Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 36))

STRUCTURAL UNITS

“ >4 RT is opposed to general ideas, it describes only the individual, it desires
only the unique,” is Marcel Schwob’s definition of modern art. We
JL JL accept it as a comprehensive phrase that summarizes the aspirations of
contemporary aesthetic activity.
Undoubtedly, most modern art workers adhere to it. It is their purpose
to create or recreate individual life.
The same definition occurred to me as I looked at Max Weber’s strange
architectonic structures of human forms that, despite their extravagance and
strangeness, impress us with an indescribable something such as we may feel
before some old mural painting. My first thought was that also this artist
belonged to the aesthetic anarchy of youthful enthusiasm which indulges in
atavistic idealizations merely to appear original. But on more careful reflec-
tion I changed my opinion. This man does not parody the moribund poetry of
life, I argued with myself. He searches for some big truth underlying the
outward appearance of torso and limbs, of facial expression, the play of
muscles and the moulding of flesh. He dissects the human form into geo-
metrical ratios and color patterns and apparently proceeds like a primitive
bent upon conquering his own knowledge of visual appearances.
This battle has often been fought; it is an old doctrine, but a more pro-
found one than the individual theory of modern artists.
For has it not been the mission of all great painters and sculptors to recon-
struct archetypes! The harmonious proportion and movement of nature
determined the rhythm of their harmonies. A salutary greeting to those who
revive it in the art and thought of today, as it is merely a memory among the
adventurous enterprises and prodigious exploitations of modern art.
Modern art is too conscious, too scientific and legitimate, too persistent
and self-important. Ancient art is more abstract, inexplicable, a vague con-
ception of life, of the wholeness of nature rather than the individual absorption
of one man’s emotion. In former periods of art, style was the product of
national pride, religious fervor and universal sentiment. Art today is entangled
in modern thought, but the artist remains an alien in the midst of it. Homer’s
“Penelope” and the “Venus of Melos” are symbols with a whole country and
civilization as a background. A character of Ibsen or a single figure by Whistler
are individual interpretations of realistic vision. They attempt to typify, but
do not go beyond a concentration of facts.
Nearly all modern painters deal either with sensuous forms, traditional
allegory or finite imagery. The art of Boecklin and Thoma, as Meier Graefe
has so aptly argued, is little more than skilful stage managing. Their paintings
resemble spectacular masquerades and dances, not unlike the Masques of
Ben Jonson, for the delectation of an educated mob; while the tentative work
of Marees, whose pictorial visions always seemed unmanageable, expresses a
truer artistic ideal. Glance over the ranks of modern painters, analyze them
from this precipitous viewpoint, and you will realize how few will survive this
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