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 æsthetic 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 æsthetic 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 æsthetic endeavour: they made possible the third and last cycle which resulted in the final purification of painting.
Of this cycle Cézanne 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 Cézanne only on its material side. Then Synchromism, combining the progress of both Cézanne 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 Cézanne 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 æsthetically comparable to Korngold’s Symphonietta or Schönberg’s Opus II. And yet in painting the great majority confines its judgment to that phase of a picture which is irrelevant to its æsthetic 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. Cézanne 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 æsthetic emotion. All painting, ancient and modern, moves us æsthetically 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 æsthetic ecstasy. Form and rhythm alone are the bases of æsthetic 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, archæology, illustration or any other quality which is not strictly æsthetic, 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 æsthetic 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’ séance each day in the morgue.” Gros, Delécluze 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.” Clément de Ris said of Courbet’s work, “It is the glorification of vulgar ugliness;” and de Chennevières 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-Évrard 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 Cézanne 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 Cézanne 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 Dürer, forgetting that Cézanne 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 Cézanne 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 André 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.
Nor are the animadversions of academic critics the only obstacles in the path of æsthetic development. Those who sympathise with the new without understanding it do more harm than good. There are those who always accept the latest men irrespective of their individual merit. But modernity in itself is not a merit, and the modern enthusiasts, in defending the newest painters, very often expend their energies on the undeserving. Thus the mediocrities are given prominence over the truly great; and the lesser artists are looked upon as representative of the epoch. Again, those who admire without comprehending are given to emphasising the less important points of departure in the new men, and of ignoring the deeper qualities which represent the primary importance of modern art. The true meaning of the late movements is thereby obscured. Of this class of critic Arthur Jerome Eddy may be mentioned as representative. By crediting the distinctly second-rate moderns with qualities they have only absorbed from greater men, and by misunderstanding the animating ideals of today’s painting, he presents so disproportionate and biased a history that the entire significance of modern art is lost. England, France and Germany possess critics who feel the grandeur but miss the meaning of the new ideals, and their books and articles, while crediting the modern painters with vitality, go little beneath the surface.
However, there are a few men to whom the modernist owes much for intelligent assistance. One may name Meier-Graefe as one of these, despite his being in reality a pioneer. He has shown an eager attitude to do justice, and has succeeded in bringing the modern men to the attention of the world. Guillaume Apollinaire, editor of Les Soirées de Paris, has done more intelligent service for the younger heretics in France than any other man. Clive Bell and Roger Fry represent the ablest and most discerning defenders of the modern spirit in England; although Mr. A. R. Orage, by opening up the columns of the New Age, has permitted a healthy discussion and exposition of the radical art theories. In America much credit is due Mr. Alfred Stieglitz for his insistent demands that the later men be given a respectful hearing. By his sympathetic attitude and his ceaseless labours he has brought before the American public the work of many prominent modern artists; and his sincerity and understanding have done much toward ameliorating the conventional scoffs of American critics.
But were there no far-seeing defenders of modern painting, the signs of the awakening are too numerous and too conspicuous to be ignored. On every hand we are conscious of the struggle for new methods and forms. Not all the inertia of the critics and the public has succeeded in suppressing the vital spirit. Nor will it succeed. The modern tendency in painting cannot be dismissed as charlatanism or extremism. The ignorant and reactionary may laugh and hurl philippics. Such opposition, if it has any effect, will only prove a stimulus to those who have experienced the ecstasy of the new work. The old dies hard. Even when the corpse is buried (as it has been) the ghost lingers. But the light will soon grow too strong. The ghost in time will be dissolved. For centuries painting has been reared on a false foundation, and the criteria of æsthetic appreciation have been irrelevant. Painting has been a bastard art—an agglomeration of literature, religion, photography and decoration. The efforts of painters for the last century have been devoted to the elimination of all extraneous considerations, to making painting as pure an art as music. But so widespread is the general ignorance regarding art’s fundamentals that the modern men have been opposed at every step. Public and critical illiteracy in the arts, however, matters little. The painter’s joy lies in the rapture of creation, in the knowledge that he is carrying forward the banner of a high ideal.