to praise, for he wants by nature the true value with which he may
relate himself to the sense of beauty. It seems, perhaps only to me,
that in Brooke's poems there is but a vigorous indication to poetic
expression, whereas doubtless the man himself was being excessively
poetic, hour and moment together, and spent much energy of mind and
body poetizing sensation. For me, there is a journalistic quality of
phrasing and only very rarely the unusual image. As for the "Letters",
they are loose and jotty in form, without distinction either in
observation or in form, without real felicity or uniqueness. Art is
nothing if it is not the object, or the idea, or experience seen in
review, with clarity. In Brooke, I feel the superabundance of joy in
the attractiveness of the world, but I do not feel the language of him
commensurate or distinguished in the qualities of poetic or literary
art. There seems to me to be too much of the blown lock and the
wistful glance, too much of the attitudinized poet, lacking, I may
even say, in true refinement, often.
A too comfortable poet, and poetry of too much verve without incision,
too much "gesturing", which is an easy thing for many talented people,
and there is also missing for me the real grip of amazement. You will
not find anything in the letters that could not have been done by the
cub reporter, save possibly in the more charming of the letters with
reference to swimming in the South Seas. Here you feel Brooke at home
instantly, and the picturing is natural and easy. But other than this,
you will find no phrasing to compare with passages of James's preface,
such, for instance, as the "sky-clamour of more dollars", surely a
vastly more incisive phrase regarding the frenzies of New York, than
all that Brooke essays to tell of it. Brooke is distinctly "not there"
too often in these so irregular letters of his. Letters are notably
rare in these times anyhow, and so it is with the letters of Brooke.
We look for distinction, and it is not to be found, they have but
little of the intimacy with their subjects that one expects.
As to his poetry, it seems to be a poetry rapidly approaching state
approval, there is in it the flavour of the budding laureate, it seems
to me to be poetry already "in orders". Brooke was certainly in danger
of becoming a good poet, like the several other poets who perished in
the throes of heroism. Like them, he would, had he lived, have had to
save himself from the evils of prosperity, poetically speaking. He
would have had to overcome his tendency toward what I want to call the
old-fashioned "gold and velvet" of his words, a very definite haze
hanging over them of the ill effect of the eighteen-ninety school,
which produced a little excellent poetry and a lot of very tame
production. Poetry is like all art, difficult even in its freest
interval. Brooke must rest his claim to early distinction perhaps upon
the "If I should die" sonnet alone, he would certainly have had to
come up considerably, to have held the place his too numerous personal
admirers were wont to thrust upon him. Unless one be the veritable
genius, sudden laurels wither on the stem with too much of morning.
This poet had no chance to prove what poetry of his would have endured
the long day, and most of all he needed to be removed from too much
love of everything. The best art cannot endure such promiscuity, not
an art of specific individual worth. In the book which is called
"Letters from America", the attraction lies in its preface, despite
the so noticeable irrelevancy of style. It seems to me that James
might for once have condescended to an equal footing with his theme,
for the sake of the devoutness of his intention, and have come to us
for the moment, the man talking of the youth. He might then have told
us something really intimate of "Rupert", as he so frequently names
him, for this would indicate some intimacy surely, unless perchance he
was "Rupert" to the innumerables whom he met, and who were sure of his
intimacy on the instant's introduction, which would indeed be
"condemned to sociability".
This book is in two pieces, preface and content, and we are conscious
chiefly of the high style and interest of the preface, first of all,
and the discrepancy inherent in the rest of the book accentuating the
wide divergence between praiser and praised. It is James with
reference to Brooke, it is not Henry James informing of the young and
handsome Rupert Brooke. Apollo in the flesh must do some mighty
singing. Brooke had not done much of this when they laid him by on the
borders of that farther sea. He had more to prove the heritage laid so
heavily upon him by the unending host of his admirers and lovers. He
needed relief from the popular notion, and we must relieve ourselves
from his excessive popularity if we are to enjoy him rightly, by being
just with him. A little time, and we should have learned his real
distinction. It is too soon for us, and too late for him. We must
accept him more for his finer indications then, and less for his
achievement in the sense of mastery.
THE DEARTH OF CRITICS
There is just cause for wonder at the noticeable absence of critics in
the field of painting, of individuals who are capable of some serious
approach to the current tendencies in art. We have witnessed a very
general failure to rise above the common or high-class reportorial
level in this particular sphere. Why do so many people who write
specifically about painting say so little that really relates to it?
It is because most of them are journalists or men of letters who have
made emotional excursions into this field, which is in most instances
foreign to them; well-known literary artists, occasionally, intent
upon varying their subject matter.
We read Meier-Graefe, for instance, on the development of modern art,
and we find his analogies more or less stimulating, but taken as a
whole his work is unsatisfactory from an artist's point of view; not
much more than a sort of novel with art for its skeleton, or rather a
handbook from which the untutored layman can gather superficial
information about group and individual influences, a kind of verbal
entertainment that is altogether wanting in true critical values. I
have listened to lectures on art by people who were supposed to know
about it, merely to see how much this type of critical study could
satisfy the really artistic mind somewhat conversant with true
relations, and I have found these lectures of but the slightest value,
_resumés_ compounded of wearisome and inappropriate detail. There is
always an extreme lack of true definition, of true information, there
is always too much of the amateur spirit passing for popular knowledge
among these individuals who might otherwise do so much to form public
taste and appreciation. Thus we find that even the chatty Meier-Graefe
stops without going any further than Cézanne. It is possible that
after writing two very heavy volumes upon the development of modern
art, he has to remain silent on modern art itself, that he really
feels he is not qualified to speak upon Cézanne and his successors; or
does he assume possibly that there is nothing this side of Cézanne?
How many writer people are there who really do understand what has
taken place since then?
I have heard these characteristic remarks among the so-called art
writers who write the regular notices for the daily journals--"You see
I really don't know anything about the subject, but I have to write!"
or--"I don't know anything about art, but I am reading up on it as
much as possible so that I won't appear too stupid; for they send me
out and I have to write something." Their attitude is the same as if
their subject were a fire or a murder: but either of the latter would
be much more in their line, calling for nothing but a registration of
the simplest of facts. Just why these people have to write upon art
will never be clear. But because of this altogether trivial
relationship to the theme of painting we find it difficult to take
seriously at all what we read in our dailies, in every case the barest
notation with heavily worded comment, having little or no reference to
what is important in the particular pictures themselves. How can
anyone take these individuals seriously when they actually have no
opinion to offer, and must rely either upon humor or indignation to
inspire them?
If we turn to the pundits of criticism we find statements like this of
Ruskin on Giotto:--"For all his use of opalescent warm color, Giotto
is exactly like Turner, as in his swift expressional power he is like
Gainsborough!" Again, speaking of Turner's _Fighting Téméraire_, he
says: "Of all pictures of subjects not visibly involving human pain,
this is, I believe, the most pathetic that was ever painted--no ruin
was ever so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to her grave."
Journalism of the first class certainly, but at the farthest stretch
of the imagination how can one possibly think of Gainsborough or
Turner in connection with any special quality of Giotto? As for the
pathos of an aged ship, that belongs to poetry, as Coleridge has
shown; sentiment of this kind has never had any proper place in
painting. A far worthier type of appreciation in words is to be
found, of course, in Pater's passages on _La Gioconda_ and
Botticelli's _Birth of Venus_. But these belong to a different realm,
in which literature rises to a height independent of the pictures
themselves by means of the suggestion that is in them, the power of
suggestion being a finer alternative for crude and worthless
description. We shall always dispute with the writer on art as to
exactly what symbol is inherent in the presence of a rose in the hand
or a tear upon the cheek, but we cannot quarrel when the matter is
treated as sublimely as in the case of a literary artist like Pater.
It is in the sphere of professed critical judgment that the literary
authorities so often go astray.
Thus between the entertaining type of writer like Meier-Graefe and the
daily reporter there is no middle ground. The journalist is frank and
says that he doesn't know but that he must write; the other writes
books that are well suited for reference purposes, but have scant
bearing upon the actual truth in relation to pictures. Are there any
critics who attempt seriously to approach the modern theme, who find
it worth their while to go into modern esthetics with anything like
sincerity or real earnestness of attitude? Only two that I am aware
of. There is the intelligent Leo Stein, who seldom appears in print,
but who makes an art of conversation on the subject; and there is
Willard Huntingdon Wright, who has appeared extensively and certainly
with intelligence also, both of these critical writers being very
much at variance in theory, but both full of discernment whatever one
may think of their individual ideas. We are sure of both as being
thoroughly inside the subject, this theme of modern art, for they are
somehow painter people. I even suspect them both of having once, like
George Moore, painted seriously themselves.
Nevertheless there is a hopeful seriousness of interest developing in
what is being done this side the sea, a rediscovery of native art of
the sort that is occurring in all countries. The artist is being
taught by means of war that there is no longer a conventional center
of art, that the time-worn fetish of Paris as a necessity in his
development has been dispensed with; and this is fortunate for the
artist and for art in general. It is having its pronounced effect upon
the creative powers of the individual in all countries, almost
obliging him to create his own impulse upon his own soil; it is making
the artist see that if he is really to create he must create
irrespective of all that exists as convention in the mind.
How will this affect the artist? He will learn first of all to be
concerned with himself, and what he puts forth of personality and of
personal research will receive its character from his strict adherence
to this principle, whether he proceeds by means of prevailing theories
or by departure from them. The public will thus have no choice but to
rely upon what he produces seriously as coming clearly from himself,
from his own desire and labor. He will realize that it is not a
trick, not a habit, not a trade--this modernity--and that with
fashions it has nothing to do; that it is explicitly a part of our
modern urge toward expression quite as much as the art of Corot and
Millet were of Barbizon, as the art of Titian, Giorgione and
Michelangelo were of Italy; that he and his time bear the strictest
relationship to one another and that through this relationship he can
best build up his own original power. Unable to depend therefore upon
the confessedly untutored lay writer or even the better class essayist
to tell him his place, he will establish himself, and his place will
be determined in the régime of his day by precisely those qualities
which he contributes to it. He will not rely too insistently upon
idiosyncrasy; the failure of this we have already seen, in the
post-impressionists.
The truth is that painters must sooner or later learn to express
themselves in terms of pure language, they must learn that creation is
the thing most expected of them, and, if possible, invention as well.
Oddity in execution or idea is of the least importance. Artists have a
more respectable service to perform than this dilettantist notion of
beauty implies. Since the utter annihilation of sentimentality, of
legend, of what we call poetry has taken place, a richer substance for
expression has come to us by means of which the artist may express a
larger, newer variety of matter, more relevant to our special need,
our modernity.
The war disintegrated the _art habit_ and in this fact lies the hope
of art. Fads have lost what slight interest they possessed, the folly
of imitation has been exposed. As a result of this, I like to think
that we shall have a finer type of expression, a richer kind of
personal quality. Every artist is his own maker, his own liberator; he
it is that should be the first to criticise, destroy and reconstruct
himself, he should find no mood convenient, no attitude comfortable.
What the lay-writer says of him in praise or blame will not matter so
much in the future; he will respect first and last only those who have
found the time to share his theme, at least in mind, if not in
experience, and the discerning public will free itself from the
temporary influences of the confessedly untutored critic. The artist
will gain its confidence by reason of his own sincerity and
intelligence. It is probable, too, that in time criticism in the mode
of Ruskin will utterly disappear and the Meier-Graefe type of critic
will have found a fitter and true successor, someone who, when he
calls himself a critic, will prove a fairly clear title to the
distinction and will not have to apologize for himself or for his
occupation.
AFTERWORD
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING "DADA"
We are indebted to Tristan Tzara and his followers for the newest and
perhaps the most important doctrinary insistence as applied to art
which has appeared in a long time. Dada-ism is the latest phase of
modernism in painting as well as in literature, and carries with it
all the passion for freedom of expression which Marinetti sponsored so
loudly in his futuristic manifestoes. It adds likewise an exhilarating
quality of nihilism, imbibed, as is said, directly from the author of
Zarathustra. Reading a fragment of the documentary statement of
Dada-ism, we find that the charm of the idea exists mainly in the fact
that they wish all things levelled in the mind of man to the degree of
commonplaceness which is typical of and peculiar to it.
Nothing is greater than anything else, is what the Dada believes, and
this is the first sign of hope the artist at least can discover in the
meaningless importance which has been invested in the term ART. It
shows best of all that art is to betake itself on its own way blandly,
despite the wish of its so ardent supporters and suppressors. I am
greatly relieved as artist, to find there is at least one tenet I can
hold to in my experience as a useful or a useless human being. I have
always said for myself, I have no office, no obligations, no other
"mission", dread-fullest of all words, than to find out the quality of
humor that exists in experience, or life as we think we are entitled
to call it. I have always felt the underlying fatality of habit in
appreciation, because I have felt, and now actually more than ever in
my existence, the fatality of habit indulged in by the artist. The
artist has made a kind of subtle crime of his habitual expression, his
emotional monotonies, and his intellectual inabilities.
If I announce on this bright morning that I am a "Dada-ist" it is not
because I find the slightest need for, or importance in, a doctrine of
any sort, it is only for convenience of myself and a few others that I
take up the issue of adherence. An expressionist is one who expresses
himself at all times in any way that is necessary and peculiar to him.
A dada-ist is one who finds no one thing more important than any other
one thing, and so I turn from my place in the scheme from
expressionist to dada-ist with the easy grace that becomes any
self-respecting humorist.
Having fussed with average intelligence as well as with average
stupidity over the various dogmatic aspects of human experience such
as art, religion, philosophy, ethics, morals, with a kind of
obligatory blindness, I am come to the clearest point of my vision,
which is nothing more or less than the superbly enlightening discovery
that life as we know it is an essentially comic issue and cannot be
treated other than with the spirit of comedy in comprehension. It is
cause for riotous and healthy laughter, and to laugh at oneself in
conjunction with the rest of the world, at one's own tragic vagaries,
concerning the things one cannot name or touch or comprehend, is the
best anodyne I can conjure in my mind for the irrelevant pains we take
to impress ourselves and the world with the importance of anything
more than the brilliant excitation of the moment. It is thrilling,
therefore, to realize there is a healthy way out of all this dilemma
of habit for the artist. One of these ways is to reduce the size of
the "A" in art, to meet the size of the rest of the letters in one's
speech. Another way is to deliver art from the clutches of its
worshippers, and by worshippers I mean the idolaters and the
commercialists of art. By the idolaters I mean those whose reverence
for art is beyond their knowledge of it. By the commercialists I mean
those who prey upon the ignorance of the unsophisticated, with
pictures created by the esthetic habit of, or better to say, through
the banality of, "artistic" temperament. Art is at present a species
of vice in America, and it sorely and conspicuously needs prohibition
or interference.
It is, I think, high time that those who have the artistic habit
toward art should be apprised of the danger they are in in assuming of
course that they hold vital interest in the development of
intelligence. It is time therefore to interfere with stupidity in
matters of taste and judgment. We learn little or nothing from habit
excepting repetitive imitation. I should, for the benefit of you as
reader, interpose here a little information from the mind of Francis
Picabia, who was until the war conspicuous among the cubists, upon the
subject of dada-ism.
"Dada smells of nothing, nothing, nothing.
It is like your hopes: nothing.
Like your paradise: nothing.
Like your idols: nothing.
Like your politicians: nothing.
Like your heroes: nothing.
Like your artists: nothing.
Like your religions: nothing."
A litany like this coming from one of the most notable dada-ists of
the day, is too edifying for proper expression. It is like a window
opened upon a wide cool place where all parts of one's exhausted being
may receive the kind of air that is imperative to it. For the present,
we may say, a special part of one's being which needs the most and the
freshest air is that chamber in the brain where art takes hold and
flourishes like a bed of fungus in the dark.
What is the use, then, of knowing anything about art until we know
precisely what it is? If it is such an orchidaceous rarity as the
world of worshippers would have us believe, then we know it must be
the parasitic equivalent of our existence feeding upon the health of
other functions and sensibilities in ourselves. The question comes why
worship what we are not familiar with? The war has taught us that
idolatry is a past virtue and can have no further place with
intelligent people living in the present era, which is for us the only
era worth consideration. I have a hobby-horse therefore--to ride away
with, out into the world of intricate common experience; out into the
arena with those who know what the element of life itself is, and that
I have become an expression of the one issue in the mind worth the
consideration of the artist, namely fluidic change. How can anything
to which I am not related, have any bearing upon me as artist? I am
only dada-ist because it is the nearest I have come to scientific
principle in experience. What yesterday can mean is only what
yesterday was, and tomorrow is something I cannot fathom until it
occurs. I ride my own hobby-horse away from the dangers of art which
is with us a modern vice at present, into the wide expanse of
magnanimous diversion from which I may extract all the joyousness I am
capable of, from the patterns I encounter.
The same disgust which was manifested and certainly enjoyed by Duse,
when she demanded that the stage be cleared of actors in order to save
the creative life of the stage, is the same disgust that makes us
yearn for wooden dolls to make abstract movements in order that we may
release art from its infliction of the big "A", to take away from art
its pricelessness and make of it a new and engaging diversion,
pastime, even dissipation if you will; for all real expression is a
phase of dissipation in itself: To release art from the disease of
little theatre-ism, and from the mandibles of the octopus-like
worshipper that eats everything, in the line of spurious estheticism
within range, disgorging it without intelligence or comprehension upon
the consciousness of the not at all stupid public, with a so obviously
pernicious effect.
"Dada is a fundamentally religious attitude, analogous to that of the
scientist with his eyeglass glued to the microscope." Dada is
irritated by those who write "Art, Beauty, Truth", with capital
letters, and who make of them entities superior to man. "Dada scoffs
at capital letters, atrociously." "Dada ruining the authority of
constraints, tends to set free the natural play of our activities."
"Dada therefore leads to amoralism and to the most spontaneous and
consequently the least logical lyricism. This lyricism is expressed in
a thousand ways of life." "Dada scrapes from us the thick layers of
filth deposited on us by the last few centuries." "Dada destroys, and
stops at that. Let Dada help us to make a complete clearance, then
each of us rebuild a modern house with central heating, and everything
to the drain, Dadas of 1920."
Remembering always that Dada means hobby-horse, you have at last the
invitation to make merry for once in our new and unprecedented
experience over the subject of ART with its now reduced front letter.
It is the newest and most admirable reclaimer of art in that it offers
at last a release for the expression of natural sensibilities. We can
ride away to the radiant region of "Joie de Vivre", and find that
life and art are one and the same thing, resembling each other so
closely in reality, that it is never a question of whether it shall or
must be set down on paper or canvas, or given any greater degree of
expression than we give to a morning walk or a pleasant bath, or an
ordinary rest in the sunlight.