Chapter IV: A Futile Protest 50 (1)

V. What is Cubism? 60

VI. The Theory of Cubism 90

VII. The New Art in Munich 110

VIII. Color Music 140

IX. Esoragoto 147

X. Ugliness 154

XI. Futurism 164

XII. Virile-Impressionism 191

XIII. Sculpture 202

XIV. In Conclusion 207

Appendix I. Exhibitions at 291 Fifth Avenue 211

Appendix II. Two Comments 214

Bibliography 223

Index 239

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

BALLA, _Dog and person in movement_ 164

BECHTEJEFF, _Fight of the Amazons_ 53

BLOCH, _Summer night_ 92

_The duel_ 93

BOCCIONI, _Head, houses, light_ 184

_Spiral expansion of muscles in action_ 204

BRANCUSI, _M’lle Poganey_ 202

CARDOZA, SOUSA, _Marine_ 4

_Leap of the rabbit_ 84

_Stronghold_ 148

CÉZANNE, _Portrait of self_ 26

_Village street_ 27

_Still life_ 36

CHABAUD, _The laborer_ 16

_Cemetery gates_ 108

CHARMY, _Landscape_ 200

DERAIN, _Forest at Martigues_ 154

DOVE, _Based on leaf forms and spaces_ 48

DUCHAMP, _Chess players_ 64

_King and queen_ 72

ERBSLOH, _Young woman_ 207

GAUGUIN, _Portrait of self_ 128

_Farmyard_ 129

_Scene in Tahiti_ 132

GIRIEUD, _Woman seated_ 141

GLEIZES, _Man on balcony_ _Frontispiece_

_Original drawing for man on balcony_ 70

GRIS, _Still life_ 133

HERBIN, _Landscape_ 96

_Still life_ 186

JAWLENSKY, _Head of a girl_ 158

KANDINSKY, _Village street_ 20

_Landscape with two poplars_ 105

_Improvisation No. 29_ 116

_Improvisation No. 30_ 124

KLEE, _House by the brook_ 88

KROLL, _Brooklyn Bridge_ 198

_Still life_ 210

LEGER, _The chimneys_ 61

LEHMBRUCK, _Kneeling woman_ 203

MARC, _The steer_ 104

MATISSE, _The dance_ 44

_Woman in red madras_ 112

_Portrait heads_ 205

_Back of woman_ 206

METZINGER, _The taster_ 60

MÜNTER, _The boat ride_ 172

_The white wall_ 173

PICABIA, _Dance at the spring_ 68

PICASSO, _Woman with mandolin_ 74

_The poet_ 75

_Drawing_ 100

_Old woman_ 140

ROUSSEAU, _Portrait of self_ 12

_Landscape_ 13

RUSSOLO, _Rebellion_ 178

SEGONZAC, _Pasturage_ 182

_Forest_ 192

SEVERINI, _The milliner_ 80

VAN GOGH, _Portrait of self_ 40

_Cafe_ 56

_Woman with frying pan_ 120

_Chair with pipe_ 121

VAN REES, _Still life_ 89

_Maternity_ 168

VILLON, _Young girl_ 32

VLAMINCK, _Village_ 136

WEREFKIN, _The country road_ 52

ZAK, _The shepherd_ 8

CUBISTS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM

ALAS! ALAS!!

“It is unlikely that any painters will ever again have to face the hostility which was manifested against the Impressionists. The repetition of such a phenomenon would be impossible. The case of the Impressionists, in which withering scorn yielded place to admiration, has put criticism on its guard. It will surely stand as a warning, and ought to prevent the recurrence of a similar outburst of indignation against the innovators and independents whom time may yet bring forth.”

--“Manet and the French Impressionists,”
by Theodore Duret, pp. 180, 181.

Cubists and Post-Impressionism

I

A SENSATION

Since the exhibit at the Columbian Exposition (1893) nothing has happened in the world of American art so stimulating as the recent INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. New York and Chicago, spring of 1913.[1]

“Stimulating” is the word, for while the recent exhibition may have lacked some of the good, solidly painted pictures found in the earlier, it contained so much that was fresh, new, original--eccentric, if you prefer--that it gave our art-world food for thought--and heated controversy.

* * * * *

Art thrives on controversy--like every human endeavor. The fiercer the controversy the _surer_, the _sounder_, the _saner_ the outcome.

* * * * *

Perfection is unattainable. As man in his loftiest flight stretches forth his hand to seize a star he drops back to earth. The finer, the purer the development of any art the more certain the reaction, the return to elemental conditions--to begin over again.

* * * * *

The young sculptor looks at the chaste perfection of Greek sculpture and says, “What is the use? I will do something different.” The young painter looks at the great painters of yesterday and exclaims, “What is the use? I cannot excel them in their way; I must do something in my own way.” It is the same in business; the young merchant studies the methods of the successful men in his line and says, “It is idle for me to copy their methods. I will do something different, something in my own way,” and he displays his goods differently, advertises differently, conducts his business differently, and _if successful_ is hailed as a genius, if a failure he is regarded as a visionary or an eccentric--the result making all the difference in the world in the verdict of the public.

Painting today is a terrible problem to an absolutely sincere,
honest, and yet ambitious mind.

Fired to set forth something of his very own, to avoid plagiarism
and give the world something it has never yet received, the artist,
in whatever direction he advances, finds the horizon bounded by a
great master whom he cannot hope to surpass. Well, indeed, may he
ask what is the use of trying to do what Van Eyck, Botticelli,
Vermeer, Rembrandt, Veronese, Michael Angelo, Velasquez--nay, even
what Constable, Corot, Claude Monet, and Signac have done to
perfection?

In despair at surpassing the limits set by the great masters of
progress he harks back, as the pre-Raphaelites did, to the painters
before Raphael. Alas, Fra Lippi and Taddeo Gaddi are soon found to
be too sophisticated. He goes back farther, to Giotto, to Orcagna,
even to the Egyptians, and with the same result. At last he takes
his courage in his hands and, throwing overboard the whole cargo of
art history, ancient and modern, he seeks to forget that picture
was ever painted, and with eyes freed from traditional vision he
seeks to recreate the barbaric art of infancy.

Call this man an extremist if you like, but do not lightly dub him
insincere and charlatan. He is the counterpart in art of the
extremist in politics, the man who has no patience with palliative
measures, who demands the whole loaf and nothing but the loaf, who
kicks savagely away the fragments of bread tendered him by the
moderate and respectable. A dangerous man he may be, but he is no
trifler; and, if he succeeds in his purpose, as extremists
sometimes do, the whipped world at his feet hails him as reformer
and benefactor of humanity.[2]

* * * * *

The Columbian Exposition gave American art a tremendous impetus forward, but of late it has been getting a little smug; the International Exhibition came and gave our complacency a severe jolt.

The net result is that American art has received another impulse forward; it will do bigger and finer and saner things. It will not copy the eccentricities, the exaggerations, the morbid enthusiasms of the recent exhibition, because America as yet is not given to eccentricities and morbidness--though it may be to a youthful habit of exaggeration. America is essentially sane and healthful--say quite practical--in its outlook, hence it will absorb all that is good in the extreme modern movement and reject what is bad.

Neither our students nor our painters will be carried off their feet but they will be helped onward. They will be helped in their technic, and they will see things from new angles, they will be more independent, in short they will be better and bigger painters.

They will not be Cubists, Orphists, or Futurists, but they will absorb all there is of good in Cubism, Orphism, Futurism--and other “isms;” and bear in mind it is the _ist_ who is always blazing a trail somewhere; he may lose himself in the dense undergrowth of his theories but he at least marks a path others have not trodden.

The recent exhibition was not an isolated movement. There are no _isolated_ movements in life. The International Exhibition was just as inevitable as the Progressive political convention of 1912 in Chicago.

The world is filled with ferment--ferment of new ideas, ferment of originality and individuality, of assertion of independence. This is true in religion, science, politics as well as in art. It is true in business. _New thought_ is everywhere. The most radical suggestions are debated at the dinner table. In politics what would have been considered socialistic twenty years ago is accepted today as reasonable. To the conservative masses these new departures may seem like a wild overturning of all that is sacred, but there is no need for fear; all that _is really sound_ will gain in the end.

* * * * *

Neither Cubism, Futurism nor any other “ism” troubles the really great painter; it is the little fellow who fumes and swears.

The poise of the great man is not at all disturbed by the eccentric and the bizarre; on the contrary he looks with a curious eye to see if something of value may not be found.

Whistler would not have painted Cubist pictures, but having known the man I can say that nothing there may be of good in Cubism would have gotten by the penetrating vision of that great painter.

It is characteristic of the little man to ridicule or resent everything he does not understand; it is characteristic of the great man to be silent in the presence of what he does not understand.

* * * * *

Just now the older men are violently opposed to the newer; there is no attempt at understanding and there is abundant ridicule instead of sympathy.

Marine]

This is inevitable and quite in accord with human nature, but it is a pity. The old and the new are not rivals; the new is simply a departure from the old, simply an attempt to do something different with line and color. The older men should watch the younger with keenest interest; they may feel sure the new is foredoomed to failure, but that is no cause for rejoicing; on the contrary the older man should always be sorry to see the soaring flights of youth come to grief.

* * * * *

Because a man buys a few Cubist pictures it must not be assumed he is a believer in Cubism.

Because a man has a few books on socialism or anarchism in his library we do not assume he is a socialist, or an anarchist; on the contrary it is commonly assumed he is simply broadly and sanely interested in social and political theories. The radical may not convince me he is right, but he may show me I am wrong.

The man who flies into a passion at pictures because they are not like the pictures he owns is on a par with the man who flies into a passion at books because they are not like the books he owns--the world is filled with such men, unreceptive, unresponsive; many intelligent in their narrow way, but bigoted.

To most men a new idea is a greater shock than a cold plunge in winter.

Personally I have no more interest in Cubism than in any other “ism,” but failure to react to new impressions is a sure sign of age. I would hate to be so old that a new picture or a new idea would frighten me.

I would like to own Raphaels and Titians and Rembrandts and Velasquezes, but I can’t afford it. I say I would like to _own_ them; no, I would not, for I have the conviction that no man has _the right_ to appropriate to himself the work of the great masters. Their paintings belong to the world and should be in public places for the enjoyment and instruction of _all_.

It is the high privilege of the private buyer to buy the works of _new men_, and by encouraging them disclose a Rembrandt, a Hals, a Millet, a Corot, a Manet, but when the public begins to want the pictures the private buyer, instead of bidding against the public, should step one side; his task is done, his opportunity has passed.

* * * * *

Most men buy pictures not because they want them, but because some one else wants them.

The man who gives half a million for a Rembrandt does so not because he knows or cares anything about the picture, but solely because he is made to believe some one else wants it $450,000 worth.

Read this:

The crowning event of the day was the sale of Rembrandt’s
“Bathsheba.” The bidding started at 150,000 francs and within a
couple of minutes a perfect whirlwind of bids had carried the price
to 500,000 francs offered by a dealer, Mr. Trotti.

Already the smaller fry among the bidders had been eliminated and
the contest was circumscribed to a small group, Messrs. Duveen,
Wildenstein, Tedesco, Muller and Trotti being the most ardent in
the battle.

“Six hundred thousand!” cried Mr. Duveen.

“Six hundred and fifty thousand,” said Mr. Wildenstein.

Mr. Duveen replied with a nod which meant the addition of another
50,000. Then with bids of 10,000 and 25,000 the price mounted, the
struggle developing into a duel between Mr. Wildenstein and Mr.
Duveen. Eight hundred thousand francs was reached and left behind;
900,000 francs in turn was passed.

“Nine hundred and fifty thousand,” rapped out Mr. Duveen.

“Nine hundred and sixty thousand,” responded Mr. Wildenstein.

Then came “nine hundred and seventy thousand” and “nine hundred
and eighty thousand.” By this time the entire gathering was
spellbound by the spectacle of the gladiatorial contest for the
picture.

“Nine hundred and ninety thousand,” said Mr. Wildenstein.

There was an instant of silence.

“A million!”

Every eye turned from the speaker, Mr. Duveen, to gaze on Mr.
Wildenstein expectantly. Then there was silence, signifying his
withdrawal from the fight.

A mighty hubbub arose. The Rembrandt had been knocked down to Mr.
Duveen for a million francs, or, with the commission, 1,100,000
francs. Never has such a price been given for a Rembrandt.

This is not dealing in art, it is art on the horse-block.

Here is the record of that one painting:

1734--Sold at Antwerp for $ 109

1791--Sold at Paris for 240

1814--Sold at London for 525

1830--Sold at London for 790

1831--Sold at London for 792

1832--Sold at London for 1,260

1841--Sold at Paris for 1,576

1913--Sold at Paris for 220,000

* * * * *

During the exhibition in New York and Chicago the pictures were the one topic of conversation; for the time being it was worth while to dine out; society became almost animated.

I recall one delightful and irascible old gentleman, critic and painter, who had not had a fresh appreciation for twenty-five years. For him art ended with the Barbizon school. Whistler, Monet, Degas had no sure places.

* * * * *

We all have the courage of _others_’ convictions.

The new, however good, is always queer; the old, however bad, is never strange.

Most people laugh at new pictures because they are afraid if they don’t laugh at the pictures, other people will laugh at _them_.

Now and then a man laughs at a queer picture because he can’t help it, _he_ is a _joy_.

Laughter is the honest emotion of the child, on the grown-up it is often a mark of ignorance.

It is so easy to ridicule what one does not understand and _dares_ not like.

Laughter never stops to think--if it did there would be less laughter.

If you _feel_ like laughing at a picture, laugh by all means, it will do you good, but be sure you _really feel_ like laughing, and to make sure ask yourself this question, “If that picture were the only one in the room and I were alone with it would it strike me as laughable?”

* * * * *

It always takes just about so many years. What happened with the Barbizon School happened with Impressionism; what happened with Impressionism, will happen with Post-Impressionism; what will happen with Post-Impressionism will surely happen with post-post-Impressionism, and so on. One movement follows another, as season follows season. Life is rhythm.

Each generation thinks itself unique in its experiences.

We go to an exhibition of cubist pictures and we think nothing like that ever happened before, hence we feel safe in denouncing them.

We admit England was wrong when it ridiculed Turner, that France was wrong when it ridiculed Corot, that Paris was wrong when it derided Millet, Manet, Monet, Degas, and a host of other great men, but _we_ are _not_ wrong when _we_ deride the new men. Why? Because we think they are newer and stranger than the men named.

The Shepherd]

We accept Wagner as a genius, but Strauss--oh, no, he is _too_ strange, but there are stranger composers than Strauss already at work and we must travel fast to keep up with the procession.[3]

Be very sure the Cubists, the Futurists, and all the other queer “ists” would not make the impression they are making if there were not a good reason for it, if the times were not ripe for a change.

* * * * *

Broadly speaking we are changing from the _perfections_ of Impressionism to the _imperfections_ of Post-Impressionism; from the _achievements_ of a school, a movement, that has done the best it could, to the _attempts_, the _experiments_, the _gropings_, of new men along new lines.

It is the purpose of this book to describe some of the changes that are taking place and _try_ to explain them in plain, every-day terms.

The curse of art literature and professional art criticism is _art-jargon_.

Every department of human activity from sport to science, baseball to philosophy, speedily develops its own jargon and the tendency is for the jargon to become denser and denser and so more and more obscure its subject, until some man with horse-sense--like Huxley in science and William James in philosophy--restores the use of every-day English.

Some jargon like that of the baseball reporter is intensely vivid and amusing, it is language in the making, but the jargon of the art critic is deadly, it is neither vivid nor interesting--it is simply hypnotic. It is only when the critic gets so angry he forgets his jargon that he becomes intelligible--and betrays himself.

The reputation of many a preacher, many an orator, depends wholly upon his command of jargon, his ability to utter endless phrases which are either stock ideas, old as the hills, or which _sound_ as if they meant something but on analysis prove quite barren.

II

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Post-Impressionism means exactly what the prefix means--the art-development _following_ Impressionism. It does not mean a further, or a higher, or a more subtle form of Impressionism, but it means something radically different, it means a _reaction_ from Impressionism.

* * * * *

The evolution of the new movement has been logical and inevitable.

After the Barbizon school with its romantic representation of nature, there came inevitably the realistic painters, headed by Courbet, later by Manet--men who painted things not romantically but realistically, pitilessly, brutally. There was the same rage against these men as against the Cubists today. Both Whistler and Manet were in the Salon des Refuses of 1864.

Along with the men who painted _things_ as they saw them, came naturally men like Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, who tried endless experiments in the effort to paint _light_ as they saw it.

So that the final twenty-five years of the last century were given up in France to attempts to paint _things_ and _light_ as they really are.

After the painting of _things_ and _light_ one would say the art of painting had touched its limits, that there was nothing more to do. But, no, there is the painting of _neither_ things nor light--the painting of _emotions_--the painting of pure line and color compositions for the sake of the pleasure such harmonies afford--_the expression of one’s inner self_.

It was while Manet was painting _things_ as they are, and Monet was painting _light_ as it is, that Whistler was painting both things and light but with an entirely different object in view, namely, the production of _color harmonies_ superior to either thing-effects or light-effects.

To the following résumé it is obvious another paragraph must be added to bring the record down to date.

* * * * *

Painting in France in the nineteenth century followed a course
parallel with that of the intellectual life of the country, it
adapted itself to the various changes in modes of thought, it took
upon itself a succession of forms corresponding to those which were
evolved in literature.

At the beginning of the century, under the Empire, painting was
classical. It was primarily engaged in rendering scenes borrowed
from the antique world of Greece and Rome, subjects derived from
fable and mythology. Historical painting formed the essence of high
art. It was based upon the nude, treated according to the classical
model. Two masters--David and Ingress--were its loftiest
expression. After them classical art was continued in an enfeebled
condition by painters of only secondary importance.

The new spirit of romanticism, however, which had arisen in
literature, also made its appearance in painting. Delacroix was the
master in whom it found its most complete expression. The tones of
classical art, sober, restrained, and often cold, gave place in his
work to warm and brilliant coloration. For the nicely balanced
scenes of classical antiquity, he substituted compositions
tumultuous with movement. Romanticism developed freedom of action
and expressiveness of pose to their utmost limits.

Painting was then conquered by realism, which had also invaded
literature. Courbet was its great initiator. He painted the life he
saw around him in a direct, robust manner. He also painted
landscape with a truthfulness that was informed by a powerful
emotion. At the same time, Rousseau and Corot had also brought
landscape painting into close touch with nature. They had
rediscovered its soul and its charm. Finally, crowning, as it were,
the work of their predecessors, came Manet and the
Impressionists.[4]

Portrait of Self]

Landscape]

Turner was the forerunner of Impressionism, the father of attempts to paint brilliant _light_ effects, Whistler was the forerunner of Post-Impressionism, the father of attempts to paint _line and color_ compositions.

Turner did not carry his theories to the scientific extremes of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists; Whistler did not carry his attempts to the abstract extremes of the Compositionalists and the Cubists; but in their work are found the seeds of all there is in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

* * * * *

“Do you say that this is a correct representation of Battersea Bridge?”

“I did not intend it to be a ‘correct’ portrait of the bridge. It is only a moonlight scene, and the pier in the center of the bridge may or may not be like the piers at Battersea Bridge as you know them in broad daylight. As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks at it. To some persons it may represent all that is intended; to others it may represent nothing.”

“The prevailing color is blue?”

“Perhaps.”

“Are those figures on the top of the bridge intended for people?”

“They are just what you like.”

“Is that a barge beneath?”

“Yes. I am very much encouraged at your perceiving that. My whole scheme was only to bring about a certain harmony of color.”[5]

* * * * *

Most painters are so intent upon the _subjects_ of their work they give little thought to color harmonies. Whistler was the one great modern exception; his first thought was to produce _beautiful effects_ in line and color, hence his titles, “Nocturnes,” “Symphonies,” “Arrangements,” and so on. He did not like to give his portraits the names of his sitters. Where other painters emphasize the “subjects” and the “stories” of their pictures he tried to suppress both and direct the attention of the beholder to the painting. He was the forerunner of recent attempts to do with line and color what the musician does with sound. He was the leader of the revolt against the “story-telling” picture.

* * * * *

Millet is a good illustration of the painter to whom “subject” was everything, and technic of quite secondary importance. I think it is generally conceded that as a painter, a master of technic, he did not rank very high, but he had a faculty for painting subjects, scenes from life, that grip. As a painter Whistler was incomparably superior to Millet, but just because he was a great master of technic and quite indifferent to the story-telling side of his pictures he did not become so popular.[6]

* * * * *

There are many actions and reactions in art, many evolutions and involutions, but the great rhythmical sweep of the pendulum is from, let us say, _studio_-art to _nature_-art, and back from _nature_-art to _studio_-art.

From works of _observation_ to works of _imagination_, and back from the use of the _imagination_ to the use of _observation_.

For a time men work feverishly in the seclusion of their closets painting, writing, modelling, composing beautiful things, pure products of their imaginations, then comes the reaction and they feel the need of renewing their vigor by touching heel to earth. They draw aside their curtains, throw open their doors and go out into the sunlight to breathe the fresh air and gain new inspirations from contact with nature.

That is what happens in art once in so often.

The Barbizon school was a studio school. It walked the streets and the fields; it looked at men and women at work and at play, but when it came to paint it did not paint outdoors with object and easel in close contact; it retired within its doors and transformed life and nature as great romantic story-tellers translate their impressions into fairy-tales and romances.

* * * * *

It seems a far cry from Millet to Chabaud but in some aspects of their attitude toward art they are nearly akin. Between the two there intervened Impressionism, that is all. Millet painted _labor_. And what is the painting by Chabaud, “The Laborer,” but a more elemental Millet? It lacks the romantic, the poetic qualities of Millet’s “Labor,” for instance, or his “Sower”--paintings famous in prints and reproductions, but it is none the less a vivid representation of labor.

To the admirers of Millet it may seem sacrilegious to even mention Chabaud in comparison, but, confining our attention to the one painting reproduced herein, there is no question that in its elemental strength, its simplicity, it possesses a quality, a certain bald dramatic quality that Millet lacks, though Millet’s “Sower” may possess qualities you like more.

However it is with no intention to make a comparison between two men so very different, that I mention them, but rather for the purpose of pointing out that the attitude of both to their art is fundamentally the same--they use art to _express themselves_ and not to imitate what they see.

This is the way Millet worked. “He himself went about Barbizon like a peasant. And he might have been seen wandering over the woods and fields with an old, red cloak, wooden shoes, and a weather-beaten straw hat. He rose at sunrise, and wandered about the country as his parents had done. He guarded no flocks, drove no cows, and no yokes of oxen or horses; he carried neither mattock nor spade but rested on his stick; he was equipped with only the _faculty_ of _observation_ and _poetic intention_ ... he leant on the garden wall with his arms crossed on his breast, and looked into the setting sun as it threw a rosy veil over field and forest. He heard the chime of vesper bells, watched the people pray and then return home. And he returned also, and read the Bible by lamplight, while his wife sewed and the children slept. When all was quiet he closed the book and began _to dream_.... _On the morrow he painted._”[7]

This is the method of all the very great art the world has ever known--first _to see_; and then _to dream_ and then _on the morrow to paint_.

Impressionism cut out the _dreams_--it painted what it _saw_.

There were never in the world peasants such as Millet painted, or woods such as Daubigny painted. People thought there were until the Impressionists came and turned on the light.

Corot’s silvery glades have a closer relationship to nature. He felt the reaction that was in the air. He was almost an

CHABAUD

The Laborer
]

Impressionist but not quite. One feels the _poetic_, the _imaginative_--that is, the _studio_ quality in his work. He sought nature but not in the spirit displayed by the Impressionists.

* * * * *

The reaction began with Courbet and was given a powerful impetus by Manet who painted things not as he _imagined_ them but as he _saw_ them, and he did not try to see interesting people and things, he did not look for the _picturesque_ but he painted anything he happened to see upon the theory that the value of a work of art depends not upon its subject but upon its technic; that the worth of a painting is to be found in the painting and not in the object that happens to be painted.

* * * * *

Manet painted very few pictures outdoors. In the literal sense he did not belong to the _plein air_ school. Almost all his work was done indoors. But it was in no sense studio-art as we have used the term. He painted in his studio as directly as Monet painted outdoors. He painted a sitter with the same realism that Monet painted a haystack; and if he painted a bull fight from memory or from a sketch, he did it with the _intention_ to reproduce the scene literally.

Whistler had his literal moods, so to speak; his moments when with clear eye and vision unaffected by any conscious play of the imagination he would make marvellously faithful transcripts from life and nature, transcripts so faithful that Monet’s at their best pale in comparison. I recall three exquisite marines which were painted in a boat, the canvases propped against a seat.

But for the most part he painted indoors and with the one end in view--the composition of line and color harmonies more beautiful than anything found in nature, just as the musician seeks to compose harmonies more beautiful than any sounds found in nature.

In the clearness of his vision and the faithfulness with which he painted the things and people with which he came in contact Whistler was an Impressionist--an Impressionist long before Monet, but in his search after color and line music, in his attempts to do things beyond and above nature, he was a _Post_-Impressionist.

* * * * *

From a psychological point of view it is not difficult to see how these movements come about.

Given exhibitions year after year filled with paintings of the imagination, with idealized peasants such as Millet’s, and idealized landscapes such as Rousseau’s, it is morally certain the younger painters will feel a restless longing to return to the realities of life, just as the reading or theater going public after being fed too long on fairy-tales and romances demand more realistic representations of life.

Every man who reads much has his fairy-tale period and his romantic period followed by a strong taste for realism, which in turn is followed by a new and finer appreciation of purely imaginative literature.

In his beliefs the normal man passes through a similar series of reactions from the acceptance of the marvellous in his childhood and youth to the sceptical rejection of the miraculous and the acceptance of only the literal and material in his buoyant manhood, thence to the profounder philosophy and mystical speculations of riper age.

The old, old conflict between _materialism_ and _idealism_, between _seeing-knowing_ and _thinking-feeling_, between the cruder actualities of the senses and the finer actualities of the imagination!

It is not that all men at a given time are idealists and at another realists, any more than all painters in one decade are Impressionists, in another Post-Impressionists. Life does not move that way.

* * * * *

Between 1874 and 1900 Impressionism forged to the front and monopolized the attention of the art world, yet during that period there were painted more pictures of the Pre-Impressionist schools than ever before. The Impressionists made all the noise, the Pre-Impressionists did most of the work.

The net result was a large amount of absorption by the older schools of the good things in Impressionism, and a noticeable improvement in painting generally.

Just now the Post-Impressionists occupy the center of the stage and are making themselves so conspicuous the public is almost led to believe that both Impressionists and Pre-Impressionists no longer exist, that everything once considered good in art is being relegated to the storehouse.

Again, as a matter of fact, with all the noise made by the Post-Impressionists, it is beyond question true that never before were so many Impressionist and Pre-Impressionist pictures painted as now.

The stream of Pre-Impressionist and Impressionist pictures goes right on and in time history will repeat itself, the good in Post-Impressionism will be absorbed and the main current that supplies the great public with art will be _Pre_-impressionist + _Impressionist_ + _Post_-impressionist, with as many more prefixes as the ingenuity of the artist can devise to describe his vagaries.

* * * * *

Painters are a good deal like inventors, each of whom thinks his invention sure to revolutionize the world, to find in the end that his supposed invention is either not new or if new not valuable.

Now and then a painter like an inventor does do something that is revolutionary, but these geniuses are not common, and with even them critical research invariably finds they have simply built upon the labors of others. An Edison, a Bell, a Marconi appears only when electrical science has reached a stage where the inventions rather than the men are inevitable. All this is statistically demonstrated in the records of patent offices.

* * * * *

We talk of this and that “period” in the work of a painter, a poet, a sculptor. Often the changes in mood and technic are marked and the transitions sharply defined. For the most part they are the turning from the imagination to observation and _vice versa_.

The brain is not unlike a factory; when filled to overflowing with raw material it must close its doors and work up its stock; when it has exhausted its store of impressions it must open its five senses to receive new.

* * * * *

According to Hegel, the great German philosopher, there are three
movements of the historical pendulum; for example, we have an age
of materialism followed by an age whose sole interest is in
psychical phenomena; this followed by an age which extracts the
truth from both of these opposite hypotheses, the golden mean.
Thus, in art, we have the classical spirit for the thesis, the
modern art movement, its antithesis, and we may confidently expect
and hope for an age which shall select the bold, fresh spirit of
the modern movement and infuse it into the proportion of classical
art, which shall be the great synthesis of the artistic future.
Thus the extravagant and apparently insane movement of the Futurist
and Cubist will be of the greatest value in reviving art, putting
red blood into art again.[8]

KANDINSKY

Village Street
]

A man can understand what is going on about him only by a knowledge of what has happened in the past--the wider his knowledge of past events, the clearer his understanding of present.

Space does not permit the printing in detail the ridicule that greeted Turner, Millet, Corot, Courbet, but it is important to open the eyes of the reader to the _fact_ that men whose pictures are considered masterpieces today, and command fabulous sums, were met with the _same_ scorn and derision that the new men of today meet.

History repeats itself--we accept as fine what our fathers laughed at; our sons will accept as fine what we laugh at, and so on to the end of time.

You readers and especially you museums, who are paying tens of thousands for pictures by Manet, Monet, Renoir and a host of other innovators, take to heart what follows.

* * * * *

In 1874 the Impressionists held their first exhibition in a room rented from a photographer, 35 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. They called themselves, _Société anonyme, des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs_.

There were about thirty exhibitors in all; among them, Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin, who might be called the extremists; Degas, Bracquemond de Nittis, Brandon, Boudin, Cals, Gustave Collin, Labouche, Lépine, Rouart, and others were invited to take the edge off the novelties of the first named.[9]

Monet exhibited a picture named “_Impression; soleil levant_.” In derision Louis Leroy called an article on the exhibition in “Charivari”[10] “_Exposition des Impressionists_,” and in spite of the protests of the painters themselves the name stuck--just as the name _Cubists_, derisively applied by Matisse, has stuck.

* * * * *

This exhibition, which marked an epoch in French art, was a failure so far as immediate results went. The ridicule was such that the better known artists, ashamed of being caught in the company of the new men, “took good care not to run the risk a second time.”

The pictures were subjected to all sorts of petty insults, “such as the placing of small coins upon the frames in derision, and jokes and jibes.”

* * * * *

The next year the Impressionists held no exhibition, but under dire need had a sale at the Hotel Drouot.

Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cals, Cézanne, Degas,
Guillaumin, de Nittis, and Pissarro were represented. There were
some seventy pictures. The pictures were disliked and for some
unknown reason the artists were considered as hardened members of
the community. They only received laughable prices. Even the
attempt to carry out the auction-room trick of having friends bid
up the prices was not carried out successfully and many of the
pictures were bid in by the penniless friends in this way, and
withdrawn. Including these mistakes and the real sales they
realized not much more than $2,000. In this sale of 1875, Renoir’s
“Avant le bain” brought $28; “La Source,” $22 (afterwards sold for
$14,000); “Une vue du Pont neuf” brought all of $60; Claude Monet’s
twenty pictures averaged from $40 to $60 each.

The writer was offered “Avant le bain” in 1894 for $1,200; it has since sold for $25,000. In a recent letter from M. George Durand-Ruel he says:

All the fine works of the Masters of the Modern French School have
advanced very much in value. The “Portrait of the Charpentier
Family,” which is now in the Metropolitan Museum, was ordered from
Renoir for three hundred francs; “La Source,” also by Renoir, was
sold in a sale in 1878 for 110 francs. It has been since bought by
the Prince de Wagram for 75,000 francs, and would be worth today
double the amount. The “Port de Boulogne,” by Manet, was bought
from Manet by my father for 800 francs and sold to Faure, who later
on sold it to Comte de Camondo for 70,000 francs. It would be worth
today about 250,000 francs. “Le Déjeuner dans l’Atelier,” which my
father bought from Manet and which we had on exhibition at 389
Fifth Avenue in 1895, asking price at that time $7,000, was sold
afterwards to M. Pellerin and bought two years ago for the Munich
Museum for $60,000.

Daubigny was one of the few men who appreciated Monet; he bought his pictures and urged others to buy.

When he died in 1878 a sale of his effects was held. Duret says:

I knew the “Canal à Saardam,” which seemed to me one of the most
beautiful things Monet had painted; I made up my mind to go to the
auction and try to buy it. The sale took place but the picture was
not put up. I supposed that the heirs had decided to keep it as a
work they understood and appreciated. One Sunday, fifteen days
later, happening by chance in L’Hôtel Drouot I went into a room
filled with unfinished works, old and grimy canvases, and a mass of
stuff--in a word, all the worthless debris of a studio--and there
at one side the “Canal à Saardam” of Claude Monet.... I inquired
and learned that the room contained the scourings of Daubigny’s
studio, sent in for sale anonymously. It was there the heirs had
sent the picture of Monet, excluding it from the regular sale
because they thought it would bring discredit. It was knocked down
to me at the auction for $16. In 1894, when my collection was sold,
the picture was bought by M. Durand-Ruel for $1,100. In 1901 it was
withdrawn from a sale at the price of $6,000.

* * * * *

The second exhibition was held in 1876 in the galleries of Durand-Ruel. In passing, tribute should be paid to this great dealer and remarkable man who backed his belief in the new men with all he possessed, to the jeopardizing of his business, and who, happily, still lives to enjoy the confirmation of his judgment.

Of this exhibition Albert Wolff, in “Figaro,” said:

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

Portrait of Self]

Village Street]

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.