CUBISTS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM
[Illustration: GLEIZES
Man on Balcony]
Cubists and
Post-Impressionism
BY
ARTHUR JEROME EDDY
Author of “Delight, the Soul of Art,” “Recollections and Impressions
of James A. McNeill Whistler,” etc.
With Twenty-three Reproductions in Color of
Cubist and Post-Impressionist Paintings,
and Forty-six Half-Tone
Illustrations
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1914
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1914
Published March, 1914
W. F. HAL. PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO
_TO THAT SPIRIT_
_the beating of whose restless wings is heard in every land_
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. A Sensation 1
II. Post-Impressionism 11
III. Les Fauves 33
IV. A Futile Protest 50
V. What is Cubism? 60
VI. The Theory of Cubism 90
VII. The New Art in Munich 110
VIII. Color Music 140
IX. Esoragoto 147
X. Ugliness 154
XI. Futurism 164
XII. Virile-Impressionism 191
XIII. Sculpture 202
XIV. In Conclusion 207
Appendix I. Exhibitions at 291 Fifth Avenue 211
Appendix II. Two Comments 214
Bibliography 223
Index 239
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
BALLA, _Dog and person in movement_ 164
BECHTEJEFF, _Fight of the Amazons_ 53
BLOCH, _Summer night_ 92
_The duel_ 93
BOCCIONI, _Head, houses, light_ 184
_Spiral expansion of muscles in action_ 204
BRANCUSI, _M’lle Poganey_ 202
CARDOZA, SOUSA, _Marine_ 4
_Leap of the rabbit_ 84
_Stronghold_ 148
CÉZANNE, _Portrait of self_ 26
_Village street_ 27
_Still life_ 36
CHABAUD, _The laborer_ 16
_Cemetery gates_ 108
CHARMY, _Landscape_ 200
DERAIN, _Forest at Martigues_ 154
DOVE, _Based on leaf forms and spaces_ 48
DUCHAMP, _Chess players_ 64
_King and queen_ 72
ERBSLOH, _Young woman_ 207
GAUGUIN, _Portrait of self_ 128
_Farmyard_ 129
_Scene in Tahiti_ 132
GIRIEUD, _Woman seated_ 141
GLEIZES, _Man on balcony_ _Frontispiece_
_Original drawing for man on balcony_ 70
GRIS, _Still life_ 133
HERBIN, _Landscape_ 96
_Still life_ 186
JAWLENSKY, _Head of a girl_ 158
KANDINSKY, _Village street_ 20
_Landscape with two poplars_ 105
_Improvisation No. 29_ 116
_Improvisation No. 30_ 124
KLEE, _House by the brook_ 88
KROLL, _Brooklyn Bridge_ 198
_Still life_ 210
LEGER, _The chimneys_ 61
LEHMBRUCK, _Kneeling woman_ 203
MARC, _The steer_ 104
MATISSE, _The dance_ 44
_Woman in red madras_ 112
_Portrait heads_ 205
_Back of woman_ 206
METZINGER, _The taster_ 60
MÜNTER, _The boat ride_ 172
_The white wall_ 173
PICABIA, _Dance at the spring_ 68
PICASSO, _Woman with mandolin_ 74
_The poet_ 75
_Drawing_ 100
_Old woman_ 140
ROUSSEAU, _Portrait of self_ 12
_Landscape_ 13
RUSSOLO, _Rebellion_ 178
SEGONZAC, _Pasturage_ 182
_Forest_ 192
SEVERINI, _The milliner_ 80
VAN GOGH, _Portrait of self_ 40
_Cafe_ 56
_Woman with frying pan_ 120
_Chair with pipe_ 121
VAN REES, _Still life_ 89
_Maternity_ 168
VILLON, _Young girl_ 32
VLAMINCK, _Village_ 136
WEREFKIN, _The country road_ 52
ZAK, _The shepherd_ 8
CUBISTS AND POST-IMPRESSIONISM
ALAS! ALAS!!
“It is unlikely that any painters will ever again have to face the
hostility which was manifested against the Impressionists. The
repetition of such a phenomenon would be impossible. The case of the
Impressionists, in which withering scorn yielded place to admiration,
has put criticism on its guard. It will surely stand as a warning, and
ought to prevent the recurrence of a similar outburst of indignation
against the innovators and independents whom time may yet bring forth.”
--“Manet and the French Impressionists,”
by Theodore Duret, pp. 180, 181.
Cubists and Post-Impressionism
I
A SENSATION
Since the exhibit at the Columbian Exposition (1893) nothing has
happened in the world of American art so stimulating as the recent
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. New York and Chicago, spring of
1913.[1]
“Stimulating” is the word, for while the recent exhibition may have
lacked some of the good, solidly painted pictures found in the earlier,
it contained so much that was fresh, new, original--eccentric, if you
prefer--that it gave our art-world food for thought--and heated
controversy.
* * * * *
Art thrives on controversy--like every human endeavor. The fiercer the
controversy the _surer_, the _sounder_, the _saner_ the outcome.
* * * * *
Perfection is unattainable. As man in his loftiest flight stretches
forth his hand to seize a star he drops back to earth. The finer, the
purer the development of any art the more certain the reaction, the
return to elemental conditions--to begin over again.
* * * * *
The young sculptor looks at the chaste perfection of Greek sculpture and
says, “What is the use? I will do something different.” The young
painter looks at the great painters of yesterday and exclaims, “What is
the use? I cannot excel them in their way; I must do something in my own
way.” It is the same in business; the young merchant studies the methods
of the successful men in his line and says, “It is idle for me to copy
their methods. I will do something different, something in my own way,”
and he displays his goods differently, advertises differently, conducts
his business differently, and _if successful_ is hailed as a genius, if
a failure he is regarded as a visionary or an eccentric--the result
making all the difference in the world in the verdict of the public.
Painting today is a terrible problem to an absolutely sincere,
honest, and yet ambitious mind.
Fired to set forth something of his very own, to avoid plagiarism
and give the world something it has never yet received, the artist,
in whatever direction he advances, finds the horizon bounded by a
great master whom he cannot hope to surpass. Well, indeed, may he
ask what is the use of trying to do what Van Eyck, Botticelli,
Vermeer, Rembrandt, Veronese, Michael Angelo, Velasquez--nay, even
what Constable, Corot, Claude Monet, and Signac have done to
perfection?
In despair at surpassing the limits set by the great masters of
progress he harks back, as the pre-Raphaelites did, to the painters
before Raphael. Alas, Fra Lippi and Taddeo Gaddi are soon found to
be too sophisticated. He goes back farther, to Giotto, to Orcagna,
even to the Egyptians, and with the same result. At last he takes
his courage in his hands and, throwing overboard the whole cargo of
art history, ancient and modern, he seeks to forget that picture
was ever painted, and with eyes freed from traditional vision he
seeks to recreate the barbaric art of infancy.
Call this man an extremist if you like, but do not lightly dub him
insincere and charlatan. He is the counterpart in art of the
extremist in politics, the man who has no patience with palliative
measures, who demands the whole loaf and nothing but the loaf, who
kicks savagely away the fragments of bread tendered him by the
moderate and respectable. A dangerous man he may be, but he is no
trifler; and, if he succeeds in his purpose, as extremists
sometimes do, the whipped world at his feet hails him as reformer
and benefactor of humanity.[2]
* * * * *
The Columbian Exposition gave American art a tremendous impetus forward,
but of late it has been getting a little smug; the International
Exhibition came and gave our complacency a severe jolt.
The net result is that American art has received another impulse
forward; it will do bigger and finer and saner things. It will not copy
the eccentricities, the exaggerations, the morbid enthusiasms of the
recent exhibition, because America as yet is not given to eccentricities
and morbidness--though it may be to a youthful habit of exaggeration.
America is essentially sane and healthful--say quite practical--in its
outlook, hence it will absorb all that is good in the extreme modern
movement and reject what is bad.
Neither our students nor our painters will be carried off their feet but
they will be helped onward. They will be helped in their technic, and
they will see things from new angles, they will be more independent, in
short they will be better and bigger painters.
They will not be Cubists, Orphists, or Futurists, but they will absorb
all there is of good in Cubism, Orphism, Futurism--and other “isms;” and
bear in mind it is the _ist_ who is always blazing a trail somewhere; he
may lose himself in the dense undergrowth of his theories but he at
least marks a path others have not trodden.
The recent exhibition was not an isolated movement. There are no
_isolated_ movements in life. The International Exhibition was just as
inevitable as the Progressive political convention of 1912 in Chicago.
The world is filled with ferment--ferment of new ideas, ferment of
originality and individuality, of assertion of independence. This is
true in religion, science, politics as well as in art. It is true in
business. _New thought_ is everywhere. The most radical suggestions are
debated at the dinner table. In politics what would have been considered
socialistic twenty years ago is accepted today as reasonable. To the
conservative masses these new departures may seem like a wild
overturning of all that is sacred, but there is no need for fear; all
that _is really sound_ will gain in the end.
* * * * *
Neither Cubism, Futurism nor any other “ism” troubles the really great
painter; it is the little fellow who fumes and swears.
The poise of the great man is not at all disturbed by the eccentric and
the bizarre; on the contrary he looks with a curious eye to see if
something of value may not be found.
Whistler would not have painted Cubist pictures, but having known the
man I can say that nothing there may be of good in Cubism would have
gotten by the penetrating vision of that great painter.
It is characteristic of the little man to ridicule or resent everything
he does not understand; it is characteristic of the great man to be
silent in the presence of what he does not understand.
* * * * *
Just now the older men are violently opposed to the newer; there is no
attempt at understanding and there is abundant ridicule instead of
sympathy.
[Illustration: SOUSA CARDOZA
Marine]
This is inevitable and quite in accord with human nature, but it is a
pity. The old and the new are not rivals; the new is simply a departure
from the old, simply an attempt to do something different with line and
color. The older men should watch the younger with keenest interest;
they may feel sure the new is foredoomed to failure, but that is no
cause for rejoicing; on the contrary the older man should always be
sorry to see the soaring flights of youth come to grief.
* * * * *
Because a man buys a few Cubist pictures it must not be assumed he is a
believer in Cubism.
Because a man has a few books on socialism or anarchism in his library
we do not assume he is a socialist, or an anarchist; on the contrary it
is commonly assumed he is simply broadly and sanely interested in social
and political theories. The radical may not convince me he is right, but
he may show me I am wrong.
The man who flies into a passion at pictures because they are not like
the pictures he owns is on a par with the man who flies into a passion
at books because they are not like the books he owns--the world is
filled with such men, unreceptive, unresponsive; many intelligent in
their narrow way, but bigoted.
To most men a new idea is a greater shock than a cold plunge in winter.
Personally I have no more interest in Cubism than in any other “ism,”
but failure to react to new impressions is a sure sign of age. I would
hate to be so old that a new picture or a new idea would frighten me.
I would like to own Raphaels and Titians and Rembrandts and Velasquezes,
but I can’t afford it. I say I would like to _own_ them; no, I would
not, for I have the conviction that no man has _the right_ to
appropriate to himself the work of the great masters. Their paintings
belong to the world and should be in public places for the enjoyment and
instruction of _all_.
It is the high privilege of the private buyer to buy the works of _new
men_, and by encouraging them disclose a Rembrandt, a Hals, a Millet, a
Corot, a Manet, but when the public begins to want the pictures the
private buyer, instead of bidding against the public, should step one
side; his task is done, his opportunity has passed.
* * * * *
Most men buy pictures not because they want them, but because some one
else wants them.
The man who gives half a million for a Rembrandt does so not because he
knows or cares anything about the picture, but solely because he is made
to believe some one else wants it $450,000 worth.
Read this:
The crowning event of the day was the sale of Rembrandt’s
“Bathsheba.” The bidding started at 150,000 francs and within a
couple of minutes a perfect whirlwind of bids had carried the price
to 500,000 francs offered by a dealer, Mr. Trotti.
Already the smaller fry among the bidders had been eliminated and
the contest was circumscribed to a small group, Messrs. Duveen,
Wildenstein, Tedesco, Muller and Trotti being the most ardent in
the battle.
“Six hundred thousand!” cried Mr. Duveen.
“Six hundred and fifty thousand,” said Mr. Wildenstein.
Mr. Duveen replied with a nod which meant the addition of another
50,000. Then with bids of 10,000 and 25,000 the price mounted, the
struggle developing into a duel between Mr. Wildenstein and Mr.
Duveen. Eight hundred thousand francs was reached and left behind;
900,000 francs in turn was passed.
“Nine hundred and fifty thousand,” rapped out Mr. Duveen.
“Nine hundred and sixty thousand,” responded Mr. Wildenstein.
Then came “nine hundred and seventy thousand” and “nine hundred
and eighty thousand.” By this time the entire gathering was
spellbound by the spectacle of the gladiatorial contest for the
picture.
“Nine hundred and ninety thousand,” said Mr. Wildenstein.
There was an instant of silence.
“A million!”
Every eye turned from the speaker, Mr. Duveen, to gaze on Mr.
Wildenstein expectantly. Then there was silence, signifying his
withdrawal from the fight.
A mighty hubbub arose. The Rembrandt had been knocked down to Mr.
Duveen for a million francs, or, with the commission, 1,100,000
francs. Never has such a price been given for a Rembrandt.
This is not dealing in art, it is art on the horse-block.
Here is the record of that one painting:
1734--Sold at Antwerp for $ 109
1791--Sold at Paris for 240
1814--Sold at London for 525
1830--Sold at London for 790
1831--Sold at London for 792
1832--Sold at London for 1,260
1841--Sold at Paris for 1,576
1913--Sold at Paris for 220,000
* * * * *
During the exhibition in New York and Chicago the pictures were the one
topic of conversation; for the time being it was worth while to dine
out; society became almost animated.
I recall one delightful and irascible old gentleman, critic and painter,
who had not had a fresh appreciation for twenty-five years. For him art
ended with the Barbizon school. Whistler, Monet, Degas had no sure
places.
* * * * *
We all have the courage of _others_’ convictions.
The new, however good, is always queer; the old, however bad, is never
strange.
Most people laugh at new pictures because they are afraid if they don’t
laugh at the pictures, other people will laugh at _them_.
Now and then a man laughs at a queer picture because he can’t help it,
_he_ is a _joy_.
Laughter is the honest emotion of the child, on the grown-up it is often
a mark of ignorance.
It is so easy to ridicule what one does not understand and _dares_ not
like.
Laughter never stops to think--if it did there would be less laughter.
If you _feel_ like laughing at a picture, laugh by all means, it will do
you good, but be sure you _really feel_ like laughing, and to make sure
ask yourself this question, “If that picture were the only one in the
room and I were alone with it would it strike me as laughable?”
* * * * *
It always takes just about so many years. What happened with the
Barbizon School happened with Impressionism; what happened with
Impressionism, will happen with Post-Impressionism; what will happen
with Post-Impressionism will surely happen with post-post-Impressionism,
and so on. One movement follows another, as season follows season. Life
is rhythm.
Each generation thinks itself unique in its experiences.
We go to an exhibition of cubist pictures and we think nothing like that
ever happened before, hence we feel safe in denouncing them.
We admit England was wrong when it ridiculed Turner, that France was
wrong when it ridiculed Corot, that Paris was wrong when it derided
Millet, Manet, Monet, Degas, and a host of other great men, but _we_ are
_not_ wrong when _we_ deride the new men. Why? Because we think they are
newer and stranger than the men named.
[Illustration: ZAK
The Shepherd]
We accept Wagner as a genius, but Strauss--oh, no, he is _too_ strange,
but there are stranger composers than Strauss already at work and we
must travel fast to keep up with the procession.[3]
Be very sure the Cubists, the Futurists, and all the other queer “ists”
would not make the impression they are making if there were not a good
reason for it, if the times were not ripe for a change.
* * * * *
Broadly speaking we are changing from the _perfections_ of Impressionism
to the _imperfections_ of Post-Impressionism; from the _achievements_ of
a school, a movement, that has done the best it could, to the
_attempts_, the _experiments_, the _gropings_, of new men along new
lines.
It is the purpose of this book to describe some of the changes that are
taking place and _try_ to explain them in plain, every-day terms.
The curse of art literature and professional art criticism is
_art-jargon_.
Every department of human activity from sport to science, baseball to
philosophy, speedily develops its own jargon and the tendency is for the
jargon to become denser and denser and so more and more obscure its
subject, until some man with horse-sense--like Huxley in science and
William James in philosophy--restores the use of every-day English.
Some jargon like that of the baseball reporter is intensely vivid and
amusing, it is language in the making, but the jargon of the art critic
is deadly, it is neither vivid nor interesting--it is simply hypnotic.
It is only when the critic gets so angry he forgets his jargon that he
becomes intelligible--and betrays himself.
The reputation of many a preacher, many an orator, depends wholly upon
his command of jargon, his ability to utter endless phrases which are
either stock ideas, old as the hills, or which _sound_ as if they meant
something but on analysis prove quite barren.
II
POST-IMPRESSIONISM
Post-Impressionism means exactly what the prefix means--the
art-development _following_ Impressionism. It does not mean a further,
or a higher, or a more subtle form of Impressionism, but it means
something radically different, it means a _reaction_ from Impressionism.
* * * * *
The evolution of the new movement has been logical and inevitable.
After the Barbizon school with its romantic representation of nature,
there came inevitably the realistic painters, headed by Courbet, later
by Manet--men who painted things not romantically but realistically,
pitilessly, brutally. There was the same rage against these men as
against the Cubists today. Both Whistler and Manet were in the Salon des
Refuses of 1864.
Along with the men who painted _things_ as they saw them, came naturally
men like Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Seurat, Signac, who tried endless
experiments in the effort to paint _light_ as they saw it.
So that the final twenty-five years of the last century were given up in
France to attempts to paint _things_ and _light_ as they really are.
After the painting of _things_ and _light_ one would say the art of
painting had touched its limits, that there was nothing more to do. But,
no, there is the painting of _neither_ things nor light--the painting of
_emotions_--the painting of pure line and color compositions for the
sake of the pleasure such harmonies afford--_the expression of one’s
inner self_.
It was while Manet was painting _things_ as they are, and Monet was
painting _light_ as it is, that Whistler was painting both things and
light but with an entirely different object in view, namely, the
production of _color harmonies_ superior to either thing-effects or
light-effects.
To the following résumé it is obvious another paragraph must be added to
bring the record down to date.
* * * * *
Painting in France in the nineteenth century followed a course
parallel with that of the intellectual life of the country, it
adapted itself to the various changes in modes of thought, it took
upon itself a succession of forms corresponding to those which were
evolved in literature.
At the beginning of the century, under the Empire, painting was
classical. It was primarily engaged in rendering scenes borrowed
from the antique world of Greece and Rome, subjects derived from
fable and mythology. Historical painting formed the essence of high
art. It was based upon the nude, treated according to the classical
model. Two masters--David and Ingress--were its loftiest
expression. After them classical art was continued in an enfeebled
condition by painters of only secondary importance.
The new spirit of romanticism, however, which had arisen in
literature, also made its appearance in painting. Delacroix was the
master in whom it found its most complete expression. The tones of
classical art, sober, restrained, and often cold, gave place in his
work to warm and brilliant coloration. For the nicely balanced
scenes of classical antiquity, he substituted compositions
tumultuous with movement. Romanticism developed freedom of action
and expressiveness of pose to their utmost limits.
Painting was then conquered by realism, which had also invaded
literature. Courbet was its great initiator. He painted the life he
saw around him in a direct, robust manner. He also painted
landscape with a truthfulness that was informed by a powerful
emotion. At the same time, Rousseau and Corot had also brought
landscape painting into close touch with nature. They had
rediscovered its soul and its charm. Finally, crowning, as it were,
the work of their predecessors, came Manet and the
Impressionists.[4]
[Illustration: ROUSSEAU
Portrait of Self]
[Illustration: ROUSSEAU
Landscape]
Turner was the forerunner of Impressionism, the father of attempts to
paint brilliant _light_ effects, Whistler was the forerunner of
Post-Impressionism, the father of attempts to paint _line and color_
compositions.
Turner did not carry his theories to the scientific extremes of the
Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists; Whistler did not carry his
attempts to the abstract extremes of the Compositionalists and the
Cubists; but in their work are found the seeds of all there is in
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
* * * * *
“Do you say that this is a correct representation of Battersea Bridge?”
“I did not intend it to be a ‘correct’ portrait of the bridge. It is
only a moonlight scene, and the pier in the center of the bridge may or
may not be like the piers at Battersea Bridge as you know them in broad
daylight. As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks
at it. To some persons it may represent all that is intended; to others
it may represent nothing.”
“The prevailing color is blue?”
“Perhaps.”
“Are those figures on the top of the bridge intended for people?”
“They are just what you like.”
“Is that a barge beneath?”
“Yes. I am very much encouraged at your perceiving that. My whole scheme
was only to bring about a certain harmony of color.”[5]
* * * * *
Most painters are so intent upon the _subjects_ of their work they give
little thought to color harmonies. Whistler was the one great modern
exception; his first thought was to produce _beautiful effects_ in line
and color, hence his titles, “Nocturnes,” “Symphonies,” “Arrangements,”
and so on. He did not like to give his portraits the names of his
sitters. Where other painters emphasize the “subjects” and the “stories”
of their pictures he tried to suppress both and direct the attention of
the beholder to the painting. He was the forerunner of recent attempts
to do with line and color what the musician does with sound. He was the
leader of the revolt against the “story-telling” picture.
* * * * *
Millet is a good illustration of the painter to whom “subject” was
everything, and technic of quite secondary importance. I think it is
generally conceded that as a painter, a master of technic, he did not
rank very high, but he had a faculty for painting subjects, scenes from
life, that grip. As a painter Whistler was incomparably superior to
Millet, but just because he was a great master of technic and quite
indifferent to the story-telling side of his pictures he did not become
so popular.[6]
* * * * *
There are many actions and reactions in art, many evolutions and
involutions, but the great rhythmical sweep of the pendulum is from, let
us say, _studio_-art to _nature_-art, and back from _nature_-art to
_studio_-art.
From works of _observation_ to works of _imagination_, and back from the
use of the _imagination_ to the use of _observation_.
For a time men work feverishly in the seclusion of their closets
painting, writing, modelling, composing beautiful things, pure products
of their imaginations, then comes the reaction and they feel the need of
renewing their vigor by touching heel to earth. They draw aside their
curtains, throw open their doors and go out into the sunlight to breathe
the fresh air and gain new inspirations from contact with nature.
That is what happens in art once in so often.
The Barbizon school was a studio school. It walked the streets and the
fields; it looked at men and women at work and at play, but when it came
to paint it did not paint outdoors with object and easel in close
contact; it retired within its doors and transformed life and nature as
great romantic story-tellers translate their impressions into
fairy-tales and romances.
* * * * *
It seems a far cry from Millet to Chabaud but in some aspects of their
attitude toward art they are nearly akin. Between the two there
intervened Impressionism, that is all. Millet painted _labor_. And what
is the painting by Chabaud, “The Laborer,” but a more elemental Millet?
It lacks the romantic, the poetic qualities of Millet’s “Labor,” for
instance, or his “Sower”--paintings famous in prints and reproductions,
but it is none the less a vivid representation of labor.
To the admirers of Millet it may seem sacrilegious to even mention
Chabaud in comparison, but, confining our attention to the one painting
reproduced herein, there is no question that in its elemental strength,
its simplicity, it possesses a quality, a certain bald dramatic quality
that Millet lacks, though Millet’s “Sower” may possess qualities you
like more.
However it is with no intention to make a comparison between two men so
very different, that I mention them, but rather for the purpose of
pointing out that the attitude of both to their art is fundamentally the
same--they use art to _express themselves_ and not to imitate what they
see.
This is the way Millet worked. “He himself went about Barbizon like a
peasant. And he might have been seen wandering over the woods and fields
with an old, red cloak, wooden shoes, and a weather-beaten straw hat. He
rose at sunrise, and wandered about the country as his parents had done.
He guarded no flocks, drove no cows, and no yokes of oxen or horses; he
carried neither mattock nor spade but rested on his stick; he was
equipped with only the _faculty_ of _observation_ and _poetic intention_
... he leant on the garden wall with his arms crossed on his breast, and
looked into the setting sun as it threw a rosy veil over field and
forest. He heard the chime of vesper bells, watched the people pray and
then return home. And he returned also, and read the Bible by lamplight,
while his wife sewed and the children slept. When all was quiet he
closed the book and began _to dream_.... _On the morrow he painted._”[7]
This is the method of all the very great art the world has ever
known--first _to see_; and then _to dream_ and then _on the morrow to
paint_.
Impressionism cut out the _dreams_--it painted what it _saw_.
There were never in the world peasants such as Millet painted, or woods
such as Daubigny painted. People thought there were until the
Impressionists came and turned on the light.
Corot’s silvery glades have a closer relationship to nature. He felt the
reaction that was in the air. He was almost an
[Illustration:
CHABAUD
The Laborer
]
Impressionist but not quite. One feels the _poetic_, the
_imaginative_--that is, the _studio_ quality in his work. He sought
nature but not in the spirit displayed by the Impressionists.
* * * * *
The reaction began with Courbet and was given a powerful impetus by
Manet who painted things not as he _imagined_ them but as he _saw_ them,
and he did not try to see interesting people and things, he did not look
for the _picturesque_ but he painted anything he happened to see upon
the theory that the value of a work of art depends not upon its subject
but upon its technic; that the worth of a painting is to be found in the
painting and not in the object that happens to be painted.
* * * * *
Manet painted very few pictures outdoors. In the literal sense he did
not belong to the _plein air_ school. Almost all his work was done
indoors. But it was in no sense studio-art as we have used the term. He
painted in his studio as directly as Monet painted outdoors. He painted
a sitter with the same realism that Monet painted a haystack; and if he
painted a bull fight from memory or from a sketch, he did it with the
_intention_ to reproduce the scene literally.
Whistler had his literal moods, so to speak; his moments when with clear
eye and vision unaffected by any conscious play of the imagination he
would make marvellously faithful transcripts from life and nature,
transcripts so faithful that Monet’s at their best pale in comparison. I
recall three exquisite marines which were painted in a boat, the
canvases propped against a seat.
But for the most part he painted indoors and with the one end in
view--the composition of line and color harmonies more beautiful than
anything found in nature, just as the musician seeks to compose
harmonies more beautiful than any sounds found in nature.
In the clearness of his vision and the faithfulness with which he
painted the things and people with which he came in contact Whistler was
an Impressionist--an Impressionist long before Monet, but in his search
after color and line music, in his attempts to do things beyond and
above nature, he was a _Post_-Impressionist.
* * * * *
From a psychological point of view it is not difficult to see how these
movements come about.
Given exhibitions year after year filled with paintings of the
imagination, with idealized peasants such as Millet’s, and idealized
landscapes such as Rousseau’s, it is morally certain the younger
painters will feel a restless longing to return to the realities of
life, just as the reading or theater going public after being fed too
long on fairy-tales and romances demand more realistic representations
of life.
Every man who reads much has his fairy-tale period and his romantic
period followed by a strong taste for realism, which in turn is followed
by a new and finer appreciation of purely imaginative literature.
In his beliefs the normal man passes through a similar series of
reactions from the acceptance of the marvellous in his childhood and
youth to the sceptical rejection of the miraculous and the acceptance of
only the literal and material in his buoyant manhood, thence to the
profounder philosophy and mystical speculations of riper age.
The old, old conflict between _materialism_ and _idealism_, between
_seeing-knowing_ and _thinking-feeling_, between the cruder actualities
of the senses and the finer actualities of the imagination!
It is not that all men at a given time are idealists and at another
realists, any more than all painters in one decade are Impressionists,
in another Post-Impressionists. Life does not move that way.
* * * * *
Between 1874 and 1900 Impressionism forged to the front and monopolized
the attention of the art world, yet during that period there were
painted more pictures of the Pre-Impressionist schools than ever before.
The Impressionists made all the noise, the Pre-Impressionists did most
of the work.
The net result was a large amount of absorption by the older schools of
the good things in Impressionism, and a noticeable improvement in
painting generally.
Just now the Post-Impressionists occupy the center of the stage and are
making themselves so conspicuous the public is almost led to believe
that both Impressionists and Pre-Impressionists no longer exist, that
everything once considered good in art is being relegated to the
storehouse.
Again, as a matter of fact, with all the noise made by the
Post-Impressionists, it is beyond question true that never before were
so many Impressionist and Pre-Impressionist pictures painted as now.
The stream of Pre-Impressionist and Impressionist pictures goes right on
and in time history will repeat itself, the good in Post-Impressionism
will be absorbed and the main current that supplies the great public
with art will be _Pre_-impressionist + _Impressionist_ +
_Post_-impressionist, with as many more prefixes as the ingenuity of the
artist can devise to describe his vagaries.
* * * * *
Painters are a good deal like inventors, each of whom thinks his
invention sure to revolutionize the world, to find in the end that his
supposed invention is either not new or if new not valuable.
Now and then a painter like an inventor does do something that is
revolutionary, but these geniuses are not common, and with even them
critical research invariably finds they have simply built upon the
labors of others. An Edison, a Bell, a Marconi appears only when
electrical science has reached a stage where the inventions rather than
the men are inevitable. All this is statistically demonstrated in the
records of patent offices.
* * * * *
We talk of this and that “period” in the work of a painter, a poet, a
sculptor. Often the changes in mood and technic are marked and the
transitions sharply defined. For the most part they are the turning from
the imagination to observation and _vice versa_.
The brain is not unlike a factory; when filled to overflowing with raw
material it must close its doors and work up its stock; when it has
exhausted its store of impressions it must open its five senses to
receive new.
* * * * *
According to Hegel, the great German philosopher, there are three
movements of the historical pendulum; for example, we have an age
of materialism followed by an age whose sole interest is in
psychical phenomena; this followed by an age which extracts the
truth from both of these opposite hypotheses, the golden mean.
Thus, in art, we have the classical spirit for the thesis, the
modern art movement, its antithesis, and we may confidently expect
and hope for an age which shall select the bold, fresh spirit of
the modern movement and infuse it into the proportion of classical
art, which shall be the great synthesis of the artistic future.
Thus the extravagant and apparently insane movement of the Futurist
and Cubist will be of the greatest value in reviving art, putting
red blood into art again.[8]
[Illustration:
KANDINSKY
Village Street
]
A man can understand what is going on about him only by a knowledge of
what has happened in the past--the wider his knowledge of past events,
the clearer his understanding of present.
Space does not permit the printing in detail the ridicule that greeted
Turner, Millet, Corot, Courbet, but it is important to open the eyes of
the reader to the _fact_ that men whose pictures are considered
masterpieces today, and command fabulous sums, were met with the _same_
scorn and derision that the new men of today meet.
History repeats itself--we accept as fine what our fathers laughed at;
our sons will accept as fine what we laugh at, and so on to the end of
time.
You readers and especially you museums, who are paying tens of thousands
for pictures by Manet, Monet, Renoir and a host of other innovators,
take to heart what follows.
* * * * *
In 1874 the Impressionists held their first exhibition in a room rented
from a photographer, 35 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. They called
themselves, _Société anonyme, des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et
Graveurs_.
There were about thirty exhibitors in all; among them, Pissarro, Monet,
Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin, who might be called
the extremists; Degas, Bracquemond de Nittis, Brandon, Boudin, Cals,
Gustave Collin, Labouche, Lépine, Rouart, and others were invited to
take the edge off the novelties of the first named.[9]
Monet exhibited a picture named “_Impression; soleil levant_.” In
derision Louis Leroy called an article on the exhibition in
“Charivari”[10] “_Exposition des Impressionists_,” and in spite of the
protests of the painters themselves the name stuck--just as the name
_Cubists_, derisively applied by Matisse, has stuck.
* * * * *
This exhibition, which marked an epoch in French art, was a failure so
far as immediate results went. The ridicule was such that the better
known artists, ashamed of being caught in the company of the new men,
“took good care not to run the risk a second time.”
The pictures were subjected to all sorts of petty insults, “such as the
placing of small coins upon the frames in derision, and jokes and
jibes.”
* * * * *
The next year the Impressionists held no exhibition, but under dire need
had a sale at the Hotel Drouot.
Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cals, Cézanne, Degas,
Guillaumin, de Nittis, and Pissarro were represented. There were
some seventy pictures. The pictures were disliked and for some
unknown reason the artists were considered as hardened members of
the community. They only received laughable prices. Even the
attempt to carry out the auction-room trick of having friends bid
up the prices was not carried out successfully and many of the
pictures were bid in by the penniless friends in this way, and
withdrawn. Including these mistakes and the real sales they
realized not much more than $2,000. In this sale of 1875, Renoir’s
“Avant le bain” brought $28; “La Source,” $22 (afterwards sold for
$14,000); “Une vue du Pont neuf” brought all of $60; Claude Monet’s
twenty pictures averaged from $40 to $60 each.
The writer was offered “Avant le bain” in 1894 for $1,200; it has since
sold for $25,000. In a recent letter from M. George Durand-Ruel he says:
All the fine works of the Masters of the Modern French School have
advanced very much in value. The “Portrait of the Charpentier
Family,” which is now in the Metropolitan Museum, was ordered from
Renoir for three hundred francs; “La Source,” also by Renoir, was
sold in a sale in 1878 for 110 francs. It has been since bought by
the Prince de Wagram for 75,000 francs, and would be worth today
double the amount. The “Port de Boulogne,” by Manet, was bought
from Manet by my father for 800 francs and sold to Faure, who later
on sold it to Comte de Camondo for 70,000 francs. It would be worth
today about 250,000 francs. “Le Déjeuner dans l’Atelier,” which my
father bought from Manet and which we had on exhibition at 389
Fifth Avenue in 1895, asking price at that time $7,000, was sold
afterwards to M. Pellerin and bought two years ago for the Munich
Museum for $60,000.
Daubigny was one of the few men who appreciated Monet; he bought his
pictures and urged others to buy.
When he died in 1878 a sale of his effects was held. Duret says:
I knew the “Canal à Saardam,” which seemed to me one of the most
beautiful things Monet had painted; I made up my mind to go to the
auction and try to buy it. The sale took place but the picture was
not put up. I supposed that the heirs had decided to keep it as a
work they understood and appreciated. One Sunday, fifteen days
later, happening by chance in L’Hôtel Drouot I went into a room
filled with unfinished works, old and grimy canvases, and a mass of
stuff--in a word, all the worthless debris of a studio--and there
at one side the “Canal à Saardam” of Claude Monet.... I inquired
and learned that the room contained the scourings of Daubigny’s
studio, sent in for sale anonymously. It was there the heirs had
sent the picture of Monet, excluding it from the regular sale
because they thought it would bring discredit. It was knocked down
to me at the auction for $16. In 1894, when my collection was sold,
the picture was bought by M. Durand-Ruel for $1,100. In 1901 it was
withdrawn from a sale at the price of $6,000.
* * * * *
The second exhibition was held in 1876 in the galleries of Durand-Ruel.
In passing, tribute should be paid to this great dealer and remarkable
man who backed his belief in the new men with all he possessed, to the
jeopardizing of his business, and who, happily, still lives to enjoy the
confirmation of his judgment.
Of this exhibition Albert Wolff, in “Figaro,” said:
The Rue Peletier is unfortunate. Following upon the burning of the
Opera House, a new disaster has fallen upon the quarter. There has
just been opened at Durand-Ruel’s an exhibition of what is said to
be painting. The innocent passerby enters, and a cruel spectacle
meets his terrified gaze. Here five or six lunatics, of whom one is
a woman (Berthe Morisot) have chosen to exhibit their works. There
are people who burst out into laughter in front of these objects.
Personally I am saddened by them. These so-called artists style
themselves Intransigeants, Impressionists. They take paint, brushes
and canvases; they throw a few colors on to the canvas at random,
and then they sign the lot. In the same way the inmates of a
madhouse pick up the stones on the road and believe they have found
diamonds.
All of which recalls what Ruskin said of Whistler, and the following
choice bits about Turner.
They (referring to two of his famous pictures) “mean nothing. They are
produced as if by throwing handfuls of white and blue and red at the
canvas, letting what chanced to stick, stick, and then shadowing in some
forms to make the appearance of a picture.”
Another picture “only excites ridicule.” “No. 353 caps all for
absurdity, without even any of the redeeming qualities of the rest.” ...
“the whole thing is truly ludicrous.”[11]
Again of Turner,
“This gentleman has on former occasions chosen to paint with cream,
or chocolate, yolk of egg, or currant jelly--there he uses his
whole array of kitchen-stuff.... We cannot fancy the state of eye
which will permit anyone cognizant of art to treat these rhapsodies
as Lord Byron treated “Christabel;” neither can we believe in any
future revolution which shall bring the world round to the opinion
of the worshipper, if worshippers such frenzies still possess.”[12]
In 1877 the Impressionists held their third exhibition, again in
Durand-Ruel’s galleries. This proved more audacious than the first.
“It gave rise to an extraordinary outburst of laughter, contempt,
indignation, and disgust. It became a notable event in Parisian life. It
was talked about in the cafés of the boulevards, in clubs, and in
drawing rooms, as some remarkable phenomenon. Numbers of people went to
see it. They were not attracted by any sort of artistic interest; they
simply went in order to give themselves that unpleasant thrill which is
produced by the sight of anything eccentric and extravagant. Hence there
was much laughter and gesticulation on the part of the visitors. They
went in a mood of hilarity; they began to laugh while still in the
street; they laughed as they were going up the stairs; they were
convulsed with laughter the first moment they cast their eyes upon the
pictures.”
A critic in “La Chronique” said:
They provoke laughter, and yet they are lamentable. They display
the profoundest ignorance of drawing, of composition, and of color.
When children amuse themselves with a box of colors and a piece of
paper they do better.
Cézanne was the one among them who both now and for a long time
afterwards excited the most detestation. It is not too much to say that
he was regarded almost as something monstrous and inhuman.
After the close of the exhibition a sale was had at the Hotel Drouot.
“Forty-five canvases of Caillebotte, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir
realized only $1,522--an average of less than $34 each. The sale
took place in the presence of an amused and contemptuous public,
who received the pictures, as they were put up at auction, with
groans. They amused themselves with passing several of them round
from hand to hand, turned upside down.”
Sixteen Renoirs brought $400. The next year “le Pont de Chateau” sold
for $8, “Jeune fille dans un Jardin” for $6, and “La Femme au Chat” for
$16.
Sisley sold eleven for 1,387 francs, or $25 each. These prices meant
disaster and the painter was in great distress. In 1878 he wrote
Theodore Duret a pathetic letter asking if Duret could not find some
friend who would have enough confidence in his, Sisley’s, future to pay
$100 per month for six months and receive in return thirty pictures.
“At the expiration of six months, if he is not disposed to keep the
thirty pictures, he can take the chances on a sale of twenty, get
back the money he paid me, and have ten pictures left for nothing.”
* * * * *
During the New York Exhibition the Metropolitan Museum bought a Cézanne
for something like $8,000. The price of a more important was $46,000. In
the seventies in Paris there was a dealer in artists’ materials called
Père Tanguy who had a little shop in rue de Navarin. In 1879 when
Cézanne left Paris for the country he left his pictures for Père Tanguy
to sell. Duret went there to buy some. He found them stacked against the
wall, piled according to their dimensions, the small ones $8 each, the
large ones $20.
* * * * *
This is an old, old story--the story of nearly every great artist of
whom we have any knowledge.
The world seems to need perspective to appreciate a great man.
* * * * *
We are prone to think the great men have just passed away; we do not
realize that men just as great in one way or another are being born
every day.
The great man usually differs from the ordinary man only in his _one_
greatness. On many sides he may be a very commonplace man, a petty man,
but on his great side he is so far
[Illustration: CEZANNE
Portrait of Self]
[Illustration: CÉZANNE
Village Street]
out of the ordinary that it is almost impossible to understand him close
to. The fact that he is doing things in an _extra_-ordinary way causes
us instinctively to distrust and condemn him.
* * * * *
One of the early buyers of Impressionist pictures was a distinguished
Chicago woman, and her collection today contains some of the finest
Monets, Renoirs, and Degases in existence. When her friends heard she
had bought some forty or fifty Monets they shook their heads in dismay
at such folly. This was not many years ago, less than thirty, and now
the pictures are in demand the world over and worth ten, fifteen, twenty
times what they cost.
The same ladies and gentlemen who shook their heads at the Monets in
1890 shook their heads at the Cubists in 1913. If they live another
quarter of a century they will once more shake their heads at the new
art of that day--for such is life.
* * * * *
Neo-Impressionism was the logical outcome of Impressionism. It was
simply the attempt to paint light in still more scientific fashion, by
the use of the primary colors laid on in fine points in such a manner
that at the proper distance the points fuse and produce the tone
desired.
The use of small dabs or points of color instead of brush strokes gained
for the movement the name “_Pointillism_.”
Neo-Impressionism was not a reaction from Impressionism but an attempt
to advance still further the painting of light effects.
Seurat and Signac simply attempted to out-Monet Monet.
They were the last word in Impressionism. After them the
reaction--_Post-Impressionism_, something fundamentally different from
and opposed to the very theory of Impressionism.