favoring conditions at a given
time concentrates human efforts and human attention upon a particular
mode, technic, or theory and brings it to the fore.
The names of Turner, Manet, Whistler, have been cited as illustrations
of geniuses so comprehensive they link several movements, several
decades, together.
To these should be added the name of Degas in painting and that of Rodin
in sculpture.
These men have done things far ahead of their own times, they have done
things their own times not only did not understand, but ridiculed and
decried. It was only a few years ago that Paris--yes, _Paris_--rejected
Rodin’s Balzac, by many considered the greatest of his works.
These men illustrate what we mean when we say that every period in art
contains within itself the seeds of its dissolution and the germs of its
succession. A movement may seem so dominating, so strong, so true, that
people exclaim, “It is the final word, it will last forever,” but at the
very moment somewhere, in obscurity, there will be men doing things that
are diametrically opposed to the prevailing current, things that are
destined to be the masterpieces of a new development.
* * * * *
Cézanne exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and was counted
one of them; yet in a profound sense he was the first of the
Post-Impressionists.
While he was classed with the Impressionists he had little in common
with them, practically nothing in common with Monet.
All his life Monet has been busy with the _surface_ of things; all his
life Cézanne was busy with the _substance_ of things.
When Monet paints a landscape he paints the grass and the flowers and
the trees one sees bathed in sunlight; when Cézanne painted a landscape
it was an elemental presentment of nature herself.
Cézanne was born in Aix in 1839 and died in the same place in 1905.
Having inherited just sufficient to live very modestly, he devoted his
entire life to trying to fathom the secrets of nature and paint her
innermost truths.
The fact that his pictures did not sell, that even his friends did not
understand him, did not swerve him a hair’s breadth from the path he had
chosen--to paint, to _learn how_ to paint, _simpler_ and _truer_
interpretations.
He lived so isolated from his neighbors that a visitor to Aix in 1904
had great difficulty in finding his residence; was obliged, in fact, to
resort to the list of voters at the town hall. In the eccentricities of
his daily life he was not unlike Turner, but in his art he indulged no
such brilliant fancies.
He was a _consistent_ painter. He never permitted his imagination to run
away with him; he constantly checked his work by the closest and most
penetrating observation of nature.
His manner of work is described by a devoted follower:[17]
He was working on a canvas showing three decapitated heads on an
Oriental carpet. He had worked a month every morning from six
o’clock until half past ten. His daily routine was, rise very
early, paint in his studio from six to ten-thirty, breakfast, and
go out immediately into the surrounding country to study nature
until five. On his return he had supper and went at once to bed. I
have seen him so exhausted by his day’s work that he could neither
talk nor listen.
“What is lacking,” he said to me while contemplating the three
heads, “is the _realisation_. Perhaps I shall get it, but I am old
and it may be that I shall die without having reached the highest
point: To realise! like the Venetians.”
Not unlike the lament of Hokusai at seventy over his imperfections as a
draftsman.
[Illustration: CÉZANNE
Still Life]
One’s first impression from even half-tone reproductions of his
paintings is a feeling of _construction_. I have before me a
still-life--the fruit, the bowl, the piece of stuff are not simply
painted but _built up_ as firmly and scientifically as a builder builds
a house--the materiality as well as the beauty is there.
It is just the same with his portraits, his figure pieces and his
landscapes; one cannot escape the _sense of the substance_, the
fundamental reality.
And to attain it all he used the simplest and most direct technic, not a
brush-stroke, not a line, not a spot of color wasted.
It was these characteristics which made him a profound Impressionist, in
the wider significance of the term, but also the first of the _Fauves_,
the father of the revolt from Impressionism in its more superficial
significance.
* * * * *
With the name of Cézanne are associated the names of two men whose work
shows his influence, VanGogh and Gauguin, and one whose work is wholly
different, Henri Rousseau, the custom house employee who painted without
instruction; later, but also conspicuously, Henri Matisse.
These are the leaders of Fauvism.
* * * * *
At the exhibition in New York one had the unusual opportunity of seeing
in close contact many works of all four. It would be difficult to
imagine paintings more different in inspiration and technic. They had
but one thing in common--a pronounced reaction from, not to say revolt
against, Impressionism, evidenced particularly in the use of color
_constructively_ and _decoratively_ rather than imitatively.
Color force is a feature of the new inspiration.
The painters of today have discovered anew the world’s coloring. We
now recognize everywhere the power and vivaciousness, the
thousandfold freshness, and the infinite changefulness of color. To
us colors now talk directly; they are not drowned by covering
tints, not hide-bound by a preconceived harmony. An instrument has
thus been given, wherein innumerable melodies still slumber.
Color is a means of representation not only of what is colored, but
also of the thick and the thin; of the solid and the liquid; of the
light and of the heavy; of the hard and of the soft; of the
corporeal and of the spacious. Cézanne models with color; with
tinted color surfaces he builds a landscape. The proper couching of
colored planes can force upon us the impression of depth; colored
transitions call forth the impression of ascent and of motion;
spots scattered here and there give the impression of sprightly
vivaciousness.
Color is a means of expression talking directly to the soul. Deep
mourning and soft glowing, warmth of heart and cold clarity,
confused dumbness, flames of passion, sweet devotion--all
conditions and all outbursts of the soul--what can communicate them
to us more forcefully and more directly than a few colors with
their effect exerted through the eye? As tones draw us with them
without our will and without meeting resistance, so does color
subjugate us: now it fills us with deepest sorrow, then again we
are all glowing under its influence.
Color is a means of composition. The force of sensuous designation,
the expressive power of the soul, both must combine and make for an
always new, always original, and always unique harmony. The law of
color beauty has not as yet been fathomed by the intellect. It is
being created by feeling and by subconscious experience.[18]
* * * * *
“Cézanne, Gauguin, and VanGogh were men of very different minds; but
they were alike in this, that they all attempted to subordinate
representation to expression, and were all determined to express only
their own emotional experience. Cézanne could not content himself with
impressionist triumphs of representation. Above all, he revolted from
the Impressionist insistence on the momentary aspect of reality. He was,
so to speak, a kind of Plato among the artists of his time, believing
that in reality there is a permanent order, a design which reveals
itself to the eye and mind of the artist, and which it is his business
to expose in his work. But this design he was determined to discover in
reality itself, not in the works of other artists. His task was
enormously difficult because he would take nothing whatever at second
hand. Nature must tell him all her own secrets; and he would not listen
even to her when she told him commonplaces. He was not interested, so to
speak, in her caprices, in her chance effects of beauty that anyone can
see. He painted landscape as Titian or Rembrandt painted portraits;
searching always for the permanent character of the place, for that
which, independent of weather or time, distinguished it from other
places. This permanent element he found in structure and mass, but, like
Titian and Rembrandt, he would not abstract these from color. For him,
as for these masters, structure and mass revealed themselves in color,
and all these must be verified by incessant observation.... For him a
hill is not a screen for the play of light; it is built up of earth and
rock. Nor is a tree a mere rippling surface, but a living thing with the
structure of its growth. Everywhere he looks for character; yet he
subordinates the character of details to the character of the whole. And
the character of the whole means for him its permanent character, which
he expresses in a design not imposed upon it but discovered in it, as
Michael Angelo discovered the statue in the block of marble.
“If Cézanne, Gauguin, and VanGogh were charlatans, they were like no
other charlatans that ever lived. If their aim was notoriety, it is
strange that they should have spent solitary lives of penury and toil.
If they were incompetents, they were curiously intent upon the most
difficult problems of their art. The kind of simplification which they
attempted is not easy, nor, if accomplished, does it make a picture
look better than it is. The better their pictures are, the more they
look as if any one could have painted them; in fact, they look just as
easy as the lyrical poems of Wordsworth or Blake.”[19]
For a glimpse of VanGogh’s life and aspirations, see his letters
published in English under the title, “Letters of a Post-Impressionist,”
written mostly to his brother--simple, pathetic documents, showing the
eager, earnest striving of a man who finally went insane and shot
himself. Critics and opponents of his work have seized upon his madness
as proof of lack of sanity in what he painted--perhaps, but then is
dullness the only proof positive of sanity?
* * * * *
Gauguin, half Breton, half Peruvian Creole, was a restless spirit.
“More than once he circumnavigated the globe, and all his life he was at
recurring intervals a victim to wander-thirst. In early manhood he
returned to Paris and made an heroic attempt to settle down. He entered
a bank, and got on there very well.
“One day he saw in a dealer’s shop some paintings which brought back
memories of the light and color he had seen in the tropics. He sought
out the painters Pissarro and Guillaumin, and began painting at the age
of thirty. Two years later, in 1880, he exhibited two landscapes in the
manner of Pissarro.
“Degas made the decisive impression on him, by his systematic division
of large planes of color, and above all, by his strong drawing.”[20]
[Illustration: VAN GOGH
Portrait of Self]
“Gauguin was as singular in his way as VanGogh in his. He did not “go
mad,” but he withdrew from civilized society, buried himself in Tahiti
and painted the natives, firmly convinced that only amidst primitive
conditions could be found the inspiration of pure art.
“His combative disposition impelled him to fight against painters,
critics, dealers, buyers, and against established institutions and
conventions. One would say fate pursued him. In 1894 at Concarneau in a
quarrel with some boatmen who had insulted him, his ankle was broken by
a sabot kick, leaving a painful injury from which he suffered until his
death (in 1903).”[21]
Of his aims he said in a letter to a friend:
Physics, chemistry, and, above all, the study of nature, have
produced an epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said
that artists, robbed of all their savagery, have wandered into all
kinds of paths in search of the productive element which they no
longer possess. They now act only in disorderly groups, and are
terrified as if lost when they find themselves alone. Solitude is
not to be recommended to any one, for a man must have strength to
bear it alone. All I have learnt from others has been an impediment
to me. It is true that I know little, but what I do know is my own.
Every human work is a revelation of the individual. Hence, there
are two kinds of beauty; one comes from instinct, the other from
labor. The union of the two--with the modification resulting
therefrom--produces great and very complicated richness....
Raphael’s great science does not for a moment prevent me from
discovering the instinct of the beautiful in him as the essential
quality.
* * * * *
In 1895 there was a sale of Gauguin’s works at the Hotel Drouot.
Strindberg was asked to write a preface to the catalogue. In declining,
he admitted his own “immense yearning to become a savage and create a
new world,” but said of Gauguin’s world, “it is too sunny for me, the
lover of chiaroscuro. And in your Eden dwells an Eve, who is not my
ideal--for indeed, I too, have a feminine ideal, or two.”
Gauguin answered,
Your civilization is your disease, my barbarism is my restoration
to health. The Eve of your civilized conception makes us nearly all
misogynists. The old Eve, who shocked you in my studio, will
perhaps seem less odious to you some day. I have perhaps been
unable to do more than suggest my world, which seems unreal to you.
It is a far cry from the sketch to the realisation of the dream.
But even the suggestion of the happiness is like a foretaste of
Nirvana--only the Eve I have painted can stand naked before us.
Yours would always be shameless in the natural state, and, if
beautiful, the source of pain and evil.[22]
He had a profound admiration for Cézanne, and was often charged with
imitating him, and in some of his pictures there is a certain
resemblance in construction, but two painters could scarce be less alike
in the handling of color. Gauguin handled color for the pure joy of
it.[23] Cézanne used color as a mason uses bricks.
Gauguin’s admiration for Cézanne was not reciprocated.
“Gauguin likes your work immensely, and imitates you,” a friend once
said to Cézanne.
“Eh! he does not understand me,” was the angry response. “I never have
and never will accept a lack of modelling or graduation; that is
nonsense. Gauguin is not a painter; he produces simply Chinese figures.”
* * * * *
Gauguin was a dreamer; Cézanne, in his way, was quite an exact thinker,
for instance, he explained his ideas of form and color as follows:
Everything in nature is modelled on the lines of the _sphere_, the
_cone_, and the _cylinder_, and one must understand how to paint
these simple figures, one can then paint anything. Design and color
are not distinct; to precisely the extent that one paints, one
draws; the more the color harmonizes, the clearer and purer the
design. When the color is at its finest, the form also attains its
perfection. Contrasts and harmonies of tones--that is the secret of
drawing and modelling.[24]
In the suggestion of the lines of the _sphere_, the _cone_, and the
_cylinder_, as the _elements_ of all art, one recognizes the _alphabet
of cubism_. But in reducing drawing to these elements Cézanne, without
knowing it, simply repeated what Albert Durer printed in book form
nearly four hundred years ago, and what the Chinese and Japanese had
discovered centuries earlier.[25]
The fact that the work of four men so different, Cézanne, Henri
Rousseau, VanGogh, Gauguin, began to be appreciated about the same time,
shows how ripe the Paris art world was for the reaction from
Impressionism--for a great movement in _creative_ and _decorative_ art.
* * * * *
Matisse taught drawing and for a time--from 1895 to 1899--painted along
conventional lines. Influenced by Cézanne he then broke with the
academic and sought new light effects, effects quite different from
those of the Impressionists.
He sought to break with all ancient laws, and his use of color became
and still is largely his own.[26]
While his coloring is always interesting and his drawing facile, there
is at times something about his work that is not satisfying, an
atmosphere of superficiality. He is described, however, by those who
know him as a painter of almost bourgeois earnestness and sincerity,
taking himself and his work most seriously.
At the same time many of his canvasses give the impression of having
been executed in a spirit of sheer audacity.
* * * * *
To be sure, there is a rhythm and swing to some of his moving figures
that is delightful, delightful in the elemental simplicity of the
drawing and the seemingly--but only seemingly--naive coloring.
Yet even with these canvases there is often the feeling, “With so much
skill, why did he not do better?”--a feeling of disappointment, of
dissatisfaction.
One is disposed to agree with the opinion that Matisse’s “true gifts are
those of address, of _souplesse_, of quick assimilation, of limited but
easily acquired knowledge--essentially feminine gifts.”[A]
_“On a beaucoup vanté le goût d’Henri Matisse. Il n’est pas niable,
mais d’une qualité secondaire. C’est le goût d’une modiste; son
amour de la conleur vaut un amour du chiffon.”_
He lives in a simple country house in a suburb out of Paris. His studio
is painted white, within and without, with immense windows.[27]
I found not a long-haired, slovenly-dressed, eccentric man, as I
had imagined, but a fresh, healthy, robust, blonde gentleman, who
looked even more German than French, and whose simple and
unaffected cordiality put me directly at my ease.
Concerning his early experiences, Matisse said: “I began at the
Ecole des Beaux Arts. When I opened my studio, years after, for
some time I painted just like any one else. But things didn’t go at
all, and I was very unhappy. Then, little by little, I began to
paint as I felt. One cannot do successful work which has much
feeling unless one sees the subject very simply, and one must do
this in order to express one’s self as clearly as possible.
[Illustration: MATISSE
The Dance]
“I studied in the schools mornings, and I copied at the Louvre in
the afternoons for ten years. I made copies for the Government, but
when I introduced some of my own emotional impressions, or personal
translations of the pictures, the Government did not care to buy;
it only wanted a photographic copy.”
Of his present methods he said: “I certainly do think of harmony
and color, and of composition, too. Drawing is for me the art of
being able to express myself with line. When an artist or student
draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing,
and not emotion. A true artist cannot see color which is not
harmonious. Otherwise it is a _moyen_, or recipe. An artist should
express his feeling with the harmony or idea of color which he
possesses naturally. He should not copy the walls, or objects on a
table, but he should, above all, express a vision of color, the
harmony of which corresponds to his feeling. And, above all, one
must be honest with one’s self.
“If one _feels no emotion_, one should not paint. When I came in
here to work this morning I had no emotion, so I took a horseback
ride. When I returned I felt like painting, and had all the emotion
I wanted.
“I never use pastels or water colors, and I only make studies from
models, not to use in a picture--_mais pour me nourrir_--to
strengthen my knowledge; and I never work from a previous sketch or
study, but from memory. I now draw with feeling, and not
anatomically. I know how to draw correctly, having studied form so
long.
“I always use a preliminary canvas the same size for a sketch as
for a finished picture, and I always begin with color. With large
canvases this is more fatiguing, but more logical. I may have the
same sentiment I obtained in the first, but this lacks solidity,
and a decorative sense. I never retouch a sketch; I take a new
canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But
I always strive to give the same _feeling_, while carrying it on
further. A picture should, for me, always be decorative. While
working _I never try to think, only to feel_.
“I have a class of sixty pupils and make them draw accurately, as a
student always should do at the beginning. I do not encourage them
to work as I do now.”
When asked about a clay model of a nude woman with abnormal legs,
he picked up a small Javanese statue with a head all out of
proportion to the body and asked:
“Is not that beautiful?”
His interviewer answered, “I see no beauty where there is lack of
proportion. To my mind no sculpture has ever equaled that of the
Greeks, unless it be Michael Angelo’s.”
He replied: “But there you are, back to the classic, the formal. We
of today are trying to express ourselves _today_--_now_--the
_twentieth century_--and not to copy what the Greeks saw and felt
in art over two thousand years ago. The Greek sculptors always
followed a set, fixed form, and never showed any sentiment. The
very early Greeks and the Primitives only worked from the basis of
emotion, but this grew cold, and disappeared in the following
centuries. It makes no difference what are the proportions, _if
there is feeling_. And if the sculptor who modeled this makes me
think only of a dwarf, then he has failed to express the beauty
which should overpower all lack of proportion, and this is only
done through or by means of his emotions.
“My favorite masters are Goya, Durer, Rembrandt, Corot, and Manet.
I often go to the Louvre, and there I study Chardin’s work more
than any other; I go there to study his technic.”
His palette was a large one, and so chaotic and disorderly were the
vivid colors on it that a close resemblance could be traced to some
of his pictures.
“I never mix much; I use small brushes and never more than twelve
colors. I use black to cool the blue.
“I seldom paint portraits; and, if I do, only in a decorative
manner. I can see them in no other way.”
One’s ideas of the man and of his work are entirely opposed to each
other: The latter abnormal to the last degree, and the man an
ordinary, healthy individual, such as one meets by the dozen every
day. On this point Matisse showed some emotion.
“Oh, do tell the American people that I am a normal man; that I am
a devoted husband and father; that I have three fine children; that
I go to the theater, ride horseback, have a comfortable home, a
fine garden that I love, flowers, etc., just like any man.”
As if to bear out this description of himself, he took me to the
salon in his perfectly normal house, to see a normal copy which he
had made at the Louvre, and he bade me good-by and invited me to
call again like a perfectly normal gentleman.[28]
Matisse differs from Cézanne, VanGogh, Gauguin, in the accentuation of
_feeling_ as distinguished from observation. While the three last named
sought fresh inspiration from close and ever closer contact with
nature, he seeks his inspiration in his own emotions.
It is this trait that makes him one of the leaders of
Post-Impressionism, as well as a Fauve.
* * * * *
From the foregoing it is clear that _Fauvism_ does not mean a particular
mode or technic, like Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism,
etc., etc. It means a _mood_ rather than a _mode_. Every painter in
revolt against prevailing taste and standards was and is a _Fauve_.
Not all Post-Impressionists are Fauves, but many are so called, for
instance, the following:[29]
Odilon Redon, Othon Friez, Picasso (the founder of Cubism), Van Dongen,
André Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, George Braque, Raoul Dufy, Robert
Delauney, M’lle Laurencin, Jean Metzinger, Pierre Girieud, Verhoeven.
Of the above four are well known Cubists; Redon is a poetic personality
quite apart; while the others exhibit marked individualities in their
work.
Les Fauves in Germany are “Die Wilden,” embracing the “Brücke” of
Dresden, the “Neue Sezession” of Berlin, the “Neue Vereinigung” of
Munich.[30]
Those of Russia are Larionoff, P. Kuznezoff, Sarjan, Denissow, Kantsch,
Schalowsky, Maschkoff, Frau Gontscharof, von Wisen, W. and D. Burljuk,
Kanabe, Jakulof; and others who live in foreign countries, such as
Schereczowa, Paris; Kandinsky Werefkina, Jawlensky, Bechteyeff, Genin in
Munich.[31]
Among the best known English artists who might fairly be classed as
“Fauves” are Ferguson, Peploe, Lewis, Wyndhover Lewis, Duncan Grant,
Mrs. Bell, Frederic Etchells, Miss Etchells, Eric Gill, Spencer F. Gore,
and a man who has done heroic service for the new movement, Roger Fry.
There are, however, comparatively speaking, so few “Fauves” in England
that the guns of the critics rust on the racks; while in America they
are so scattered they have as yet attracted no attention by concerted
action.
Almost the only man in this country who has persistently painted in
Cubist fashion for any length of time is Arthur Dove, one of whose
pictures is reproduced.
When asked how he came to paint as he does Dove said:
After having come to the conclusion that there were a few
principles existent in all good art from the earliest examples we
have, through the Masters to the present, I set about it to analyze
these principles as they are found in works of art and in nature.
One of these principles which seemed most evident was the choice of
the simple motif. This same law held in nature, a few forms and a
few colors sufficed for the creation of an object.
Consequently I gave up my more disorderly methods (impressionism);
in other words, I gave up trying to express an idea by stating
innumerable little facts, the statement of facts having no more to
do with the art of painting than statistics with literature.
He then refers to “that perfect sense of order which exists in the early
Chinese painting,” and goes on:
The first step was to choose from nature a motif in color, and with
that motif to paint from nature, the form still being objective.
The second step was to apply this same principle to form, the
actual dependence upon the object (literal to representation)
disappearing, and the means of expression becoming purely
subjective.
After working for sometime in this way, I no longer observed in the
old way, and not only began to think _subjectively_, but also to
remember certain sensations _purely through their form and color_,
that is by certain shapes, planes, light, or character lines
determined by the meeting of such planes.
With the introduction of the line motif the expression grew more
plastic, and the struggle with the means became less evident.
[Illustration: DOVE
Based on Leaf Forms and Spaces]
Referring to the painting reproduced he said:
It is a choice of three colors, red, yellow, and green, and three
forms selected from trees and the spaces between them that to me
were expressive of the movement of the thing which I felt.
As to going further and explaining what I felt, that would be quite
as stupid as to play on an instrument before deaf persons. The deaf
person is simply not sensitive to sound and cannot appreciate; and
a person who is not sensitive to form and color as such would be
quite as helpless.
The majority of people seem to be in the position of deaf persons.
They see others listening intently, and apparently enjoying
something, and because they fail to hear, they at once draw the
false conclusion that the trouble is with the instrument or the
performers.
In November last a group of young Americans held an exhibition of very
modern work in The MacDowell Club in New York. The exhibitors were
Oliver Chaffee, Konrad Cramer, Andrew Dasburg, Grace Johnson, Arthur
Lee, Henry L. McFee, Paul Rohland, William Zorach.
IV
A FUTILE PROTEST
The Cubist pictures in the Salon d’Automne, 1912, was the occasion of
the following letter from M. Lempué, painter and doyen du Conseil
municipal de la Ville de Paris, addressed M. Bérard, Sous-Secrétaire
d’Etat des Beaux-Arts.[32]
If the voice of a municipal counsellor could reach you, I would beg
you, would pray you to go and take a turn around the Autumn Salon.
Go there, sir, and although you are a minister, I trust that you
will come away as much disgusted as are many people whom I know,
and I hope, also, that you will say to yourself in an undertone:
“Have I indeed the right to loan a public building to a lot of
malefactors who conduct themselves in the world of art as do the
_apaches_ in ordinary life?”
You will ask yourself, Mr. Minister, in leaving the place, if
nature and the human form have ever before suffered such outrages;
you will admit with regret that in this Salon the most trivial
uglinesses and vulgarities that can be imagined are there displayed
and accumulated; and you will again ask yourself, Mr. Minister, if
the dignity of the Government of which you form part is not
injured, inasmuch as it appears to take under its protection such a
scandal by sheltering horrors like these in a national building.
The Government of the Republic, as it seems to me, ought to be more
careful and more respectful of the artistic dignity of France.
A year ago, and for another reason, I wrote to your predecessor,
who, by the way, took no notice of my letter; but what is
astonishing--does he not let everybody think that he is a
meridional, whereas he was born nowhere else than at Montmartre?
A friend whispers to me that you are from Orthez; we are,
therefore, fellow-townsmen, for that is almost as if you came from
Montrejeau; so then, “Dious bibant!” (Dieu vivant!) it will not be
long before you will make known to the Belgian, Frantz Jourdain,
who has very modestly set for himself the mission of reforming
French art, and who, in order to thoroughly demonstrate his ability
to do so, has deposited--I will not say offal--but the store of
“La Samaritaine” almost opposite the Louvre, which fact is a sure
proof of the superiority of his monstrosity of a structure over the
beautiful architecture of the Renaissance. Please, therefore, make
known to this architect that in the future he may locate his
reforms and his reformers where he pleases, but not again in a
public building, and for so doing, all those who have taste and
love for beautiful things will applaud you.
Please accept, Mr. Minister, the assurance of my highest regards.
Lempué.
* * * * *
The Committee of the Autumn Salon, in reply, made the following
statement:
The committee of the Autumn Salon considers that the only reply
which it can make to the especially severe attacks that have been
made on it this year is to make announcement of the principle that
directs it:
“To admit all efforts of conscientious art, whatever they may be,
however personal, and however strange they may seem to the ancient
formulae.”
The Autumn Salon is not and does not wish to be the conservator of
a school with a fixed formula; it wishes, rather, to remain the
ground of generous combat and of the emulation necessary in a
country like ours, in order to bring out and fructify both artists
and works of art.
The Government, whose rôle is not to direct, but to encourage the
artistic effort of the nation, can consider only in the most kindly
way a Salon which has been the first to give reception to many
artists now celebrated, which has given a place hitherto unknown to
decorative art, and which, before all other expositions, has placed
music and literature on a par with painting and sculpture.
* * * * *
Then the newspapers published the following item of news:
M. J. L. Breton, deputy from Cherbourg, proposes to put to the
Assistant-Secretary of State for the Beaux Arts, in the course of
the next discussion of his budget, a question regarding the
“scandal” of the Autumn Salon, and to ask him not to allow the use
of the Grand Palais for such manifestations, which discredit
French art in our national palaces.
This is the question which was put to the consulting commission
charged with giving its advice regarding the multiple concessions
for the Grand Palais in 1913.
M. Pascal, of the Institute, who presented the question, concluded
unfavorably. After a long and lively discussion, the commission
ranged itself by a large majority on the side of the proponent.
Let us recall the protests that have been addressed to the Autumn
Salon. They were the subject, a few weeks ago, of a letter from Mr.
Lampué, dean of the municipal council, who protested against the
invasion of _cubism_ into the galleries of the palace of
expositions.
It is now up to M. Léon Bérard, Assistant-Secretary of State for
the Beaux Arts, to take final action.
* * * * *
On varnishing day, Mr. Gabriel Mourey wrote in the Journal:
“What a pity it is that there is no law permitting the taking of
legal action against painters who cultivate hatred of beauty in the
public mind. These painters are the advance-guard artists and the
Cubists.” M. Mourey neglected to tell us if the legal action which
he proposes to us would be civil or penal. In our opinion, it would
be necessary to make a distinction: The rich painters might be
condemned to pay a penalty, and, so that the Government might not
be liable to lose its rights where there is nothing, the poor
painters might be hung up high and short.
Oh, tolerance! oh, progress! oh, the twentieth century!
In connection with the controversy “L’Art Décoratif” quoted the
following letter from Boucher to his pupil Fragonard: “My dear
Fragonard: You are going to see in Italy the works of Raphael, Michael
Angelo, and their imitators; I say to you in confidence and as a friend,
_if you take these people seriously you are lost_.”
* * * * *
Not the least interesting and amusing feature of the lively article from
which the above extracts are taken is its own denunciation of the
cubists _en bloc_.
[Illustration: WEREFKIN
The Country Road]
[Illustration: BECHTEJEFF
Fight of the Amazons]
It resolutely assails the more orthodox critics for what they say about
all the moderns _it likes_ and then it echoes their language in its own
condemnation of a body of men who are striving earnestly in their way to
do things.
* * * * *
_“Oh! tolerance, oh! progress!_
_Oh! twentieth century!”_
* * * * *
One has only to group the conflicting opinions of great painters and
critics to see how much depends upon the point of view and the personal
equation.
To say certain pictures are worthless is a matter of individual taste
and judgment; they may be worthless to me and not to you, just as
clothes one man likes another would refuse to wear.
But to say a school or a movement, irrespective of particular works, is
a worthless movement involves not one’s taste but one’s philosophy of
life; it involves the proposition that a movement in art that challenges
the attention of the art-world _is so devoid of force of any kind_ that
it is unworthy attention--an obvious contradiction.
Cubism has produced a lot of inane, uninteresting, and ugly pictures,
pictures hopelessly bad in both line and color, but it has also produced
pictures that are fine in line and color; but whether a particular
picture is good or bad is of no importance whatsoever in comparison with
the larger and more vital question:
_What is the relation of Cubism to the art of today and tomorrow?_
* * * * *
When the _Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ was founded in 1890 in a
spirit of revolt against the old Salon _Société des Artistes
Français_--which dates its expositions from 1673--the schism was
complete and the movement was denounced as revolutionary. The art world
was divided into two bitterly hostile camps. The two Salons seemed
absolutely irreconcilable.
Now they exhibit side by side in practically the same building. The
visitor can stand in the main gallery of the one and gaze into the
galleries of the other. The only distinctions are separate catalogues
and an extra charge of a franc or two if you wish to pass from the one
to the other.
* * * * *
Passing from the old Salon to the newer, one still has--to a slight
degree--the feeling of passing from older and more conservative pictures
to a newer, lighter, and somewhat more modern collection. And there is a
difference but it is so slight that casual visitors do not notice it. In
fact nine out of ten who visit the two Salons would think they were in
but one exhibition, selected and arranged by the same committee, were it
not for the additional fee and the two catalogues.
There is no reason today why the two Salons should not coalesce and make
one exhibition.
In less than twenty-five years the older has absorbed much of what was
good in the revolutionary force of the younger, and so much of the
revolutionary enthusiasm of the younger has subsided that the members of
the new _Société_ fight side by side with the members of the old
_against the two more radical exhibitions_, the _Salon d’Automne_,
organized in 1903, and the _Société des Artistes Independents_,
organized in 1884.
* * * * *
In time the Salon d’Automne will become quite as conservative as the two
older Salons and there will be no reason why it should not exhibit and
coalesce with the older.
What is happening in Paris has happened in Munich. The Munich
Secessionists, once denounced as aesthetic anarchists, have so far
subsided that they exhibit with the academic painters, retaining a faint
show of identity by having the word “Secessionist” over the doors of the
few rooms they fill.
The old Secession having subsided, the “Neue Sezession” has been
organized by “Die Wilden” of Munich and that is now rampant; in ten or
twenty years _it_ will be absorbed in the main stream and a still
_newer_ secession challenge attention--and so on to the end of progress,
for progress depends upon new and newer and ever newer departures.
Already there is a division in the New Secession; the “Blue Riders” have
withdrawn.
* * * * *
Months after the above was written the London correspondent of the
“Chicago Tribune”--Nov. 2, 1913--wrote as follows about the
post-impressionist exhibition in the Grafton Galleries:
Many of the pictures which would have provoked happy laughter three
years ago now look quite ordinary. The public is inured to them as
much as it is inured to Whistler or Degas, and in a little time
some of them will be dealers’ pictures, just like the works of the
Barbizon school.
There is, for instance, nothing extraordinary about the “Interior
of a Café,” by VanGogh, except its quiet excellence. It is all seen
as justly and yea as newly as a character in one of Tolstoi’s
novels. One feels that any one could have painted it who had had
the luck to see it so.
The “Boats at Anchor,” also by VanGogh, is merely a sound but not
very interesting impressionist picture, and his flower piece is
even academic in a delightful way. Cézanne’s “Boys Bathing” is one
of those works on which the art of modern painters like M. Friesz
is based.
It looks like a representation of something seen instantaneously,
and yet at the same time it is all designed like a work of Nicholas
Poussin’s.
M. Matisse’s “Joaquina” is timidly skied, but it is not in the
least infuriating, like his famous gentleman in pajamas. Indeed,
his method here justifies itself at first sight, for by no other
means, one feels, could he have expressed the vitality of his
sitter so simply and intensely.
M. Friesz’s “Garden at Coimbra” is one of the pictures that would
have astonished us all three or four years ago, but which now looks
only pleasant and simple. So are the works of M. Marquet and M.
Doucet, and even M. Herbin no longer seems a bad joker. The “Polka”
and “Waltz” of Mr. Severini, the futurist, are quite agreeable to
the eye, if it refuses to allow itself to be puzzled by the mind;
but, if futurist paintings can be academic, they are a little
academic, or at least systematic. One feels that any one could be
taught to do them pretty well in a studio.
Among the water colors there are some pleasant works by M. Doucet
and some remarkable experiments by M. Pechstein. The color prints
of M. Manzana are more Chinese than Japanese in spirit, especially
the print of horses; and the lithographs of M. Matisse may help
some earnest beginners to see some merit in his painting. At any
rate, any one who looks at them must see that he can draw.
The exhibition contains a good deal of rubbish, but far less than
most exhibitions of what is considered orthodox art.
* * * * *
The Salon d’Independants tends to remain radical notwithstanding it was
founded so long ago as 1884 because it has but one article in its creed,
“_the suppression of juries of admission and permission to artists to
exhibit freely their works to the judgment of the public_.”
By paying five dollars any artist--real or supposed--is entitled to so
much space and can fill that space with such pictures as he pleases,
irrespective of their merit.
As a result, each exhibition contains original, revolutionary and
radical work mixed with an immense amount of painting and sculpture that
is hopelessly bad and some positively objectionable.
The continued vitality of the Independent Salon is due to the fact it
has no officials or committees to control its exhibitions and check the
appearance of radical work.
[Illustration: VAN GOGH
Café]
The three other Salons grow conservative in the natural ageing of their
management; they start with all the enthusiasm of youth but as both
members and officers get older they tend to monopolize much of the
available space for themselves and, naturally, they admit only those
newcomers whose work does not detract or distract from their own. That
is the history of the Royal Academy in London, of the National Academy
in New York, and of every organization _the management of which has the
right to hang their own and reject the works of others_.
* * * * *
In the development of art _all_ these exhibitions have their values.
They are not unlike an army in a campaign, with its scouts, its
skirmishers, its advance guard, and its more slowly moving main body--in
the end it is the main body that does the most work.
The _value_ of every _new_ movement lies in the possibility of its
ultimately _contributing_ something to the mass, _not_ in the
possibility of its _destroying_ what has been done.
* * * * *
One has but to recall that both Whistler and Manet--to mention no
others--were obliged to exhibit in the Salon des Refuses of their day to
realize that an _independent_ salon has its place in the art world quite
as important as an official; in fact, wherever there is an _official_
exhibition there should be an _un_-official, or independent, as a
natural complement, otherwise the opportunity of the public to see _for
itself_ is limited by official discretion.
* * * * *
For instance, it is the rule of the National Academy in New York that
every member and associate has _the right_ to hang a picture
irrespective of its merits. As the space is limited the chance for new
men is small indeed.
Furthermore it is the older men who pass upon the works of the newer and
naturally they feel an instinctive aversion to paintings that clash with
or distract attention from their own, hence the more radical, the more
novel, the more interesting the picture the less chance it has of being
accepted. This is both a fault and a virtue in the Academy--the fault
and the virtue of extreme conservatism.
To correct the fault other exhibitions, held under freer conditions, are
absolutely necessary not only to the progress of artists, young and old,
but to stimulate interest in the public, to make the public feel that
_it_ is something more than a passive spectator with nothing to say, but
on the contrary _its sympathetic cooperation_ and _final verdict_ of
approval are desired.
* * * * *
Nothing is more deadly to the art of a country than a single annual
official exhibition such, for instance, as that of the Royal Academy in
London, or the old Salon as it was thirty years ago in Paris.
The interest of the public is not aroused. The official selection is
accepted as a matter of course. What is in the exhibitions is supposed
to be good, what is not accepted is supposed to be bad.
As a result, the really good pictures in such exhibitions are not
appreciated at their true value, while the poor are bought simply
because they are there.
The truth is it requires the new salons, the independent exhibitions to
give vitality to the old, to teach the public to appreciate the good in
the old.
Good art, like everything else good, springs from controversy, _from the
assertion of the individual_, from the mighty struggle of every sincere
and enthusiastic man to convince the world that _he_ is right and that
_his_ works and ways are better than those of all other men.
* * * * *
That is just what the new men are striving to do now--each is trying to
convince the world _he_ is right, that _his_ methods, _his_ departures,
_his_ theories are true.
The Cubist does not admit much of value in the Futurist, while the
latter see nothing at all in Cubism. In short the “isms” are more at war
among themselves than with the older schools.
Out of the seething conflict of forces good is sure to come; the amount
of good depending directly upon the sharpness of the conflict.
V
WHAT IS CUBISM?
What is “Cubism?”
One more name added to the long roll of “movements” in art. Within the
memory of living men we have had “Classicists,” “Romanticists,”
“Idealists,” “Naturalists,” “Realists,” “Pre-Raphaelites,” and many
more.
Today we have the “Neo-Impressionists,” the “Pointilists,” the
“Luminists,” the “Futurists,” the “Orphists,” the “Sensationalists,” the
“Compositionalists,” the “Synchronists,” the “Cubists”--tomorrow?
New and ever new departures, experiments, achievements.
All of which goes to prove that art is living, for the sign of life is
flux.
* * * * *
The other day I saw three well-known American painters standing before a
cubist picture laughing; _painters of forty years ago_ would have
laughed quite as heartily _at the works of each of the three_.
The innovation of today is the conventional of tomorrow.
Because the names of Rembrandt and Hals are now household words in art
we are quick to assume their pictures were always considered great. Not
so.
Just now it is a fad of millionaires to own Rembrandts; consequently he
is over-appreciated and ridiculously overpriced.
* * * * *
The bare thought of the scorn that greeted Wagner’s operas, the poems of
Browning, and Whitman, sends a cold
[Illustration: METZINGER
The Taster]
[Illustration: LEGER
The Chimneys]
chill down our backs, makes us pause in our headlong criticism lest we,
too, pillory ourselves.
Violent judgments are good fun, but they often come back to plague us.
Of Wagner’s “Meistersinger” Ruskin said:
Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-headed stuff
I ever saw on a human stage that thing last night--as far as the
story and acting went--and of all the affected, sapless, soul-less,
beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest,
tuneless, scrannelpipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I
ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the
deadliest as far as its sound went. I never was so relieved, so far
as I can remember, in my life by the stopping of any sound, not
excepting railroad whistles, as I was by the cessation of the
cobbler’s bellowing; even the serenader’s caricatured twangle was a
rest after. As for the great “Lied,” I never made out where it
began or where it ended except by the fellow’s coming off the horse
block.
From which the inference is not unwarranted that Wagner did not please
Ruskin!
* * * * *
Opposed to all movements in art and life is the _academic_ mind, fed on
learning, steeped in tradition, hence conservative.
The term is not here used in a reproachful sense; on the contrary, the
philosopher lays stress upon the value of the academic in progress; it
is the element that preserves; it is the mass upon which humanity rests;
it is the old and stable; it is the past upon which the future is built;
it is the essential groundwork of new thought and new effort.
* * * * *
The life of the individual passes from the enthusiasms, the radicalisms
of youth to the serene and self-satisfied outlook of old age which
instinctively opposes novelty and change--the academic attitude.
Youth makes friends with every chance acquaintance, age shuns the
strange.
We are all Impressionists and Futurists at some times in our lives, but
we tend to petrify. Sclerosis of the _arteries_ is bad, but nothing
compared with sclerosis of the _emotions_. We not only tend to become
petrified as we grow older, but even in our youth we have our petrified
sides, our hard spots.
However progressive we may be in certain directions we are sure to be
stubbornly conservative in others.
The man who laughs at a cubist picture may be a cubist--that is, an
innovator--in his profession or business.
The man who is a conservative in religion may be a radical in politics,
and _vice versa_. As a matter of fact most of the followers of Lloyd
George in England are the greatest sticklers for the inerrancy and the
literal interpretation of the Scriptures, while most of the hide-bound
conservatives are exceedingly tolerant toward “modernism” and “higher
criticism” in the church.
So it goes. The merchant or manufacturer, the doctor or lawyer who is up
to date in business or profession, who is keenly receptive toward the
latest and most revolutionary methods, inventions, discoveries, may
be--usually is--a hopeless reactionary toward other lines of human
endeavor, a hopeless conservative when it comes, for instance, to
looking at pictures.
* * * * *
Now and then one meets a man so sympathetically observant and receptive
that, like a good rubber ball, he is resilient at all points of contact.
But for the most part we are like defective balls, resilient only in
spots, and, like rubber, we become less and less resilient with age.
* * * * *
Happy the man or woman who retains until late in life the power to react
to new impressions and to experience new emotions.
The trouble with most of us is that even when we do react to new
impressions and experience new emotions we are afraid to admit it. If
any one of us, while alone in a museum, happened to run across a strange
painting or a strange piece of sculpture--say a Javanese or a cubist
production--we would not burst out laughing any more than we would laugh
at some of the archaic sculptures and primitive works that are found in
every great collection. On the contrary, we would probably study it with
good healthy curiosity. But when the crowd is about we are afraid to
express our curiosity, we are afraid to be honestly and genuinely
interested, so we take refuge in laughter, it is so much easier to mask
our ignorance with ridicule than confess it by frankly asking for
information.
The man who does not understand a play or a book always condemns it.
* * * * *
It would not be difficult to pick out among one’s business acquaintances
those who are conservative, that is, academic, and those who are
inventive, speculative, venturesome, and so on to the “wild
enthusiasts,” “crazy fellows,” who are always doing the unexpected;
failing often but sometimes succeeding so brilliantly the world follows
in their footsteps.
* * * * *
There is nothing strange about the Cubists--except their pictures. Their
pictures strike us as strange because we do not understand them, but if
they were simply trying to do what thousands of inventors are trying to
do the world over, namely, devise something new to meet the needs of
mankind we would laugh at them no more than--and just as much as--the
world laughed at the Wright brothers when they were working on the
flying machine.
There are romanticists, realists, impressionists, futurists, cubists, in
the theater.
The romantic play is an old, but still delightful story. We have had
realism on the stage so long it has become almost academic. Just now
there is coming from the Scandinavian countries and from Germany and
Russia a form of dramatic representation that is essentially Cubist,
Futurist, and Orphist in its expression.[33]
This ferment of new ideas is very disturbing to men who are afraid of
change, who favor things as they are, who like to go to bed at the same
hour and get up at the same hour, to do today what they did yesterday.
But the new ideas will not down; they are constantly breaking out in
unexpected places and while they may seem to be different ideas when
expressed in music, painting, sculpture, poetry, architecture, from
those expressed in science, religion, politics, social reform, and
business generally, they are not; they are all fundamentally the same,
namely, they are the ideas of a progress so rapid and radical it may be
revolutionary and in a measure destructive.
* * * * *
In the very nature of things it is not given to many men to be receptive
to new ideas in many lines, for that implies thinking for themselves in
many lines. The more intense and advanced a man is in one line of
thought, the more apt he is to accept ready made the ideas of others in
other subjects. It is a saving of time for the radical scientist to
accept his politics and religion ready made from those who devote their
time to those matters--the scientist does not always do so, but often
when he thinks he is asserting his independence by rejecting current
beliefs he is doing so without any real ideas and convictions of his
own.
[Illustration: DUCHAMP
Chess Players]
What has been said so far has been a plea for tolerance, for a sober
suppression of hasty judgment in the presence of the strange.
Few men seem able to control their resentments and risibilities in the
presence of paintings that seem to contradict all the teachings and
traditions of art; but because they do _seem_ to stand in opposition to
all we have been taught to believe, they are all the more worthy our
most serious consideration. It is the man who challenges and denies who
stirs other men to think _for themselves_. That is the chief value of
the cubist paintings--they compel us to _think for ourselves_, to take a
careful inventory of our stock of stereotyped notions; with the result
that while we may not accept the theories of the Cubists, we cannot fail
to readjust our own notions on a broader basis.
* * * * *
I would be very sorry if any reader should take up this volume under the
impression it is a plea for Cubism or any other “ism” in either art or
life. If it is a plea for anything, it is for _tolerance and intelligent
receptivity_, for an attitude of sympathetic appreciation toward
_everything that is new and strange and revolutionary in life_. Not that
we will necessarily end by accepting the new and the strange and the
revolutionary, but we cannot get the good there may be in them unless
our attitude is one of sympathetic as well as critical receptivity.
* * * * *
It is something more than a mere coincidence that the upheaval in the
art world has paralleled the upheaval in the political world. The
exhibitions of extreme modern pictures were first held in England just
when extreme radical theories were gaining the ascendency. The
International Exhibition in America followed hot in the footsteps of
the split in the Republican party and the triumph of the Democratic
along lines so progressive as to seem almost socialistic.
The artists who organized the exhibition did not realize it, but they
were animated by precisely the same motive that animated the organizers
of the Progressive party--an irresistible desire for a change.
* * * * *
Youth gazes curiously at the experiment--painting, poem, play--from
which age turns in anger.
Cubist paintings interest the young; they irritate the old.
Nothing keeps a man young so effectually as a vivid and sympathetic
interest in _every_ new and seemingly revolutionary movement.
* * * * *
People who looked at the cubist paintings and laughed did so through
ignorance; the sad part was that many frankly said they did not care to
understand; not a few insisted the paintings were quite without meaning,
utterly devoid of sense.
In other words, the public, day after day and week after week, struggled
and paid to see works that were _meaningless_!
Painters, sculptors, critics, argued and fought over canvases _devoid of
significance_! A paradox! For if _devoid of significance_, why should
the world of artists, critics, writers, argue, swear, and fight over
them?
The question answers itself; the trouble is the works _do_ possess a
significance, a significance far beyond the merits of any particular
one, far beyond the merits of cubism itself; they are significant of the
spirit of change that is within and about us, the spirit of unrest, of
the striving, of the searching for greater and more beautiful things.
Cubism will pass away, but the spirit of change will not pass away. One
enthusiasm will follow another enthusiasm so long as men possess
ambition.
Already there are signs that Cubism is passing. Some of the men are
calling themselves Neo-Cubists and Post-Cubists, and they are painting
in very different manner.
One has but to look at a series of Picasso’s work to see how often and
radically he has changed his style in these ten years from drawing and
painting with great facility and success in Impressionistic and
Neo-Impressionistic manner to the most abstract Cubism; what he will be
doing two years hence, no one can predict, save that, judging by the
past, he will not be painting Cubist pictures.
* * * * *
The name “Cubism” was given to the new school “in derision, in the
autumn of 1908, by Henri Matisse, who happened to see a picture of
buildings the cubical representation of which struck him forcibly.”[34]
That year Georges Braque exhibited a Cubist picture in the Salon des
Independents.
In 1910, Jean Metzinger exhibited a Cubist portrait in the Salle
d’Automne, and a number of pictures were hung in the Salon des
Independents.
The first collection was gathered together in room 41 at the Salon des
Independents in 1911. The same year the first exhibition outside of
Paris was held in Brussels, and there the names “Cubism” and “Cubistes”
were adopted.
In 1911 the exposition of the Cubists in the Salle d’Automne caused
considerable sensation. Gleizes, Metzinger, Leger, and, for the first
time, Marcel Duchamp and his brother, the sculptor-architect,
Duchamp-Villon, exhibited.
Other expositions were held in November, 1911, at the gallery d’Art
Contemporaine rue Tronchet; in 1912, at the Salon des Independents,
where Juan Gris first exhibited; in May of the same year, in Barcelona;
in June, at Rouen, where Picabia joined the new school.
The different tendencies of the movement are described as follows:[35]
1. _Cubism scientifique_ is the tendency toward pure cubism; it is the
painting with elements borrowed not from the realities of vision, but
the realities of knowledge. The geometrical lines, which so impressed
all who first saw their scientific works, resulted from the attempt to
paint the essential--rather than the visual--realities of things which
were rendered on canvas with an abstract purity, and in which objective
realities and story-telling qualities were eliminated.
Most of Picasso’s geometrical representations and Duchamp’s “King and
Queen” are good illustrations of _scientific_ or _pure_ Cubism.
2. _Cubism physique_ is painting compositions the elements of which are
borrowed for the most part from realities of vision. Inasmuch as
objective realities are more or less in evidence in these works, they
are not pure Cubism.
Picasso’s “Woman and the Pot of Mustard” is a very striking--and
indifferent--example of _Cubism physique_, which simply means cubist
paintings in which figures and objects are more or less apparent to the
casual observer. In Marcel Duchamp’s “Chess Players” the figures are
quite plain; in Picabia’s “Dance at the Spring” one figure is
distinguishable at first glance, the second is not so easily discerned,
while the spring is more obscure, though plain enough after a little
study.
It is under this head that some of the most interesting
[Illustration: PICABIA
Dance at the Spring]
and also some of the most exasperating cubist pictures will be found. To
the extent that figures and objects are blocked in in planes and masses
in a big, elemental way, the result may be both impressive and
beautiful--Derain’s “Forest at Martigues” is an example in point; but in
so far as the picture is a _puzzle_, clear only in part, the result is
exasperating; the observer, however sympathetic his attitude, is
diverted from enjoying the _art_ of the painter to the attempt to
discover the hidden objects.
To the foregoing two divisions are added two more, which are, in
reality, but subdivisions or refinements of _Cubism Scientifique_.
There are really but the two extremes--those who represent objects more
or less cubically, i.e., in planes and masses of line and color; and
those who compose harmonies of line and color that have no relation to
figures or objects.
In the paintings of the one, objects are more or less apparent; in those
of the other no object is discernible, because none is represented or
suggested.
3. _Cubism Orphique_ is created entirely by the artist; it takes nothing
from visual, objective realities, but is derived wholly from the
painter’s imagination; it is pure art.
4. _Cubism instinctive_ is described as the painting of compositions of
color, not based upon objective realities, but suggested by the instinct
and intentions of the artist. The artist who follows his instinct, his
fancy of the moment, though he may paint beautiful compositions, lacks
the clear comprehension of him who paints according to some well thought
out, artistic creed.
* * * * *
It is quite obvious that subdivisions three and four are based upon
temperamental rather than logical or scientific distinctions.
To refer to some of the pictures reproduced:
There is no mystery about the “Man on the Balcony.” He is quite in
evidence; the background is a little puzzling, yet fairly obvious. The
attention of the casual observer is not diverted from the mode and
manner of painting--from the Cubism of the picture, so to speak.
It is not a question of “Now I see it, now I don’t see it.” It is
obviously the figure of a man leaning on something, apparently a
railing, with a confused background. But so far as uncertainty regarding
the background and accessories is concerned, that troubles no one, for
uncertainty in detail is! characteristic of the backgrounds of many fine
and famous portraits.
The point is that the “Man on the Balcony” belongs to that class of
Cubist pictures wherein the object is almost as well defined as in
pictures with which the public is more familiar; whereas the “King and
Queen” belongs to the extreme class wherein the objects have been
reduced to symbols or abstractions.
The one is the painting of objects in Cubist fashion; the other is the
painting of ideas in Cubist fashion.
* * * * *
Of all the Cubist pictures exhibited, most people liked “The Man on the
Balcony” best. Why?
Because it looked like a good painting of a man in armour.
“I like the ‘Man in Armour,’” was an expression frequently heard.
All of which goes to show that appreciation is largely a matter of
association rather than of knowledge and taste.
Tell the people it is not a man in armour, and immediately they ask, in
a tone of disgust, “Then what is he?” and the picture they liked a
moment before becomes ridiculous in their eyes.
[Illustration: GLEIZES
Original drawing for “Man on Balcony”]
The original design is an almost academic freehand drawing of a
man--artist or workman--leaning against the railing of a balcony, with
roofs of the city at his back. Barring the square treatment of hand and
foot, there is little to suggest Cubism.
The drawing is uninteresting, the painting is uninteresting. By blocking
out details, emphasizing planes, and laying stress on masses, the artist
made his painting incomparably more dignified and stronger than his
design.
If he had painted an academic picture, following the lines of his
original sketch, the painting probably would have been quite
commonplace.
* * * * *
The “Chess Players” gives one a singular impression of human absorption
in a game; it is elemental and impersonal. Behind the two players are
onlookers, equally intent. One player is resting his chin upon his hand,
the other holds a piece apparently making a move. The artist has
arbitrarily placed the men and board close to the eye of the player
making the move.
While most people might prefer lifelike portraits of two men playing
chess, is it not true that this curious reduction of the players to
elemental planes and masses gives a very vivid impression of intense
absorption, and also a strange feeling of the elemental? A sculptor
admired this picture greatly.
* * * * *
Two figures were the basis of the “King and the Queen,” the king at the
right, and the queen at the left; but in the finished picture these two
figures were reduced to planes, and appear as the two upright conical or
cubical masses that are so evident, and a philosophical significance was
attributed to the scheme, namely, a representation of the static and
dynamic forms of life; the static being represented in the upright
masses, the king and queen--dynastic, permanent--while the dynamic
forces are represented in the stream of cubical forms that flow in
different directions about the two more permanent masses.
On its technical side, Cubism is simply a systematic use of planes.
* * * * *
The power of lines is a manifestation of the new mode of
representation.
It is not a semblance of things, but a world of objects that the
picture forces us to take in with a glance. The objects may not get
lost. The outline is the demarcation and designation of the
objects. By its outer essence their inner nature is expressed. The
nature of objects is not fixed by a correct drawing, but by a
forceful and emotional, intensive and pervasive outline. Not in
their restfulness and with their details do the objects serve the
picture, but by their relations to each other, which relations
combined lead up to the climax.
The long lines form the structure of the picture. They decide how
the picture is to be constructed from its parts, and how the parts
are to be interlocked in order to become a whole. The long lines
define the measure and rhythm of the work. Lines are the vibrations
of the soul; lines are reflections of the will, the rigidity of
that which endures. Like currents of forces they flow against each
other and unite into one. The smaller ones accompany them with
playful gambols, like a multiple echo, the sounds of which melt
away in the distance.
The picture is not a nicely divided plane. It is like a world
arising from chaos. Its essence is the law of order working itself
out. The picture is an agglomeration of agitated members, an
agglomeration of planes pulsating with blood, enlivened by breath.
The planes may be stratified, parallel and similar to each other;
they may rear and pile themselves against each other, or they may
interlock like cogs. They may liquefy and melt away, or they may
double up and form themselves into balls. They may, more quietly,
rest within themselves, becoming effective through the contrast of
their essence and yet maintaining themselves. Out of them
originates the picture’s spaciousness, out of them the living force
of the picture.
The dynamics of the planes is a manifestation of the new style.[36]
[Illustration:
DUCHAMP
King and Queen
]
Passing one morning among a number of first year students drawing from
casts in the Chicago Art Institute, I was struck by the large number who
were making what would pass for Cubist sketches; yet not one of these
young students had seen a Cubist picture. All were simply following the
regular course of instruction and drawing _in planes_.
I remember one drawing of a statue by Michael Angelo. There was not a
straight line in the statue; there was not a curved line in the drawing;
the drawing was blocked out far more solidly and geometrically than, for
instance, either the original design for “The Man on the Balcony” or the
finished painting.
In another room I ran across a teacher who was indicating by a few
geometrical lines drawn from points the essential features of a statue
the pupil was about to begin blocking in. The lines looked exactly like
the geometrical lines in a drawing by Picasso.
There is, therefore, nothing fundamentally new or strange in the technic
of the Cubists; it is simply a return to the use of the elemental in
drawing, of the very A, B, C of design. The new and the strange lie in
the fact that the Cubists _stop_ with planes and lines; they do not
attempt to model the surfaces of the things they paint.
* * * * *
Not that the use of planes is all there is to the theory of Cubism, for
the theory extends far beyond the painting of surfaces; it embraces the
presentation of the very _substance_ and nature of persons and objects
by means of a _technic_ in which planes are the vital feature.
* * * * *
Albert Dürer wrote a book on the proportions of the human figure; it was
published in 1528, and translated into many languages.
He reduced the human figure to certain elemental lines.[37]
[Illustration]
Applying these principles to the hand, he gets this result:
[Illustration]
It is interesting to compare this sectional diagram of the hand with the
hand of “The Man on the Balcony.”
Furthermore, one has but to consider the elemental lines at the top of
the page with the words of Cézanne, quoted on page 43, and with the
fundamental propositions of Chinese and Japanese art, to realize that in
the last analysis the
[Illustration: PICASSO
Woman with Mandolin]
[Illustration: PICASSO
The Poet]
minds of men in all ages and all countries follow very closely the same
channels.
There are but _two_ lines, _curved_ and _straight_, and with these two
lines all outward semblances of things are constructed. So far as the
unaided eye is concerned, every curved line may be entirely composed of
small straight lines, the curved effect being due to a series of minute
angles.
The following are Durer’s diagrams showing how to obtain sections and
modifications:
[Illustration]
He applies these sections to the human figure as follows:
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
So far as the use of planes and angles is concerned, these diagrams by
Durer should serve to disarm criticism. That the human figure can be
decomposed into straight lines and angles will be a revelation to most
of those who laughed at the Cubist paintings, and only the authority of
a great name would convince that any good could result from such an
analysis.
Suppose any one of the Durer diagrams had been framed and hung in the
Cubist section; would it not have been treated with ridicule?
The men who arranged the exhibition could have played with critics and
artists--the men who claim to know--by including many things of
recognized position in academic art and teachings, which would have
seemed as absurd as the newest of the new pictures.
* * * * *
The very high aesthetic value of drawing and painting in planes, and
with small regard to the so-called laws of perspective, is illustrated
in the rare beauty of Chinese and Japanese paintings. From the point of
view of their greatest painters, we carry perspective and imitation to
extremes that destroy art.
One value of the Cubist movement lies in arousing a sense of the
strength possessed by the simple and elemental.
In oriental art, in archaic art, in primitive Italian art, in not a
little modern decorative work, we have long recognized the beauty of
drawing in planes and of the use of color arbitrarily. The Cubists are
showing us--perhaps too violently and imperfectly--that it is possible
to paint pictures and portraits in planes and masses without imitation.
That it is possible we know, for the orientals have done it for two
thousand years; nevertheless, we stubbornly resist the attempt in
western art.
We acknowledge the singular beauty of the Italian primitives, yet we
demand that portraits and paintings of today shall be carefully
modelled in the vain effort to accurately and mechanically copy nature.
* * * * *
In some of Sargent’s best portraits not only the lights and shadows but
character and personality are indicated by brush-strokes as arbitrary in
line and color as those of a Cubist--strokes that follow neither the
lines nor the colors of the original, but which convey with tremendous
power the _character_.
Again, we all know how insipid are most of the portraits that are
faithfully rounded and modelled to reproduce every curve of the sitters’
features.
The truth is there is more of Cubism in great painting than we dream,
and the extravagances of the Cubists may serve to open our eyes to
beauties we have always felt without quite understanding.
Take, for instance, the strongest things by Winslow Homer; the strength
lies in the big, elemental manner in which the artist rendered his
impressions in lines and masses which departed widely from photographic
reproductions of scenes and people.
Rodin’s bronzes exhibit these same elemental qualities, qualities which
are pushed to violent extremes in Cubist sculpture. But may it not be
profoundly true that these very extremes, these very extravagances, by
causing us to blink and rub our eyes, end in a finer understanding and
appreciation of such work as Rodin’s?
His Balzac is, in a profound sense, his most colossal work, and at the
same time his most elemental. In its simplicity, in its use of planes
and masses, it is--one might say, solely for purposes of
illustration--Cubist, with none of the extravagances of Cubism. It is
_purely_ Post-Impressionistic.
Twenty or twenty-five years ago painters who used a broad technic, and
especially those who used the palette knife to lay the pigment in flat
sweeps, were looked upon as charlatans and sensationalists. Today their
pictures are accepted in the most conservative exhibitions and the
public passes with scarcely a comment.
This broad technic is simply painting in planes--in a sense, simply
modified Cubism.
To illustrate:
The surface of an orange may be so carefully painted or modelled in clay
that the effect is a perfect sphere with no straight lines; or it may be
painted or modelled in minute planes and no curved lines; or the use of
planes may be carried so far the orange is represented by angles so
sharp the shape is almost cubical--it is all a question of the _extent_
to which the artist carries the use of _plane surfaces_. The _fewer_ the
planes used and the _larger_ their size, the nearer the _substance_ and
more obvious the representation of _mass_.
The _smaller_ the planes and the _larger_ their number, the nearer the
_surface_--the more superficial the representation.
* * * * *
The division of planes can be carried--geometrically--to such an extent
that the unaided eye can no longer distinguish the minute flat surfaces,
and the effect is a perfect sphere.
What is true concerning the painting or modelling of an orange is true
of the painting or modelling of all objects.
* * * * *
“It has been charged that the new men are too much given to the
geometrical. But geometrical figures are the essential elements of
drawing. Geometry, the science which deals with extension, its measure
and its relations, has ever been the basis of painting.
[Illustration: SEVERINI
The Milliner]
“Up to the present time the three dimensions of Euclid have sufficed to
express the problems that infinity gives rise to in the souls of great
artists.
“Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the
writer.
“Today philosophers do not confine their speculations to the three
dimensions of Euclid. Painters, by intention, so to speak, have cause
naturally to preoccupy themselves with these new lines of extension
which, in the language of modern studios, are classed under the term,
_fourth_ dimension.”[38]
* * * * *
Speaking of Cézanne, it is said:
To him a sphere was not always round, a cube always square, or an
ellipse always elliptical. Thus the traditional oval of the
conventional face disappeared in his portraits, the generally
accepted round surfaces of a vase or bowl was represented as flat
and dented in spots and the horizontal stability of the horizon was
rendered elliptical whenever it so appeared to him.
The general truthfulness of his observations may readily be tested
by any one of normal vision who will carefully observe the actual
appearance of the surfaces of a round sugar bowl, for example, when
placed in the light of a window. It will be found that certain
planes are as flat as the table, that others present the appearance
of dents and hollows, and the more clearly this is perceived the
more grotesque will the object appear as compared with the
preconceived image of it established in our minds by the
unconscious interaction of the sense of touch and sight.
We know that, scientifically regarded, there is no such thing as a
round surface, that what appears to be such is simply the closely
adjusted juxtaposition of infinitesimal planes that are each
perfectly flat. And the very fact that painters refer to the
surface of a figure as _planes_ is indicative of a partial
recognition of this basic characteristic of structure.
Nevertheless, both artists and laymen persist in speaking of the
roundness of a torso, for example, when in reality, if we could
disassociate the _sense_ of roundness from the _appearance_ of
roundness as did Cézanne, we would find large surfaces of spheroids
quite flat. Therein lies the real secret of the art of Cézanne who
is the first of realists.
In a sense, “Cubism” is a misleading term, for, in the first place,
“Cubist” pictures are not painted in cubes, but in all sorts of angles
and curves; in the second place, the theory does not call for angles.
The theory being the expression of emotion in line and color, there is
no conceivable reason why cubes and angles should be used to the
exclusion of curves, swirls, sweeps, dashes. On the contrary, of all
forms, cubes and angles would seem to be the most inappropriate for
emotional expression, since they are peculiarly suggestive of the
geometrical and the matter-of-fact.
“Curvism” or “Swirlism” would describe the movement just as well, save
that for the time being angles are very much in evidence.
Picabia says that “Cubism” is a misnomer for the movement. He says:
After impressionism, neo-impressionism, then cubism, which sought a
geometric third dimension in painting, the expression of things
seen in geometrical figures. But a purely subjective art cannot, of
course, be bound by any form of expression the moment that
expression becomes a convention, an established body of laws with
accepted values. Therefore, he has cut loose from cubism, and is
what, again for handy classification--an evil habit from which we
cannot emancipate ourselves--may perhaps best be called
“post-cubist,” with entirely unfettered, spontaneous, ever-varying
means of expression in form and color waves, according to the
commands, the needs, the inspiration of the impression, the mood
received. Objective expression is strictly barred. He even ignores
form as far as possible, seeking “color harmonies.” Harmony and
equilibrium are his device.
* * * * *
But the Cubists are rapidly getting away from the cubes and angles. It
is quite possible that a year or two hence we shall see no more _purely_
Cubist pictures.
That does not mean the movement will come to an end--not at all. The
movement toward abstract painting, toward the use of line and paint on
canvas for mere pleasure of using them, and without copying objects in
either life or nature, is in its infancy.
* * * * *
“But I don’t understand them!”
Is it necessary to your enjoyment that you should?
Do you understand what Caruso is singing?
Do you understand that French song reproduced by the phonograph?
Do you understand what the orchestra is playing?
Do you understand the pattern in that Persian rug?
How many people who rave over Japanese art have the remotest idea what
this or that precious print or painting represents?
Does an intricate design on a bit of Oriental pottery please you? And is
your enjoyment lessened one whit by the fact it is all a mystery to you?
Why will you accept as beautiful and buy at a high price a painting you
do not understand because it is by a Chinese artist, and reject as ugly
the painting by a French artist simply because you cannot see “what he
is driving at”?
* * * * *
Suppose a Cubist picture is a beautiful scheme of color; is it less
beautiful _in color_ because you do not understand the painter’s theory?
His painting may be fine, his theory absurd.
Would your enjoyment of Caruso be increased if he sang in English the
ridiculous stuff he sings in Italian?
Fortunate it is for most grand opera that we _do not understand_--we are
not diverted from the music by the nonsense of the libretto.
The enjoyment of music is a curious thing.
First of all, there are all kinds of music, from rag-time to Beethoven,
and each kind has its following.
Then the following of each kind breaks up into its rag-time and
Beethoven divisions.
That is to say, in an audience listening to rag-time there are always a
few who enjoy the music in a Beethoven way--for what there is of real
value in it.
While in an audience listening to a Beethoven symphony there are always
a goodly number, often a big majority, who enjoy it in a rag-time
way--just the emotional reaction, without knowing a thing about the
music.
There are two entirely distinct enjoyments of the same composition--the
purely intellectual and the purely emotional. There may be a mingling of
the two, but as a rule what one gains the other loses.
The man who follows the score, is familiar with the different
interpretations of this and that leader, whose ear catches every failure
by any part of the orchestra to respond, and so on, and so on--that man
is constantly holding his emotional response subject to his intellectual
appreciation. What is a fine performance to most of the audience may be
a very indifferent performance to him.
True, when the performance is so fine it carries him off his feet, then
he gets an enjoyment--intellectual and emotional--far finer than the
enjoyment experienced by others. In a sense, he is the one man worth
playing for.
But while it is a fine thing to both understand and enjoy, understanding
is not essential to enjoyment in the purely emotional sense--to the
enjoyment most people feel when listening to music.
The voice of a street singer borne in upon the night air, even the sound
of a hurdy-gurdy, pleases, though we do not
[Illustration:
SOUSA CARDOZA
Leap of the Rabbit
]
know the song or the air. There is a species of pleasure in not knowing
that is dissipated when we recall or are told.
Many of our enjoyments are more than half dreamy. Is it not true that
the dreamy element is essential to purely emotional enjoyment?
I confess to a very ignorant enjoyment of music. If I am at a concert I
do not like to be told what it is all about. I enjoy good music without
knowing or caring why, and I like to hear it without being seated where
I am more than half-hypnotized by the rhythmical movements of the
orchestra, especially the fascinating bowing of the violins.
* * * * *
What is true of the enjoyment of music should be true of the enjoyment
of painting. But with painting, most people insist upon understanding.
They will listen to Patti without knowing her language, but they will
not look at a painting unless they know the painter’s language.
* * * * *
Why not accept at their face value all pictures that are beautiful in
line and color, without bothering about their meaning? Perhaps they have
no meaning beyond the vagrant fancy of the artist.
Take the three pictures by Sousa Cardoza. Suppose they have no more
significance than so many illustrations to a fairy tale; they are
interesting in line and fascinating in color. If the “Stronghold” had
been on a Delft platter, or the “Leap of the Rabbit” on a piece of
Persian pottery, everyone would have lauded their beauty, and collectors
would give ten or twenty times the modest prices of the canvases.
When put to people in that matter-of-fact way the response is almost
always favorable to the pictures.
In an interesting monograph entitled “Is It Art?”[39] the writer says:
It will be seen, therefore, that the efforts of these men to give a
subjective rendering of actuality results in nothing better than a
poorly realized form of objectivity which is as much the creation
of the spectator as of the artist, inasmuch as the vaguely
adumbrated forms in the picture simply serve as a hint to that
reality of which it is a wilfully distorted symbol, and the
discovery of the “mustard pot” would scarcely have been possible
without the happy cooperation of the title with the spectator’s
previous knowledge of the actual appearance of a mustard pot.
Without the intervention of the title and the association of ideas
called forth thereby through the memory of past experiences with
actuality, these pictures would be totally meaningless even to the
most recondite. They would inevitably be reduced to a personal
system of shorthand, an individual code, as it were, comprehensible
only to the originator.
Regarded from that viewpoint, these enigmatic paintings and
drawings may very possibly be altogether successful. At all events
it is only fair to assume that these works express to the
originator what he intended them to express. But it is quite
obvious that they express something quite different to the
spectator who has not been initiated into the meaning of this
personal form of shorthand, and the appending of an objective title
to what is intended as a subjective impression of the actual world
hardly help him over the difficulty. On the contrary it takes him
just that far away from the impression the artist desires to
produce, plunging him deeper into that world of reality out of
which he was to be extricated by this new art, and there is no
doubt that in the minds of even the most intelligent spectator it
only serves to reenforce his conception of reality upon which he is
forced to fall back by the objective titles as well as the concrete
representations of what is supposed to be a subjective mood.
I think it may safely be said that in no case does this mood
manifest itself to the persons to whom it is addressed, although by
a process of auto-hypnotism, a certain few no doubt succeed in
making themselves believe that they penetrate the real inwardness
of these arbitrarily individual mental processes. Granted that
these very discerning ones do respond to the real intention of
these abstractions it cannot be denied that this work is the most
circumscribed in its appeal of anything so far produced in the
name of art and, until its working premise is made clearer, its
influence must be correspondingly limited. At present it appears to
me to be a too purely personal equation to be intelligible to
others than the artist himself and therefore, generally speaking,
it can not be regarded as art, whatever else it may be. For that
that communicates nothing expresses nothing and as the office of
art is first and last expression this new form is as yet outside of
the domain of art.
But that makes the attitude of the _observer_ the test whether a given
product is or is not art, while the true test is the attitude of the
_producer_.
Whether a given work is or is not art is _determined_ and _forever
fixed_ at the time of its production. If art to him who creates it, it
is art to all humanity for all time; neither a man’s neighbors nor
future generations can deprive it of its character.
* * * * *
Quite a good many years ago I made the attempt, in lecture and book
form, to define art.[40]
What is Art? The question is as old as man himself, for we have no
records of men without some manifestation of the art impulse....
Man is the _combination_ of _thought_ and _symbol_; thought
striving to express itself, and symbol, the means whereby it
achieves that end. The symbol may be sound, word, or song; or it
may be line, form, or structure; it matters not. A cry is the
language of the child; speech is the every-day utterance of the
man; the heart of the singer bursts forth in song; the musician
speaks in harmonies, the painter in line and color, the sculptor in
form, the architect in structure, the poet in rhyme and rhythm--and
each is silent save in his own way....
Now what is the distinction between _thought_ expression which _is
art_ and _thought_ expression which is _not art_?
In its broadest significance, and in its very essence, _art is
delight in thought and symbol_.
Mark the union--art is delight in _both_ the thought _and_ the
symbol. Without the double delight--the combination of these two
quite distinct delights, there can be no art.
To the writer of prose there may come a beautiful fancy; he
delights in it and hastens to record his thought. He may write the
most flowing, the most perfect prose, but as he writes he is still
occupied with his thought; his sole object is to find words which
will but express it. The same fancy comes to the poet; he, too,
delights in it, and seeks to record it; but when the poet touches
pen to paper he is seized with a new and an entirely distinct
delight, a delight _in his method of expressing_ his thought; he
may even permit his delight in his symbol, the flow, rhythm and
ring of rhyme, to sweep him onward in forgetfulness of his first
fancy--literature is filled with such examples.
Now and then a writer of prose expresses himself so finely, writes
so well, that we feel instinctively and immediately not only the
delight in the thought, but also a certain amount of delight in the
manner of expressing the thought, in the style, ... and to the
extent of the _double_ delight such prose is art, for art, as we
shall see, is by no means confined to the five so-called fine arts.
No hard and fast line can be drawn between that which is art and
that which is not art, the one fades imperceptibly into the other.
And farther on in the same little volume:[41]
The current notions of art are such and the current notions of
labor are such that it may seem to most of you as though any
attempt to discuss the two together could result only in a waste of
words; yet time was when art and labor were so intimately united in
the great domain of human effort that the one almost invariably
implied more or less of the other; and the time will yet be when
there will be no labor without at least some art, even as there is
now and ever has been no art without at least some labor.
Art lies not in the employment, but in the _manner_ of the
employment of the powers of nature for an end; not in the task, but
in the _attitude_ of the worker towards his task.
* * * * *
Whether a Cubist painting is or is not art does not depend upon the
opinion of either critic or multitude; if it did it would be art to one
man and not to another, art to one generation and not to another--an
illogical conclusion.
[Illustration: KLEE
House by the Brook]
[Illustration: VAN REES
Still Life]
Most Cubist pictures are plainly the work of men who are profoundly
moved by an idea and who are striving to express that idea in a highly
original manner. It may be the manner they have chosen is so abstract,
so scientifically theoretical, that it will in the end--if pursued--kill
the imagination, stifle all delight, and so result in failure as _art
expression_; but so long as the men take sincere delight in both what
they are trying to say and their manner of utterance, it is impossible
to deny the character of art to their works.
In proportion to their originality and daring, there may be more of
living and vital art in what they are doing than in the art of the
academic painter who follows in the footsteps of others without any
particular effort.
In other words, it is quite conceivable there may be more of vital and
living art in a movement doomed to failure than in a movement that has
achieved success and become stagnant.
_The vitality lies in the element of earnest striving rather than in the
direction the striving takes._
VI
THE THEORY OF CUBISM
The art that is at hand is a highly _subjective_ art as distinguished
from the highly _objective_ art of the Impressionist and Realist, but no
man can say just what forms this new art will assume.
Cubism is one attempt, Futurism is another, Compositional painting is
another; there will be many more attempts before freedom of expression
is attained.
Cubism is interesting because it accentuates the value of planes and
shows what can be done with elemental propositions in drawing. But the
student or painter who turns to Cubism because he thinks it is to become
a fad and will pay, runs the risk of making a great mistake; he would
better stick to older methods.
* * * * *
The Orphists have been mentioned; there were no Orphist pictures in the
International Exhibition. The movement is based on the purely practical
proposition that color in itself, and color alone without drawing, may
be beautiful. So they just place lines and masses of color on a canvas
and frame the canvas.
It sounds absurd, yet the theory is the very foundation of wall
decoration, of interior furnishing, of dressmaking--the mere
juxtaposition of masses of color, with or without pattern.
The Orphist “picture” may not be much of a picture in the accepted sense
of the term, but it may afford pleasure as a color combination and may
be of very real value to the decorator, the furnisher, the dressmaker,
the scene-painter, the costumer.
The theory is not new. So long as man has loved color he has used it
irrespective of pattern.
One part of the theory of the Cubists is as old as that of the Orphists.
It is simply that the painter can do with line and color what the
composer does with sound. In other words they demand the same freedom in
the use of line and color that every great composer has in the use of
sound.
If, for instance, a great musician composes a pastoral symphony does he
imitate the mooing of cows, the bleating of lambs, the rippling of
brooks? Such attempts would be recognized as cheap in the extreme.
“Very well,” the Cubist says, “if I paint a pastoral symphony why should
I so much as suggest cows, sheep, landscape, brook? Why should people
insist upon _seeing_ in my painting what they cannot _hear_ in Mozart’s
or Beethoven’s music?”
* * * * *
The comparison which Picabia is fondest of making is that with absolute
music. The rules of musical composition, he points out, are sufficiently
hampering in themselves to the composer’s mood, or call it inspiration.
Words, as of songs, still further confine his vision of melody, even
though they give in the beginning the impression that evokes the mood.
Songs without words, the expression of the impression made on him by a
great poem without the necessity of following in musical form the
literary form of the poet, leave him far freer, give his subjectivity
far wider scope. Modern composers have rebelled against the old fetters;
modern painters have begun to feel the same need of a freer, an absolute
method of expression. Hence, “post-impressionism,” which refuses
altogether to be bound by objectivity, by literal reproduction of the
object seen, in connection with the mood, the after-impression, received
and fixed on the canvas. A composer may be inspired by a walk in the
country, says M. Picabia, and produce a production of the landscape
scene, of its details of form and color? No; he expresses it in sound
waves, he translates it into an expression of the impression, the mood.
And as there are absolute sound waves, so there are absolute waves of
color and form. Modern music has won its way; this modern painting, too,
will find appreciation and understanding in the days to come.
* * * * *
The Cubists have set themselves a hard task. It is a good deal easier to
_sing_ an _emotion_ than _paint_ one. It is a good deal easier to
_paint_ an _object_ than _sing_ one--therein lies the trouble.
Yet in the beginning both music and painting were imitative. Music
imitated natural sounds; drawing and painting imitated natural objects.
But soon men began to sing for the pleasure of singing and play on
instruments for the pleasure of playing, and the imitation of natural
sounds was left far behind as primitive and elemental, and music tended
to become more and more expressive of emotions, elemental emotions at
first, finer and purer emotions later, until in the western world
abstract purity was reached in Beethoven.
Since Beethoven there has been a reaction to more imitative music, as in
the operas of Wagner.
While music departed farther and farther from imitation of natural
sounds, drawing and painting progressed toward the more perfect
representation of natural objects.
Or rather painting developed along two distinct lines--one the more
perfect representation of objects _for the sake of the representation_;
the other compositions of line and color--not
[Illustration: BLOCH
Summer Night]
[Illustration: BLOCH
The Duel]
imitative--for the sake of the pleasure afforded _by the pattern and the
color scheme_.
This second development parallels that of music--compositions of line
and color, like compositions of sound for the pleasure they give, and
not for the associations they arouse.
Strange as it may sound, it is nevertheless true, that four-fifths of
the pleasure we get in our daily lives out of line and color is not from
the _imitative_ development, the _picture_ side, but from the
_non-imitative_, the _abstract_ side.
Our clothes, our homes, our public buildings, our cities, our landscapes
are made beautiful by the use of line and color in patterns and
masses--in harmonious composition. It is only here and there that we
come in contact with either line or color used imitatively.
We all know how distressingly tiresome a wall-paper becomes if it is
made up of imitative scenes--that is, a series of pictures, and the
better the pictures the sooner we tire of the paper.
While a paper that contains no imitative spots, or in which the
imitative features are so subdued and conventionalized we _feel_ them
rather than _see_ them, may be restful and pleasing; and a wall that is
a monotone if bordered by wainscoting and frieze in monotones, may wear
the best of all.
* * * * *
But while the great, the practical use of line and color followed
parallel lines with sound and got farther and farther away from
imitative features, _the art_ of painting, as it is commonly called,
developed in just the opposite direction, it became more and more
imitative, until of late years it would seem that the last word has been
said in the reproduction of natural objects and natural light and color
effects.
Of course the _last_ word has not been said, and never will be said so
long as _individuals_ are born, but _so much_ has been said that it is
not surprising there is a reaction, nor is it surprising that one phase
of this reaction should be an attempt to use line and color as the
decorator and the dressmaker and a thousand others use them, to express
and kindle pleasurable emotions.
In short it is not surprising that the painter of pictures should awaken
to the realization of the fact that others use and have used, from the
beginning, line and color to make delightful compositions that have no
relation to natural objects, as the musician uses sound to make
delightful compositions that have no relation to natural noises.
* * * * *
As a rule women have a finer instinct for the use and arrangement of
color than painters. Few wives of painters would trust their husbands to
decorate their dinner tables.
Look at the gruesome and ugly “still lifes” done by painters of renown.
I saw one the other day of some fish on a platter by an American painter
famous for such things. If his wife had found that platter of dead and
clammy fish in her drawing room she would have exclaimed, “For goodness
sake, how did that get in here? Take it back to the kitchen.”
* * * * *
Look at the naive and absurd compositions of flowers and fruit that
painters put together to paint; no woman of taste would permit them on
her tea table.
I know a charming woman whose dinner tables are a dream of beauty,
veritable compositions in which flowers and fruits and lights and every
detail are far more thoughtfully considered than are the details in most
pictures. In short, without knowing it she creates a work of art each
time she entertains. Imagine what her table would be if left to an
artist or a committee of artists--or her husband!
Most painters’ studios are either devoid of all color arrangement or
positively ugly.
So far as _color_ goes many a portrait owes its success more to the
_modiste_ than the artist.
* * * * *
From the painting of color harmonies and line harmonies it is but a step
to insist that line and color composition may be used like sound
compositions to express one’s moods and emotions.
That is what these modern men are trying to do.
You may not think it is possible for them to succeed but why should you
ridicule the attempt?
The attempt is an ambitious one, it is an attempt to extend the sphere
of painting, and it may lead to new and beautiful things. Should we not
watch it with interest and sympathy even if you think it foredoomed to
failure?
* * * * *
Watch a painter preparing to paint a picture of still life. He
takes a vase of flowers and places it on a table; beside it he
poses, perhaps a brass bowl and some other objects, having regard
throughout for light and, above all, for proportion and color. That
is when he is _really painting_ his picture, when he is really
_composing_, receiving his impression, creating his subjective
mood. The objective part of his work is done; all that remains now
is to give expression to that impression, that mood. Instead of
thus allowing his inspiration to gain its full value and
significance, he sits down and reproduces it with a varying degree
of literalness. He becomes nothing more or less than a copyist, a
photographer of his own work. He kills within himself its
subjective values, or, at best, seeks to give them expression
filtered by objectivity. Or, again, consider the case of the
portrait painter. He studies sitters from every point of view,
gathering impressions. Then he begins to experiment with poses,
draperies, light effects, seeking to heighten the impression
already received from the sitter himself. At last he is content
with pose, draperies, background, lights--his picture is there. But
why, then, go to the trouble of painting it, of copying it? If the
work he has done, finished in all its details, is to benefit him,
he must proceed from it and beyond it. His real work then is to
communicate to others the mood awakened in him.[42]
* * * * *
In another interview Picabia said:
You of New York should be quick to understand me and my fellow
painters. Your New York is the cubist, the futurist city. It
expresses in its architecture, its life, its spirit, the modern
thought. You have passed through all the old schools, and are
futurists in word and deed and thought. You have been affected by
all these schools just as we have been affected by our older
schools.
Because of your extreme modernity therefore, you should quickly
understand the studies which I have made since my arrival in New
York. They express the spirit of New York as I feel it, and the
crowded streets of your city as I feel them, their surging, their
unrest, their commercialism, and their atmospheric charm.
You see no form? No substance? Is it that I go out into your city
and see nothing? I see much, much more, perhaps, than you who are
used to it see. I see your stupendous skyscrapers, your mammoth
buildings and marvellous subways, a thousand evidences of your
great wealth on all sides. The tens of thousands of workers and
toilers, your alert and shrewd-looking shop girls, all hurrying
somewhere. I see your theater crowds at night gleaming, fluttering,
smilingly happy, smartly gowned. There you have the spirit of
modernity again.
But I do not paint these things which my eye sees. I paint that
which my brain, my soul, sees. I walk from the Battery to Central
Park. I mingle with your workers, and your Fifth Avenue mondaines.
My brain gets the impression of each movement; there is the driving
hurry of the former, their breathless haste to reach the place of
their work in the morning and their equal haste to reach their
homes at night. There is the languid grace of the latter, emanating
a subtle perfume, a more subtle sensuousness.
I hear every language in the world spoken, the staccato of the New
Yorker, the soft cadences of the Latin people, the heavy rumble of
the Teuton, and the ensemble remains in my soul as the ensemble of
some great opera.
At night from your harbor I look at your mammoth buildings. I see
your city as a city of aerial lights and shadows; the streets are
your shadows. Your harbor in the daylight shows the shipping
[Illustration: HERBIN
Landscape]
of a world, the flags of all countries add their color to that
given by your sky, your waters, and your painted craft of every
size.
I absorb these impressions. I am in no hurry to put them on canvas.
I let them remain in my brain, and then when the spirit of creation
is at flood-tide, I improvise my pictures as a musician improvises
music. The harmonies of my studies grow and take form under my
brush, as the musician’s harmonies grow under his fingers. His
music is from his brain and his soul just as my studies are from my
brain and soul. Is this not clear to you?
* * * * *
You say all this cannot be done.
That is precisely the question, and one thing certain, it cannot and
will not be done, unless some one _tries_ to do it.
It is just as legitimate to attempt to express one’s emotions by the use
of line and color as by the use of sound as in music, or by the use of
motion as in pantomime.
One man says, “I will paint the portrait of a beautiful woman.”
A second says, “I will not paint her portrait, but I will put on canvas
a composition of colors so joyous it will express my admiration for
her.”
A third says, “I will compose a sonata or a symphony or a ‘song without
words’ to express my love for her.”
The public accepts without question the work of the first and third--the
portrait painter and the musician--but rejects the work of the
second--the painter of harmonies. Why? Because he does not copy the
features and the dress of the woman.
Picabia again says:
Art, art, what is art? Is it copying faithfully a person’s face? A
landscape? No, that is machinery. Painting Nature as she is, is not
art, it is mechanical genius. The old masters turned out by hand
the most perfect models, the most faithful copies of what they saw.
That all their paintings are not alike is due to the fact that no
two men see the same things the same way. Those old masters were,
and their modern followers are, faithful depicters of the actual,
but I do not call that art today, because we have outgrown it. It
is old, and only the new should live. Creating a picture without
models is art.
They were successful, those old masters; they filled a place in our
life that cannot be filled otherwise, but we have outgrown them. It
is a most excellent thing to keep their paintings in the art
museums as curiosities for us and for those who will come after us.
Their paintings are to us what the alphabet is to the child.
We moderns, if so you think of us, express the spirit of the modern
time, the twentieth century. And we express it on canvas the way
the great composers express it in their music.
There is plenty of clear expression and fine enthusiasm in those three
paragraphs.
* * * * *
There is, however, another side to Cubism and one not so easy to
understand.
Painting color harmonies for the sake of their emotional effect is easy
of comprehension. But when the Cubist sets out to convey the impression,
not of the surfaces, but of the very substance of things, he is
attempting something very different from what has heretofore been
considered within the sphere of painting. Possibly he is attempting
something painting cannot do.
The theory is so abstract and so scientific it comes near paralyzing the
art. It is _too coldly logical_ and unemotional to produce great art,
for great art is and must be fundamentally _emotional_.
Of Picasso, the founder and leading exponent of Cubism, a sympathetic
writer says:
His whole tendency is a negation of the main tenets of the gospel
of Cézanne whose conception of form he rejects, together with
Monet’s conception of light and color. To him both are
non-existent. Instead he endeavors “to produce with his work an
impression, not with the subject, but the manner in which he
expresses it,” to quote his confrère, Marius De Zayas, who studied
the raison d’être of this work, together with Picasso. Describing
his process of aesthetic deduction further, M. De Zayas tells us
that “he (Picasso) receives a direct impression from external
nature; he analyzes, develops, and translates it, and afterwards
executes it in his own particular style, with the intention that
the picture should be the pictorial equivalent of the emotion
produced by nature. In presenting his work he wants the spectator
to look for the emotion or idea generated from the spectacle and
not the spectacle itself.
“From this to the psychology of form there is but one step, and the
artist has given it resolutely and deliberately. Instead of the
physical manifestation he seeks in form the psychic one, and on
account of his peculiar temperament, his psychical manifestation
inspires him with geometrical sensations. When he paints he does
not limit himself to taking from an object only those planes which
the eye perceives, but deals with all those which, according to
him, constitute the individuality of form; and with his peculiar
fantasy he develops and transforms them.
“And this suggests to him new impressions, which he manifests with
new forms, because from the idea of the representation of a being,
a new being is born, perhaps different from the first one, and this
becomes the represented being. Each one of his paintings is the
coefficient of the impressions that form has performed in his
spirit, and in these paintings the public must see the realization
of an artistic ideal, and must judge them by the abstract sensation
they produce, without trying to look for the factors that entered
into the composition of the final result.
“As it is not his purpose to perpetuate on canvas an aspect of the
external world, by which to produce an artistic impression, but to
represent with the brush the impression he has directly received
from nature, synthesized by his fantasy, he does not put on the
canvas the remembrance of a past sensation, but describes a present
sensation.... In his paintings perspective does not exist; in them
there are nothing but harmonies suggested by form, and registers
which succeed themselves, to compose a general harmony which fills
the rectangle that constitutes the picture.
“Following the same philosophical system in dealing with light, as
the one he follows in regard to form, to him color does not exist,
but only the effects of light. This produces in matter certain
vibrations, which produce in the individual certain impressions.
From this it results that Picasso’s paintings present to us the
evolution by which light and form have operated in developing
themselves in his brain to produce the idea, and his composition is
nothing but the synthetic expression of his emotion.”
Thus it will be seen that he tries to represent in essence what
seems to exist only in substance. And, inasmuch as his psychical
impressions inspire in him geometrical sensations, certain of these
exhibits are in the nature of geometrical abstractions that have
little or nothing in common with anything hitherto produced in art.
Its whole tendency would appear to be away from art into the realm
of metaphysics.
Here is a design, a pattern of triangles, ellipses and semi-circles
that at first glance appears to be little more than the incoherent
passage of a compass across the paper in the hands of some
absent-minded engineer. After a little attentive study, however,
these enigmatic lines resolve themselves into the semblance of a
human figure and one begins to discover a clearly defined intention
behind this apparent chaos of ideated sensations. There is evident
a method in his madness which, after all, may only be truth turned
inside out. And this is what should make one pause and investigate
the matter further.
The fact that one may get nothing out of it as yet in the way of
tangible or even vaguely experienced emotions is beside the point.
The interest in this whole matter rests on the fact that here is
revealed a new form of aesthetic expression as yet only tentative
and groping perhaps, but reaching out in new directions. And it
must not be forgotten that the pioneer is usually misunderstood; he
is so far in advance of current ideas as to be out of touch with
his fellow men who might appropriately be called follow-men, they
lag so far behind the progress of new ideas. Cézanne and
Picasso--they mark the parting of the ways: a fulfilment and a
promise. Quo Vadis?[43]
Not many years ago Picasso was painting under the influence of the
pointillists. Almost every year he changed his style, until he developed
the pure, the geometrical Cubism of the drawing shown herein. He had a
period of painting very uninteresting blue portraits, one of which was
shown at the exhibition.
His “Woman with the Mustard Pot” belongs with his sculpture, which is
interesting but, to most people, ugly.
He has such phenomenal powers of absorption and his technical facility
is such that he does anything he pleases
[Illustration: PICASSO
Drawing]
with ease, and what he does today is no sure indication of what he will
attempt tomorrow.
For the moment he seems absorbed in the _music of planes_, so to speak.
Take, for instance, a still life wherein there seem to be a pipe, a
wall, a musical instrument, a glass, something like a stairway, street
signs, etc. These may or may not have been the objects the painter had
before him, but whether they are or not it is quite clear that he was
not content with dealing with superficial planes, that is, with the
visible lines and surfaces of the objects, but he _lets the planes
project and intersect_ very much as if the objects were
semi-transparent.
To state the matter in other words--by using only the essential lines of
an object and treating the object as otherwise more or less transparent,
one readily understands why the essential lines of all objects in _the
rear show through_, and the result is a confused mass of planes with
here and there more conspicuous surface indications such as the pipe,
the signs, the glass, etc.
In much of Picasso’s later work he suppresses all such surface
indications, until only a few absolutely elemental lines remain.
The result is a picture so scientific, so abstract, it appeals to but
few and excites no emotion in anyone because it was not the result of
emotion in the artist.
In short, Picasso and a few followers have reached a degree of
abstraction in the suppression of the real and the particular that their
pictures represent about the same degree of emotion as the demonstration
of a difficult geometrical proposition.
Beyond the few lines they use there is the bare canvas; they have
reached the limit and they must turn in their tracks. The reaction is
bound to come, and come quickly.
Meanwhile the Cubists, who have been painting along emotional, as
distinguished from the coldly scientific lines, are still turning out
pictures that possess a charm in line and color irrespective of their
theoretical significance and much may still be done in this direction.
* * * * *
The Cubists are fond of quoting the following from Plato:
Socrates: What I am saying is not, indeed, directly obvious. I must
therefore try to make it clear. For I will endeavor to speak of the
beauty of figures, not as the majority of persons understand them
such as those of animals, and some paintings to the life; but as
reason says, I allude to something straight and round, and the
figures formed from them by the turner’s lathe, both superficial
and solid and those by the plumb-line and the angle-rule, if you
understand me. For these, I say, are not beautiful for a particular
purpose, as other things are; but are by nature ever beautiful by
themselves, and possess certain peculiar pleasures, not at all
similar to those from scratching; and colors possessing this
character are beautiful and have similar pleasures.--From
“Philebus.”
* * * * *
Every really great painter must have moments when, as he thinks of the
days and years spent painting _things_--just things for people to look
at and see--he asks himself, “Is it worth while to spend all one’s life
painting things one _sees_? Is it not possible to paint the things one
_feels_?”
* * * * *
Sargent is tired of portrait painting--why? Because he longs to do
something else. But what he is doing is simply another form of portrait
painting--and not so big. He has simply turned from men and women to
chairs and tables--so to speak; that is, from portraits of people to
pictures of things--all the same art. So far as any one knows he has not
tried to make compositions of line and color that would be beautiful in
themselves. In short, great painter as he is, he seems to lack the
ambition or the inspiration to try to do what Whistler for more than
forty years was trying to do--lift painting from the rut of reality to a
plane more nearly on a level with that occupied by the greatest masters
of China and Japan.
* * * * *
The following paragraphs from a little book on Cubism by two well known
Cubist painters throw some light on the subject:
We should be the first to blame those who, to hide their
incapacity, should attempt to fabricate puzzles. Systematic
obscurity betrays itself by its persistence. Instead of a veil
which the mind gradually draws aside as it adventures toward
progressive wealth, it is merely a curtain hiding a void.
It is not surprising that people ignorant of painting should not
spontaneously share our assurance; but nothing is more absurd than
that they should be irritated thereby. Must the painter, to please
them, turn back in his work, restore things to the commonplace
appearance from which it is his mission to deliver them?
From the fact that the object is truly transubstantiated, so that
the most accustomed eye has some difficulty in discovering it, a
great charm results. The picture which only surrenders itself
slowly seems always to wait until we interrogate it, as though it
reserved an infinity of replies to an infinity of questions.[44]
By way of comment on this paragraph:
Why should we deny to painting one of the greatest charms of
poetry--_elusiveness_?
Great poetry is _rarely_ superficially plain to the casual reader.
Great music is _never_ superficially plain to the casual hearer.
But the attitude of the public is that great painting shall always be
superficially plain to the casual observer.
A painter may paint things every one understands at a glance, but is it
not his _right_, if he wishes, to paint things no one understands but
himself?
In other words, what right have _we_ to say to the poet, “If you don’t
write things we understand you are no poet,” or to the painter, “If you
don’t paint things we understand you are no painter?”
The only difference between poet and painter is that one uses a _pen_,
the other a _brush_ to express _himself_.
* * * * *
Without employing any allegorical or symbolical literary artifice,
merely by inflections of lines and colors, a painter can show, _in
the same picture_, a Chinese city, a French town, together with
mountains, oceans, fauna, and flora, and nations with their
histories and their desires--all that separates them in external
reality. Distance or time, concrete fact, or pure conception,
nothing refuses to be uttered in the language of the painter, as in
that of the poet, the musician, or the scientist.
Here is a most significant statement of a _truth_ and an assertion of
_freedom_.
We all know how the poet in a dozen lines may give us glimpses of the
universe; he may leap from flower to star, from city to city, nation to
nation, age to age; nothing confines him, he knows no restraint.
In one short poem he may give us glimpses of the four quarters of the
globe--of Athens, London, Chicago, Pekin. His imagination knows no
bounds, his art is unlimited.
For the first time in the history of painting painters are
systematically claiming the same independence, the same right to
_express themselves freely_ in each canvas, to paint in the one picture
_if they see fit_ glimpses of different countries, cities, scenes,
different times as well as places; to use them and suggest them as
freely as the poet does to _express a mood_--and why not?
But the painter must be sure of his mood, and be doubly sure that what
he is trying to say _requires_ a wealth of illustration, otherwise his
painting will be but a fantastic jumble,
[Illustration: MARC
The Steer]
[Illustration: KANDINSKY
Landscape With Two Poplars]
just as many poems lose themselves in not a _wealth_ but a _confused
mass_ of irrelevant illustrations.
* * * * *
The _assertion_ of freedom is one thing, the _exercise_ of it is quite
another.
The point is that, fundamentally, there is no reason why a painter
should not show in one canvas things and events unrelated in either
space or time, leaving the observer to work out the more or less hidden
meaning of it all.
There is no reason why he should be tied down to the realistic painting
of an apple or an apple tree if he prefers to paint some flight of the
imagination into which apple and apple tree enter together with strange
glimpses of temples and pyramids, playing children and armed battalions,
weeping women and fighting men.
Read the foregoing lines once more. Eight objects are mentioned--apple,
apple tree, temples, pyramids, children, battalions, weeping women,
fighting men--by no possibility could these strangely diverse objects be
found grouped together in actual life, yet it is safe to say that _as
you read them_ no feeling of utter incongruity was experienced. On the
contrary your imagination unconsciously created a picture, vague and
indistinct because fleeting, which combined them all, possibly a
strange, poetic scene with orchards and playing children, temples and
pyramids in the distance, with armed battalions, weeping women and
fighting men passing by in clouds or fanciful shapes.
Thousands of such pictures are painted every year and they are mostly
rather poor works of the imagination.
There is, however, no reason why the same freedom, the same arbitrary
indifference to actualities, should not be exercised in the painting of
good pictures.
No reason why, for instance, painters should not _experiment freely
with all the so-called laws of art_, and that is what the Cubists and
others of the moderns are doing.
* * * * *
That the ultimate aim of painting is to touch the crowd we have
admitted; but painting must not address the crowd in the language
of the crowd; it must employ its own language, in order to move,
dominate, and direct the crowd, not in order to be understood. It
is so with religions and philosophies. The artist who concedes
nothing, who does not explain himself and relates nothing,
accumulates an internal strength whose radiance shines on every
hand.
It is in consummating ourselves within ourselves that we shall
purify humanity; it is by increasing our own riches that we shall
enrich others; it is by kindling the heart of the star for our own
pleasure that we shall exalt the universe.
* * * * *
To explain Cubism, or any attempt in art to suppress the objective, one
must fall back on music.
Grieg calls a certain composition “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”
Not for a moment did he attempt realistically to suggest a hall, a
mountain, a king or any object; to have done so would have been folly.
And if that particular composition were played for the first time before
a body of keen musicians, no title mentioned, and not a word said about
its being a part of the Peer Gynt suite, no two would agree as to what
the composer had in mind, though many might have very interesting
impressions regarding the _mood of the composer in writing it_.
But once understand it is part of the Peer Gynt suite and once told it
is “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” the weird and fascinating music
explains itself, it is recognized as a wonderfully successful attempt to
realize an impressive scene by a combination of sounds.
* * * * *
The veriest tyro in music feels the cheapness of imitative music, the
imitation of the nightingale, the ripple of notes to imitate a rippling
brook, the beating of a drum to imitate thunder, the tremolo of violins
to represent fright, etc., etc.
From such bald attempts at realism to the abstract beauty of a symphony
by Beethoven is a vast interval.
The severely logical composer will not name his symphony for fear of
suggesting ideas that will interfere with the pure enjoyment of his
abstract conception. There have been painters--like Whistler--who
preferred to call their works “Harmonies” or “Arrangements” or “Studies”
rather than subject their canvases to a clamoring horde of suggestions
by choosing names that must inevitably divert the observer.
However at times a name helps, it at least puts us on the right track,
it enables us to measure the piece of music or the picture by the
artist’s intention. If it is utterly impossible for the best and most
sympathetic minds after long study to find any suggestion of the title
in the work, it means either the artist has been unsuccessful in
conveying his idea in sound or in line and color, or--what often
happens--he has carelessly and arbitrarily chosen a title after his work
was finished, a title that imperfectly fits his original impulse.
* * * * *
It is most disappointing to hear a man go into raptures over what he
cannot explain.
The greatest enemies of the moderns are their friends. But there have
been published a number of books in German and French that are well
worth reading if approached with an open mind.
If read with preconceived notions and prejudices the result will be very
irritating. Several artists, notably Kandinsky, have taken the utmost
pains to explain in print what they believe and what they are trying to
do.
But it is often quite as difficult to understand some of the things the
painters write about their work as it is to understand their pictures;
but this is because some of the new men carry their theories so far it
is hard for the layman to follow, however earnest and sympathetic his
efforts.
But because we do not understand what a man says is no good reason for
calling him an ignoramus.
The trouble _may_ be with him, it is _probably_ with us. At all events
each re-reading, like each re-scrutiny of the pictures, yields clearer
results.
To a man _really and profoundly interested_ in art nothing has occurred
in many a generation so full of significance, so worthy one’s earnest
attention, as the present new movements--all the more interesting
because changing so rapidly and because some of them are certain to be
so fleeting.
The art institute which does not secure and preserve some examples
illustrative of the extraordinary upheaval in the art world is
derelict--as derelict as a natural history museum would be if it passed
over indifferently the evidence of some mysterious upheaval in nature.
* * * * *
When a man stands before a cubist painting or an improvisation by
Kandinsky and says he sees all sorts of things in it, do not take him
too seriously; he is like members of those extraordinary Browning Clubs
who destroy our enjoyment of the poetry by reading into each line things
the poet never dreamed.
* * * * *
The Cubists and most of the moderns are very young men, what they
_think_ is of far less interest than what they _do_.
What a young man does is often of vital importance, what he thinks may
be of no importance at all--save to himself.
Moved by the most naive theories and enthusiasms youth
[Illustration: CHABAUD
Cemetery Gates]
will do wonderful things, things the sober reflection of age would fear
to do.
One of the charms of the Cubists is their child-like faith in the
absolute supremacy of their art; this faith is interesting in them
because it leads them to produce works that cause us to stop and look
and think, but when their followers indulge the same blind faith in
print their utterances are mostly incoherent and boresome.
* * * * *
The violent partisan who sees all sorts of things in the modern painting
is at one extreme, the violent opponent who sees nothing at all is at
the other--let them fight it out.
The truth lies midway, that there is _something_ worth finding in even
the most extravagant attempts of the new movement no thoughtful man will
deny. The very fact the paintings attract such crowds and excite so much
controversy proves there is _something_ for serious investigation; the
something may not turn out to be of overwhelming importance, but it will
have its influence upon the future of art.
No one for a moment doubts that the exhibitions held in New York,
Chicago, and Boston are destined to have a very great effect upon
American art, especially upon the art of the men most bitterly opposed
to Cubism, and everything akin to Cubism. The academic has received a
severe but healthful jolt.
Whatever affects us has, at least, the merit of _affecting_ us, and
whatever moves us to do better work, whether in an old way or a new way,
has the merit of _affecting us for good_.
VII
THE NEW ART IN MUNICH
“WE cling more closely to the old masters; what we are doing is simply
the natural development of their principles and their methods,” said a
well-known painter of Munich while speaking of the Cubists and other
moderns of Paris, and the words had direct reference to the head of a
woman, by Jawlenski, reproduced herein in color.
It would be difficult to convince the casual observer that this head has
any relationship to portraits by Titian, _and yet_--
* * * * *
The Cubists are also equally quick to demonstrate the logical connection
between their works and those of the old masters, tracing the connection
through Courbet, El Greco, and so on.
The truth, of course, is that _everything_ modern is a development of
_something_ ancient, that _nothing_ exists _unrelated_.
Art is as _continuous_ as everything else in life and nature.
One thing flows inevitably out of another.
* * * * *
Sorolla and Zoloaga are the children of Velasquez. Puvis de Chavannes
may seem nearer Raphael and the Italian Primitives than Degas and Manet,
but he is simply the fruition of one collateral line, while Degas is the
fruition of another, and Manet of another--_they are all painters_, and
the art of painting admits endless variations in theory and technic.
* * * * *
It is, therefore, true that every modern experiment, however strange,
may trace its genealogy to the Old Masters and through them to the
Primitives, and through them to the Cave Painters.
So that when a Munich artist argues that the strange heads of Jawlensky
and the still stranger compositions of Kandinsky are based upon the best
there is in Italian art, the proposition in its broad significance may
be conceded and plenty of room be still left for startling differences
between the art of Venice in the sixteenth century and that of Munich in
the twentieth.
* * * * *
There is, however, some slight but tangible foundation for the assertion
that the work of the extreme men of Munich is closer to that of the Old
Masters than the work of the extreme men of Paris, in that most of the
former paint more _solidly_ and _substantially_, while most of the
latter paint more _lightly_ and _superficially_--just about the
difference that exists between the two cities, the two environments. The
worker in Munich cannot help being influenced by the _German_
atmosphere, the worker in Paris cannot help being influenced by the
_French_--in fact each is where he is because he finds the particular
atmosphere congenial.
* * * * *
“The New Artists’ Federation,” in Munich, was founded in January, 1909,
by Adolf Erbslöh, Alexej von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander
Kanoldt, Alfred Kubin, Gabriele Münter, Marianna von Werefkin, Heinrich
Schnabel, and Oskar Wittenstein. During the first year Paul Baum,
Wladimir von Bechtejeff, Erma Bossi, Karl Hofer, Moissey Koga, and
Albert Sacharoff joined. Paul Baum and Karl Hofer soon resigned their
membership. In 1910 the Frenchmen, Pierre Girieud and Le Fauconnier,
became members, and in 1911 Franz Marc and Otto Fischer, followed in
1912 by Alexander Mogilewsky.
The first exhibition was held in the winter of 1909 in the Modern
Gallery, Munich. Indignation and derisive laughter, and insults
from the press were the outward result. Still the seed scattered
was not lost. Similar exhibitions were held in many cities of
Germany and Switzerland. Everywhere they met with opposition, but
also made some friends at each place.
The second exhibition, held in the fall of the following year,
brought the members into contact with a large number of outside
artists, some of whom have become of great importance in the new
art, and most of whom were, up to that time, unknown in Germany.
These were the Germans, Hermann Haller, Bernhard Hoetger, Eugen
Kahler, Adolf Nieder; the Frenchmen, Georges Bracque, André Derain,
Kees Van Dongen, Francisco Durio, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault,
and Maurice de Vlaminck; finally, the Russians, Mogilewsky, David
and Wladimir Burljuk, and Seraphim Sudbinin. This was the first
exhibition at which it was possible to rightly estimate the
development and the international character of the new movement.
The preparations for the exhibition in the year 1911 led to a
split. Some of the members insisted that, as regarded their works,
the custom of a jury should be dispensed with, while others were in
favor of having the entries rigidly judged in order to insure
proper selection. Kandinsky, Kubin, Marc, and Gabriele Münter in
consequence announced their withdrawal from the federation. Thus a
difference of opinion and convictions was openly vented that had
existed in secret for quite a time. The members named, under the
name of “Redaktion des Blauen Reiters,” opened a separate
exhibition and have since continued to work under this banner.
The New Artists’ Federation, since its third exhibition in 1912,
has held a series of exhibits of the works of individual artists in
its rooms at Munich, and its members are represented at nearly all
important exhibitions in Germany and Switzerland.[45]
* * * * *
The key-note of the modern movement in art is _expression of self_; that
is, the expression of one’s _inner self_ as distinguished from the
representation of the outer world.
* * * * *
[Illustration: MATISSE
Woman in Red Madras]
I have before me six of Jawlensky’s heads, painted a year or so apart.
They range from almost conventional portrait studies in strong
impressionistic manner to heads very like Matisse’s “Madras Rouge,”
thence to the head reproduced, which was the last painted.
The series shows an interesting development of the painter’s
_convictions_, his technic remains essentially the same, facile and
competent, only the latest picture places a much greater stress upon his
resources.
It was apparent from things in his studio, canvases ten or twelve years
old, that he could have made a commercial success as a painter of
portraits.
* * * * *
To say that Jawlensky’s latest heads with their strange, expressive,
exaggerated eyes are not wholly new one has only to turn to any work on
Greek painting wherein are reproduced some of the encaustic and tempera
portraits found in the Fayum some twenty-odd years ago.
* * * * *
When asked why he preferred his latest work to the earlier, Jawlensky
said:
“I have put more of myself into them; they are more expressive of what I
feel.”
And he went on to say the development seemed to him natural and logical.
He could not understand why the heads should strike others as queer or
laughable since they were the products of absolute sincerity.
Of his work a friendly critic says:
Jawlensky, formerly an officer in the Russian army, resigned a
captain’s commission and turned to painting. Today he looks back
into an artistic past rich in changes and just as rich in successes
achieved. Gauguin, VanGogh and Cézanne have given much to him; more
recently, oriental and primitive art, Byzantine pictures and
antique German woodcarvings have not been without influence on
him. His color is peculiarly his own, with its limpidity, its
bloom, and bold modulations, the spontaneous, expressive force of
which have a most refreshing effect. In its soft and surprising
beauty one may perhaps discover a distinctly Russian quality. It is
almost an injustice toward this artist’s pictures to reproduce them
colorless. His still-life pictures excel in composition and charm
by their color effects. In his landscapes a peculiar mood finds
expression, always striking, always original, and often with great
simplicity and beauty. His heads and half figures might be termed
snapshots of the soul: a pose, a motion, a glance of the eye,
retained by the briefest and most effective means. Here, too, a
conscious simplifying and exaggeration becomes more and more
evident. For this artist, art itself has the grace of a gesture;
the soul part immediately becomes expression, and thus is shown
everywhere the creative quality of an impulsive nature that owes
its best to the inspiration of the moment, and from it proceeds to
work with a most happy facility.[46]
* * * * *
Marianna von Werefkin, a Russian, uses water color, gouache, and prefers
the mystery of the night to daylight. Her pictures are interesting human
documents. She does not seek startling or novel pictured effects.
* * * * *
There is another and almost unknown artist, P. Klee, who is very highly
esteemed by the most advanced men. There is certainly an exquisite
refinement to his line; it is so alive it scintillates.
Gabriele Münter has a vision of things quite her own, a sense of humor
and of life that penetrates beneath the surface, and that manifests
itself in a technic that is, one might say, almost nonchalant.
A. Bloch is a young American, living in Munich, who has allied himself
with the Blue Knights and made an impression by his very personal
expressions. He was given a one-man exhibition in Berlin in December
last, and his pictures were highly praised in a well-written article in
the Berlin _Borsen-Courier_. Absolute and unswerving fidelity to one’s
ideals is the only sure road to success, and this sort of sincerity is
manifest in the work of Bloch.
Franz Marc is in a class by himself. He is the animal painter of the
Blue Knights, and his pictures have a fairly steady sale notwithstanding
they are extreme in conception and execution. Animal forms and their
phases of composition seem to appeal to him, but he often uses the forms
as arbitrarily as Matisse uses his nudes to secure an effect of life or
grace. His color is always delightful, and there is a flow, a rhythm to
his pictures that is fascinating.
In an article in “Der Blaue Reiter” he says:
It is remarkable how _spiritual_ acquisitions are valued so
differently by men as compared with _material_. If someone conquers
a new colony for his country everybody applauds; if, however,
someone has the _inspiration_ to give to mankind a new and purely
spiritual value, it is rejected with scorn and indignation, the
gift is suspected, and the people try to suppress and crush it. Is
not this a frightful condition?
And speaking of the new movement in art, which he considers a
_spiritual_ offering to the public, he says:
The public is against us, with scorn and abuse it refuses our
pictures; but we may be right. They may not want our gifts, but
perhaps they cannot help accepting them. We have the consciousness
that our world of ideas is no card house with which we play, but it
contains the vital elements of a _movement_ the vibrations of which
are felt today _the world_ over.
In the orthodox sense these men may or may not be religious--I do not
know--but one thing is certain, there is an immense amount of religious
power in their propaganda.
* * * * *
The most extreme man not only of Munich but of the entire modern art
movement is Wassily Kandinsky, also a Russian.
There was one of his Improvisations in the International Exhibition.[47]
It did not hang with the Cubists, not even in the large room with
Matisse and other radical men. Evidently those in charge of the hanging
did not know what to make of it or what to do with it, so they
side-tracked it on a wall that was partly in shadow. Visitors who paused
to look at it dismissed it as meaningless splotches of paint, and passed
on.
There is this to be said for the public, that with no word of
explanation one of Kandinsky’s Improvisations does seem--_at first
glance_--the last word in extravagance; on fourth or fifth glance it
appears to have a charm of color that is fascinating; on _study_ it
begins to _sound_ like color music.
* * * * *
There were three of his canvases in the London Exhibition in Albert Hall
in July, 1913, “Landscape with Two Poplars,” “Improvisation No. 29,” and
“Improvisation No. 30,” the last reproduced herein in color.
Of these three paintings a critic said:[48]
By far the best pictures there seemed to me to be the three works
by Kandinsky. They are of peculiar interest, because one is a
landscape in which the disposition of the forms is clearly prompted
by a thing seen, while the other two are improvisations. In these
the forms and colors have no possible justification, except the
rightness of their relations. This, of course, is really true of
all art, but where representation of natural form comes in, the
senses are apt to be tricked into acquiescence by the intelligence.
In these improvisations, therefore, the form has to stand the test
without any adventitious aids. It seemed to me that they did this,
and established their right to be what they were. In fact, these
seemed to me the most complete pictures in the exhibition, to be
those which had the most definite and coherent expressive power.
Undoubtedly representation, besides the evocative power which it
has through association of ideas,
[Illustration: KANDINSKY
Improvisation No. 29]
has also a value in assisting us to coordinate forms, and, until
Picasso and Kandinsky tried to do without it, this function at
least was always regarded as a necessity. That is why of the three
pictures by Kandinsky, the landscape strikes one most at first.
Even if one does not recognize it as a landscape, it is easier to
find one’s way about in it, because the forms have the same sort of
relations as the forms of nature, whereas in the two others there
is no reminiscence of the general structure of the visible world.
The landscape is easier, but that is all. As one contemplates the
three, one finds that after a time the improvisations become more
definite, more logical and more closely knit in structure, more
surprisingly beautiful in their color oppositions, more exact in
their equilibrium. _They are pure visual music._
People who do not find a _picture_ turn away disappointed and irritated,
but many turn back to look again, attracted by the strength and charm of
the compositions, and in the end not a few reluctantly concede, “Yes,
they have fine color, but--” and then follows the old demand for some
familiar object as anchorage.
* * * * *
Of Kandinsky’s qualifications from the academic point of view let it be
said he is a superb draftsman, though he no longer attaches any
importance to drawing _per se_; and he is a master of color
combinations.
One would say that the two, mastery of drawing and mastery of color,
would make a great painter, and so they _did_ and _do_.
I have at hand some of his earlier work along conventional lines, and I
have seen tempera drawings of Moroccan scenes that would delight a
Whistler, they are so delicate and so filled with subtle charm. Then I
have a series of sketches, extending over a number of years, which show
the development of his later works.
* * * * *
He has explained his theories at length in his book, “Ueber das
Geistege in der Kunst,”[49] and in numerous articles, notably in “Der
Blaue Reiter.”
The keynote of the entire modern movement is found in the first sentence
of his book,
“_Every work of art is the child of its own times._”
A man may so steep himself in history and tradition that all he does is
reminiscent of the past, but such work marks no progress and such men
are negligible factors in the advancement of mankind.
It is the man who yields himself to _his times_, who absorbs all there
is of good in the _life about him_, who sees everything, feels
everything, who mingles with his respect for the achievements of the
past a mighty admiration for the triumphs of the present--such a man is
a leader among his fellows; brilliant thinker, daring adventurer, he
blazes the way for the timid to follow.
If we were Greeks of the fifth century we would carve the marbles they
did. If we were Romans under the Caesars we would build the buildings
they built. If we were Christians of the middle ages we would rear
cathedrals. If we were English, French, German, Chinese, or Japanese, we
would do the things they do, like the things they like. But we are none
of these peoples; we are Americans living in an age of steam and
electricity, of automobiles and aeroplanes, in an age of kaleidoscopic
changes, of marvelous and startling developments.
What _must_ happen in painting, music, sculpture?
Exactly what has happened in architecture.
Painting, music, sculpture that will go with our mighty steel buildings,
with our factories and railroads.
Painting, music, sculpture varied in form, as old and as new as the
brain of man can conceive, but always and essentially _our own_. That
is the secret, it must be characteristic of our age--_our own_.
* * * * *
This is not a placid age.
It is an age of feverish activities, brilliant imaginings, profound
emotions.
Hence our art will not be placid, but will be an art of the imagination
and the emotions.
Venturesome souls will not be content to paint things, or even people,
but they will paint _themselves_, not their _outer_ selves, but their
_inner_; they will put on canvas what they _feel_. That is as near the
final word in art as man can utter--to _paint_ instead of _speak_ his
most subtle emotions.
* * * * *
In a recent article[50] Kandinsky summarises part of his theory as
follows:
A work of art consists of two elements, the _inner_ and the _outer_.
The inner is the emotion in the soul of the artist. This emotion has the
power to arouse a similar feeling in the soul of the observer.
The soul being connected with the body it is affected through the medium
of the senses--feelings; emotions are stirred and aroused by sensations.
Hence our sensations are the bridge, the physical connection between the
_immaterial_, the emotion in the soul of the artist, to the _material_,
resulting in the production of the work of art.
And again the sensations are the bridge from the _material_, the artist,
and his work, to the _immaterial_, emotion in the soul of the observer.
The sequence is, _emotion_ (in
artist)--sensations--_work_--sensations--_emotion_ (in observer).
The two emotions will be like and equal to the extent the _work_ is
successful. In this respect a painting is no different from a song, each
is a message; the successful singer succeeds in arousing in his hearers
the emotions he feels; the successful painter should do no less.
The inner element, emotion, must exist, else the work will be a sham.
The inner element determines the _character_ of the work.
In order that the inner element which at first exists only as an
emotion, may develop into work, the _second_ element--the _outer_ is
used as the embodiment. Therefore emotion is always seeking means of
expression, seeking a material form, a form that can stir the
senses.[51]
The _vital_, the _determining_ element is the _inner_, that controls the
outer form, even as the idea in the mind determines the words we use,
and not the words the idea.
Therefore the selection of the _form_ of a work of art is determined by
the _inner_ irresistible force--this is the only unchangeable _law_ of
art.
A _beautiful_ work is the product of the harmonious cooperation of the
two elements, the inner and outer. A painting, for instance, is an
intellectual organism which, like every material organism, consists of
many parts.
These single parts, if isolated, are as lifeless as a finger severed
from the hand.
The single parts live only through the whole.
The endless number of single parts in a painting is divided into two
groups:
1. The _designed_ form.
2. The _picturesque_ form.
* * * * *
An examination of a work of art, especially a painting,
[Illustration: VAN GOGH
Woman with Frying Pan]
[Illustration: VAN GOGH
Chair with Pipe]
usually discovers the presence of parts and forms drawn from _nature_,
from _objects_.
As the _imitation_ of natural forms forms no part of the definition of
pure art how is it these objective representations creep in?
The origin of painting was the same as that of the other arts, and of
every human action. It was _purely practical_.
If a native hunter chases game for days, he is induced to do so by
_hunger_.
If today a princely hunter chases game, he is induced to do so by the
desire for _enjoyment_. Just as hunger is of _bodily_ value, here the
enjoyment is of _aesthetic_ value.
If a savage requires artificial sounds for his dance, he is induced
thereto by sexual impulse. The artificial sounds, from which through
centuries the music of today developed, moved savages to an expression
of passion in the form of dancing.
If the man of today attends a concert he is not seeking the music for
_practical_ results, but _pleasure_.
Also here the original _practical_ motive changed to the _aesthetic_.
That means that also here the practical want of the body changed to that
of the _soul_.
During this progress toward refinement (or spirituality) of the most
simple practical (or bodily) wants, two consequences are to be noticed
throughout: The _separation_ of the spiritual _from_ the bodily element
and its further _independent development_ through the different arts.
Here the above mentioned laws (of the inner element and the form)
gradually apply with ever increasing force, until finally out of each
art comes a _pure_ art.
This is a steady, logical, natural growth, like the growth of a tree.
The process is to be noticed in painting.
First period, _Origin_: _Practical_ desire to make use of _physical_.
Second Period, _Development_: The gradual separation of this _practical_
purpose, and the gradual ascendancy of the _spiritual_ element.
Third Period, _Aim_: The attainment of a higher stage in _pure art_; in
this the remains of the practical desire are _totally separated_
(abstracted). Pure art speaks from soul to soul, it is not dependent
upon the use of objective and imitative forms.
We can distinguish all of these three stages in various combinations in
paintings of today.
First Period: _Realistic Painting_. The realism here is understood to be
such as developed traditionally into the nineteenth century--the
_practical_ desire to exhibit objective realities--portraits,
landscapes, historical paintings, etc., in the direct sense.
Second Period: _Naturalistic Paintings_ in the form of Impressionism, of
the New Impressionism and Expressionism--to which partly Cubism and
Futurism belongs: The separation of the _practical_ aim and the _general
preponderance_ of the _spiritual element_; from Impressionism through
Neo-Impressionism to Expressionism always increasing separation and
always increasing preponderance of the spiritual.
Apparently in this finer development _nature_ as such is no more taken
into consideration; but this is only “apparently” so, for as a matter of
fact nature is used as a motive, a background, a basis for the pictures,
and if the attempt is made to separate the natural or _objective_ part
of the picture from the purely artistic, the result is the picture falls
for lack of support.
* * * * *
In other words, in most of even the very abstract paintings, such as
even Picasso’s, there is a foundation, a background of objects without
which the pictures would not exist.
Picasso may refine a “Woman with a Mandolin,” to a dozen intersecting
lines that disclose neither woman nor mandolin, but _both_ were present
in his mind’s eye when he created his work, and without them the work
has no reason for existing.
It is here that one begins to understand Kandinsky’s attitude, and how
diametrically he diverges from Picasso. The two have nothing in common
save the desire to produce more abstract art, but Picasso abstractions
are based on the _outer_ world, while Kandinsky’s are based on the
_inner_.
When Picasso has refined nature, that is, things _outside_ him, to the
_last degree_, to the simplest mode of expression in line and mass, he
has reached an _impasse_, further progress is impossible, further
scientific subdivision in unattainable, his art in _that direction_ is
finished.
But Kandinsky has before him an unlimited view. With him the elimination
of nature, of all things _physical_ from his compositions, simply gives
him greater freedom in the painting of compositions representing
things--moods--_spiritual_.
* * * * *
To go on with his own explanation, not in his exact words, but in
substance:
It is thus seen that in both the first and second signs in the
development of art, the objective foundation or background is not of
simply secondary importance, but of _first_; it is essential because
without it the work would not exist.
To create _pure art_ it is necessary to eliminate this background of the
physical, and substitute for it _pure artistic form_, which alone can
give the picture independent life.
This step we find in the _dawning third period_ of
painting--_Compositional painting_.
According to the scheme of the three periods, we have arrived at the
third one--which was designated as the _Aim_.
In the _compositional painting_ which is developing today we see the
signs of the attainment of the higher step of _pure art_, in which the
remains of the _practical_ desire (all evidences of objectivity) can be
perfectly separated, which can speak from soul to soul in purely
artistic language.
The conscious and oftentimes also still unconscious striving, which
strongly (and ever stronger) shows itself today, to replace the
objective (subject paintings) by pure construction (pure composition) is
the first sign of the dawning of that _pure art_ to which the past art
periods inevitably led.
I have been trying to briefly deal with the entire development and
more especially the situation today in broad schematic outlines;
therefore there are many deficiencies (gaps) which necessarily
remain uncovered, and there are passed over many interesting lesser
developments, which are inevitable in progress, like smaller
branches on the tree, which extend outward notwithstanding the
tree’s growth upward.
The further development, which is pending in painting, will still
have to suffer many seeming contradictions and diversions, as was
the case with music, which today we know already as pure art.
The past teaches us that the development of humanity consists in
the increasing _spirituality_ of various factors. Among these
factors art takes the first place.
Among the arts painting is following the road that leads it from
the _practical_-efficiency to the _intellectual_-efficiency. From
the _subject-picture_ to the _pure composition_.
To better understand the foregoing take the “Improvisation No. 30.”[52]
It is a very pure example of _compositional_ painting, but it
[Illustration: KANDINSKY
Improvisation No. 30]
is not _absolutely pure_, in that it contains many more or less obvious
suggestions of familiar forms and objects.
Some workmen who happened to be handling the painting, referred to it as
the “War Picture,” and many casual observers insist it is an impression
of war or of a battle field.
This is because two cannon are quite plain in the lower right-hand
corner, and the two oblong blue masses projecting from the cannons’
mouths would seem to be the smoke of the discharges.
Then, too, the seeming cataclysmic effect, the suggestion of a helmet, a
tottering tower, banners, aerial flashes or fireworks, all accentuate
the impression of conflict and explosions.
If one looks long enough in this mood it is not difficult to read into
the canvas all sorts of interpretations of a warlike character.
Yet the painting was “improvised”--_composed_ with no _direct_ intention
of suggesting war.
In his own personal note book wherein he keeps a record of all his work,
Kandinsky identifies the picture by a hasty pencil sketch and the words,
“Blue Splashes,” or “Masses,” and “Cannons.”
Of the painting he says in a letter:
The designation “Cannons,” selected by me _for my own use_, is not
to be conceived as indicating the “contents” of the picture.
These contents are indeed what the spectator _lives_, or _feels_
while under the effect of the _form and color combinations_ of the
picture. This picture is nearly in the shape of a cross. The
centre--somewhat below the middle--is formed by a large, irregular
blue plane. (The blue color in itself counteracts the impression
caused by the cannons!) Below this centre there is a muddy-gray,
ragged second centre almost equal in importance to the first one.
The four corners extending the oblique cross into the corners of
the picture are heavier than the two centres, especially heavier
than the first, and they vary from each other in characteristics,
in lines, contours, and colors.
Thus the picture becomes lighter, or looser in the centre, and
heavier, or tighter towards the corners.
The scheme of the construction is thus toned down, even made
invisible for many, by the looseness of the forms. Larger or
smaller remains of _objectivity_ (the cannons, for instance)
produce in the spectator that secondary tone which objects call
forth in all who feel.
The presence of the cannons in the picture could probably be
explained by the constant war talk that had been going on
throughout the year. But I did not intend to give a representation
of war; to do so would have required different pictorial means;
besides, such tasks do not interest me--at least not just now.
This entire description is chiefly an analysis of the picture which
I have painted rather subconsciously in a state of strong inner
tension. So intensively did I feel the necessity of some of the
forms, that I remember having given loud voiced directions to
myself, as for instance: “But the corners must be heavy!” In such
cases it is of importance exactly to discern all things, the
weight, for instance, by the feeling. Generally speaking, I might
almost declare that where the feeling that lies in the soul, in the
eye, and in the hand is strong enough to faultlessly determine the
finest measurements and weights, “schematism” and the much-dreaded
“consciosity” will not become dangerous. On the contrary, in this
case, the said elements will even prove immeasurably beneficial.
I would that all my pictures might be judged exclusively from this
point of view, and that the non-essentials might completely
disappear from the judgment.
* * * * *
In subsequent letters he said:
Whatever I might say about myself or my pictures can touch the
_pure artistic meaning_ only _superficially_. The observer must
learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a
_mood_ and not as a representation of _objects_.
* * * * *
All that anyone can say about pictures, and what I might say
myself, can touch the contents, the _pure artistic meaning_, of a
picture _only superficially_. Each spectator for himself must learn
to view the picture _solely_ as a graphic representation of a mood,
passing over as unimportant such details as representations or
suggestions of natural objects. This the spectator can do after a
time, and where one can do it, many can.
Given a work of art, painting, sculpture, music--anything--its
appreciation and understanding depend upon the _attitude_ of the
audience.
A work of art may be, and ultimately must be viewed from two very
different points of view--the point of view of the _artist_, and the
point of view of the _observer_.
The great majority of people view a painting only from the latter point
of view, only in the light of _their preconceived_ notions and
prejudices--hence the ridicule of the strange and the protest against
the new.
A very, very small minority--a minority so small it numbers scarce one
in ten thousand--view a new work searchingly and at the same time
sympathetically _from the artist’s point of view_, seeking diligently to
find out what he is trying to do, and not permitting a single prejudice
or preconceived notion of their own to bias their judgment.
_After_ this class of observers have ascertained what the artist
intended, _then_, and not until then, do they turn and view the work
from their own point of view--that is, in the light of their own likes
and dislikes.
Their final appreciation may be that _granting the theories of the
artist_ the picture is a fine one, but they do not agree with the
artist’s theories, hence the picture from their point of view is a
failure as a work of art.
To rightly view a work of art is an _act of creation_; the true observer
is a painter; the true reader is a poet.
* * * * *
It is not at all strange that the great majority referred to should
resent Kandinsky’s improvisations, for they are not easy to understand,
though most of them are undeniably fascinating in color.
It is not even strange that a large percentage of the intelligent and
sympathetic minority should finally reach the
conclusion that the theories of the artist are not sound, and
therefore all his work based on his extreme theories fails as art
work, but the attitude of this fraction of the minority is an
attitude of intelligent and conscientious conviction, reached after
long and impartial investigation, while the attitude of the great
majority is that of impulsive ignorance and irritation, reached on
first impression and without the slightest attempt at
understanding.
* * * * *
To illustrate: The great majority of people on first hearing Chinese
music exclaim, “What a horrid din!” and turn away.
A very, very small minority, about one man in a million, say, “True, it
sounds to us like a din, but to a people of extraordinary civilization
it is music; the matter is worth investigating,” and on investigation it
would be found that Chinese music from time immemorial has been under
state supervision.[53]
The very ancient scale was pentatonic--five tones. It was in the seventh
century, B.C., that the Asiatic flute was introduced into Greece and the
Greek Doric scale transformed into one of five tones.[54]
Among the more cultivated nations, the Chinese, and Celts of
Scotland and Ireland still retain the scale of five notes without
semitones, although both have become acquainted with the complete
scale of seven tones.
The division of the octave into twelve semitones, and the
transposition of scales have also been discovered by this
intelligent and skilful nation.
But, generally speaking, both the Gaels and the Chinese,
notwithstanding their acquaintance with the modern tonal system,
hold fast by the old. And it cannot be denied that by avoiding the
semitones
[Illustration: GAUGUIN
Portrait of Self]
[Illustration: GAUGUIN
Farmyard]
of the diatonic scale, Scotch airs receive a peculiarly bright and
mobile character, although we cannot say as much for the
Chinese.[55]
While we are content with a scale divided into semitones, the more
delicate oriental ear requires _quarter_ tones. The Arab octave is
divided into _twenty-four_ intervals. A distinguished musician on a
visit to Cairo wrote Helmholtz as follows: “This evening I have listened
attentively to the song on the minarets, to try to appreciate the
_quarter-tones_ which I had not supposed to exist, as I had thought the
Arabs sang _out of tune_. But today as I was with the dervishes I became
certain that such quarter-tones existed.[56]
In discussing the development of our modern, _equal_ temperament
(adopted commercially in England for pianos not until 1846), Helmholtz
says, “Amiot reports equal temperament from China long previously even
to Pythagoras.”[57]
The Chinese are the only people who, thousands of years ago,
possessed a system of octaves, a circle of fifths, and a normal
tone. With this knowledge, however, their eighty-four scales, _each
of which has a special philosophical signification_, appear all the
more incomprehensible to us.[58]
“The Chinese believe their music to be the first in the world. _European
music_ they consider to be _barbaric_ and _horrible_.”[59]
* * * * *
All this goes to show how hazardous it is to jump to the conclusion that
what we don’t understand has no meaning.
To one ignorant of Chinese or Japanese or Hebrew handwriting it seems
just as absurd and meaningless as a drawing by Picasso or a painting by
Kandinsky, but to the earnest
and indefatigable searcher after hidden meanings the strange
handwriting and the strange pictures both deliver up a message.
* * * * *
Of such paintings as Kandinsky’s improvisations it is often flippantly
said, “They paint that way because they can’t draw.”
As a matter of fact most of the extreme moderns such as Picasso,
Matisse, Kandinsky, are past-masters of the art of drawing.
But they do not now attach the importance to drawing, merely for the
sake of drawing, they once did.
Kandinsky’s own attitude is expressed in the following extract from a
letter:
As regards other artists, I am very tolerant, but at the same time
most severe; my opinion of artists is influenced but little by
considerations of the element of form, pure and simple; I expect of
the artist to bear within at least the “sacred spark” (if not
“flame”). There really is nothing easier than to master the form of
something or someone. Boecklin is quoted as having said that even a
poodle-dog might learn how to draw, and in this he was correct. At
the schools I attended I had more than a hundred colleagues who had
learned something, many had in good time managed to draw quite well
and anatomically correct--_still_, they were not artists, not a
pfennig’s worth. In short, I value _only_ those artists who really
are artists; that is, who consciously or unconsciously, in an
_entirely original form_, or in a style bearing their _personal
imprint_, embody the expression of their _inner self_; who,
consciously or unconsciously, work _only_ for _this end_ and cannot
work _otherwise_. The number of such artists is very few. If I were
a collector I would buy the works of such even if there were
weaknesses in what they did; _such_ weaknesses grow less in time
and finally disappear entirely, and though they may be apparent in
the earlier works of the artist still they do not deprive even
these earlier and less perfect works of value. But the _other_
weakness, that of _lack of soul_, never decreases with time, but is
sure to grow worse and become more and more apparent, and so render
absolutely valueless works that _technically_ may be very correct.
The entire history of art is proof of this. The _union_ of _both_
kinds of strength--that of intellect or spirituality with that of
form, or technical perfection--is most rare, as is also
demonstrated by the history of art.
* * * * *
From his exceedingly abstruse article “On the Question of Form” in “Der
Blaue Reiter,” I take and paraphrase the following:
At certain times our inner forces--impulses--mature and the result is a
longing to create something, and we try to find a material
form--manifestation--for the _new value_ that exists in us in spiritual
or intellectual form.
This is the seeking of the _spiritual_ for material expression. Matter
is but the store house out of which the spirit selects the necessary
elements to secure the objective result.
Thus the _creative spirit_ is hidden in the matter, behind the material
manifestation through which it must make itself known. But often the
material envelope is so dense that only a few people can discern the
spiritual idea within and behind it; some people never penetrate behind
the matter at all, and therefore, never comprehend the spiritual
message.
While many comprehend the _spiritual_ content behind the _outward_ forms
of religion, they do not realize that there is, or should be, a
_spiritual_ content behind the _outward_ forms of art.
There are whole epochs when men seem blind to the spiritual truths that
are behind material manifestations; generally speaking, the nineteenth
century was a century of _materialism_.
It is as if a _black hand_ were placed over the eyes of men so they
should not see the spiritual forces behind the material, and the
production of new spiritual values is fought by mockery and calumny. The
man who produces the new value is held up to ridicule and called a
charlatan.
The _joy of living_ is the _perpetual victory_ of the new, the
_spiritual value_. But even as men learn to appreciate the new of
yesterday and today they establish it as a barrier against the new of
tomorrow. Spiritual development and evolution are a constant throwing
down of these bars that are as constantly re-erected by the materialism
and blindness of mankind.
Therefore the important thing is not only the impulse to create new
spiritual values, but _liberty_ to do so.
The spiritual is the _absolute_, the outward form is _relative_, it is
born of the place and the hour. Therefore one should not fall into the
worship of a particular form, but should use whatever form best serves
to express the spiritual content.
And, naturally, each artist must use _his own form_ to express his own
ideas, and _form_ should have the stamp of _personality_.
Each nation, each epoch will develop its own forms, or peculiarities of
forms, and it is the reflection of the nation, the epoch, the individual
in the particular form that is known as, or makes the _style_.
When a group of artists is animated by the same spirit the forms they
use will be so alike the result will be a “movement” or “school” in art;
but a “school” should not be permitted to dominate the freedom of
others. Every individual must be at liberty to choose the form that best
expresses the spiritual message he wishes to utter.
The form--picture--may be agreeable or disagreeable, beautiful or ugly,
harmonious or disharmonious, but it must not be judged on its outward
appearance; it must be judged by the _idea_, the _spiritual value_
behind it. We must look _through_ the form to the spiritual, as we would
look through the deformed body of the cripple to the soul of the man.
In practical life we never meet a man who, if he wishes
[Illustration: GAUGUIN
Scene in Tahiti]
[Illustration: GRIS
Still Life]
to go to Berlin, gets off the train at Regensberg. But in spiritual life
it is a common thing to find people who step out at Regensberg.
Sometimes the engine driver refuses to go on and all the travelers have
to leave the train at Regensberg. How many who are _looking for God_
stop before a _carved image_! How many who are looking for art are
caught by some form that has been used by some great artist to express
_his_ ideas!
And in conclusion he asserts, it is not of vital importance whether the
_form_ is personal, national, according to prevailing mode, or whether
it is related to “schools,” “movements,” etc., etc., or is isolated.
“_The important question is whether the form has grown out of the inner,
spiritual necessity._”
* * * * *
In art, especially in painting, we have today striking richness of form
which shows the immense striving that is going on.
To adhere stubbornly to one form is to travel a lane that has no outlet.
Many call the present state of painting “anarchy,” and so they say of
music, but this appearance of anarchy, of lawlessness, is due to the
workings of spiritual forces that cannot be expressed in old forms, but
demand new manifestations.
It is one thing to reproduce on canvas an accurate representation of an
object, but such a representation is no more than the outer shell; to
find out whether the picture has any real, any spiritual value one must
get rid of this outer shell. Step by step the “objective,” the
photographic elements are eliminated until in the end there may be no
trace of any object, and with this elimination the spiritual content
becomes plainer and plainer. The steps are:
Realism--abstraction--
Abstraction--_reality_.
* * * * *
Objects need not necessarily be eliminated from a picture, but they
should be used _not_ for the sake of forcing their photographic
likenesses upon the observer, but solely to more perfectly express the
inner, the spiritual significance of the work.
If a painter introduces a suggestion of a landscape or a bit of still
life it should be for the purpose of making _his_ meaning, _his_ inner
feeling plainer to the beholder, and not for the purpose of making a
colored photograph of a field or flowers.
Therefore it does not matter whether _actual_ or _abstract_ forms are
used by the artist, so long as both are used to express _spiritual
values_. The sole question regarding form the artist should put to
himself is, “Which form, or combination of forms, shall I use in this
case to express most fully and plainly my spiritual mood?”
* * * * *
The _ideal art critic_ is not the critic who tries to discover mistakes,
ignorance, imitations in the form, but he who tries to _feel_ and
_understand_ how the form _expresses_ the _inner feeling_ of the artist
and who tries to make the public understand.
A painter may use new and strange forms for the sake of the forms, just
for the sake of painting new and strange pictures, but the result will
be lifeless.
It is only when new and strange forms are used _because_ they are
necessary to express a spiritual content that the result is a _living_
work of art.
“_The world reverberates; it is a cosmos of spiritually working human
beings. Thus matter is living spirit._”
* * * * *
Rather a fine philosophy, is it not?
One cannot but feel that out of such thoughts good works must come.
* * * * *
To quote once more from a personal letter:
“I have now been exhibiting for almost fifteen years, and for the same
fifteen years I have been hearing (although more rarely of late) that I
have gone too far on my way; that in time my exaggerations will most
surely decrease, and that I would yet paint in an ‘entirely different
manner'; that I would ‘return to nature.’ I had to hear this for the
first time when I exhibited my studies painted on the naturalist basis
with the horn (spatula).
“The truth of the matter is that every really gifted artist, that is, an
artist working under an impulse _from within_, must go in a way that in
some mystical manner has been laid out for him from the very start. His
life is nothing but the fulfillment of a task set for him (_for him, not
by himself_). Meeting with enmity from the start, he feels only vaguely
and indistinctly that he carries a message for the expression of which
he must find a _certain_ manner. This is the period of ‘storm and
stress,’ then follow desperate _searching_, pain, great pain--until
_finally_ his eyes open and he says to himself, ‘There is my way.’ The
rest of his life lies along this path. And one must follow it to the
very last hour _whether one wants to do so, or not_. And no one must
imagine that this is a Sunday afternoon’s walk, for which one selects
the route at will. Neither is there any Sunday about it; it is a working
day, in the strongest sense possible. And the greater the artist, the
more one-sided is he in _his_ work; true, he retains the ability to do
‘nice’ work of other kind (by reason of his ‘talent'), but _innerly_
weighty, infinitely deep, and immeasurable serious things he can achieve
_only_ in his _one-sided_ art. Talent is not an electric pocket lantern,
the rays of which one may at will direct now hither and then thither;
it is a star for which the path is being prescribed by the dear Lord.
“As far as I am concerned personally, I was as if thunderstruck, when
for the first time and in only a general manner I began to see my way. I
was awed. I deemed this inspiration to be a delusion, a ‘temptation.’
“You will easily understand what doubts I had to overcome, until I
became convinced that I had to follow this way. Of course, I clearly
understood what it means ‘to drop the objective.’ With what doubts I was
troubled regarding my own powers! For I knew at once _what_ powers were
_absolutely_ required for this task. How this inner development
proceeded, how _everything_ pushed me on to this way and how the
exterior development slowly but logically (step by step) followed suit,
you will see from my book that is to appear shortly (in English). All
that I still see _ahead_ of me, all these tasks, the ever-increasing
wealth of possibilities, the ever-growing depth of painting I cannot
describe. And one must and _may_ not describe such things: they must
mature _innerly_ in secret confinement and may not be expressed
otherwise than by the painter’s art.
“If in time you acquire the ability to more exactly _live_ my pictures,
you will have to admit that the element of ‘chance’ is very rarely met
with in these pictures, and that it is more than amply covered by the
large positive sides--so amply, indeed, that it is not worth while to
mention those weak spots.
“My constructive forms, although outwardly appearing indistinct, are in
fact rigidly fixed as if they were cut in stone.
“These explanations lead us too far; they could help only if illustrated
by examples. Also, this letter is already much longer than it ought to
be. I trust that I have expressed myself clearly! These things are so
infinitely complicated,
[Illustration:
VLAMINCK
Village
]
and how often do I deviate from my theme and thus (instead of producing
‘clarity') cause confusion to become worse confounded!”
* * * * *
The result are paintings such as the four reproduced in color and
half-tone.
The brilliant color combinations and harmonies of the originals are
inadequately disclosed in the reproductions, the scale is too reduced.
But the forms are well indicated, strange, curious forms, meaningless on
first impression but _insistent_.
Most people are repelled at once by the landscapes because they seem so
badly drawn a child could do better; but even as landscapes, as
impressions of nature--or rather of _something in nature_--the pictures
will not be denied.
If they were intended to be accurate representations of natural scenes,
mountains, fields, trees, houses, they would be ridiculous indeed, but
they are not so intended, therefore they should not be so judged.
In looking at these pictures--compositions, rather, it is but fair to
look at them from the point of view of the painter, try to _read_ them
as he _wrote_ them.
* * * * *
“_Compositional_” painting is no radical departure, no new discovery.
The instinct of the child is to “compose,” to create. It is only after
much chiding and correction that the child draws literally--copies what
it _sees_.
* * * * *
It takes a big and strong man to pass through schools and academies and
come out unscathed. The art school is a godsend to talent and
mediocrity; it is a menace to genius.
Most paintings are “compositional” to _some_ extent. But from the
literalness of Monet’s hay stacks to the abstract qualities of
Kandinsky’s improvisations the interval is great.
There is, too, a difference in kind, as well as degree, between the
compositions of the painter who simply re-arranges nature, persons, or
objects to secure a pleasing or effective result, and the painter who
uses nature, life, or objects as so many signs or notes to express his
inner feelings; the former paints to _impress_ others, the latter paints
to _express himself_ to others. The one is thinking all the time of his
picture, the other is thinking all the time of his message.
All great painters have combined the two attitudes, they have _expressed
themselves_ in pictures that not only convey the message but _as
pictures_ impress others--that is characteristic of the world’s great
art.
At the moment the pendulum is swinging toward the extreme where
everything is subordinated to the expression of the artist’s _self_, and
the indications are that some subtle and wonderful things will be
painted before the pendulum swings back.
* * * * *
To what extent the public generally will accept pure compositional
painting it is impossible to say; but the number of those who enjoy it
will steadily increase until there will be many lovers of art who will
collect only the most abstract works.
* * * * *
A Russian painter of great strength but entirely different inspiration
and technic was asked, “Do you like Kandinsky’s Improvisations?”
“Very much.”
“Do you understand them?”
“No.”
“Then why do you like them?”
“Because they give me pleasure and I am sure that as I look at them
they excite in me the same pleasure they excited in him when he painted
them; he has succeeded in conveying to me his own emotions and that is
the most any artist can hope to do.”
Which brings us back to the proposition laid down in an earlier chapter:
the emotional reaction to music and painting may be and usually is quite
independent of the intellectual, and while it may be either increased or
diminished in _volume_ by _understanding_, it is necessarily _changed_
in character.
* * * * *
Another artist, an Austrian, was asked:
“How do you like Kandinsky’s Improvisations?”
After a moment’s hesitation he replied slowly: “They interest me
immensely, and I admire the man’s courage to express himself in his own
way regardless whether people understand him or not, but he goes so far
that it is almost impossible for even his friends and sympathizers to
understand his pictures. He goes so far he is quite alone, no one can
follow, and therein I think perhaps he makes a mistake, for after all
pictures should be so painted that those who earnestly try can
understand them.”
But that is just the question that every great artist is obliged to put
to himself, “Shall I write or paint so that others will understand, or
shall I express myself in my own way even though no one but myself
comprehends and even I fail at times?”
It is just as bad to paint with the sole purpose of being
understood--_commercialism_--as it is to paint with the sole purpose of
being misunderstood--_charlatanism_.
VIII
COLOR MUSIC
Color music is no new idea, but of late it is finding new expression.
While painters are beginning to paint color harmonies that are
independent of the representations of natural objects, others are
seeking the same emotional effects with colored lights.
A “color organ” has been invented[60] which deals with color for its own
sake as music does with sound, thereby opening up a new world of beauty
and interest as yet to a great extent unexplored.
When you enter Mr. Rimington’s English studio you see at one end of
it a curious instrument with a keyboard and stops, while at the
other end is a white screen, hung in folds to give greater depth
and life to the colors playing upon it. What happens when the
instrument is played is thus described by Mr. Rimington:
“Imagine a darkened concert room. At one end there is a large
screen of white drapery in folds, surrounded with black and framed
by two bands of pure white light. Upon this we will suppose, as an
example of a simple color composition, that there appears the
faintest possible flush of rose color, which very gradually fades
away while we are enjoying its purity and subtlety of tint, and we
return to darkness. Then, with an interval, it is repeated in three
successive phases, the last of which is stronger and more
prolonged.
“While it is still lingering upon the screen, a rapid series of
touches of pale lavender notes of color begin to flit across it,
gradually strengthening into deep violet. This again becomes shot
with amethyst, and afterward changing gradually into a broken tint
of ruby, gives a return to the warmer tones of the opening passage.
“A delicate primrose now appears, and with little runs and flushes
of pulsation leads through several passages of indescribable
cinnamon
[Illustration: PICASSO
Old Woman]
[Illustration: GIRIEUD
Woman Seated]
color to deep topaz. Then suddenly interweavings of strange green
and peacock blue, with now and then a touch of pure white, make us
seem to feel the tremulousness of the Mediterranean on a breezy
day, and as the color deepens there are harmonies of violet and
blue green which recall its waves under a Tramontana sky. More and
more powerful they grow, and the eye revels in the depth and
magnificence of the color as the executant strikes chord after
chord among the bass notes of the instrument.
“Then suddenly the screen is again dark and there is only a
rhythmic and echoing beat of the dying color upon it. At last this
disappears also, and there is another silent pause, then one
hesitating tint of faded rose as at the opening of the composition.
“Upon this follows a stronger return of the color, and as the
screen once more begins to glow with note after note of red and
scarlet, we are prepared for the rapid crescendo which finally
leads up to a series of staccato and forte chords of pure crimson
which almost startle us with the force of their color before they
die away into blackness!
“This,” says Mr. Rimington, “is an extremely simple example, but it
may suffice to show the kind of effect produced by an unadorned
form of mobile color not accompanied by music. In some cases a
musical accompaniment was found to add greatly to the interest of a
color composition. The nearest approach to color music in nature is
to be found in certain sunsets.” Of the emotional and aesthetic
effect of color music on various beholders we read:
The amount of pleasure and interest derived from color compositions
varies immensely with individuals. An interesting instance of this
was the case of a well-known London doctor, who told the author,
after first seeing a recital of color-music, that he was absolutely
unappreciative of any form of “sound music;” that it was, in fact,
a pain to him, and that he had always detested it. “But,” he said,
“from the moment that I first saw a display of mobile color, I
realized what I had missed all my life through my inability to
appreciate music. It opened up a new world of sensations to me and
gave me the greatest mental pleasure I have ever experienced.” This
clearly shows that to some persons mobile color would, or does,
fill the place which music can not occupy in their lives.
On the other hand, there can be little doubt that to some, though
they would hardly own it, color of any kind is more or less
unpleasant, and they would prefer to live in a monotonic world. One
must therefore be prepared for a great variety of opinions with
regard to any such art as that of mobile color. The majority of
people will probably derive a moderate but increasing pleasure from
it.
There are many to whom it at once provides a surpassingly
interesting source of enjoyment and education, and some to whom,
like my medical friend, it will open up an entirely new world of
sensations; and there are others, again, to whom it will be
supremely distasteful. It is well to recognize this to avoid
disappointment, and be prepared for very divergent expressions of
opinion about it.
Speaking broadly, it appeals most to those who have had an artistic
training into which color has entered, and it is less attractive to
those whose interests center in music. This is not what the author
personally expected. He imagined that the connection with music
being so close on some points, those who would take the greatest
interest in mobile color would be musicians; but, with some
striking exceptions among distinguished musicians, the musical
world, as far as it has yet come into contact with color-music, has
been at first inclined to see points of divergence rather than
those of analogy and to look upon the art as a possible rival. A
similar attitude is often adopted toward any new departure in
science or art, and there is no reason for resenting it; it merely
makes the cooperation of those among musicians who are able to take
a sympathetic view and welcome the endeavor to open up new fields
of investigation all the more valuable.
* * * * *
From time immemorial child and man have taken the keenest delight in
fireworks and colored lights which are after all a species of light
music.
Since the adoption of electricity for lighting it is comparatively easy
to produce the most wonderful effects both indoors and out.
As yet little thought has been given to producing harmonious light
effects on streets--save in advertising signs. For the most part the
lighting is garish in the extreme, often positively painful to the eyes,
but in time this will be corrected. Public authorities cooperating with
private owners will work out schemes for lighting streets and shops that
will yield charming effects.
* * * * *
Already much has been done in the theater, especially in Russia and
Germany. The value of light effects is being recognized. Soft music is
often played to enhance the effect of a tender or pathetic scene, and it
is quite common for the lights to change in harmony.
By the use of light alone as an accompaniment to a love scene the same
effect on the audience can be secured as by the use of soft music.
So far all this has been done crudely and for the most part
unscientifically. Producer and electrician have worked together in a
haphazard way, often with great success, sometimes with most
disagreeable results.
The very term “stage lighting” is not inspiring, but the art of light
music will be developed and be taught in theory and practice. Masters of
the art will come and men will realize that it is just as great an art
to satisfy the eye with light melodies as it is to please the ear with
sound melodies.
There yet may be entertainments where only light music is played as
there are concerts where only sound music is played.
And why not? Just ask yourself the question--Why not?
Of all the organs of sense the eye is the most delicate and the most
wonderful. The ear responds to _air_ waves that travel at the rate of
1,100 _feet_ per second and vary in frequency from 16 to 32,000 per
second. The musical notes vary from 32 to 5,000 beats per second.
The eye responds to _ether_ waves that travel at the rate of 182,000
_miles_ per second and vary in frequency from 400 millions millions--the
lowest red of the spectrum--to 750 millions millions (red
400,000,000,000,000; violet 750,000,000,000,000) the highest violet.
* * * * *
Man has devoted ages to developing harmonies in the combination of air
waves, and he has reduced sound music to a science.
He has devoted _all_ the ages of his being to the use of color in one
way and another to please his eye, but only of late has he made any
attempt to understand the _science_ of light and color music.
* * * * *
The _material_ civilization we _have_ attained in comparison with the
_spiritual_ civilization we _should_ attain is fairly well indicated by
the vast difference between the crude and natural art of _sound_ effects
which is, so far, man’s most abstract achievement in art, and the
incomparably finer and more ethereal art of light and color effects
which will be one of the crowning achievements of man’s nobler future.
* * * * *
The painter of _easel_ pictures arrogates to himself the name artist and
to his work the phrase _fine art_. He looks down upon the house painter,
the dressmaker, and the interior decorator.
Yet as compared with those who clothe our bodies and decorate our homes
in harmonies of line and color the painter of easel pictures cuts very
little figure in life; he plays his part but much of his inspiration is
drawn from the work of the other two.
It should never be forgotten that in all the great portraits of the
world the clothes and the interiors that furnish the beautiful color
schemes _preceded_ the pictures often by generations.
The costumer and the decorator work year in and year out, from
generation to generation, throughout the centuries, with not so much as
a thought of the painter in the corner with his little canvas,
faithfully copying.
Now and then a great painter, a great sculptor, takes off his coat,
turns workman for the moment and makes sculptures for buildings, paints
pictures on walls, devises costumes, and contributes to making our
environment more beautiful.
But not infrequently the sculptor and the painter upset the equilibrium
of the work of others by doing things which are out of key or out of
proportion. The “fine artist” _may_ bring the work of decorating to a
standstill by painting spotty _easel_ pictures on walls that should be
treated in harmony with the entire building and with its uses.
* * * * *
The time will come when art schools will teach pure color composition as
well as drawing and the painting of pictures.
Why should not prizes be offered for color harmonies?
As it is now pupils are taught everything _except_ the use of color _for
the sake of color_.
* * * * *
What is a “still life”? Simply a painting of a number of objects
selected and arranged primarily for their color notes. Why not paint the
notes without the fruit and dishes?
So far as the color harmony is concerned the _figure_ of an orange, an
apple, a banana is not essential; in reality the photographic
realization distracts. But the public is not accustomed to _pure_ color
music, it is not accustomed to seeing canvases that contain only color
harmonies with no suggestion of object or form, it demands that the note
of yellow shall be a lemon or a banana, that the note of purple shall
assume the shape of a plum and so on, and so on; yet all the time the
enjoyment derived from a fine “still life” is from the harmony that
results from the combination of colors, and in no sense from the objects
arbitrarily and artificially grouped together.
* * * * *
The use of line and color _imitatively_ to depict objects is one thing.
The use of line and color _freely_ to produce pure line harmonies and
pure color harmonies, with no reference to objects is quite another, and
in a sense, a far higher art--a more abstract art.
It is toward the development of this more abstract art that the modern
experiments are tending. The net result in the long run will be the
education of a considerable fraction of the public to the appreciation
of pure line and color music and a consequent demand for paintings that
are simply pure line and color compositions.
With this development of a taste for a very abstract art all the arts
and crafts are certain to be beneficially affected.
The study of line for the sake of line, and of color for the sake of
color if systematically pursued will make all draftsmen greater masters
of line, and all painters--to the humblest house painter--greater
masters of color.
IX
ESORAGOTO
Neither the Cubists nor Kandinsky troubled a very distinguished Japanese
expert who spent many days at the exhibition.
“The principles of all this are old, very old, in Japan.”
He was far more interested in the extreme drawings and paintings than in
the more academic. Pointing to a drawing that seemed scarce more than a
few careless strokes, he said, “That is quite in the spirit of the best
Japanese art.”
Of the “King and Queen” he said, “I like that very much,” and so on,
passing from one Cubist picture to another, commenting upon each
seriously and intelligently.
* * * * *
To either copy or be in the slightest degree hampered by nature is a
mark of inferiority in Chinese and Japanese art.
The very abstract art of the Orient has its elaborate conventions, but
those conventions are all in the direction of _pure_ art, whereas the
conventions of our art (music always excepted) are all in the direction
of imitation.
It was a theory of the great Chinese teacher, Chinanpin, and
particularly enforced by him, that trees, plants, and grasses take
the form of a circle, called in art _Rin kan_; or a semi-circle,
_Han kan_; or an aggregation of half circles, called fish-scales,
_Gyo sin_; or a modification of these latter, called moving
fish-scales, _Go sin Katsu_.[61]
* * * * *
In regard to painting moving waters, whether deep or shallow, in
rivers or brooks, bays or oceans, Chinanpin declared it was
impossible for the eye to seize their exact forms because they are
ever changing and have no fixed, definite shape; therefore, they
cannot be sketched satisfactorily; yet, as moving water must be
represented in painting, it should be long and minutely
contemplated by the artist and its general character--whether
leaping in the brook, flowing in the river, roaring in the
cataract, surging in the ocean or lapping the shore--observed and
reflected upon, and after the eye and the memory are both
sufficiently trained and _the very soul of the artist is
saturated_, as it were, with this one subject, and he feels his
whole being calm and composed, he should retire to the privacy of
his studio and with the early morning sun to gladden his spirit
there attempt to reproduce the movement of the flow; _not by
copying what he has seen_, for the effect would be stiff and
wooden, but by symbolizing according to certain laws _what he feels
and remembers_.
* * * * *
It begins to be plain why the Japanese expert was profoundly interested
in the modern pictures and drawings.
* * * * *
One of the most important principles in the art of Japanese
painting--indeed a fundamental and entirely distinctive
characteristic--is that called living movement, _sei do_, or
_Kokoro machi_, it being, so to say, the transfusion into the work
of _the felt nature_ of the thing to be painted by the artist.
Whatever the subject to be translated--whether river or tree, rock
or mountain, bird or flower, fish or animal--the artist at the
_moment of painting it must feel its very nature_, which, by the
magic of his art, he transfers into his work to remain forever,
affecting all who see it with the same sensations he experienced
when executing it.
This is not an imaginary principle, but a strictly enforced law of
Japanese painting. The student is insistently admonished to observe
it. Should his subject be a tree he is urged when painting it to
_feel_ the _strength_ which shoots through the branches and
sustains the limbs; or if a flower to try to _feel_ the grace with
which it expands or bows its blossoms. Indeed, nothing is more
constantly urged upon his attention than this great _underlying
principle_ that it is _impossible to express in art what one does
not first feel_.
* * * * *
“Waga kokoro waga te woyaku
Waga te waga kokoro ni ozuru.”
Our spirit must make our hand its servitor;
Our hand must respond to each behest of our spirit.
[Illustration: SOUSA CARDOZA
Stronghold]
The Japanese artist is taught that even to the placing of a dot in
the eyeball of a tiger, he must _first feel_ the savage, cruel,
feline character of the beast, and only under such influence should
he apply the brush. If he paint a storm he must at the moment
_realize_ passing over him the very tornado which tears up trees
from their roots and houses from their foundations. Should he
depict the seacoast with its cliffs and moving waters, at the
moment of putting the wave-bound rocks into the picture he must
_feel_ that they are being placed there to resist the fiercest
movement of the ocean, while to the waves in turn he must give an
irresistible power to carry all before them. Thus, by this
sentiment called living movement (_sei do_), _reality_ is imparted
to the inanimate object. This is one of the marvelous secrets of
Japanese painting handed down from the great Chinese painters and
based on psychological principles--_matter responsive to mind_.[62]
* * * * *
In the light of the foregoing, one begins to understand why Winslow
Homer painted such wonderful realizations of the sea and rocky
coasts--he _lived_ removed from men, his most intimate friends the rocks
and waves.
One also begins to understand how painters who show great strength and
promise in their earlier works, based upon surroundings they know, lose
both strength and promise when, flushed by prosperity or attracted by
tinsel and glitter, they establish their studios in cities and still try
to paint the sea or the country.
* * * * *
Japanese artists are not bound down to the literal presentation of
things seen. They have a canon, called _esoragoto_, which literally
means an invented picture, or a picture into which certain fictions
are painted.
Every painting to be effective must be _esoragoto_; that is there
must enter therein certain artistic liberties. It should aim not so
much to reproduce the exact thing as its sentiment, called _kokoro
mochi_, which is the moving spirit of the scene; it must not be a
facsimile.
* * * * *
It is related that Okubo Shibutsu, famous for painting bamboo, was
requested to execute a kakemono representing a bamboo forest.
Consenting, he painted with all his well-known skill a picture in
which the entire bamboo grove was in red. The patron upon its
receipt marveled at the extraordinary skill with which the painting
had been executed, and, repairing to the artist’s residence, he
said:
“Master, I have come to thank you for the picture; but, excuse me,
you have painted the bamboo red.”
“Well,” cried the master, “in what color would you desire it?”
“In black, of course,” replied the patron.
“And who,” answered the artist, “ever saw a black-leaved bamboo?”
This story well illustrates _esoragoto_. The Japanese are so
accustomed to associate true color with what the _sumi_ [the black
so commonly used in Japan] stands for, that not only is fiction in
this respect permissible but actually missed when not employed.
* * * * *
_Esoragoto_ is a very good word for the Post-Impressionists to
appropriate. We have no word in English and I know of none in French
that is anywhere near its equivalent.
Impressionism is painting with a minimum of _esoragoto_;
Post-Impressionism is painting with a maximum of _esoragoto_.
The pendulum in art and literature swings from less _esoragoto_ to
more--from realistic transcription with a minimum of self, to idealistic
compositions with a _maximum_ of self.
* * * * *
All the great art of the world is _esoragoto_.
The greatest paintings in the world are indoor not outdoor
paintings--_in-self_ not _out-self_.
All the great Italian paintings and frescoes are creations of the
imagination. The portraits of Velasquez, Rembrandt, Hals are
_esoragoto_. They are the sitters idealized by the genius of the
artists. They are far removed from photographic realism.
Why are the portraits of the same man or woman painted by different
artists so unlike? Because each is more or less _esoragoto_--more or
less the reflection of the painter rather than the sitter.
* * * * *
For a long time we have been so influenced by the theories of the
Impressionists, the realists, the _plein-air_ school, that we resent it
when an artist says, “I will paint something more beautiful than nature;
I will paint nature herself more beautiful than she is. I will paint the
spirit of nature. I will paint trees that do not look like trees, but
will give you the feeling, the dignity, the power of trees. I will paint
the earth, not as it looks, but in a way that will give you an
impression of its fertility and fecundity. I will paint you flowers, not
by faithfully copying them as they are in the field, but as they bloom
and blossom in your memory. I will paint you men and women, not as you
see them on the street and in the drawing room--superficial
resemblances--but as they really are to you and to me, human beings the
true significance of which is not expressed in the drooping of a
moustache, the lifting of an eyebrow. I will paint them in black or
brown or red or blue, or in gold or bronze, as does the sculptor; I will
paint them in a way so strange you have never seen the like before, but
I will make you _feel_ their _humanity_.”
* * * * *
To illustrate the arbitrary manner which the great oriental artists use
colors to produce harmonious results irrespective of nature, I once used
a number of old Chinese paintings borrowed from a famous collection--in
each of which the hair of the figures was painted _blue_.
And why not? Black, brown, or flaxen would not have given the effect the
painter desired, any more than C, D, or E would take the place of F in a
chord.
The Oriental needs a note of blue and so paints the hair blue. And when
one comes to think of it, next to some marvelous shades of red, blue
hair is far more positive and picturesque than gray, or yellow, or any
black but a glossy raven.
We never think of resenting a terra cotta horse in a print by Hokusai;
it does not disturb us because we instinctively recognize the fact that
a strong note of terra cotta is needed precisely where it is used--a
terra cotta horse, or rock, or man, it matters not.
* * * * *
Human faces of gold, silver, bronze, even marble--that ugliest of all
stones, in its natural state--do not worry us.
In fact when we look at marble sculpture we are in the attitude of the
man who ordered the painting of the bamboo forest. We are so accustomed
to seeing ghostly white marble busts and statues we actually resent it
if the sculptor _stains_ or _colors_ the marble not to make it more
realistic, but to make it _more beautiful_.
Yet all Greek sculpture was painted or treated with wax in such a manner
the harshness of the stone was modified. The sensitive vision of the
Greeks could not tolerate the cold, hard whiteness.
Much of our enjoyment of ancient sculpture is due to its discoloration,
to what time and the elements have done to its surfaces.
* * * * *
Our appreciation of art will never be true until we can gaze with
unprejudiced eye upon any combination of lines and colors the artist
chooses to use.
So long as we demand that he shall use only those combinations we are
accustomed to, just so long do _we_ by _our_ attitude check his
development.
The average man is bewildered by the new and the strange; he is
bewildered by new cities, new countries, new peoples, new pictures, new
sculpture, new architecture, new music, new books, new ideas--because he
is not used to them and does not understand them; he does not know
whether to like them or not so he condemns them in order to make a
pretense of knowing.
* * * * *
The rare man is not bewildered by the new and the strange at home or
abroad, in art or life. He is interested and at once sets about learning
and comprehending. He _loves_ the new and the strange _instinctively_
because they excite his curiosity and pique his intelligence. He loves
to meet the new and the strange as an archeologist loves to find an
inscription in an unknown tongue--for the hidden significance.
* * * * *
This chapter may be concluded appropriately by four warnings which
Chinese wisdom pours into the ears of art students. Many of the modern
painters should ponder these precepts.
“Ja, Kan, Zoku, Rai.”
“_Ja_ refers to attempted originality in a painting without the ability
to give it character, departing from all law to produce something not
reducible to any law or principle.
“_Kan_ is producing only superficial pleasing effect without any _power_
in the brush stroke--a characterless painting, to charm only the
ignorant.
“_Zoku_ refers to the fault of painting from a mercenary motive
only--thinking of money instead of art.
“_Rai_ is the base imitation of or copying or cribbing from others.”
X
UGLINESS
The modern movement is in the direction of greater freedom, freedom to
produce beautiful things in one’s own way.
_Unhappily many of the things produced are not beautiful now_--not
nearly so dignified and beautiful as thousands upon thousands of old
pictures.
One’s _first_ impression on entering an exhibition of extreme modern
works is not an impression of beauty but of _ugliness_.
There is no denying that, and it takes even the most impartial and
sympathetic observer a long time to pick out the things which are fine
in color and line and to readjust his notions of beauty.
Many of the pictures are brutal and most of them are crude, but while
the first impression may be one of ugliness it is more, it is one of
_exceeding vitality_.
There is nothing musty about the moderns, their canvases are so alive
_they scream_.
As compared with the subdued tones of an academic exhibition a modern
seems like a babel of discordant sounds, but the confusion is more
apparent than real. By going day after day one gets accustomed to the
newness, the freshness, the strangeness of it all and begins to
understand and appreciate the one big, dominant note--_vitality_.
* * * * *
Then, too, when we say the _first_--and last for most people--impression
is one of ugliness, we must not forget
[Illustration:
DERAIN
Forest at Martigues
]
that our appreciations are primarily the result of environment and
habit, and only secondarily, and with comparatively few, the result of
intelligent discipline.
We like what we are accustomed to and dislike what we are not accustomed
to. Few take the pains to discipline their likes and dislikes.
* * * * *
Seventy years ago public and critics thought Turner ugly in the extreme.
Sixty years ago public and critics thought Millet ugly in the extreme.
Fifty years ago public and critics thought Manet ugly in the extreme.
Forty years ago public and critics thought Monet ugly in the extreme.
Thirty years ago public and critics thought Cézanne ugly in the extreme.
Twenty years ago public and critics thought Gauguin ugly in the extreme.
Ten years ago public and critics thought VanGogh ugly in the extreme.
Today public and critics think the Cubists and nearly all the new men
ugly in the extreme.
Each decade has its men in art, music, science, literature whose works
at first seem ugly, only to win out in the long run.
Hence the danger in pronouncing this or that painting ugly; it may seem
grotesque and hideous today; thirty years hence it may command thousands
from men and museums eager to possess it. That has been the history of
many great paintings.
* * * * *
Still we do have our notions regarding the ugly and the beautiful, and
while our notions change and develop year by year they naturally control
at each given moment; that is, we cannot say we _think_ a picture or a
piece of music is beautiful today because the chances are we will think
it beautiful a dozen years hence, any more than we can say we like
olives on first tasting them, simply because most people come to like
them after a time.
To the London public in 1840 the pictures of Turner were absurd.
To the Paris public in 1874 the pictures of the Impressionists were
ridiculous.
To the New York public in 1913 the pictures of the Cubists were
grotesque.
These several publics were not to blame; they could not help their
impressions. They had been brought up on very different picture-food and
did not like the taste of the new.
The attitude of the public was normal, logical, and sane. If the people
had received the new men with wild acclamations of joy and called them
great on first sight it would have meant such instability of opinion and
character as to render the homage absolutely worthless.
In a sense, tenacity of opinion on the part of the public is the
salvation of art as well as of morals; it is essential to substantial
progress.
Therefore the everlasting conflict between the old and the new is a
normal conflict; the clash between the public and new art, new music,
new thought is a healthful clash, because the fiercer the conflict the
more certain that what survives will be worth having.
* * * * *
The only excuse for an ugly picture is superb technic--and even then the
excuse is not a very good one for the same technic should paint a
beautiful thing.
There were plenty of ugly pictures in the exhibition; some were
interesting on account of their technic, others were without any excuse
at all--_just ugly_.
A great painter may paint things, a great writer may write things which
no amount of good painting and no amount of good writing can
excuse--there are plenty of such paintings and books in the world.
But because there were a number of ugly--ugly to the extent of being
objectionable--pictures in the exhibition, that should not and does not
detract from the merits of men who did not paint them.
An ugly work is a comment upon him who produces it and upon those who
accept it. It is a golden opportunity, a touchstone to those who reject
it.
* * * * *
There is a great deal of the ugly in the work of Matisse, mixed with a
great deal of extraordinary technic. He is a good man to study, but a
bad man to imitate--for that matter, the same, in a profounder sense,
may be said of every man of ability.
Then, too, it should never be forgotten that _refinement_ is an
essential element in all _great_ art.
* * * * *
The supreme justification of the new art is that its works shall tend
toward the beautiful. If they make for ugliness their existence is
without rhyme or reason. Many of the new men seem to forget this.
However, even the ugly, the grotesque, the hideous has its use. Any art
may become so smug, so complacent, so conceited that it requires the
shock of the ugly to stir it to new life.
After Bouguereau, Matisse was inevitable.
However, a very little of the ugly goes a long ways, a very little of
Matisse at his worst is all that is needed as an antidote to Bouguereau.
Zola-like fidelity in depicting the ugly in life has its uses--and
abuses.
* * * * *
It is easy enough to paint a conglomeration of angles and cubes, but it
will be as hollow and meaningless as the pattern of an oilcloth unless
it has sincerity behind it.
No doubt many of the new men lack sincerity. Doubtless not a few are
inspired with simply the desire to create a sensation, but these men
soon betray themselves.
The artist may not succeed in making _his_ meaning clear, but the
public--yes, even the much despised public--will instinctively _feel_
whether there is _some_ meaning, _some_ intention worth finding out.
That was the secret of the success of the Cubist pictures. They
attracted throngs because they were strange, but the throngs would never
have gazed as they did unless behind the outward strangeness there had
not been an inward seriousness of purpose.
“Those fellows are trying to do something,” was an expression often
heard.
* * * * *
The papers would say, “They are simply making fun of the public,” but
the public, generally speaking, did not feel that way.
A goodly section of the public made fun of the pictures, but very few
people honestly felt the pictures made fun of the public--if anything
they were rather too serious.
* * * * *
To return to the proposition that a Cubist picture--being so largely
_esoragoto_--must be well painted.
[Illustration: JAWLENSKY
Head of a Girl]
The painter of scenes and things is helped out by his subject.
The portrait of a beautiful woman may be very badly painted, but if it
conveys the impression of a beautiful woman it is accepted.
The Cubist who tries to paint _his_ impression of a beautiful woman has
no likeness to help him out; he must make his painting so beautiful in
itself that those who see it will, without knowing why, get some of the
enjoyment from the mere composition of line and color that the artist
received from knowing the woman who inspired the picture.
To do this a man must be a greater master of line and color, a greater
technician, than the average portrait painter.
* * * * *
Ask the average portrait painter to paint a composition of line and
color, beautiful in itself without reference to any object, and not one
in a hundred can do it.
The average portrait painter finds his compositions of line and color
ready-made; he takes them as they come to him. He has little practice in
_composing_ for himself.
* * * * *
However disconcerting the exhibition was to most painters it should have
been stimulating to decorators and interior furnishers.
The older pictures are of little help to the decorator. On the contrary
he rather dreads their presence on his walls. A room may be quite upset
by a strong picture. To make the Leyland dining room harmonize with the
“Princess from the Land of Porcelain” Whistler painted practically every
inch of walls and ceilings, completely covering costly woodwork and old
Spanish leather.
To rightly hold a Rembrandt a room must be subdued and rich in tone,
otherwise the picture is a dead weight. The greater the picture, the
more completely the surroundings must either rise to it or be completely
subordinated to it.
It is not so with the more abstract Cubist pictures; they do not thrust
a great landscape or a powerful personality into the room; they are not
intended to thrust any object upon the attention of the visitor.
Intended to express simply the mood or emotion of the painter, they are
unobtrusive, as unobtrusive as a pattern of the wall covering, a rug, or
a tapestry; in effect they are not unlike a tapestry, save they are
essentially modern in feeling, and therefore fit into our modern rooms
as tapestries--and often rugs--do not.
* * * * *
Imagine the editorial room of a live, up-to-date newspaper--say a
typical yellow journal--hung with Titians and Rembrandts! The paper
would be paralyzed, the editorial staff would be depressed by the
dignity and the sobriety, by the old-world flavor.
Whereas a lot of Cubist, Futurist, Orphist pictures would be quite in
keeping with modern journalistic methods, and stimulating in the
extreme. In the picturesque language of current journalism, they would
be “live stuff.”
* * * * *
It is worth noting in passing that the time is probably coming when
about as many pictures will be bought for offices as for homes, and
fewer and fewer will be bought for those graveyards of art--private
galleries.
Why should men buy pictures and hang them where they are seldom seen,
often in places where the light is so bad they cannot be seen?
Where do most men spend most of their time? In their places of business.
Then why not make their places of business attractive and livable?
Every man knows how relaxing and delightful it would be if in the midst
of a busy afternoon he could drop business for a moment and read an
interesting book or listen to some good music. Well, we can’t do that;
it takes too long to get into a book, and music is not at hand.
But we can turn from our desks and in a second lose ourselves in the
contemplation of a beautiful picture.
* * * * *
The physician covers the walls of his office with prints of such
pictures as Rembrandt’s “Lesson in Anatomy.” Ugh!
The lawyer covers the walls of his office with dusty lawbooks. Whew!
The manufacturer covers the walls of his office with prints of
factories, machinery, goods, etc., etc. Shop! Shop! Shop!
No relief anywhere for man, patient, client, or customer.
Tired eyes that seek rest in change are met with the same old
story--reflections of the daily grind.
Speaking from experience, I can say that next to getting out of an
office for a brief respite, the contemplation of pictures yields the
greatest rest, actually enabling one to do more work per day with less
fatigue.
It is so refreshing to get up from one’s desk for only a few moments and
be instantly transported far away on the wings of the imagination of a
painter.
It is a rest, a complete rest, for the tired brain-cells, to lift one’s
eyes from one’s work and gaze at a picture--the effect is like unto that
of distant music wafted through the open window.
Of all men in the world, the busy American is most in need of pictures
on the walls of his office--not one or two, but many. The busier he is,
the more he needs; his walls should be a blaze of color.
* * * * *
Most of our bankers and corporation magnates spend large sums in “solid
mahogany fittings.” Their offices resemble old-fashioned Pullman
sleepers. Cost is the one impressive feature. Woodwork, furniture, rugs,
everything to the inkstand are massive and--oppressive. Everything is
admirably calculated to make work more burdensome; commercial and
financial life more sombre.
Why not the reverse of all this? Why fit up an office so that it is
about as inviting as a tomb?
Why not make it so attractive that a man will look forward each morning
to entering it? Why not so inviting that friends and strangers will be
glad to visit it?
Why should an office be a place where no one goes except for business?
Why should not men say to one another, “Come in a minute; I have a new
picture I want to show you”?
* * * * *
One has simply to enter the offices and school-rooms of any art
institute to realize the hollowness of the pretense of love for the
beautiful. Infinite pains are taken to arrange the pictures and
sculpture in the galleries; once out of the galleries, and all feeling
of art disappears; the offices and school-rooms are more sordid, barren,
and uninviting than most shops and factories.
In other words, the very men who are supposed to be devoting their lives
to the service of art, to making the world more beautiful, who promote
exhibitions and urge people to buy pictures, are content to pass all
their working lives amidst surroundings unrelieved by a single picture,
unadorned by a single fresco.
There is a great opportunity for missionary work in this direction. Why
should not the many organizations such as “Friends of American Art,”
etc., whose disinterested purpose is to advance art, organize a movement
the object of which will be to place, by loaning if necessary, pictures
and small sculpture in the offices and business haunts of the busy
American man, and so create a new demand for beautiful things?
Once fill a man’s office with pictures, he will be reluctant to let them
go.
XI
FUTURISM
There were no Futurist pictures in the exhibition, but there were
several more or less influenced by Futurism, notably the “Nude
Descending the Stairs,” by Duchamp.
In many respects this was the least satisfactory of his pictures,
because it is neither good Cubism nor good Futurism.
It is easy to distinguish a figure drawn in more or less Cubist fashion,
at the right--the spectator’s right--of the confused mass of lines; it
is quite easy, if the balance of the picture be covered.
The confused mass is just so many overlapping figures coming down the
stairs. As a child exclaimed one day, “Why, I see them; there’s one on
every step.” The Cubist drawing did not bother the child.
* * * * *
A sympathetic writer says of the picture:
M. Duchamp says in effect something like this: “If you paint a girl
coming downstairs, on any one step you will not show her moving. If
you paint a girl on every step, like Burne-Jones with the ‘Golden
Stair’ you have a crowd and still no movement. But if you get the
forms down to simplest and most essential, just swaying shoulders
and hip and knee, bent head and springy sole--and then show them on
every step and between all the steps, passing and always passing
one into the next, you give the sense of movement, as with a run of
arpeggios on the harp or a cadenza on the violin. You and your
friends don’t feel the movement--too bad, my friends and I do.” And
pure movement is what, after all, here was sought.
Pure movement, it will hardly be questioned, these men can give.
[Illustration: BALLA
Dog and Person in Movement]
Picabia makes the lines in his “Dance at the Spring” leap and swing
and flicker like a fiddler’s bow. If he and others want, when they
choose, to abandon the last pretense of representation and convey
directly to you the way they feel mass and motion, as music conveys
inner experience always, who is to stop them?
* * * * *
Futurism had its beginning in Italy a few years ago. The first
exhibition in Paris was held in February, 1912. One of its fundamental
notions in painting is a certain theory regarding the painting of
motion. It is that in order rightly, scientifically, to indicate motion
on a canvas it is not sufficient to paint the figure of a man in an
attitude of walking, but a series of more or less clearly outlined
figures must be shown overlapping, a sort of cinematograph effect; very
much as every painter shows a blur of spokes to indicate a wheel
turning, if an individual is in motion there must be a blur of many
overlapping individuals. (See the half-tone of the girl with the dog.)
The theory is interesting, it is based on recognized optical conditions,
and no doubt the experiments will have their value. Some very
interesting results have been obtained in photography already.
* * * * *
The program of the Futurists is, however, far more ambitious than the
mere painting of motion effects. They have issued the following formal
“Manifestoes”:
1. “Manifesto of Futurism,” February, 1909; written by F. T.
Marinetti.[63]
2. “Manifesto of Futurist Painters,” April, 1910.
3. “Manifesto of Futurist Musicians,” May, 1911.
4. “Manifesto of the Futurist Woman,” March, 1912.
5. “Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture,” April, 1912.
6. “Manifesto of the Technic of Futurist Literature,” May, 1912.
Supplement to same, August, 1912.
And every few months new declarations of faith are issued in Milan,
each, if possible, more violent and extravagant than its forerunner.
If the public looked upon the Cubist pictures as “crazy,” what would it
think of these manifestoes if printed in English and scattered
broadcast?
The work of madmen!
So many madmen and visionaries have influenced the world by their
utterances that we must not turn a deaf ear.
* * * * *
The Futurists are the anarchists of the art and literary world.
The Cubists, Orphists, and other extreme moderns all _reason from_ the
past; the Futurists would _break with_ the past entirely--as if it were
possible!
All who do not agree with them are _Pass-ists_, and every form of art
and literature up to Futurism belongs to _Pass-ism_, and is therefore
condemned.
* * * * *
There is much in Futurism that is repellant, just as there is much in
Anarchism that is repellant.
When men push their opposition to established order to extremes, their
hatred of the traditional and conventional is such they indulge in wild
and foolish excesses; they even defy law and order and decency, and
require curbing.
* * * * *
The unprejudiced reader will find a great deal that is suggestive in
some of these Futurist declarations mixed with much that is
philosophically and ethically unsound.
Take, for instance, some of the propositions regarding the technic of
the literature of the future:
1. Use only the _infinite form_ of the verb, because only the infinite
mood gives the sense of the _continuity of life_.
2. Abolish the use of the _adjective_ so that the noun _standing alone_
may speak for itself with all its force. The adjective implies
modification, an arrest of judgment, meditation, and is, therefore,
opposed to the _human vision dynamic_, to the _force_ and _energetic
flow_ of human thought.
3. Abolish the _adverb_, which is a _superfluous refinement_, a
fastidious hampering of human expression.
4. New _punctuation_: Adjectives and adverbs and conjunctive phrases
being suppressed, punctuation goes with them naturally, in the varied
continuity of a living style which creates itself without the use of
absurd commas and periods. To accentuate certain movements and indicate
their directions, certain mathematical and unusual signs will be used.
5. Abolish the “I” from literature, that is to say, _psychology_;
replace the “I,” the ego, by the _matter_, the essence of which must be
appreciated by intuitions. Heretofore the matter, the real substance of
a book or a poem, has been obscured by the intervention of the ego of
the writer, by the persistent “I” of the author, who is too much
pre-occupied with himself and filled with prejudices and conceits in his
own supreme wisdom. In short, writers use the subjects of the works as
vehicles to exploit themselves.
(Here the Futurists certainly put their finger on one of the weak spots
in literature.)
6. Revolution in _typographical_ appearance: Suppress the ornaments,
fancy initials, &c., &c., of the presented printed page, which impede
rather than assist the natural flow of expression. “We will employ on
the same page three or four inks of different colors, and twenty
different characters, if necessary: for example, italics to express
rapid sensations; capitals for violent; &c., &c. New conception of the
_graphic_ printed page.”
* * * * *
All of which sounds wildly extravagant, but in sum and substance it
simply means the death of the, let us say, Henry James style and the
apotheosis of the front page of the modern sensational journal.
And is it not true that the painfully involved and boresome style of
Henry James--the adjectival and adverbial style, the style of endless
qualifications, the assertion and amplification of the “ego” style--is
rapidly becoming obsolete in fiction as it has long been obsolete in
American journalism?
And is it not true that the _terse_, the _substantive_, the
_journalistic_ style, together with the printed page in many colors and
many types, is gaining vogue?
In even the matter of punctuation the painstaking use of the comma and
the semicolon has yielded to the free use of the dash. Only a short time
ago there appeared a lamentation by a well-known writer over the use of
the dash in dialogue. He counted an unbelievable number on one page of a
popular magazine, each of which, he thought, should have been replaced
by one of the more orthodox signs.
But the orthodox signs are _too slow_. Modern conversation does not move
in studied phrases and rounded periods; its sign is the _dash_, because
the dash either breaks the thought abruptly or carries it over into the
words of the next speaker.
* * * * *
Furthermore, before leaving the subject, it should be
[Illustration: VAN REES
Maternity]
noted that there is coming over our literature a profound, a radical
change, _a change in the direction of terser, more forcible expression_;
a change in the _direction of the elimination of superfluous words_, of
_condensation_, to the end that the imagination and intelligence of the
_reader_ will be called more and more into play.
It is conceivable that the reading public may become so _intelligent_
and so keenly _sensitive_ that _one word_ will suffice to convey a
wealth of information or suggestion where _a page_ is now necessary.
Certain it is, if mankind is progressing at all, it is progressing in
_that direction_.
* * * * *
The _rise_ of the _printed_ drama means the _fall_ of the _descriptive_
novel.
A few years ago no American publisher would risk the printing of a play;
now every play of any merit and many of no merit are issued in book
form.
The novelist devotes two-thirds of his book to descriptions of persons
and places, and most of the remaining third to banal psychological
analysis and comment. He leaves little to the imagination of the reader,
who is told the color of the heroine’s eyes and hair, the number of her
dimples, the length of her smile, the shape of her teeth, her make of
face powder, together with endless references to her hats, gowns, shoes,
parasols, etc., etc.
Usually the novelist has some young woman acquaintance in mind, and he
_literally forces_ the woman he likes upon the reader, who may be in
love with an entirely different type, and who, if left to himself, would
find the girl he likes in the pages of the story.
The dramatist does nothing of the kind. “Mary Smith, age about twenty,”
suffices for him. Shakespeare gives no more than the name.
As for description of places, “a room,” or “an office,” “a wood,” “a
garden,” answers every purpose.
Managers and players have no trouble in building up both scenes and
characters; the less “directions,” the more room for individual
initiative.
Nor is the reader of a play troubled by entire absence of description
and “directions.” His imagination supplements the dramatist’s, and he
creates heroes and heroines to please himself.
That psychological _analysis_ is not only not essential to the
psychological novel, but positively detrimental, is demonstrated by the
entire absence of such analysis in so profound a psychological study as
Hamlet. Paul Bourget is as obsolete as Henry James.
* * * * *
Bernard Shaw is the one conspicuous reactionary. He still exploits the
ego, and writes as if his readers were fools--perhaps they are.
* * * * *
The popularity of the cinematograph lies not in the cheapness of the
entertainment, nor in its _novelty_, which wore off long ago, but in the
fact that it is _without words_ and each onlooker enjoys his own
interpretation; from child to old man, every one in the audience is _his
own playwright_, supplying his own dialogue as the scenes flicker on the
curtain.
The best of modern plays leave much to the imagination of the audience.
Words and bits of business absolutely necessary thirty years ago are
considered childishly obvious nowadays, as is amply demonstrated in
revivals of old plays.
Apparently the development is toward more action and less dialogue--more
cinematograph, fewer words.
Scenery will become less and less obvious--save, of course, where it is
intended to be of first importance. In the theater of the future there
will be less and less on the stage to interfere with the _play--of the
spectator’s_ imagination.
* * * * *
There is a precisely parallel tendency in print--more action, fewer
words; more suggestion, less description.
The future novel will leave more and more to be supplied by the reader.
Paragraphs, pages, whole chapters now deemed essential, will be omitted.
In books such as histories, philosophical works, scientific treatises,
&c., &c., the skill and art of the printer will be exhausted to make the
page not only attractive but expressive--_readable at a glance_, instead
of, as now, to make the volumes as forbidding as possible.
The much-despised “yellow journal” of America has taught a valuable
lesson in the _art of emphasis_, and its effect is seen not only in the
make-up of newspapers but of periodicals, and will be felt in the
make-up of books.[64]
* * * * *
In America the art of advertising has far outstripped the art of
literature. The advertising pages of our periodicals are often more
interesting and _always_ more _alive_ than the literary.
A magazine devotes pages to an article or a story every line of which
betrays the writer’s evident desire to write as _many words_ as
possible. In the advertising pages, to every square inch, the minds not
of one but of three or four experts have been concentrated upon the
attempt to express an idea in as _few words_ as possible and in such a
manner it will stand out and be read with a minimum of trouble.
Why should not stories be told that way? Why should not all literature
be written and printed that way?
The proposition may seem a startling one, but the _tendency is_ that
way.
We find fault with our plays, our poetry, our fiction, our serious
literature; we complain people prefer the _flashy_ periodical; well the
word _flashy_ is doubly descriptive--it is commonly used to describe the
_quality_ but it also measures _time_.
* * * * *
Meanwhile most of us underrate the intelligence of our readers and use
more words than are necessary to carry our meanings.
The Futurists themselves use an abundance of words in advocating their
cause, though their examples of Futurist literature contain many lines
and pages that are written in strict accordance with their theories.
Marinette says in so many words, “Philosophy, science, politics,
journalism, must still make use of the conventional syntax and
punctuation; I am myself obliged to use them to explain my ideas.”
* * * * *
March 8, 1910, in the Theatre Chiarella, at Turin, before an audience of
three thousand, the Futurist painters launched their first declaration
of faith, “which contained,” to follow their own words, “all our
profound disgusts and hatreds, our revolts against vulgarity, against
academic and pedantic mediocrity, against the fanatic cult of what is
antique.”
[Illustration: MUNTER
The Boat Ride]
[Illustration: MUNTER
The White Wall]
1. Our desire for the truth no longer contents itself with form and
color as heretofore understood.
2. What we wish to reproduce on the canvas is not an instant or a
moment of immobility of the universal force that surrounds us, but
_the sensation of that force itself_.
3. As a matter of fact everything moves, everything runs,
everything transforms rapidly. A profile is never immobile before
us, but it appears and disappears without ceasing.
Given the fact of the momentary persistence of the image on the
retina, objects in movement multiply, change form and follow like
vibrations in space. A running horse has not four legs, but twenty,
and their movements are triangular.
4. Nothing is absolute in painting. That which was a truth for the
painters of yesterday, is a lie for those of today. We declare, for
example, that a portrait should not resemble its sitter, and that
the painter carries in his own imagination the landscape he wishes
to place upon the canvas.
[On this point the Futurists and Cubists agree.]
5. To paint the human figure it is not necessary to paint the
_figure_ but simply to give its _envelopment_. Space does not
exist. Millions of miles separate us from the sun, yet that is no
reason why the house before us should not be encased in the solar
disk. In our work we can secure effects similar to those of the
X-ray. Opacity does not exist.
They paint all sides of an object as if they saw through it. They
will paint a platter on a table and the part of the table covered
by the platter; they will paint the entire collar about the neck so
that it is visible through the neck. They ignore not only the
ordinary conceptions of space, but time does not exist for them.
Where in ordinary painting the box of bonbons that is passed at a
baptism may be painted closed on a table, the Futurist shows what
is inside the box, also the people assembled to whom the bonbons
are given, and the infant to be baptized, and perhaps the marriage
of the father and mother, the carriages outside the church, etc.,
etc.[65]
They illustrate further,
The sixteen persons about us in a moving omnibus are _in turn_ and
_at the same time_, one, ten, four, three; they are immobile and
yet move; they go, come, bounding along the street, suddenly lost
in the sun, then return seated before you, like _so many symbols
persistent of universal vibration_.
How often it happens that upon the cheek of the person with whom we
are talking we see the horse that passes far away at the end of the
street. Our bodies become parts of the seat upon which we rest and
the seat becomes part of us. The omnibus merges in the houses that
it passes, and the houses mix with the bus and become part of it.
6. The construction of pictures up to this time has been stupidly
traditional.
Painters have always shown things and persons _before_ us. We place
the spectator _in the midst_ of the picture.
Heretofore we have looked at pictures; it is the idea of the
Futurist that we should look _through_ them, that the pictures
should give us _new visions_ of life and things, new sensations,
new emotions.
We declare:
That one should hate every form of imitation and glorify every form
of originality.
That it is necessary to revolt against the tyranny of the words
“harmony” and “good taste,” expressions too elastic and with which
one might easily condemn the works of Rembrandt, Goya, and Rodin.
That art critics are useless and detrimental.
That it is necessary to brush aside all the subjects already used,
in order to adequately express our turbulent life of steel, of
pride, of feverish rapidity.
That the name madmen applied to all innovators shall be considered
a title of honor.
That the universal force must be shown in painting as a _sensation
dynamic_.
Above all, sincerity and purity are required in the portrayal of
nature.
That movement and light destroy the materiality of objects.
We are opposed to the use of those bituminous colors by which it is
attempted to secure the effect of time on modern pictures.
We are opposed to the superficial and elementary archaism based on
the flat tints and linear manner of the Egyptians, which makes
painting puerile and grotesque.
We are opposed to the false modernism of the Secessionists and
Independents who have built up new “schools” as pontifical as the
old.
The nude in painting is as nauseous as adultery in literature.
To explain this last article: There is nothing immoral in our eyes,
it is the monotony of nudity that we fight against. Painters
possessed of the desire to display on canvas the bodies of the
women with whom they are in love have transformed picture
exhibitions into galleries of portraits of disreputables. We
demand for the next ten years the absolute suppression of the nude
in painting.
* * * * *
The first exhibition of Futurist paintings in London was at the
Sackville Gallery in March, 1912.
The painters printed by way of preface to the little catalogue a
statement of their beliefs and aims. From this statement the following
paragraphs are taken:
“We are young and our art is violently revolutionary.”
Speaking of the Cubists and Post-Impressionists generally:
“While we admire the heroism of these painters of great worth, who have
displayed a laudable contempt for artistic commercialism and a powerful
hatred of academism, we feel ourselves and we declare ourselves to be
absolutely opposed to their art.
“They obstinately continue to paint objects motionless, frozen, and all
the static aspects of nature; they worship the traditionalism of
Poussin, of Ingres, of Corot, ageing and petrifying their art with an
obstinate attachment to the past, which to our eyes remains totally
incomprehensible.
“We, on the contrary, with points of view pertaining essentially to the
future, seek for a style of motion, a thing which has never been
attempted before us.
“All the truths learnt in the schools or in the studios are abolished
for us. Our hands are free enough and pure enough to start everything
afresh.
“It is indisputable that several of the aesthetic declarations of our
French comrades display a sort of masked academism.
“Is it not, indeed, a return to the Academy to declare that the subject,
in painting, is of perfectly insignificant value?
“We declare, on the contrary, that there can be no modern painting
without the starting point of an absolutely modern sensation, and none
can contradict us when we state that _painting_ and _sensation_ are two
inseparable words.
“If our pictures are futurist, it is because they are the result of
absolutely futurist conceptions, ethical, aesthetic, political, and
social.
“To paint from the posing model is an absurdity, and an act of mental
cowardice, even if the model be translated upon the picture in linear,
spherical, or cubic forms.
“To lend an allegorical significance to an ordinary nude figure,
deriving the meaning of the picture from the objects held by the model
or from those which are arranged about him, is to our mind the evidence
of a traditional and academic mentality.
“While we repudiate impressionism, we emphatically condemn the present
reaction which, in order to kill impressionism, brings back painting to
old academic forms.
“It is only possible to react against impressionism by surpassing it.
“Nothing is more absurd than to fight it by adopting the pictural laws
which preceded it.
“The points of contact which the quest of style may have with the
so-called _classic art_ do not concern us.
“Others will seek, and will, no doubt, discover, these analogies which
in any case cannot be looked upon as a return to methods, conceptions,
and values transmitted by classical painting.
“A few examples will illustrate our theory.
“We see no difference between one of those nude figures commonly called
_artistic_ and an anatomical plate. There is, on the other hand, an
enormous difference between one of these nude figures and our futurist
conception of the human body.
“Perspective, such as it is understood by the majority of painters, has
for us the very same value which it lends to an engineer’s design.
“The simultaneousness of states of mind in the work of art: that is the
intoxicating aim of our art.
“Let us explain again by examples. In painting a person on a balcony,
seen from inside the room, we do not limit the scene to what the square
frame of the window renders visible; but we try to render the sum total
of visual sensations which the person on the balcony has experienced;
the sun-bathed throng in the street, the double row of houses which
stretch to right and left, the beflowered balconies, etc. This implies
the simultaneousness of the ambient, and, therefore, the dislocation and
dismemberment of objects, the scattering and fusion of details, freed
from accepted logic, and independent from one another.
“In order to make the spectator live in the center of the picture, as we
express it in our manifesto, the picture must be the synthesis of _what
one remembers_ and of _what one sees_.
“You must render the invisible which stirs and lives beyond intervening
obstacles, what we have on the right, on the left, and behind us, and
not merely the small square of life artificially compressed, as it were,
by the wings of a stage.”
[This feeling of transparency is fundamental to the theory.]
“We have declared in our manifesto that what must be rendered is the
_dynamic sensation_, that is to say, the particular rhythm of each
object, its inclination, its movement, or, to put it more exactly, its
interior force.
“It is usual to consider the human being in its different aspects of
motion or stillness, of joyous excitement or grave melancholy.
“What is overlooked is that all inanimate objects display, by their
lines, calmness or frenzy, sadness or gaiety. These various tendencies
lend to the lines of which they are formed a sense and character of
weighty stability or of aerial lightness.
“Every object reveals by its lines how it would resolve itself were it
to follow the tendencies of its forces.
“This decomposition is not governed by fixed laws but it varies
according to the characteristic personality of the object and the
emotions of the onlooker.
“Furthermore, every object influences its neighbour, not by reflections
of light (the foundation of _impressionistic primitivism_), but by a
real competition of lines and by real conflicts of planes, following the
emotional law which governs the picture (the foundation of _futurist
primitivism_).
“With the desire to intensify the aesthetic emotions by blending, so to
speak, the painted canvas with the soul of the spectator, we have
declared that the latter ‘_must_ in future be placed in the center of
the picture.’
“We may further explain our idea by a comparison drawn from the
evolution of music.
“Not only have we radically abandoned the motive fully developed
according to its determined and, therefore, artificial equilibrium, but
we suddenly and purposely intersect each motive with one or more other
motives of which we never give the full development but merely the
initial, central, or final notes.
“As you see, there is with us not merely variety, but chaos and clashing
of rhythms, totally opposed to one another, which we nevertheless
assemble into a new harmony.
“We thus arrive at what we call the _painting of states of mind_.
“One may remark, also, in our pictures spots, lines, zones of colour
which do not correspond to any reality, but which, in accordance with a
law of our interior mathematics, musically prepare and enhance the
emotion of the spectator.
“We thus create a sort of emotive ambience, seeking by intuition the
sympathies and the links which exist between
[Illustration: RUSSOLO Rebellion]
the exterior (concrete) scene and the interior (abstract) emotion. Those
lines, those spots, those zones of colour, apparently illogical and
meaningless, are the mysterious keys to our pictures.
“Conclusion: Our futurist painting embodies three new conceptions of
painting:
“1. That which solves the question of volumes in a picture, as opposed
to the liquefaction of objects favoured by the vision of the
impressionists.
“2. That which leads us to translate objects according to the _force
lines_ which distinguish them, and by which is obtained an absolutely
new power of objective poetry.
“3. That (the natural consequence of the other two) which would give the
emotional ambience of a picture, the synthesis of the various abstract
rhythms of every object, from which there springs a fount of pictural
lyricism hitherto unknown.”
* * * * *
The explanations of two pictures are as follows:
“Leave-taking,” by Boccioni: “In the midst of the confusion of
departure, the mingled concrete and abstract sensations are translated
into force lines and rhythms in quasi-musical harmony: mark the
undulating lines and the chords made up of the combinations of figures
and objects. The prominent elements, such as the number of the engine,
its profile shown in the upper part of the picture, its wind-cutting
forepart in the center, symbolical of parting, indicate the features of
the scene that remain indelibly impressed upon the mind.”
“Rebellion,” by Russolo: “The collision of two forces, that of the
revolutionary element made up of enthusiasm and red lyricism against the
force of inertia and reactionary resistance of tradition. The angles are
the vibratory waves of the former force in motion. The perspective of
the houses is destroyed just as a boxer is bent double by receiving a
blow in the wind.”
* * * * *
The theory of the Futurists is vividly illustrated in the following note
to a picture called “The Street Enters the House.” “The dominating
sensation is that which one would experience on opening a window: all
life, the noises of the street rush in at the same time as the movement
and reality of the objects outside. The painter does not limit himself
to what he sees in the square frame of the window as would a simple
photographer, but he also reproduces what he would see by looking out on
every side from the balcony.”
To the layman this attitude is almost incomprehensible. For instance,
the Cubist, Pierre Dumont, says of his picture, “The Cathedral at
Rouen”:
One must not expect to find in this picture an exact representation
of the cathedral at Rouen, but rather my idea, my personal
perception, of this cathedral as I see it.
In painting my picture I did not paint from a fixed point and
always from the same point, but I studied the cathedral and
surroundings from all points of view and obtained a personal
conception of it, which I reproduced on my canvas.
I only included the details which struck me most forcibly, and
thought it necessary to break up the monotony of the roofs in the
first plan by one of the most beautiful details of the cathedral--a
statue of a saint, who is certainly not in his right place as far
as the eye is concerned, but does really occupy the place which he
occupies in my conception of what was before me.
* * * * *
That a painter should deliberately attempt to show on one canvas
features of all sides of a building, strikes the layman--and many
artists--as a “crazy” attempt to achieve the impossible; but it is _not
impossible_, as a moment’s reflection shows.
It is, of course, easy to show all sides and all details of a building,
interior and exterior, on one sheet or canvas, by drawing or painting,
one after another, in panorama effect--that is done in every architect’s
drawing-room.
It is also equally possible to _superimpose_ these detached drawings one
over the other and _see_ or _feel_ the outlines _through_. That is, the
drawing or photograph of the exterior of a cathedral may be so made as
to show in outline or shadowy substance the altar within.
Illustrations along these lines are common in fiction--ghostly, shadowy,
mystical effects, effects secured only by treating stones and walls and
human beings as _semi-transparent_.
In this way every feature of a cathedral that strikes the artist,
whether on the outside or inside, whether a feature so permanent as a
statue or so fleeting as a wedding ceremony, may be indicated in his
picture. By suppressing every detail save the most striking, what
purports to be the picture of a cathedral may appear to be fragments of
spires, bronze doors, statues, altars, lights, processions, the
brilliant color of a priest’s robe, the white note of a bridal veil.
Another man painting his impressions of the same subject might catch
glimpses of entirely different features.
If we can _in our mind’s eye_ see what is behind an object; if, for
instance, we can picture to ourselves clearly the children playing in
the yard back of a house, why may not the painter, if he chooses,
suggest to us in his picture of the house the vital feature of the
children in the rear?
The feat is a seemingly impossible one. Perhaps neither the Cubists nor
the Futurists have accomplished it successfully; but because it is
difficult is no reason why the attempt should not be made.
_Theoretically_ there is nothing to be said against pictures which show
what both the _eye_ and the _mind’s eye_ of the artist see.
The works of the ultra-modern men can be understood only by the aid
of the imagination, by the aid of the _mind’s eye_ to see
_through_, and _about_ and _into_ things, to see the _inner_
conditions, happenings, and significance of things.
Stated in other terms, the extreme modern is no longer content to
paint what is before his eyes at a given moment and from a given
point of view; he is no longer content to act the part of a camera,
making reproductions of what is in front of it. He demands the
freedom to walk around his subject, fly over it, enter it, find out
all about it, and then record on canvas the sum and substance of
his observations _and_ reflections. The result may not look like a
cathedral, but if done by a genius it may give a fine impression of
certain salient features of the building, inside and out, and also
a vivid impression of some of its great ceremonies. Why not try to
paint the _power_ as well as the proportions?
* * * * *
If the American public found the work of Lehmbruck and Brancusi queer,
what would it think of the Futurist sculpture?
The two female figures exhibited by Lehmbruck were simply decorative
elongations of natural forms. In technic they were quite conventional.
Their modelling was along purely classical lines, far more severely
classical than much of the realistic work of Rodin.
The heads by Brancusi were idealistic in the extreme; the sculptor
carried his theories of mass and form so far he deliberately lost all
resemblance to actuality. He uses his subjects as motives rather than
models. In this respect he is not unlike--though more extreme than--the
great Japanese and Chinese artists, who use life and nature arbitrarily
to secure the results they desire.
I have a golden bronze head--a “Sleeping Muse,” by
[Illustration: SEGONZAC Pasturage]
Brancusi--so simple, so severe in its beauty, it might have come from
the Orient.
* * * * *
Of this head and two other pieces of sculpture exhibited by Brancusi in
July, 1913, at the Allied Artists’ Exhibition in London, Roger Fry said
in “The Nation,” August 2:
Constantin Brancusi’s sculptures have not, I think, been seen
before in England. His three heads are the most remarkable works of
sculpture at the Albert Hall. Two are in brass and one in stone.
They show a technical skill which is almost disquieting, a skill
which might lead him, in default of any overpowering imaginative
purpose, to become a brilliant _pasticheur_. But it seemed to me
there was evidence of passionate conviction; that the
simplification of forms was no mere exercise in plastic design, but
a real interpretation of the rhythm of life. These abstract vivid
forms into which he compresses his heads give a vivid presentment
of character; they are not empty abstractions, but filled with a
content which has been clearly, and passionately apprehended.
* * * * *
Futurist sculpture, like Futurist painting, starts with a fundamental
departure.
All sculpture, classic as well as Impressionistic and
Post-Impressionistic, deals with an object or a group of objects. It
models and reproduces them _detached_ from their environment.
Futurist sculpture seeks to reproduce a figure or an object _attached_
to and a _part of_ its fleeting and flowing surroundings, its
atmosphere, its _medium_.
It goes further; it seeks to convey not only the impression of the truth
that a figure is a part of its environment, but that its atmosphere and
environment _flows through_ the figure and the figure _through_ the
environment, that _nothing is segregated_ but everything _fusing_.
The philosophical thought is old, as old as the earliest Greek
philosophy, but the attempt to express the thought in stone, wood,
bronze, is new.
We may feel sure the attempt is futile, that it cannot succeed, but
our scepticism is no reason why a sculptor in his enthusiasm should
not make the attempt.
* * * * *
In June and July last a Futurist sculptor, Boccioni, exhibited some of
his work in Paris.
One example, “Head--Houses--Light,” was literally a conglomerate of a
human bust of heroic size, with hands crossed in front, and the
following accessories:
On the top of the head the fronts of several small houses, with doors,
windows, and all details just as the sculptor saw the houses _many
blocks back_ of his model. The casual observer would be completely
mystified on seeing several house fronts start out of the head of a
bust; but when one understands that it is a fundamental belief of the
Futurists that _all that is within the vision, actual or imagined, of
painter or sculptor is a part of the picture or bust_, the reason why of
the houses is plain.
From one shoulder of the figure starts about eighteen inches of a wooden
railing and iron grill work, part of a balcony, just as the sculptor
glimpsed it a block or so down the street.
A little to the back of the shoulder is a slightly inclined level
surface about a foot square; on this surface is the toy figure, an inch
high, of a woman in street costume. The figure was probably bought at a
toy store, just as the wooden railing and iron grill work might have
been picked up at any second-hand shop. The little figure of the woman
and the level surface represent some open square that--judging from the
diminutive size of the figure--must have been a long distance away, far
enough away for a human being to appear no taller than an inch.
The entire bust was crudely colored, and one side of the
[Illustration: BOCCIONI Head--Houses--Light]
face was modelled in downward flowing lines and painted yellow to
represent rays of strong sunlight.
The figure was ugly in the extreme; the lines were ugly, the coloring
ugly, the technic clumsy; but _as an illustration of a theory_ the work
was both curious and interesting.
* * * * *
In the creed of the Futurist are found the following:
1. Sculpture must give life to objects by making sensible _their
extension in space_, for no one today can deny that an object continues
to where another object begins, and that all things that are about
us--automobile, house, tree, street, etc., etc.--traverse our bodies,
dividing us into planes and sections, forming an arabesque of curved and
straight lines.
This traversing of each object by the planes occupied by all other
objects is called in the transcendental terminology of Futurism,
“_Compenetration of planes_.” (Here Futurist and Cubist again meet.)
2. A Futurist sculptural _composition_ will contain in itself the
marvellous mathematical and geometrical elements of modern objects.
These objects will not be placed close to the statue, like so many
_detached_ explanatory attributes or decorative elements, but according
to the laws of the new conception of harmony they will be _embodied_ in
the muscular lines of the body. For example, we may see the wheel of an
automobile starting out of the body of a chauffeur, the line of a table
traversing the head of a man who is reading, and the pages of his book
may project through his chest.
3. The abolition complete of the _line finished_ and the _statue
isolated_! Throw open the figure like a window and make part of it the
surroundings in which it exists. The sidewalk may extend to your table;
your head may traverse and include the street, and at the same moment
your lamp may unite house to house by its searching rays.
The entire world precipitates itself upon us, amalgamates with us,
creating a harmony that will not be controlled except by creative
intuition.
4. Do not be afraid to go outside one art and receive assistance from
others. There is no such thing as painting _alone_, sculpture _alone_,
music _alone_, poetry _alone_; there is simply _creation_.
Hence if a particular sculptural composition needs some special movement
to augment or contrast the rhythm of the ensemble, there is no reason
why one should not make use of a small motor to secure the effect.
5. It is necessary to get rid of the idea, purely literary and
traditional, that marble and bronze are the materials that must be used
in great sculpture. The sculptor may use twenty materials in one work if
required to express his idea. He may use glass, wood, cement, cardboard,
leather, cloth, mirrors, electric lights, etc.
6. It is only by choosing subjects absolutely modern that one can
discover new motives and ideas.
7. It is necessary to abandon the nude and the traditional conception of
the statue and the monument.
8. What the Futurist sculpture creates is, in a way, the _ideal bridge_
that unites the infinite plastic _exterior_ with the infinite plastic
_interior_. That is why the objects _never finish_, but they _intersect_
with endless combinations both sympathetic and averse. The feeling of
the spectator is at the _center_ of the work, not aloof and outside, as
with traditional sculpture.
* * * * *
All this sounds wildly extravagant, but not absolutely incoherent.
* * * * *
The obvious objection to the attempt of the Futurist sculptor to include
in his _composition_ an object _and_ its environment
[Illustration: HERBIN Still Life]
is found in his own proposition--_which is philosophically valid_--that
_the universe_ is the atmosphere, the environment of every object from a
grain of sand to a planet.
Hence the Futurist figure that shows a few houses, a bit of a railing, a
glimpse of a distant square, is more comprehensive than the conventional
bust to only an infinitesimal degree; only _almost infinitesimal
fractions_ of the _enveloping_ universe are shown.
The effect is fragmentary and confusing.
Other sculptors, conspicuously Rodin in some of his work, get the effect
of atmosphere and environment by detaching the figure or composition
_only partially_ from the block of marble or mass of bronze, leaving to
the _imagination of the observer_ the finishing of the work, the
supplying of both environment and atmosphere.
That would seem to be the finer, the purer, the more abstract way.
* * * * *
In fact, there is an obvious contradiction between the creed of the
Futurist sculptor and the Futurist writer.
The former feels impelled to show environment by encumbering his figure
with an overwhelming mass of details, houses, railings, sidewalks, petty
figures, etc., etc.--all the _qualifying_ objects that happen within his
vision, leaving nothing to the imagination of his observer; while the
Futurist writer would eliminate from literature all adjectival and
adverbial words and phrases, leaving the nouns (the simple figures of
sculpture) to stand alone.
* * * * *
Many things can be done in painting that cannot be done in sculpture. A
figure may be painted against a background of an entire city, or against
the heavens; or it may be painted in the midst of a battle, or a train
wreck; the flight of years can be indicated, centuries may be swept into
one canvas.
In sculpture this cannot be done save, in a measure, in such crude
mixtures of sculpture, relief, and painted scenes as those large
circular panoramas so popular twenty years ago, where the spectator
stood _in the center_--where the theory of the Futurist requires him to
be--and gazed from life-size figures and objects at his feet across
smaller and smaller, until reality imperceptibly joined the painted
canvas, which gave a sense of great distance--entire battle-fields.
The Futurist sculptor cannot give this sense of environment and
atmosphere by attaching diminutive houses and bits of balconies to the
bust of a man.
* * * * *
In reading their extravagant declarations and denunciations of the past
it must be remembered that extremes beget extremes, that enthusiasts
habitually indulge in extravagant arguments and theories for the purpose
of attracting attention and stimulating discussion.
In an address recently delivered in London, the leader of Futurism
warned his hearers not to accept too literally the startling
extravagances of some of the Futurist manifestoes and literature. He
stated frankly that many of the most violent propositions were uttered
for the purpose of arousing public attention to what they considered
very real evils in our modern life. For instance, when the Futurists
cry, “Down with all museums,” “Destroy all remains of antiquity,” they
do not mean that if they were given the power they would do these
things, but what they desire is to arouse Italy and the ancient world to
the fact that Italy has a position as a _modern_ nation. The Futurists
resent the attitude of the world toward Rome and Athens; they resent the
attitude of travelers who visit those two places solely to look at the
remains of the _ancient world_; they believe that Italy is just as much
a _modern nation_ as is America, and that Rome is just as much alive as
is New York, and they would have people come to Italy, not to see ruins,
but to see her factories and industries and places of business. When one
rightly considers the matter this is a very rational and patriotic
attitude, and it is the only attitude that is wholly consistent with the
development and progress of a nation as a _vital force_ in the world of
_today_.
Viewed in the light of the intense patriotism which is behind some of
these wildly extravagant denunciations of the past, they do not seem so
devoid of reason.
We in America have no past to oppress us; therefore it is difficult for
us to realize the feeling of a modern nation, or a modern city, which
the civilized world will not accept as modern, but insists upon viewing
as a museum of antiquities.
* * * * *
The address referred to also said:
“Futurism was first put forward by me for the purpose of renovating
and reawakening the Italian race to a true appreciation of the true
art in literature as well as in painting and sculpture. Precisely
because it has a splendid past, Italy is today in some sort
disinherited. The cult of the past is upheld among them by a whole
world of interested people, and the Futurist movement in its
creative effort is hampered not only by such economic hindrances
but by the mental cowardice of people.
“In art you must continually advance; those who stop are already
dead, or candidates for death. The Romanticism of artists like
Baudelaire and Wagner and Flaubert was inspired by two or three
principles which are worn out today. ‘Salambo’ was the type romance
of that old sensibility. In a certain sense such Romanticism is the
identification of the
idea of beauty with the idea of woman. We are at the end of that period.
“Woman as the center, the obsession has already gone out of poetry. As a
leit-motif she has no longer the same force; other problems have taken
her place. According to our view, poetry is nothing but a more intense,
a more exalted, life--and that is why we combat the constant intrusion
into it of the ‘domestic triangle’ in various forms, and which has been
its ruin.
“Now, Futurists are found everywhere. In England you have H. G. Wells.
We all realize the need to be more rapid, more intense, more essential,
and though our method of expression has been stigmatized as ‘telegraphic
lyricism’ I take no exception to that so long as it makes people talk
and brings them to examine our underlying rules of action.
“Art, either plastic or active, is not a religion. It is the best part
of our strength, of our physiological being. It is, in consequence,
absurd to consider it as a system, as something to worship with joined
hands; it should express all the intensity of life--its beauty,
greatness, its fire, its brutality, its sordidness.
“Futurism in poetry represents a realism profound, rapid, intense--the
very complex of our life of today.”
XII
VIRILE-IMPRESSIONISM
What is happening in America? Exactly what might be expected in a
_young_, _vigorous_, and _virile_ country.
America has been keenly susceptible to art influences from every
section. Her students are everywhere, her exhibitions are gathered from
the four quarters of the globe. She is very much alive to what Europe is
doing, she has long been interested in what China and Japan have done.
While her art is in the main conservative, it is not the conservatism of
stubbornness or stolidity, it is rather the conservatism of isolation;
but her isolation is a thing of the past. Communication is so frequent,
travel so easy, transportation so cheap, that both art and artists flow
hither and thither almost unrestricted.
In spite of this freedom of inter-communication, the development of
American art has been along independent lines--at least along _one_
independent line, a line so individual in its characteristics it
deserves the name _American_-Impressionism, or, more generically,
Virile-Impressionism.
By Virile-Impressionism is meant a manner of viewing nature and a mode
of painting quite different from the more superficial refinements of
Impressionism on the one hand and the extraordinary developments of
Post-Impressionism on the other.
Let us try to make this clear.
* * * * *
As already noted, Impressionism attained a logical end in the painting
of brilliant light effects, especially in the works of the
Neo-Impressionists, the pointillists.
In short, the drift of Impressionism in France was toward more and more
brilliant reflections of the _surfaces_ of things.
This extreme _attentuation_ was quite foreign to the spirit of America,
which is more _material_ and _practical_.
* * * * *
It may be our fault, it is certainly our virtue, that we are material
and practical in our outlook. In a big, sane sense we are _dreamers_.
Only dreamers could carry the Panama Canal to completion, and, to
mention lesser works, only dreamers could build such terminals as the
Pennsylvania and New York Central in New York, and such buildings as the
Woolworth and the Manhattan. But our dreams always take practical shape.
We are a nation of inventors _because_ we are a nation of dreamers.
Hence, while our artists were quick to respond to all that is good and
strong in Impressionism, they found little satisfaction in the
ultra-refinements of Neo-Impressionism.
The result was that when France pressed Impressionism to its extreme, a
normal and healthy reaction took place in American art.
Many of the strong painters of America began doing things of their own.
They still adhered closely to nature. They remained Impressionists
in the older significance of the term, but they painted not the
_surfaces_ of things but the _substance_--in short, they were
_Cézanne_-Impressionists as distinguished from _Monet_-Impressionists.
For instance, Winslow Homer was a great and true Impressionist, but he
had nothing in common with the Neo-Impressionists, and little in common
with Monet. He had, however, a great deal in common with Cézanne. His
pictures give one an impression of _nature herself_, of the power of the
sea, the adamant of the rocks, the significance of life, yet each one is
an accurate transcript of what he saw. He did
[Illustration:
SEGONZAC
Forest
]
not go into his studio and _create_ pictures out of his imagination; he
let his imagination play upon nature, but nature controlled all he did.
He was, in a sense, the greatest of _American_-Impressionists--he was a
Virile-Impressionist.
There are many Virile-Impressionists in Europe, but they are so many
individuals; here Virile-Impressionism is the result of racial,
national, geographical conditions.
It was inevitable that Impressionism in America should follow along
virile and substantial lines rather than along nervous and superficial;
it is the way the country is built.
* * * * *
Sargent is a Virile-Impressionist. He paints striking _likenesses_, but
he also paints marvellous _characterizations_; that is, he gets beneath
the skin of his sitters and paints them as they _are_, not as they seem.
His sense of color is very deficient; many of his portraits from a
decorative point of view are almost the reverse of pleasing; he had not
the faintest appreciation of the subtle refinements of the things
Whistler strove so long and earnestly to achieve; in his best things he
is strong and direct to the point of brutality--all of which is
characteristic of Virile-Impressionism, and exactly what one would
expect from a vigorous, muscular, frank American. Though Sargent spends
most of his time on the other side, he is no more English than French;
his pictures fit into an American exhibition far more comfortably than
into the Royal Academy or the old Salon.
Robert Henri is another strong Virile-Impressionist.
* * * * *
The attitude of American painters toward the extreme modern developments
is both curious and interesting.
On the opening of the International Exhibition there was an outburst of
violent indignation from the older men, ordinary speech failed to
express their feelings, and they rushed into print with language as
violent as the press would accept. All that made lively reading and lent
zest to current literature.
Six months later this feeling of angry opposition largely subsided. As
an illustration, one of the bitterest of the Academicians accepted as a
“good idea” the organization of an _independent_ exhibition, open to
artists _without the intervention of a jury_, under the auspices of the
National Academy, as soon as a building could be provided that would
adequately house all exhibitions.
Again, the very conservative authorities of a large art institute
listened receptively to the suggestion that every art museum owed the
public two things in the way of exhibitions:
_First_, exhibitions selected by juries which would give the public the
benefit of the best expert judgment available.
_Second_, exhibitions wherein painters and sculptors barred by the
juries would have opportunities to present their works _to the judgment
of the public_.
In short, suggestions that would not have been listened to before the
International are now discussed as quite within the range of
possibilities.
There is no danger of these things coming to pass in the _immediate_
future; there is still too much latent opposition, but the virulent has
measurably subsided.
So much for the _older_ men.
* * * * *
The younger were naturally much more tolerant. They were more--they were
both _curious_ and _receptive_. Many of them searched with eager eye for
valuable hints, for ways and means to perfect their own art.
It was a great pleasure to watch and talk with these young men, the
_rising_ generation.
Many of them, to their own surprise, found they had been working along
modern lines without fully realizing it.
They had not cut loose from Impressionism, but they were doing things
_constructively_ rather than _superficially_; they were painting like
Cézanne rather than Monet.
* * * * *
If the attempt were made to name these younger men, the result would be
injustice to many whose works are unknown to the writer, and the
argument would be confused.
To speak, therefore, of one of the paintings reproduced, take the “Still
Life,” by Kroll. In the decorative arrangement of the draperies and in
the manner in which the fruit and stone jug are painted, the feeling is
quite _Post_-Impressionistic; while the glimpse of the street out the
window is purely _Impressionistic_.
That is to say, all within the window is painted solidly and
constructively, quite under the influence of Cézanne; all that is
without is painted fleetingly and superficially, more under the
influence of Monet. It was done intentionally, to secure a certain
effect of contrast; but the result is neither _French_-Impressionism nor
_Post_-Impressionism, but _American_-Impressionism--a certain
_eclecticism_.
The glimpse of the street is delightful, but the arbitrarily arranged
interior is more than delightful; it possesses strength of line, fine
color, and solid masses, _done constructively_.
Still, one has only to compare this picture with the “Still Life,” by
Herbin, and the “Forest at Martigues,” by Derain, to see how close to
nature it is, how _Impressionistic_ it is as distinguished from the
_Post_-Impressionistic, or creative, spirit.
Kroll painted what he felt, _controlled_ by what he saw. Derain painted
what he felt, _influenced only slightly_ by what he had seen.
* * * * *
The foregoing illustrates the position of the more vigorous of the
younger American painters; they are so strong, so virile, so
muscular--let us say--that instinctively they lean toward the painting
of things in a big, broad _constructive_ manner; the refinements of
_superficial_ impressionism do not interest them.
At the same time they have not reached the point where they are willing
to let go of nature entirely and do purely _creative_ things.
Perhaps this is just as well.
America--like every new country--is so essentially practical, practical
in even its most imaginative flights, that it is difficult for its
painters to retire within themselves and do things that have only an
esoteric or metaphysical relation to actualities; that sort of thing in
both art and literature is much easier on the continent than in either
England or America; it is especially easy in the highly charged and
hyper-artificial atmosphere of Paris.
* * * * *
Purely _creative_ work is done in a masterly manner--in his best
things--by Arthur Davies. It is attempted and quite successfully by
Kenneth Miller, to mention only two of many.
To the casual observer Davies may seem to lose himself at times in his
theories, to press his dreams and speculations beyond the confines of
his art, but on this point the opinion of the “casual observer” is of
little value, for Davies’s pictures cannot be casually observed; they
challenge the attention of the most serious and repay study. I make no
pretense to having fathomed their mystery, to understanding their inner
significance, but enjoy and have always enjoyed the marvellously fine
way in which they are done, and their rare decorative quality.
Here is a man doing _creative_ work, work in which he plays with and
uses nature to attain ends far above and far removed from nature. He is
in no sense a Virile-Impressionist, no one would think of classing him
as an Impressionist at all. Yet he is not a Post-Impressionist as the
term has been defined in this book.
He belongs rather to the class of inspired or _poetic_ painters, a few
of whom are with us always, men who neither found nor belong to a
“school,” but who express on canvas or in stone their fancies in a way
that reminds one of fairy-tales.
Davies may admire much of the work of some of the ultra
Post-Impressionists; he likes, for instance, much of Matisse’s work; he
may even fancy he has something in common with these men, but he has
not. He was painting his pictures long before theirs were very much
known, and he would have painted his if theirs had never been produced
at all.
Matisse is moved by a _spirit fundamentally different_ from that which
animates Davies.
* * * * *
“The Bridge,” by Kroll, is another striking example of
American-Impressionistic art. It is one of a series of pictures of lower
New York, each painted “on the spot,” some from roofs and high places
difficult of access and dangerous.
It is comparatively easy to go out and make a few sketches of portions
of a city like New York and then retire to the studio and paint faint
and superficial reproductions, such inadequate reproductions as appear
on the walls of any metropolitan exhibition; it is quite another thing
to plant one’s easel on slippery rocky heights and day after day, in
the cold, paint from nature as directly as Monet ever painted and in a
much more virile way.
It takes imagination and enthusiasm and the superb confidence of youth
to attempt such colossal things, and it takes an unusual technical
facility to “get away” with the attempt.
* * * * *
Winslow Homer’s name has been mentioned and mentioned with the respect
due one of the greatest painters this country has produced, but the
besetting weakness of picture buyers is undue reverence for the man who
has “arrived,” above all for the master who is dead.
_Better pictures are being painted in America today than Homer painted_,
and he would be the first to say so if living.
Since he painted his best pictures the art of painting has advanced,
painters have improved their technic and broadened their outlook.
There are pictures being painted today by young Americans that will be
worth far more than Homer’s, and that is said with the full realization
that no lover of what is big and strong in art could ask for more virile
impressions of nature than those of Homer at his best.
* * * * *
When the Morgan pictures were hanging in the Metropolitan Museum,
acclaimed in parrot phrases by critics and visited by multitudes, it was
a delight, a veritable refreshing of the soul, to get away from the
smell of the dead into the living atmosphere of the Hearn collection and
see pictures that _belong to us_, to our own times, that are flesh of
our flesh, bone of our bone.
Every picture in the Morgan collection had its vital relation
[Illustration:
KROLL
Brooklyn Bridge
]
to life _once_--_when_ it was painted and _where_ it was painted.
Not one has even a remote relation to the life of America.
They are valuable, very valuable, in the sense that old tapestries, old
armor, old brocades, old pottery, etc., etc., are valuable--valuable as
illustrating the history and development of painting, and beautiful as
many old things are beautiful--but _not half so beautiful as the living
and breathing things of today_.
* * * * *
But how can we appreciate the beauty of the things our painters and
sculptors are doing when we are blind to the superb, the magnificent
beauty of what our engineer-builders are doing--our _steel_
“_sky-scrapers_”--America’s greatest achievement and unique contribution
to the arts--an _absolutely new architecture_?
* * * * *
Though the artist may be quick to disavow all such intention, it is
obvious that there is much Post-Impressionism in John W. Alexander’s
work.
In both his technic and his inspiration he is very Post-Impressionistic.
In the delightful sweep of his line, and the purely decorative use of
color, he departs far from nature.
The attitude of Sargent toward a model or sitter and that of Alexander
are diametrically opposed, the one seeks to paint a vigorous
_characterization_ of the person before him, the other seeks to _create
a picture_, and to do so by a technic so different from that commonly
used it still occasions much of the wonderment it excited years ago.
Some of the portraits by Alexander are conspicuous on the walls of an
exhibition for very much the same reasons such a picture as Van Rees’s
“Maternity” would be conspicuous.
The landscape and cattle piece by Segonzac are both examples of
Virile-Impressionism. But Segonzac has painted many other pictures that
are Post-Impressionistic--arbitrary in design and execution, and still
others that are both Virile-Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic,
such as his large canvas, “A Pastoral,” shown at the International,
wherein the cattle are Virile-Impressionistic creations while the nude
figures and the entire scheme are purely Post-Impressionistic.
* * * * *
The two landscapes by Vlaminck and Charmy are good examples of the
transition state from Virile-Impressionism to Post-Impressionism.
They are sufficiently close to nature to be Impressionistic in the large
sense of the term; at the same time they are so arbitrary and decorative
in technic as to be quite Post-Impressionistic. They are about as far
removed from the average exhibition of Impressionistic pictures as they
are from the creative and abstract art of the Cubists, yet they will
hang with either without unduly shocking the spectator’s sense of the
fitness of things.
* * * * *
The three Cardoza’s are purely Post-Impressionistic; they are charming
examples of what might be called _romantic_ Post-Impressionism as
distinguished from the more _abstract_ conceptions of the Cubists; they
have no more relation to life than a fairy tale, rather less if
anything, for they are primarily decorative rather than significant.
* * * * *
Zak’s “Shepherd” is also Post-Impressionistic, romantic in feeling like
Cardoza’s, but of deeper human significance. The utter loneliness of the
shepherd’s life, the monotony of its outlook, the note of resignation,
are all as subtly indicated
[Illustration:
CHARMY
Landscape
]
as are any of the human qualities in Millet’s pictures of peasant life;
yet in technic and composition the picture is essentially
Post-Impressionistic, a decorative and musical work of the _creative_
imagination. One would not be far astray in classing it with the poetic
work of Arthur Davies.
XIII
SCULPTURE
Developments in sculpture do not always parallel those in painting.
In comparison painting is so facile that it lends itself easily to
experiments, responds quickly to moods and fancies. In short, painting
is more susceptible--more volatile.
Not that the painter and the sculptor are different human beings, but
the mediums whereby they express themselves are so different, and the
demands for their work are so unequal, that sculpture usually lags
behind in new ventures. The sculptor, however great his desire, cannot
afford to make the experiments the painter makes, or at the best he can
only embody his new ideas and aspirations in uninviting plaster casts.
He is bound by some of the conditions that hamper the architect, one of
which is difficulty in finding a patron who will take the risk and pay
the expense of innovations.
* * * * *
The reaction in sculpture has been from the _classic_ along two opposed
lines:
A. Back to nature.
B. Purely creative.
* * * * *
The movement back to nature, to a closer observation of life, even to
the rendering of the human figure with brutal frankness, is exemplified
in the work of Matisse, work so _ugly_--to most people--it seems a
grotesque caricature of
[Illustration: BRANCUSI
M’lle Poganey]
[Illustration: LEHMBRUCK
Kneeling Woman]
the human form, but the human form today is never so symmetrical, so
perfect as in classic sculpture, and one suspects the Greeks themselves
idealized their young men and maidens.
Long before Matisse, Rodin started the “return to nature.” His “Age of
Bronze,” 1877, was so literal a transcript it was denounced as a cast
from life; sculptors and critics refused to believe human fingers could
model so perfect an impression. His “Saint John,” “Eve,” “Bourgeois of
Calais,” “Le Penseur,” “La Belle Heaulmière,” to mention only a few,
were all created in a spirit diametrically opposed to the classic--yet
Rodin is a most intelligent lover of the classic.
_Per contra_, most of Rodin’s marbles are a fine mixture of the classic
and purely modern--of the _classic_ and the _romantic_.
The point here is that in some of his bronzes he exhibits as clear and
merciless an observation of nature as Matisse or any other modern. It
may be said once for all that in the number and _variety_ of things he
does, in the manner in which he links past and present, Rodin stands
quite alone among sculptors. If he has little sympathy with the extreme
sculpture of the hour it is because life is short and in his life time
he has covered so vast a territory, responded to so many impulses,
ancient and modern, he is not unnaturally reluctant to embark upon new
experiments or interest himself vitally in what others are doing.
* * * * *
The best American sculpture, even more than American painting, is
solidly virile-impressionistic, notably the work of such men as Barnard
and Borghlum. Davidson has one foot firmly planted within the confines
of Post-Impressionism, but he has by no means cut loose from the past.
His “Decorative Panel” in the Exhibition was purely
post-impressionistic, a work of the imagination, while his figures were
virile-impressionistic.
* * * * *
It is only by comparing the work of these new men with that of St.
Gaudens, French, MacMonies--to mention no others--that one begins to
rightly understand what is meant by the “_reaction to nature_.”
There is plenty of pure _observation_ and plenty of fine _imagination_
in the work of those three men, but there is also much of the purely
classical, and not one of them showed or shows any desire to break with
tradition, while the very essence of the modern movement is a disregard,
conscious or unconscious, for tradition; in many of the new men there is
a violent revolt against the domination of the past.
* * * * *
It is when we come to the work of Brancusi and Archipanko that we find
the most startling examples of the reaction along purely creative lines.
Nature is purposely left far behind, as far behind as in Cubist
pictures, and for very much the same reasons.
Of Brancusi something has been said already.
Of all the sculpture in the International Exhibition the two pieces that
excited the most ridicule were Brancusi’s egg-shaped portrait of Mlle.
Pogany and “Family Life” by Archipanko.
Both are _creative_ works, products of the imagination, but in their
inspiration they are fundamentally different.
* * * * *
In his symmetrical oval head with the spiral masses where the neck would
be, it is apparent the sculptor’s interest is in the play of line and
relation of masses, no profound human problem troubled him. That there
is a relation between the strange shape of the head and his theories of
life and art no
[Illustration: BOCCIONI
Spiral Expansion of Muscles in Action]
[Illustration: MATISSE
Portrait Heads]
serious observer of his other work could doubt, but his unusual technic
over-shadows other interest.
* * * * *
In his “Family Life,” the group of man, woman, child, Archipanko
deliberately subordinated all thought of beauty of form to an attempt to
realize in stone the relation in life that is at the very basis of human
and social existence.
Spiritual, emotional, and mathematical intellectuality, too, is
behind the family group of Archipanko. This group, in plaster,
might have been made of dough. It represents a featureless, large,
strong male--one gets the impression of strength from humps and
lumps--an impression of a female, less vivid, and the vague
knowledge that a child is mixed up in the general embrace. The
faces are rather blocky, the whole group with arms
intertwined--arms that end suddenly, no hands, might be the sketch
of a sculpture to be. But when one gets an insight it is intensely
more interesting. It is, eventually, clear that in portraying his
idea of family love the sculptor has built his figures with
pyramidal strength; they are grafted together with love and
geometric design, their limbs are bracings, ties of strength, they
represent, not individuals, but the structure itself of family
life. Not family life as one sees it, but the unseen, the deep
emotional unseen, and in making his group when the sculptor found
himself verging upon the seen--that is, when he no longer felt the
unseen--he stopped. Therefore the hands were not essential. And
this expression is made in the simplest way. Some will hoot at it,
but others will feel the respect that is due one who simplifies and
expresses the deep things of life. You may say that such is
literature in marble--well, it is the modernest sculpture.[66]
* * * * *
The group is so angular, so _Cubist_, so ugly according to accepted
notions, that few look long enough to see what the sculptor means; yet
strange as the group was it undeniably gave a powerful impression of the
binding, the _blending_ character of the family tie, a much more
powerful impression than groups in conventional academic pose could
give.
In considering the extreme modern movement in sculpture it must not be
forgotten that groups and figures just as strange have been done in the
past--that even queerer and more grotesque things have been used to
adorn churches and altars.
True, those sculptures and carvings are _naive_ and _primitive_, but may
not the naive and primitive be closer to life and to life’s great truths
than the sophisticated and classical?
That is the question.
The answer of the moderns is that the swing of the pendulum in art is
from the naive and primitive through the more and more conventional to
the fixed and lifeless mold of the classic and academic, then back again
to the naive, traversing the romantic, in its course, both ways.
[Illustration: MATISSE
Back of Woman]
[Illustration: ERBSLOH
Young Woman]
XIV
IN CONCLUSION
To gather the loose ends of the argument in one skein.
* * * * *
Impressionism was the natural, the inevitable reaction from the romantic
and story-telling art of the forties, fifties, and sixties--a return to
_nature_ from the _studio_, to works of the _observation_ from works of
the _imagination_.
Impressionism developed along three diverging lines:
A. _Superficial_ Impressionism--Monet.
B. _Realistic_ Impressionism--Manet.
C. _Substantial_ Impressionism--Cézanne.
* * * * *
A. _Superficial_--the painting of light effects, the impressionism of
Monet, culminated in the extreme refinements of the pointillists, the
Neo-Impressionists, Seurat and Signac.
In superficial Impressionism the last word seems to have been said for
the time being. Any number of delightful pictures--light effects--are
being painted, and will continue to be painted, but the early enthusiasm
has largely subsided.
Superficial Impressionism leads naturally to the painting of pure color
effects--_color music_, _orphism_, _compositional_ painting. After the
last word in the _observation_ of light effects _Post_-Impressionistic
attempts to _create_ pure color effects, irrespective of natural--that
is a logical reaction.
B. _Realistic_ Impressionism penetrates a little deeper. While Monet and
his followers, Signac and Seurat, dealt more and more with the play of
light on the _surface_ of things, Manet and his followers painted closer
to the _heart_ of things.
While Monet was content to paint a hay stack twenty times in as many
different lights, Manet preferred a touch of _life_ and _character_ in
his pictures. While he was first and last a painter, he was not so
absorbed in securing purely technical effects as to be wholly blind to
the _human_ element, hence his wonderful portraits, his bullfights, his
glimpses of city life--pictures _big_ in more senses than one.
Still he and his followers were primarily interested in the _aspect_ of
things, the _characteristics_ as distinguished from the fundamental
_character_ of things. He penetrated far deeper than Monet, so much
deeper the two had little in common, but he did not get so close to the
heart that he forgot the skin; he was always a painter of _appearances_,
but in a _big_ as distinguished from a _superficial_ way.
The realistic Impressionism of Manet has by no means run its course.
Some of the finest painting in the world has been done and is being done
along this line. It is the line of Franz Hals and Velasquez; it is the
line of men so different as Whistler and Sargent in their best
portraits.
The natural reaction from perfection in this line is higher accentuation
of characteristics--in the extreme _caricature_.
That is, given the last word in the painting of character by great men
in a _solid_ way, the logical attempts of new men or lesser men will be
the indication of character in a lighter and more superficial way. The
penetrating _observation_ of the older men gives way to the keen and
playful _fancies_ of the younger. The same sitter yields with the former
a powerful portrait, with the latter a fascinating picture which may be
quite as _revealing_ both as a likeness and as a characterization.
C. _Substantial_ Impressionism is not so easy to define and
differentiate. It is far from _superficial_ but has much in common with
_realistic_.
It is easiest to simply say it is the Impressionism of Cézanne and
those who have read what has already been said about Cézanne will
understand.
Cézanne was not content to paint either the _surface_ or the
_characteristics_ of things or people; he sought to go _deeper_, to get
at the very _substance_ and to place on canvas their elemental
qualities.
As a natural result the longer he painted the _less_ interesting his
pictures became _superficially_, but the _greater_ their interest
_fundamentally_.
While Monet became more and more a _popular_ painter, a painter for the
dealer and the buyer, Cézanne became more and more a _painter’s
painter_, doing things that only the technically skilled could rightly
appreciate.
Interested solely in the profoundest problems of his art and painting
only for those who had a very great knowledge of art, he attracted
comparatively few followers; the path he followed promised little in the
way of immediate fame and rewards.
Still during his last years he had his ardent admirers and after his
death his simple, strong _constructive_, _elemental_ pictures began to
be widely appreciated.
They make no pretense to the superficial charm of color or composition
that attracts the average observer, but they _fascinate_ every man who
studies things long enough to even partially understand what the artist
was so earnestly trying to do.
_Substantial_ or Cézanne Impressionism led naturally to the
Virile-Impressionism of today, a way of seeing and painting things that
is a compound of the Impressionism of Manet with that of Cézanne.
There is a great and glorious future for Virile-Impressionism. Some of
the greatest portraits and pictures in the world will be painted with
the penetrating vision of a Cézanne, modified by the clear, cool
observation of a Manet.
The logical reaction from carrying observation of nature to the extent
Cézanne carried it is painting of the substance of things _creatively_,
_theoretically_, as in _Cubism_.
Cézanne carried the use of planes _imitatively_ so far that it was but a
step to their use _arbitrarily and scientifically_.
_Substantial_ Impressionism leads naturally to substantial
Post-Impressionism; or in other words, the _substance_ of things
painted impressionistically (more or less imitatively) leads
logically to the painting of the _substance_ of things _creatively_ =
_Post_-Impressionistically.
[Illustration:
KROLL
Still Life
]
APPENDIX I
EXHIBITIONS AT 291 FIFTH AVENUE
During a number of years prior to 1913 Mr. Alfred Stieglitz gave
exhibitions of extreme modern work in his Small Photo-Secession Gallery,
291 Fifth Avenue, New York, and the International was the outcome, the
logical culmination of these earlier efforts.
Mr. Stieglitz prepared the following chronological narrative:
In the end of November, 1906, “291” (“Photo-Secession Gallery,” “Little
Gallery,” etc., etc.) was opened with an exhibition of pictorial
photography. The exhibition represented the best work of Steichen, Frank
Eugene, Kasebier, Clarence White, Stieglitz, Coburn, Brigman, Herbert G.
French, and about thirty others, all Americans.
This exhibition was followed up by a series of exhibitions--usually
one-man--of the picked work which had been done in pictorial photography
the world over.
In 1907 the first exhibition not devoted to photography was that of Miss
Pamela Coleman Smith. This exhibition created a sensation. At the time
it aroused the ire of most of the New York critics.
Following this there were shown Willie Geiger’s (Munich) best etchings
and Ex Libris. This was the first show of his in America.
But the real beginning, I suppose, of the so-called _Modern_ work shown
at “291” was the exhibition of about sixty of Rodin’s choicest drawings.
These were selected by Rodin and Steichen for the special exhibition.
The exhibition aroused intense indignation in New York amongst the
critics and amongst most painters (men like Chase, Alexander, and
others of this type feeling that such things were not meant for the
public).
April, 1908, Matisse was introduced to the American public for the first
time. This exhibition of Matisse’s represented the complete evolution of
Matisse from his academic period up to date. It included etchings,
drawings, water colors, lithographs, and oil paintings.
January, 1909, the work of Marius De Zayas was introduced for the first
time.
March, 1909, John Marin and Alfred Maurer (the “new” Maurer) were
introduced. The work of these Americans seemed to upset the equilibrium
of the academicians even more than the “jokes” of Rodin and Matisse.
May, 1909, Marsden Hartley was introduced to the public for the first
time.
December, 1909, Toulouse Lautrec Exhibition. A very choice collection of
his lithographs. First Lautrec Exhibition in America.
February, 1910, second Marin Exhibition.
March, 1910, exhibition of the work of “Younger American Painters”:
Arthur G. Dove, Arthur B. Carles, L. Fellows, Marsden Hartley, Putnam
Brindley, John Marin, Alfred Maurer, Steichen, Max Weber. This was the
first collective exhibition of Modern work by Americans.
April, 1910, second Rodin Exhibition. The very latest drawings of Rodin
were shown, together with eleven of his earliest ones. At the same time
the best small bronze of the “Penseur” (loaned by Mrs. John W. Simpson)
was exhibited.
November, 1910, Exhibition of lithographs by Cézanne, Renoir, Manet, and
Toulouse Lautrec. Together with these, drawings and paintings by Henri
Rousseau, just deceased. This exhibition introduced Rousseau for the
first time to America, as well as it introduced Cézanne.
January, 1911, Exhibition by Max Weber, American.
February, 1911, Marin Exhibition (third).
March, 1911, a series of Cézanne water colors. The first one-man show of
Cézanne’s in America. These water colors were most carefully selected
and really represent a side of Cézanne which is underestimated by all
those, even Cézanne lovers, who do not fully understand Cézanne’s
importance.
April, 1911, Picasso. Drawings, lithographs, water colors, etc. A series
of eighty showing the complete evolution of Picasso. The first
introduction of Picasso to America and the first exhibition anywhere of
Picasso held in this sense.
February, 1912, second Hartley exhibition.
February, 1912, first Arthur G. Dove exhibition.
March, 1912, sculptures and latest drawings by Matisse. First
introduction to America of Matisse, the sculptor.
April, 1912, Exhibition of Children’s Work, showing relationship of that
to much of the spirit of so-called “Modern” work, first exhibition of
its kind held in America.
December, 1912, drawings and paintings by A. Walkowitz.
January, 1913, fourth Marin Exhibition--the now famous New York
skyscraper series were shown.
March, 1913, Picabia’s New York work. The first one-man show of Picabia
held in America.
April, 1913, Exhibition of De Zaya’s abstract caricature. Possibly the
most _modern_ expression of the human portrait.
Incidentally, without having had official shows, the work of Eli
Nadelmann (Paris) and Manolo, was introduced to America by examples of
their work being shown.
Outside of all these exhibitions, of course, must be added the
exhibition of color-photography, first in America, in 1907, and numerous
other exhibitions, of important photographic work.
APPENDIX II
TWO COMMENTS
It is only fair to the press to say that here and there, in most
unexpected places, not only articles but editorials appeared admonishing
the public to be cautious about condemning the new art too impulsively.
We have chosen two such expressions from places so different, as London,
and Reno, Nevada.
Apropos the Russian Ballet and its extraordinary music, the London
“Times,” in a leading editorial, July 13, 1913, said:
“We have entered into one of those periods of artistic revolution in
which the public, audience, or spectators become partisans and express
their opinions as if they were at a political meeting. The Russian
Ballet, for instance, produced a conflict of opinion last Friday, which
recalls the conflicts provoked by the plays of Victor Hugo in the
thirties. Post-Impressionism now is what the Romantic movement was then.
To one party it means the end of all beauty; to the other a new birth of
it. People no longer clap or hiss because they think a particular
performance is well or ill done. Even in England, where the arts are not
commonly taken very seriously, they are beginning to clap or hiss on
principle, and to feel that they are making history when they do so.
Partisans on both sides are probably not very clear in their minds why
they like Post-Impressionism or dislike it; but the word, vague and
clumsy as it is, does imply to them a set of tendencies by which all the
arts may be ruined or regenerated. It is not merely a fashion in
painting, but, like Romanticism, a movement of the mind which is trying
to express itself through all means of artistic expression.
“Of this the new turn taken by the Russian Ballet is a striking proof;
for no one can suppose that the artists concerned in that enterprise are
haters of beauty because of their own incompetence to achieve it. They
have every material inducement to continue delighting the world with
Ballets like Carnival or Scheherazade; and, if they attempt a new kind
of art, it must be because they are driven to it by some force in
themselves too powerful to be withstood. Masters like M. Nijinsky do not
try dangerous experiments on the public for the mere pleasure of trying
them; and it is a little presumptuous to assume that they are suddenly
afflicted by sheer perversity of taste. It is more probable that they
are possessed by that ardour of discovery which is common both to great
artists and to great men of science, indeed to all men whose interest in
life is stronger than their desire for their own comfort.
“Most people make the mistake of thinking that the development of an art
consists altogether of what is called invention and not of discovery;
and for that reason they often resent innovations as mere perversities.
If a thing has been well done already they cannot see why it should not
continue to be done. But the artist knows that he cannot invent again
what has been once invented. He knows, too, that these seeming
inventions are also discoveries of the possibilities of his art; and
that when discovery has been carried very far in one direction it cannot
be carried any further. The history of all arts proves this. After
Michel Angelo no one could invent anything fresh in his manner, because
he had discovered all that could be discovered about his method of art.
Renaissance architecture prevailed in Europe because no new discoveries
were possible in Gothic.
“The Romantic movement changed English poetry when there was nothing
more to be said in the manner of Pope. You may prefer the old art to the
new, but even if you are right in preferring it, you are not therefore
right in condemning those who practice the new art. For they have no
alternative. Either they must be mere imitators of the great men of the
past or they must make a new start; and the true artist can no more
content himself with imitation than the true philosopher can content
himself with repeating what other philosophers have said.
“Behind all representation in the arts there is the impulse of
expression; and that will make its discoveries wherever there is most to
be discovered, turning naturally to those elements of the art which have
lately been neglected. If we understand this we shall see that a new
artistic movement, such as Post-Impressionism, is not to be judged
merely by a few pictures or to be condemned because those pictures seem
to us very unlike reality. Whatever may come of it, it is something that
is happening in all the arts, because discovery is turning in a new
direction. All the successes of the past are obstacles to new success of
the same kind, and discovery naturally takes a line of least resistance
away from them. For a long time, in every art, artists have been raising
expectations which they found it difficult, if not impossible, to
satisfy. In painting, with its effort at complete illusion, they have
provoked comparisons with Velasquez. In music, with its elaborate forms,
they must do as well as Beethoven if they are to succeed. The dance, as
we are used to it, demands an easy grace in every movement, which M.
Nijinsky himself cannot combine with novelties of expression. He has
found that, if he is to be a discoverer in his art, he must teach his
public not to expect this easy grace, this formal and accustomed beauty,
from the start. And that is the purpose of Post-Impressionism in all
the arts. It is determined not to arouse expectations which it cannot
satisfy.
“The public may begin by thinking it all crude and ugly and childish;
and it will be the more delighted by any beauties which it discovers
afterwards. Hitherto the arts have promised more than they could
possibly perform. Now they shall promise nothing, and so perform at
least more than they promise. It is natural, perhaps, that the public
should resent this as a kind of discourtesy. The artist who makes no
professions seems to them lacking in respect, and they are inclined to
hoot him as an impudent charlatan. But there are very few artists who
wish to be hooted, and the real charlatan usually flatters his public.
Whatever may be said against Post-Impressionists in all the arts, they
are not flatterers.”
* * * * *
It is a far cry from London to Reno, and the differences between the two
places are not measured by the miles between them.
Leading editorial from the “Journal,” Reno, July 11, 1913:
SIMPLE SOLOMON
“When Solomon staked his reputation for wisdom as well as originality on
the assertion that there is nothing new under the sun, he did not think
some day the Cubist painter, the Futurist artist, and the color musician
would rise in the twentieth century and make him ridiculous. There is
something new under the sun even in these departures, and like
everything original since the first sin, the innovations are now roundly
condemned.
“It is the fashion now to condemn the Cubist and the Futurist in art,
even as not long ago it was the fashion to condemn the realist, the
impressionist and the Post-Impressionist; but it is a peculiar tribute
to the authority of an innovation that it requires such a general attack
of condemnation. A trivial thing requires mere neglect; a war of
condemnation implies some strong and virile thing to be subdued.
“These new things have a substantial basis for existence; else they
would not exist. Their novelty has caused some extravagant adherents to
carry them to unreasonable excess. They have abused the discoveries, not
used them. They will pass away but the new principles will survive.
“The cubist takes his cue from the idea of perspective itself--carried
to excess. No one can imagine anything but straight lines as the basis
for ‘vanishing points.’ Curved lines, while apparent and obvious, are
not the scientific representations of actualities. The things we see
strike the eye on the basis of flat images and our imagination brings
out shape and significance. It is but a simple reversal to present flat
art and give the imagination equal play in reconstructing real images in
the eye.
“If we take a half-tone engraving and examine it with a magnifying glass
we find it is a series of holes of uniform size but more or less dense
on the surface according to the requirements of light, shade and line.
Magnify a half-tone 100 times and we have a large grating of black and
white circles or squares. That is cubist art. It requires a slight shift
in the point of view, a little development and stimulation of the
imagination--nothing more.
“When Gulliver visited the Brobdingnagians and viewed the complexions of
their women at close range, it almost made him sick--yet they were noted
beauties. He looked too close. When they looked at him they observed no
complexion--they looked too far. Yet each had a concrete complexion and
the only trouble was the point of view and the shock of comparison.
“The futurists have a very novel and, at this time, an outlandish art.
One of them has a full page picture used as an advertisement of the
peculiar sound of a horn. It is a picture of a sound that saws its way
through other sounds. There is a straight, fan-like picture for a
constant, augmenting note, rising in scale. It is gray. There is a black
ellipse for a loud varying noise of fairly regular variation of note,
and so on. The foreign noise of the horn is shown as utterly unlike in
form, intensity, regularity or harmony, any other sound.
“If one has a diagram one can understand the futurist art and, when one
understands, he approves. The new arts are simply aids to comparison,
discrimination and inspiration. They have all the delights of
wine-tasting or salad-judging--and some salads are vile.
“The color musician has developed only another exercise in
discrimination. If we were to make mathematics of music we would find
that there is an exact relation between the number of vibrations of
notes an octave apart; a constant relation between the vibrations in the
natural and the sharp; a direct ratio between the vibrations of the
notes in a chord; a formula for harmony and another for discord. It is
an interesting mathematical study, a science as well as an art, and it
proves that our appreciation through the senses is based on natural
mathematical sequences and on well understood ratios, seasoned for
variety’s sake by divergences from type.
“Now the color musician has taken the spectrum and made notes out of it
like the notes on the gamut. He has a color-scale and can do as much on
it for the delight of the eye as a musician can with the musical scale
for the ear. He merely brings out an extra way of enjoying distinctions
and of enjoying that most restful of enjoyable things--conventionality.
The certainty and the satisfaction of the conventional is about the most
assuring thing in all experience. There is no more steadying feeling in
all the world than to know that two and two make four, and that c-a-t
spells cat. The more ways by which we can be assured of the belief we
hold by faith, that there is an uniform, unchanging, all-pervading rule
in the world, arguing an individual, mastering central consciousness and
direction, the happier we are.
“The cubists and the futurists and the color musicians may be faddists,
but they help to drive out old Solomon’s pessimism. They help us to
understand by purely human experience how it is that there may be some
things which even humans cannot understand--but which are.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ENGLISH
In attempting this bibliography of the modern movement in art, the
search in periodical literature in England, France, and Germany has
been carried back no farther than 1908.
IS ART A FAILURE? by Robert Fowler. Nineteenth Century, July, 1912.
ART, A NEW VENTURE IN. _Exhibition at the Omega Workshops._ Times,
July 9, 1913.
BAKST, LEON. _Art Exhibitions. A Great Designer._ Times, June 17,
1912. Morning Post, June 18, 1912.
BAKST, LEON. _Exhibition._ Athenaeum, July 6, 1912.
BERLIN SECESSION. For short notices on see “Studio”: LI, p. 241;
LI, p. 328; LII, p. 68; LII, p. 153; LII, p. 240; LIII, p. 324;
LIV, p. 84; LV, p. 59; LV, p. 249; LVI, p. 241.
CÉZANNE. _Article by Maurice Denis._ Burlington Magazine, XVI Part
I, p. 207; Part II, p. 275.
_Cézanne_. _Manet and the French Impressionists. Pissaro--Claude
Monet--Sisley--Rénoir--Berthe Morisot--Cézanne--Guillaume._
Translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch. Illustrated with 34 etchings,
4 wood engravings, and 32 reproductions in half-tone No. 9 by
Theodore Duret. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1910.
CÉZANNE. _Cézanne and Gauguin._ Athenaeum, Dec. 2, 1911.
CÉZANNE. _Cézanne and Gauguin._ London Times, Nov. 28, 1911.
COURBET. _Exhibition._ Times, March 8, 1911.
CUBISTS. _Cubism._ Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. Translated
from the French, with illustrations. T. Fisher Unwin, 1912.
DRAMA AND ART, THE NEW SPIRIT IN. Huntley Carter. London, Frank
Palmer, 1912.
FUTURISTS. Athenaeum, March 9, 1912.
FUTURISTS. Spectator, March 16, 1912.
FUTURISTS. _The Initial Manifesto of Futurism._ F. T. Marinetti.
Printed in the Catalogue of Exhibition in the Sackville Gallery,
London, of works by the Italian Futurist painters, March, 1912.
FUTURISTS. _Severini (Gino)._ Introduction to catalogue of his
pictures on view at the Marlborough Galleries, Duke street, London,
1913.
GAUGUIN. _Cézanne and Gauguin._ London Times, Nov. 28, 1911.
HARRISON, FREDERIC. _Aischro Latreia--The Cult of the Foul._
Nineteenth Century, February, 1912.
HIND, C. LEWIS. _The Consolations of a Critic._ London, A. and C.
Black, 1911.
HOURTICG, LOUIS. _Art in France._ London, Heinemann, 1911.
HUNEKER, JAMES. _Promenades of an Impressionist._
IMPRESSIONISTS. _The Post Impressionists._ Article by Clutton-Brock
(A), Burlington Magazine, XVIII, p. 216.
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY. _Exhibitions._ Times, April 8, 1911;
Spectator, April 15, 1911.
LONDON SALON. See Times July 8, 1911; July 30, 1912, _Effects of
Artistic Freedom_; July 7, 1913.
MACCOLL, D. S. _Ugliness, Beauty and Mr. Frederic Harrison._
Nineteenth Century, March, 1912.
MAILLOL. _The Sculpture of Maillol._ Roger Fry. Burlington
Magazine, XVII, p. 26.
MEIER-GRAEFE, ALFRED JULIUS. _Modern Art, Being a Contribution to a
New System of Aesthetics._ Translated from the German by Florence
Simmons and George W. Chrystal. 2 vols. London, 1908.
MUNICH NEUE VEREINIGUNG. Studio, LIII, p. 320.
NEW ENGLISH ART CLUB EXHIBITION. Spectator, Nov. 30, 1912.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _The Post Impressionists._ C. Lewis Hind.
London, Methuen & Co., 1911.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _Review of Mr. Hind’s Book._ Athenaeum, July
8, 1911.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _Notes on the Post Impressionist Painters at
the Grafton Galleries._ C. J. Holmes. 1910-1911.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _On Post Impressionism._ Sir William Richmond.
Times, Jan. 10, 1911.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _Pages on Art._ Charles Ricketts. Containing
article on _Post-Impressionism at the Grafton Gallery_. London,
Constable & Co., 1913.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _French Artists of Today._ London, Heinemann,
1912.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _From Impressionism to the Spectral Palette._
H. P. H. Friswell. Saturday Review, Feb. 23, 1901.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. Foreword to catalogue of exhibition by Frank
Rutter. Doré Galleries, London.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. Letter on _The Post Impressionists at the
Grafton Gallery_. A. Warren Dow. Spectator, Oct. 12, 1912.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. Athenaeum, Jan. 7, 1911; December, 1911.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _A Year of Post-Impressionism._ D. S. MacColl.
Nineteenth Century, February, 1912; “The Spectral Palette,”
Saturday Review, Feb. 9, 1901.
POST IMPRESSIONISTS. _The Post Impressionist and Others._ Yoshio
Markino. Nineteenth Century, February, 1913.
REVOLUTION IN ART. Athenaeum, Feb. 4, 1911.
RODIN, AUGUSTE. _Art._ From the French of Paul Gsell. London,
Hodder & Stoughton.
SCULPTURE. _Gills, Eric._ Times, Jan. 27, 1911.
SCULPTURE. _Post Impressionist Sculptures._ Athenaeum, Jan. 28,
1911.
SCULPTURE. _The Sculpture of Maillol._ Roger Fry. Burlington
Magazine, XVII, p. 26.
VAN GOGH. _The Letters of a Post Impressionist, Being the Familiar
Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh._ Translated from the German by
Anthony M. Ludovici. London, Constable & Co., 1912.
VAN GOGH. _Review of V. Van Gogh’s Letters._ Athenaeum, Dec. 21,
1912.
VAN GOGH. _Riefstahl_, R. Meyer. Part I, _Vincent Van Gogh_,
Burlington Magazine, XVIII, p. 91; Part II, _Van Gogh’s Style in
Relation to Nature_, Burlington Magazine, XVIII, p. 155.
VAN GOGH. _The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh._ F. Melian Stawell
(review) Burlington Magazine, XVIX, p. 152.
FRENCH
APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME. _Meditations esthétiques. Les peintres
cubistes._ 1ère série: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean
Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Mlle. Marie Laurencin,
Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp Villon.
Paris, Eug. Figuière, 1913. In-40, 84 p. et 46 planches,
reproductions.
BERNARD, EMILE. _Souvenirs sur P. Cézanne._ Paris, office central
de librairie, 5 rue Palatine, 1908. In-12.
BUZZI, PAOLO. _Aeroplani._ Canti alati di Paolo Buzzi. Col. IIe
Proclama futurista di F. T. Marinetti. Milano, edizione di
_Poesia_, 1909. In-16, 282 p.
DENIS, MAURICE. _Théories 1890-1910._ _Du symbolisme et de Gauguin
vers un nouvel ordre classique._ Paris, Bibliothèque de l’occident,
17 rue Eble, 1912. In-80, 272 p.
DUHEM, HENRI. _Impressions d’art contemporain._ Paris, Eug.
Figuière, 1913. In-120, 382 p.
GLEIZES, ALBERT ET METZINGER, JEAN. _Du cubisme._ Paris, Eug.
Figuière, 1912. In-40, 80, 44 p., et 30 pl., reproductions.
GUY, MICHEL. _Le dernier état de la peinture._ Paris, Union
française d’édition, Le Feu, 1911. In-16, plaquette.
LETALLE, ABEL. _Idées et figurations d’art._ Paris, E. Sansot,
1911. In-160.
MARINETTI, F. T. _Le futurisme._ Paris, E. Sansot, 1911. In-12, 240
p. La Iere édition italienne est de.
MARINETTI, F. T. _Coupées électriques._ Drama en trois actes avec
une préface sur le futurisme. Paris, E. Sansot, 1909. In-12, 194 p.
MARINETTI, F. T. _Le monoplan du pape, roman politique en vers
libres._ Paris, E. Sansot, 1913. In-16, 349 p.
_Les peintres futuristes italiens._ Exposition du Lundi 5, au Mardi
24 Février 1912. Paris, Bernheim, Jeune, 1912. Oct. In-16, 32 p., 8
fig. ou reproductions.
_Catalogues des peintres futuristes et sculpteurs_. Paris,
Bernheim-Jeune, 1912. In-16. Même opuscule que le précédent à peu
de chose près 3 éditions: en français, en anglais, en italien.
MELLERIO, ANDRÉ. _Le mouvement idéaliste en peinture._ Paris, H.
Floury, 1896. In-80, 75 p.
MELLERIO, ANDRÉ. _L’Exposition de 1900 et l’impressionnisme._
Paris, H. Floury, 1900. In-80, 48 p.
NOCQ, HENRY. _Tendances nouvelles. Enquête sur l’évolution des
industries d’art._ Paris, H. Floury, 1896. In-80, 204 p.
SALMON, ANDRÉ. _La jeune peinture française._ Paris, Société des
Trente. Albert Messein, 1910. In-80, 124 p.
Lors paraître prochainement du même auteur:
SALMON, ANDRÉ. _La jeune sculpture française._ Paris, Société des
Trente. Albert Messein, 1912. In-80.
SIGNAC, PAUL. _D’Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme._ Paris,
Floury, 1911. In-80, 120 p. (nouvelle édition) La Iere édition en
1899.
UHDE, J. B. _Henri Rousseau_, (dit Rousseau le Douanier) Paris,
Eug. Figuière, 1913. In-40, avec reproductions.
EN PRÉPARATION.
MORISSE, CHARLES. _Gauguin._ In-80. Chez l’éditeur H. Floury,
Boulevard des Capucines, Paris.
A noter pour paraître prochainement sous la direction de Guillaume
Apollinaire, à la librairie Eugène Figuière à Paris, 7 rue Corneille;
Une volume sur Cézanne, sur Seurat, sur Dégas, sur Rénois, par des
auteurs différents. Une volume également sur _Les peintres orphiques_
par Guillaume Apollinaire lui-même.
À noter aussi l’ouvrage suivant:
RÉNOIR. _Album de quarante reproductions dont 4 fac-similés en
couleur et 36 phototypes._ Préface d’Octave Mirebeau. Texte des
plus notoires écrivains de tous les pays. Paris, chez
Bernheim-Jeune, 28 boulevard de la Madeleine, 1913. In folio.
ARTICLES.
ALEXANDRE, ARSÈNE. _Maurice Denis._ Signé: Arsène Alexandre. In-40,
6 pages, 5 reproductions. L’art et les artistes. Tome VIII,
Janvier, 1909.
APOLLINAIRE, GUILLAUME. _Henri Matisse._ Signé: Guillaume
Apollinaire. In-80, 5 pages, et 3 reproductions. La Phalange. No.
du 15 Décembre, 1907.
AUREL. _L’Ensiegnement d’Emile-Antoine Bourdelle._ Signé: Aurel.
In-80, 14 p. La Phalange. No. du 20 Mars, 1912.
BERTAUX, EMILE. _Notes sur le Gréco._ I. _Les Portraits_. II.
_L’Italienne_. III. _Le Byzantisme_. 3 articles dans de _revue de
l’art ancien et moderne_, Années: 1911, Juin; 1912, Décembre et
1913, Janvier. Nombreuses reproductions et planches hors texte.
BESSON, GEORGES. _Le grand palais aux bestiaux._ Signé: Georges
Besson. In-80, 5 pages. La Phalange. No. du 20 Décembre, 1912.
BRICAUT, JEAN. _Essai sur la couleur._ Signé: Jean Bricaut. In-80,
5 pages. La Phalange. No. du 20 Avril, 1913.
CORNU, PAUL. _Bernard Naudin, dessinateur et graveur._ Signé: Paul
Cornu. Les Cahiers du Centre. 40 Série, Mars, 1913.
A noter dans cette même revue; La Phalange--Léon Werth puis Georges
Besson rédigent le mois du peintre donnet à propos des différentes
expositions à la galerie Bernheim-Jeune, à la Galerie Volard et autres,
des aperçus et des considerations souvent fort intéressants sur le
cubisme et le néo-impressionisme et sur de nombreux artistes tels que
Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Rénois, Cissaro, Seurat, etc.
Dans de Mercure de France, Charles Morisse, puis Gustave Kahn, font le
même sous la rubrique _Art et art moderne_.
COUSTURIER, LUCIE. _Georges Seurat._ (1889-1891.) Signé: Lucie
Cousturier. In-40, 16 pages, 15 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue
de l’art ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 174, 20 Juin,
1912.
COUSTURIER, LUCIE. _Pierre Bonnard._ Signé: Lucie Cousturier.
In-40, 16 pages, 16 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art
ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 186, 20 Décembre, 1912.
COUSTURIER, LUCIE. _Henri-Edmond Cross._ Signé: Lucie Cousturier.
In-40, 16 pages, 15 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art
ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 189, Mars, 1913.
COUSTURIER, LUCIE. _Maurice Denis._ Signé: Lucie Cousturier. In-40,
16 pages, 16 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et
de la vie artistique moderne. No. 191, Mai, 1913.
DENIS, MAURICE. _Maillol._ (Aristide.) Signé: Maurice Denis. In-40,
6 p., 5 reproductions. L’art et les artistes. Tome VIII, Janvier,
1909.
DEVERIN, EDOUARD. _Paul-Emile Colin._ Signé: Edouard Deverin.
In-40, 8 pages, 7 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art
ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 190, Avril, 1913.
FAURE, ELIE. _Paul Cézanne._ Signé: Elie Faure. In-40, 16 pages, 17
reproductions dont 1 en couleur. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art
ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 157, Octobre, 1911.
FAURE, ELIE. _Francisco Iturino._ Signé: Elie Faure. In-40, 4 p., 3
reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie
artistique moderne. No. 178, 20 Août, 1912.
GODET, PIERRE. _Vincent Van Gogh._ Signé: Pierre Godet. In-40, 16
p., 14 reproductions dont une en couleur. Art décoratif. Revue de
l’art ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 156, Septembre,
1911.
GODET, PIERRE. _Puvis de Chavannes et la peinture d’aujourd’hui._
Signé: Pierre Godet. In-40, 16 pages, 13 reproductions. Art
décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie artistique moderne.
No. 164, Janvier, 1912.
GODET, PIERRE. _Un peintre suisse._ Cuno Amiet. Signé: Pierre
Godet. In-40, 10 pages, 11 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de
l’art ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 171, 5 Mai, 1912.
GUY, MICHEL. _Paul Gauguin._ Signé: Michel Guy. In-40, 16 pages, 13
reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie
artistique moderne. No. 151, Avril, 1911.
GUY, MICHEL. _Les Fauves._ Signé: Michel Guy. In-89, 9 pages. La
Phalange. No. du 15, Septembre, 1907.
GUY, MICHEL, _van Gogh._ Signé: Michel Guy. In-80. La Phalange. No.
du 15, Février, 1908.
HENRI, FRANTZ. _La Collection Henri Rouart._ Signé: Henri Frantz.
In-40, 31 pages et 32 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art
ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 185, 5 Décembre, 1912.
Contient de nombreux aperçus sur des œuvres des peintres
impressionistes tels que Cézanne, Rénoir, Monet, Degois, etc.
LAENEN, JEAN. _Jacob Smits._ Signé: Jean Laenen. In-40, 9 pages, 8
reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie
artistique moderne. No. 121, Octobre, 1908.
MARVAL, JACQUELINE, _Les danseurs de Flandrin._ Signé: Jacqueline
Marval. In-40, 12 pages, 12 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de
l’art ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 190, Avril, 1913.
MAUCLAIN, CAMILLE. _Gaston Crunier._ Signé: Camille Mauclain.
In-40, 12 pages, 14 reproductions et 1 planche en couleur hors
texte. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie artistique
moderne. No. 139, Avril, 1910.
MEIER-GRAEFE, J. _Grêco peintre baroque._ Signé: J. Meier-Graefe.
Trav. de l’allemand par Pierre Godet. In-40, 36 pages, 35
reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie
artistique moderne. No. 182, 20 Octobre, 1912.
RITTER, WILLIAM. _Frank Brangwyn._ Signé: William Ritter. In-40, 14
p., 14 reproductions. L’art décoratif, revue de l’art ancien et de
la vie artistique moderne. No. 144, Septembre, 1910.
RIVIÈRE, JACQUES. _Coussin et la peinture contemporaine._ Signé:
Jacques Rivière. In-40, 16 pages, 14 reproductions. Art décoratif.
Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 167,
Mars, 1912.
SALMON, ANDRÉ. _Odilon Rédon._ Signé: André Salmon. In-40, 16
pages, 16 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de
la vie artistique moderne. No. 187, Janvier, 1913.
SALMON, ANDRÉ. _Marie Laurencin._ Signé: André Salmon. In-40, 6
pages, et 6 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et
de la vie artistique moderne. Nos. 194-198, Août-Septembre, 1913.
_Tougendhold, Jacques._ _Borissoff Moussatoff._ Signé: Jacques
Tougendhold. In-40, 12 pages, 13 reproductions. Art décoratif.
Revue de l’art ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 188,
Février, 1913.
_Vauxcelles, Louis._ _A propos des bois sculptes de Paul Gauguin._
In-160, 2 pages, 3 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art
ancien et de la vie artistique moderne. No. 148, Janvier, 1911.
_Werth, Léon._ _Aristide Maillol._ Signé: Léon Werth. In-40, 16
pages, 16 reproductions. Art décoratif. Revue de l’art ancien et de
la vie artistique moderne. No. 188, Février, 1913.
GERMAN
Acht Jahre Secession v. Ludwig Hevesi, Wien 1906. The
Post-Impressionist, by Lewis Hind, London (p. 412-417 Die
Nach-Impressionisten).
Aus der Correspondenz, Kunst u. Künstler, II. p. 264, 417, 462,
493. 1904.
Aus der Correspondenz, Kunst u. Künstler, III, p. 39-40, 86, 120,
169, 214-217, 261-262, 298-300, 347-348, 391-392, 436-438, 479-480
u. 528. 1905.
Ausstellung b. Cassirer von H. Rosenhagen, Kunst für Alle, XIX. p.
401-403, 1913-14.
Ausstellung der Kubisten in dem Moderne Kunstkring, zu Amsterdam,
p. 137-140, Kunstchr, XXIII.
Ausstellung in Berlin, Kunstchr, 09. XX. p. 238.
Ausstellung in Köln v. G. E. Lüthgen, Deutsche Kunst u. Dekoration,
XXXII. p. 179-182.
Ausstellung in München, Kunst für Alle, XXVI. p. 21-22, 1910-11.
Biermann, Georg, Bernhard Hoetger, ein deutscher Bildauer der
Gegenwart, München, H. Goltz, 1914.
Briefe von E. Schur, Kunst für Alle, 08, XXIII. p. 562-670.
Cato, Die Schweizer Abteilung der internationalen Kunstausstellung
München, München, 1913.
Cézanne u. Hodler, Einführung in die Probleme der Malerei der
Gegenwart von Fritz Burger, 1913, Delphin Verlag, München, Text und
Tafelband.
Coellen, Ludwig, Die neue Malerei: Der Impressionismus; Van Gogh
und Cézanne; Die Romantik der neuen Malerei; Gauguin und Matisse,
Picasso u. der Kubismus; Die Expressionisten, München, 1912; E. W.
Bonsels & Co., 2d edition.
Cohen-Gotschalk Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, XIX. p. 225-235.
1907-08.
Das Erwachen des Geistes von Wilhelm Michel, Deutsche Kunst u.
Dekoration, XXXII. p. 9-11.
Das Kolorit i. d. Zeitgenössischen deutschen Malerei. Ein Mahnwort
von A. Giesecke. p. 41-43, Kunstnachrichten, Beiblatt der
Kunstwelt. II. Jahrgang No. 6 März 1913.
Der Blaue Reiter, herausgegeben von Kandinsky, München, 1912.
Der Blaue Reiter von Hans Titeze, Kunst für Alle, XXVII. p.
543-550.
Der Kubismus i. d. französischen Kammer, Kunstchr, XXIV. p. 176.
Der Moderne Impressionismus von Meier-Graefe. Die Kunst
Herausgegeben von Richard Muther, Verlag Julius Bard, Berlin.
Der Sturm Veranstaltete bisher folgende Ausstellungen in Berlin W.
9. Potsdamerstr. 134 a.
1. Der Blaue Reiter, Oskar, Kokoschka.
2. Die Futuristen: Boccioni, Carra, Russolo, Severini.
3. Französische Graphik, Pablo Picasso.
4. Deutsche Expressionisten: Campemdonk, Bloch, Jawlensky,
Kandinsky, Marc, Münter.
5. Französische Expressionisten: Braque, Derain, Othon, Friess,
Herbin Marie Laurencin, de Vlaminck.
6. Jungbelgische Künstler.
7. Kandinsky.
8. Die Pathetiker: Ludwig Meider, Jacob Steinhardt.
9. Egon Adler, Van Gauguin, Arthur Segal.
10. Die Neue Secession.
11. Gabriele Münter.
12. Robert Delaunay, Ardengo Soffici.
13. Alfred Reth.
14. Franz Marc.
15. Der Moderne Bund, Schweiz.
16. Gino Severini.
Deri, Max, Die neue Malerei: Impressionismus, Pointillismus, Futuristen,
die grossen Uebergangsmeister, Kubisten, Expressionismus, Absolute
Malerei, München; Piper, 1913; with illustrations.
Die Ausstellung von Werken Zurückgewiessener der Berliner Secession
1910, Neue Secession, p. 440-441, Kunstchr, XXI.
Die Französischen Bilder der Sammlung Kohner von Hugo Haberfeld mit
Abbildung Gauguin, Cézanne, Gogh, etc., Der Cicerone, III. p. 579-589.
1911.
Die Frühbilder, von H. Hildebrandt, p. 376-378, Kunst u. Künstler, XI.
1913.
Die Futuristen in Rom, Kunstnachrichten, Beiblatt der Kunstwelt, II. p.
48, Jahrg. No. 6. März 1913.
Die Grundlagen der jüngsten Kunstbewegung. Ein Vortrag von Emil Utitz,
Verlag v. Ferd. Enke, Stuttgart 1913.
Die Hauptströmungen des XIX Jahrhunderts von Julius Leisching.
Die Impressionisten von Heilbut, E., Berlin, Cassierer.
Die Impressionistenausstellung der Secession von E. Heilbut, Kunst u.
Künstler, I. p. 169-207.
Die Internationale Ausstellung des Sonderbundes v. A. Fortlage, Köln,
Der Cicerone, IV. p. 547-556. 1912 (mit abbildung van Gogh, Cézanne,
Gauguin, Picasso).
Die Jungmodernen, Neue Secession, Brücke, p. 443-444, Kunstchr, XXIII.
Die Jüngsten von Karl Scheffler, Kunst und Künstler, XI. S. 391-409.
Die Neue Kunst in Wien Salon Miethke, Kunstchr, XXIV. p. 286-287.
Die neue Malerei von L. Coellen. Der Impressionismus von Gogh u.
Cézanne, Gauguin u. Mattise, Picasso u. d. Kubismus. Verlag E. W. Bonsch
& Co., München.
Die Persönlichen Erinnerungen N. B. Mendes da Costa’s an seinen
Lateinschüler--mitgeteilt v. Max Eisler, Kunst u. Künstler, X. p.
98-104.
Die Secession von R. Klein, Moderne Zeitfragen, Nr. 9 Herausgegeben von
Dr. Hans Landsberg, Pan-Verlag.
Die XXVI Ausstellung der Berliner Secession, Deutsche Kunst u.
Dekoration, XXXII, p. 239-245, Darmstadt.
Die Zurückgewiessen auf der Berliner Secession, Kunstchr, XXIV. p.
480-482.
Du Quesne, Persönliche Erinnerungen an Vincent Van Gogh, München, 1913;
R. Piper & Co., 3d ed.; 24 plates.
Entwickelung des Impressionismus in Malerei u. Plastik v. Meier-Graefe,
Secession Wien.
Entwickelungsgeschichte der Modernen Kunst von J. Meier-Graefe I.-III.
(III. Band Abbildungen), Verlag Jul Hoffmann, Stuttgart.
Erinnerungen an--von Emile Bernard, Kunst u. Künstler, VI, p. 421-429,
p. 475-480, p. 521-527. 1908.
Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon Berlin 1913, Der Sturm, Berlin W. 9,
Potsdamerstrasse 134a, mit einer Vorrede von Herwarth Walden.
Fischer, Otto, Das neue Bild, published by the New München Artists’
League; München, 1912; Delphin Verlag; 4°, with 36 art plates.
Französisch Importen von Felix Lorenz, Die Kunstwelt, III. p. 700-701.
1912.
Friedrich, Hans, Hodler, die Schweiz und Deutschland, München; James
Verlag, 1913.
Futuristen und Genossen bei der Arbeit, Die Kunstwelt, II. 3. p.
189-191, 1912.
Futuristen v. Rud. Klein, Berlin, Deutsche Kunst u. Dekoration, XXX. p.
274-277, 1912, Darmstadt.
Gauguin, Paul, Noa-Noa, Berlin, Cassirer, 1911, 2d ed.
Gogh, V. Von, Briefe deutsche Ausgabe besorgt von M. Mauthner, II.
Auflage, Bruno Cassierer, Berlin.
Gott schütz die Kunst, von Terentius, Die Kunstwelt, II. p. 353-360.
1912.
Hausenstein, Wilh., Die Neue Kunst; Zur Naturgeschichte der Kritik, In
Katalog der II, Gesamtausstellung Neue Kunst, Hans Goltz, München, 1913;
illustrated.
Hausenstein, W., Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart, Stuttgart, Deutsche
Verlagsanstalt, 1914.
Hermann, Curt, Der Kampf um den Stil. Probleme der modernen Malerei,
with 8 autotypes; Berlin, Ed. Reiss’ Verlag, 1911; 8°.
Hildebrand, Hans, Adolph Stölzel als Zeichner, Stuttgart, Deutsche
Verlagsanstalt, 1913; 8°.
Impressionismus. Ein Problem der Malerei i. d. Antike und Neuzeit von
Werner Weisbach I., Berlin 1910, II. 1911.
Impressionismus v. Laforgue, Kunst u. Künstler, III. p. 501-506.
Impressionisten Gugs-Maud van Gogh, Pissarro-Cézanne, II, Aufl. München
u. Leipzig 1907.
Impressionistische Weltanschauung v. Scheffler, K., Zukunft, XLV. p.
138-147.
Jacob, Les oeuvres burlesques et mystiques de Frère Natorel mort au
Couvent, illustrated with wood cuts by André Dérain; Paris, 1912.
Jacob, Saint Natorel, illustrated with water colors by Pablo Picasso,
Paris, 1911.
Kampf, Im-um die Kunst, Reply to the “Protest by German Artists,”
München, R. Piper & Co., 1911; 8°.
Kandinsky über das Geistige in der Kunst, München 1912, Verlag Piper &
Co.
Kandinsky, Ueber das Geistige in der Kunst, insbesondere in der Malerei,
München, R. Piper & Co., 1912; 8°.
Katalog der Sonderausstellung v. V. van Gogh, Amsterdam, Städt. Museum
1905.
Kritik seiner Arbeiten, Pariser Herbstsalon. S. 47-48, Zeitschrift für
Bildende Kunst, XVII. 1906-07.
Kubisten u. Nazarener, Künstchr., XXIV. p. 113-115.
Kunst, Deutsche und französische, A symposium of German artists, gallery
directors, collectors and authors; München, R. Piper & Co., 1913; 8^o.
Kunst und Künstler, V. p. 339-359, 1907.
Kunst und Künstler, VI. p. 355-376, 1908.
Kunstchr., Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, XIV. p. 420. 1902-03.
Le Fauconnier, Die Auffassung unserer Zeit und das Gemälde, translated
by Gertrude Osthaus in connection with the exposition at the Folkwang
museum in Hagen, Westphalia, München, 1913; 8^o.
Malerische Impressions und Koloristische Rythmus, Beobachtungen über
Malerei der Gegenwart von Wilh. Neimeyer. Sonderbund Ausstellung 1910,
Düsseldorf, mit Abbildungen unter anderen von A. v. Jawlensky, Henri
Matisse, W. Kandinsky.
Marinetti, F. P., Le Futurisme, Tours, 1911; E. Arrauset Cie.
Meier-Graefe, Paul Cézanne, München, 1910, R. Piper & Co.; 4th-6th ed.,
1913.
Neue Kunst, Katalog der II. Gesamtausstellung August-September, 1913.
Hans Goltz, München, Odeonsplatz 1 (mit Abbildungen von Picasso,
Matisse, Kandinsky, Jawlensky).
Noa-Noa-Tagebuch, p. 78-81, p. 125-127, Kunst u. Künstler, VI. p.
160-164, 1908.
Noa-Noa von P. Fechter-Aufenthalt in Tahiti, Kunst für Alle, 08. XXIII.
S. 250-255.
Notiz über Kandinsky, p. 434. Kunst für Alle XXVII.
Notizen eines Malers, Kunst u. Künstler, VII. p. 335-347, 1909.
Paris auf der Juryfreien Kunstchau in Berlin v. J. v. Bülow, Kunstchr.,
XXIV. p. 249-254.
Paul Cézanne v. Julius Meier-Graefe München, 1910, Verlag R. Piper & Co.
Paul Gauguin, Gallerie Miethke, Katalog mit Biogr. von Rudolf Adalbert
Meyer, März-April 1907.
Paul Gauguin, 1847-1903, par Jean de Rotonchamp, Paris chez. Ed. Druet.
Paul Gauguin, v. Dr. Meyer Riefstal, Paris, p. 109-116. Deutsche Kunst
u. Dekoration XXVII, Darmstadt.
Persönliche Erinnerungen an V. van Gogh, E. H. du Quesne, München Piper
1911.
Pratella, Franc, Balita, Musica Futurista per Ontesta, Bologna, F.
Bongiovanni, 1913.
Raphael, Max, Von Monet zu Picasso; Grundzüge einer Aesthetik und
Entwickelung der modernen Malerei, München, Delphin Verlag, 1913; 8^o.
Reiter, Der blaue, Ein Dokument des Expressionismus. Herausgeber:
Kandinsky und Franz Marc, München, R. Piper & Co., 1912; with 34 plates.
Soffici, Ardenzo, Cubismo e oltre, Florence, Libreria della Voce, 1913.
Sydow, Eckart v., Cuno Amiet. Eine Einführung in ein nationales Werk. In
“Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes,” issue 106, Strassburg, 1913; with 11
plates; 4^o.
Ueber Impressionismus von J. Meier-Graefe, p. 145-162, Kunst für Alle,
XXV. 1909 u. 10.
Utitz, Die Grundlagen der jüngsten Kunstbewegung. Ein Vortrag,
Stuttgart, Enke, 1913; 8^o.
v. Meyer Riefstahl, Burlington Magazine, XVIII. p. 91-99. 155-162.
Van Gogh, Vinc., Briefe. Deutsch von N. Mauthner, Berlin, P. Cassirer,
1911; 4th ed.; with 15 drawings; 8^o.
Vincent Van Gogh, München, 1910, R. Piper & Co.; 4th-6th ed., 1912.
Vincent Van Gogh u. Gauguin zum Klassizismus, Kunst u. Künstler, 09,
VIII. p. 86-101.
Vincent Van Gogh von Julius Meier-Graefe, München 1910.
Vom Wert des Neo-Impressionismus von A. L. Plehn, Kunst für Alle, XIX.
p. 514-522.
Von Eugen Delacroix zum Neo-Impressionismus. Einzige deutsche
autorisierte Uebersetzung, Krefeld, 1903, Rheinischer Verlag G. A. Hohns
Söhne.
Von Impressionismus zum Neo-Impressionismus. Autoris. Uebersetzung,
Berlin, Verlag. K. Schnabel.
Von P. Gauguin, Kunst u. Künstler, VIII. p. 579-586.
Von Paul Gauguin, Kunst u. Künstler, VIII. p. 579-586. 1910.
Was ist uns impressionistische Malerei von A. Gold, Deutschland, III. p.
328-342.
Weese, Arth., Ferdinand Hodler, Berlin, 1910; Francke.
Worringer, Wilh., Abstraction und Einfühlung. Ein Beitrag zur
Stilpsychologie, München, Piper, 1911; 3d ed.; 8^o.
Zum Klassizismus von Maurice Denis, Kunst u. Künstler, VIII. p. 86-101,
1910.
ARTICLES.
Alt, Theod., Hodler und seine Zeitgenossen, Der Thürmer, XV,
1912-13, p. 626-37.
Apollinaire, Guill., Réalité, peinture pure, Der Sturm, 1902, No.
138-39.
Apollinaire, Guill., Die moderne Malerei. Uebersetzt von Jean
Jacques, Der Sturm, 1903, No. 148-49.
Avenarius, Von Van Gogh, Kunstwart, XXIV, 1910, I, p. 56-59.
Avenarius, Ferd., Futuristen, Kunstwart, XXV, 1912, III, p. 278-81.
Beckmann, Frz., Gedanken über zeitgemässe und unzeitgemässe Kunst.
A reply to Die neue Malerei, by Frz. Marc., Pan, II, 1, p. 499-502.
Bahne, Adolf, Der Maler Franz Marc, Pan, III, 1913, p. 616-18.
Bender, Ewald, Deutsche Kunst um 1913, Zeitschrift für bildende
Kunst, new series 24, 1912-13, p. 287,302, with 1 illustration.
Bender, Ewald, F. A. Weinzheimer, Zeitschrift f. bildende Kunst,
new series XXIV, 1912-13, p. 305-8, with illustrations.
Benkard, Ernst A., Ferdinand Hodler, Zur Hodlerausstellung im
Frankfurter Kunstverein, Zeitschrift f. bildende Kunst, new series
XXIII, 1911-12, p. 7-12, with illustrations.
Beringer, Jos. Aug., Deutsche Kunstnöte, Süddeutsche Monatshefte,
XI, 1913-14, p. 198-208.
Bernard, Emile, Erinnerungen an Paul Cézanne, Kunst und Künstler,
vol. VI, 1908, p. 421, 475, 521, with illustration.
Biermann, Hans Georg, Bernhard Hoetger, Kunst f. Alle, XXVIII,
1912-13, p. 385-96, with illustrations.
Breuer, Robert, Max Pechstein, Deutsche Kunst u. Dekoration, XXIX,
1911-12, p. 423-36, with illustrations.
Corinth, Lovis, Die neueste Malerei, Pan, II, 1910-11, p. 432-7.
Denis, Maurice, Von Gauguin und Van Gogh zum Klassizismus, Kunst u.
Künstler, Berlin, VIII, 1910, p. 86-101, with illustrations.
Denis, Maurice, Edmund Cross, Kunst u. Künstler, Berlin, IX,
1910-11, p. 294-6.
Dennert, Die Kunst der Urmenschen und der Allermodernsten, Der
Türmer, XVI, 1913, p. 296-301.
Dreyfus, Alb., Paul Cézanne, Zeitschrift f. bildende Kunst, new
series XXIV, 1912-13; p. 197-206, with illustr.
Eisler, Max, Die persönlichen Erinnerungen N. B. Mendes da Costa’s
an seinen Lateinschüler Vincent Van Gogh, Kunst und Künstler, X,
1911-12, p. 98-104, with illustrations.
Fechter, Paul, Die Fortbildungen des Impressionismus, Deutsche
Kunst u. Dekoration, XXIX, 1911-12; p. 299-304.
Fortlage, Arnold, Die internationale Ausstellung des Sonderbundes,
Cicerone IV, 1912, p. 547-56, with illustrations; Kunst f. Alle,
XXVIII, 1912-13, p. 84-93, with illustrations.
Fortlage, Arnold, Georg Minne, Kunst f. Alle, XXVIII, 1912-13; p.
347-53, with illustrations.
Friedeberger, Hans, Zeichnungen von Max Pechstein, with
illustrations, Cicerone, V, 1913, p. 289-91.
Friedrich, Hans, Eine Analyse des Futurismus, Janus (München), II,
1, 1912-13, p. 173-7. Die Hinrichtung Paul Cézanne’s durch Max
Beckmann, Janus, II, 1, 1912-13; p. 362-4.
Futuristen und Genossen bei der Arbeit, Kunstwelt, II, 1912-13;
vol. 1, p. 189-91.
Gauguin, Paul, Vincent Van Gogh, Kunst u. Künstler, Berlin, VIII,
1910; p. 579-86, with 6 illustrations.
Hausenstein, Wilh., Vom Kubismus, Der Sturm, IV, 1913; p. 170-71.
Albert Weisgerber, Zeit im Bilde, XI, 1913; p. 2641-7; with
illustrations. Von der neuen Kunst Zum Sommerschau von 1913 im
Kunstsalon Goltz in München, Zeit im Bild, XI, 1913; p. 2185-92;
with illustrations.
Holl, J. C., Après l’impressionnisme, Physionomie de l’art actuel,
La leçon de l’impressionnisme, XX Siècle, Paris.
Michel, Wilh., Das Weltanschauliche der neuen Malerei, Deutsche
Kunst u. Dekoration, XVII, 1913-14; p. 33-39.
Kandinsky, Ueber Kunstverstehen, Der Sturm, 1912, No. 129;
illustrated.
Kandinsky, Für., Protest, Der Sturm, 1913, Nos. 150-5.
Kandinsky, Malerei als reine Kunst, Der Sturm, 1913; Nos. 178-9.
Klein, Rud., Futuristen, Deutsche Kunst u. Dekoration, XXX, 1912;
p. 274-77.
Kuhn, Alfr., Eduard Mundt, Zeit im Bild, XI, 1903; p. 2999-3003;
illustrated.
Léger, Fern., Les origines de la peinture contemporaine et sa
valeur représentative, Der Sturm, IV, 1913; Nos. 172-73.
Märten, Lu., Vincent Van Gogh, Die Grenzboten, 72, 1913, I, p.
237-43.
Manifest der Futuristen, Der Sturm, 1912, No. 103.
Marc, Franz, Die neue Malerei, Pan II, 1, 1911-12; p. 468-71.
Die konstruktiven Ideen der neuen Malerei, Pan, p. 527-31.
Anti-Beckmann, Pan, p. 555-6.
Markus, S., Die Kunst der Zukunft, Kunst für Alle, XXVIII, 1912-13,
p. 541-8; illustrated.
Meyer-Riefstahl, Rud., Paul Gauguin, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration,
XXVII, 1910-11; p. 109-16; illustrated.
Michel, Wilh., Albert Weisgerber, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration,
XXIX, 1911-12; p. 295-96; illustrated.
Osborn, Max, Bernhard Hoetger, V. Collective Exhibition of Modern
Art by Hans Goltz, Munich, 1913; with many illustrations.
Pechstein, Max, Was ist mit dem Picasso?, Pan, II, i, 1912; p.
665-9.
Rivière, Jacques, Gauguin, translated from the French by Jean
Jacques, Der Sturm, 1912; Nos. 134-5.
Rote, M. K., Pablo Picasso, Kunst für Aile, XXVIII, 1912-13; p.
377-83; illustrated.
Bernhard Hoetger, Der Cicerone, V. 1913; p. 197-203; illustrated.
Bewegungen in der neuen Kunst und ihre Aussichten, Kunst für Alle,
XXVIII, 1912-13; p. 292-305; illustrated.
Rovere, Jean, Paul Cézanne; Erinnerungen, Kunst und Künstler, X,
1911-12; p. 477-86; illustrated.
Salmon, André, La jeune peinture française, Paris, 1912.
Sch., K. E., Kubisten und Nazarener, Kunstchronik, new series,
XXIV, 1912-13; p. 113-4.
Schaefer, W., Bernhard Hoetger, Die Rheinlande, XVII, 1909; p.
13-14; illustrated.
Die junge und die jüngste Malerei. (Glossen zur
Sonderbund-Ausstellung in Köln.) Vincent Van Gogh; Cézanne; Der
blaue Reiter, Deutsche Monatshefte, Düsseldorf, XII, 1912; p.
284-317-355.
Schmidt, Max, Finke, Igc., Weiss, Konr., Eine Ausstellung des
Sonderbundes (at Düsseldorf), Hochland, XIII, 1, 1910-11; p. 245
and 516-17.
Schmidt, Paul Ferd., Ueber die Expressionisten, Deutsche
Monatshefte, XI, 1911; p. 427-9.
Die internationale Ausstellung des Sonderbundes in Köln 1912,
Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, new series XXIII, 1911-12; p.
229-38; illustrated.
Schoenlank, M. R., Brief an Pechstein, Pan, II, 2, 1912; p. 738-9.
Schulze, Otto, Bildhauer Bernhard Hoetger, Deutsche Kunst und
Dekoration, XXVII, 1910-11; p. 116-23; illustrated.
Storck, Willy F., Ausstellung des deutschen Künstlerbundes in
Mannheim 1913, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, XXVII, 1913-14; p.
9-27; illustrated.
St. K., Die Zukünftler, Der Türmer, XIV, 1912, II; p. 422-4.
Terentius, Gott schütz’ die Kunst, Ein Faschingskapitel, Die
Kunstwelt, I, 1912; p. 353-60; illustrated.
Warstat, W., Die Futuristen, Die Grenzboten, 71, 1912, III; p.
210-18.
Walser, Rob., Zu der Arleserin von Van Gogh, Kunst und Künstler, X,
1911-12; p. 442-5.
Werth, Léon, Aristide Maissol, Kunst für Alle, XXVI, 1910-11; p.
276-82; illustrated.
Zukunft, Die, der deutschen Kunst. Eine Umfrage, Die Kunstwelt,
vol. 3 (1913), first issue; p. 19-33. Contains the answers given by
German artists and other well known personages to the following
questions put to them by the editor of the Kunstwelt:
1. How are you impressed by the creations of the latest schools of
art--the primitivists, the cubists, the futurists, the
expressionists?
2. Do you believe that in these directions or in one of them the
future of German art must be looked for?
REPRODUCTIONS OF FUTURIST AND CUBIST PAINTERS--PORTFOLIOS:
Cézanne Mappe; München; R. Piper & Co., 1912; 15 reprod.
Ehrenstein, A., Tubutsch. 12 drawings by O. Kokoschka. Wien; Jokoda
& Siegel, 1911.
Engert, Seven Drawings; H. P. S. Bachmann, 1913; 8°.
Gauguin Mappe, München; Piper, 1913. 15 reproductions.
Genin, Robert, Figürliche Kompositionen; 20 original drawings on
stone. München, Delphin Verlag, 1912.
Hodlermappe, München; Piper, 1913.
Kandinsky Album, 1901-1913; 80 full page reproductions of paintings
by Kandinsky with text written by himself. Berlin, Verlag der
Sturm, 1914.
Kokoschka, Oskar, Dramen und Bilder. Leipzig, Kurt Wolff, 1913.
Kokoschka, Oskar, 20 drawings. Berlin, Verlag der Sturm, 1913.
Reinhardt, Sig., Simson; 43 pen and ink sketches. München, 1913.
Schwalbach, Karl, 10 original lithographic drawings. München,
Delphin Verlag, 1913.
Senna, 15 original lithographic drawings by the artists’
association Senna. München, Delphin Verlag, 1912.
Van Gogh Mappe, München; Piper, 1912.
INDEX
Academic attitude, 61
Advertising, art of, 171-172
Age and new experiments, 66
Alexander and Sargent, 199;
Van Rees, 199;
post-Impressionistic, 199
America and virile Impressionism, 191;
new movement in 48;
what is happening in, 191
Americans, as dreamers, 192
Anderson, 1
Apollinaire, 67, 81
Arrangements, 14
Arteries, sclerosis of, 62
Archipanko, 204;
his Family Life, 205
Architecture, sky-scrapers, 199
Art, archaic and primitive, 78;
attitude of observer and producer, 87;
attitude of observer, 127;
conflict between old and new, 156;
continuous, 110;
creative, 30;
creative work by certain Americans, 196-197;
criticism, professional, 9-10;
currents in, 33;
decorative, correspondence regarding cubist pictures, 50-52;
definition of, 87-88;
expression of inner self, 112;
extravagances in, 34;
evolution of new movement, 11;
gains from controversy, 58, 59;
in offices, 161;
is cubism art? 86-87;
its relation to life, 198-199;
jargon, 9-10; laws of, 106;
modern expression of inner self, 11;
modern pictures in newspaper office, 160;
movement from studio to nature and back again, 14, 15;
movements from perfections to imperfections, 9;
movements of recent years, 60;
movements in, 8;
new movement a spiritual offering, 115;
new movements in relation to origin of art, 111;
new movements profoundly interesting, 108;
objective, 90;
on the horse-block, 7;
part played by subject,
159;
philosophy of movements in, 20;
private galleries graveyards of, 160;
revolution in, 3;
ridicule of great men by their own generations, 8;
sign of life is flux, 60;
subjective, 90;
thrives on controversy, 1;
ugliness in new pictures, 154;
works of observation and works of imagination, 14-15
Barbizon school and later developments, 11-12;
imaginative, 30;
its method, 15
Barnard, 203
“Bathsheba,” record of sales, 6, 7
Baum, 111
Beautiful, our notions of the, 155-156
(see also Ugliness)
Bechtejeff, 47, 111
Bell, Mrs., 48
Bellows, 1
Berlin, new movement in, 47
Bernard, 36, 43
Blaue Reiters, organization of, 112
Blue Riders, 55
Boccioni, 179;
exhibition in Paris, 184-185
Borghlum, 203
Borgmeyer, 21
Bossi, 111
Bourget, Paul, style obsolete, 170
Bracque, 47, 112
Brancusi, 182, 204;
article on his sculpture, 183;
“Sleeping Muse,” 182-183
Bloch, 115
Books in French and German, 107
Breton, protest against Cubist pictures, 51
Brinley, 1
Browning clubs, 108
Browning, ridicule of, 60
Burljuk, 47, 112
Cardoza, 200
Carter, 64
Cézanne and Cubism, 43, 81;
and Gauguin, 42;
leaders of Post-Impressionism, 28;
a painter’s painter, 209;
and substance of things, 35;
a substantial Impressionist, 208-210;
and the Impressionists, 35;
career of, 36;
compared with Monet, 195;
method of work, 36-37;
scientific theories, 43
Chabaud and Millet, 15
Charmy, 200
_Chicago Tribune_, article on London Exhibition, 55
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 9
Chilton-Brock, 30, 31, 40
Chinanpin, 147-149
Chinese art, blue hair, 151;
esoragoto, 147
Chinese painting, 30;
four warnings, 153;
perspective in, 78;
principles of, 147-149
Cinematograph, secret of popularity, 170-171
Civilization, material and spiritual, 144
Clarke, 1
Color, compositions of, 91;
effects in theater, 142-143;
harmonies, 12, 95, 146;
in offices, 162;
music, 140-146 (see Music);
notes of in still lifes, 145
Colors used arbitrarily, 151-152;
used constructively, 37-38, 42;
used decoratively, 93, 144-5;
used imitatively, 93, 146
Color waves, 143
Columbian Exposition, 1, 3
Compenetration of planes in Futurism, 185-186
Compositionalists, 13
Compositional painting, 124-128;
no radical departure, 137
Conservative and radical tendencies in exhibitions, 57, 58
Convictions, the courage of, 7-8
Corot, ridiculed in France, 8
Courbet and followers, 11-12, 17
Cramer, 49
Creative art, 30
Critic, the ideal art critic, 134
Criticism of great masters, 155-156;
rage against great painters, 11, 12;
two comments, 214-220;
violent, 61
Cubism, and broad technic, 80;
and Futurism, 173-174;
and geometrical figures, 80-81;
a misleading term, 82;
and sincerity, 158;
and the substance of things, 98;
attitude of observer, 32;
derivation of name, 67;
development and exhibitions of, 67-68;
drawings by first year art students, 73;
effect on American art, 109;
explanation of by Picabia, 95-98;
explained by music, 106;
Gleizes and Metzinger’s book, 103;
is it art? 86-87;
its technical side, 72;
largely esoragoto, 158;
no object to help out picture, 159;
not a plea for, 65;
“Nude Descending the Stairs,” 164;
one form of prevailing reaction, 31;
significance of new movement, 66;
the different tendencies described, 68-70;
the elemental in, 78;
the theory of, 90;
transparency of objects, 180-182;
two extremes, 69;
what is it? 60;
when a puzzle, 69;
will pass away,67
Cubists, American, 48;
and El Greco, 110;
and certain American painters, 60;
child-like faith of, 109;
esoragoto, 147;
free to express themselves in their own way, 103-107;
getting away from cubes and angles, 82-83;
impression of New York, 96-97;
in business or profession, 62;
more favorably considered, 55, 56;
mostly young men, 108-109;
named by Matisse, 22;
nothing strange in their theories, 63;
protest against pictures, 50;
quotation from Plato, 102;
see nothing in Futurism, 59;
too serious, 158;
understanding them, 83-85
Dabo, 1
Dasburg, 49
Davidson, 1, 203
Davies, 1, 201;
a creative painter, 196
Decoration and pictures, 159;
of offices, 162-163
Delauney, 47
Denissow, 47
Derain, 28, 47, 112;
“Forest at Martigues,” 69
DeZayas, 98
Dove, 48
Drawing, modern men are masters of, 130
Dresden, new movement in, 47
DuBois, 1
Duchamp, “Chess Players,” 68, 71;
“King and Queen,” 70, 71;
“Nude Descending the Stairs,” 164
Dufy, 47
Durand-Ruel, 22, 23, 24
Durer, elemental lines in human figure, 73-77
Duret, 12, 21
Emotions, painting of, 11, 92, 102;
sclerosis of, 62
England, new movement in, 47-48
Erbsloh, 111
Esoragoto, 147-153;
all great paintings are, 150
Etchells, 48
Exhibitions at 291 Fifth Ave., 211-213;
by Impressionists, 21-26;
independent, 194;
Morgan, pictures in Metropolitan Museum, 198-199
Extremists in art, 2-3
Fauvism, what it means, 47
Ferguson, 47
Ferment of new ideas, 4
Fiction, future development of, 171
Fischer, 38, 72, 112
Freedom to express one’s self, 103-107
French, 204
Friesz, 28, 47
Fry, Roger, 48, 116;
article on Brancusi, 183
Fry, S. E., 1
Futurism, 164-189;
development of, 165;
exhibition of sculpture, 184-185;
first exhibition in London, 175;
manifestoes of, 165-180;
manifestoes not to be accepted too literally, 188-189;
pictures and theories extreme, 166;
sculpture, 182-186;
theory of, 165;
theory of literature, 167-172;
theory of sculpture, 185-186;
transparency of objects, 176-179, 180-182
Futurists, and reaction, 32;
patriotism of, 189-196;
see nothing in Cubism, 59
Gauguin, 37;
a dreamer, 42;
and Strindberg, 41-42;
career, 40-42
Genin, 47
Gill, 48
Girieud, 47, 111
Glackens, 1
Gleizes and Metzinger’s book, 103
Gleizes, “Man on the Balcony,” 70
Gore, 48
Grant, 48
Graveyards of art, private galleries as, 160
Great artist, quality of, 26, 27
Greek painting, portraits, 113
Greek sculpture, painted, 152
Grieg, 106-107
Haller, 112
Hearn collection in Metropolitan Museum, 198-199
Hegel, philosophy of art, 20
Henri, 1;
a virile Impressionist, 193
Hoetger, 112
Hofer, 111
Hokusai, terra cotta horse, 152
Homer, a virile Impressionist, 192;
absorbed his subjects, 149;
his technic, 79;
work compared with recent pictures, 198
Ideals, demand for, 31
Ideas, accepting ready made, 64
Imagination and observation in art, 14-15
Impressionism (see Virile Impressionism);
American, 193;
and Monet, 34;
definition of term, 28;
different forms of, 195-196;
growth of, 19;
of Les Fauves, 33;
method of, 16;
realistic, and the great portrait painters, 208;
realistic leads to, 207-208;
substantial leads to, 208-210;
substantial, leads to Post-Impressionism, 210;
summing up of, 207;
superficial leads to, 207
Impressions, reaction to, 62-63
Impressionists, 11;
and Futurists, we all are at times, 62;
derivation of name, 21;
early exhibitions of, 21-26
Impressionist pictures bought by Chicago woman, 27
International Exhibition, 1, 3, 4, 26;
coincided with other upheavals in life, 65;
effect of on society, 7;
indignation of older men, 194;
no Futurist pictures, 164;
plenty of ugly pictures in, 157;
younger men curious, 194-195
Jakulof, 47
James, Henry, style obsolete, 168
Japanese art esoragoto, 147;
painting bamboo forest, 150;
sumi, 150;
perspective in, 78;
principles of, 147-149
Jargon in art and other departments of thought, 10
Jawlensky, 47, 110, 111, 113
Johnson, 49
_Journal_, Reno, Nevada, editorial from, 217
Kahler, 112
Kanabe, 47
Kandinsky, 111, 112;
and Turner, 29;
article in “Der Blaue Reiter,” 131-135;
estimate by other artists, 138, 139;
extreme in theories and work, 115;
his improvisations, 116;
his pictures in London exhibition, 116;
his writings, 107;
Improvisations, 124-128;
letters from, 124-128;
personal letter regarding his development, 135-137;
praised by a critic, 116-117;
spiritual values and necessities, 133-135;
qualifications and theories, 117-128
Kanoldt, 111
Kantsch, 47
Koga, 111, 114
Kramer, 1
Kroll, a virile Impressionist, 195, 196
Kuhn, 1
Kuznezoff, 47
Lempué, letter from, 50
Larionoff, 47
Laurencin, 47
Laughing at what is strange, 63
Laughter at the pictures, 7-8
Laurvik, 86
Lawson, 1
Lee, 49
Le Fauconnier, 111
LeFitz Simons, 20
Lehmbruck, 182
Les Fauves, 33, 37
Lewis, 47, 48
Lewis, 48
Lie, 1
Life and rhythm, 8
Life, romantic and realistic periods of, 18-19
Light, painting of, 11
Light, waves, 143
Literature, objectionable books, 157
Lloyd, George, 62
London, Allied Artists’ Exhibition, 183;
first exhibition of Futurism, 175
Luks, 1
MacMonies, 204
Manet, a realistic Impressionist, 207-210;
and followers, 11-12;
studio painter, 17
Marc, 112, 115
Marinetti, 165
Marquet, 47
Maschkoff, 47
Materialism and idealism, 18-19
Matisse, 28, 37;
career of, 43-47;
element of ugliness in, 157;
inevitable after Bouguereau, 157;
“Madras Rouge,” 113;
sculpture, 202;
theories of, 44-47
McFee, 49
McRae, 1
Metropolitan Museum, 26
Metzinger, 47
Millet, a subject painter, 14;
and Chabaud, 15;
and others ridiculed by Paris, 8;
manner of working, 16
Miller, Kenneth, a creative painter, 196
Mogilewsky, 112
Monet, a superficial Impressionist, 207-210;
and painting of light, 29;
and surface of things, 35
Morgan Exhibition in Metropolitan Museum, 198-199
Mourey, protest against Cubist pictures, 52
Movements in art, 8, 19;
never devoid of force, 53;
new in music, drama, etc., 30-31
Munich, atmosphere of compared with that of Paris, 111;
new movement in, 47;
Secessionists, 55;
the new art in, 110
Münter, 111, 112, 114
Müther, 16
Music and painting, development of, 92-94
Music, changes of appreciations in, 9;
Chinese, 128-129;
color organ, 140-146;
Greek, 128-129;
imitative, 106-107;
in color, 140-146;
of Schoenberg, 9;
Oriental, 128-129;
Russian Ballet, 9;
sound waves, 143;
understood in different ways by different hearers, 84-85;
used to explain, 106-107
Myers, 1
Nankivell, 1
National Academy in New York conservative, 57
Nature is living spirit, 134
Neo-Cubists, 67
Neo-Impressionists, 13;
logical outcome of Impressionism, 27
New and strange, average man bewildered by, 153
New ideas and work, 5
Newspaper, pictures in editorial room of, 160
New York, impressions by a Cubist, 96-97
Nieder, 112
Nocturnes, 14
Objects flow through one another (see chapter on Cubism)
Objective art, 90
Observation and imagination in art, 14-15
Offices, decoration of, 162;
pictures in, 161
Official exhibitions and independent, value of, 57
Old and new men, 4, 5
Old masters and the new art, 110
Old masters, works belong to public, 6
Opera not understood, 83-84
Orphists, 60;
theory of, 90-91
Organ, for color music, 140-146
Pach, 1
Painters like inventors, 19-20
Painting, a terrible problem, 2;
and music, development of, 92-94;
and sculpture compared, 187-188;
in France, 19th century, 12
Paris compared with Munich, 111
Peploe, 47
Perfections of Impressionism to imperfections of Post-Impressionism, 9
Perfection unattainable, 1
Periods in work of artist, 20
Photo-Secession Gallery, 1
Picabia, calls Cubism a misnomer, 82;
comparison made by, 91-92;
“Dance at the Spring,” 68;
explanation of abstract painting, 95-97;
impressions of New York, 96-97
Picasso, 47, 112;
changes in style, 67;
his development, 100-101;
his theory, 98-100;
“Woman and the Pot of Mustard,” 68;
“Woman with a Mandolin,” 123
Pictures, easel, 144
Planes, as used by Picasso, 101;
drawing in, 73-78;
illustrated in modelling an orange, 80
Plato, quotation from, 102
Pointillists, 28
Porter, 1
Portrait painting and cubism, 159;
and the modistes, 95;
the average, 159
Post-Cubists, 67
Post-Impressionism, 11;
aim of, 30;
and reaction, 30;
fundamentally different from Impressionism, 27, 28;
what it means, 11;
Exhibition in London, 55
Prendergast, 1
Prices, absurd for old masters, 6-7;
of famous Impressionist pictures, 22-26
Private buyer, his opportunity, 6
Progressive Political Convention, 4
Progressive Political Party, 66
Protest, a futile, 50
Public instinctively feels, 158
Public, normal attitude toward new pictures, 156
Reaction in art, 2
Realism and Courbet, 12
Redon, 47
Rembrandt, sale of “Bathsheba,” 6-7;
overpriced, 60
Resilient, men who are, 62
Revolutionary movements, interest in, 66
Ridicule, of famous Impressionists, 22-26;
of the strange, 65;
which greeted great masters, 21
Rimington, 140-146
Rodin, 35, 182;
attitude towards sculpture, 203;
his Balzac purely Post-Impressionistic, 79;
his technic, 79
Rohland, 49
Romanticism, 12
Royal Academy in London conservative, 57
Rousseau, 37
Rouault, 112
Russia, new movement in, 47
Russian Ballet, 9
Ruskin, opinion of Wagner, 61
Russolo, 179
Rutter, 3, 28, 42
Sacharoff, 111
Salmon, 43
Salon d’Automne, 54;
exhibition 1912, 50
Salon des Refuses, 11
Salon d’Independants, plan of, 56
Salons grow conservative, 57
Sargent, a virile Impressionist, 193;
and Alexander, 199;
and Whistler, 193;
his technic, 79;
tired of portrait painting, 102
Sarjan, 47
Schalowsky, 47
Schereczowa, 47
Schnabel, 111
Schools, effect of, 137, 138
Sculpture, 202-205; (see Futurism);
American, 203-204;
compared with painting, 187-188;
creative works, 204-205;
developments in, 202-203;
Futurist (see Futurism);
Greek, 203;
Matisse, 202;
observation and imagination in, 204;
painted, 152;
primitive element in, 206;
Rodin, 203;
spiritual element in, 205;
work of Brancusi and Archipanko, 204
Secessionists, Munich, 55
Segonzac, 200
Seguin, 42
Shaw, Bernard, a reactionary, 170
Sky-scrapers, 199
Sloan, 1
Société des Artistes Francais, 53-54
Société des Artistes Independents, 54
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 53-54
Sound waves, 143
Sousa Cardoza, 85
St. Gaudens, 204
Stieglitz, 1, 116;
his exhibitions, 211-213
Still lifes, 94, 145
Story-telling pictures, 14
Strauss and other composers, 9
Strindberg and Gauguin, 41-42
Striving as an element of vitality, 89
Studios, art and nature art, 14;
mostly ugly, 95
Subjective art, 90
Subjects in painting, 13-14
Substance of things difficult to paint, 98
Sudbinin, 112
Symphonies, 14
Synchronists, 60
Taste, attitude of public normal, 156;
change in public taste, 55-56;
changes from decade to decade, 155-156
Taylor, 1
Theater, Cubists, Futurists, etc., in, 64;
color effects in, 142-143;
future development of play, 170-171
Things, painting of, 11
_Times_, London, editorial from, 214
Times ripe for a change in art, 9
Tolerance, a plea for, 65
_Tribune_, Chicago, article on London Exhibition, 55
Tucker, 1
Turner and light effects, 28;
forerunner of Impressionism, 13;
his strange pictures, 29;
ridiculed in England, 8
Ugliness, 154-163;
a matter of taste, 154-156;
and superb technic, 156;
a realism, 158;
a touchstone for taste, 157;
great masters thought ugly, 155-156;
in sculpture, 205-206;
Matisse, 157
Van Dongen, 47, 112
Van Gogh, 37;
letters of, 40
Verhoeven, 47
Virile Impressionism, 191-201;
glorious future for, 209-210;
material and practical, 192;
outcome of substantial Impressionism, 209-210
Visual music, 117
Vitality, a new art, 154
Vlaminck, 47, 112, 200
Wagner and Ruskin, 61;
Ruskin’s ridicule, 60
Werefkin, 47, 111, 114
Whistler, 4, 11;
as a Post-Impressionist, 18;
as an Impressionist, 18;
and Sargent and realistic Impressionism, 208;
compared with Sargent, 193;
forerunner of Post-Impressionism, 13;
his literal moods, 17;
master of technic, 14;
on level with Chinese masters, 103;
suit against Ruskin, 13
Whitman, ridicule of, 60
Wittenstein, 111
Young, 1
Youth, and new experiments, 66;
radicalisms of, 61
Zak, 200
Zorach, 49
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The names of the men who, in a spirit of disinterested devotion
to art, organized this exhibition should not be forgotten. They were:
Arthur B. Davies, J. Mowbray Clarke, Elmer L. McRae, Walt Kuhn, Karl
Anderson, George Bellows, D. Putnam Brinley, Leon Dabo, Jo Davidson,
Guy Pene DuBois, Sherry E. Fry, William J. Glackens, Robert Henri, E.
A. Kramer, Ernest Lawson, Jonas Lie, George B. Luks, Jerome Myers,
Frank A. Nankivell, Bruce Porter, Walter Pach, Maurice Prendergast,
John Sloan, Henry Fitch Taylor, Allen Tucker, Mahonri Young.
For detailed account of earlier exhibitions held by Mr. Alfred
Stieglitz--the real pioneer--in the Photo-Secession Gallery, 291 Fifth
Ave., New York, see Appendix.¹
[2] “Revolution in Art,” by Frank Rutter, pp. 14, 15.
[3] Five short pieces of the music by Arnold Schoenberg were played for
the first time in Chicago, December 31, 1913, by the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra.
“Had Mr. Richard Swiveller been present at the performance of the new
Stravinsky-Nijinsky ballet, ‘Le Sacre du Printemps,’ at Drury Lane
on Friday night he would certainly have pronounced it ‘a staggerer.’
Both the music of M. Stravinsky and the choreography of M. Nijinsky
are more defiantly anarchical than anything we have ever had before,
and the purport of it all was a dark mystery, even though Mr. Edwin
Evans was deputed to throw light on it in a long explanatory prologue.
As every one knows by this time, M. Nijinsky is the apostle of a sort
of ‘post-impressionist’ or ‘Cubist’ revolution of the dance, in which
mere gracefulness is ruthlessly sacrificed to significance and force of
expression, and everything is stated in terms of symbolism, and in the
new ballet he seems to have carried his theories into the most extreme
practice.... M. Stravinsky seems as determined to make the hearer sit
up as his colleague. Save that he condescends to regular rhythms, his
music is the last word in emancipation from form and the cacophony of
it is at times distressing.”--(London Sunday Times, July 13, 1913, from
its article on the new Russian ballet, the sensation of the season.)
[4] “Manet and the French Impressionists,” by Theodore Duret,
Introduction.
[5] Testimony of Whistler in suit of “Whistler v. Ruskin.”
[6] How little the world cared for Millet when he lived is a matter of
history. He painted his greatest pictures in a room without a fire, in
straw shoes, and with a horse blanket on his shoulders, and often he
and his wife went without food. “All his efforts to exhibit in Paris
were in vain. Even in 1859, ‘Death and the Woodcutter’ was rejected by
the Salon. The public laughed, being accustomed to peasants in comic
opera, and, at best, his pictures were honored by a caricature in a
humorous paper.” His pictures brought from fifty to sixty dollars.
[7] “History of Modern Painting,” Richard Muther, Vol. II, pp. 487-8.
[8] “The New Movement in Art from a Philosophical Standpoint,” by Theo.
LeFitz Simons.
[9] See “Manet and the French Impressionists,” by Duret, p. 112 _et
seq._, and a readable article, “The Master Impressionists,” by C. L.
Borgmeyer, in “Fine Arts Journal” for March, 1913.
[10] April 25, 1874.
[11] “Library Gazette,” May 14, 1842, p. 331.
[12] “Athenaeum,” May 14, 1842, p. 433.
[13] “Revolution in Art,” by Frank Rutter, p. 17, 18.
[14] The interest expressed in much impressionist painting is only an
interest of curiosity. The painter represents facts that he has only
just noticed. He is like a clever journalist who makes an article
out of his first observations of a new country. But the aim of the
Post-Impressionist is to substitute the deeper and more lasting
emotional interest for the interest of curiosity.
Like the great Chinese artists, they have tried to know thoroughly
what they paint before they begin to paint it, and out of the fulness
of their knowledge to choose only what has an emotional interest for
them. Their representations have the brevity and concentrated force of
the poet’s descriptions. He does not go out into the country with a
note-book and then versify all that he has observed. His descriptions
are often empty of fact, just because he only tells us what is of
emotional interest to himself and relevant to the subject of his poem;
and they are justified, not by the information they convey, but by
the emotion they communicate through the rhythm of sound and words.
The Post-Impressionists try to represent as the poet describes. They
try to give every picture an emotional subject-matter and to make all
representation relevant to it.
“The Post-Impressionists,” by A. Chilton-Brock, “Burlington Magazine,”
January, 1911.
[15] “The Post-Impressionists,” by A. Chilton-Brock, “Burlington
Magazine,” January, 1911.
[16] In another book, “The New Competition,” the writer has attempted
this in relation to business and economics.
[17] “Souvenirs Sur Paul Cézanne,” by Emile Bernard, 1912.
[18] “Das Neue Bild,” Otto Fischer, 11-12. Several of the half-tone
reproductions which we use are from this work on Munich art.
[19] “The Post-Impressionists,” by A. Chilton-Brock, “Burlington
Magazine,” January, 1911.
[20] “Revolution in Art,” by Frank Rutter, p. 27.
[21] “Paul Gauguin,” by Michael Puy, “L’Art Décoratif,” April, 1911.
[22] “Revolution in Art,” by Frank Rutter, 32-33. Now that the
great Swedish dramatist, and pessimist, is becoming known to the
English-speaking world, these words of Gauguin’s are singularly
interesting--and just.
[23] See “Paul Gauguin,” by Armand Seguin, “L’Occident,” March, April,
and May, 1903.
[24] “Souvenirs of Paul Cézanne,” by Emile Bernard, p. 36.
[25] See “Laws of Japanese Painting,” Henry P. Bowie, by long odds the
best book in English on the subject.
[26] See “La Jeune Peinture Française,” pas. André Salmon, pp. 18, 19.
[27] “La Jeune Peinture Française,” André Salmon, p. 19.
[28] From an article and interview by C. T. MacChesney, printed in the
“New York Times,” March 9, 1913.
[29] See “Le Jeune Peinture Française,” André Salmon, 1912.
[30] “Der Blaue Reiter,” p. 5.
[31] See “Der Blaue Reiter,” pp. 17, 18.
[32] “L’Art Décoratif,” Nov. 1912.
[33] See “The New Spirit in Drama and Art,” by Huntley Carter.
[34] This and the following chronological information are from “Les
Peintres ‘Cubistes,’” by Guillaume Apollinare, 22 _et seq._
[35] “Les Peintres ‘Cubistes,’” pp. 24-26.
[36] “Das Neue Bild,” Otto Fischer, pp. 12-13.
[37] See “The Mask,” Vol. VI, pp. 64-75.
[38] “Les Peintres ‘Cubistes,’” Guillaume Apollinare, p. 15.
[39] “Is It Art? Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism,” by J. N.
Laurvik. The sub-title is obviously confusing, since Post-Impressionism
includes all the developments following Impressionism.
[40] “Delight; the Soul of Art,” p. 9 et seq.
[41] “Delight; the Soul of Art,” lecture V, “Delight in Labor.”
[42] From “An Interview with Francois Picabia,” in the “New York
Tribune.”
[43] J. N. Laurvik, in “Boston Evening Transcript.”
[44] “Cubism,” Gleizes and Metzinger (Eng. Edition).
[45] “Das Neue Bild,” by Otto Fischer, pp. 22, 23.
[46] “Das Neue Bild,” p. 34.
[47] It was purchased by Mr. Alfred Stieglitz.
[48] Roger Fry in “The Nation,” August 2, 1913.
[49] Second edition, Munich, R. Piper & Co., 1912.
[50] “Der Sturm,” Berlin.
[51] See pages 87-88 for quotation from “Delight; the Soul of Art.”
[52] It should be stated that the brilliant colors of the original are
very inadequately shown in the reproduction for the reason the painting
is so large it does not reproduce well so small.
[53] “The History of Music,” Emil Nauman, Vol. 1, p. 7 _et seq._
[54] See “Sensations of Tone,” Helmholtz, Eng., Edit., p. 258.
[55] Helmholtz, p. 258.
[56] Ibid., p. 265.
[57] For a scientific investigation of Siamese and Japanese scales, see
additions to English edition of Helmholtz, “Sensation of Tone,” p. 556.
[58] “History of Music,” Nauman, Vol. I, p. 10.
[59] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 12.
[60] By Mr. A. W. Rimington, Professor of Fine Arts at Queen’s College,
London. See his book, “Color Music.”
[61] “On the Laws of Japanese Painting,” by Bowie, p. 55.
[62] “On the Basis of Japanese Painting,” Bowie, pp. 77-79.
[63] Signor Marinetti is the founder of the school; he is not a
painter, but a writer, editor of “Poesia.” He is a young man and
is followed by a small band of young enthusiastic writers, poets,
musicians, painters, sculptors, whose innovations strike even the
cubists as wild extravagances. In fact, Futurism and Cubism have
very little in common except innovation; both are revolutionary but
otherwise diametrically opposed in many of their aims and theories.
[64] Before seeing any of the Futurist literature and influenced only
by developments in the printing of newspapers and periodicals in
America, the writer caused a book on an economic subject to be printed
in such a manner that, so far as possible, each page displayed on
its face its contents. The attempt was made to so break up the pages
and so use italics and capitals that the task of the reader would
be lightened. The attempt attracted the very favorable attention of
reviewers, several remarking that “the arts of the advertiser had been
used to display the ideas”--and that was true.
[65] From an article by Ray Nyst, a Belgian critic in “La Belgique
Artistique et Libraire.”
[66] Writer in “The Times-Democrat,” New Orleans.
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