intense on all they undertake, and if there is one quality common
to the generation of painters who followed the earlier
impressionists it is intensity. This earnest passionateness has
produced developments in two main directions, towards more intense
luminosity and towards more intense simplification. The first is
exemplified in the work of _the Pointillists_, who carried it to
its logical conclusion, the division of tones, and built up their
pictures with points or square touches of pure colour. Paul Signac,
for example, is dazzling in his scientific presentment of the power
of light. It is difficult to believe that luminosity can be carried
further than in his radiant canvases whose force makes the most
brilliant Turner appear pale and weak in comparison. Signac’s
method, it may be noted in passing, is a square touch of pure
colour as opposed to the circular spots of Seurat, the inventor of
Pointillism, Theo van Rysselberg, and the late Henri-Esmond Cross.
If Signac has reached the limit in intense luminosity, Henri
Matisse, Otho Friesz, and André Derain, among others, stand for
intense simplification. But it is still a little too early to deal
with their astonishing works, and any one sincerely desirous of
comprehending the aims of these revolutionary painters may be
recommended to commence his course of initiation by a serious study
of the works of Cézanne and Gauguin. These two deceased painters
are to their younger comrades what Marx and Kropotkin are to the
young social reformers of today.[13]
We are constantly led astray by words--at best they are imperfect
instruments of thought.
As has been often noted in the literature of painting, all art is
_impressionistic_ in the broad and fine sense of the term. Hence to
divide painters into Impressionists and Non-Impressionists involves a
contradiction.
In painting his _purely imaginative_ creations of light effects Turner
was as much of an Impressionist as Monet in painting his _closely
observed_ light effects.
In painting his _ideal_ peasants Millet yielded as freely to his
impressions as did Manet in painting his bull-fighters.
From one point of view the difference is one of degree rather than of
kind, namely, the degree to which the painter lets his impressions _sink
in_ and become a part of him.
Monet attempted to paint light _exactly as he saw it_, reducing the
personal equation--that is, himself--to the lowest possible
significance. Turner painted light as he saw _and imagined_ it; he
allowed his impressions to sink in, to become a part of him, then he
_created_ a picture. And his pictures vary greatly in the proportion of
observation to imagination; in some he painted almost as direct and as
coldly from nature as Monet, in others he barely used his observations
as groundwork upon which to let his imagination run riot.
It is not strange that so erratic, so eccentric a genius bewildered the
public and the critics of his day, for in the painting of light he was a
generation ahead of his time, and in the attempt to paint pure color
harmonies he was two generations ahead.
* * * * *
Take, for instance, his “Sunrise, with a Sea Monster,” and “Sunrise,
with Boat between Headlands,” in the Tate Gallery. If these pictures had
been hung anonymously in the International Exhibition in New York they
would have excited more laughter than any of the Cubists. They are
simply color schemes compared with which an “Improvisation” by Kandinsky
is a legible message.
A Turner in the National or Tate Gallery is accepted as a masterpiece;
the same picture hung anonymously with a lot of extreme
Post-Impressionists in the Grafton Gallery would be the occasion of much
hilarity.
* * * * *
While all painting is more or less impressionistic, in the art
literature of the day the term “Impressionists” is appropriated to the
school of men who paint in the open direct from nature, and who attempt
to record faithfully, many almost mechanically, their visual
impressions of objects and light-effects.
Hence the term _Post_-Impressionism means not an accentuation or a
further development of Impressionism such as _Neo_-Impressionism or
“pointillism,” but a _reaction_.
When Impressionism has had its day and done its best, then something
different must come, and logically that something different is a return
to the art that is the antithesis of Impressionism--the art of the
_imagination_--a _creative_ art.[14]
* * * * *
For a generation the poetic, the imaginative work of the Barbizon
School--to use this one school as typical of the painting of practically
the entire western world in the sixties and seventies--held sway.
Then came the return to nature, the Impressionists, and for a generation
they held sway.
Now, apparently, we are at the beginning of a new movement, a return to
imaginative art, and the evidences of this return are seen not only in
painting but in decoration, in sculpture, in music, in drama, in
literature, in fiction, in philosophy, in medicine, in business, in
politics.
_There is a demand_ for _ideals_ as distinguished from _results_.
* * * * *
We have learned that the proper end of poetry is the expression of
emotion, to which all reasoning and statement of fact should be
subsidiary; but we have not learned that painting should have the
same end, using representation only as a means to that end, and
representing only those facts of reality which have emotional
associations for the painter. In primitive pictures, it is true, we
look for the expression of emotion rather than for illusion, and
that is the reason why so many people get a real pleasure from
primitive art. They judge it by the right standard, and ask of it
what it offers to them. But from modern pictures they demand
illusion--that is to say, the kind of representation they are used
to; and when they do not get it they accuse the artist of
incompetence.[15]
* * * * *
In painting this reaction, this tendency--call it what you please--has
taken many forms, one of which is _Cubism_.
While this book devotes much space to Cubism, it is solely because in
its extreme development it is, from a coldly critical point of view, the
_most abstract_ word yet uttered in painting, it is the farthest removed
from impressionism, and therefore serves admirably to illustrate a
discussion of the philosophy of _Post-Impressionism_.
In a book like this, written as an off-hand comment upon what is now
going on in the world of art--in the world generally, for that
matter--it would be quite impracticable to follow the development of
even the principal lines of human activity;[16] hence the works and
theories of the Cubists have been chosen as typical of radical and
revolutionary ideas and the attempt is made to find wherein these works
and ideas are not so radical and extravagant as they seem, but are, in
fact, only an illustration of what is going on in the minds of men
generally.
If the painter who laughs at a Cubist painting and denounces it will
only stop to think he will find one of two things true, he himself is
either advancing in his art or he is not. If he is not, there is nothing
further to be said, his attitude toward the Cubist painting is quite
consistent; but if he is advancing, if his style, his technic, his point
of view are changing, _however slightly_, from year to year, then he
should be exceedingly cautious how he ridicules or condemns, for without
knowing it he may be traveling the highroad, one of the interesting
byways of which is Cubism.
Most painters of sixty who are now Impressionists and who ridicule
Cubists, if cross-questioned would be obliged to confess that
thirty-four years ago they ridiculed the men in whose footsteps they
have since followed and whom they now recognize as masters.
* * * * *
In the course of our discussion we shall have occasion to speak of the
Futurists and other extremists, for they all are part of the one big
reaction, they are all _Post-Impressionists_, and all have something to
say worth hearing, but the Cubists serve our purpose best because their
pictures, from an argumentative point of view, are more tangible, and
their theories have been worked out in print in plain terms.
[Illustration: VILLON
Young Girl]
III
LES FAUVES
Every development bears within the seeds of its dissolution and the
germs of its succession.
The seeds of the dissolution and the germs of the succession of
Impressionism were _Les Fauves_--the Savages, the Wild Ones, as you
please.
The philosophical student of the history of art has no trouble in
tracing at any time the following currents:
_A._ The main stream which includes _all_ art developments from the
profoundest and most permanent to the most fleeting and superficial,
from the soberest to the most extravagant.
_B. B._ +. Within the main current lesser currents of such magnitude
that they frequently seem to dominate--and often do obscure the
direction of--the main current; as, for instance, Impressionism
dominated the art of France and influenced the art of the entire western
world in the final years of the last century. These lesser currents have
their effect on the main current, though their ultimate effect is never
so revolutionary as their enthusiasts believe; the good in them is
absorbed, the meretricious rejected.
_C. C. C._ +. Surface manifestations of all kinds, often so violent they
disguise not only the main current, but the important subsidiary
currents, and lead men to believe for the moment that art is reversing
itself, that all that has been done is being undone, that chaos is
taking the place of order. These subsidiary movements are with us
always, evident in every exhibition; they are the experiments, the
extravagances of each generation, of each decade, of each year. Some of
them contain so much of truth they develop into _B._--larger
currents--“movements;” others are of such ephemeral importance they
cause their sensations of the hour and pass away, leaving behind scarce
distinguishable traces.
It is these last movements which, because they are new and strange, so
impress critics and public that observation loses its sense of
proportion; the force of the main current (_A._) is lost sight of, and
the strength of subsidiary currents (_B. B._ +) is overlooked.
The newest movements (_C. C. C._ +) are usually either too bitterly
denounced or too widely praised, their true relationship is not
perceived; all sense of perspective is lost in the immediate presence of
the startling.
There are no hard and fast lines dividing any of these currents and
movements. When and where they begin no one can say; when and where they
end no one can tell.
* * * * *
Impressionism is identified with Monet more than any other painter,
because all his life long he has been the steadfast and consistent
exponent of extreme theories regarding the painting of light effects.
But Impressionism, even the painting of light effects, had its beginning
long before Monet; with the beginning of painting itself, the germs were
there.
Likewise the germs of every other movement, however extravagant and
superficial, could probably be found in the work of some man or men in
another age and country.
What happens is that a combination of favoring conditions at a given
time concentrates human efforts and human attention upon a particular
mode, technic, or theory and brings it to the fore.
The names of Turner, Manet, Whistler, have been cited as illustrations
of geniuses so comprehensive they link several movements, several
decades, together.
To these should be added the name of Degas in painting and that of Rodin
in sculpture.
These men have done things far ahead of their own times, they have done
things their own times not only did not understand, but ridiculed and
decried. It was only a few years ago that Paris--yes, _Paris_--rejected
Rodin’s Balzac, by many considered the greatest of his works.
These men illustrate what we mean when we say that every period in art
contains within itself the seeds of its dissolution and the germs of its
succession. A movement may seem so dominating, so strong, so true, that
people exclaim, “It is the final word, it will last forever,” but at the
very moment somewhere, in obscurity, there will be men doing things that
are diametrically opposed to the prevailing current, things that are
destined to be the masterpieces of a new development.
* * * * *
Cézanne exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874 and was counted
one of them; yet in a profound sense he was the first of the
Post-Impressionists.
While he was classed with the Impressionists he had little in common
with them, practically nothing in common with Monet.
All his life Monet has been busy with the _surface_ of things; all his
life Cézanne was busy with the _substance_ of things.
When Monet paints a landscape he paints the grass and the flowers and
the trees one sees bathed in sunlight; when Cézanne painted a landscape
it was an elemental presentment of nature herself.
Cézanne was born in Aix in 1839 and died in the same place in 1905.
Having inherited just sufficient to live very modestly, he devoted his
entire life to trying to fathom the secrets of nature and paint her
innermost truths.
The fact that his pictures did not sell, that even his friends did not
understand him, did not swerve him a hair’s breadth from the path he had
chosen--to paint, to _learn how_ to paint, _simpler_ and _truer_
interpretations.
He lived so isolated from his neighbors that a visitor to Aix in 1904
had great difficulty in finding his residence; was obliged, in fact, to
resort to the list of voters at the town hall. In the eccentricities of
his daily life he was not unlike Turner, but in his art he indulged no
such brilliant fancies.
He was a _consistent_ painter. He never permitted his imagination to run
away with him; he constantly checked his work by the closest and most
penetrating observation of nature.
His manner of work is described by a devoted follower:[17]
He was working on a canvas showing three decapitated heads on an
Oriental carpet. He had worked a month every morning from six
o’clock until half past ten. His daily routine was, rise very
early, paint in his studio from six to ten-thirty, breakfast, and
go out immediately into the surrounding country to study nature
until five. On his return he had supper and went at once to bed. I
have seen him so exhausted by his day’s work that he could neither
talk nor listen.
“What is lacking,” he said to me while contemplating the three
heads, “is the _realisation_. Perhaps I shall get it, but I am old
and it may be that I shall die without having reached the highest
point: To realise! like the Venetians.”
Not unlike the lament of Hokusai at seventy over his imperfections as a
draftsman.
[Illustration: CÉZANNE
Still Life]
One’s first impression from even half-tone reproductions of his
paintings is a feeling of _construction_. I have before me a
still-life--the fruit, the bowl, the piece of stuff are not simply
painted but _built up_ as firmly and scientifically as a builder builds
a house--the materiality as well as the beauty is there.
It is just the same with his portraits, his figure pieces and his
landscapes; one cannot escape the _sense of the substance_, the
fundamental reality.
And to attain it all he used the simplest and most direct technic, not a
brush-stroke, not a line, not a spot of color wasted.
It was these characteristics which made him a profound Impressionist, in
the wider significance of the term, but also the first of the _Fauves_,
the father of the revolt from Impressionism in its more superficial
significance.
* * * * *
With the name of Cézanne are associated the names of two men whose work
shows his influence, VanGogh and Gauguin, and one whose work is wholly
different, Henri Rousseau, the custom house employee who painted without
instruction; later, but also conspicuously, Henri Matisse.
These are the leaders of Fauvism.
* * * * *
At the exhibition in New York one had the unusual opportunity of seeing
in close contact many works of all four. It would be difficult to
imagine paintings more different in inspiration and technic. They had
but one thing in common--a pronounced reaction from, not to say revolt
against, Impressionism, evidenced particularly in the use of color
_constructively_ and _decoratively_ rather than imitatively.
Color force is a feature of the new inspiration.
The painters of today have discovered anew the world’s coloring. We
now recognize everywhere the power and vivaciousness, the
thousandfold freshness, and the infinite changefulness of color. To
us colors now talk directly; they are not drowned by covering
tints, not hide-bound by a preconceived harmony. An instrument has
thus been given, wherein innumerable melodies still slumber.
Color is a means of representation not only of what is colored, but
also of the thick and the thin; of the solid and the liquid; of the
light and of the heavy; of the hard and of the soft; of the
corporeal and of the spacious. Cézanne models with color; with
tinted color surfaces he builds a landscape. The proper couching of
colored planes can force upon us the impression of depth; colored
transitions call forth the impression of ascent and of motion;
spots scattered here and there give the impression of sprightly
vivaciousness.
Color is a means of expression talking directly to the soul. Deep
mourning and soft glowing, warmth of heart and cold clarity,
confused dumbness, flames of passion, sweet devotion--all
conditions and all outbursts of the soul--what can communicate them
to us more forcefully and more directly than a few colors with
their effect exerted through the eye? As tones draw us with them
without our will and without meeting resistance, so does color
subjugate us: now it fills us with deepest sorrow, then again we
are all glowing under its influence.
Color is a means of composition. The force of sensuous designation,
the expressive power of the soul, both must combine and make for an
always new, always original, and always unique harmony. The law of
color beauty has not as yet been fathomed by the intellect. It is
being created by feeling and by subconscious experience.[18]
* * * * *
“Cézanne, Gauguin, and VanGogh were men of very different minds; but
they were alike in this, that they all attempted to subordinate
representation to expression, and were all determined to express only
their own emotional experience. Cézanne could not content himself with
impressionist triumphs of representation. Above all, he revolted from
the Impressionist insistence on the momentary aspect of reality. He was,
so to speak, a kind of Plato among the artists of his time, believing
that in reality there is a permanent order, a design which reveals
itself to the eye and mind of the artist, and which it is his business
to expose in his work. But this design he was determined to discover in
reality itself, not in the works of other artists. His task was
enormously difficult because he would take nothing whatever at second
hand. Nature must tell him all her own secrets; and he would not listen
even to her when she told him commonplaces. He was not interested, so to
speak, in her caprices, in her chance effects of beauty that anyone can
see. He painted landscape as Titian or Rembrandt painted portraits;
searching always for the permanent character of the place, for that
which, independent of weather or time, distinguished it from other
places. This permanent element he found in structure and mass, but, like
Titian and Rembrandt, he would not abstract these from color. For him,
as for these masters, structure and mass revealed themselves in color,
and all these must be verified by incessant observation.... For him a
hill is not a screen for the play of light; it is built up of earth and
rock. Nor is a tree a mere rippling surface, but a living thing with the
structure of its growth. Everywhere he looks for character; yet he
subordinates the character of details to the character of the whole. And
the character of the whole means for him its permanent character, which
he expresses in a design not imposed upon it but discovered in it, as
Michael Angelo discovered the statue in the block of marble.
“If Cézanne, Gauguin, and VanGogh were charlatans, they were like no
other charlatans that ever lived. If their aim was notoriety, it is
strange that they should have spent solitary lives of penury and toil.
If they were incompetents, they were curiously intent upon the most
difficult problems of their art. The kind of simplification which they
attempted is not easy, nor, if accomplished, does it make a picture
look better than it is. The better their pictures are, the more they
look as if any one could have painted them; in fact, they look just as
easy as the lyrical poems of Wordsworth or Blake.”[19]
For a glimpse of VanGogh’s life and aspirations, see his letters
published in English under the title, “Letters of a Post-Impressionist,”
written mostly to his brother--simple, pathetic documents, showing the
eager, earnest striving of a man who finally went insane and shot
himself. Critics and opponents of his work have seized upon his madness
as proof of lack of sanity in what he painted--perhaps, but then is
dullness the only proof positive of sanity?
* * * * *
Gauguin, half Breton, half Peruvian Creole, was a restless spirit.
“More than once he circumnavigated the globe, and all his life he was at
recurring intervals a victim to wander-thirst. In early manhood he
returned to Paris and made an heroic attempt to settle down. He entered
a bank, and got on there very well.
“One day he saw in a dealer’s shop some paintings which brought back
memories of the light and color he had seen in the tropics. He sought
out the painters Pissarro and Guillaumin, and began painting at the age
of thirty. Two years later, in 1880, he exhibited two landscapes in the
manner of Pissarro.
“Degas made the decisive impression on him, by his systematic division
of large planes of color, and above all, by his strong drawing.”[20]
[Illustration: VAN GOGH
Portrait of Self]
“Gauguin was as singular in his way as VanGogh in his. He did not “go
mad,” but he withdrew from civilized society, buried himself in Tahiti
and painted the natives, firmly convinced that only amidst primitive
conditions could be found the inspiration of pure art.
“His combative disposition impelled him to fight against painters,
critics, dealers, buyers, and against established institutions and
conventions. One would say fate pursued him. In 1894 at Concarneau in a
quarrel with some boatmen who had insulted him, his ankle was broken by
a sabot kick, leaving a painful injury from which he suffered until his
death (in 1903).”[21]
Of his aims he said in a letter to a friend:
Physics, chemistry, and, above all, the study of nature, have
produced an epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said
that artists, robbed of all their savagery, have wandered into all
kinds of paths in search of the productive element which they no
longer possess. They now act only in disorderly groups, and are
terrified as if lost when they find themselves alone. Solitude is
not to be recommended to any one, for a man must have strength to
bear it alone. All I have learnt from others has been an impediment
to me. It is true that I know little, but what I do know is my own.
Every human work is a revelation of the individual. Hence, there
are two kinds of beauty; one comes from instinct, the other from
labor. The union of the two--with the modification resulting
therefrom--produces great and very complicated richness....
Raphael’s great science does not for a moment prevent me from
discovering the instinct of the beautiful in him as the essential
quality.
* * * * *
In 1895 there was a sale of Gauguin’s works at the Hotel Drouot.
Strindberg was asked to write a preface to the catalogue. In declining,
he admitted his own “immense yearning to become a savage and create a
new world,” but said of Gauguin’s world, “it is too sunny for me, the
lover of chiaroscuro. And in your Eden dwells an Eve, who is not my
ideal--for indeed, I too, have a feminine ideal, or two.”
Gauguin answered,