Part 15

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

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

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

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.