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

Now, as all artists worthy of the name are in a broad sense inspired by a similar intention,
so it is manifest that this sort of criticism must of necessity be given over largely to commonplaces.
A critic at liberty to speak freely of his own emotions may be entertaining or even inspiring when
he deals with a work of art, just as a painter may be in dealing with his vision of nature, or as
any reasonable companion may be in any circumstances whatever. But it is a condition of modern
criticism that the personal element must be excluded as rigorously as the dogmatic; hence such
deplorable platitude as the following:
Picasso tries to produce with his work an impression, not with the subject but the manner in which
he expresses it. He receives a direct impression from external nature, he analyzes, develops and translates
it, and afterwards executes it in his own particular style, with the intention that the picture should be the
pictorial equivalent of the emotion produced by nature. In presenting his work he wants the spectator
to look for the emotion or idea generated from the spectacle, and not the spectacle itself.
If it were not against the rules of modern criticism to think, it must upon a moment’s reflec-
tion have occurred to the author of these lines that painting is invariably a matter of equivalents,
and that what he says would apply as well to the pictures of a Sorolla or a Bouguereau. When he
goes on to speak of “the psychology of form” and to make distinctions between “psychic” and
“ physical ” manifestations he is merely indulging in the sort of loose thinking that critics of the
emotional school have always employed in their writings; the debatable point is reached only
when he tells us that the “psychical manifestations” give rise in Picasso’s mind to “geometrical
sensations” and result in the discovery of invisible planes “which according to him constitute
the individuality of form.”
Here, at last, is a really interesting question; it is here that the business of the critic should
begin, and if M. de Zayas were of the old school the question of geometrical equivalents might
serve as an occasion for all sorts of fanciful if more or less futile speculations. Being a modern,
however, he dare not give us so much as a hint of his own thoughts, and so he dismisses a difficult
subject with the question-begging and obvious remark that “in these paintings the public must
see the realization of an artistic ideal, and must judge them by the abstract sensation they produce,
without trying to look into the factors that entered into the composition of the final result.” Having
delivered himself of these “musts,” which are altogether delightful in a critic who professes such
a perfect hatred of dogma, he condescends to enlighten us a little concerning a few of Picasso’s
postulates. In the matter of perspective:
He does not think it right to paint a child in size far larger than that of a man, just because the child
is in the foreground and one wants to indicate that the man is some distance away from it. The painting
of distance, to which the academic school subordinates everything, seems to him an element which might
be of great importance in a topographical plan or in a geographical map, but false and useless in a work of
art.
And regarding light and color:
Following the same philosophical system in dealing with light, as the one he follows in regard to
form, to him color does not exist, but only the effects of light. This produces in matter certain vibrations,
which produce in the individual certain impressions. From this it results that Picasso’s painting presents
to us the evolution by which light and form have operated in developing themselves in his brain to produce
the idea, and his composition is nothing but the synthetic expression of his emotions.
That this “philosophical system,” in so far as it is not nonsensical, is the common property
of all painters is a circumstance which does not seem to have occurred to the commentator. So
overwhelmed is he by arbitrary deviations from current custom that he dwells with admiration
upon Picasso’s conventions as if they had some peculiar quality making them essentially better
than the academic. He seems to forget that it is only 500 years since Paolo di Dono was crying,
Oh! che dolce cos a Z questa prospettiva! Perspective was in those days a novelty, and we are
apt to smile at Paolo’s enthusiasm; but is it to be compared in point of simplicity with the modern
painter who “ does not think it right,” but insists that it is “ false,” to use such devices ? As if in
abandoning them he were not obliged to adopt a new and equally “false’’convention!
The modern school of criticism, however, is essentially unphilosophical. Our simple-
minded friend states the case clearly enough when he says:
I have devoted my life to the study of art, principally painting and sculpture. I believe I have seen
all that is worth seeing, and I have never dared pass sentence on a work declaring it good, even if signed
by the most renowned artist; nor declare it bad, though it bears the name of a person totally unknown.
. . Each epoch has had its artists, and must have its art, as each also has its men of science and its science;
and any one who intends to oppose a dike to the floodtide of human genius is perverse or a fool.

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