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

home. The old Southern home was charming but far from being as beautiful
and mysterious as it appeared to Hearn because of his impaired vision. So
each one sees from his particular point of view; and as each may be right or
wrong it is well not to condemn too readily the works of a Matisse, a Marin, a
Weber or a Hartley, because to us they seem extreme, bizarre or outré.Time
may prove these things the pioneer steps of a new and vital expression of the
beautiful; or it may relegate them to the junk-heap of art as the ephemeral
impertinences of clever charlatans. That is something that the verdict of time
alone will decide. Read over and compare the opinions on the same exhib-
itors published in the various newspapers by our leading art critics and repub-
lished in Camera Work as an object lesson in comparative contemporary
criticism. See how widely at variance are these gifted and brilliant leaders of
public opinion on art and often how much at sea too. And then recall what
Dürer said, “ What is beauty: that is what I do not know”; and be guided in
forming opinions by the advice of Voltaire, “Cultivate preferences but avoid
prejudices.” Joseph T. Keiley.

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