Part 22

Despite his complete preoccupation with colour Kandinsky is decadent more than Van Gogh to whom artistically he is closely related, because the progress of modern painting is toward purity, toward creation by means of a unique element, toward an art which expresses only the qualities of which that art is the most highly capable. When other considerations enter into it, it is at once drawn back toward illustration, and its final defecation is postponed. Happily Kandinsky, an explorer of the limitless realms of metaphysics, has given us no more specific a postulate than that colour has meaning. Though he formulates many vaguely associative theories (such as "keen yellow looks sour because it recalls the taste of a lemon," "a shade of red will cause pain or disgust through association with running blood," and "in the hierarchy of colours green is the _bourgeoisie_--self-satisfied, immovable, narrow"); he nevertheless relies largely on instinct for their application. While attempting to turn painters' minds from the precise discoveries of colourists to a pseudo-philosophical consideration of colour, he is too general and ambiguous to inspire extensive imitation. Already painters since him have gone forward in the great work of research begun by the Impressionists.

If Kandinsky, as a theorist, is cabalistic and illusory, he achieves a certain decorative prettiness in his work. Though his ideas are old, the appearance of his canvases is new: and it is merely this novelty of conception, coupled with his tendency toward abstraction, which makes him of interest, and then only as a theoretical deviation from the work of Gauguin, Matisse and the Orientals. His colour is not without visual charm, and his composition often has the fascination of the delicate patterns found in the Chinese. In fact, Kandinsky's compositional debt to the Chinese is large. His Improvisation No. 29 is almost identical with a painting by Rin Teikei, and many of his pictures appear like curved-line generalisations of Chinese groupings, or the forms in Chinese backgrounds. Like the Cubists Kandinsky is a step toward arbitrariness in formal composition, but his advance is less significant than theirs. In his desire to illustrate a mood and produce a corresponding psychic emotion in the spectator he is a transcendentalised Futurist. His ontological terminology has given an impetus to his popularity, but it has tended unfortunately to obscure his worth as a maker of arabesques.

Of a different decadent type are Bonnard, Vuillard and K.-X. Roussel who call themselves the Intimists. These artists descend in large measure from Matisse, and though other and sometimes stronger influences enter their work, they are in a general way more closely akin to him than any other modern painter. Their appearance is more academic and, in the decorative sense, prettier than that of Matisse. Also, there is in their pictures a greater perpendicularity than in the work of their master. The angular and the perpendicular always represent the second compositional step from symmetricality to order: they are indicative of the earliest stage of aesthetic consciousness. They are found in the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and in all the primitive Christians, and in Gauguin and Puvis de Chavannes. The artists who use them have awakened to the fact that chaos is not conducive to emotional satisfaction. In perpendicular lines there is a primitive sense of fitness, for one feels they are both well-planted and immovable. Not infrequently they are employed by the decadents of a movement or an epoch because they harmonise so neatly and unostentatiously with pretty colours and delicate themes. The Futurists found in them a ready means to a decorative order.

Bonnard, the most genuine artist of the group, uses perpendicularity of arrangement more consciously than does either of the others. He studied in the same class with Maurice Denis at the _Academie Julien_, and his association with this painter no doubt explains his compositional predilection. He is strongly influenced by Renoir, although he has never penetrated beyond Renoir's surface. His greys are always rich and sombre, and even his simplest works are as artistically opulent and lovely as the finest tapestry. Indeed his large paintings are more appropriately wall coverings than panels, ornaments rather than decorations. In them are hot sunlight and cold shadow in scintillating succession; and every object is put to genuine ornamental use. They seem to exhibit an unconscious fluency in the employment of bafflingly diverse greys which are saturated with colour and applied so as to reveal highly their attentuated purity. There are also in his work harmoniously horizontal lines and pleasing sequences of curves. In Le Jardin a line starts with the head of a man on the left, continues along his arm and leg and the sofa back, and reaches an apex in the child's head to the right of the centre, sinks by way of the head of the woman on the right to the man's arm, is then caught up again by the contour of his legs, is paralleled by the outline of the nearest standing child's dress and face and the face of the kneeling girl, is continued in the bottom of the skirt of the child seated on the sofa, and then becomes horizontal in a perfect continuation of the table's surface. The line is beautiful and studiously made, and is pointed out here for the purpose of showing the simple ordonnance often found in the lesser artists. Nor is it the only line in the canvas. There are others as harmonious and as beautiful; but what keeps the picture from being a great composition, although its forms are solid and well adapted to their spaces, is its lack of opposition or solution of warring elements. If we do not try to class Bonnard with the greatest artists, we are forced to praise him. He is unpretentious, highly gifted, has a well-developed sense of the beautiful, and is possessed of a most sensitive eye. He is neither an illustrator of nature nor of moods, but an artist who paints to obtain aesthetic expression, without the _arriere pensee_ of a theoretical method. He is one of the most purely pleasing painters of modern times.

Vuillard, a painter of interiors, owes his inspiration as much to Toulouse-Lautrec as to Gauguin. Like Bonnard he uses greys of dry and mat colour, but his harmonies are slighter and of lighter tonality than those of Bonnard. Profiting by the Impressionists' light discoveries he has done some very admirable interiors; some of his works are more modern and artistic Whistlers. His art is one in which the spotting of masses for the sake of balance supplants any attempt to produce generating lines. As with Bonnard and Roussel there is in him a striving after beautiful surfaces, _matieres_ which in themselves will tempt the amateur. In this common pursuit the Intimists show themselves to be the successors of Degas; but they are successors who, having taken to heart the teachings of more significant forerunners, represent a sturdier decadence than that of Degas. K.-X. Roussel is a feminised Poussin. He searches solely for effect, and his canvases have the singular charm of enamel. Were they smaller they would make admirable brooches and vases. He too has made tapestries, but in spirit they are less modern than the corresponding efforts of his contemporaries. His compositions embody reddish satyrs and nymphs, intense blue sky, yellow-green foliage and yellow ground. His drawing never has more than the rudimentary charm of school-room talent, while that of Vuillard is subjugated to his colour application, and that of Bonnard is instinctively deformed to the needs of line and decorative necessity.

Maurice Denis is more directly an outcome of the school of Pont-Aven than are the three preceding men. His synthetic figures were first seen in Courbet, then in Puvis de Chavannes, then in Besnard and Gauguin. In Denis they have lost much of their significance and have once more become primarily academic. There was a time about 1890 when Denis's colour was not aggressively disagreeable. It was subjugated to a certain greyness which was applied in little spots resembling the black-and-white stippling of some of Seurat's drawings. Now his colour has grown acid and unpleasant. His line is stiff and vitiated and lacks even the quality of a pleasing silhouette. He has written a book of theories, but it has helped him little in his artistic achievements. He is the antithesis of Bonnard, and his colours possess almost no harmonious interrelation. In him there are a few perpendicular lines, but one may seek in vain for evidences of co-ordination. Many of his figures are appropriated from the works of the old masters, but because he fails to adapt them sensitively to his needs, they lose, rather than gain, in beauty by the transfer. He is at times symbolic and allegoric, and while one might overlook this literary phase of his art, provided there were other qualities to compensate for it, he fails to exhibit a complete appreciation of the aesthetic possibilities of his models, and consequently becomes merely an exponent of adopted mannerisms. His popularity has entirely to do with qualities unrelated to painting. Judged by a purely aesthetic standard he is inferior to an Augustus John, a Desvallieres, a Bourdelle or a Wyndham Lewis.

The highly talented Andre Derain is another synthetic painter. He is sincerely moved by multiramose tree forms and the sunlight effects of Provence, and his admiration for Cezanne led him into certain mannerisms which have for their object a facilitation of the Aix master's methods. In his use of soft yellows, hot earth tones, deep warm greens and light blues, he reveals his debt to the modern tendency toward colour. By outlining his objects with heavy contours, he has acquired erroneously a reputation for virility, and though he aspires to composition, he only achieves pattern. He is much like the Scandinavian, Othon Friesz, who, having absorbed the exteriors of Matisse and Cezanne, and having read Cezanne's letter recommending Poussin remade on nature, has turned his attention to this old Titian offshoot and endeavours to give us a reversion to style. At one time he used colour freely, but he now paints with ochres, blues, blacks, greens and an occasional red--a gamut like Derain's, only yellower. He too has a heavy technique and a reputation for virility. Maurice de Vlaminck is another painter of similar inspiration and palette. He is much prettier and has a finer sense of soft harmonies than either of the other two. He reveals a genuine feeling for his subjects, and always tries to introduce into his works a simple oppositional line. He comes direct from Cezanne, and it is from paintings such as his that Cezanne has acquired a reputation as a maker of arabesques. De Vlaminck has a rich and impelling _matiere_ and an art sense which is almost coquettish.

Kees van Dongen has studied the sensual drawings of Toulouse-Lautrec and the broad exteriors of Matisse, and in combining his two admirations has made eminently effective posters of nearly harmonious colours in very broad planes. De Segonzac also uses attenuated colours in a broad manner after Matisse. Manguin, another Matisse imitator, is too academic to appeal strongly to those who have acquired the modern vision, despite the primitive order his canvases at times possess. Flandrin is more decorative. His works reveal a classic perpendicularity of composition, and though they are without a sense of form, we feel in them a certain charm of space and air. He brushes in his landscapes broadly by planes of light and dark, somewhat in the very early manner of Matisse. Pierre Laprade has arrived at a style of surface which may best be characterised as bad tapestry. Jean Puy applies his pictures in a broad, somewhat bold, manner, and his light tonality and angularities point to his having lingered over the work of Cezanne. Lebasque is the feminine prototype of Puy. His colour is faded and unemotional, and his exteriors are as flat as the simplest decorations. Madame Marval differs from Lebasque only in theme.

Modern decadence in Zak, Rousseau, Vallotton, Prendergast and Simon Bussy manifests itself in a retrogression to primitive ideals. Though using the modern methods of simplification, these men revert to a static and dead past. Their aim is to revive the most ancient manner of painting. Of all the modern decadents they are perhaps the most devitalising for they tacitly repudiate the discoveries of the new men, and strive to turn the minds of the public and of painters alike to the sterilities of antiquity. They even ignore the aesthetic principles of the Renaissance, and by pushing creative expression to its furthest limits of artlessness, turn to naught the entire achievements of the great plastic composers. At best these men are dealers in decorative material. Simple arrangement is absent from their works, and colour, which for nearly a century has fought for its true place in painting, is once more used as an instinctive means for filling in drawings.

Vallotton, though a modern primitive, is not allied to any recent school. In appearance his work is unlike that of the other moderns. He disdains all save the simplest means and the most restricted colours. In him there are no delicate plays of light, but broad and heavy shadings which are not without subtlety. He is a Teutonic Ingres--a Flandrin made serious as to precision and reduced colour. At a distance his nude studies are interesting, for there one loses the dryness and hardness of their technical manner--a heritage of Vallotton's days of wood engravings. Other modern painters who elude classification, but who are intimately related in a general way to the new movements are Charles Guerin, Piot, Spiro, Alcide Le Beau, Gustave Jaulmes and d'Espagnat. Though they differ markedly from Vallotton they are all preoccupied with self-expression by means of colour. By making it a dominant element in their work, they have admitted their susceptibility to the modern ideal and thereby have given an impetus to the spirit which tends toward purification. Guerin is a professor of the _Academie Moderne_; and though clinging close to conventional drawing, he attains a slightly novel aspect in all his tapestry-like canvases. He is eminently of the Beaux-Arts tradition, is artificial and monotonous, and paints very large pictures with both idealistic and realistic themes.

Of the modern men who have found in Cubism their strongest aesthetic fascination de la Fresnay is a noteworthy example. So well does he understand the demands of the Picasso tradition that he has come to be looked upon as one of the members of the Cubist group. His arrangements are soft and pretty and his colour is harmonious. He has in fact surpassed in merit several of the original Cubists. Frederick Etchells and W. Roberts are English exponents of Cubism, and the latter has done some work which rivals that of Picabia. Wyndham Lewis, another Englishman, strives for an individual expression, but his angularities reveal his debt to Picasso, although the general impression of his pictures is Futuristic. The hand of the Cubists can be found in many of the canvases of the modern Americans. Arthur B. Davies, the most popular of the new men in the United States, is at bottom a superficial academician, but he superimposes shallow Cubist traits on his two-dimensional drawings, giving them a spuriously modern appearance. Maurice Stern treats Gauguin themes with a pale reflection of the early geometrical Picasso; and similar means are employed by C. R. Sheeler, Jr., though both Matisse and Delaunay have contributed to his art.

To name all the modern painters who are conscientiously battling against formalism and the dry-rot of the academies would be impossible. The field is too broad: the activities are too numerous. Few civilised countries have escaped the insistence of the new impetus. By some painters the new methods are adopted tentatively and by degrees. Others fly to the latest phases of art and move forward with the epoch. Today there are numerous representatives of all the movements from Impressionism to Synchromism. Kroll and Childe Hassam, both Americans, are emulators of Monet, though Hassam, who appears less modern than Kroll, is by far the more sensitive painter. Marquet has done more than imitate Impressionism. He has synthesised Monet into a more masculine expression. His planes are broad and luminous, and he achieves a distinct feeling for air and distance by simpler and more direct means than did the Impressionists. W. S. Glackens combines a Renoir technique with a modern purity of colour. J. D. Ferguson, the Scotchman, also reverts to the Impressionists but has learned much from Matisse. Duncan Grant, an Englishman, is much more modern than Ferguson and more competently expressive of the new. Roger Fry has contributed much to the modern impetus. His writings reveal a wide comprehension of present-day paintings and his insight into aesthetics is at times profound. Every year adds to the ranks. Besides the modern artists already named may be mentioned Bechteiev, Bolz, Lhote, Chagall, Chamaillard, Zawadowsky, Hayden, Ottmann, Lotiron, Utrillo, Hartley, Peckstein, Valensi, Jawlensky, Knauerhase, Muenter, Tobeen, Bloch, Dove, de Chirico, Walkowitz, Boussingault, Kanoldt and Granzow.

One of the healthiest movements of the day, though without novelty, is Vorticism whose headquarters are London. The Vorticists are unrestricted as to theories, and have for their aim the final purification of painting as well as of the other arts. Their creed is an intelligent one, and is in direct line with the current tendencies. As yet they have produced no pictures which might be called reflective of their principles, but they have kept before English artists the necessity of eliminating the unessentials. Their main doctrines, so far as painting is concerned, were set forth by the Synchromists long before the Vorticists came into public being; but by their insistence on the basic needs of purification, they have done valuable service. The Synchromists in their manifesto wrote: "An art whose ambition it is to be pure should express itself only in the means inherent in that art.... Painting being the art of colour, any quality of a picture not expressed by colour is not painting." A year later in _Blast_, the Vorticists' publication, we read: "The Vorticist relies on this alone; on the primary pigment of his art, and nothing else.... Every concept, every emotion presents itself to the vivid consciousness in some primary form. It belongs to the art of this form. If sound, to music, if formed words, to literature; colour in position, to painting...."

All these painters are the leaders of the secondary inspirations in modern art, and out of them grow other painters in Europe and America. They do not as a rule go by the name of any school, but they can be classed together because in them all is the same desire to create the novel, to present a strikingly different aspect from the academies, and to differentiate themselves individually from their fellows. They all feel their incompetency to create new forms, the necessity to follow, the timidity which only permits them to modify the surfaces of other greater men. They are the creative exponents and the decadents of vital movements, and they in turn have their own imitators and decadents. They have felt the need for change, but lack the genius for new organisations. That many of them are sound artists it would be folly to deny. But they are in no sense of the word innovators. Some of them in fact are failures, but theirs is the consolation of having failed in attempting something vital and representative of the age in which they live.

XV

CONCLUSION

In conclusion there are several points which require accentuation if the significance of modern painting is to be fully grasped. There have been three epochs in the visual arts. The first was the longest, and extended through more than two centuries. The last two epochs have required less than a hundred years for their fulfilment. Each epoch dealt with a specific phase of painting and developed that phase until its possibilities were exhausted. The ultimate aim of all great painting was purification, but before that could come about many theories had to be tested; many consummations had to take place; many problems had to be solved. The laws of formal organisation were first discovered and applied with the limited means at hand. Then came experimentation and research in the mechanics of expression--the search for new and vital methods wherewith these principles of composition might be bodied forth more intensely. Later the functioning properties of colour were unearthed and employed. In the course of this evolution many irrelevant factors found their way into painting. The men of the first epoch used primitive and obvious materials to express their forms. When the new means--means inherent in painting--were ascertained, it was necessary to eliminate the former media. The subject-matter of painting--that is, the recognisable object, the human obstacle--had to be forced out to permit of the introduction of colour which had become an inseparable adjunct of form. To effect the coalition of pure composition and the newer methods was a difficult feat, for so long had the world been accustomed to the pictorial aspect of painting, that it had come to look upon subject-matter as a cardinal requisite to plastic creation.

The first epoch began with the advent of oil painting about 1400, and went forward, building and developing, until it reached realisation early in the seventeenth century. Knowing that organised form is the basis of all aesthetic emotion, the old masters strove to find the psychological principles for co-ordinating volume. Their means were naturally superficial, for their initial concern was to determine what they should do, not how they should do it. In expressing the form they deemed necessary to great art they used the material already at their disposal, namely: objective nature. They organised and made rhythmic the objects about them, more especially the human body which permitted of many variations and groupings and which was in itself a complete ensemble. And furthermore they had discovered that movement--an indispensable attribute of the most highly emotional composition--was best expressed by the poise of the human figure. Colour to these early men was only an addendum to drawing. They conceived form in black and white, and sought to reinforce their work by the realistic use of pigments. That colour was an infixed element of organisation they never suspected. Their preoccupation was along different lines. The greatest exponents of intense composition during this first epoch were Tintoretto, Giorgione, Masaccio, Giotto, Veronese, El Greco and Rubens. These men were primarily interested in discovering absolute laws for formal rhythm. The mimetic quality of their work was a secondary consideration. In Rubens were consummated the aims of the older painters; that is, he attained to the highest degree of compositional plasticity which was possible with the fixed means of his period. In him the first cycle terminated. There was no longer any advance to be made in the art of painting until a new method of expression should be unearthed. However, the principles of form laid down by these old masters were fundamental and unalterable. Upon them all great painting must ever be based. They are intimately connected with the very organisms of human existence, and can never be changed until the nature of mankind shall change.