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

of forms, made up of angles with circular eyes that fill more than one-half of the profiles, the
“Jardin de Plantes” or an “Indian Vase ?” There is one piece of landscape which is an attempt
at sanity, but that is the only interesting thing about it. There is one group of nudes where the
central figure suggests something like a human being, but, outside of these, the pictures are a lot
of extravaganzas in art.
Mr. James B. Townsend in the American Art News:
At the Photo-Secession Society, 291 Fifth avenue, some thirty examples in oil and water-
color, and a few pencil and crayon drawings by Max Weber, of this city, are on exhibition through
January 31. Mr. Weber is a Post-Post-Impressionist, or in other words, Matisse, Gauguin and the
late Henri Rousseau—plus. If the best definition of art is that it is an expression of the emotions,
one must marvel at the emotional side of Mr. Weber’s make-up. He is an admirer of Henry
Rousseau and says that he is proud to be the owner of the curious productions by the dead man,
recently shown in this gallery. But Mr. Weber, to whose vision a young woman singer appears
to have a neck like a badly turned piano leg, triangular eyes, purple arms and a green forehead,
would seem to have gone beyond Rousseau in the weirdness of most of his productions. They
cannot be called pictures—these presentments of distorted vision on canvas or paper—but pro-
ductions or expressions of an emotion and a vision that are not shared by other human beings.
A future generation may call this “art,” but the present writer cannot conscientiously give it
that term. Some other works, and notably a decoration with figures, have a certain sense of
form and decorative quality. The experiment of the exhibition of these weird works is interesting.
It is another ripple—following preceding ones made by Matisse and Rousseau, under Mr. Stieg-
litz’s catholicity of view, at these galleries, in all probability—of the wave of Post-Impressionism
soon to break upon these shores after its arrival from France and England.
Mr. Israel White in the Newark Evening News:
In the little Gallery of the Photo-Secession, Max Weber is showing as strange a lot of canvases
as have ever been gathered together in America. That they are naive we will not deny, nor will
we claim that naivete has ever sufficed to produce serious art yet. Mr. Weber wishes to be taken
very seriously and he must be taken that way or not at all. Occasionally a suggestion of grace is
found—probably an accident, as that is contrary to this painter’s notion of aesthetics—and more
frequently a juxtaposition of color that delights the eye, and this is not accidental.
Beyond this the pictures will be of little interest in themselves. But because they represent
a novel idea and what is recognized abroad as a new movement, it may be spoken of here; for
already the name of Paul Cezanne has become familiar and the Post-Impressionists have been
given their name. In justice to Mr. Weber, however—and to Cezanne—it should be explained
that these canvases were painted in this country during the last two or three years and so do not
reflect any one but Weber himself.
The spirit that lies underneath Mr. Weber’s experiment is one that commends itself even
after it has been christened “The Revolt Against Respectability,” for the stamp of “respectability”
may be and often is placed upon that which merits no serious respect. The trouble with “respec-
tability” is that it usually relates only to the outward appearance of things and easily becomes a
mere formality with its artificial rules and conventions. In fact, as the word is often used, it
signifies very moderate praise, denoting that the object in question will pass muster according to
a medium standard that has been arbitrarily set.
The necessity for such standards is very obvious. Taking human society as we find it,
the unwritten laws of conventionality become conservative forces without which the social fabric
would soon go to pieces. Within certain limits there must be a standardizing of morals, behavior,
literature and other forms of art, for these standards respect the elemental laws which even a
genius cannot ignore, and there are religious as well as aesthetic geniuses. Chesterfields as well as
Dostoievskys.
“The idea of perfection,” said Morris Llewellyn Cooke in his recent report on academic
and industrial efficiency, “is not involved in standardization. The standard method of doing
anything is simply the best method that can be devised at the time the standard is drawn”—by

33