Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 2))

shop-windows are reflected, like some blurred and golden
dream, on the slushy pavement.
YOU knock at the door. It is Mr. Steichen who admits you. It is a
MR. Steichen looms tall among his canvases, his arms crossed. With his
HE showed me his paintings, sketches, and photographs in rapid succession,
BIOGRAPHICAL data do not interest me. What is the
THE first picture that attracted my attention in Steichen’sstudio
It contains more strength and power than beauty. The simplic

















/yBL straight lines on the streets of New York, and the lighted
! 'wL shop-windows are reflected, like some blurred and golden
/ dream, on the slushy pavement.
YOU mount the slippery iron stairs of a humble and reticent
ofKce-building on Fifth Avenue. To the negro, who comes to your ring,
you say: “Mr. Steichen.” He takes you up to the top floor, and
carelessly, indifferently, as one points to a door, he points to the right.
<cRight in there, sir,” he says.
YOU knock at the door. It is Mr. Steichen who admits you. It is a
plain little room, without skylight, but with an artistic atmosphere of its
own. The first impression is one of cool grays and pale terra-cotta, a studio
void of furniture, but full of artistic accessories — a vagrom place, where a
sort of orderly disorder, a sort of gipsy fashion prevails. The light of
the waning day seems to rest in the center of the walls, while the corners
are filled with twilight shadows, whose monotony is only here and there
relieved by the color-notes of a Japanese lantern, a large brass vessel, or
some other quaint accessory. A little plaster fragment of one of Rodin’s
statues hangs in proud isolation over the mantelpiece.
MR. Steichen looms tall among his canvases, his arms crossed. With his
square shoulders, his pallid, angular face, his dark, disheveled hair, his
steady eyes, he reminds one of some old statue carved of wood, a quaint
personality which has at times the air of some classical visionary, <ca modern
citizen of Calais,” and at other times the deportment of some gallant figure
of Sir Reynolds’s time.
HE showed me his paintings, sketches, and photographs in rapid succession,
which is one of those ordeals the art critic has to go through if he wants
to become acquainted with a new man. I have probably passed through
this severe experience oftener than any other man. I remember
visited at least four hundred and fifty American studios for =_
purpose—as I have convinced myself that it is the only way toE «
man’s individuality. And art criticism is to me nothing but aE““
mania for searching in every expression of art, and life as well, £01=“^ rjflVkS
individual, perhaps innermost, essence. =-^
BIOGRAPHICAL data do not interest me. What is the <|L
where a man is born, how old he is, where he studied, and wheiE £
medaled? His art must speak—that is all I care for. =
THE first picture that attracted my attention in Steichen’s studi=~o
Beethoven. It is all black and gray, huge and grim (though no iSr^
colossal size) almost Doric in its severity. Everything is sacrificE-
idea, a study in the somber supremacy of genius and the mart^ELi?
the artist. It is the Beethoven of the Fifth, not of the Ninth, Sy=_
It contains more strength and power than beauty. The simplic= co
composition is remarkable. The dark pyramidal shape of a seat(E

p CG
L o

0

C\l

o>

00

co

LO

co

C\J

05

00

co

LO

co

CV|