Chapter M: J. L. Breton, deputy from Cherbourg, proposes to put to the (5)

They paint all sides of an object as if they saw through it. They
will paint a platter on a table and the part of the table covered
by the platter; they will paint the entire collar about the neck so
that it is visible through the neck. They ignore not only the
ordinary conceptions of space, but time does not exist for them.
Where in ordinary painting the box of bonbons that is passed at a
baptism may be painted closed on a table, the Futurist shows what
is inside the box, also the people assembled to whom the bonbons
are given, and the infant to be baptized, and perhaps the marriage
of the father and mother, the carriages outside the church, etc.,
etc.[65]

They illustrate further,

The sixteen persons about us in a moving omnibus are _in turn_ and
_at the same time_, one, ten, four, three; they are immobile and
yet move; they go, come, bounding along the street, suddenly lost
in the sun, then return seated before you, like _so many symbols
persistent of universal vibration_.

How often it happens that upon the cheek of the person with whom we
are talking we see the horse that passes far away at the end of the
street. Our bodies become parts of the seat upon which we rest and
the seat becomes part of us. The omnibus merges in the houses that
it passes, and the houses mix with the bus and become part of it.

6. The construction of pictures up to this time has been stupidly
traditional.

Painters have always shown things and persons _before_ us. We place
the spectator _in the midst_ of the picture.

Heretofore we have looked at pictures; it is the idea of the
Futurist that we should look _through_ them, that the pictures
should give us _new visions_ of life and things, new sensations,
new emotions.

We declare:

That one should hate every form of imitation and glorify every form
of originality.

That it is necessary to revolt against the tyranny of the words
“harmony” and “good taste,” expressions too elastic and with which
one might easily condemn the works of Rembrandt, Goya, and Rodin.

That art critics are useless and detrimental.

That it is necessary to brush aside all the subjects already used,
in order to adequately express our turbulent life of steel, of
pride, of feverish rapidity.

That the name madmen applied to all innovators shall be considered
a title of honor.

That the universal force must be shown in painting as a _sensation
dynamic_.

Above all, sincerity and purity are required in the portrayal of
nature.

That movement and light destroy the materiality of objects.

We are opposed to the use of those bituminous colors by which it is
attempted to secure the effect of time on modern pictures.

We are opposed to the superficial and elementary archaism based on
the flat tints and linear manner of the Egyptians, which makes
painting puerile and grotesque.

We are opposed to the false modernism of the Secessionists and
Independents who have built up new “schools” as pontifical as the
old.

The nude in painting is as nauseous as adultery in literature.

To explain this last article: There is nothing immoral in our eyes,
it is the monotony of nudity that we fight against. Painters
possessed of the desire to display on canvas the bodies of the
women with whom they are in love have transformed picture
exhibitions into galleries of portraits of disreputables. We
demand for the next ten years the absolute suppression of the nude
in painting.

* * * * *

The first exhibition of Futurist paintings in London was at the Sackville Gallery in March, 1912.

The painters printed by way of preface to the little catalogue a statement of their beliefs and aims. From this statement the following paragraphs are taken:

“We are young and our art is violently revolutionary.”

Speaking of the Cubists and Post-Impressionists generally:

“While we admire the heroism of these painters of great worth, who have displayed a laudable contempt for artistic commercialism and a powerful hatred of academism, we feel ourselves and we declare ourselves to be absolutely opposed to their art.

“They obstinately continue to paint objects motionless, frozen, and all the static aspects of nature; they worship the traditionalism of Poussin, of Ingres, of Corot, ageing and petrifying their art with an obstinate attachment to the past, which to our eyes remains totally incomprehensible.

“We, on the contrary, with points of view pertaining essentially to the future, seek for a style of motion, a thing which has never been attempted before us.

“All the truths learnt in the schools or in the studios are abolished for us. Our hands are free enough and pure enough to start everything afresh.

“It is indisputable that several of the aesthetic declarations of our French comrades display a sort of masked academism.

“Is it not, indeed, a return to the Academy to declare that the subject, in painting, is of perfectly insignificant value?

“We declare, on the contrary, that there can be no modern painting without the starting point of an absolutely modern sensation, and none can contradict us when we state that _painting_ and _sensation_ are two inseparable words.

“If our pictures are futurist, it is because they are the result of absolutely futurist conceptions, ethical, aesthetic, political, and social.

“To paint from the posing model is an absurdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if the model be translated upon the picture in linear, spherical, or cubic forms.

“To lend an allegorical significance to an ordinary nude figure, deriving the meaning of the picture from the objects held by the model or from those which are arranged about him, is to our mind the evidence of a traditional and academic mentality.

“While we repudiate impressionism, we emphatically condemn the present reaction which, in order to kill impressionism, brings back painting to old academic forms.

“It is only possible to react against impressionism by surpassing it.

“Nothing is more absurd than to fight it by adopting the pictural laws which preceded it.

“The points of contact which the quest of style may have with the so-called _classic art_ do not concern us.

“Others will seek, and will, no doubt, discover, these analogies which in any case cannot be looked upon as a return to methods, conceptions, and values transmitted by classical painting.

“A few examples will illustrate our theory.

“We see no difference between one of those nude figures commonly called _artistic_ and an anatomical plate. There is, on the other hand, an enormous difference between one of these nude figures and our futurist conception of the human body.

“Perspective, such as it is understood by the majority of painters, has for us the very same value which it lends to an engineer’s design.

“The simultaneousness of states of mind in the work of art: that is the intoxicating aim of our art.

“Let us explain again by examples. In painting a person on a balcony, seen from inside the room, we do not limit the scene to what the square frame of the window renders visible; but we try to render the sum total of visual sensations which the person on the balcony has experienced; the sun-bathed throng in the street, the double row of houses which stretch to right and left, the beflowered balconies, etc. This implies the simultaneousness of the ambient, and, therefore, the dislocation and dismemberment of objects, the scattering and fusion of details, freed from accepted logic, and independent from one another.

“In order to make the spectator live in the center of the picture, as we express it in our manifesto, the picture must be the synthesis of _what one remembers_ and of _what one sees_.

“You must render the invisible which stirs and lives beyond intervening obstacles, what we have on the right, on the left, and behind us, and not merely the small square of life artificially compressed, as it were, by the wings of a stage.”

[This feeling of transparency is fundamental to the theory.]

“We have declared in our manifesto that what must be rendered is the _dynamic sensation_, that is to say, the particular rhythm of each object, its inclination, its movement, or, to put it more exactly, its interior force.

“It is usual to consider the human being in its different aspects of motion or stillness, of joyous excitement or grave melancholy.

“What is overlooked is that all inanimate objects display, by their lines, calmness or frenzy, sadness or gaiety. These various tendencies lend to the lines of which they are formed a sense and character of weighty stability or of aerial lightness.

“Every object reveals by its lines how it would resolve itself were it to follow the tendencies of its forces.

“This decomposition is not governed by fixed laws but it varies according to the characteristic personality of the object and the emotions of the onlooker.

“Furthermore, every object influences its neighbour, not by reflections of light (the foundation of _impressionistic primitivism_), but by a real competition of lines and by real conflicts of planes, following the emotional law which governs the picture (the foundation of _futurist primitivism_).

“With the desire to intensify the aesthetic emotions by blending, so to speak, the painted canvas with the soul of the spectator, we have declared that the latter ‘_must_ in future be placed in the center of the picture.’

“We may further explain our idea by a comparison drawn from the evolution of music.

“Not only have we radically abandoned the motive fully developed according to its determined and, therefore, artificial equilibrium, but we suddenly and purposely intersect each motive with one or more other motives of which we never give the full development but merely the initial, central, or final notes.

“As you see, there is with us not merely variety, but chaos and clashing of rhythms, totally opposed to one another, which we nevertheless assemble into a new harmony.

“We thus arrive at what we call the _painting of states of mind_.

“One may remark, also, in our pictures spots, lines, zones of colour which do not correspond to any reality, but which, in accordance with a law of our interior mathematics, musically prepare and enhance the emotion of the spectator.

“We thus create a sort of emotive ambience, seeking by intuition the sympathies and the links which exist between

the exterior (concrete) scene and the interior (abstract) emotion. Those lines, those spots, those zones of colour, apparently illogical and meaningless, are the mysterious keys to our pictures.

“Conclusion: Our futurist painting embodies three new conceptions of painting:

“1. That which solves the question of volumes in a picture, as opposed to the liquefaction of objects favoured by the vision of the impressionists.

“2. That which leads us to translate objects according to the _force lines_ which distinguish them, and by which is obtained an absolutely new power of objective poetry.

“3. That (the natural consequence of the other two) which would give the emotional ambience of a picture, the synthesis of the various abstract rhythms of every object, from which there springs a fount of pictural lyricism hitherto unknown.”

* * * * *

The explanations of two pictures are as follows:

“Leave-taking,” by Boccioni: “In the midst of the confusion of departure, the mingled concrete and abstract sensations are translated into force lines and rhythms in quasi-musical harmony: mark the undulating lines and the chords made up of the combinations of figures and objects. The prominent elements, such as the number of the engine, its profile shown in the upper part of the picture, its wind-cutting forepart in the center, symbolical of parting, indicate the features of the scene that remain indelibly impressed upon the mind.”

“Rebellion,” by Russolo: “The collision of two forces, that of the revolutionary element made up of enthusiasm and red lyricism against the force of inertia and reactionary resistance of tradition. The angles are the vibratory waves of the former force in motion. The perspective of the houses is destroyed just as a boxer is bent double by receiving a blow in the wind.”

* * * * *

The theory of the Futurists is vividly illustrated in the following note to a picture called “The Street Enters the House.” “The dominating sensation is that which one would experience on opening a window: all life, the noises of the street rush in at the same time as the movement and reality of the objects outside. The painter does not limit himself to what he sees in the square frame of the window as would a simple photographer, but he also reproduces what he would see by looking out on every side from the balcony.”

To the layman this attitude is almost incomprehensible. For instance, the Cubist, Pierre Dumont, says of his picture, “The Cathedral at Rouen”:

One must not expect to find in this picture an exact representation
of the cathedral at Rouen, but rather my idea, my personal
perception, of this cathedral as I see it.

In painting my picture I did not paint from a fixed point and
always from the same point, but I studied the cathedral and
surroundings from all points of view and obtained a personal
conception of it, which I reproduced on my canvas.

I only included the details which struck me most forcibly, and
thought it necessary to break up the monotony of the roofs in the
first plan by one of the most beautiful details of the cathedral--a
statue of a saint, who is certainly not in his right place as far
as the eye is concerned, but does really occupy the place which he
occupies in my conception of what was before me.

* * * * *

That a painter should deliberately attempt to show on one canvas features of all sides of a building, strikes the layman--and many artists--as a “crazy” attempt to achieve the impossible; but it is _not impossible_, as a moment’s reflection shows.

It is, of course, easy to show all sides and all details of a building, interior and exterior, on one sheet or canvas, by drawing or painting, one after another, in panorama effect--that is done in every architect’s drawing-room.

It is also equally possible to _superimpose_ these detached drawings one over the other and _see_ or _feel_ the outlines _through_. That is, the drawing or photograph of the exterior of a cathedral may be so made as to show in outline or shadowy substance the altar within.

Illustrations along these lines are common in fiction--ghostly, shadowy, mystical effects, effects secured only by treating stones and walls and human beings as _semi-transparent_.

In this way every feature of a cathedral that strikes the artist, whether on the outside or inside, whether a feature so permanent as a statue or so fleeting as a wedding ceremony, may be indicated in his picture. By suppressing every detail save the most striking, what purports to be the picture of a cathedral may appear to be fragments of spires, bronze doors, statues, altars, lights, processions, the brilliant color of a priest’s robe, the white note of a bridal veil.

Another man painting his impressions of the same subject might catch glimpses of entirely different features.

If we can _in our mind’s eye_ see what is behind an object; if, for instance, we can picture to ourselves clearly the children playing in the yard back of a house, why may not the painter, if he chooses, suggest to us in his picture of the house the vital feature of the children in the rear?

The feat is a seemingly impossible one. Perhaps neither the Cubists nor the Futurists have accomplished it successfully; but because it is difficult is no reason why the attempt should not be made.

_Theoretically_ there is nothing to be said against pictures which show what both the _eye_ and the _mind’s eye_ of the artist see.

The works of the ultra-modern men can be understood only by the aid
of the imagination, by the aid of the _mind’s eye_ to see
_through_, and _about_ and _into_ things, to see the _inner_
conditions, happenings, and significance of things.

Stated in other terms, the extreme modern is no longer content to
paint what is before his eyes at a given moment and from a given
point of view; he is no longer content to act the part of a camera,
making reproductions of what is in front of it. He demands the
freedom to walk around his subject, fly over it, enter it, find out
all about it, and then record on canvas the sum and substance of
his observations _and_ reflections. The result may not look like a
cathedral, but if done by a genius it may give a fine impression of
certain salient features of the building, inside and out, and also
a vivid impression of some of its great ceremonies. Why not try to
paint the _power_ as well as the proportions?

* * * * *

If the American public found the work of Lehmbruck and Brancusi queer, what would it think of the Futurist sculpture?

The two female figures exhibited by Lehmbruck were simply decorative elongations of natural forms. In technic they were quite conventional. Their modelling was along purely classical lines, far more severely classical than much of the realistic work of Rodin.

The heads by Brancusi were idealistic in the extreme; the sculptor carried his theories of mass and form so far he deliberately lost all resemblance to actuality. He uses his subjects as motives rather than models. In this respect he is not unlike--though more extreme than--the great Japanese and Chinese artists, who use life and nature arbitrarily to secure the results they desire.

I have a golden bronze head--a “Sleeping Muse,” by

Brancusi--so simple, so severe in its beauty, it might have come from the Orient.

* * * * *

Of this head and two other pieces of sculpture exhibited by Brancusi in July, 1913, at the Allied Artists’ Exhibition in London, Roger Fry said in “The Nation,” August 2:

Constantin Brancusi’s sculptures have not, I think, been seen
before in England. His three heads are the most remarkable works of
sculpture at the Albert Hall. Two are in brass and one in stone.
They show a technical skill which is almost disquieting, a skill
which might lead him, in default of any overpowering imaginative
purpose, to become a brilliant _pasticheur_. But it seemed to me
there was evidence of passionate conviction; that the
simplification of forms was no mere exercise in plastic design, but
a real interpretation of the rhythm of life. These abstract vivid
forms into which he compresses his heads give a vivid presentment
of character; they are not empty abstractions, but filled with a
content which has been clearly, and passionately apprehended.

* * * * *

Futurist sculpture, like Futurist painting, starts with a fundamental departure.

All sculpture, classic as well as Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic, deals with an object or a group of objects. It models and reproduces them _detached_ from their environment.

Futurist sculpture seeks to reproduce a figure or an object _attached_ to and a _part of_ its fleeting and flowing surroundings, its atmosphere, its _medium_.

It goes further; it seeks to convey not only the impression of the truth that a figure is a part of its environment, but that its atmosphere and environment _flows through_ the figure and the figure _through_ the environment, that _nothing is segregated_ but everything _fusing_.

The philosophical thought is old, as old as the earliest Greek philosophy, but the attempt to express the thought in stone, wood, bronze, is new.

We may feel sure the attempt is futile, that it cannot succeed, but
our scepticism is no reason why a sculptor in his enthusiasm should
not make the attempt.

* * * * *

In June and July last a Futurist sculptor, Boccioni, exhibited some of his work in Paris.

One example, “Head--Houses--Light,” was literally a conglomerate of a human bust of heroic size, with hands crossed in front, and the following accessories:

On the top of the head the fronts of several small houses, with doors, windows, and all details just as the sculptor saw the houses _many blocks back_ of his model. The casual observer would be completely mystified on seeing several house fronts start out of the head of a bust; but when one understands that it is a fundamental belief of the Futurists that _all that is within the vision, actual or imagined, of painter or sculptor is a part of the picture or bust_, the reason why of the houses is plain.

From one shoulder of the figure starts about eighteen inches of a wooden railing and iron grill work, part of a balcony, just as the sculptor glimpsed it a block or so down the street.

A little to the back of the shoulder is a slightly inclined level surface about a foot square; on this surface is the toy figure, an inch high, of a woman in street costume. The figure was probably bought at a toy store, just as the wooden railing and iron grill work might have been picked up at any second-hand shop. The little figure of the woman and the level surface represent some open square that--judging from the diminutive size of the figure--must have been a long distance away, far enough away for a human being to appear no taller than an inch.

The entire bust was crudely colored, and one side of the

face was modelled in downward flowing lines and painted yellow to represent rays of strong sunlight.

The figure was ugly in the extreme; the lines were ugly, the coloring ugly, the technic clumsy; but _as an illustration of a theory_ the work was both curious and interesting.

* * * * *

In the creed of the Futurist are found the following:

1. Sculpture must give life to objects by making sensible _their extension in space_, for no one today can deny that an object continues to where another object begins, and that all things that are about us--automobile, house, tree, street, etc., etc.--traverse our bodies, dividing us into planes and sections, forming an arabesque of curved and straight lines.

This traversing of each object by the planes occupied by all other objects is called in the transcendental terminology of Futurism, “_Compenetration of planes_.” (Here Futurist and Cubist again meet.)

2. A Futurist sculptural _composition_ will contain in itself the marvellous mathematical and geometrical elements of modern objects. These objects will not be placed close to the statue, like so many _detached_ explanatory attributes or decorative elements, but according to the laws of the new conception of harmony they will be _embodied_ in the muscular lines of the body. For example, we may see the wheel of an automobile starting out of the body of a chauffeur, the line of a table traversing the head of a man who is reading, and the pages of his book may project through his chest.

3. The abolition complete of the _line finished_ and the _statue isolated_! Throw open the figure like a window and make part of it the surroundings in which it exists. The sidewalk may extend to your table; your head may traverse and include the street, and at the same moment your lamp may unite house to house by its searching rays.

The entire world precipitates itself upon us, amalgamates with us, creating a harmony that will not be controlled except by creative intuition.

4. Do not be afraid to go outside one art and receive assistance from others. There is no such thing as painting _alone_, sculpture _alone_, music _alone_, poetry _alone_; there is simply _creation_.

Hence if a particular sculptural composition needs some special movement to augment or contrast the rhythm of the ensemble, there is no reason why one should not make use of a small motor to secure the effect.

5. It is necessary to get rid of the idea, purely literary and traditional, that marble and bronze are the materials that must be used in great sculpture. The sculptor may use twenty materials in one work if required to express his idea. He may use glass, wood, cement, cardboard, leather, cloth, mirrors, electric lights, etc.

6. It is only by choosing subjects absolutely modern that one can discover new motives and ideas.

7. It is necessary to abandon the nude and the traditional conception of the statue and the monument.

8. What the Futurist sculpture creates is, in a way, the _ideal bridge_ that unites the infinite plastic _exterior_ with the infinite plastic _interior_. That is why the objects _never finish_, but they _intersect_ with endless combinations both sympathetic and averse. The feeling of the spectator is at the _center_ of the work, not aloof and outside, as with traditional sculpture.

* * * * *

All this sounds wildly extravagant, but not absolutely incoherent.

* * * * *

The obvious objection to the attempt of the Futurist sculptor to include in his _composition_ an object _and_ its environment

is found in his own proposition--_which is philosophically valid_--that _the universe_ is the atmosphere, the environment of every object from a grain of sand to a planet.

Hence the Futurist figure that shows a few houses, a bit of a railing, a glimpse of a distant square, is more comprehensive than the conventional bust to only an infinitesimal degree; only _almost infinitesimal fractions_ of the _enveloping_ universe are shown.

The effect is fragmentary and confusing.

Other sculptors, conspicuously Rodin in some of his work, get the effect of atmosphere and environment by detaching the figure or composition _only partially_ from the block of marble or mass of bronze, leaving to the _imagination of the observer_ the finishing of the work, the supplying of both environment and atmosphere.

That would seem to be the finer, the purer, the more abstract way.

* * * * *

In fact, there is an obvious contradiction between the creed of the Futurist sculptor and the Futurist writer.

The former feels impelled to show environment by encumbering his figure with an overwhelming mass of details, houses, railings, sidewalks, petty figures, etc., etc.--all the _qualifying_ objects that happen within his vision, leaving nothing to the imagination of his observer; while the Futurist writer would eliminate from literature all adjectival and adverbial words and phrases, leaving the nouns (the simple figures of sculpture) to stand alone.

* * * * *

Many things can be done in painting that cannot be done in sculpture. A figure may be painted against a background of an entire city, or against the heavens; or it may be painted in the midst of a battle, or a train wreck; the flight of years can be indicated, centuries may be swept into one canvas.

In sculpture this cannot be done save, in a measure, in such crude mixtures of sculpture, relief, and painted scenes as those large circular panoramas so popular twenty years ago, where the spectator stood _in the center_--where the theory of the Futurist requires him to be--and gazed from life-size figures and objects at his feet across smaller and smaller, until reality imperceptibly joined the painted canvas, which gave a sense of great distance--entire battle-fields.

The Futurist sculptor cannot give this sense of environment and atmosphere by attaching diminutive houses and bits of balconies to the bust of a man.

* * * * *

In reading their extravagant declarations and denunciations of the past it must be remembered that extremes beget extremes, that enthusiasts habitually indulge in extravagant arguments and theories for the purpose of attracting attention and stimulating discussion.

In an address recently delivered in London, the leader of Futurism warned his hearers not to accept too literally the startling extravagances of some of the Futurist manifestoes and literature. He stated frankly that many of the most violent propositions were uttered for the purpose of arousing public attention to what they considered very real evils in our modern life. For instance, when the Futurists cry, “Down with all museums,” “Destroy all remains of antiquity,” they do not mean that if they were given the power they would do these things, but what they desire is to arouse Italy and the ancient world to the fact that Italy has a position as a _modern_ nation. The Futurists resent the attitude of the world toward Rome and Athens; they resent the attitude of travelers who visit those two places solely to look at the remains of the _ancient world_; they believe that Italy is just as much a _modern nation_ as is America, and that Rome is just as much alive as is New York, and they would have people come to Italy, not to see ruins, but to see her factories and industries and places of business. When one rightly considers the matter this is a very rational and patriotic attitude, and it is the only attitude that is wholly consistent with the development and progress of a nation as a _vital force_ in the world of _today_.

Viewed in the light of the intense patriotism which is behind some of these wildly extravagant denunciations of the past, they do not seem so devoid of reason.

We in America have no past to oppress us; therefore it is difficult for us to realize the feeling of a modern nation, or a modern city, which the civilized world will not accept as modern, but insists upon viewing as a museum of antiquities.

* * * * *

The address referred to also said:

“Futurism was first put forward by me for the purpose of renovating
and reawakening the Italian race to a true appreciation of the true
art in literature as well as in painting and sculpture. Precisely
because it has a splendid past, Italy is today in some sort
disinherited. The cult of the past is upheld among them by a whole
world of interested people, and the Futurist movement in its
creative effort is hampered not only by such economic hindrances
but by the mental cowardice of people.

“In art you must continually advance; those who stop are already
dead, or candidates for death. The Romanticism of artists like
Baudelaire and Wagner and Flaubert was inspired by two or three
principles which are worn out today. ‘Salambo’ was the type romance
of that old sensibility. In a certain sense such Romanticism is the
identification of the

idea of beauty with the idea of woman. We are at the end of that period.

“Woman as the center, the obsession has already gone out of poetry. As a leit-motif she has no longer the same force; other problems have taken her place. According to our view, poetry is nothing but a more intense, a more exalted, life--and that is why we combat the constant intrusion into it of the ‘domestic triangle’ in various forms, and which has been its ruin.

“Now, Futurists are found everywhere. In England you have H. G. Wells. We all realize the need to be more rapid, more intense, more essential, and though our method of expression has been stigmatized as ‘telegraphic lyricism’ I take no exception to that so long as it makes people talk and brings them to examine our underlying rules of action.

“Art, either plastic or active, is not a religion. It is the best part of our strength, of our physiological being. It is, in consequence, absurd to consider it as a system, as something to worship with joined hands; it should express all the intensity of life--its beauty, greatness, its fire, its brutality, its sordidness.

“Futurism in poetry represents a realism profound, rapid, intense--the very complex of our life of today.”

XII

VIRILE-IMPRESSIONISM

What is happening in America? Exactly what might be expected in a _young_, _vigorous_, and _virile_ country.

America has been keenly susceptible to art influences from every section. Her students are everywhere, her exhibitions are gathered from the four quarters of the globe. She is very much alive to what Europe is doing, she has long been interested in what China and Japan have done.

While her art is in the main conservative, it is not the conservatism of stubbornness or stolidity, it is rather the conservatism of isolation; but her isolation is a thing of the past. Communication is so frequent, travel so easy, transportation so cheap, that both art and artists flow hither and thither almost unrestricted.

In spite of this freedom of inter-communication, the development of American art has been along independent lines--at least along _one_ independent line, a line so individual in its characteristics it deserves the name _American_-Impressionism, or, more generically, Virile-Impressionism.

By Virile-Impressionism is meant a manner of viewing nature and a mode of painting quite different from the more superficial refinements of Impressionism on the one hand and the extraordinary developments of Post-Impressionism on the other.

Let us try to make this clear.

* * * * *

As already noted, Impressionism attained a logical end in the painting of brilliant light effects, especially in the works of the Neo-Impressionists, the pointillists.

In short, the drift of Impressionism in France was toward more and more brilliant reflections of the _surfaces_ of things.

This extreme _attentuation_ was quite foreign to the spirit of America, which is more _material_ and _practical_.

* * * * *

It may be our fault, it is certainly our virtue, that we are material and practical in our outlook. In a big, sane sense we are _dreamers_. Only dreamers could carry the Panama Canal to completion, and, to mention lesser works, only dreamers could build such terminals as the Pennsylvania and New York Central in New York, and such buildings as the Woolworth and the Manhattan. But our dreams always take practical shape. We are a nation of inventors _because_ we are a nation of dreamers.

Hence, while our artists were quick to respond to all that is good and strong in Impressionism, they found little satisfaction in the ultra-refinements of Neo-Impressionism.

The result was that when France pressed Impressionism to its extreme, a normal and healthy reaction took place in American art.

Many of the strong painters of America began doing things of their own. They still adhered closely to nature. They remained Impressionists in the older significance of the term, but they painted not the _surfaces_ of things but the _substance_--in short, they were _Cézanne_-Impressionists as distinguished from _Monet_-Impressionists.

For instance, Winslow Homer was a great and true Impressionist, but he had nothing in common with the Neo-Impressionists, and little in common with Monet. He had, however, a great deal in common with Cézanne. His pictures give one an impression of _nature herself_, of the power of the sea, the adamant of the rocks, the significance of life, yet each one is an accurate transcript of what he saw. He did

SEGONZAC

Forest
]

not go into his studio and _create_ pictures out of his imagination; he let his imagination play upon nature, but nature controlled all he did.

He was, in a sense, the greatest of _American_-Impressionists--he was a Virile-Impressionist.

There are many Virile-Impressionists in Europe, but they are so many individuals; here Virile-Impressionism is the result of racial, national, geographical conditions.

It was inevitable that Impressionism in America should follow along virile and substantial lines rather than along nervous and superficial; it is the way the country is built.

* * * * *

Sargent is a Virile-Impressionist. He paints striking _likenesses_, but he also paints marvellous _characterizations_; that is, he gets beneath the skin of his sitters and paints them as they _are_, not as they seem. His sense of color is very deficient; many of his portraits from a decorative point of view are almost the reverse of pleasing; he had not the faintest appreciation of the subtle refinements of the things Whistler strove so long and earnestly to achieve; in his best things he is strong and direct to the point of brutality--all of which is characteristic of Virile-Impressionism, and exactly what one would expect from a vigorous, muscular, frank American. Though Sargent spends most of his time on the other side, he is no more English than French; his pictures fit into an American exhibition far more comfortably than into the Royal Academy or the old Salon.

Robert Henri is another strong Virile-Impressionist.

* * * * *

The attitude of American painters toward the extreme modern developments is both curious and interesting.

On the opening of the International Exhibition there was an outburst of violent indignation from the older men, ordinary speech failed to express their feelings, and they rushed into print with language as violent as the press would accept. All that made lively reading and lent zest to current literature.

Six months later this feeling of angry opposition largely subsided. As an illustration, one of the bitterest of the Academicians accepted as a “good idea” the organization of an _independent_ exhibition, open to artists _without the intervention of a jury_, under the auspices of the National Academy, as soon as a building could be provided that would adequately house all exhibitions.

Again, the very conservative authorities of a large art institute listened receptively to the suggestion that every art museum owed the public two things in the way of exhibitions:

_First_, exhibitions selected by juries which would give the public the benefit of the best expert judgment available.

_Second_, exhibitions wherein painters and sculptors barred by the juries would have opportunities to present their works _to the judgment of the public_.

In short, suggestions that would not have been listened to before the International are now discussed as quite within the range of possibilities.

There is no danger of these things coming to pass in the _immediate_ future; there is still too much latent opposition, but the virulent has measurably subsided.

So much for the _older_ men.

* * * * *

The younger were naturally much more tolerant. They were more--they were both _curious_ and _receptive_. Many of them searched with eager eye for valuable hints, for ways and means to perfect their own art.

It was a great pleasure to watch and talk with these young men, the _rising_ generation.

Many of them, to their own surprise, found they had been working along modern lines without fully realizing it.

They had not cut loose from Impressionism, but they were doing things _constructively_ rather than _superficially_; they were painting like Cézanne rather than Monet.

* * * * *

If the attempt were made to name these younger men, the result would be injustice to many whose works are unknown to the writer, and the argument would be confused.

To speak, therefore, of one of the paintings reproduced, take the “Still Life,” by Kroll. In the decorative arrangement of the draperies and in the manner in which the fruit and stone jug are painted, the feeling is quite _Post_-Impressionistic; while the glimpse of the street out the window is purely _Impressionistic_.

That is to say, all within the window is painted solidly and constructively, quite under the influence of Cézanne; all that is without is painted fleetingly and superficially, more under the influence of Monet. It was done intentionally, to secure a certain effect of contrast; but the result is neither _French_-Impressionism nor _Post_-Impressionism, but _American_-Impressionism--a certain _eclecticism_.

The glimpse of the street is delightful, but the arbitrarily arranged interior is more than delightful; it possesses strength of line, fine color, and solid masses, _done constructively_.

Still, one has only to compare this picture with the “Still Life,” by Herbin, and the “Forest at Martigues,” by Derain, to see how close to nature it is, how _Impressionistic_ it is as distinguished from the _Post_-Impressionistic, or creative, spirit.

Kroll painted what he felt, _controlled_ by what he saw. Derain painted what he felt, _influenced only slightly_ by what he had seen.

* * * * *

The foregoing illustrates the position of the more vigorous of the younger American painters; they are so strong, so virile, so muscular--let us say--that instinctively they lean toward the painting of things in a big, broad _constructive_ manner; the refinements of _superficial_ impressionism do not interest them.

At the same time they have not reached the point where they are willing to let go of nature entirely and do purely _creative_ things.

Perhaps this is just as well.

America--like every new country--is so essentially practical, practical in even its most imaginative flights, that it is difficult for its painters to retire within themselves and do things that have only an esoteric or metaphysical relation to actualities; that sort of thing in both art and literature is much easier on the continent than in either England or America; it is especially easy in the highly charged and hyper-artificial atmosphere of Paris.

* * * * *

Purely _creative_ work is done in a masterly manner--in his best things--by Arthur Davies. It is attempted and quite successfully by Kenneth Miller, to mention only two of many.

To the casual observer Davies may seem to lose himself at times in his theories, to press his dreams and speculations beyond the confines of his art, but on this point the opinion of the “casual observer” is of little value, for Davies’s pictures cannot be casually observed; they challenge the attention of the most serious and repay study. I make no pretense to having fathomed their mystery, to understanding their inner significance, but enjoy and have always enjoyed the marvellously fine way in which they are done, and their rare decorative quality.

Here is a man doing _creative_ work, work in which he plays with and uses nature to attain ends far above and far removed from nature. He is in no sense a Virile-Impressionist, no one would think of classing him as an Impressionist at all. Yet he is not a Post-Impressionist as the term has been defined in this book.

He belongs rather to the class of inspired or _poetic_ painters, a few of whom are with us always, men who neither found nor belong to a “school,” but who express on canvas or in stone their fancies in a way that reminds one of fairy-tales.

Davies may admire much of the work of some of the ultra Post-Impressionists; he likes, for instance, much of Matisse’s work; he may even fancy he has something in common with these men, but he has not. He was painting his pictures long before theirs were very much known, and he would have painted his if theirs had never been produced at all.

Matisse is moved by a _spirit fundamentally different_ from that which animates Davies.

* * * * *

“The Bridge,” by Kroll, is another striking example of American-Impressionistic art. It is one of a series of pictures of lower New York, each painted “on the spot,” some from roofs and high places difficult of access and dangerous.

It is comparatively easy to go out and make a few sketches of portions of a city like New York and then retire to the studio and paint faint and superficial reproductions, such inadequate reproductions as appear on the walls of any metropolitan exhibition; it is quite another thing to plant one’s easel on slippery rocky heights and day after day, in the cold, paint from nature as directly as Monet ever painted and in a much more virile way.

It takes imagination and enthusiasm and the superb confidence of youth to attempt such colossal things, and it takes an unusual technical facility to “get away” with the attempt.

* * * * *

Winslow Homer’s name has been mentioned and mentioned with the respect due one of the greatest painters this country has produced, but the besetting weakness of picture buyers is undue reverence for the man who has “arrived,” above all for the master who is dead.

_Better pictures are being painted in America today than Homer painted_, and he would be the first to say so if living.

Since he painted his best pictures the art of painting has advanced, painters have improved their technic and broadened their outlook.

There are pictures being painted today by young Americans that will be worth far more than Homer’s, and that is said with the full realization that no lover of what is big and strong in art could ask for more virile impressions of nature than those of Homer at his best.

* * * * *

When the Morgan pictures were hanging in the Metropolitan Museum, acclaimed in parrot phrases by critics and visited by multitudes, it was a delight, a veritable refreshing of the soul, to get away from the smell of the dead into the living atmosphere of the Hearn collection and see pictures that _belong to us_, to our own times, that are flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone.

Every picture in the Morgan collection had its vital relation

KROLL

Brooklyn Bridge
]

to life _once_--_when_ it was painted and _where_ it was painted.

Not one has even a remote relation to the life of America.

They are valuable, very valuable, in the sense that old tapestries, old armor, old brocades, old pottery, etc., etc., are valuable--valuable as illustrating the history and development of painting, and beautiful as many old things are beautiful--but _not half so beautiful as the living and breathing things of today_.

* * * * *

But how can we appreciate the beauty of the things our painters and sculptors are doing when we are blind to the superb, the magnificent beauty of what our engineer-builders are doing--our _steel_ “_sky-scrapers_”--America’s greatest achievement and unique contribution to the arts--an _absolutely new architecture_?

* * * * *

Though the artist may be quick to disavow all such intention, it is obvious that there is much Post-Impressionism in John W. Alexander’s work.

In both his technic and his inspiration he is very Post-Impressionistic.

In the delightful sweep of his line, and the purely decorative use of color, he departs far from nature.

The attitude of Sargent toward a model or sitter and that of Alexander are diametrically opposed, the one seeks to paint a vigorous _characterization_ of the person before him, the other seeks to _create a picture_, and to do so by a technic so different from that commonly used it still occasions much of the wonderment it excited years ago.

Some of the portraits by Alexander are conspicuous on the walls of an exhibition for very much the same reasons such a picture as Van Rees’s “Maternity” would be conspicuous.

The landscape and cattle piece by Segonzac are both examples of Virile-Impressionism. But Segonzac has painted many other pictures that are Post-Impressionistic--arbitrary in design and execution, and still others that are both Virile-Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic, such as his large canvas, “A Pastoral,” shown at the International, wherein the cattle are Virile-Impressionistic creations while the nude figures and the entire scheme are purely Post-Impressionistic.

* * * * *

The two landscapes by Vlaminck and Charmy are good examples of the transition state from Virile-Impressionism to Post-Impressionism.

They are sufficiently close to nature to be Impressionistic in the large sense of the term; at the same time they are so arbitrary and decorative in technic as to be quite Post-Impressionistic. They are about as far removed from the average exhibition of Impressionistic pictures as they are from the creative and abstract art of the Cubists, yet they will hang with either without unduly shocking the spectator’s sense of the fitness of things.

* * * * *

The three Cardoza’s are purely Post-Impressionistic; they are charming examples of what might be called _romantic_ Post-Impressionism as distinguished from the more _abstract_ conceptions of the Cubists; they have no more relation to life than a fairy tale, rather less if anything, for they are primarily decorative rather than significant.

* * * * *

Zak’s “Shepherd” is also Post-Impressionistic, romantic in feeling like Cardoza’s, but of deeper human significance. The utter loneliness of the shepherd’s life, the monotony of its outlook, the note of resignation, are all as subtly indicated

CHARMY

Landscape
]

as are any of the human qualities in Millet’s pictures of peasant life; yet in technic and composition the picture is essentially Post-Impressionistic, a decorative and musical work of the _creative_ imagination. One would not be far astray in classing it with the poetic work of Arthur Davies.

XIII

SCULPTURE

Developments in sculpture do not always parallel those in painting.

In comparison painting is so facile that it lends itself easily to experiments, responds quickly to moods and fancies. In short, painting is more susceptible--more volatile.

Not that the painter and the sculptor are different human beings, but the mediums whereby they express themselves are so different, and the demands for their work are so unequal, that sculpture usually lags behind in new ventures. The sculptor, however great his desire, cannot afford to make the experiments the painter makes, or at the best he can only embody his new ideas and aspirations in uninviting plaster casts.

He is bound by some of the conditions that hamper the architect, one of which is difficulty in finding a patron who will take the risk and pay the expense of innovations.

* * * * *

The reaction in sculpture has been from the _classic_ along two opposed lines:

A. Back to nature.

B. Purely creative.

* * * * *

The movement back to nature, to a closer observation of life, even to the rendering of the human figure with brutal frankness, is exemplified in the work of Matisse, work so _ugly_--to most people--it seems a grotesque caricature of

M’lle Poganey]

Kneeling Woman]

the human form, but the human form today is never so symmetrical, so perfect as in classic sculpture, and one suspects the Greeks themselves idealized their young men and maidens.

Long before Matisse, Rodin started the “return to nature.” His “Age of Bronze,” 1877, was so literal a transcript it was denounced as a cast from life; sculptors and critics refused to believe human fingers could model so perfect an impression. His “Saint John,” “Eve,” “Bourgeois of Calais,” “Le Penseur,” “La Belle Heaulmière,” to mention only a few, were all created in a spirit diametrically opposed to the classic--yet Rodin is a most intelligent lover of the classic.

_Per contra_, most of Rodin’s marbles are a fine mixture of the classic and purely modern--of the _classic_ and the _romantic_.

The point here is that in some of his bronzes he exhibits as clear and merciless an observation of nature as Matisse or any other modern. It may be said once for all that in the number and _variety_ of things he does, in the manner in which he links past and present, Rodin stands quite alone among sculptors. If he has little sympathy with the extreme sculpture of the hour it is because life is short and in his life time he has covered so vast a territory, responded to so many impulses, ancient and modern, he is not unnaturally reluctant to embark upon new experiments or interest himself vitally in what others are doing.

* * * * *

The best American sculpture, even more than American painting, is solidly virile-impressionistic, notably the work of such men as Barnard and Borghlum. Davidson has one foot firmly planted within the confines of Post-Impressionism, but he has by no means cut loose from the past. His “Decorative Panel” in the Exhibition was purely post-impressionistic, a work of the imagination, while his figures were virile-impressionistic.

* * * * *

It is only by comparing the work of these new men with that of St. Gaudens, French, MacMonies--to mention no others--that one begins to rightly understand what is meant by the “_reaction to nature_.”

There is plenty of pure _observation_ and plenty of fine _imagination_ in the work of those three men, but there is also much of the purely classical, and not one of them showed or shows any desire to break with tradition, while the very essence of the modern movement is a disregard, conscious or unconscious, for tradition; in many of the new men there is a violent revolt against the domination of the past.

* * * * *

It is when we come to the work of Brancusi and Archipanko that we find the most startling examples of the reaction along purely creative lines.

Nature is purposely left far behind, as far behind as in Cubist pictures, and for very much the same reasons.

Of Brancusi something has been said already.

Of all the sculpture in the International Exhibition the two pieces that excited the most ridicule were Brancusi’s egg-shaped portrait of Mlle. Pogany and “Family Life” by Archipanko.

Both are _creative_ works, products of the imagination, but in their inspiration they are fundamentally different.

* * * * *

In his symmetrical oval head with the spiral masses where the neck would be, it is apparent the sculptor’s interest is in the play of line and relation of masses, no profound human problem troubled him. That there is a relation between the strange shape of the head and his theories of life and art no

Spiral Expansion of Muscles in Action]

Portrait Heads]

serious observer of his other work could doubt, but his unusual technic over-shadows other interest.

* * * * *

In his “Family Life,” the group of man, woman, child, Archipanko deliberately subordinated all thought of beauty of form to an attempt to realize in stone the relation in life that is at the very basis of human and social existence.