Vorticism whose headquarters are London. The Vorticists are unrestricted
as to theories, and have for their aim the final purification of
painting as well as of the other arts. Their creed is an intelligent
one, and is in direct line with the current tendencies. As yet they have
produced no pictures which might be called reflective of their
principles, but they have kept before English artists the necessity of
eliminating the unessentials. Their main doctrines, so far as painting
is concerned, were set forth by the Synchromists long before the
Vorticists came into public being; but by their insistence on the basic
needs of purification, they have done valuable service. The Synchromists
in their manifesto wrote: "An art whose ambition it is to be pure should
express itself only in the means inherent in that art.... Painting being
the art of colour, any quality of a picture not expressed by colour is
not painting." A year later in _Blast_, the Vorticists' publication, we
read: "The Vorticist relies on this alone; on the primary pigment of his
art, and nothing else.... Every concept, every emotion presents itself
to the vivid consciousness in some primary form. It belongs to the art
of this form. If sound, to music, if formed words, to literature; colour
in position, to painting...."
All these painters are the leaders of the secondary inspirations in
modern art, and out of them grow other painters in Europe and America.
They do not as a rule go by the name of any school, but they can be
classed together because in them all is the same desire to create the
novel, to present a strikingly different aspect from the academies, and
to differentiate themselves individually from their fellows. They all
feel their incompetency to create new forms, the necessity to follow,
the timidity which only permits them to modify the surfaces of other
greater men. They are the creative exponents and the decadents of vital
movements, and they in turn have their own imitators and decadents. They
have felt the need for change, but lack the genius for new
organisations. That many of them are sound artists it would be folly to
deny. But they are in no sense of the word innovators. Some of them in
fact are failures, but theirs is the consolation of having failed in
attempting something vital and representative of the age in which they
live.
XV
CONCLUSION
In conclusion there are several points which require accentuation if the
significance of modern painting is to be fully grasped. There have been
three epochs in the visual arts. The first was the longest, and extended
through more than two centuries. The last two epochs have required less
than a hundred years for their fulfilment. Each epoch dealt with a
specific phase of painting and developed that phase until its
possibilities were exhausted. The ultimate aim of all great painting was
purification, but before that could come about many theories had to be
tested; many consummations had to take place; many problems had to be
solved. The laws of formal organisation were first discovered and
applied with the limited means at hand. Then came experimentation and
research in the mechanics of expression--the search for new and vital
methods wherewith these principles of composition might be bodied forth
more intensely. Later the functioning properties of colour were
unearthed and employed. In the course of this evolution many irrelevant
factors found their way into painting. The men of the first epoch used
primitive and obvious materials to express their forms. When the new
means--means inherent in painting--were ascertained, it was necessary to
eliminate the former media. The subject-matter of painting--that is, the
recognisable object, the human obstacle--had to be forced out to permit
of the introduction of colour which had become an inseparable adjunct of
form. To effect the coalition of pure composition and the newer methods
was a difficult feat, for so long had the world been accustomed to the
pictorial aspect of painting, that it had come to look upon
subject-matter as a cardinal requisite to plastic creation.
The first epoch began with the advent of oil painting about 1400, and
went forward, building and developing, until it reached realisation
early in the seventeenth century. Knowing that organised form is the
basis of all aesthetic emotion, the old masters strove to find the
psychological principles for co-ordinating volume. Their means were
naturally superficial, for their initial concern was to determine what
they should do, not how they should do it. In expressing the form they
deemed necessary to great art they used the material already at their
disposal, namely: objective nature. They organised and made rhythmic the
objects about them, more especially the human body which permitted of
many variations and groupings and which was in itself a complete
ensemble. And furthermore they had discovered that movement--an
indispensable attribute of the most highly emotional composition--was
best expressed by the poise of the human figure. Colour to these early
men was only an addendum to drawing. They conceived form in black and
white, and sought to reinforce their work by the realistic use of
pigments. That colour was an infixed element of organisation they never
suspected. Their preoccupation was along different lines. The greatest
exponents of intense composition during this first epoch were
Tintoretto, Giorgione, Masaccio, Giotto, Veronese, El Greco and Rubens.
These men were primarily interested in discovering absolute laws for
formal rhythm. The mimetic quality of their work was a secondary
consideration. In Rubens were consummated the aims of the older
painters; that is, he attained to the highest degree of compositional
plasticity which was possible with the fixed means of his period. In him
the first cycle terminated. There was no longer any advance to be made
in the art of painting until a new method of expression should be
unearthed. However, the principles of form laid down by these old
masters were fundamental and unalterable. Upon them all great painting
must ever be based. They are intimately connected with the very
organisms of human existence, and can never be changed until the nature
of mankind shall change.
After Rubens a short period of decadence and deterioration set in. The
older methods no longer afforded inspiration. About the beginning of the
nineteenth century the second cycle of painting was ushered in by
Turner, Constable and Delacroix. These men, realising that until new
means were discovered art could be only a variation of what had come
before, turned their attention to finding a procedure by which the
ambition of the artist could be more profoundly realised. This second
cycle was one of research and analysis, of scientific experimentation
and data gathering. To surpass Rubens in his own medium was impossible:
he had reached the ultimate outpost of aesthetic possibilities with what
materials he possessed. The new men first made inquiry into colour from
the standpoint of its dramatic potentialities. Naturalism was born.
While Delacroix was busy applying the rudiments of colour science to
thematic romanticism, Courbet was busy tearing down the tenets of
conventionalism in subject-matter, and Daumier was experimenting in the
simultaneity of form and drawing. Manet liberated the painter from set
themes, and thereby broadened the material field of composition. The
Impressionists followed, and by labourious investigations into nature's
methods, probed the secrets of colour in relation to light. The
Neo-Impressionists went further afield with scientific observations; and
finally Renoir, assimilating all the new discoveries, rejected the
fallacies and co-ordinated the valuable conclusions. In him was brought
to a close the naturalistic conception of painting. He was the
consummation of the second cycle. During this period the older laws of
composition were for the most part forgotten. The painters were too
absorbed in their search for new means. They forgot the foundations of
art in their enthusiasm for a fuller and less restricted expression. The
essential character of colour and light and the new freedom in subject
selection so intoxicated them that they lost sight of all that had
preceded them. But their gifts to painting cannot be overestimated. By
finding new weapons with which future artists might achieve the highest
formal intensity, they opened up illimitable fields of aesthetic
endeavour: they made possible the third and last cycle which resulted
in the final purification of painting.
Of this cycle Cezanne was the primitive. Profiting by the Impressionist
teachings, he turned his attention once more to the needs of
composition. He realised the limitations of the naturalistic conception,
and created light which, though it was as logical as nature's, was not
restricted to the realistic vision. Colour with him became for the first
time a functional element capable of producing form. The absolute
freedom of subject selection--a heritage from the second cycle--permitted
him extreme distortions, and with these distortions was opened up the
road to abstraction. Matisse made form even more arbitrary, and Picasso
approached still nearer to the final elimination of natural objectivity,
though both men ignored colour as a generator of form. They carried
forward the work of Cezanne only on its material side. Then Synchromism,
combining the progress of both Cezanne and the Cubists, took the final
step in the elimination of the illustrative object, and at the same time
put aside the local hues on which the art of Cezanne was dependent.
Since the art of painting is the art of colour, the Synchromists
depended entirely on primary pigment for the complete expression of
formal composition. Thus was brought about the final purification of
painting. Form was entirely divorced from any realistic consideration:
and colour became an organic function. The methods of painting, being
rationalised, reached their highest degree of purity and creative
capability.
The evolution of painting from tinted illustration to an abstract art
expressed wholly by the one element inherent in it--colour, was a
natural and inevitable progress. Music passed through the same
development from the imitation of natural sounds to harmonic
abstraction. We no longer consider such compositions as The Battle of
Prague or Monastery Bells aesthetically comparable to Korngold's
Symphonietta or Schoenberg's _Opus II_. And yet in painting the great
majority confines its judgment to that phase of a picture which is
irrelevant to its aesthetic importance. So long have form and composition
expressed themselves through recognisable phenomena that the cognitive
object has come to be looked upon as an end, whereas it is only a means
to a subjective emotion. The world still demands that a painting shall
represent a natural form, that is, that the basis of painting shall be
illustration. The illustrative object was employed by the older painters
only because their means were limited, because they had no profounder
method wherewith to express themselves. And even with them the human
body was deliberately disproportioned and altered to meet the needs of
composition. When the properties of colour began to be understood, the
older methods were no longer required. Colour itself became form. But so
deeply rooted was the illustrative precedent that no one painter had the
courage to eliminate objectivity at one stroke. Cezanne took the first
great step; Matisse, the second; Cubism the next; and Synchromism the
final one.
So long as painting deals with objective nature it is an impure art, for
recognisability precludes the highest aesthetic emotion. All painting,
ancient and modern, moves us aesthetically only in so far as it
possesses a force over and beyond its mimetic aspect. The average
spectator is unable to differentiate his literary and associative
emotions from his aesthetic ecstasy. Form and rhythm alone are the bases
of aesthetic enjoyment: all else in a picture is superfluity. Therefore a
picture in order to represent its intensest emotive power must be an
abstract presentation expressed entirely in the medium of painting: and
that medium is colour. There are no longer any experiments to be made in
methods. Form and colour--the two permanent and inalienable qualities of
painting--have become synonymous. Ancient painting sounded the depths of
composition. Modern painting has sounded the depths of colour. Research
is at an end. It now remains only for artists to create. The means have
been perfected: the laws of organisation have been laid down. No more
innovatory "movements" are possible. Any school of the future must
necessarily be compositional. It can be only a variation or a
modification of the past. The methods of painting may be complicated.
New forms may be found. But it is no longer possible to add anything to
the means at hand. The era of pure creation begins with the present day.
Those who go to painting for anecdote, drama, archaeology, illustration
or any other quality which is not strictly aesthetic, would do well to
confine their attention and their comments to the academicians of whom
there is and always has been an abundant supply. Let them keep their
hands off those artists who strive for higher and more eternal
manifestations. The greatest artists of every age have never sought to
appeal to the lovers of reality and sentiment. Nor have they wished to
be judged by standards which considered only verisimilitude and
technical proficiency. It is the misfortune of painting that literary
impurities should have accompanied its development, and it is the irony
of serious endeavour that on account of these impurities there has been
an indefinite deferment of any genuine appreciation of painting. It is
difficult to convince a man who has not experienced the great aesthetic
emotions which art is capable of producing, that there is an
intoxication to be derived from the contemplation of art keener than
that of association, sentiment or drama. Not knowing that greater
delights await him once he has penetrated beneath the surface, he has
doggedly combated every effort to eliminate the irrelevant accretions.
But if painting was to reach its highest point of artistic creation, its
realistic aspect had to go. When colour became profoundly understood, no
longer could the artist apply it according to the dictates of nature. It
lost its properties as decoration and as an enhancement of the
naturalistic vision. Its demands freed the artist from the tyranny of
nature. In becoming pure, painting drew further and further away from
mimicry; and the superficial lover of painting, enslaved by the ignorant
and rigid standards of the past, protested with greater and greater
vehemence.
The misunderstanding which has attached to modern painting has been
colossal. The newer men, because they have dared search for means of
expression superior to those of the past, have met with ridicule and
abuse. From Delacroix to Synchromism the critics and public have fought
every advance. Immured in tradition, their minds have been unable to
grasp the meaning of the new activities or to sense the artist's need
for pure creation. No school has escaped the obloquy of the professional
critic who, judging art from its superficial and unimportant side, has
failed to penetrate to its fundamentals. Delacroix was declared crazy by
the leading critics. The _Journal des Artistes_ said of him, "We do not
say this man is a charlatan, but we do say this man is the equivalent of
a charlatan." The _Observateur des Beaux-Arts_, commenting on this
artist's failure to procure an award, remarked, "Delacroix, the leader
of the new school, received no honours, but in order to recompense him,
he was accorded a two hours' _seance_ each day in the morgue." Gros,
Delecluze and Alfred Nettement are conspicuous among the academicians
and critics who bitterly opposed Delacroix's innovations. Courbet met
with a similar reception. Gautier, after studying one of his pictures,
wrote, "One does not know whether to weep or laugh. There are heads
which recall the ensigns of tobacconists and of the menagerie." Clement
de Ris said of Courbet's work, "It is the glorification of vulgar
ugliness;" and de Chennevieres called one of his finest pictures "an
ignoble and impious caricature." Even Manet, whose radicalism was
slight, brought down upon himself the abuse of the critics for daring to
paint modern themes. Claretie drew the following conclusion from the
Olympia: "One cannot reproach Manet for idealising _vierges folles_, for
he makes of them _vierges sales_." The remark was characteristic. Manet
revolted against classic subjects, and for his modernity was excoriated
by the moral traditionalists.
The early Impressionists, as pretty as they were, did not escape
critical abuse. Benjamin Constant called them "the school of snobs, the
conscious or unconscious enemies of art," and added, "Their days are
numbered." Albert Wolff was more venomous. "These _soi-disant_ artists,"
he wrote, "call themselves the intransigents. They take canvases,
colours and brushes, fling at hazard several tones, and then sign the
work. It is thus that the wandering spirits at Ville-Evrard pick up
pebbles on the highway and think they have found diamonds. Hideous
spectacle of human vanity straying toward dementia!" Paul Mantz's
remarks were similar. His criticism in part read: "Before the works of
certain members of the group one is tempted to ascribe to them a defect
of the eyes, singularities of vision which would be the joy of
ophthalmologists, and the terror of families." (How like the recent
criticisms of the very modern men does all this sound--these accusations
of insanity, these hints of defective vision! Such comments would seem
to have been lifted almost bodily by the detractors of Cubism, Futurism
and Synchromism.) Renoir shared a similar fate. One leading critic said
it was futile to "try to explain to Renoir that the female torso is not
a mass of decomposing flesh with spots of green and violet which denote
the state of complete putrefaction in a cadaver." Roger Ballu explained
the appearance of Renoir's work thus: "At first view it seemed that his
canvases, during their trip from the studio to the exhibition, had
undergone an accident." With the exception of Manet two years prior to
his death and Renoir at the age of sixty-eight, not one of the
Impressionists was decorated by the French government. They were
banished from official _Salons_, and compelled to expose in private
galleries.
To quote from the critics who denounced Cezanne would be an endless
task. When he exposed at the Impressionist exhibition in the Rue
Peletier in 1877 he was universally regarded with disgust and horror and
considered a barbarian. The venom of the critics was appalling. They
attacked him from every standpoint, though on one point they seemed in
agreement, namely: that he was a _communard_. Nor did the abuse cease
with his early works. His greatness has consistently evaded critics and
painters alike. Recently the American painter, William M. Chase, offered
the suggestion that Cezanne did not know how to paint. Chase's opinion
is not an isolated one: it is typical of the minor academic painters and
the critics who view art through the eyes of the past. Henri-Matisse is
another painter who has received short shrift from the reviewers. One
need not have a long memory to recall the adverse criticisms he
provoked. His distortions have served as a basis for a display of
ignorance which has few parallels in art history. Matisse himself has
fed fuel to the fire. In his interview with newspaper men he indulged in
much high jesting, and the remarks attributed to him were in many
instances _blague_. Others, judging him by his words, have pinned on him
the labels of charlatan and degenerate.
The Cubists, misunderstood from the first, have been a source of
ridicule rather than of contumely. Systematisers have sought to trace
them to Duerer, forgetting that Cezanne once wrote: "Treat nature by the
cylinder, the sphere and the cone; the whole put in perspective, so that
each side of an object and of a plane directs itself toward a central
point." Even today, after the vital contributions of the Cubists have
altered the whole trend of modern art, there are few who see in them
aught but the material for laughter. The critics who have accepted the
Impressionists and Cezanne deny the merits of Cubism, venting their
derision in a manner which recalls the detractors of the very schools
which these critics now uphold. Synchromism has perhaps called forth the
bitterest protests. It was the last step in the evolution of modern
means. It had no affinities with the academies. There was no foothold in
this new school for the conservatives and reactionaries. The Munich
critics were first to attack it. Later in Paris Andre Salmon wrote, "The
public will believe that Synchromism is the final movement of which it
has learned. Synchromism is the worst of backward movements, a vulgar
art, without nobility, unlikely to live, as it carries the principles of
death in itself." _Les Arts et Les Artistes_ summed up Synchromists
with: "The house painter at the corner can, when he wishes, claim that
he belongs to this school." _La Plume_ discovered the fact that
"Macdonald-Wright copies with a dirty broom the Slave of Michelangelo."
Charles H. Caffin declared, "The whole tenor of their foreword and
introduction is one of egregious self-exploitation and
self-advertisement. This ... raises the very obvious question: 'Are
these men megalomaniacs or charlatans?' Possibly they are neither the
one nor the other. I am not in a position to decide."
These quotations and comments are set down to reveal the opposition
which the genuine modern painters have had to contend with. The
criticisms of each movement repeat themselves with the following one,
even to a point of verbal similarity. The attacks on Synchromism are
strangely like those which companioned Impressionism. The same
facetiousness, the same irrelevant denunciation, the same opposition to
the new, the same antipathy for progress are manifest in all the critics
of the new painting from Delacroix to date. All arise out of ignorance,
out of that immobility of mind which cannot judge clearly until a thing
is swathed in the perspective of the years. Art has grown faster than
the critic's ability to comprehend. Its problems are a closed book to
him, for, not being a painter himself, he requires a longer period in
which to assimilate the new ideals. Gradually as the new methods
establish themselves, and become accepted (as in the case of
Impressionism), the critic at last comes abreast of a movement; but by
that time art has gone forward and left him in the rear. Again he
attacks the new. All innovations are as poison to his system, until he
again becomes adjusted. Thus can we account for the animosity and
ridicule with which each modern movement has been met.