Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 3))

overstudied, like separate objects pitched together. Seen in fragments, each
of their figures would affect one pleasantly, owing to their fine draughtsman-
ship; but when put together, one resents in them a too close discrimination
of unessential facts and local tints.
Modern art has discarded the classic purity of the Greek line and
substituted the rugged, picturesque line of the Japanese, which vibrates with
the nervous touch of the artist'shand. A perfectly straight or clear line
seems to us almost as offensive as the introduction of geometrical figures.
We do not want the representation of facts, but of appearances, or merely
the blurred suggestion of appearances and the swift reflections and subtle
quivering of light do not permit any exact copyism. The natural result is a
broader treatment, and as it is impossible to handle large masses successfully
without breaking them up, the artist — each after his own fashion — has to
find some technical device to lead him in the direction he desires.
Experiments will teach him to regard the eccentricities of brush-work,
the apparently meaningless and inaccurate, as one of his safest helpmates.
He may introduce, like Cecilia Beaux, red and blue color-daubs in the
shadows, which are apparently meaningless, as they do not exist in reality,
but which relieve the monotony of the actual local tints. Or, like Winslow
Homer, he may accentuate his shadows in the foreground and render them
inaccurate by painting them black, in order to give his objects more solidity
and to heighten the impression of sunlight.
Peculiarities of style like these may easily deteriorate into trickery and
mannerisms, but even then they are to be preferred to pure mimicry and
imitation.
The love for exactitude is the lowest form of pictorial gratification-
felt by the child, the savage, and the Philistine — it merely apprehends
the likeness between the representation and the object represented. The
unforeseen and unexpected effects are those which make the deepest
impressions. Of course, the artist can not entirely rely on accidents —
although accidental flourishes are apt to produce artistic and even remarkable
eflfects at times — he must understand the underlying structures and keep
enough force in reserve for the handling of the essential masses.
Take, for instance, Mary Cassatt, by no means a great artist, but on
almost every one of her canvases, roughly, sometimes brutally composed,
drawn, and painted, there is that touch, which by imparting to form and
color some particular quality of effect, impossible to analyze, endows all her
figures with the energy of life. How does she accomplish it?
Her style of painting consists primarily of a mosaic of irregular colored
shapes. At close scrutiny we complain about bad drawing, wilful accen-
tuation of detail (in particular in the boundary lines of shapes) and the
unchromatic vehemence of her coloring. There are any amount of tiny,
crisp, and angular lines and chaotic color-patches which apparently have
nothing to say, and yet at a distance pull altogether and give a significance.
A hand, represented by a few fragmentary scratches and scrawls of the brush
and a juxtaposition of color, after all gives a more life-like impression than
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