Part 16

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.