There is no mystery about the “Man on the Balcony.” He is quite in
evidence; the background is a little puzzling, yet fairly obvious. The
attention of the casual observer is not diverted from the mode and
manner of painting--from the Cubism of the picture, so to speak.
It is not a question of “Now I see it, now I don’t see it.” It is
obviously the figure of a man leaning on something, apparently a
railing, with a confused background. But so far as uncertainty regarding
the background and accessories is concerned, that troubles no one, for
uncertainty in detail is! characteristic of the backgrounds of many fine
and famous portraits.
The point is that the “Man on the Balcony” belongs to that class of
Cubist pictures wherein the object is almost as well defined as in
pictures with which the public is more familiar; whereas the “King and
Queen” belongs to the extreme class wherein the objects have been
reduced to symbols or abstractions.
The one is the painting of objects in Cubist fashion; the other is the
painting of ideas in Cubist fashion.
* * * * *
Of all the Cubist pictures exhibited, most people liked “The Man on the
Balcony” best. Why?
Because it looked like a good painting of a man in armour.
“I like the ‘Man in Armour,’” was an expression frequently heard.
All of which goes to show that appreciation is largely a matter of
association rather than of knowledge and taste.
Tell the people it is not a man in armour, and immediately they ask, in
a tone of disgust, “Then what is he?” and the picture they liked a
moment before becomes ridiculous in their eyes.
[Illustration: GLEIZES
Original drawing for “Man on Balcony”]
The original design is an almost academic freehand drawing of a
man--artist or workman--leaning against the railing of a balcony, with
roofs of the city at his back. Barring the square treatment of hand and
foot, there is little to suggest Cubism.
The drawing is uninteresting, the painting is uninteresting. By blocking
out details, emphasizing planes, and laying stress on masses, the artist
made his painting incomparably more dignified and stronger than his
design.
If he had painted an academic picture, following the lines of his
original sketch, the painting probably would have been quite
commonplace.
* * * * *
The “Chess Players” gives one a singular impression of human absorption
in a game; it is elemental and impersonal. Behind the two players are
onlookers, equally intent. One player is resting his chin upon his hand,
the other holds a piece apparently making a move. The artist has
arbitrarily placed the men and board close to the eye of the player
making the move.
While most people might prefer lifelike portraits of two men playing
chess, is it not true that this curious reduction of the players to
elemental planes and masses gives a very vivid impression of intense
absorption, and also a strange feeling of the elemental? A sculptor
admired this picture greatly.
* * * * *
Two figures were the basis of the “King and the Queen,” the king at the
right, and the queen at the left; but in the finished picture these two
figures were reduced to planes, and appear as the two upright conical or
cubical masses that are so evident, and a philosophical significance was
attributed to the scheme, namely, a representation of the static and
dynamic forms of life; the static being represented in the upright
masses, the king and queen--dynastic, permanent--while the dynamic
forces are represented in the stream of cubical forms that flow in
different directions about the two more permanent masses.
On its technical side, Cubism is simply a systematic use of planes.
* * * * *
The power of lines is a manifestation of the new mode of
representation.
It is not a semblance of things, but a world of objects that the
picture forces us to take in with a glance. The objects may not get
lost. The outline is the demarcation and designation of the
objects. By its outer essence their inner nature is expressed. The
nature of objects is not fixed by a correct drawing, but by a
forceful and emotional, intensive and pervasive outline. Not in
their restfulness and with their details do the objects serve the
picture, but by their relations to each other, which relations
combined lead up to the climax.
The long lines form the structure of the picture. They decide how
the picture is to be constructed from its parts, and how the parts
are to be interlocked in order to become a whole. The long lines
define the measure and rhythm of the work. Lines are the vibrations
of the soul; lines are reflections of the will, the rigidity of
that which endures. Like currents of forces they flow against each
other and unite into one. The smaller ones accompany them with
playful gambols, like a multiple echo, the sounds of which melt
away in the distance.
The picture is not a nicely divided plane. It is like a world
arising from chaos. Its essence is the law of order working itself
out. The picture is an agglomeration of agitated members, an
agglomeration of planes pulsating with blood, enlivened by breath.
The planes may be stratified, parallel and similar to each other;
they may rear and pile themselves against each other, or they may
interlock like cogs. They may liquefy and melt away, or they may
double up and form themselves into balls. They may, more quietly,
rest within themselves, becoming effective through the contrast of
their essence and yet maintaining themselves. Out of them
originates the picture’s spaciousness, out of them the living force
of the picture.
The dynamics of the planes is a manifestation of the new style.[36]
[Illustration:
DUCHAMP
King and Queen
]
Passing one morning among a number of first year students drawing from
casts in the Chicago Art Institute, I was struck by the large number who
were making what would pass for Cubist sketches; yet not one of these
young students had seen a Cubist picture. All were simply following the
regular course of instruction and drawing _in planes_.
I remember one drawing of a statue by Michael Angelo. There was not a
straight line in the statue; there was not a curved line in the drawing;
the drawing was blocked out far more solidly and geometrically than, for
instance, either the original design for “The Man on the Balcony” or the
finished painting.
In another room I ran across a teacher who was indicating by a few
geometrical lines drawn from points the essential features of a statue
the pupil was about to begin blocking in. The lines looked exactly like
the geometrical lines in a drawing by Picasso.
There is, therefore, nothing fundamentally new or strange in the technic
of the Cubists; it is simply a return to the use of the elemental in
drawing, of the very A, B, C of design. The new and the strange lie in
the fact that the Cubists _stop_ with planes and lines; they do not
attempt to model the surfaces of the things they paint.
* * * * *
Not that the use of planes is all there is to the theory of Cubism, for
the theory extends far beyond the painting of surfaces; it embraces the
presentation of the very _substance_ and nature of persons and objects
by means of a _technic_ in which planes are the vital feature.
* * * * *
Albert Dürer wrote a book on the proportions of the human figure; it was
published in 1528, and translated into many languages.
He reduced the human figure to certain elemental lines.[37]
[Illustration]
Applying these principles to the hand, he gets this result:
[Illustration]
It is interesting to compare this sectional diagram of the hand with the
hand of “The Man on the Balcony.”
Furthermore, one has but to consider the elemental lines at the top of
the page with the words of Cézanne, quoted on page 43, and with the
fundamental propositions of Chinese and Japanese art, to realize that in
the last analysis the
[Illustration: PICASSO
Woman with Mandolin]
[Illustration: PICASSO
The Poet]
minds of men in all ages and all countries follow very closely the same
channels.
There are but _two_ lines, _curved_ and _straight_, and with these two
lines all outward semblances of things are constructed. So far as the
unaided eye is concerned, every curved line may be entirely composed of
small straight lines, the curved effect being due to a series of minute
angles.
The following are Durer’s diagrams showing how to obtain sections and
modifications:
[Illustration]
He applies these sections to the human figure as follows:
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
So far as the use of planes and angles is concerned, these diagrams by
Durer should serve to disarm criticism. That the human figure can be
decomposed into straight lines and angles will be a revelation to most
of those who laughed at the Cubist paintings, and only the authority of
a great name would convince that any good could result from such an
analysis.
Suppose any one of the Durer diagrams had been framed and hung in the
Cubist section; would it not have been treated with ridicule?
The men who arranged the exhibition could have played with critics and
artists--the men who claim to know--by including many things of
recognized position in academic art and teachings, which would have
seemed as absurd as the newest of the new pictures.
* * * * *
The very high aesthetic value of drawing and painting in planes, and
with small regard to the so-called laws of perspective, is illustrated
in the rare beauty of Chinese and Japanese paintings. From the point of
view of their greatest painters, we carry perspective and imitation to
extremes that destroy art.
One value of the Cubist movement lies in arousing a sense of the
strength possessed by the simple and elemental.
In oriental art, in archaic art, in primitive Italian art, in not a
little modern decorative work, we have long recognized the beauty of
drawing in planes and of the use of color arbitrarily. The Cubists are
showing us--perhaps too violently and imperfectly--that it is possible
to paint pictures and portraits in planes and masses without imitation.
That it is possible we know, for the orientals have done it for two
thousand years; nevertheless, we stubbornly resist the attempt in
western art.
We acknowledge the singular beauty of the Italian primitives, yet we
demand that portraits and paintings of today shall be carefully
modelled in the vain effort to accurately and mechanically copy nature.
* * * * *
In some of Sargent’s best portraits not only the lights and shadows but
character and personality are indicated by brush-strokes as arbitrary in
line and color as those of a Cubist--strokes that follow neither the
lines nor the colors of the original, but which convey with tremendous
power the _character_.
Again, we all know how insipid are most of the portraits that are
faithfully rounded and modelled to reproduce every curve of the sitters’
features.
The truth is there is more of Cubism in great painting than we dream,
and the extravagances of the Cubists may serve to open our eyes to
beauties we have always felt without quite understanding.
Take, for instance, the strongest things by Winslow Homer; the strength
lies in the big, elemental manner in which the artist rendered his
impressions in lines and masses which departed widely from photographic
reproductions of scenes and people.
Rodin’s bronzes exhibit these same elemental qualities, qualities which
are pushed to violent extremes in Cubist sculpture. But may it not be
profoundly true that these very extremes, these very extravagances, by
causing us to blink and rub our eyes, end in a finer understanding and
appreciation of such work as Rodin’s?
His Balzac is, in a profound sense, his most colossal work, and at the
same time his most elemental. In its simplicity, in its use of planes
and masses, it is--one might say, solely for purposes of
illustration--Cubist, with none of the extravagances of Cubism. It is
_purely_ Post-Impressionistic.
Twenty or twenty-five years ago painters who used a broad technic, and
especially those who used the palette knife to lay the pigment in flat
sweeps, were looked upon as charlatans and sensationalists. Today their
pictures are accepted in the most conservative exhibitions and the
public passes with scarcely a comment.
This broad technic is simply painting in planes--in a sense, simply
modified Cubism.
To illustrate:
The surface of an orange may be so carefully painted or modelled in clay
that the effect is a perfect sphere with no straight lines; or it may be
painted or modelled in minute planes and no curved lines; or the use of
planes may be carried so far the orange is represented by angles so
sharp the shape is almost cubical--it is all a question of the _extent_
to which the artist carries the use of _plane surfaces_. The _fewer_ the
planes used and the _larger_ their size, the nearer the _substance_ and
more obvious the representation of _mass_.
The _smaller_ the planes and the _larger_ their number, the nearer the
_surface_--the more superficial the representation.
* * * * *
The division of planes can be carried--geometrically--to such an extent
that the unaided eye can no longer distinguish the minute flat surfaces,
and the effect is a perfect sphere.
What is true concerning the painting or modelling of an orange is true
of the painting or modelling of all objects.
* * * * *
“It has been charged that the new men are too much given to the
geometrical. But geometrical figures are the essential elements of
drawing. Geometry, the science which deals with extension, its measure
and its relations, has ever been the basis of painting.
[Illustration: SEVERINI
The Milliner]
“Up to the present time the three dimensions of Euclid have sufficed to
express the problems that infinity gives rise to in the souls of great
artists.
“Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the
writer.
“Today philosophers do not confine their speculations to the three
dimensions of Euclid. Painters, by intention, so to speak, have cause
naturally to preoccupy themselves with these new lines of extension
which, in the language of modern studios, are classed under the term,
_fourth_ dimension.”[38]
* * * * *
Speaking of Cézanne, it is said:
To him a sphere was not always round, a cube always square, or an
ellipse always elliptical. Thus the traditional oval of the
conventional face disappeared in his portraits, the generally
accepted round surfaces of a vase or bowl was represented as flat
and dented in spots and the horizontal stability of the horizon was
rendered elliptical whenever it so appeared to him.
The general truthfulness of his observations may readily be tested
by any one of normal vision who will carefully observe the actual
appearance of the surfaces of a round sugar bowl, for example, when
placed in the light of a window. It will be found that certain
planes are as flat as the table, that others present the appearance
of dents and hollows, and the more clearly this is perceived the
more grotesque will the object appear as compared with the
preconceived image of it established in our minds by the
unconscious interaction of the sense of touch and sight.
We know that, scientifically regarded, there is no such thing as a
round surface, that what appears to be such is simply the closely
adjusted juxtaposition of infinitesimal planes that are each
perfectly flat. And the very fact that painters refer to the
surface of a figure as _planes_ is indicative of a partial
recognition of this basic characteristic of structure.
Nevertheless, both artists and laymen persist in speaking of the
roundness of a torso, for example, when in reality, if we could
disassociate the _sense_ of roundness from the _appearance_ of
roundness as did Cézanne, we would find large surfaces of spheroids
quite flat. Therein lies the real secret of the art of Cézanne who
is the first of realists.
In a sense, “Cubism” is a misleading term, for, in the first place,
“Cubist” pictures are not painted in cubes, but in all sorts of angles
and curves; in the second place, the theory does not call for angles.
The theory being the expression of emotion in line and color, there is
no conceivable reason why cubes and angles should be used to the
exclusion of curves, swirls, sweeps, dashes. On the contrary, of all
forms, cubes and angles would seem to be the most inappropriate for
emotional expression, since they are peculiarly suggestive of the
geometrical and the matter-of-fact.
“Curvism” or “Swirlism” would describe the movement just as well, save
that for the time being angles are very much in evidence.
Picabia says that “Cubism” is a misnomer for the movement. He says:
After impressionism, neo-impressionism, then cubism, which sought a
geometric third dimension in painting, the expression of things
seen in geometrical figures. But a purely subjective art cannot, of
course, be bound by any form of expression the moment that
expression becomes a convention, an established body of laws with
accepted values. Therefore, he has cut loose from cubism, and is
what, again for handy classification--an evil habit from which we
cannot emancipate ourselves--may perhaps best be called
“post-cubist,” with entirely unfettered, spontaneous, ever-varying
means of expression in form and color waves, according to the
commands, the needs, the inspiration of the impression, the mood
received. Objective expression is strictly barred. He even ignores
form as far as possible, seeking “color harmonies.” Harmony and
equilibrium are his device.
* * * * *
But the Cubists are rapidly getting away from the cubes and angles. It
is quite possible that a year or two hence we shall see no more _purely_
Cubist pictures.
That does not mean the movement will come to an end--not at all. The
movement toward abstract painting, toward the use of line and paint on
canvas for mere pleasure of using them, and without copying objects in
either life or nature, is in its infancy.
* * * * *
“But I don’t understand them!”
Is it necessary to your enjoyment that you should?
Do you understand what Caruso is singing?
Do you understand that French song reproduced by the phonograph?
Do you understand what the orchestra is playing?
Do you understand the pattern in that Persian rug?
How many people who rave over Japanese art have the remotest idea what
this or that precious print or painting represents?
Does an intricate design on a bit of Oriental pottery please you? And is
your enjoyment lessened one whit by the fact it is all a mystery to you?
Why will you accept as beautiful and buy at a high price a painting you
do not understand because it is by a Chinese artist, and reject as ugly
the painting by a French artist simply because you cannot see “what he
is driving at”?
* * * * *
Suppose a Cubist picture is a beautiful scheme of color; is it less
beautiful _in color_ because you do not understand the painter’s theory?
His painting may be fine, his theory absurd.
Would your enjoyment of Caruso be increased if he sang in English the
ridiculous stuff he sings in Italian?
Fortunate it is for most grand opera that we _do not understand_--we are
not diverted from the music by the nonsense of the libretto.
The enjoyment of music is a curious thing.
First of all, there are all kinds of music, from rag-time to Beethoven,
and each kind has its following.
Then the following of each kind breaks up into its rag-time and
Beethoven divisions.
That is to say, in an audience listening to rag-time there are always a
few who enjoy the music in a Beethoven way--for what there is of real
value in it.
While in an audience listening to a Beethoven symphony there are always
a goodly number, often a big majority, who enjoy it in a rag-time
way--just the emotional reaction, without knowing a thing about the
music.
There are two entirely distinct enjoyments of the same composition--the
purely intellectual and the purely emotional. There may be a mingling of
the two, but as a rule what one gains the other loses.
The man who follows the score, is familiar with the different
interpretations of this and that leader, whose ear catches every failure
by any part of the orchestra to respond, and so on, and so on--that man
is constantly holding his emotional response subject to his intellectual
appreciation. What is a fine performance to most of the audience may be
a very indifferent performance to him.
True, when the performance is so fine it carries him off his feet, then
he gets an enjoyment--intellectual and emotional--far finer than the
enjoyment experienced by others. In a sense, he is the one man worth
playing for.
But while it is a fine thing to both understand and enjoy, understanding
is not essential to enjoyment in the purely emotional sense--to the
enjoyment most people feel when listening to music.
The voice of a street singer borne in upon the night air, even the sound
of a hurdy-gurdy, pleases, though we do not
[Illustration:
SOUSA CARDOZA
Leap of the Rabbit
]
know the song or the air. There is a species of pleasure in not knowing
that is dissipated when we recall or are told.
Many of our enjoyments are more than half dreamy. Is it not true that
the dreamy element is essential to purely emotional enjoyment?
I confess to a very ignorant enjoyment of music. If I am at a concert I
do not like to be told what it is all about. I enjoy good music without
knowing or caring why, and I like to hear it without being seated where
I am more than half-hypnotized by the rhythmical movements of the
orchestra, especially the fascinating bowing of the violins.
* * * * *
What is true of the enjoyment of music should be true of the enjoyment
of painting. But with painting, most people insist upon understanding.
They will listen to Patti without knowing her language, but they will
not look at a painting unless they know the painter’s language.
* * * * *
Why not accept at their face value all pictures that are beautiful in
line and color, without bothering about their meaning? Perhaps they have
no meaning beyond the vagrant fancy of the artist.
Take the three pictures by Sousa Cardoza. Suppose they have no more
significance than so many illustrations to a fairy tale; they are
interesting in line and fascinating in color. If the “Stronghold” had
been on a Delft platter, or the “Leap of the Rabbit” on a piece of
Persian pottery, everyone would have lauded their beauty, and collectors
would give ten or twenty times the modest prices of the canvases.
When put to people in that matter-of-fact way the response is almost
always favorable to the pictures.
In an interesting monograph entitled “Is It Art?”[39] the writer says:
It will be seen, therefore, that the efforts of these men to give a
subjective rendering of actuality results in nothing better than a
poorly realized form of objectivity which is as much the creation
of the spectator as of the artist, inasmuch as the vaguely
adumbrated forms in the picture simply serve as a hint to that
reality of which it is a wilfully distorted symbol, and the
discovery of the “mustard pot” would scarcely have been possible
without the happy cooperation of the title with the spectator’s
previous knowledge of the actual appearance of a mustard pot.
Without the intervention of the title and the association of ideas
called forth thereby through the memory of past experiences with
actuality, these pictures would be totally meaningless even to the
most recondite. They would inevitably be reduced to a personal
system of shorthand, an individual code, as it were, comprehensible
only to the originator.