Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1910 (Heft 30))

PHOTO-SECESSION NOTES

THE Photo-Secession is continuing its demonstrations this season with
a series of exhibitions which have attracted unusual interest. Not
only the number, but the quality of the visitors has been gratifying.
Painters, art critics, directors of museums, in this country and abroad, art
students, collectors, as well as laymen have followed the exhibitions most faith-
fully, and have been warm in their praise of the work done by the Photo-
Secession because of the opportunity it has given the public to study the best
manifestations of the newer artistic tendencies. In considering the exhibitions
it should be remembered that the Little Gallery is nothing more than a
laboratory, an experimental station, and must not be looked upon as an Art
Gallery in the ordinary sense of that term.
STEICHEN COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS
Simultaneously with Steichen’s exhibition of paintings at the Montross
Gallery, examples of his recent color transparencies were being shown at the
Photo-Secession Galleries. The daring of some of his color combinations can
only be excused by the success with which he solved the problems he had set
for himself. He seems to have achieved the maximum of brilliancy and lumi-
nosity obtainable from the process. Interesting experiments in artificial light
effects show the range of conditions under which the process can be successfully
used by capable hands.
MARIN’S WATER-COLORS
John Marin’s water-colors which decorated the walls of the Little Galleries
from February seventh to the twenty-fifth show a decided advance of this
talented young man along the lines exemplified at the exhibition of his work
given last season. He is less conscious of his technique. His treatment of color
is broader and the result more convincing. One feels that he knows what
he is about and that he succeeds in expressing himself. This exhibition is
more fully dealt with on another page of this number of Camera Work.
MATISSE DRAWINGS
Coming at a time when the name, Matisse, is being used indiscriminately
to explain the influence to which any painter at present may have succumbed
whose work is unacademic, the exhibition of Matisse drawings, and photo-
graphs of his drawings, held from February twenty-seventh to March
twentieth was most opportune. The readers of Camera Work will remember
that two years ago the Photo-Secession originally introduced Matisse to the
American public. That exhibition included drawings, etchings, water-colors,
lithographs, and one painting. The recent exhibition exemplified positively
the power and sanity of the man, his scientific and almost mathematical
attitude toward form, his almost Oriental sense of decorative spotting, so ir-
reconcilably opposed to some of the more emotional tendencies for which critics
have tried to make him responsible. “ Influenced by Matisse” has become the

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