Part 13

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.

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.

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

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.

* * * * *