that taught him the force of the southern aspect. Romancer among the
realistic facts of nature, he might be called, for he did not merely
copy nature. He did invest things with their own suggestive reality,
and he surmounted his earlier gifts for exact illustration by this
other finer gift for romantic appreciation. Homer was an excellent
narrator, as will be seen in the "Gulf Stream" picture in the
Metropolitan Museum. It has the powers of Jack London and of Conrad in
it. Homer was intense, vigorous, and masculine. If he was harsh in his
characteristics, he was one who knew the worth of economy in emotion.
He was one with his idea and his metier, and that is sufficient.
AMERICAN VALUES IN PAINTING
There are certain painters who join themselves together in a kind of
grouping, which, whether they wish to think of themselves in this light
or not, have become in the matter of American values in painting, a
fixed associative aspect of painting in America. When we speak of
American painting, the choice is small, but definite as to the number of
artists, and the type of art they wished themselves to be considered
for. From the Hudson River grouping, which up to Inness is not more
marked than as a set of men copying nature with scrupulous fidelity to
detail, rather than conveying any special feeling or notion of what a
picture of, or the landscape itself, may convey; and leaving aside the
American pupils of the Academy in Paris and Rome, most of whom returned
with a rich sense of rhetorical conventionalities in art--men like
William Morris Hunt and Washington Allston--we may turn to that other
group of men as being far more typical of our soil and temper. I mean
artists such as Homer Martin, Albert P. Ryder, George Fuller, and the
later Winslow Homer who certainly did receive more recognition than any
of them prior to his death.
Martin, Ryder, and Fuller could not have enjoyed much in the way of
appreciation outside of a few artists of their time, and even now
they may be said to be the artists for artists. It is reasonable to
hope that they were not successful, since that which was à la mode in
the expression of their time was essentially of the dry Academy. One
would hardly think of Homer Martin's "Border of the Seine" landscape
in the Metropolitan Museum, hardly more then than now, and it leaves
many a painter flat in appreciation of its great dignity, austerity,
reserve, and for the distinguished quality of its stylism. What Martin
may have gotten, during his stay in Europe, which is called
impressionism is, it must be said, a more aristocratic type of
impressionism than issued from the Monet followers. Martin must then
have been knowing something of the more dignified intellectualism of
Pissarro and of Sisley, those men who have been the last to reach the
degrees of appreciation due them in the proper exactitude.
We cannot think of Martin as ever having carried off academic medals
during his period. We cannot think of Martin as President of the
Academy, which position was occupied by a far inferior artist who was
likewise carried away by impressionism, namely Alden Weir. The actual
attachment in characteristic of introspective temper in Alden Weir is
not so removed from Martin, Fuller and Ryder as might be imagined; he
is more like Martin perhaps though far less profound in his sense of
mystery; Fuller being more the romanticist and Ryder in my estimation
the greatest romanticist, and artist as well, of all of these men. But
Alden Weir failed to carry off any honor as to distinctive qualities
and invention. A genial aristocrat if you will, but having for me no
marked power outside of a Barbizonian interest in nature with a kind
of mystical detachedness.
But in the consideration of painters like Martin, Fuller and Ryder we
are thinking chiefly of their relation to their time as well as their
relation to what is to come in America. America has had as much
painting considering its youth as could be expected of it and the best
of it has been essentially native and indigenous. But in and out of
the various influences and traditional tendencies, these several
artists with fine imaginations, typical American imaginations, were
proceeding with their own peculiarly original and significantly
personal expressions. They represent up to their arrival, and long
after as well, all there is of real originality in American painting,
and they remain for all time as fine examples of artists with purely
native imaginations, working out at great cost their own private
salvations for public discovery at a later time.
All these men were poor men with highly distinguished aristocratic
natures and powerful physiques, as to appearances, with mentalities
much beyond the average. When an exhibition of modern American
painting is given, as it surely will and must be, these men and not
the Barbizonian echoes as represented by Inness, Wyant & Co., will
represent for us the really great beginning of art in America. There
will follow naturally artists like Twachtman and Robinson, as likewise
Kenneth Hayes Miller and Arthur B. Davies for reasons that I think are
rather obvious: both Hayes Miller and Arthur B. Davies having skipped
over the direct influence of impressionism by reason of their
attachment to Renaissance ideas; having joined themselves by
conviction in perhaps slight degrees to aspects of modern painting.
Miller is, one might say, too intellectually deliberate to allow for
spontaneities which mere enthusiasms encourage. Miller is emotionally
thrilled by Renoir but he is never quite swept. His essential
conservatism hinders such violence. It would be happier for him
possibly if the leaning were still more pronounced.
The jump to modernism in Arthur B. Davies results in the same sort of
way as admixture of influence though it is more directly appreciable
in him. Davies is more willing, by reason of his elastic temper and
intellectual vivacity, to stray into the field of new ideas with a
simple though firm belief, that they are good while they last, no
matter how long they last. Davies is almost a propagandist in his
feeling for and admiration of the ultra-modern movement. Miller is a
questioner and ponders long upon every point of consequence or
inconsequence. He is a metaphysical analyst which is perhaps the
extraneous element in his painting. In his etching, that is, the
newest of it, one feels the sense of the classical and the modern
joined together and by the classical I mean the quality of Ingres,
Conjoined with modern as in Renoir, relieved of the influence of
Italian Renaissance.
But I do not wish to lose sight of these several forerunners in
American art, Martin, Ryder and Fuller who, in their painting, may be
linked not without relativity to our artists in literary imagination,
Hawthorne and Poe. Fuller is conspicuously like Hawthorne, not by his
appreciation of witchcraft merely, but by his feeling for those eery
presences which determine the fates of men and women in their time.
Martin is the purer artist for me since he seldom or never resorted to
the literary emotion in the sense of drama or narrative, whereas in
the instances of Ryder or Fuller they built up expression entirely
from literary experience. Albert Ryder achieves most by reason of his
vaster poetic sensibility--his Homeric instincts for the drama and by
a very original power for arabesque. He is alone among the Americans
in his unique gift for pattern. We can claim Albert Ryder as our most
original painter as Poe takes his place as our most original poet who
had of course one of the greatest and most perfect imaginations of his
time and possibly of all time.
But it is these several painters I speak of, Martin, Ryder, and
Fuller, who figure for us as the originators of American indigenous
painting. They will not be copied for they further nothing beyond
themselves. No influence of these painters has been notable, excepting
for a time in the early experience of one of the younger modernists
who, by reason of definite associations of birthright and relativity
of environment, essayed to claim Albert Ryder as a very definite
influence; just as Courbet and Corot must in their ways have been
powerful influences upon Ryder himself. Albert Ryder is too much of a
figure to dismiss here with group-relationship, he must be treated of
separately. So far then, there is no marked evidence that the
influence of Fuller or Martin was powerful enough to carry beyond
themselves. They had no tenets or theories other than those of
personal clarification. All three remained the hermit radicals of
life, as they remain isolated examples in American art; and all of
them essentially of New England, in that they were conspicuously
introspective, and shut in upon their own exclusive experience.
But for all these variances, we shall find Homer Martin, George Fuller,
and Albert Ryder forming the first nucleus for a definite value in
strictly American painting. They were conscious of nothing really
outside of native associations and native deductions. The temper of them
is as essentially American as the quality of them is essentially Eastern
in flavor. They seldom ventured beyond more than a home-spun richness of
color, though in Ryder's case Monticelli had assisted very definitely
in his notion of the volume of tone. We find here then despite the
impress of artists like William Morris Hunt, Washington Allston, and the
later Inness with the still later Winslow Homer, that gripping and
relentless realist who took hold of the newer school of
painter-illustrators, that the artists treated of here may be considered
as the most important phase of American painting in the larger sense of
the term. If I were to assist in the arrangement of an all American
exhibition to show the trend toward individualism I should begin with
Martin, Fuller and Ryder. I should then proceed to Winslow Homer, John
H. Twachtman, Theodore Robinson, Hayes Miller, Arthur B. Davies,
Rockwell Kent, then to those who come under the eighteen-ninety tendency
in painting, namely the Whistler-Goya-Velasquez influence.
From this it will be found that an entirely new development had taken
place among a fairly large group of younger men who came, and very
earnestly, under the Cézannesque influence. It may be said that the
choice of these men is a wise one for it is conspicuous among artists
of today that since Cézanne art will never, cannot ever be the same,
just as with Delacroix and Courbet a French art could never have
remained the same. Impressionism will be found to have had a far
greater value as a suggestive influence than as a creative one. It
brought light in as a scientific aspect into modern painting and that
is its valuable contribution. So it is that with Cézanne the world is
conscious of a new power that will never be effectually shaken off,
since the principles that are involved in the intention of Cézanne are
of too vital importance to be treated with lightness of judgment. Such
valuable ideas as Cézanne contributes must be accepted almost as
dogma, albeit valuable dogma. Influence is a conscious and necessary
factor in the development of all serious minded artists, as we have
seen in the instances of all important ones.
So it is I feel that the real art of America, and it can, I think,
justly be said that there is such, will be headed by the imaginative
artists I have named in point of their value as indigenous creators,
having worked out their artistic destinies on home soil with all the
virility of creators in the finer sense of the term. They have
assisted in the establishment of a native tradition which without
question has by this time a definite foundation. The public must be
made aware of their contribution to a native production. It will no
doubt be a matter for surprise to many people in the world today that
art in general is more national or local than it has ever been, due
mostly to the recent upheaval, which has been of great service to the
re-establishment of art interest and art appreciation everywhere in
the modern world. Art, like life, has had to begin all over again,
for the very end of the world had been made visible at last. The
artist may look safely over an utterly new horizon, which is the only
encouragement the artist of today can hope for.
MODERN ART IN AMERICA
The question may be asked, what is the hope of modern art in America?
The first reply would be that modern art will one day be realized in
America if only from experience we learn that all things happen in
America by means of the epidemical principle. It is of little visible
use that single individuals, by sitting in the solitary confinement of
their as yet little understood enthusiasms, shall hope to achieve what
is necessary for the American idea, precisely as necessary for us here
as for the peoples of Europe who have long since recognized that any
movement toward expression is a movement of unquestionable importance.
Until the moment when public sincerity and the public passion for
excitement is stimulated, the vague art interests of America will go
on in their dry and conventional manner. The very acute discernment of
Maurice Vlaminck that "intelligence is international, stupidity is
national, art is local" is a valuable deduction to make, and applies
in the two latter instances as admirably to America as to any other
country. Our national stupidity in matters of esthetic modernity is a
matter for obvious acceptance, and not at all for amazement.
That art is local is likewise just as true of America as of any other
country, and despite the judgment of stodgy minds, there is a
definite product which is peculiar to our specific temper and
localized sensibility as it is of any other country which is nameable.
Despite the fact that impressionism is still exaggeration, and that
large sums are still being paid for a "sheep-piece" of Charles Jacque,
as likewise for a Ridgeway Knight, there is a well defined grouping of
younger painters working for a definitely localized idea of modernism,
just as in modern poetry there is a grouping of poets in America who
are adding new values to the English language, as well as assisting in
the realization of a freshly evolved localized personality in modern
poetics.
Art in America is like a patent medicine, or a vacuum cleaner. It can
hope for no success until ninety million people know what it is. The
spread of art as "culture" in America is from all appearances having
little or no success because stupidity in such matters is so national.
There is a very vague consideration of modern art among the directors
of museums and among art dealers, but the comprehension is as vague as
the interest. Outside of a Van Gogh exhibition, a few Matisses, now
and then a Cézanne exhibited with great feeling of condescension,
there is little to show the American public that art is as much a
necessity as a substantial array of food is to an empty stomach. The
public hunger cannot groan for what it does not recognize as real
nourishment. There is no reason in the world why America does not have
as many chances to see modern art as Europe has, save for minor
matters of distance. The peoples of the world are alike, sensibilities
are of the same nature everywhere among the so-called civilized, and
it must be remembered always that the so-called primitive races
invented for their own racial salvation what was not to be found ready
made for them. Modern art is just as much of a necessity to us as art
was to the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks. Those peoples have
the advantage of us only because they were in a higher state of
culture as a racial unit. They have no more of a monopoly upon the
idea of rhythm and organization than we have, because that which was
typical of the human consciousness then, is typical of it now. As a
result of the war, there has been, it must be said, a heightening of
national consciousness in all countries, because creative minds that
were allowed to survive were sent home to struggle with the problem of
their own soil.
There is no reason whatever for believing that America cannot have as
many good artists as any other country. It simply does not have them
because the integrity of the artist is trifled with by the intriguing
agencies of materialism. Painters find the struggle too keen and it is
easy to become the advertising designer, or the merchant in painting,
which is what many of our respectable artists have become. The lust
for prosperity takes the place of artistic integrity and courage. But
America need not be surprised to find that it has a creditable
grouping of artists sufficiently interested in the value of modern art
as an expression of our time, men and possibly some women, who feel
that art is a matter of private aristocratic satisfaction at least,
until the public is awakened to the idea that art is an essentially
local affair and the more local it becomes by means of comprehension
of the international character, the truer it will be to the place in
which it is produced.
A catalogue of names will suffice to indicate the character and
variation of the localized degree of expression we are free to call
American in type: Morgan Russell, S. Macdonald Wright, Arthur G. Dove,
William Yarrow, Dickinson, Thomas H. Benton, Abraham Walkowitz, Max
Weber, Ben Benn, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Marsden
Hartley, Andrew Dasburg, William McFee, Man Ray, Walt Kuhn, John
Covert, Morton Schamberg, Georgia O'Keeffe, Stuart Davis, Rex
Slinkard. Added to these, the three modern photographers Alfred
Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, and Paul Strand must be included. Besides
these indigenous names, shall we place the foreign artists whose work
falls into line in the movement toward modern art in America, Joseph
Stella, Marcel Duchamp, Gaston Lachaise, Eli Nadelman. There may be no
least questioning as to how much success all of these artists would
have in their respective ways in the various groupings that prevail in
Europe at this time. They would be recognized at once for the
authenticity of their experience and for their integrity as artists
gifted with international intelligence. There is no reason to feel
that prevailing organizations like the Society of Independent Artists,
Inc., and the Société Anonyme, Inc., will not bear a great increase of
influence and power upon the public, as there is every reason to
believe that at one time or another the public will realize what is
being done for them by these societies, as well as what was done by
the so famous "291" gallery.
The effect however is not vast enough because the public finds no
shock in the idea of art. It is not melodramatic enough and America
must be appealed to through its essentially typical melodramatic
instincts. There is always enough music, and there are some who
certainly can say altogether too much of the kind there is in this
country. The same thing can be said of painting. There is altogether
too much of comfortable art, the art of the uplifted illustration. It
is the reflex of the Anglo-Saxon passion for story-telling in pictures
which should be relegated to the field of the magazines. Great art
often tells a story but great art is always something plus the idea.
Ordinary art does not rise above it.
I often wonder why it is that America, which is essentially a country
of sports and gamblers, has not the European courage as well as
rapacity for fresh development in cultural matters. Can it be because
America is not really intelligent? I should be embarrassed in
thinking so. There is nevertheless an obvious lethargy in the
appreciation of creative taste and a still lingering yet old-fashioned
faith in the continual necessity for importation. America has a great
body of assimilators, and out of this gift for uncreative assimilation
has come the type of art we are supposed to accept as our own. It is
not at all difficult to prove that America has now an encouraging and
competent group of young and vigorous synthesists who are showing with
intelligence what they have learned from the newest and most engaging
development of art, which is to say--modern art. The names which have
been inserted above are the definite indication, and one may go so far
as to say proof, of this argument that modern art in America is
rapidly becoming an intelligently localized realization.
OUR IMAGINATIVES
Is it vision that creates temperament or temperament that creates
vision? Physical vision is responsible for nearly everything in art,
not the power to see but the way to see. It is the eye perfect or the
eye defective that determines the kind of thing seen and how one sees
it. It was certainly a factor in the life of Lafcadio Hearn, for he
was once named the poet of myopia. It was the acutely sensitive eye of
Cézanne that taught him to register so ably the minor and major
variations of his theme. Manet saw certainly far less colour than
Renoir, for in the Renoir sense he was not a colourist at all. He
himself said he painted only what he saw. Sight was almost science
with Cézanne as it was passion.
In artists like Homer Martin there is a something less than visual
accuracy and something more than a gift of translation. There is a
distinguished interpretation of mood coupled with an almost
miniature-like sense of delicate gradation, and at the same time a
something lacking as to a sense of physical form. In the few specimens
of Martin to be seen there is, nevertheless, eminent distinction
paramount. He was an artist of "oblique integrity": He saw
unquestionably at an angle, but the angle was a beautiful one, and
while many of his associates were doing American Barbizon, he was
giving forth a shy, yet rare kind of expression, always a little
symbolic in tendency, with the mood far more predominant. In "The sand
dunes of Ontario" there will be found at once a highly individualistic
feeling for the waste places of the world. There is never so much as a
hint of banality in his selection. He never resorts to stock rhetoric.
Martin will be remembered for his singularly personal touch along with
men like Fuller and Ryder. He is not as dramatic as either of these
artists, but he has greater finesse in delicate sensibility. He was, I
think, actually afraid of repetition, a characteristic very much in
vogue in his time, either conscious or unconscious, in artists like
Inness, Wyant, and Blakelock, with their so single note. There is
exceptional mysticity hovering over his hills and stretches of dune
and sky. It is not fog, or rain, or dew enveloping them. It is a
certain veiled presence in nature that he sees and brings forward. His
picture of peaks of the White Mountains, Jefferson and Madison, gives
you no suggestion of the "Hudson River" emptiness. He was searching
for profounder realities. He wanted the personality of his places, and
he was successful, for all of his pictures I have seen display the
magnetic touch. He "touched it off" vividly in all of them. They
reveal their ideas poetically and esthetically and the method is
personal and ample for presentation.
With George Fuller it was vastly different. He seemed always to be
halting in the shadow. You are conscious of a deep and ever so earnest
nature in his pictures. He impressed himself on his canvases in spite
of his so faulty expression. He had an understanding of depth but
surface was strange to him. He garbled his sentences so to speak with
excessive and useless wording. "The Octoroon" shows a fine feeling for
romance as do all of the other pictures of Fuller that have been
publicly visible, but it is romance obsessed with monotone. There is
the evidence of extreme reticence and moodiness in Fuller always. I
know little of him save that I believe he experienced a severity of
domestic problems. Farmer I think he was, and painted at off hours all
his life. It is the poetry of a quiet, almost sombre order, walking in
the shadow on the edge, of a wood being almost too much of an
appearance for him in the light of a busy world.
Why is it I think of Hawthorne when I think of Fuller? Is there a
relationship here, or is it only a similarity of eeriness in temper? I
would suspect Fuller of having painted a Hester Prynne excepting that
he could never have come to so much red in one place in his pictures.