DOI issue:
[Editors] Editorial
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31322#0009
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EDITORIAL
THIS number of Camera Work contains two articles written
by Miss Gertrude Stein, an American resident in Paris.
But while it so happens that one of these articles treats
of Henri Matisse and the other of Pablo Picasso; and while the text
is accompanied by fourteen reproductions of representative paintings
and sculptures by these artists; the fact is that these articles them-
selves, and not either the subjects with which they deal or the illus-
trations that accompany them, are the true raison d'etre of this
special issue.
A considerable number of the exhibitions that have been held
by the Photo-Secession during the past five years have been devoted
to phases of a general art movement that originated in France and
which, with a merely chronological appropriateness, has been
christened Post-Impressionism.
The development of this movement is the outward and visible
sign of an intellectual and esthetic attitude at once at odds with our
familiar traditions and undreamed of by most of our generation.
So that its attempts at self-expression are more or less puzzling, if
not wholly unintelligible, to the average observer who approaches
them for the first time. And while this is especially true when the
attempted expression is made through an art like painting (in the
interpretation of which the average observer is only sufficiently
trained to be able to recognize, when he meets it, that which habit
has taught him to look for); it happens that the movement found
its first expression in the field of painting and that in that field have
appeared its most striking, and therefore its most discussed manifes-
tations.
It must, however, be apparent that if the expression came
through an art with the raw materials and rough practice of which
we were ourselves familiar—let us say through the art of literature,
whose raw material is words—even an unpiloted navigator of the
unknown might feel his way into the harbor of comprehension.
And it is precisely because, in these articles by Miss Stein, the
Post-Impressionist spirit is found expressing itself in literary form
that we thus lay them before the readers of Camera Work in a
specially prepared and supplemental number.
THIS number of Camera Work contains two articles written
by Miss Gertrude Stein, an American resident in Paris.
But while it so happens that one of these articles treats
of Henri Matisse and the other of Pablo Picasso; and while the text
is accompanied by fourteen reproductions of representative paintings
and sculptures by these artists; the fact is that these articles them-
selves, and not either the subjects with which they deal or the illus-
trations that accompany them, are the true raison d'etre of this
special issue.
A considerable number of the exhibitions that have been held
by the Photo-Secession during the past five years have been devoted
to phases of a general art movement that originated in France and
which, with a merely chronological appropriateness, has been
christened Post-Impressionism.
The development of this movement is the outward and visible
sign of an intellectual and esthetic attitude at once at odds with our
familiar traditions and undreamed of by most of our generation.
So that its attempts at self-expression are more or less puzzling, if
not wholly unintelligible, to the average observer who approaches
them for the first time. And while this is especially true when the
attempted expression is made through an art like painting (in the
interpretation of which the average observer is only sufficiently
trained to be able to recognize, when he meets it, that which habit
has taught him to look for); it happens that the movement found
its first expression in the field of painting and that in that field have
appeared its most striking, and therefore its most discussed manifes-
tations.
It must, however, be apparent that if the expression came
through an art with the raw materials and rough practice of which
we were ourselves familiar—let us say through the art of literature,
whose raw material is words—even an unpiloted navigator of the
unknown might feel his way into the harbor of comprehension.
And it is precisely because, in these articles by Miss Stein, the
Post-Impressionist spirit is found expressing itself in literary form
that we thus lay them before the readers of Camera Work in a
specially prepared and supplemental number.
