Cubists and Post-impressionism

SINCE the exhibit at the Columbian Exposition (1893) nothing has happened in the world of American art so stimulating as the recent INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. New York and Chicago, spring of 1913.

“Stimulating” is the word, for while the recent exhibition may have lacked some of the good, solidly painted pictures found in the earlier, it contained so much that was fresh, new, original—eccentric, if you prefer—that it gave our art-world food for thought—and heated controversy. Art thrives on controversy—like every human endeavor. The fiercer the controversy the surer, the sounder, the saner the outcome. Perfection is unattainable. As man in his loftiest flight stretches forth his hand to seize a star he drops back to earth. The finer, the purer the development of any art the more certain the reaction, the return to elemental conditions—to begin over again. The young sculptor looks at the chaste perfection of Greek sculpture and says, “What is the use? I will do something different.” The young painter looks at the great painters of yesterday and exclaims, “What is the use? I cannot excel them in their way; I must do something in my own way.” It is the same in business; the young merchant studies the methods of the successful men in his line and says, “It is idle for me to copy their methods. I will do something different, something in my own way,” and he displays his goods differently, advertises differently, conducts his business differently, and if successful is hailed as a genius, if a failure he is regarded as a visionary or an eccentric—the result making all the difference in the world in the verdict of the public.

Painting today is a terrible problem to an absolutely sincere, honest, and yet ambitious mind.

Fired to set forth something of his very own, to avoid plagiarism and give the world something it has never yet received, the artist, in whatever direction he advances, finds the horizon bounded by a great master whom he cannot hope to surpass. Well, indeed, may he ask what is the use of trying to do what Van Eyck, Botticelli, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Veronese, Michael Angelo, Velasquez—nay, even what Constable, Corot, Claude Monet, and Signac have done to perfection?

In despair at surpassing the limits set by the great masters of progress he harks back, as the pre-Raphaelites did, to the painters before Raphael. Alas, Fra Lippi and Taddeo Gaddi are soon found to be too sophisticated. He goes back farther, to Giotto, to Orcagna, even to the Egyptians, and with the same result. At last he takes his courage in his hands and, throwing overboard the whole cargo of art history, ancient and modern, he seeks to forget that picture was ever painted, and with eyes freed from traditional vision he seeks to recreate the barbaric art of infancy.

Call this man an extremist if you like, but do not lightly dub him insincere and charlatan. He is the counterpart in art of the extremist in politics, the man who has no patience with palliative measures, who demands the whole loaf and nothing but the loaf, who kicks savagely away the fragments of bread tendered him by the moderate and respectable. A dangerous man he may be, but he is no trifler; and, if he succeeds in his purpose, as extremists sometimes do, the whipped world at his feet hails him as reformer and benefactor of humanity.