Chapter M: J. L. Breton, deputy from Cherbourg, proposes to put to the (1)

Assistant-Secretary of State for the Beaux Arts, in the course of
the next discussion of his budget, a question regarding the
“scandal” of the Autumn Salon, and to ask him not to allow the use
of the Grand Palais for such manifestations, which discredit
French art in our national palaces.

This is the question which was put to the consulting commission
charged with giving its advice regarding the multiple concessions
for the Grand Palais in 1913.

M. Pascal, of the Institute, who presented the question, concluded
unfavorably. After a long and lively discussion, the commission
ranged itself by a large majority on the side of the proponent.

Let us recall the protests that have been addressed to the Autumn
Salon. They were the subject, a few weeks ago, of a letter from Mr.
Lampué, dean of the municipal council, who protested against the
invasion of _cubism_ into the galleries of the palace of
expositions.

It is now up to M. Léon Bérard, Assistant-Secretary of State for
the Beaux Arts, to take final action.

* * * * *

On varnishing day, Mr. Gabriel Mourey wrote in the Journal:

“What a pity it is that there is no law permitting the taking of
legal action against painters who cultivate hatred of beauty in the
public mind. These painters are the advance-guard artists and the
Cubists.” M. Mourey neglected to tell us if the legal action which
he proposes to us would be civil or penal. In our opinion, it would
be necessary to make a distinction: The rich painters might be
condemned to pay a penalty, and, so that the Government might not
be liable to lose its rights where there is nothing, the poor
painters might be hung up high and short.

Oh, tolerance! oh, progress! oh, the twentieth century!

In connection with the controversy “L’Art Décoratif” quoted the following letter from Boucher to his pupil Fragonard: “My dear Fragonard: You are going to see in Italy the works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and their imitators; I say to you in confidence and as a friend, _if you take these people seriously you are lost_.”

* * * * *

Not the least interesting and amusing feature of the lively article from which the above extracts are taken is its own denunciation of the cubists _en bloc_.

The Country Road]

Fight of the Amazons]

It resolutely assails the more orthodox critics for what they say about all the moderns _it likes_ and then it echoes their language in its own condemnation of a body of men who are striving earnestly in their way to do things.

* * * * *

_“Oh! tolerance, oh! progress!_
_Oh! twentieth century!”_

* * * * *

One has only to group the conflicting opinions of great painters and critics to see how much depends upon the point of view and the personal equation.

To say certain pictures are worthless is a matter of individual taste and judgment; they may be worthless to me and not to you, just as clothes one man likes another would refuse to wear.

But to say a school or a movement, irrespective of particular works, is a worthless movement involves not one’s taste but one’s philosophy of life; it involves the proposition that a movement in art that challenges the attention of the art-world _is so devoid of force of any kind_ that it is unworthy attention--an obvious contradiction.

Cubism has produced a lot of inane, uninteresting, and ugly pictures, pictures hopelessly bad in both line and color, but it has also produced pictures that are fine in line and color; but whether a particular picture is good or bad is of no importance whatsoever in comparison with the larger and more vital question:

_What is the relation of Cubism to the art of today and tomorrow?_

* * * * *

When the _Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ was founded in 1890 in a spirit of revolt against the old Salon _Société des Artistes Français_--which dates its expositions from 1673--the schism was complete and the movement was denounced as revolutionary. The art world was divided into two bitterly hostile camps. The two Salons seemed absolutely irreconcilable.

Now they exhibit side by side in practically the same building. The visitor can stand in the main gallery of the one and gaze into the galleries of the other. The only distinctions are separate catalogues and an extra charge of a franc or two if you wish to pass from the one to the other.

* * * * *

Passing from the old Salon to the newer, one still has--to a slight degree--the feeling of passing from older and more conservative pictures to a newer, lighter, and somewhat more modern collection. And there is a difference but it is so slight that casual visitors do not notice it. In fact nine out of ten who visit the two Salons would think they were in but one exhibition, selected and arranged by the same committee, were it not for the additional fee and the two catalogues.

There is no reason today why the two Salons should not coalesce and make one exhibition.

In less than twenty-five years the older has absorbed much of what was good in the revolutionary force of the younger, and so much of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the younger has subsided that the members of the new _Société_ fight side by side with the members of the old _against the two more radical exhibitions_, the _Salon d’Automne_, organized in 1903, and the _Société des Artistes Independents_, organized in 1884.

* * * * *

In time the Salon d’Automne will become quite as conservative as the two older Salons and there will be no reason why it should not exhibit and coalesce with the older.

What is happening in Paris has happened in Munich. The Munich Secessionists, once denounced as aesthetic anarchists, have so far subsided that they exhibit with the academic painters, retaining a faint show of identity by having the word “Secessionist” over the doors of the few rooms they fill.

The old Secession having subsided, the “Neue Sezession” has been organized by “Die Wilden” of Munich and that is now rampant; in ten or twenty years _it_ will be absorbed in the main stream and a still _newer_ secession challenge attention--and so on to the end of progress, for progress depends upon new and newer and ever newer departures. Already there is a division in the New Secession; the “Blue Riders” have withdrawn.

* * * * *

Months after the above was written the London correspondent of the “Chicago Tribune”--Nov. 2, 1913--wrote as follows about the post-impressionist exhibition in the Grafton Galleries:

Many of the pictures which would have provoked happy laughter three
years ago now look quite ordinary. The public is inured to them as
much as it is inured to Whistler or Degas, and in a little time
some of them will be dealers’ pictures, just like the works of the
Barbizon school.

There is, for instance, nothing extraordinary about the “Interior
of a Café,” by VanGogh, except its quiet excellence. It is all seen
as justly and yea as newly as a character in one of Tolstoi’s
novels. One feels that any one could have painted it who had had
the luck to see it so.

The “Boats at Anchor,” also by VanGogh, is merely a sound but not
very interesting impressionist picture, and his flower piece is
even academic in a delightful way. Cézanne’s “Boys Bathing” is one
of those works on which the art of modern painters like M. Friesz
is based.

It looks like a representation of something seen instantaneously,
and yet at the same time it is all designed like a work of Nicholas
Poussin’s.

M. Matisse’s “Joaquina” is timidly skied, but it is not in the
least infuriating, like his famous gentleman in pajamas. Indeed,
his method here justifies itself at first sight, for by no other
means, one feels, could he have expressed the vitality of his
sitter so simply and intensely.

M. Friesz’s “Garden at Coimbra” is one of the pictures that would
have astonished us all three or four years ago, but which now looks
only pleasant and simple. So are the works of M. Marquet and M.
Doucet, and even M. Herbin no longer seems a bad joker. The “Polka”
and “Waltz” of Mr. Severini, the futurist, are quite agreeable to
the eye, if it refuses to allow itself to be puzzled by the mind;
but, if futurist paintings can be academic, they are a little
academic, or at least systematic. One feels that any one could be
taught to do them pretty well in a studio.

Among the water colors there are some pleasant works by M. Doucet
and some remarkable experiments by M. Pechstein. The color prints
of M. Manzana are more Chinese than Japanese in spirit, especially
the print of horses; and the lithographs of M. Matisse may help
some earnest beginners to see some merit in his painting. At any
rate, any one who looks at them must see that he can draw.

The exhibition contains a good deal of rubbish, but far less than
most exhibitions of what is considered orthodox art.

* * * * *

The Salon d’Independants tends to remain radical notwithstanding it was founded so long ago as 1884 because it has but one article in its creed, “_the suppression of juries of admission and permission to artists to exhibit freely their works to the judgment of the public_.”

By paying five dollars any artist--real or supposed--is entitled to so much space and can fill that space with such pictures as he pleases, irrespective of their merit.

As a result, each exhibition contains original, revolutionary and radical work mixed with an immense amount of painting and sculpture that is hopelessly bad and some positively objectionable.

The continued vitality of the Independent Salon is due to the fact it has no officials or committees to control its exhibitions and check the appearance of radical work.

Café]

The three other Salons grow conservative in the natural ageing of their management; they start with all the enthusiasm of youth but as both members and officers get older they tend to monopolize much of the available space for themselves and, naturally, they admit only those newcomers whose work does not detract or distract from their own. That is the history of the Royal Academy in London, of the National Academy in New York, and of every organization _the management of which has the right to hang their own and reject the works of others_.

* * * * *

In the development of art _all_ these exhibitions have their values. They are not unlike an army in a campaign, with its scouts, its skirmishers, its advance guard, and its more slowly moving main body--in the end it is the main body that does the most work.

The _value_ of every _new_ movement lies in the possibility of its ultimately _contributing_ something to the mass, _not_ in the possibility of its _destroying_ what has been done.

* * * * *

One has but to recall that both Whistler and Manet--to mention no others--were obliged to exhibit in the Salon des Refuses of their day to realize that an _independent_ salon has its place in the art world quite as important as an official; in fact, wherever there is an _official_ exhibition there should be an _un_-official, or independent, as a natural complement, otherwise the opportunity of the public to see _for itself_ is limited by official discretion.

* * * * *

For instance, it is the rule of the National Academy in New York that every member and associate has _the right_ to hang a picture irrespective of its merits. As the space is limited the chance for new men is small indeed.

Furthermore it is the older men who pass upon the works of the newer and naturally they feel an instinctive aversion to paintings that clash with or distract attention from their own, hence the more radical, the more novel, the more interesting the picture the less chance it has of being accepted. This is both a fault and a virtue in the Academy--the fault and the virtue of extreme conservatism.

To correct the fault other exhibitions, held under freer conditions, are absolutely necessary not only to the progress of artists, young and old, but to stimulate interest in the public, to make the public feel that _it_ is something more than a passive spectator with nothing to say, but on the contrary _its sympathetic cooperation_ and _final verdict_ of approval are desired.

* * * * *

Nothing is more deadly to the art of a country than a single annual official exhibition such, for instance, as that of the Royal Academy in London, or the old Salon as it was thirty years ago in Paris.

The interest of the public is not aroused. The official selection is accepted as a matter of course. What is in the exhibitions is supposed to be good, what is not accepted is supposed to be bad.

As a result, the really good pictures in such exhibitions are not appreciated at their true value, while the poor are bought simply because they are there.

The truth is it requires the new salons, the independent exhibitions to give vitality to the old, to teach the public to appreciate the good in the old.

Good art, like everything else good, springs from controversy, _from the assertion of the individual_, from the mighty struggle of every sincere and enthusiastic man to convince the world that _he_ is right and that _his_ works and ways are better than those of all other men.

* * * * *

That is just what the new men are striving to do now--each is trying to convince the world _he_ is right, that _his_ methods, _his_ departures, _his_ theories are true.

The Cubist does not admit much of value in the Futurist, while the latter see nothing at all in Cubism. In short the “isms” are more at war among themselves than with the older schools.

Out of the seething conflict of forces good is sure to come; the amount of good depending directly upon the sharpness of the conflict.

V

WHAT IS CUBISM?

What is “Cubism?”

One more name added to the long roll of “movements” in art. Within the memory of living men we have had “Classicists,” “Romanticists,” “Idealists,” “Naturalists,” “Realists,” “Pre-Raphaelites,” and many more.

Today we have the “Neo-Impressionists,” the “Pointilists,” the “Luminists,” the “Futurists,” the “Orphists,” the “Sensationalists,” the “Compositionalists,” the “Synchronists,” the “Cubists”--tomorrow?

New and ever new departures, experiments, achievements.

All of which goes to prove that art is living, for the sign of life is flux.

* * * * *

The other day I saw three well-known American painters standing before a cubist picture laughing; _painters of forty years ago_ would have laughed quite as heartily _at the works of each of the three_.

The innovation of today is the conventional of tomorrow.

Because the names of Rembrandt and Hals are now household words in art we are quick to assume their pictures were always considered great. Not so.

Just now it is a fad of millionaires to own Rembrandts; consequently he is over-appreciated and ridiculously overpriced.

* * * * *

The bare thought of the scorn that greeted Wagner’s operas, the poems of Browning, and Whitman, sends a cold

The Taster]

The Chimneys]

chill down our backs, makes us pause in our headlong criticism lest we, too, pillory ourselves.

Violent judgments are good fun, but they often come back to plague us. Of Wagner’s “Meistersinger” Ruskin said:

Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-headed stuff
I ever saw on a human stage that thing last night--as far as the
story and acting went--and of all the affected, sapless, soul-less,
beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest,
tuneless, scrannelpipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I
ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the
deadliest as far as its sound went. I never was so relieved, so far
as I can remember, in my life by the stopping of any sound, not
excepting railroad whistles, as I was by the cessation of the
cobbler’s bellowing; even the serenader’s caricatured twangle was a
rest after. As for the great “Lied,” I never made out where it
began or where it ended except by the fellow’s coming off the horse
block.

From which the inference is not unwarranted that Wagner did not please Ruskin!

* * * * *

Opposed to all movements in art and life is the _academic_ mind, fed on learning, steeped in tradition, hence conservative.

The term is not here used in a reproachful sense; on the contrary, the philosopher lays stress upon the value of the academic in progress; it is the element that preserves; it is the mass upon which humanity rests; it is the old and stable; it is the past upon which the future is built; it is the essential groundwork of new thought and new effort.

* * * * *

The life of the individual passes from the enthusiasms, the radicalisms of youth to the serene and self-satisfied outlook of old age which instinctively opposes novelty and change--the academic attitude.

Youth makes friends with every chance acquaintance, age shuns the strange.

We are all Impressionists and Futurists at some times in our lives, but we tend to petrify. Sclerosis of the _arteries_ is bad, but nothing compared with sclerosis of the _emotions_. We not only tend to become petrified as we grow older, but even in our youth we have our petrified sides, our hard spots.

However progressive we may be in certain directions we are sure to be stubbornly conservative in others.

The man who laughs at a cubist picture may be a cubist--that is, an innovator--in his profession or business.

The man who is a conservative in religion may be a radical in politics, and _vice versa_. As a matter of fact most of the followers of Lloyd George in England are the greatest sticklers for the inerrancy and the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, while most of the hide-bound conservatives are exceedingly tolerant toward “modernism” and “higher criticism” in the church.

So it goes. The merchant or manufacturer, the doctor or lawyer who is up to date in business or profession, who is keenly receptive toward the latest and most revolutionary methods, inventions, discoveries, may be--usually is--a hopeless reactionary toward other lines of human endeavor, a hopeless conservative when it comes, for instance, to looking at pictures.

* * * * *

Now and then one meets a man so sympathetically observant and receptive that, like a good rubber ball, he is resilient at all points of contact. But for the most part we are like defective balls, resilient only in spots, and, like rubber, we become less and less resilient with age.

* * * * *

Happy the man or woman who retains until late in life the power to react to new impressions and to experience new emotions.

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.

Chess Players]

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

Dance at the Spring]

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.

Original drawing for “Man on Balcony”]

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]

DUCHAMP

King and Queen
]

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

Woman with Mandolin]

The Poet]

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.

Rodin’s bronzes exhibit these same elemental qualities, qualities which are pushed to violent extremes in Cubist sculpture. But may it not be profoundly true that these very extremes, these very extravagances, by causing us to blink and rub our eyes, end in a finer understanding and appreciation of such work as Rodin’s?

His Balzac is, in a profound sense, his most colossal work, and at the same time his most elemental. In its simplicity, in its use of planes and masses, it is--one might say, solely for purposes of illustration--Cubist, with none of the extravagances of Cubism. It is _purely_ Post-Impressionistic.

Twenty or twenty-five years ago painters who used a broad technic, and especially those who used the palette knife to lay the pigment in flat sweeps, were looked upon as charlatans and sensationalists. Today their pictures are accepted in the most conservative exhibitions and the public passes with scarcely a comment.

This broad technic is simply painting in planes--in a sense, simply modified Cubism.

To illustrate:

The surface of an orange may be so carefully painted or modelled in clay that the effect is a perfect sphere with no straight lines; or it may be painted or modelled in minute planes and no curved lines; or the use of planes may be carried so far the orange is represented by angles so sharp the shape is almost cubical--it is all a question of the _extent_ to which the artist carries the use of _plane surfaces_. The _fewer_ the planes used and the _larger_ their size, the nearer the _substance_ and more obvious the representation of _mass_.

The _smaller_ the planes and the _larger_ their number, the nearer the _surface_--the more superficial the representation.

* * * * *

The division of planes can be carried--geometrically--to such an extent that the unaided eye can no longer distinguish the minute flat surfaces, and the effect is a perfect sphere.

What is true concerning the painting or modelling of an orange is true of the painting or modelling of all objects.

* * * * *

“It has been charged that the new men are too much given to the geometrical. But geometrical figures are the essential elements of drawing. Geometry, the science which deals with extension, its measure and its relations, has ever been the basis of painting.

The Milliner]

“Up to the present time the three dimensions of Euclid have sufficed to express the problems that infinity gives rise to in the souls of great artists.

“Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.

“Today philosophers do not confine their speculations to the three dimensions of Euclid. Painters, by intention, so to speak, have cause naturally to preoccupy themselves with these new lines of extension which, in the language of modern studios, are classed under the term, _fourth_ dimension.”[38]

* * * * *

Speaking of Cézanne, it is said:

To him a sphere was not always round, a cube always square, or an
ellipse always elliptical. Thus the traditional oval of the
conventional face disappeared in his portraits, the generally
accepted round surfaces of a vase or bowl was represented as flat
and dented in spots and the horizontal stability of the horizon was
rendered elliptical whenever it so appeared to him.

The general truthfulness of his observations may readily be tested
by any one of normal vision who will carefully observe the actual
appearance of the surfaces of a round sugar bowl, for example, when
placed in the light of a window. It will be found that certain
planes are as flat as the table, that others present the appearance
of dents and hollows, and the more clearly this is perceived the
more grotesque will the object appear as compared with the
preconceived image of it established in our minds by the
unconscious interaction of the sense of touch and sight.

We know that, scientifically regarded, there is no such thing as a
round surface, that what appears to be such is simply the closely
adjusted juxtaposition of infinitesimal planes that are each
perfectly flat. And the very fact that painters refer to the
surface of a figure as _planes_ is indicative of a partial
recognition of this basic characteristic of structure.
Nevertheless, both artists and laymen persist in speaking of the
roundness of a torso, for example, when in reality, if we could
disassociate the _sense_ of roundness from the _appearance_ of
roundness as did Cézanne, we would find large surfaces of spheroids
quite flat. Therein lies the real secret of the art of Cézanne who
is the first of realists.

In a sense, “Cubism” is a misleading term, for, in the first place, “Cubist” pictures are not painted in cubes, but in all sorts of angles and curves; in the second place, the theory does not call for angles.

The theory being the expression of emotion in line and color, there is no conceivable reason why cubes and angles should be used to the exclusion of curves, swirls, sweeps, dashes. On the contrary, of all forms, cubes and angles would seem to be the most inappropriate for emotional expression, since they are peculiarly suggestive of the geometrical and the matter-of-fact.

“Curvism” or “Swirlism” would describe the movement just as well, save that for the time being angles are very much in evidence.

Picabia says that “Cubism” is a misnomer for the movement. He says:

After impressionism, neo-impressionism, then cubism, which sought a
geometric third dimension in painting, the expression of things
seen in geometrical figures. But a purely subjective art cannot, of
course, be bound by any form of expression the moment that
expression becomes a convention, an established body of laws with
accepted values. Therefore, he has cut loose from cubism, and is
what, again for handy classification--an evil habit from which we
cannot emancipate ourselves--may perhaps best be called
“post-cubist,” with entirely unfettered, spontaneous, ever-varying
means of expression in form and color waves, according to the
commands, the needs, the inspiration of the impression, the mood
received. Objective expression is strictly barred. He even ignores
form as far as possible, seeking “color harmonies.” Harmony and
equilibrium are his device.

* * * * *

But the Cubists are rapidly getting away from the cubes and angles. It is quite possible that a year or two hence we shall see no more _purely_ Cubist pictures.

That does not mean the movement will come to an end--not at all. The movement toward abstract painting, toward the use of line and paint on canvas for mere pleasure of using them, and without copying objects in either life or nature, is in its infancy.

* * * * *

“But I don’t understand them!”

Is it necessary to your enjoyment that you should?

Do you understand what Caruso is singing?

Do you understand that French song reproduced by the phonograph?

Do you understand what the orchestra is playing?

Do you understand the pattern in that Persian rug?

How many people who rave over Japanese art have the remotest idea what this or that precious print or painting represents?

Does an intricate design on a bit of Oriental pottery please you? And is your enjoyment lessened one whit by the fact it is all a mystery to you?

Why will you accept as beautiful and buy at a high price a painting you do not understand because it is by a Chinese artist, and reject as ugly the painting by a French artist simply because you cannot see “what he is driving at”?

* * * * *

Suppose a Cubist picture is a beautiful scheme of color; is it less beautiful _in color_ because you do not understand the painter’s theory? His painting may be fine, his theory absurd.

Would your enjoyment of Caruso be increased if he sang in English the ridiculous stuff he sings in Italian?

Fortunate it is for most grand opera that we _do not understand_--we are not diverted from the music by the nonsense of the libretto.

The enjoyment of music is a curious thing.

First of all, there are all kinds of music, from rag-time to Beethoven, and each kind has its following.

Then the following of each kind breaks up into its rag-time and Beethoven divisions.

That is to say, in an audience listening to rag-time there are always a few who enjoy the music in a Beethoven way--for what there is of real value in it.

While in an audience listening to a Beethoven symphony there are always a goodly number, often a big majority, who enjoy it in a rag-time way--just the emotional reaction, without knowing a thing about the music.

There are two entirely distinct enjoyments of the same composition--the purely intellectual and the purely emotional. There may be a mingling of the two, but as a rule what one gains the other loses.

The man who follows the score, is familiar with the different interpretations of this and that leader, whose ear catches every failure by any part of the orchestra to respond, and so on, and so on--that man is constantly holding his emotional response subject to his intellectual appreciation. What is a fine performance to most of the audience may be a very indifferent performance to him.

True, when the performance is so fine it carries him off his feet, then he gets an enjoyment--intellectual and emotional--far finer than the enjoyment experienced by others. In a sense, he is the one man worth playing for.

But while it is a fine thing to both understand and enjoy, understanding is not essential to enjoyment in the purely emotional sense--to the enjoyment most people feel when listening to music.

The voice of a street singer borne in upon the night air, even the sound of a hurdy-gurdy, pleases, though we do not

SOUSA CARDOZA

Leap of the Rabbit
]

know the song or the air. There is a species of pleasure in not knowing that is dissipated when we recall or are told.

Many of our enjoyments are more than half dreamy. Is it not true that the dreamy element is essential to purely emotional enjoyment?

I confess to a very ignorant enjoyment of music. If I am at a concert I do not like to be told what it is all about. I enjoy good music without knowing or caring why, and I like to hear it without being seated where I am more than half-hypnotized by the rhythmical movements of the orchestra, especially the fascinating bowing of the violins.

* * * * *

What is true of the enjoyment of music should be true of the enjoyment of painting. But with painting, most people insist upon understanding. They will listen to Patti without knowing her language, but they will not look at a painting unless they know the painter’s language.

* * * * *