by means of colour, form which would be as complete and as simple as a
Michelangelo drawing, and which would give subjectively the same emotion
of form that the Renaissance master gives objectively. They wished to
create images of such logical structure that the imagination would
experience their unrecognisable reality in the same way our eyes
experience the recognisable realities of life. They strove to bring
about a new and hitherto unperceived reality which would be as definite
and moving as the commonplace realities of every day, in short, to find
an abstract statement for life itself by the use of forms which had no
definable aspects. The Synchromists' chief technical method of obtaining
this abstract equivalent for materiality was to make use of the inherent
and absolute movement of colours toward and away from the spectator,
by placing colours on forms in exact accord with the propensities of
those colours to approach or recede from the eye. The Futurists had
spoken of drawing the spectator into the centre of the picture, there to
struggle with the principals of the work. They failed in this ambition
because their canvases lacked the intense tactility of volume. The
Synchromists, by making the enjoyment of form purely subjective, and by
expressing form both by objectivity of line and the subjectivity of
colour, achieved the ambition of both the Futurists and Cezanne. The
latter's desire was ever toward a pure and subjective art. Although his
colour viewed objectively is much like the Impressionists', the pleasure
of the Impressionistic vision disappears when the eye is satisfied,
whereas our emotions begin to work on a Cezanne only after the visual
enjoyment has run its course.
[Illustration: SYNCHROMIE COSMIQUE by MORGAN RUSSELL]
Where Cezanne obtained a block solidity by the intelligent addition of
local colour to light and by the subtraction of light from local colour,
the Synchromists reject all local colour and paint only with hues which
express the desired form. The position of a given volume in space
dictates to them the colour with which it is to be painted. Consequently
a receding volume whose position is behind the other volumes is never
painted a pure yellow, for that colour advances toward the spectator's
eye; and a solid volume which projects further than the others is never
painted violet, for violet expresses not solidity but a quality of
space, something intangible and translucent. All colours and tones and
admixtures are answerable to the law of natural placement. This law is
not absolute; it does not anchor each colour at a specific and
unchangeable distance from the eye, but it determines the relative
position of colours in space according to the influence of environmental
colours, thereby making their position both dependent and directing but
none the less inevitable. The perfecting of this principle by the
Synchromists introduced an added element of poise and a new emotion in
painting--poise, because, by changing a line or a colour, the formal
solid constructed by interdependent hues would shift and adopt another
position answering to the needs of the new order:--a new emotion, because
colour in all painting before Cezanne had been used for ornament or for
the dramatic reinforcement of the drawing or subject, and in Cezanne
colour had been employed to express subjectively the emotions of volumes
found in nature.
In Synchromism, which was first inspired by natural forms, all
considerations other than light forces (as with Russell) and form (as
with Macdonald-Wright) and composition (as used by both) were abolished.
Colour was made a functioning element out of which grew all the
qualities of the pictures. At first, adverse criticisms were aimed at
the Synchromists' polychromatic nudes, still-lives and landscapes. The
press remarked that the nudes appeared as if adorned in Harlequin suits;
the landscapes, as if they were intended for theatre drops; and the
still-lives, as if painted through a prism. The Synchromists answered
that, in order to achieve a strong emotion of force and weight, they
would "willingly sacrifice the lovely tints of the flesh and the joy of
searching for coloured pots in the shops of the second-hand merchants."
But, despite all they could say, there was justice in the public's
criticism. So long as there was a natural form in a picture, the
spectator would unconsciously judge it from a naturalistic standpoint.
To be sure, there were canvases in the Munich exhibition which were
almost unrecognisable as nature; but, before the aims of this new
movement could be fully attained, a style of arbitrary and pure form was
necessary. In the Bernheim-Jeune show Russell exposed one wholly
abstract canvas. As an indication of a deflection toward pure
composition, it was important, but the picture itself was as manifestly
an artistic failure as had been his first large Synchromie en Vert hung
in the _Salon des Independants_ of that year. It was not the only
failure exposed, however. From the point of view of complete and
organised conception all the early Synchromist pictures were to a
certain extent fragmentary and tentative. The large canvas by
Macdonald-Wright, Synchromie en Bleu, was a flagrant example of a
totally new vision unsuccessfully struggling with the objectively
classic inspiration of a defunct antiquity. The group of three males in
its foreground, while competently and intelligently built, had the
appearance of allegorical figures struggling against a toppling world.
Although their position and organisation were dictated by the needs of
an almost El Greco-like composition, one was too conscious of natural
objects to accept, with a clear aesthetic conscience, the seeming chaos
of the elements.
In bringing together in a unified emotion all the impressions of form,
the Synchromists at first overlooked the fact that purity of expression,
in order to be highly potent, must embody a pure conception. Their early
canvases demonstrated many new formal possibilities, but, while they
were composed more compactly than those of the other moderns, the forms
themselves were obviously naturalistic. Herein the Synchromists at their
debut failed to take the step from Cezanne to abstraction. Cezanne
conceived all nature's qualities--form, colour and tone--simultaneously.
He was the first great realist, because nature dictated to him the
colour he was to use. The Synchromists, on the other hand, used natural
objects to create organisations of pure colour, thus making formal
expression a wholly subjective performance. This method contained
greater emotional potentialities than Cezanne's, because where the
latter's palette was necessarily much subdued in order to approximate to
the attenuated gamut found in nature, the Synchromists' palette was
keyed to its highest pitch of saturation. Cezanne's choice of colour was
never absolute in the harmonic sense, because he depended for accuracy
entirely on taste and sensitivity. With Macdonald-Wright and Russell the
palette was completely and scientifically rationalised so that one could
strike a chord upon it as surely and as swiftly as on the keyboard of a
piano: the element of hazard in harmony was eliminated. This knowledge
of colour gamuts was not employed for ornamental niceties, but was
converted into a method of creating an aesthetic finality other than that
of form and line. If, in a complete balance of line and volume, the
colour overweighs at any point into warm or cold, the poise of the whole
is jeopardised and the finality obscured. The perfect poise of all the
elements of a painting, expressed by the single element of colour, is
the final technical aim of Synchromism.
In the first arbitrary formal composition by Russell the desire was to
carry out the continuations of form from one chosen generating colour
and at the same time to create linear development as well. His
compositional theory was that, through the inevitable evolution of line
from an arbitrarily chosen centre, the artist would naturally and
consciously create form which would definitely approximate to the human
body. In his Synchromie en Bleu Violace the composition was very similar
to that of the famous Michelangelo Slave whose left arm is raised above
the head and whose right hand rests on the breast. The picture contained
the same movement as the statue, and had a simpler ordonnance of linear
directions; but, save in a general way, it bore no resemblance to the
human form. The sketch for this canvas was a greater success than the
final presentation, for its realisation was more complete, its order
more contracted and intense. In both there was but one very simple
rhythm with two movements; and the size of the large picture, which was
twelve feet high, was incommensurate with the slightness of the
expression.
His second large Synchromie, exposed in the _Salon des Independants_ in
March 1914, was more complicated and more sensitively organised, both as
to movement and to colour, than his first. By his colour rhythms he
strove to incorporate into his painting the quality of duration: that
is, he sought to have his picture develop into time like music. The
ambition was commendable although he wrongly asserted that older
painting extends itself strictly into space. A Rubens, while presenting
itself to the spectator at one glance, is nevertheless more than a
block-manifestation of forms, for it never reveals itself fully until
after many periods of study. In the old painters there is a definite
formal foundation on which the canvas is rhythmically built, and as a
rule this formal figure is repeated in miniature many times throughout
the canvas. These form-echoes are defined and complete linear orders,
and into them rhythm is introduced. In Russell the process is reversed:
with him the rhythm brings about the order. In Rubens there is a
distinct and conscious development of line, but no development of form.
Russell, in his later canvases, sets down a central form which dictates
both the continuity of the picture and its formal complications. His
generating centre is not like a motif whose character imprints itself on
all its developments, but rather like a seed out of which the different
forms grow--a directing centre which inspires and orders its environment.
In fine, the surrounding forms are not a development of the central one,
but a result of it. This type of composition corresponds to the melodic
composition in music.
In the later works of Macdonald-Wright the motif form of composition is
achieved. In Cezanne there are forms whose parallels are repeated in
varied development throughout the work and are rhythmically ordered
into blocks. But while these forms resemble motif repetition, they are
not generated by rhythm but united by it. In Macdonald-Wright's canvases
the rhythmic continuation of a central form constitute the movement of
the picture as well as the final character of it. In his Arm
Organisation in Blue-Green one can discern near the centre a small and
arbitrary interpretation of the constructional form of the human arm.
The movement of these forms throws off other lines and forms which,
through many variations and counter-statements, reconstruct the arm in a
larger way. Again these lines of the larger arm, in conjunction with the
lines of the smaller one, evoke a further set of forms which break into
parts each of which is a continuation or a restatement of the original
arm motif, varied and developed.
Macdonald-Wright holds that the forms which we have experienced in our
contact with nature are more expressive and diverse than those which are
born of the inventive intelligence. But, while it is true that every
realisation of _aesthetic movement_ or of the _rhythm_ of form is based
on the movement of the human body, it is not true that the human body is
a necessary foundation for form alone. However, Macdonald-Wright, in
interpreting the human form, makes use merely of the direction and
counterpoise of volume; he does not indulge in the depiction of limbs
and torso: the body is only his inspiration to abstraction. He changes
and shifts its forms out of any superficial resemblance to nature. In
his desire to cling to a solid and immutable foundation we recognise an
artist who realises how meagre is the incentive to create abstract
compositions. With centuries of tradition urging him to a realistic
rendering of the life about him, he finds it difficult to break entirely
with realism and to create without referring to materiality. Perhaps
some day he will even forgo the inspiration found in the combined forms
in nature. His work is tending toward that ultimate freedom, as also is
Russell's.
Such a development, however, cannot be definitely predicted, but one can
say, without dogmatism, that in the future their work will become surer,
their compositions of a higher and more complete order. With their
knowledge of the fundamentals of rhythmic organisation, which is well in
advance of that of the other painters of today, their progress seems
assured. Their postulates are too definite to permit of the introduction
of literary or musical transcendentalism; and their _apports_ are too
significant to permit of any retrogression toward metaphysics or drama.
Their palette has become co-ordinated and rationalised. Their
composition is founded on the human body in movement. And their colour,
in its plastic sense, takes into consideration space, light and form.
These factors represent their technical assets. With these painters
comes into being an art divorced from all the entanglements of
photography, of piecemeal creation, of inharmonic gropings, of
literature and of data hunting.
But they must not be regarded merely as inventors of new pictorial
methods, for their discoveries have already taken significant aesthetic
form. As Renoir completed the first cycle of modern art which was
ushered in by Turner and Delacroix, so have the Synchromists completed
the cycle of which Cezanne is the archaic father. They have discovered
the concrete means wherewith to bring about his desires. It remains now
for the painters of today and of the future to realise more fully the
dreams of a higher art history. With the Synchromists there is no system
or method other than a purely personal one. The word Synchromism,
adopted by them to avoid obnoxious classification under a foreign
banner, means simply "with colour." It does not explain a mannerism or
indicate a special trait, as do Cubism, Futurism and Neo-Impressionism.
It is as open as the term musician. As a school it can never exist.
Indeed it is the first graphic art the application of whose principles
cannot be learned by a course of instruction. Artists employing its
means must depend entirely on their own ability to create. In
Synchromist pictures the good or bad results cannot be obscured by the
introduction of foreign elements, as in the case of pictures wherein
nature is copied. Russell and Macdonald-Wright have already repudiated
the appellation of Synchromist and call themselves merely "painters,"
for, since Cezanne, painting means, not the art of tinting drawing or of
correctly imitating natural objects, but the art which expresses itself
only with the medium inherent in it--colour.
All significant painting to come must necessarily make use of
Synchromist means, although form and composition--that is, the creative
expression--may be as arbitrary or personal as the artist desires. In the
Synchromists' latest prospectus are to be found the following comments:
"In our painting colour becomes the generating function. Painting being
the art of colour, any quality of a picture not expressed by colour is
not painting. An art whose ambition it is to be pure should express
itself only with means inherent in that art. The relation of spacial
emotions and of the emotions of density and transparency which we wish
to express, dictates to us the colours most capable of transmitting
these sensations to the spectator. In thus creating the subjective
emotion of depth and rhythm we achieve the dreams of painters who talk
of drawing the spectator into the centre of the picture; but instead of
his being drawn there merely by intellectual processes he is enveloped
in the picture by tactile sensation. We limit ourselves to the
expression of plastic emotions. We can no longer conceive of the stupid
juxtapositions of colours devoid of any rhythmic interlinking as art
organisations." The Synchromists do not pretend to have invented new
qualities for art but to have brought to painting a new vision which
permits them to express the old qualities with a greater potency than
formerly.
XIV
THE LESSER MODERNS
Decadence is simply the inability to create new tissue. In painting it
manifests itself in two ways: either in the endeavour of an artist to
turn the attention from new and precise procedures to antiquated and
irrelevant ones; or in the artist's desire to base his inspiration on
the great work of an immediate forerunner rather than on the foundation
of all vitality, nature. In neither case is new material being added to
the sum of art. Decadence usually takes the form of a facile imitation
of the surface aspect of a master, not infrequently making that master's
_results_ prettier, more fluent and more attractive. This is a natural
and inevitable consequence of copying the objective side of a great work
which originally was the outgrowth of a profound aesthetic philosophy.
Decadents, as a general rule, are sufficiently analytic to sense their
own paucity of constructive genius. In recognising that nature can never
inspire them to significant co-ordinations, they are content to accept,
with slight modifications, the artistic standards of their predecessors.
They vary the art that has gone before to meet the needs of their own
temperaments. In many cases highly meritorious work results.
The word decadent is not wholly deprecatory. Often the decadent is a
competent composer in the abstract. By presenting in an attractive way
his own personal tastes, he sometimes makes his art both interesting and
beautiful. His decadence lies in his retrogression from the point to
which the art of his day has arrived and in his inability to introduce a
new element to compensate for this retrogression. No amount of
individuality can bridge this gap. Many painters, like Gauguin, have
reacted against achievement but have possessed a tangential vitality
which in itself has been a new contribution to aesthetic endeavour. Other
painters, like Renoir, while introducing no innovations, have, by
talented and comprehensive efforts, duplicated and improved upon the art
of the latest creative masters and thereby pushed forward the highest
standards. They are not decadents, for their work exhibits no
deterioration. Even decadents may be excellent artists. Gaspar de Crayer
was undoubtedly a great artist though an offshoot of Rubens; and
Giampietrino and Cesare da Sesto were both solid and intelligent
painters, though they did not rival their master, Leonardo da Vinci.
There has undoubtedly been great sculpture since the Renaissance; but
Michelangelo closed up for all time the plastic possibilities of clay
and marble, and consequently, there being no new functioning element to
be introduced into it, all sculpture since his day has been in the broad
sense decadent.
Modern painting has had its decadents also--men who have attempted to
revert to a sterile past or who have followed in the paths blazed by
others without approaching the achievements of the painters imitated.
This latter class has its usages, for it tends to lend impetus to the
movement it follows. The men composing it are popularly called
exponents, and the appellation is just. There are painters in all
countries today who adhere to Impressionist methods, and thereby keep
ever before us one of the great steps in the development of modern
painting. Cezanne has undoubtedly been given greater consideration
because of the many artists who follow his precepts. And the numerous
imitators of Cubism have done much to focus on that movement the
consideration it deserves. In a general way all the lesser modern
painters, by their feverish activities, expositions and pamphleteering,
have, despite their inherent lack of genuine importance, kept the world
conscious of the fact that it is in the midst of a great aesthetic
upheaval, that new forces are at work, that the older order is being
supplanted.
Today nearly every country has a group of men striving toward the new
vision. They cannot all be innovators of new methods. They cannot all
carry forward the evolution of modern painting. But they can at least
give momentum to the current ideals and turn out work which bears so
much personal merit that it becomes deserving of more or less serious
consideration. Degas and his circle are of this class, as are the
Futurists who, though at bottom decadent, inasmuch as they turn their
art back to illustration, are a force which cannot be ignored. In
Dresden, Munich and Berlin are groups of modern men who have repudiated
the academies and struck out into new fields. Russia has contributed
many young artists to the present ideal. England has not been altogether
impervious to the modern doctrines. America is represented by fully a
score of artists animated by the new vitality. And in France there are a
hundred painters at work tearing down the older idols. While few of
these men can lay claim to introducing any intrinsically new and
significant methods or forms into modern painting, their work in many
instances, while being decadent in the strict sense, is nevertheless
commendable. They are not great artists even in the sense that Monet,
Manet, Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso are great; but many of them are at
least genuine artists.
One of the most conspicuous figures among the decadents is Wassily
Kandinsky. In an age when all art was being arraigned before the
tribunal of biology, physiology, and psychology, he came forward and
attempted to drag it back into the murky medium of metaphysics. The
generating forces of modern painting, however, rest on no metaphysical
hypothesis. To attempt to define form by transcendental terms, or even
to credit form with esoteric significance, reveals an ignorance of the
principles of aesthetic emotion. Form in the art sense is a demonstrable
proposition; it is answerable to physical laws. Michelangelo, El Greco,
Giotto, Rubens, Cezanne and Renoir based composition on natural causes,
and as each successive artist has approached intensity in organisation,
he has come nearer and nearer to the rhythm which animates and controls
corporeal existence. AEsthetic form, in order to become
emotion-producing, must reflect the form which is most intimately
associated with our sensitivities. It must primarily be physical. There
is nothing mysterious about aesthetic rhythm, and any attempt to
"spiritualise" the harmonies of art carries art so much further from the
truth. The modern tendency to make objects abstract and to divest
subject-matter of all its mimetic qualities, has led some critics and
painters to the false conclusion that form itself is unrelated to
recognisable phenomena. But even in the most abstract of the great
painters, the form is concrete. In a broad sense it is susceptible of
geometrical demonstration; and its intensity is in direct ratio to its
proximation to human organisms. In fact, there are no moving forms in an
aesthetic organisation which do not have their prototypes in the human
body in action. Were this not true empathy would be impossible, and
without empathy an artistic emotion is purely intellectual and
associative. The greatest painters, past and present, have recognised
this principle; and art which does not adhere to it is decadent both in
the aesthetic and the intellectual sense.
Kandinsky exemplifies this kind of decadence. While the innovators up to
Matisse had tried to discover in nature secrets which would aid them in
plastic expression, Kandinsky has tried, by numerous articles and at
least one complete book, to turn back the minds of painters to the
supposedly mystical elements of form and colour. But although this
artist is to be commended on his effort to make colour significant in a
day when angular forms of brown and black were the keynote, his study
of colour should have begun where Cezanne left off and not with the
writings of Maeterlinck and the symbolist poets. Kandinsky recognises
that colour has possibilities, but he ignores the fact that colour is
one of the physical sciences, as definite as those of the quadrivium,
that its inductive qualities have become classified and that its
functioning is precise and answerable to natural laws. Consequently he
cannot co-ordinate its governing principles, and, in an attempt to
rationalise it he has sought refuge in music, an art which presents to
him the same mystical difficulties. So long as he was under the healthy
influence of Matisse his symbology was less evident; but when he adopted
a metaphysical programme it all came to the surface.