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

“These studies are of a sort that is not usually shown to the public. They represent what
most artists regard not as results, but as processes. Some hazard always attends the exhibition
of such flotsam of the workshop. Still, when an artist is safely dead, we do not hesitate to show
his working sketches. The red chalk fragments of Andrea del Sarto are among our most precious
relics. So when work is of the quality of Matisse’s we think it is right to let the public be tested
by it. They may, probably will, not like it. If so, the loss is theirs.
“Yet, there is one question which a plain man might very properly ask, namely: ‘Is this
all there is of it, or is it a preparation for something else ?’ To us, these drawings have a painful,
we trust a misleading, air of finality. The few compositions represented in chalks or photography
are merely extensions of the single figure or quite commonplace caligraphies. It is possible that
Matisse will always be making these magnificent studies. The present exhibition gives small
hint of constructive imagination. If so, he will merely take his place with other geniuses who have
sacrificed themselves in the passionate invention of processes. Pollaiola and Hokusai, to a consider-
able extent, represent this inability to organize a complicated whole. Meanwhile one is grateful
for so much. It is no small gift to have one’s vision toned up to this strenuously controlled enthu-
siasm for the human mechanism. The effect of this work upon modern art can only be beneficial.
Matisse as painter is almost unknown to the present writer, who suspects that there individual
and arbitrary caprice may be masking as genial invention. As for these drawings, there is no
manner of doubt. They are in the high tradition of fine draftsmanship of the figure. If, on suffi-
cient acquaintance, they still seem merely eccentric to any one, let him rest assured that the lack
of centrality is not with them, but with himself.”
J. Edgar Chamberlain in the “New York Mail”:
“Drawings and photographs of Matisse, the master and prophet of the Wild Men, are on
exhibition at the Photo-Secession. Matisse is a great man. It seems to be supposed that there is
no judicial, middle course to be adopted, or to be thought of, in connection with him. You must
either worship Matisse, or hate and despise him.
“ But why ? It does not seem to be quite impossible to regard him philosophically. He is
simply a strong man and a gifted artist who has been inspired to seize upon and hold great hand-
fuls of the essential and foundation facts of the things he looks at. If he draws a human figure,
you perceive at once that he has given you not only the bones that are in this figure, and the muscles
and flesh that are over the bones, and the gleaming skin that covers the flesh, but the most charac-
teristic and idiosyncratic thing about the person who possesses that flesh and those bones. It is
a kind of artistic wizardry; he seems to look through surfaces to interiors, and somehow he con-
vinces you that he has put the interior on the outside.
“ He is not after beauty, but sometimes gets it in a large and startling measure because he gets
truth, and truth is frequently—not always—beauty.
“These Matisse drawings are in any case amazing instances of rapid, clear-seeing, revealing
draughtsmanship, and are richly worth seeing. And it is not really necessary that one should
hate Matisse because one loves somebody else. He is a man to study.”
Mr. Harrington in the “New York Herald”:
“Galleries filled with paintings and crowded by interested observers attest that the art season
is at its zenith. There are excellently displayed exhibitions of individual artists; the annual show
in oils of the Salmagundi Club is open in the little house in West Twelfth street; the jury of the
National Academy of Design was busy yesterday rejecting pictures, and Mons. Henri Matisse is
again here in spirit.
“Mons. Matisse’s spirit has come in a collection of his drawings and photographs of his paintings
aligned in the Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession at No. 291 Fifth avenue. So many persons
have visited this interesting agglomeration that Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, the head spirit of the gallery,
fears the work of Mons. Matisse will become a fad in this city.
“Those who are interested in the new movement in art which is commonly ascribed to the
influence of the French artist will find much that is vital and convincing in the present exhibition,
although there are examples which seem to have been devised solely for the sake of shocking the
conventions. For example, there is a woman with twisted arms and legs who looks like the victim
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