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

freres in these departures. What it is all about we cannot for the life of us tell, nor does it
interest us. There is much talk of emotion, sensation, harmony, impression, feeling, Heaven
knows what not, and the talk seems more or less reasonable until one sees the results. Then
comes the question of sanity, and we are asked to accept impossible designs and crude color as
full of significance. They may be, but frankly they quite elude us. The work is at the Photo-
Secession Gallery, 291 Fifth Avenue, and Mr. Stieglitz stands sponsor for it. It adds one more
to the list of Mr. Stieglitz’s responsibilities, though little, very little, to the gayety of the art
season.

Arthur Hoeber in the “N. Y. Globe”:
The things that the Frenchman, Henri Matisse, has done in painting and drawing—and
he has, curious to relate, a substantial number of followers—are as nothing to the concrete
form his sculpture takes on, a display of which is now on view at the little galleries of the
Photo-Secession, 291 Fifth Avenue, which Alfred Stieglitz has arranged for the delectation of
the cult, a cult, too, that is growing daily. Some of them, to put it very mildly, seem like the
work of a madman, and it is hard to be patient with these impossible travesties on the human
form. There are attenuated figures representing women seriously offered here which makes
one grieve that men should be found who can by any chance regard them with other than
feelings of horrible repulsion, and their significance is quite beyond the ken of those not inocu-
lated with the virus of post-impressionism. Indeed, it is unbelievable that sane men can
justify these on any possible grounds. Yet, so seriously minded a man as Roger Fry, lately
connected with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, takes this same Matisse seriously, and has
so expressed himself in black and white under his own signature.
We are told vaguely of the research for certain emotions in this work, of a desire to
express a sense of this or that, certainly most commendable in any form of art, but why should
it be necessary to get away absolutely from all proportion, from all recognized construction,
to ignore the human figure as the good Lord has made it and as men know it, we cannot for
the life of us comprehend. Would not this same expression be that much the more effective
if it were given with a sense of human shape? Here is a bronze of a squatty man, out of all
relation to everything we know of man’s form, and we are gravely told he is expressive of the
struggle of the ages. Here are three heads of what is said to be a woman, but there is no sug-
gestion of the characteristics of sex, and they are “three states of the portrait of a young girl”!
We have never before seen such a travesty on humanity, while the meaning is entirely beyond
the present reviewer. It all seems decadent, unhealthy, certainly unreal, like some dreadful
nightmare, and it is depressing to a degree.
James Huneker in the “N. Y. Sun”:
After Rodin—what? Surely not Henri Matisse. We can see the power and individuality
of Matisse as a painter, particularly as a draughtsman, but in modelling he produces gooseflesh.
At the Gallery of the Photo-Secession there are a few specimens of his sculptures and recent
drawings. The bronze torso of a man heavily accented and the back of a nude, a drawing, are
the best things to be seen at Mr. Stieglitz’s.
David Lloyd in the “N. Y. Evening Post”:
Sculpture by Henry Matisse and some recent drawings are to be seen at the Photo-
Secession No. 291 Fifth Avenue. Of the sculpture there are half a dozen small bronzes, in
which an ability to emphasize expressive traits in form seems to mingle with too self-conscious
an effort after salient elements. There are also some plaster casts, including three states of a
portrait of a young girl. The sculptor goes after the gargoyle in human nature, but then
apparently realities begin to cramp him, and as in the parable, the last state is worse than the
first. The exhibition continues to April 6.
J. Edgar Chamberlin in the “Evening Mail”:
Several bronzes, plaster casts, a terra cotta and a number of drawings by Henri Matisse
are exhibited at the Photo-Secession Galiery, where they will remain until April 6. Students
and connoisseurs should see these strong things—the general public will hardly care for them.
Matisse is certainly not working for prettiness, but manifestly for such expression of his own
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