Part 6

The trouble with most of us is that even when we do react to new impressions and experience new emotions we are afraid to admit it. If any one of us, while alone in a museum, happened to run across a strange painting or a strange piece of sculpture--say a Javanese or a cubist production--we would not burst out laughing any more than we would laugh at some of the archaic sculptures and primitive works that are found in every great collection. On the contrary, we would probably study it with good healthy curiosity. But when the crowd is about we are afraid to express our curiosity, we are afraid to be honestly and genuinely interested, so we take refuge in laughter, it is so much easier to mask our ignorance with ridicule than confess it by frankly asking for information.

The man who does not understand a play or a book always condemns it.

* * * * *

It would not be difficult to pick out among one’s business acquaintances those who are conservative, that is, academic, and those who are inventive, speculative, venturesome, and so on to the “wild enthusiasts,” “crazy fellows,” who are always doing the unexpected; failing often but sometimes succeeding so brilliantly the world follows in their footsteps.

* * * * *

There is nothing strange about the Cubists--except their pictures. Their pictures strike us as strange because we do not understand them, but if they were simply trying to do what thousands of inventors are trying to do the world over, namely, devise something new to meet the needs of mankind we would laugh at them no more than--and just as much as--the world laughed at the Wright brothers when they were working on the flying machine.

There are romanticists, realists, impressionists, futurists, cubists, in the theater.

The romantic play is an old, but still delightful story. We have had realism on the stage so long it has become almost academic. Just now there is coming from the Scandinavian countries and from Germany and Russia a form of dramatic representation that is essentially Cubist, Futurist, and Orphist in its expression.[33]

This ferment of new ideas is very disturbing to men who are afraid of change, who favor things as they are, who like to go to bed at the same hour and get up at the same hour, to do today what they did yesterday. But the new ideas will not down; they are constantly breaking out in unexpected places and while they may seem to be different ideas when expressed in music, painting, sculpture, poetry, architecture, from those expressed in science, religion, politics, social reform, and business generally, they are not; they are all fundamentally the same, namely, they are the ideas of a progress so rapid and radical it may be revolutionary and in a measure destructive.

* * * * *

In the very nature of things it is not given to many men to be receptive to new ideas in many lines, for that implies thinking for themselves in many lines. The more intense and advanced a man is in one line of thought, the more apt he is to accept ready made the ideas of others in other subjects. It is a saving of time for the radical scientist to accept his politics and religion ready made from those who devote their time to those matters--the scientist does not always do so, but often when he thinks he is asserting his independence by rejecting current beliefs he is doing so without any real ideas and convictions of his own.

What has been said so far has been a plea for tolerance, for a sober suppression of hasty judgment in the presence of the strange.

Few men seem able to control their resentments and risibilities in the presence of paintings that seem to contradict all the teachings and traditions of art; but because they do _seem_ to stand in opposition to all we have been taught to believe, they are all the more worthy our most serious consideration. It is the man who challenges and denies who stirs other men to think _for themselves_. That is the chief value of the cubist paintings--they compel us to _think for ourselves_, to take a careful inventory of our stock of stereotyped notions; with the result that while we may not accept the theories of the Cubists, we cannot fail to readjust our own notions on a broader basis.

* * * * *

I would be very sorry if any reader should take up this volume under the impression it is a plea for Cubism or any other “ism” in either art or life. If it is a plea for anything, it is for _tolerance and intelligent receptivity_, for an attitude of sympathetic appreciation toward _everything that is new and strange and revolutionary in life_. Not that we will necessarily end by accepting the new and the strange and the revolutionary, but we cannot get the good there may be in them unless our attitude is one of sympathetic as well as critical receptivity.

* * * * *

It is something more than a mere coincidence that the upheaval in the art world has paralleled the upheaval in the political world. The exhibitions of extreme modern pictures were first held in England just when extreme radical theories were gaining the ascendency. The International Exhibition in America followed hot in the footsteps of the split in the Republican party and the triumph of the Democratic along lines so progressive as to seem almost socialistic.

The artists who organized the exhibition did not realize it, but they were animated by precisely the same motive that animated the organizers of the Progressive party--an irresistible desire for a change.

* * * * *

Youth gazes curiously at the experiment--painting, poem, play--from which age turns in anger.

Cubist paintings interest the young; they irritate the old.

Nothing keeps a man young so effectually as a vivid and sympathetic interest in _every_ new and seemingly revolutionary movement.

* * * * *

People who looked at the cubist paintings and laughed did so through ignorance; the sad part was that many frankly said they did not care to understand; not a few insisted the paintings were quite without meaning, utterly devoid of sense.

In other words, the public, day after day and week after week, struggled and paid to see works that were _meaningless_!

Painters, sculptors, critics, argued and fought over canvases _devoid of significance_! A paradox! For if _devoid of significance_, why should the world of artists, critics, writers, argue, swear, and fight over them?

The question answers itself; the trouble is the works _do_ possess a significance, a significance far beyond the merits of any particular one, far beyond the merits of cubism itself; they are significant of the spirit of change that is within and about us, the spirit of unrest, of the striving, of the searching for greater and more beautiful things.

Cubism will pass away, but the spirit of change will not pass away. One enthusiasm will follow another enthusiasm so long as men possess ambition.

Already there are signs that Cubism is passing. Some of the men are calling themselves Neo-Cubists and Post-Cubists, and they are painting in very different manner.

One has but to look at a series of Picasso’s work to see how often and radically he has changed his style in these ten years from drawing and painting with great facility and success in Impressionistic and Neo-Impressionistic manner to the most abstract Cubism; what he will be doing two years hence, no one can predict, save that, judging by the past, he will not be painting Cubist pictures.

* * * * *

The name “Cubism” was given to the new school “in derision, in the autumn of 1908, by Henri Matisse, who happened to see a picture of buildings the cubical representation of which struck him forcibly.”[34]

That year Georges Braque exhibited a Cubist picture in the Salon des Independents.

In 1910, Jean Metzinger exhibited a Cubist portrait in the Salle d’Automne, and a number of pictures were hung in the Salon des Independents.

The first collection was gathered together in room 41 at the Salon des Independents in 1911. The same year the first exhibition outside of Paris was held in Brussels, and there the names “Cubism” and “Cubistes” were adopted.

In 1911 the exposition of the Cubists in the Salle d’Automne caused considerable sensation. Gleizes, Metzinger, Leger, and, for the first time, Marcel Duchamp and his brother, the sculptor-architect, Duchamp-Villon, exhibited.

Other expositions were held in November, 1911, at the gallery d’Art Contemporaine rue Tronchet; in 1912, at the Salon des Independents, where Juan Gris first exhibited; in May of the same year, in Barcelona; in June, at Rouen, where Picabia joined the new school.

The different tendencies of the movement are described as follows:[35]

1. _Cubism scientifique_ is the tendency toward pure cubism; it is the painting with elements borrowed not from the realities of vision, but the realities of knowledge. The geometrical lines, which so impressed all who first saw their scientific works, resulted from the attempt to paint the essential--rather than the visual--realities of things which were rendered on canvas with an abstract purity, and in which objective realities and story-telling qualities were eliminated.

Most of Picasso’s geometrical representations and Duchamp’s “King and Queen” are good illustrations of _scientific_ or _pure_ Cubism.

2. _Cubism physique_ is painting compositions the elements of which are borrowed for the most part from realities of vision. Inasmuch as objective realities are more or less in evidence in these works, they are not pure Cubism.

Picasso’s “Woman and the Pot of Mustard” is a very striking--and indifferent--example of _Cubism physique_, which simply means cubist paintings in which figures and objects are more or less apparent to the casual observer. In Marcel Duchamp’s “Chess Players” the figures are quite plain; in Picabia’s “Dance at the Spring” one figure is distinguishable at first glance, the second is not so easily discerned, while the spring is more obscure, though plain enough after a little study.

It is under this head that some of the most interesting

and also some of the most exasperating cubist pictures will be found. To the extent that figures and objects are blocked in in planes and masses in a big, elemental way, the result may be both impressive and beautiful--Derain’s “Forest at Martigues” is an example in point; but in so far as the picture is a _puzzle_, clear only in part, the result is exasperating; the observer, however sympathetic his attitude, is diverted from enjoying the _art_ of the painter to the attempt to discover the hidden objects.

To the foregoing two divisions are added two more, which are, in reality, but subdivisions or refinements of _Cubism Scientifique_.

There are really but the two extremes--those who represent objects more or less cubically, i.e., in planes and masses of line and color; and those who compose harmonies of line and color that have no relation to figures or objects.

In the paintings of the one, objects are more or less apparent; in those of the other no object is discernible, because none is represented or suggested.

3. _Cubism Orphique_ is created entirely by the artist; it takes nothing from visual, objective realities, but is derived wholly from the painter’s imagination; it is pure art.

4. _Cubism instinctive_ is described as the painting of compositions of color, not based upon objective realities, but suggested by the instinct and intentions of the artist. The artist who follows his instinct, his fancy of the moment, though he may paint beautiful compositions, lacks the clear comprehension of him who paints according to some well thought out, artistic creed.

* * * * *

It is quite obvious that subdivisions three and four are based upon temperamental rather than logical or scientific distinctions.

To refer to some of the pictures reproduced:

There is no mystery about the “Man on the Balcony.” He is quite in evidence; the background is a little puzzling, yet fairly obvious. The attention of the casual observer is not diverted from the mode and manner of painting--from the Cubism of the picture, so to speak.

It is not a question of “Now I see it, now I don’t see it.” It is obviously the figure of a man leaning on something, apparently a railing, with a confused background. But so far as uncertainty regarding the background and accessories is concerned, that troubles no one, for uncertainty in detail is! characteristic of the backgrounds of many fine and famous portraits.

The point is that the “Man on the Balcony” belongs to that class of Cubist pictures wherein the object is almost as well defined as in pictures with which the public is more familiar; whereas the “King and Queen” belongs to the extreme class wherein the objects have been reduced to symbols or abstractions.

The one is the painting of objects in Cubist fashion; the other is the painting of ideas in Cubist fashion.

* * * * *

Of all the Cubist pictures exhibited, most people liked “The Man on the Balcony” best. Why?

Because it looked like a good painting of a man in armour.

“I like the ‘Man in Armour,’” was an expression frequently heard.

All of which goes to show that appreciation is largely a matter of association rather than of knowledge and taste.

Tell the people it is not a man in armour, and immediately they ask, in a tone of disgust, “Then what is he?” and the picture they liked a moment before becomes ridiculous in their eyes.

The original design is an almost academic freehand drawing of a man--artist or workman--leaning against the railing of a balcony, with roofs of the city at his back. Barring the square treatment of hand and foot, there is little to suggest Cubism.

The drawing is uninteresting, the painting is uninteresting. By blocking out details, emphasizing planes, and laying stress on masses, the artist made his painting incomparably more dignified and stronger than his design.

If he had painted an academic picture, following the lines of his original sketch, the painting probably would have been quite commonplace.

* * * * *

The “Chess Players” gives one a singular impression of human absorption in a game; it is elemental and impersonal. Behind the two players are onlookers, equally intent. One player is resting his chin upon his hand, the other holds a piece apparently making a move. The artist has arbitrarily placed the men and board close to the eye of the player making the move.

While most people might prefer lifelike portraits of two men playing chess, is it not true that this curious reduction of the players to elemental planes and masses gives a very vivid impression of intense absorption, and also a strange feeling of the elemental? A sculptor admired this picture greatly.

* * * * *

Two figures were the basis of the “King and the Queen,” the king at the right, and the queen at the left; but in the finished picture these two figures were reduced to planes, and appear as the two upright conical or cubical masses that are so evident, and a philosophical significance was attributed to the scheme, namely, a representation of the static and dynamic forms of life; the static being represented in the upright masses, the king and queen--dynastic, permanent--while the dynamic forces are represented in the stream of cubical forms that flow in different directions about the two more permanent masses.

On its technical side, Cubism is simply a systematic use of planes.

* * * * *

The power of lines is a manifestation of the new mode of representation.

It is not a semblance of things, but a world of objects that the picture forces us to take in with a glance. The objects may not get lost. The outline is the demarcation and designation of the objects. By its outer essence their inner nature is expressed. The nature of objects is not fixed by a correct drawing, but by a forceful and emotional, intensive and pervasive outline. Not in their restfulness and with their details do the objects serve the picture, but by their relations to each other, which relations combined lead up to the climax.

The long lines form the structure of the picture. They decide how the picture is to be constructed from its parts, and how the parts are to be interlocked in order to become a whole. The long lines define the measure and rhythm of the work. Lines are the vibrations of the soul; lines are reflections of the will, the rigidity of that which endures. Like currents of forces they flow against each other and unite into one. The smaller ones accompany them with playful gambols, like a multiple echo, the sounds of which melt away in the distance.

The picture is not a nicely divided plane. It is like a world arising from chaos. Its essence is the law of order working itself out. The picture is an agglomeration of agitated members, an agglomeration of planes pulsating with blood, enlivened by breath.

The planes may be stratified, parallel and similar to each other; they may rear and pile themselves against each other, or they may interlock like cogs. They may liquefy and melt away, or they may double up and form themselves into balls. They may, more quietly, rest within themselves, becoming effective through the contrast of their essence and yet maintaining themselves. Out of them originates the picture’s spaciousness, out of them the living force of the picture.

The dynamics of the planes is a manifestation of the new style.[36]

Passing one morning among a number of first year students drawing from casts in the Chicago Art Institute, I was struck by the large number who were making what would pass for Cubist sketches; yet not one of these young students had seen a Cubist picture. All were simply following the regular course of instruction and drawing _in planes_.

I remember one drawing of a statue by Michael Angelo. There was not a straight line in the statue; there was not a curved line in the drawing; the drawing was blocked out far more solidly and geometrically than, for instance, either the original design for “The Man on the Balcony” or the finished painting.

In another room I ran across a teacher who was indicating by a few geometrical lines drawn from points the essential features of a statue the pupil was about to begin blocking in. The lines looked exactly like the geometrical lines in a drawing by Picasso.

There is, therefore, nothing fundamentally new or strange in the technic of the Cubists; it is simply a return to the use of the elemental in drawing, of the very A, B, C of design. The new and the strange lie in the fact that the Cubists _stop_ with planes and lines; they do not attempt to model the surfaces of the things they paint.

* * * * *

Not that the use of planes is all there is to the theory of Cubism, for the theory extends far beyond the painting of surfaces; it embraces the presentation of the very _substance_ and nature of persons and objects by means of a _technic_ in which planes are the vital feature.

* * * * *

Albert Dürer wrote a book on the proportions of the human figure; it was published in 1528, and translated into many languages.

He reduced the human figure to certain elemental lines.[37]

Applying these principles to the hand, he gets this result:

It is interesting to compare this sectional diagram of the hand with the hand of “The Man on the Balcony.”

Furthermore, one has but to consider the elemental lines at the top of the page with the words of Cézanne, quoted on page 43, and with the fundamental propositions of Chinese and Japanese art, to realize that in the last analysis the

minds of men in all ages and all countries follow very closely the same channels.

There are but _two_ lines, _curved_ and _straight_, and with these two lines all outward semblances of things are constructed. So far as the unaided eye is concerned, every curved line may be entirely composed of small straight lines, the curved effect being due to a series of minute angles.

The following are Durer’s diagrams showing how to obtain sections and modifications:

He applies these sections to the human figure as follows:

So far as the use of planes and angles is concerned, these diagrams by Durer should serve to disarm criticism. That the human figure can be decomposed into straight lines and angles will be a revelation to most of those who laughed at the Cubist paintings, and only the authority of a great name would convince that any good could result from such an analysis.

Suppose any one of the Durer diagrams had been framed and hung in the Cubist section; would it not have been treated with ridicule?

The men who arranged the exhibition could have played with critics and artists--the men who claim to know--by including many things of recognized position in academic art and teachings, which would have seemed as absurd as the newest of the new pictures.

* * * * *

The very high aesthetic value of drawing and painting in planes, and with small regard to the so-called laws of perspective, is illustrated in the rare beauty of Chinese and Japanese paintings. From the point of view of their greatest painters, we carry perspective and imitation to extremes that destroy art.

One value of the Cubist movement lies in arousing a sense of the strength possessed by the simple and elemental.

In oriental art, in archaic art, in primitive Italian art, in not a little modern decorative work, we have long recognized the beauty of drawing in planes and of the use of color arbitrarily. The Cubists are showing us--perhaps too violently and imperfectly--that it is possible to paint pictures and portraits in planes and masses without imitation. That it is possible we know, for the orientals have done it for two thousand years; nevertheless, we stubbornly resist the attempt in western art.

We acknowledge the singular beauty of the Italian primitives, yet we demand that portraits and paintings of today shall be carefully modelled in the vain effort to accurately and mechanically copy nature.

* * * * *

In some of Sargent’s best portraits not only the lights and shadows but character and personality are indicated by brush-strokes as arbitrary in line and color as those of a Cubist--strokes that follow neither the lines nor the colors of the original, but which convey with tremendous power the _character_.

Again, we all know how insipid are most of the portraits that are faithfully rounded and modelled to reproduce every curve of the sitters’ features.

The truth is there is more of Cubism in great painting than we dream, and the extravagances of the Cubists may serve to open our eyes to beauties we have always felt without quite understanding.

Take, for instance, the strongest things by Winslow Homer; the strength lies in the big, elemental manner in which the artist rendered his impressions in lines and masses which departed widely from photographic reproductions of scenes and people.