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

And yet it would be an error to apply to Senor Picasso’s method any term that implied
progress, or advance, or development. The work is rather a reversion to the extreme of primi-
tivism. If the pictures of Alfred Maurer, lately shown at the same gallery, were properly described
as neo-Aztec, these things of Picasso’s are neo-African. They remind one of nothing so much as
of the carvings in ebony or blackened wood, rudely representing the human figure, made by the
natives of the west coast of Africa.
They are supposed to be the result of a sort of geometrical obsession in the soul of the artist,
but the ungeometrical eye sees nothing in them but a rude, primitive attempt to represent the
human and figure in blocks and slabs. A man’s or a woman’s face, as Senor Picasso sees it,
looks almost exactly like that of a football player with a headguard and a noseguard on.
In his very interesting account of these things, which is printed in the catalogue, Marius de
Zayas says that Picasso’s paintings are “the coefficient of the impressions that form has produced
in his spirit.” Mr. de Zayas also says that the most that he himself can do, as a critic, is to say
a thing “pleases or displeases him,” and to “express the personal motives of his impressions.”
Good! We stand absolutely with Mr. de Zayas, and say that form produces in our spirit
impressions resulting in a totally different coefficient from that produced in Picasso’s case, and
that his pictures displease us radically and violently. There are some sketches in his collection
that are, indeed, very pleasing. But they are more or less traditional. They are not neo-African
at all. Neo-Africanism jars our “personal motives,” and we think it jars the personal motives of
9,999 out of every 10,000 Americans and Europeans.
Mr. Harrington in the N. T. Herald:
Seftor Don Pablo Picasso, who presses beyond the Post-Impressionists, is represented by
a disquieting array of drawings and water colors in the Galleries of the Photo-Secession Society.
Persons entering this domain receive what is practically an injunction signed by Mr. Marius de
Zayas forbidding them to criticize anything which Senor Picasso has to offer, on the ground that
Mr. de Zayas himself would not dare to pass sentence on anything which he has ever seen. Mr.
Alfred Stieglitz has taken this array into his gallery, which he calls his laboratory. He looks upon
the study of this hideous assemblage as necessary to research work. The chemist, by dint of
experiment, may produce most delicate perfumes and delightful flavors, yet much of the material
in the intermediate process may not be alluring to the senses. The Spanish painter presents
semblances of human heads covered with green hair and figures which have hexagonal legs.
Miss Elizabeth Luther Carey in the N. T. Times:
As to Picasso, whose geometrical emotions are boldly on view at the Photo-Secession Gal-
leries, there can be, of course, but one opinion. He is shocking, he is reactionary, he is schematic,
he is le dernier cri, and the general public stops its ears to that discordant sound. Nevertheless,
it is a sound that is quite apt to precede revolution of one kind or another, and Picasso is one of
the painters whose work indicates the stirring of rebellion against the academic influences of the
past, which, if it does nothing more, is pretty certain to wake up the academies. We heard the
other day an extremely clever characterization of the group of men who may be called Expres-
sionists, if you choose, certainly anything else than Impressionists or Post-Impressionists, both
of which are crass misnomers. They were compared to explorers on uncharted seas, starting
out as the early discoverers did, with only the assurance that the little world about them had been
so thoroughly investigated that no surprises were forthcoming in that field, with the profound
conviction that there were new worlds to conquer beyond the seas that might be found, if some
mariner had courage to set sail.
There is no sign as yet that Picasso or any of his companions has found the Northwest
Passage, although they come back with tales enough and to spare of the strange monsters encoun-
tered on their travels. When, like Picasso, they hark back to primitive symbols for the expression
of their exceedingly sophisticated feelings and ideas, they are merely wearisome in their lack of
anything like true originality. When, like Cezanne, they use their principles and formulas to
support a direct and simple personal vision, when they use their intellectual instrument as he did
his, to give form to the idea conceived in emotion, and not for the solution of purely abstract

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