hearts is seeking. Lust seeks it; Love creates it; the miracle of Faith
finds it—but nothing less, neither truth nor wisdom nor morality nor
knowledge, neither progress nor reaction, can quench the thirst we
feel.”
_A Benefit Recital_
The sonata recital of Josephine Gerwing and Carol Robinson on March 7 is
to be a benefit for THE LITTLE REVIEW. Our gratitude is so deep that we
can’t even begin to express it. But you will not be so interested in our
gratitude as in our taste: we know both these musicians and we know that
whoever comes to them for _music_ will not go away empty. It will be
beautiful. The program is on page 59. Tickets are on sale at 917 Fine
Arts Building.
_More Nietzsche_
Dr. Foster’s series of Nietzsche articles will be continued in the next
issue.
Ten Grotesques
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
I. WHY WOMEN HATE ARTISTS
Thanks, belovèd; here’s your pay.
Now get you quickly out of the way.
For there are many more things to do;
And all my pictures can’t image you.
II. THE PRUDENT LOVER
I dreamed a song of a wild, wild love
And purposed to follow her flying hair,
Singing my music, through vale and grove,
Till dusk met the hills—and I clasped her there.
But—mumbling ancient I have become!—
I sang two staves, and then gave o’er;
And carried my song with prudence home;
And nailed it as motto above my door.
Now, the angels in heaven will crown me with bays;
And give me a golden trumpet to blow
When at last I die, full of virtuous days ...
But my wild, wild love—will she ever know?
III. A POETRY-PARTY
Fronting a Dear Child and an Infamy
You sat; and watched, with dusk-on-the-mountain eyes,
The marching river of the beer go by,
Alert in vain for a band-crash of surprise.
I also! Dawn, that in respectful way
Entered a-liveried, could no lightnings rouse
For which I watched; the calling-card of day
Flushed with no guilt your Hebridean brows.
Wherefore the Infamy and I went down
Into a street of windows high and blind.
His face, his tongue, his words, his soul, were brown.
But from a window lofty and left behind,
Like a silver trumpet over the gutter-dirt,
You waved!—(I know not what; perhaps a shirt.)
IV. PORTRAIT OF A SPIRITUALLY DISTURBED GENTLEMAN
O piece of garbage rotting on a rug,—
To what a final ending hast thou come!
Art thou predestined fodder of a bug?
Shalt thou no more behold thy Dresden home?
When green disintegration works its last
Ruin, and all thy atoms writhe and start,
Shall no frilled-paper memories from the past
Drift spectral down the gravy of thy heart?
Can the cold grease from off the dirty plate
Make thee forget the ice-box of thy prime,
And soon, among the refuse-cans, thy fate
Blot out the gay fork-music of old time?
Ah well! all music has its awkward flats—
And after all, there are the alley-cats!
V. PORTRAIT OF THE INCOMPARABLE JOHN COWPER POWYS, ESQ.
When first the rebel hosts were hurled
From heaven,—and as they downward sped
Flashed by them world on glimmering world
Like mileposts on that road of dread,—
One ruined angel by strange chance
On earth lit stranded with spent wing.
There, when revived, he took his stance
In slightly battered triumphing.
And still he stands; though lightning-riven,
More riotous than ere he fell,—
Upon his brow the lights of heaven
Mixed with a foregleam out of hell.
VI. TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON
God forgive you, O my friend!
For, be sure, men never will.
Their most righteous wrath shall bend
Toward you all the strokes of ill.
You are outcast—Who could bear,
Laboring dully, to behold
That glad carelessness you wear,
Dancing down the sunlight’s gold?
Who, a self-discovered slave,
As the burdens on him press,
Could but curse you, arrant knave,
For your crime of happiness?
All the dogmas of our life
Are confuted by your fling,—
Taking dullness not to wife,
But with wonder wantoning.
All the good and great of earth,
Prophecying your bad end,
Sourly watch you dance in mirth
Up the rainbow, O my friend!
VII. IN A BAR ROOM
Across the polished board, wet and ashine,
Appalling incantations late have passed.—
For some, the mercy of dull anodyne;
For others, hope destined an hour to last.
Here has been sold courage to lift the weak
That they embrace a great and noble doom.
Here some have bought a clue they did not seek
Into the wastes of an engulfing gloom.
And amorous tears, and high indignant hate,
Laughter, desires, passions, and hopes, and rest,—
The drunkard’s sleep, the poet’s shout to fate,—
All from these bottles filled a human breast!
Magician of the apron! Let us see—
What is that draught you are shaking now for me?
VIII. THE DEVIL AMONG THE TAILORS
They groaned—“His aims are not as ours.”
He mused—“What end to mortal powers?”
They urged—“Your fair ideals have fled.”
He smiled.—“The living tramp the dead!”
They told him—“You have done a wrong!”
He asked—“Which is my faulty song?”
They cried—“Your life lies wrecked and vain!”
He laughed.—“That shell? Pray, look again!”
They shrieked—“Go forth! An outcast be!”
He answered—“Thanks. You make me free!”
IX. THE NEWEST BELIEVER
Through his sick brain the shrieking bullet stormed,
Wrecking the chambers of his spirit’s state.
The gleam that brightened and the glow that warmed
Those arrassed halls sank quenched and desolate.
Out of the balefully enfolding mesh,
Life he would free from dominance of evil;
And purpose deeper than the weak-willed flesh
Bade him renounce the world, the flesh, the devil.
And as I looked upon his shattered face
Hideously fronting me in that dark room,
I saw the Prophets of the Church take place
Beside him,—they who dared the nether gloom
For worlds of life or silence far away,
So hated they the evil of their day.
X. SONG OF A VERY SMALL DEVIL
He who looks in golden state
Down from ramparts of high heaven,
Knows he any turn of fate,
It must be of evil given—
He perhaps shall wander late
Downward through the luminous gate.
He who makes himself a gay
Dear familiar of things evil,—
In some deepest tarn astray,
Close-companioned of the Devil,—
He can nowhere turn his way
Save up brighter slopes of day.
Plight it is, yet clear to see.
Hence take solace of your sinning.
As ye sink unfathomably,
Heaven grows ever easier winning.
Therefore ye who saved would be,
Come and shake a leg with me!
A New Standard of Art Criticism and a Significant Artist
HUNTLEY CARTER
It has been clear to me for some time that a new standard of art
criticism is needed to assist the present-day revaluation of Art. A
constant examination of advanced pictures has shown me that the key to
revaluation resides in the ultimate effect attained by the new
“masters.” In studying this effect I have become aware of certain facts.
(1) The effect is one of solid motion at a greater intensity than is
found in actuality. It is solid motion actually exaggerated. (By solid
motion, I mean motion expressed by actual forms.) (2) The greater the
intensity the more it tends to obliterate actuality. (3) There is a
fluid motion behind phenomena. This motion informs phenomena but loses
its intensity when it becomes phenomenalized. It changes its character
from fluid motion to solid motion, as though undergoing a process of
conversion similar to that by which water is frozen into ice. (4) The
meaning of the attainment of the said effect would therefore seem to be
that solid motion, as expressed by artists, is being melted into fluid
motion, as ice is melted into water, and water is, in turn, converted
into steam. Moreover, the solid motion is being melted by the higher
intensity of the fluid motion. In other words fluid motion is converting
solid motion into its own flow, or that from whence solid motion came.
The conclusion is that the quest for intensity is a sign that artists
are awakening to a feeling for fluid motion behind solids.
Perhaps artists are becoming purer mediums. It is conceivable that the
revolt against academic formulae and the consequent movement towards
neo-primitivism, have had a refining influence. In ridding artists of
certain forms of culture and convention, they have removed inner
obstacles to the intense stream-line flow or fluid motion, and have made
them accessible to the motion itself. Hence the present-day pursuit of
abstraction in painting and the tendency of representative forms (i. e.:
solids) to disappear from the canvas and to be replaced by
non-representative forms (i. e.: fluids). As an example I may point to
the shadowy forms pursued by Kandinsky. It is true that many of
Kandinsky’s studies do not contain evidence of fluid motion working
freely through the artist and tracing its own designs on his canvas. In
his earlier studies he certainly expresses solids. He puts down forms
which the conventional memory recognizes as having a relation to the
known, and thereby defeats his own object. But his recent studies
exhibit a refining away of solids and a larger feeling for fluidity,
that leads one to believe the artist is striving for a true dream-like
state in which the fluid motion is left to express itself at its own
degree of intensity. Whether he will ever attain this state is uncertain
as yet, especially in view of the intellectual attitude of his writings.
In _Spiritual Harmony_, for instance, he is seen working out a scheme of
color thus showing he hopes to produce an effect upon the spectator by
the use of a mathematical formula. He has evidently conceived the theory
that certain colors are equivalent to certain emotions and by adding or
subtracting color he can add or subtract an emotion to or from the
spectator. Thus yellow equals joy, but add red to the yellow and the
effect will be joy tinged with passion. In this way the fluid motion
actuating Kandinsky is bound to be subjected to theoretical treatment
instead of being left free to do its own work. The emotion of joy in
passing through the painter on its way to the spectator will be
subjected to mental checks, with the result that it will be deprived of
its greatest value in its original intensity.
The study of the aforementioned facts led me in turn to new views on
Art, (a) as to the origin and nature of Art, (b) as to the order,
intelligibility, and coherence that exist in the natural manifestations
of Art, (c) as to the law of growth and progression to be applied to art
forms, (d) as to the illumination of this law by a proper standard of
criticism. Accordingly I came to see that Art is a potential creative
movement in space. It first exists in the fluid motions of the universe
and ultimately in a work of art only as the inevitable and efficient
expression of itself through a specially adapted medium called the
artist. In a metaphysical sense, Art may be said to be a spiritual
experience capable of assuming visibility. But it becomes visible only
by a process of debasement. Apparently, as I have said, the fluid motion
in which Art expresses itself loses its intensity and becomes solid
motion in the process of conversion into a work of art, as applied by
all civilized artists (as far as we know) up to the present day. In
fact, it is only recent years that have witnessed the discovery by the
artist of the fluid motion potential in solid motion. Cezanne, Gauguin,
and Van Gogh were among the first of the moderns to arrive at the point
of realizing this potential character. All three were actively engaged
in the refining of solids and suggesting their potential ultimate
fluidity. What they actually did was this. They demonstrated that Art is
a fluid motion seeking to produce an ultimate creative effect upon the
spectator through efficient application, and that fluid motion can only
produce its creative effect as fluid motion. Now, largely owing to
blindness or wrong direction, artists, with rare exceptions, have
hitherto concerned themselves with converting fluid motion into various
forms of solid motion. They have in fact stopped at the expression of
representative forms of nature and human life, apparently unconscious
that in doing so they were not completing the expression of the art
flow, but were stopping at a half-way house, so to speak, where of
course the maximum creative effect could not be produced. Before this
effect can be produced it is necessary to complete the journey by
reconverting the solids into fluid motion. It cannot be said that either
Cezanne, Van Gogh, or Gauguin completed the magic journey. But if they
did not refine away the solids in their canvases and set them going as
fluid motion, if they put down forms recognizable as houses, men, trees,
and so on, they certainly exhibited such forms undergoing a process of
melting. In Van Gogh’s canvases the forms are simply being melted by the
fierce internal intensity to which the artist is subjecting them. Van
Gogh, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, shows us known forms
in the act of being converted into their original fluid motion. And it
is for this reason, I think, Van Gogh’s pictures produce a greater
creative effect upon the spectator than any merely representative forms
of art. We experience in them a rush of liberated energy due to the
change from solidity to fluidity.
So much for the new conception of the origin and nature of Art. With
regard to the principles by which Art moves towards its ultimate effect,
I believe they are analogous to those by which an unseen agency assumes
visibility in natural forms. There is the same order, intelligibility,
and coherence throughout. Corresponding to the invariable order of
growth and progression in a plant as represented by the seed (enclosing
the life and unifying principle) stem, branches, leaves and fruit, is
the order of ascent, or perhaps it should be descent, by which Art takes
concrete form. First there is the initial flow, then the root-point
answering to the seed or unifying principle, then follow in turn, lines,
planes, and solids. The fruit and the solids appear to be the
culmination of the initial flow, but really they contain a potential
power of growth in a realizable fluid motion. This abstract motion has
ever since the start been descending and slackening into solid motion,
and its forms have become more and more concrete as they attained
actuality. Behind these actual forms, it is clear, there is the
potentiality of further movement and growth which in our limited state
of intelligence we conceive of as realisable only on the original lines.
If there is an infinite growth and development inherent in actual forms
very few persons are aware of it. Indeed most persons are aware only of
particular growth. To them growth begins with the seed and stops with
the fruit or its art expression as fruit, and the only form of
continuation is to be found in repetition. The old process must be
repeated from seed to fruit. According to this view the phenomena of
growth as expressed by art-forms is manifested in a succession of
parallel movements and not in one continuous and ever-expanding
movement. Generally speaking, things are transferred to canvas as they
appear, particular solids, not infinite fluids as they are. If they have
a life principle in them it is carefully concealed, for they suggest no
power of infinite growth. It would seem indeed as though art-expression,
during civilized times, has reached a deadlock. For it is noticeable
that throughout all the great periods of art-expression, artists have
expressed the same things. In the canvases of the old masters a flow of
solids manifests itself with depressing regularity. Time, one might
think, would have lifted the soul of the artist out of solid space. But,
as we know, the feverish desire to express a too solid world has not
grown less till of recent years. It may be due to this deadlock that art
criticism has seldom risen above mediocrity. How indeed could it reach
the highest creative achievement of the critical mind if works of art
lack the creative principle to be judged? The creative critic cannot
possibly build his house of illumination without the essential
fundamental materials. And these the artist must provide. He cannot
illuminate the non-existent. And if there are no creative elements to
work upon criticism is bound to fall and remain far below the creative
standard. It will be uncertain and chaotic in its judgments. History
says it is so, and not without proof. It shows us that the art judgment
of one age has been sufficient to reverse the art judgment of a previous
age. Yet Art itself does not change. If it is badly expressed at any
time it is badly expressed for all time. Therefore the said fluctuating
judgment has but one interpretation. It means that the judgment itself
is at fault, and much of the art criticism to which art critics have
given utterance is worthless. The reason is apparent. Art criticism is
not based upon a fundamental principle. There is no established law of
art criticism.
Of course I shall be told there is no such law to establish, because it
does not exist and never will exist. The art critic has been and will
continue to be guided by his conscious experience. And as such
experience varies from age to age, so judgment founded upon it varies
also. But a statement so independent of common sense is plainly
nonsense. The law to which I refer is within the critic just as it is
within the artist. It does not always operate because it is not allowed
to do so. It is hindered by conscious experience. Actually the law is
the artist, and if left to itself it would make an efficient application
of itself to produce the highest creative effect of which fluid motion
is capable. Such is the unconscious method of using the law. The artist
uses it not because he can or will but because he must. His picture
producing is a work that can only be done in one way, not by thought and
reason, not by compulsions and restraints, but through the livingness of
free energies left free to find their own expressions through their own
channels. His starting point, representing the seed of unity, is
sensibility, and feeling if left alone will do everything to unite all
parts of his vision, to bind and cement them together. The result would
remain as an example of organic growth not limited to solid space but
extended to a higher space as far as the emotional impulse in the artist
can be expressed by the limited means at his disposal. The question of
how far the artist can use solid (that is, dead) materials, paint
brushes, and canvas, to reach a transcendental effect (effect of
livingness) is one that I must leave for future consideration.
In such a result would be found evidence not only that there is a great
principle or law by which art operates and reaches its highest mark
humanly possible, but that it remains constant and true in the sensible
artist and can be traced running through all he does. If further
evidence of the existence of the law is needed I can point to the
conscious use of it today by painters who are seeking to give the facts
of ordinary experience a non-representative character, as though
belonging to a world of abstraction. We know that Picasso is busy
converting everyday forms of his own contemporary surroundings into
rhythmic shape from which all clichés have been carefully eliminated. We
know too that other painters following the epoch-making example of John
D. Fergusson are boldly rhythmising the people and affairs of everyday
life as though convinced that the big unified rhythmic design is
symbolic of the intense movement by which Art moves and expresses
itself. We see in their canvases an obvious attempt to give the widest
expansion to the fundamental rhythm of each subject treated. At first
sight it appears to be a step in the right direction, one leading away
from the fallacy or blindness, which led the old masters to turn out
wonderful patchworks by giving each object in their canvases a
structural unity of its own. Indeed it looks as though these painters
have mastered the secret of binding a composition together by a unified
design springing from a central note that expands by spontaneous motion
till it not only fills the canvas but passes out of it on a very wide
sweep, and having order, intelligibility, and coherence in all its
parts. It looks as though they have discovered the great law of creative
organic unity of which I speak. Closer examination of their work,
however, reveals it is not so. For one thing their pictures are not
growths from small beginnings to great ends, each the successive sweep
of one curve expanding in oneness from a root-point. It is true that the
starting point in them may be feeling, as with the work of the
unconscious artist. But as soon as feeling has decided the start,
knowledge and reason decide the rest. They decide what shapes and colors
are to be selected and carefully related to the central shape and color.
If the character of the subject is zigzag then the composition will take
a zigzag course. If a sharp curve, then sharp curves will be gathered
from objects surrounding the central one and related to it. In fact the
law of association is called in and kept busy throughout. Everything in
a picture is consciously associated just as a builder associates the
materials of a house. Intuition is checked by reason.
So we find one principle being applied alike by conscious and
unconscious methods. With this difference, that whereas the movement,
growth and unity attained by the unconscious method is organic that
reached by the conscious method is mechanical. It is the difference
between the natural growth of a plant and the artificial manufacture of
one. The first is a process whereby the life flow organizes itself. The
second a process of eliminating the life flow. The one is mediumistic
and spontaneous, the other is volitional and mechanical.
What, it may be asked, is this principle or law? Briefly it is the law
of spiral growth and progression traceable in all natural phenomena. It
is a law which actuates human nature at its best and which shapes all
work done in the finer way. If we wish to see how it operates we cannot
do better than symbolize it in the form of a motion-curve starting from
a point in space and expanding in ever-widening curves. Thus:
This law may be found completely applied to one picture or it may be
traced running through a succession of pictures, each a part of a
creative unity, the whole manifesting the growth and development curve
of the artist. In the first case the picture would have an organic unity
of its own. In it the fluid motion would be seen coming to fruition from
the initial point of feeling to its fullest statement as vision at the
highest pressure of fluid expression. Thus:
In the second case, each period of the artist’s work represent a section
of the development-curve. By placing the sections together it is
possible to view his work as a whole and to construct the course of
development which he has undergone. And we can tell by the widest sweep
of the curve precisely where he stands and how much he has detached
himself from the world of solids. Thus:
Needless to say, this motion-curve may be applied as a standard of
art-criticism. Indeed it is the business of art critics to experience
this curve in themselves and to apply it to all works of art. So far as
I know it has never been applied. When it is it will transform art
criticism. For it will enable the critic to judge whether a work is an
inevitable growth of a movement inherent in the artist,—and to value it
rightly and fully in its relation to this movement,—or whether it is
merely a bit of clever brain juggling.