Part 3

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

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.

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.

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.

* * * * *