Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1910 (Heft 31))

Turning to Skeats’ Etymological Dictionary we find that the word beauty
is derived from French beau, old French bel, Latin bellus, fair, fine; and we
deduce from this that that which is fine or fair to contemplate or look upon is
beautiful. From this we again deduce that the beautiful is that that charms
and attracts by its fineness or fairness, i.e., that that approaches our conception
of the perfect. It was no less a person than Dürer who said, “ What is beauty:
that is what I do not know.” Beauty might be said to be the divine dream-
vision or inherited memory of every true artist shaped and moulded by the
circumstances and environments of his life and age. The real pioneers of art
ever in pursuit of that dim dream within their souls reverence the accom-
plishments of the great masters of art who preceded them none the less because
their dream of beauty comes in diiferent guise. Of the great masterpieces of
the past they say, as Ingres said to his students in passing through the Rubens
gallery in the Louvre, “Salute—but pass on.” Salute, but pass on. Respect
and admire, study the great masters if you will; they can teach much, but seek
to evolve from your inner self your own dream. If there is that in nature that
awakens a quick, throbbing response and an irresistible desire to give definite
expression to the thrill of joy thus stirred, seek to express as nearly as possible
as you feel, and see, and understand, and not in the terms and mannerisms of
recognized classicism of the established masters. This is the lesson that Seces-
sionism would teach, in these days of commercialized art and expensive living;
in these days when pseudo-old-masters bring handsome prices and struggling
artists of merit receive little encouragement; in these days when more powerful
than ever before is the temptation to conform in pictorial style and subject to
the requirements of the academic art juries and most successful art dealers.
It is individualism of style and expression that Secessionism seeks to encourage.
Let each see and feel for himself and express himself as he sees and feels.
It is this that the public and even many of the critics find so difficult to
understand. In the work of the so-called wild men of Paris and New York,
the Expressionists I prefer to term them, they see only a violation to their
recognized standards and an affront to their conventions. Many of the nudes
of Matisse, for example, deeply shocked their moral sense. This appears to be
due largely to the fact that it is almost impossible for the public to view the
presentation of the nude human form as merely an expression of animation-
the most wonderful piece of machinery in the word. Somehow they always see
in it something that borders on the immoral. In view of the fact that most
occidental literature concerns itself almost exclusively with questions of sex
and it is the one problem we have continuously before us whether in plays,
books or operas, light or heavy, it is natural that this should be so. Orientals
who, while apparently very free in such matters, seem to regard our literature
as more or less immoral because of the manner in which it gives predominance
to such matters. Compare Occidental with Oriental art and note how great
a part the sex element predominates in our art expression as compared with
theirs. As nations have their different points of view, so have individuals.
Some New Orleans friends related to me that on one occasion when Lafcadio
Hearn was writing on the Times Democrat of New Orleans, he visited their
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