pictures. His "compositions" for the most part are general statements of
some rural scene in Matisse's manner; and his "improvisations" represent
semi-abstract lines delimiting scientifically meaningless colours. In
his book, The Art of Spiritual Harmony, he presents an elaborate
explanation of the metaphysical basis for colour, but he fails to
contribute any ideas not to be found in Delacroix and Seurat. And the
pictures with which he complements the text have been surpassed, in
their own manner, by the Chinese. There are isolated comments on colour
theories which are separately sound, and there are explanatory
generalisations; but a diligent search fails to reveal any statement
which is precise and at the same time new. The book refers constantly
to music, and there are undeniable evidences of literary thought; but
nowhere is there an explanation of the plastic significance of colour.
Kandinsky is a painter of moods, and as such encroaches upon the domain
of music. He is a painter of the vision of an action without its
objective integument, and as such he enters the realm of poetry. He is
essentially pretty, and despite his idealistic nomenclature, he is at
bottom illustrative and decorative. What he designates the "soul" is
only associative memory, and his conception of composition is the
breaking up of a flat surface into irregular compartments by lines and
more or less pure colour. Like Scriabine he has overlooked the formal
possibilities of colour and consequently has failed in any aesthetically
emotional expression.
[Illustration: COMPOSITION NO. 2 by KANDINSKY]
Kandinsky's attempts to create moods are largely failures because of the
inherent limitations of his art medium. The arts may be synthesised when
a profounder understanding of them has come about, but their
functionality can never be interchanged. The art of literature will
always be able to tell a story better than the greatest sculpture; and
even a primitive song is more capable of producing a mood than the most
highly organised painting. Kandinsky, for instance, fails to achieve
what the Marseillaise achieves in music, namely: the dramatic
presentation of an exhortation to action. Separate, for instance, the
phrases of the original version. The first verse opens with a rousing
appeal which culminates on "_patrie_," a word always welcome to the ear
and heart of a Frenchman. Then the song acclaims the glory of the
occasion and repeats dramatically the cause of the struggle--"_Contre
nous de la tyrannie l'etendard sanglant est leve_." Then it recounts the
tragedies which are befalling relatives and friends at the hands of the
growling soldiers of the enemy; and suddenly, in an unexpected voice it
calls, "_Aux armes, citoyens!_" ending in a patriotic and decisive
flourish. The music throughout is subtly harmonised with the words:
lively during the opening call; abated during the first statement of the
cause; animated with its repetition; minor when the tragic words occur;
vibrant and imitative of bugles during the call to arms; and highest in
pitch at the end. This is the expression of the mood intensified.
Could painting extend itself into time and present singly and in
sequence the visions of objective nature, dramatically synthesised with
colour and line, it could perhaps influence people to emotion in the way
music does. But the musical quality of time-extension is impossible in
painting. And since a picture presents a simultaneous vision, which
cannot be otherwise except through a subjective process, it is incapable
of working from a prelude to a finale like music. Music is abstract,
though firmly based on the rhythmic movement of all nature, yet it can
produce moods by far more distant and far less tangible associations
than can painting. But mood in music is no higher a quality than
illustration in painting, and the highly creative artists ignore them
both. The great composer is the one who, seeing beyond the associative
theory in music, feels the deeper plasticity of movement and form: and
his plasticity is this only preoccupation, just as the plastic element
of colour is the great modern painter's chief concern. Kandinsky has
only tried to introduce an unimportant element of one art into another
art. While the procedure has a superficial taste of novelty it is no
more creditable than if he had declared himself frankly for illustration
and joined the ranks of Degas and his school. He has not probed into the
pregnant recesses of painting and attempted to discover the meaning of
form. He has contented himself with obscuring the delineations of
natural objects in such a manner that the beholder feels led to decipher
his cryptic realities. The suggestion of actuality is there, but there
being no other strong attraction in the picture, aesthetic or otherwise,
the spectator sets to work to penetrate its objective meaning. In the
majority of cases he succeeds, and gains thereby a satisfaction similar
to that of having solved a simple problem in fractions.
In painting moods, which he refers to as "spiritual impressions,"
"internal harmonies," "psychic effects" and "soul vibrations," Kandinsky
does not attempt to depict the dynamic forces which produce moods, but
strives to interpret his own emotional impressions by means of
semi-symbolic and semi-naturalistic visions and by inspirational
methods. Unable to ally the elements of colour and line to a given
theme, he contents himself with giving us a chaotic impression by such
means as he personally associates with his mood: and since this kind of
association is largely individual, his depiction of the mood is
incomprehensible to anyone not temperamentally and mentally at one with
him. Did he understand the inherent psychological dramatic significance
of colours and lines he could represent a universally moving vision, and
thereby attain in a small degree the end for which he aims. But his
feeling for colour especially is so vague and unscientific that it is,
after all, a personal thing, and his graphic representation of a mood is
little more than an individual and purely otiose expression. Even Carra,
in his colourless Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, approaches nearer the
creation of a mood than does Kandinsky in his best canvases, for in
Carra there is exhibited a certain knowledge of the dramatic use of line
which, when combined with recognisable subject-matter, augments the
thematic drama.
Despite his complete preoccupation with colour Kandinsky is decadent
more than Van Gogh to whom artistically he is closely related, because
the progress of modern painting is toward purity, toward creation by
means of a unique element, toward an art which expresses only the
qualities of which that art is the most highly capable. When other
considerations enter into it, it is at once drawn back toward
illustration, and its final defecation is postponed. Happily Kandinsky,
an explorer of the limitless realms of metaphysics, has given us no more
specific a postulate than that colour has meaning. Though he formulates
many vaguely associative theories (such as "keen yellow looks sour
because it recalls the taste of a lemon," "a shade of red will cause
pain or disgust through association with running blood," and "in the
hierarchy of colours green is the _bourgeoisie_--self-satisfied,
immovable, narrow"); he nevertheless relies largely on instinct for
their application. While attempting to turn painters' minds from the
precise discoveries of colourists to a pseudo-philosophical
consideration of colour, he is too general and ambiguous to inspire
extensive imitation. Already painters since him have gone forward in the
great work of research begun by the Impressionists.
If Kandinsky, as a theorist, is cabalistic and illusory, he achieves a
certain decorative prettiness in his work. Though his ideas are old, the
appearance of his canvases is new: and it is merely this novelty of
conception, coupled with his tendency toward abstraction, which makes
him of interest, and then only as a theoretical deviation from the work
of Gauguin, Matisse and the Orientals. His colour is not without visual
charm, and his composition often has the fascination of the delicate
patterns found in the Chinese. In fact, Kandinsky's compositional debt
to the Chinese is large. His Improvisation No. 29 is almost identical
with a painting by Rin Teikei, and many of his pictures appear like
curved-line generalisations of Chinese groupings, or the forms in
Chinese backgrounds. Like the Cubists Kandinsky is a step toward
arbitrariness in formal composition, but his advance is less significant
than theirs. In his desire to illustrate a mood and produce a
corresponding psychic emotion in the spectator he is a
transcendentalised Futurist. His ontological terminology has given an
impetus to his popularity, but it has tended unfortunately to obscure
his worth as a maker of arabesques.
Of a different decadent type are Bonnard, Vuillard and K.-X. Roussel who
call themselves the Intimists. These artists descend in large measure
from Matisse, and though other and sometimes stronger influences enter
their work, they are in a general way more closely akin to him than any
other modern painter. Their appearance is more academic and, in the
decorative sense, prettier than that of Matisse. Also, there is in their
pictures a greater perpendicularity than in the work of their master.
The angular and the perpendicular always represent the second
compositional step from symmetricality to order: they are indicative of
the earliest stage of aesthetic consciousness. They are found in the
Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and in all the primitive
Christians, and in Gauguin and Puvis de Chavannes. The artists who use
them have awakened to the fact that chaos is not conducive to emotional
satisfaction. In perpendicular lines there is a primitive sense of
fitness, for one feels they are both well-planted and immovable. Not
infrequently they are employed by the decadents of a movement or an
epoch because they harmonise so neatly and unostentatiously with pretty
colours and delicate themes. The Futurists found in them a ready means
to a decorative order.
Bonnard, the most genuine artist of the group, uses perpendicularity of
arrangement more consciously than does either of the others. He studied
in the same class with Maurice Denis at the _Academie Julien_, and his
association with this painter no doubt explains his compositional
predilection. He is strongly influenced by Renoir, although he has never
penetrated beyond Renoir's surface. His greys are always rich and
sombre, and even his simplest works are as artistically opulent and
lovely as the finest tapestry. Indeed his large paintings are more
appropriately wall coverings than panels, ornaments rather than
decorations. In them are hot sunlight and cold shadow in scintillating
succession; and every object is put to genuine ornamental use. They seem
to exhibit an unconscious fluency in the employment of bafflingly
diverse greys which are saturated with colour and applied so as to
reveal highly their attentuated purity. There are also in his work
harmoniously horizontal lines and pleasing sequences of curves. In Le
Jardin a line starts with the head of a man on the left, continues along
his arm and leg and the sofa back, and reaches an apex in the child's
head to the right of the centre, sinks by way of the head of the woman
on the right to the man's arm, is then caught up again by the contour of
his legs, is paralleled by the outline of the nearest standing child's
dress and face and the face of the kneeling girl, is continued in the
bottom of the skirt of the child seated on the sofa, and then becomes
horizontal in a perfect continuation of the table's surface. The line is
beautiful and studiously made, and is pointed out here for the purpose
of showing the simple ordonnance often found in the lesser artists. Nor
is it the only line in the canvas. There are others as harmonious and as
beautiful; but what keeps the picture from being a great composition,
although its forms are solid and well adapted to their spaces, is its
lack of opposition or solution of warring elements. If we do not try to
class Bonnard with the greatest artists, we are forced to praise him. He
is unpretentious, highly gifted, has a well-developed sense of the
beautiful, and is possessed of a most sensitive eye. He is neither an
illustrator of nature nor of moods, but an artist who paints to obtain
aesthetic expression, without the _arriere pensee_ of a theoretical
method. He is one of the most purely pleasing painters of modern times.
Vuillard, a painter of interiors, owes his inspiration as much to
Toulouse-Lautrec as to Gauguin. Like Bonnard he uses greys of dry and
mat colour, but his harmonies are slighter and of lighter tonality than
those of Bonnard. Profiting by the Impressionists' light discoveries he
has done some very admirable interiors; some of his works are more
modern and artistic Whistlers. His art is one in which the spotting of
masses for the sake of balance supplants any attempt to produce
generating lines. As with Bonnard and Roussel there is in him a striving
after beautiful surfaces, _matieres_ which in themselves will tempt the
amateur. In this common pursuit the Intimists show themselves to be the
successors of Degas; but they are successors who, having taken to heart
the teachings of more significant forerunners, represent a sturdier
decadence than that of Degas. K.-X. Roussel is a feminised Poussin. He
searches solely for effect, and his canvases have the singular charm of
enamel. Were they smaller they would make admirable brooches and vases.
He too has made tapestries, but in spirit they are less modern than the
corresponding efforts of his contemporaries. His compositions embody
reddish satyrs and nymphs, intense blue sky, yellow-green foliage and
yellow ground. His drawing never has more than the rudimentary charm of
school-room talent, while that of Vuillard is subjugated to his colour
application, and that of Bonnard is instinctively deformed to the
needs of line and decorative necessity.
[Illustration: LE JARDIN by BONNARD]
Maurice Denis is more directly an outcome of the school of Pont-Aven
than are the three preceding men. His synthetic figures were first seen
in Courbet, then in Puvis de Chavannes, then in Besnard and Gauguin. In
Denis they have lost much of their significance and have once more
become primarily academic. There was a time about 1890 when Denis's
colour was not aggressively disagreeable. It was subjugated to a certain
greyness which was applied in little spots resembling the
black-and-white stippling of some of Seurat's drawings. Now his colour
has grown acid and unpleasant. His line is stiff and vitiated and lacks
even the quality of a pleasing silhouette. He has written a book of
theories, but it has helped him little in his artistic achievements. He
is the antithesis of Bonnard, and his colours possess almost no
harmonious interrelation. In him there are a few perpendicular lines,
but one may seek in vain for evidences of co-ordination. Many of his
figures are appropriated from the works of the old masters, but because
he fails to adapt them sensitively to his needs, they lose, rather than
gain, in beauty by the transfer. He is at times symbolic and allegoric,
and while one might overlook this literary phase of his art, provided
there were other qualities to compensate for it, he fails to exhibit a
complete appreciation of the aesthetic possibilities of his models, and
consequently becomes merely an exponent of adopted mannerisms. His
popularity has entirely to do with qualities unrelated to painting.
Judged by a purely aesthetic standard he is inferior to an Augustus
John, a Desvallieres, a Bourdelle or a Wyndham Lewis.
The highly talented Andre Derain is another synthetic painter. He is
sincerely moved by multiramose tree forms and the sunlight effects of
Provence, and his admiration for Cezanne led him into certain mannerisms
which have for their object a facilitation of the Aix master's methods.
In his use of soft yellows, hot earth tones, deep warm greens and light
blues, he reveals his debt to the modern tendency toward colour. By
outlining his objects with heavy contours, he has acquired erroneously
a reputation for virility, and though he aspires to composition, he only
achieves pattern. He is much like the Scandinavian, Othon Friesz, who,
having absorbed the exteriors of Matisse and Cezanne, and having read
Cezanne's letter recommending Poussin remade on nature, has turned his
attention to this old Titian offshoot and endeavours to give us a
reversion to style. At one time he used colour freely, but he now paints
with ochres, blues, blacks, greens and an occasional red--a gamut like
Derain's, only yellower. He too has a heavy technique and a reputation
for virility. Maurice de Vlaminck is another painter of similar
inspiration and palette. He is much prettier and has a finer sense of
soft harmonies than either of the other two. He reveals a genuine
feeling for his subjects, and always tries to introduce into his works a
simple oppositional line. He comes direct from Cezanne, and it is from
paintings such as his that Cezanne has acquired a reputation as a maker
of arabesques. De Vlaminck has a rich and impelling _matiere_ and an art
sense which is almost coquettish.
Kees van Dongen has studied the sensual drawings of Toulouse-Lautrec and
the broad exteriors of Matisse, and in combining his two admirations has
made eminently effective posters of nearly harmonious colours in very
broad planes. De Segonzac also uses attenuated colours in a broad manner
after Matisse. Manguin, another Matisse imitator, is too academic to
appeal strongly to those who have acquired the modern vision, despite
the primitive order his canvases at times possess. Flandrin is more
decorative. His works reveal a classic perpendicularity of composition,
and though they are without a sense of form, we feel in them a certain
charm of space and air. He brushes in his landscapes broadly by planes
of light and dark, somewhat in the very early manner of Matisse. Pierre
Laprade has arrived at a style of surface which may best be
characterised as bad tapestry. Jean Puy applies his pictures in a broad,
somewhat bold, manner, and his light tonality and angularities point to
his having lingered over the work of Cezanne. Lebasque is the feminine
prototype of Puy. His colour is faded and unemotional, and his exteriors
are as flat as the simplest decorations. Madame Marval differs from
Lebasque only in theme.
Modern decadence in Zak, Rousseau, Vallotton, Prendergast and Simon
Bussy manifests itself in a retrogression to primitive ideals. Though
using the modern methods of simplification, these men revert to a static
and dead past. Their aim is to revive the most ancient manner of
painting. Of all the modern decadents they are perhaps the most
devitalising for they tacitly repudiate the discoveries of the new men,
and strive to turn the minds of the public and of painters alike to the
sterilities of antiquity. They even ignore the aesthetic principles of
the Renaissance, and by pushing creative expression to its furthest
limits of artlessness, turn to naught the entire achievements of the
great plastic composers. At best these men are dealers in decorative
material. Simple arrangement is absent from their works, and colour,
which for nearly a century has fought for its true place in painting, is
once more used as an instinctive means for filling in drawings.
Vallotton, though a modern primitive, is not allied to any recent
school. In appearance his work is unlike that of the other moderns. He
disdains all save the simplest means and the most restricted colours. In
him there are no delicate plays of light, but broad and heavy shadings
which are not without subtlety. He is a Teutonic Ingres--a Flandrin made
serious as to precision and reduced colour. At a distance his nude
studies are interesting, for there one loses the dryness and hardness of
their technical manner--a heritage of Vallotton's days of wood
engravings. Other modern painters who elude classification, but who are
intimately related in a general way to the new movements are Charles
Guerin, Piot, Spiro, Alcide Le Beau, Gustave Jaulmes and d'Espagnat.
Though they differ markedly from Vallotton they are all preoccupied with
self-expression by means of colour. By making it a dominant element in
their work, they have admitted their susceptibility to the modern ideal
and thereby have given an impetus to the spirit which tends toward
purification. Guerin is a professor of the _Academie Moderne_; and
though clinging close to conventional drawing, he attains a slightly
novel aspect in all his tapestry-like canvases. He is eminently of the
Beaux-Arts tradition, is artificial and monotonous, and paints very
large pictures with both idealistic and realistic themes.
Of the modern men who have found in Cubism their strongest aesthetic
fascination de la Fresnay is a noteworthy example. So well does he
understand the demands of the Picasso tradition that he has come to be
looked upon as one of the members of the Cubist group. His arrangements
are soft and pretty and his colour is harmonious. He has in fact
surpassed in merit several of the original Cubists. Frederick Etchells
and W. Roberts are English exponents of Cubism, and the latter has done
some work which rivals that of Picabia. Wyndham Lewis, another
Englishman, strives for an individual expression, but his angularities
reveal his debt to Picasso, although the general impression of his
pictures is Futuristic. The hand of the Cubists can be found in many of
the canvases of the modern Americans. Arthur B. Davies, the most popular
of the new men in the United States, is at bottom a superficial
academician, but he superimposes shallow Cubist traits on his
two-dimensional drawings, giving them a spuriously modern appearance.
Maurice Stern treats Gauguin themes with a pale reflection of the early
geometrical Picasso; and similar means are employed by C. R. Sheeler,
Jr., though both Matisse and Delaunay have contributed to his art.
To name all the modern painters who are conscientiously battling
against formalism and the dry-rot of the academies would be impossible.
The field is too broad: the activities are too numerous. Few civilised
countries have escaped the insistence of the new impetus. By some
painters the new methods are adopted tentatively and by degrees. Others
fly to the latest phases of art and move forward with the epoch. Today
there are numerous representatives of all the movements from
Impressionism to Synchromism. Kroll and Childe Hassam, both Americans,
are emulators of Monet, though Hassam, who appears less modern than
Kroll, is by far the more sensitive painter. Marquet has done more than
imitate Impressionism. He has synthesised Monet into a more masculine
expression. His planes are broad and luminous, and he achieves a
distinct feeling for air and distance by simpler and more direct means
than did the Impressionists. W. S. Glackens combines a Renoir technique
with a modern purity of colour. J. D. Ferguson, the Scotchman, also
reverts to the Impressionists but has learned much from Matisse. Duncan
Grant, an Englishman, is much more modern than Ferguson and more
competently expressive of the new. Roger Fry has contributed much to the
modern impetus. His writings reveal a wide comprehension of present-day
paintings and his insight into aesthetics is at times profound. Every
year adds to the ranks. Besides the modern artists already named may be
mentioned Bechteiev, Bolz, Lhote, Chagall, Chamaillard, Zawadowsky,
Hayden, Ottmann, Lotiron, Utrillo, Hartley, Peckstein, Valensi,
Jawlensky, Knauerhase, Muenter, Tobeen, Bloch, Dove, de Chirico,
Walkowitz, Boussingault, Kanoldt and Granzow.