Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 34-35))

It is through the example of Cezanne that the younger generation of
artists has discovered its triune creed: Simplification, Organization, Expres-
sion. Substitute for the last its equivalent in modern everyday affairs—
efficiency—and one recognizes that Cezanne’s influence is tending to bring
painting once more into serious alignment with everything else that is worth
while in modern civilization. It is working to affect a harmony between two
factors that have hitherto been accepted as irreconcilable—materialism and
idealism. Cezanne is a “Primitive of the Way” in the direction of that goal
of modern progress—a completer union of art with life.
In a letter to his friend, Emile Bernard, dated a month before his death,
Cezanne writes: “I have sworn to die painting.” He had his desire. He
was overtaken by death while at work, on October 2nd, 1905.
Charles H. Caffin.

* * * &
The Other: These Salome drawings of Beardsley’s—are they not beau-
tiful ? The hair lines and the wonderfully disposed masses so full of meaning.
Believer: To me art is something more than this queer sort of thing:—■
Something really beautiful for all to enjoy and understand.
Other: You wish to say that all can enjoy real beauty?
Believer: Yes, I think this vague and grotesque work that a few people
try to make themselves believe in is far from being either beautiful or artistic.
Raphael painted real beauty, didn’t he ? Yet the most untrained in art can
appreciate his beautiful Madonnas.
Other: Raphael was far from being the big man of his time.
Believer: I suppose the “big man” was some one whose work no one
can understand, but that anyone can see is out of drawing.
Other: Very likely.
Believer: Perhaps you call artists whose work has given pleasure
to thousands—like Meissonier, Rosa Bonheur, and more recently Sorolla
y Bastida—little ?
Other: Let us reserve the term big to be applied to something different.
Rosa Bonheur and Meissonier, the craftsmen of today will tell you, no longer
interest them. Sorolla they like. He expresses so forcefully the old banalities
one is taught to admire. By treating everything as still life he eliminates
thought. An ox’s flank is painted like a glazed pot—that is, according to the
present popular formula for a glazed pot. Never mind, the money spent for
Sorollas gave the glow of collectorship to many, and their generation will not
find them out.
Believer: My dear fellow, I’m too well backed by the opinions of those
who know to need to take up arms myself in the cause of as great an artist as
Sorolla.
Other: Right you are; I’m in the minority, and therefore my ideas are
those of one who fails to understand; yet there are a few names on my side,

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