Chapter M: J. L. Breton, deputy from Cherbourg, proposes to put to the (6)

Spiritual, emotional, and mathematical intellectuality, too, is
behind the family group of Archipanko. This group, in plaster,
might have been made of dough. It represents a featureless, large,
strong male--one gets the impression of strength from humps and
lumps--an impression of a female, less vivid, and the vague
knowledge that a child is mixed up in the general embrace. The
faces are rather blocky, the whole group with arms
intertwined--arms that end suddenly, no hands, might be the sketch
of a sculpture to be. But when one gets an insight it is intensely
more interesting. It is, eventually, clear that in portraying his
idea of family love the sculptor has built his figures with
pyramidal strength; they are grafted together with love and
geometric design, their limbs are bracings, ties of strength, they
represent, not individuals, but the structure itself of family
life. Not family life as one sees it, but the unseen, the deep
emotional unseen, and in making his group when the sculptor found
himself verging upon the seen--that is, when he no longer felt the
unseen--he stopped. Therefore the hands were not essential. And
this expression is made in the simplest way. Some will hoot at it,
but others will feel the respect that is due one who simplifies and
expresses the deep things of life. You may say that such is
literature in marble--well, it is the modernest sculpture.[66]

* * * * *

The group is so angular, so _Cubist_, so ugly according to accepted notions, that few look long enough to see what the sculptor means; yet strange as the group was it undeniably gave a powerful impression of the binding, the _blending_ character of the family tie, a much more powerful impression than groups in conventional academic pose could give.

In considering the extreme modern movement in sculpture it must not be forgotten that groups and figures just as strange have been done in the past--that even queerer and more grotesque things have been used to adorn churches and altars.

True, those sculptures and carvings are _naive_ and _primitive_, but may not the naive and primitive be closer to life and to life’s great truths than the sophisticated and classical?

That is the question.

The answer of the moderns is that the swing of the pendulum in art is from the naive and primitive through the more and more conventional to the fixed and lifeless mold of the classic and academic, then back again to the naive, traversing the romantic, in its course, both ways.

Back of Woman]

Young Woman]

XIV

IN CONCLUSION

To gather the loose ends of the argument in one skein.

* * * * *

Impressionism was the natural, the inevitable reaction from the romantic and story-telling art of the forties, fifties, and sixties--a return to _nature_ from the _studio_, to works of the _observation_ from works of the _imagination_.

Impressionism developed along three diverging lines:

A. _Superficial_ Impressionism--Monet.

B. _Realistic_ Impressionism--Manet.

C. _Substantial_ Impressionism--Cézanne.

* * * * *

A. _Superficial_--the painting of light effects, the impressionism of Monet, culminated in the extreme refinements of the pointillists, the Neo-Impressionists, Seurat and Signac.

In superficial Impressionism the last word seems to have been said for the time being. Any number of delightful pictures--light effects--are being painted, and will continue to be painted, but the early enthusiasm has largely subsided.

Superficial Impressionism leads naturally to the painting of pure color effects--_color music_, _orphism_, _compositional_ painting. After the last word in the _observation_ of light effects _Post_-Impressionistic attempts to _create_ pure color effects, irrespective of natural--that is a logical reaction.

B. _Realistic_ Impressionism penetrates a little deeper. While Monet and his followers, Signac and Seurat, dealt more and more with the play of light on the _surface_ of things, Manet and his followers painted closer to the _heart_ of things.

While Monet was content to paint a hay stack twenty times in as many different lights, Manet preferred a touch of _life_ and _character_ in his pictures. While he was first and last a painter, he was not so absorbed in securing purely technical effects as to be wholly blind to the _human_ element, hence his wonderful portraits, his bullfights, his glimpses of city life--pictures _big_ in more senses than one.

Still he and his followers were primarily interested in the _aspect_ of things, the _characteristics_ as distinguished from the fundamental _character_ of things. He penetrated far deeper than Monet, so much deeper the two had little in common, but he did not get so close to the heart that he forgot the skin; he was always a painter of _appearances_, but in a _big_ as distinguished from a _superficial_ way.

The realistic Impressionism of Manet has by no means run its course. Some of the finest painting in the world has been done and is being done along this line. It is the line of Franz Hals and Velasquez; it is the line of men so different as Whistler and Sargent in their best portraits.

The natural reaction from perfection in this line is higher accentuation of characteristics--in the extreme _caricature_.

That is, given the last word in the painting of character by great men in a _solid_ way, the logical attempts of new men or lesser men will be the indication of character in a lighter and more superficial way. The penetrating _observation_ of the older men gives way to the keen and playful _fancies_ of the younger. The same sitter yields with the former a powerful portrait, with the latter a fascinating picture which may be quite as _revealing_ both as a likeness and as a characterization.

C. _Substantial_ Impressionism is not so easy to define and differentiate. It is far from _superficial_ but has much in common with _realistic_.

It is easiest to simply say it is the Impressionism of Cézanne and those who have read what has already been said about Cézanne will understand.

Cézanne was not content to paint either the _surface_ or the _characteristics_ of things or people; he sought to go _deeper_, to get at the very _substance_ and to place on canvas their elemental qualities.

As a natural result the longer he painted the _less_ interesting his pictures became _superficially_, but the _greater_ their interest _fundamentally_.

While Monet became more and more a _popular_ painter, a painter for the dealer and the buyer, Cézanne became more and more a _painter’s painter_, doing things that only the technically skilled could rightly appreciate.

Interested solely in the profoundest problems of his art and painting only for those who had a very great knowledge of art, he attracted comparatively few followers; the path he followed promised little in the way of immediate fame and rewards.

Still during his last years he had his ardent admirers and after his death his simple, strong _constructive_, _elemental_ pictures began to be widely appreciated.

They make no pretense to the superficial charm of color or composition that attracts the average observer, but they _fascinate_ every man who studies things long enough to even partially understand what the artist was so earnestly trying to do.

_Substantial_ or Cézanne Impressionism led naturally to the Virile-Impressionism of today, a way of seeing and painting things that is a compound of the Impressionism of Manet with that of Cézanne.

There is a great and glorious future for Virile-Impressionism. Some of the greatest portraits and pictures in the world will be painted with the penetrating vision of a Cézanne, modified by the clear, cool observation of a Manet.

The logical reaction from carrying observation of nature to the extent Cézanne carried it is painting of the substance of things _creatively_, _theoretically_, as in _Cubism_.

Cézanne carried the use of planes _imitatively_ so far that it was but a step to their use _arbitrarily and scientifically_.

_Substantial_ Impressionism leads naturally to substantial Post-Impressionism; or in other words, the _substance_ of things painted impressionistically (more or less imitatively) leads logically to the painting of the _substance_ of things _creatively_ = _Post_-Impressionistically.

KROLL

Still Life
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