form nearer to an abstract conception, is the harmonising of colour, his
finest canvases are those in which the form predominates, as for
instance the Jeu de Balles, La Musique--Esquisse, La Musique (_panneau
decoratif_) and Baigneuses. In these pictures, however, there is an
entire absence of rhythm in the Renoir sense, but they possess a perfect
disposition of forms to fill a given space, a harmony of subject with
its frame, a dazzling succession of uncommon and beautifully
proportioned spaces and an amazing feeling for two-dimensioned form.
Where with Matisse the distinct _parti pris_ of reverting to a primitive
inspiration was excusable, such an attitude was worse than folly for
those who came after him. With him it was a manifestation of the disgust
of an impatient and experimental mind for stereotyped expression: with
his followers it was only an imitation of his motives, and hence it was
decadent. If Matisse partially understood Giotto and Michelangelo, the
understanding contributed little to his art. His greatest claim to
consideration is that he gave painting its final impulse toward
abstraction. But his canvases, while being aesthetically just, are not
aesthetically satisfying, because in composition he never penetrated
further than the surface. And even on the surface he did not attain to a
greater fluency than that permitted by parallelisms and simple
oppositions, although there has never been an artist who more perfectly
adapted his expression to the shape and size of his canvas.
That all great artists worked like him from the standpoint of creating
recognisable form by abstract thought, does not detract from his fine
destiny. Where other artists failed to drag art from the quicksands of
literary instantaneity, Matisse succeeded. His evolution was direct and
logical, as a close study of his work will show; and those who see in
him an _arriviste_ may with equal justice bring the same charge against
Michelangelo. His aesthetic sources and admirations, of which so much has
been written, are important in understanding the genealogical
foundations of art, but they are of little moment in the actual
enjoyment of his pictures. Looking impartially at his classic influences
on the one hand and his Persian and negro influences on the other, it is
difficult to see just where the benefits of the latter lie. Matisse
merely shifted his inspiration from the greatest masters of form to the
slighter masters--from a well-known and great antiquity to a little-known
and less significant one. However, if negro sculpture can help produce a
man like Picasso, and the Persian stuffs and enamels one like Matisse,
they serve after all a high purpose.
XI
PICASSO AND CUBISM
Cubism first and foremost is an attempt to make art more arbitrary in
its selection of compositional forms. In all ancient painting only the
human figure was used as a basis for organisation. Later landscape
widened the scope of the painter's material possibilities; but even the
introduction of this new element merely extended the boundary of
subject-matter. The essence of art remained the same. Landscape
permitted new forms to be interwoven with the old ones, without making
the old more plastic. The elasticising process was what the painter had
always desiderated, but his literalness was such that he never went
beyond primary distortions of the human body--distortions so small that
they were almost unnoticeable. With the Greeks and Chinese these
deformations were practised in order to beautify the body's relative
proportions; with the East Indians and Michelangelo, to accentuate the
emotion of forceful movement; with Renoir, to express form fully in its
relation to the generating line of each picture; and with Matisse the
distortions were the result, first, of a reaction against a
hackneyed classic system, and later, of a desire to divorce aesthetic
pleasure from mental association, in other words, to make form abstract
rather than personal. In him there is no rhythmic composition, and
while, as in the case of Renoir, his pictures are great as ensembles,
each part of them is a separate item which does not depend, for
appreciation, on its rapport to the whole. His is an art of colour, of
sensitive and inspiring form in two dimensions--a decorative art of a
high order. As such it is at once a derivation of Impressionism and a
development of Impressionistic colour through the channels of taste.
Cubism is a far more arbitrary art than Matisse's. In its extreme
expression it depends, not so much on the artist's adroitness at
interpreting nature, as on his ability to express pure aesthetic emotion
in its relation to form--form being used here in its extended sense to
connote the solidity of the entire picture and the block relation of
each part to the other parts. Composition prior to the Cubists had been
the rhythmic organisation of a picture's integral parts by line, volume,
chiaroscuro and colour. A totally unrelated set of objective figures or
forms was drawn together into an ensemble by these abstract aesthetic
means. Cubism retained the older methods of form and conception, and
added to them the illustrative device of disorganising and rearranging
objectivity so that the separated parts would intersect, overlap and
partly obscure the image. Thus was presented a picture replete with all
aspects of the model, that is, a picture in which the expression
presented not only the vision of reality as it discloses itself to our
eyes, but the vision which delivers itself to our intelligences, with
its actions and reactions, its many and changing miens, its linear and
voluminous struggles, its solidity and its transparency. In Cubism the
details of this ubiquitous and omnifarious vision are subjugated to
arbitrary order and expressed in tones of warm and cold.
At the outset Cubism was a Dionysian reaction against the flowing and
soft decoration of the schools of Bouguereau and the Impressionists. The
precise and masculine minds of a new cycle could not rest satisfied with
the single melody of their immediate predecessors. Courbet, the Cubists'
prototype on the side of painting which dealt entirely with objectivity,
reacted against corresponding feminine tendencies in the schools of
David and Ingres; and the decisive blow he struck in 1850 with his
L'Enterrement a Ornans had a psychological parallel in the Cubists'
exhibit in 1911. While Manet seemed to continue Courbet he in reality
retrogressed to a classic prettiness. His achievements may be compared
to those of the Orphists who, while seeming to carry on the principles
of Cubism, nullified the effect of that school by the misapplication of
colour. Cubism itself ignored colour and curved lines. It was a further
step toward a more intellectual type of painting. The modern artist's
mind, in becoming more self-conscious, was consequently growing more
precise in its expression. And since the Cubists were the primitives of
a new era, it was natural that this precision should express itself in
straight lines and angular forms. The inconsistency of these artists lay
in the fact that, while their first desire was to make their art
arbitrary, they were so preoccupied with the dynamism of objectivity
that the main object of their work was deputised. In the canvases of
Picasso's followers naturalism is the first consideration. As a result
the organisation of emotion-impelling form is obscured. It was from
Cezanne that the Cubists garnered the greater part of their theories,
and even the appearance of their work is not unlike his. Cezanne
realised that a mere imitation of reality, no matter how interesting,
could never set in motion the wheels of aesthetic ecstasy; and so he
translated nature into a subjective impression of reality by expressing
it in a complete order which was itself dynamic. The Cubists, profiting
by his discoveries of linear and tonal modification, essayed to found a
school on certain of his better-known and more easily grasped practices.
The spirit of precision, the need for a renovation, and the example of
Picasso who at one period copied the angularities of negro sculpture--all
gave momentum to the movement. Later were introduced the philosophical
reasonings and scientific explanations of which there has recently been
so much discussion.
The total absence of colour in the Cubists is ascribable to the same
revolt against prettiness and ambiguity that made them alter their line
and form. They felt the subjective solidity of Cezanne without
understanding that it was brought about by the use of colour whose
emotional possibilities he had profoundly penetrated. In fact his art
was composed entirely of minute chromatic planes which, by their
complete adaptability to a given position in space, produced the
intensest form. The Cubists' planes are based, not on colour, but on
objective form itself, and are expressed by tone. In this respect Cubism
is diametrically opposed to the conception of Cezanne. With him form
was a result of the plastic employment of colour. With the Cubists even
tone is subjugated to formal planes. In them we do not experience the
subjectivity of emotion which can be produced alone by colour. Their
pictures represent a recognisable solidity which, by an image, expresses
subjective processes. Cezanne's simultaneous vision of reality had to do
purely with the most mobile element of art; the Cubists attempted to
express psychological phenomena by the limited methods of the early
primitives. Their inability to sound (not in theory but actually) the
possibilities of colour in the creation of aesthetic form, has caused
them to diverge from the direct path in the development of means, and
has restricted permanently their initial desire for concentrated
composition. The Impressionists experimented in a highly dynamic
element; but the Cubists have only dabbled in mental processes which,
even should they become perfected, could give us only the sequential
vision of a human action. The Cubist doctrine embraces no more than a
side issue in an art which primarily has to do with the organisation of
form. In the effort of the Cubists to create a pure art they merely
disguise objectivity by abstract thought. This is by no means the same
as creating abstract form--that is, form which is not reminiscent of a
particular natural object; and by failing in this they let pass the
great opportunity of taking the final step from Matisse to purity. They
took only a half step, for in their exultation they forgot the preceding
advances in composition.
In such forgetfulness there was nothing unusual. Every new movement in
the progress of art has about it a certain isolation of ambition. The
first innovators push out the boundary on one side; their followers, on
another; and the final exponents of a method, having fully assimilated
what has preceded them, combine the endeavours and accomplishments of
their forerunners and go forward to new achievements. Cezanne had
recognised that he could never round out his own cycle. No stricture can
attach to his incompleteness: his life was too short for realisation.
That the Cubists did not altogether achieve their desire does not
detract from the importance of their departure from established
precedent. Their reaction was a salutary event in the evolution of
modern painting. The field of art was being overrun by the decadents of
Impressionism and Cezanne, by the imitators of Toulouse-Lautrec and
Degas, by those academicians who follow in the wake of every movement
long after its methods have been accepted as vital. These scholastic men
were incorporating spots and bright colours into their school-room
drawings when Cubism came forward. By its unequivocal expression of
opinions and by its neat delimitations of planes it has revealed the
futility and pettiness of academic alterations. Besides their purely
psychological innovations the Cubists have achieved all the ambitions of
the academies in a way so net, so sure, so precise, that they have
reduced the school, if not to silence, at least to ineffectualness. No
longer can the admirers of scholastic art stand before a canvas
exclaiming on the feeling, the atmosphere or the spirituality of the
work. One must now use concrete terms and speak of those qualities which
have to do with profound order; for although the theories of Cubism
state one thing, the application of them has taken another and definite
aesthetic form. In the Cubists' work lies their greatest importance. We
may without loss lay aside their explanations, their manifestos and the
reports of their lectures.
The idea of synthesis in painting had been so thoroughly assimilated
through familiarity with successive movements that, with the advent of
Cubism, it was an accepted and unquestioned law of painting. Synthesis
had in fact become an almost unconscious knowledge. Ingres, Daumier,
Manet, Seurat and Matisse had, in quick succession, proclaimed its value
in eliminating the unimportant and unessential from models. With Cubism,
as with Matisse and Gauguin, synthesis was the supreme
ambition--synthesis which had for its goal the artistic consistency of
all the picture's qualities. Subject-matter, colour and the method of
expression were all harmonised in Gauguin: with him the synthesis was
illustrative. In Matisse it manifested itself in the reduction of form
and colour to their simplest and most personal expression, and was
therefore a step toward a pure art. With Picasso synthesis went still
further. It became almost basic. We know that the curved line stands for
life, colour and movement; that the straight line represents the dead,
the sombre and the static. A solid dark is conducive to peace, while
quickly succeeding light and dark promote liveliness. Bearing these
fundamental postulates in mind we can easily analyse Picasso's quality
of synthesis. The straight line which predominates in Cubism repudiates
colour:--the Cubists were not colourists. The curved line, when
profoundly comprehended, expresses movement and fluidity; when used
haphazardly mere prettiness results. There are seldom any curves in
Cubism, and then only for relieving the monotony, for the sake of
ornament. In the Cubists' scintillating succession of darks and lights,
like a photographic negative of a Cezanne or an early Renoir, there is
an unescapable feminine prettiness in which the twinkling of tone serves
the same purpose as pretty colour. By their straight lines, subfuse
tones and rigid forms, on the one hand, they achieve immobility. By
their lights and darks, their curves and their dependence on nature, on
the other hand, they reveal their emotional kinship to the illustrative
schools of Whistler, Fragonard and Tiepolo. Now when we combine properly
these two widely separated aspects of art--the one almost Egyptian and
the other almost English--we obtain a combination of temperamental
characteristics capable of the greatest achievements, for we have
brought about the coalition of the purely masculine and the purely
feminine. In Cubism, however, these two aspects are mingled
disproportionately. The static predominates. The pretty is merely
superimposed because of temperamental dictation: instead of functioning,
it only attracts. But though in Cubism we do not find the perfect fusion
of these creative sex impulses, the simultaneous presence of the two
elements produces nevertheless a fundamental synthesis.
In order to bring about the greatest art, the form and order (which
constitute the masculine side) must be all-pervading. Objective ornament
and external beauty (which constitute the feminine side) must be only
the inspiration to creation. This is an important principle, for all
art, like all life, falls into either the masculine or the feminine
category. All personal preferences for certain forms of art are
imputable to the predomination of the male or the female in the
individual. Necessarily all creation is to a certain extent masculine--in
it there has to be order; and by the predomination of the male or female
is meant simply the accentuation of one of these qualities in their
relative combination in each of the sexes. For instance, should the
feminine "predominate" in a man, the fact would merely indicate that the
percentage of femininity in his bisexuality had over-balanced the normal
ratio. Decoration, which is an ornamental art, is feminine, and it will
appeal to men who have a subnormal amount of the creator in them. The
colossally ordered art of a Rubens will be understood and enjoyed only
by one highly capable of creation, for in the contemplation and
comprehension of a profound work of art the spectator reconstructs the
artist's mind after his own formula, and thus recreates the work for
himself. That side of art which is the recording of some emotion the
artist has experienced so intensely that it demands concrete expression,
is feminine. It is merely an overflow of receptivity into objectivity.
To the contrary, when great art is produced it is not dependent on a
specific exterior impulse. It grows abstractly out of a collection of
assimilated impressions. When the will dominates the expression, these
impressions must take plastic form. The desire to create is in itself
feminine. The constructive ability is masculine. The first desire always
is to decorate and beautify, but the masculine will dictates and rules
the expression. In feminine art the will to co-ordinate is absent.
Consequently the expression is only the direct result of the reception.
The Cubists realise that the will must play a large part in painting,
but they exert their will on the analysis of thought rather than on
their actual productions. The result is that, while their expression is
highly restrained and reasoned, the will is exercised only on the
emotion of the received impression, and is not manifested on their
canvases' surface. In all their work they are decorators first and
significant artists afterward. They belong distinctly to the lighter
side of artistic tradition. They are the lyric poets of the plastic.
This is markedly true of Picasso who instigated the movement. When he
first came to Paris he threw himself into a style of painting which
recalled Steinlen at his best. From Steinlen he went to Toulouse-Lautrec
and Impressionistic colour. Next he did carefully drawn portraits which
proclaimed him a greater Gauguin. Later he become infatuated with the
rhythm and skeleton-like creations of El Greco. It was at this period
that he began to do his significant work. His pictures for the most part
were painted in blue. They were sensitive to a high degree, and were, in
the sculptural sense, sometimes ordered into a solid block form. Then,
adopting a reddish colour gamut, he began to create full figures of
nudes, portraits and animal studies. At this time he commenced his
research in precise form. He organised copies of negro sculpture of
which he had heard much from Matisse, and it was a result of his
studying these rigid figures that angularities began to creep into
his art. Other artists set to work along the same lines, and from the
friction of ideas which followed the theory of Cubism was evolved.
Picasso's still-lives then became more precise, more hard-cut, more
personal, more completely ordered. It is from this period we receive
some of his greatest work.
[Illustration: FEMME A LA MANDOLINE by PICASSO]
Shortly after came the Cubist theory of simultaneity. The authorship of
this theory is in doubt. There has been much controversy as to whether
it originated with Picasso or with one of his followers. But it was
straightway adopted by the entire group and made one of the dominating
principles of the movement. Simultaneity to these painters meant the
combined presentation of a number of aspects of the same object from
many different angles. In the visualisation of an object in nature
during the absence of that object, we conceive it, not only as a
silhouette or as a form with three dimensions, but as a congeries of
silhouettes which, when imagined simultaneously, constitute the
appearance of the object from every known angle. In short, our minds
envelop it and all its attributes at the same instant. Such a vision is
the result of collected and concentrated memory. In a desire to disarm
criticism the Cubists offered as a theory the picturisation of this
multilateral vision; but in reality it was little more than an excuse to
make the utilisation of natural forms more arbitrary than in the case of
Matisse, Cezanne and Gauguin and also to rid themselves entirely of the
illustrative obstacle. Their ingrained weakness lay in that they did not
possess sufficient genius to alienate themselves entirely from document
and to create new abstract compositions. Nor did their instinct permit
them to throw document aside when they sensed their inability to replace
it with something more vital. Their spirit of revolution worked on the
form which illustration would take, rather than on the discontinuance of
illustration. But even in this attitude they marked a decided progress,
for while in the paintings of their predecessors the disposition of line
and form had made a unity of many separated figures, these figures, even
to a mind unusually free from the taint of anecdote and objectivity in
art, presented themselves separately as integers of a whole. The
Cubists, by breaking up a model into parts which separately bore little
resemblance to nature, proved that they not only recognised the demands
of pure organisation but that they knew those demands could never be met
so long as there were recognisable objects in a painting.
The presentation of a nude or a landscape from many different viewpoints
was in itself no more important than the methods of the Impressionists.
Indeed the pleasure derived from so constructing a picture is similar to
the pleasure derived from copying light. It represents the nearest
approach of the enthusiastic painter of form to the enthusiastic painter
of light. They are both interested in recording a rather puzzling and
interesting phenomenon: the one is after that which creates the
impressions of form; the other, that which creates the impressions of
colour. Both, in the broad sense, derive the same enjoyment in
deciphering the work after it is finished. The one records only broad
waves of scintillating colours with no demarcation of silhouettes; and
these colours gradually resolve themselves into a sunny and ambiguous
landscape. The other makes a number of broad planes of brown and white
which, when diligently studied in their parts, become the angular
representation of water, ships, sky-lines which run into and through
houses, trees which obscure near-by objects, and houses which melt into
distant skies. Both schools of painting are impressionistic; each treats
of exactly what the other neglects. No artist as yet has seen the
distinct advantage of uniting the two methods. Cezanne might be
suggested as having approached this alliance, but his means were too
profound for him to be led into portraying by concrete symbols his
impressions of a model.
In painting the enveloping mental vision of a model, however, the
Cubists actually failed in the synchronism for which they strove. In
reality they extended the effect of their pictures into time more than
ever before. To grasp their illustrative import, long and arduous search
must be made. While their canvases present a simultaneous vision, each
picture as a whole is incapable of creating a unified impression. A
Cubist painting is, let us say, like the momentary blare of a hundred
musical instruments all of which play consecutive bars. By approaching
each performer in order and studying his particular notes, until every
musical detail is learned, we might intellectually construct from our
memory an impression of a related musical composition. But should the
blare be repeated, even after our research, the music's meaning would be
no clearer than before. On the other hand, if, having first heard the
composition in its natural development, we had studied its parts and
motifs and then heard it repeated sequentially, a greater enjoyment and
comprehension would result. In breaking up nature, either for the sake
of extending the aesthetic appreciation into time like music, or for
simultaneity of presentation, all the parts must answer to an
organisation;--in the first case, so that, after the spectator's first
fleeting vision of the whole, his eye will be carried from one part to
another by the rhythmic balance of volume, linear opposition and harmony
of colour; and in the second case, so that the canvas will be an
interdependent block-manifestation.