Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1912 (Heft 38))

summer scene “Near Spuyten Duyvil,” a magnificent piece of realism which his power of
emphasis has endowed with unusual pictorial interest. Some day this man will be generally
recognized as one of the greatest landscape painters produced in this country and no collection
will be complete without a Lawson, as to-day the indifferent of yesterday vie with one another
for the possession of a Twachtman or a Theodore Robinson.

Arthur Hoeber in the “N. Y. Globe”:
Alfred Stieglitz, who will be known to future generations as “the Master of the Photo-
Secession galleries,” is at it again. There are few moments when Mr. Stieglitz is not at it.
This time he is aided and abetted by Mr. Gelett Burgess, who, when he is not writing plays
or disporting himself with “Gollywogs,” runs, it seems, to essays in “subjective symbolism.”
The last four words should by rights be capitalized, but we refrain. You might not suspect it,
but these symbols are in water color, though they are not half as interesting as the catalogue,
which in its way is a decided literary masterwork. They relate (in the catalogue only, for
without it you can make absolutely nothing out of the pictures save that a gollywog on horse-
back in every picture is riding madly where no gollywog could possibly ride) to such pleasing
subjects as Fancy, Imagination, Adventure, Realism, Regret, and kindred themes, as well as
themes by no means kindred, though that does not matter in the least, and Mr. Stieglitz has
hung them about the room for the inspection of the faithful.
Thus in “Poetry” we leam—always from the catalogue—that “Poetry is the adventure
of the emotions, and is independent of their strength or importance, regarding them only
aesthetically. Poetically, the leaf of the tree has its feeling as urgent as that of the forest.”
Which sounds very highbrowish, as it were, though its meaning is vague, but which, when you
look at the water color, resolves itself into the same old gollywog horseman, with a most inse-
cure seat, galumphing from mountain top, or castle turret, or over the moon, perhaps upside
down, and being at his best but mildly humorous. It might be well for Mr. Stieglitz to take
a little while off for some quiet introspection, and to recall that the charter of his society—if it
ever had one—was for photography. At photography Mr. Stieglitz is a wonder, and for it he
has done yeoman work. There is a dignity about that and some one is needed continually to
advance its cause. Photography should be glory and honor enough for one man. Mr. Burgess
adds to the gayety of nations unmistakably. He is a bright man, and the land would be much
more stupid without him. May he flourish long; but, if we may be permitted the hazard, we
should say that a Photo-Secession show is a little out of his line and not for the likes of him.
Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and the rest of the new school make him look like an amateur at this
eccentric game. Better fifty years of “cave men” than a cycle of “subjective symbolism.”
J. Edgar Chamberlin in the “Evening Mail”:
Gelett Burgess puts forth his water colors, now on exhibition at the Photo-Secession, 291
Fifth Avenue, as an attempt at “some picturesque analogy to the action of the mind under the
dominance of the emotions.” They are “essays in subjective symbolism”—very definite and
circumscribed symbolism. Here is “Fancy,” for instance, as differentiated from “Imagina-
tion”; here is “Drama” as distinguished from “Tragedy,” and “Poetry” quite apart from
“Lyric Love.” Consequently all these studies are distinctly “literary”—and Mr. Burgess
adopts the word, and confesses them literature instead of art.
They are, nevertheless, good pictures, just as pictures. Several of them are such good
pictures—so much better than the others—that they make the others look weak. The best of
all is the symbolic representation of “Passion”—a great blue, crested, rolling wave, plunging
the little pathetic “soul” whither it will; but the little soul (though you would scarcely be
aware of that) “remains always at the boundary where the spiritual beautifies and the physical
delights.” “Average” is a fine picture—the “Soul” split up into an infinite number of evil
acts, following each other as cause and effect, in the form of a cataract. “Horror,” “Imagina-
tion,” “Lyric Love”—all are admirable flights of a fancy which is not the less pictorial for
being literary.
Mr. Burgess’s well-known humor comes in his manner of depicting the soul. Besides
being the inventor of the sulphitic theory, Mr. Burgess is the inventor of the “goop,” which is

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