Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Heft 41))

PHOTOGRAPHY*
PHOTOGRAPHY is not Art. It is not even an art.
Art is the expression of the conception of an idea. Photography
is the plastic verification of a fact.
The difference between Art and Photography is the essential difference
which exists between the Idea and Nature.
Nature inspires in us the idea. Art, through the imagination, represents
that idea in order to produce emotions.
The Human Intellect has completed the circle of Art. Those whose
obstinacy makes them go in search of the new in Art, only follow the line
of the circumference, following the footsteps of those who traced the closed
curve. But photography escapes through the tangent of the circle, show-
ing a new way to progress in the comprehension of form.
Art has abandoned its original purpose, the substantiation of religious
conception, to devote itself to a representation of Form. It may be said that
the soul of Art has disappeared, the body only remaining with us, and that
therefore the unifying idea of Art does not exist. That body is disintegrating,
and everything that disintegrates, tends to disappear.
So long as Art only speculates with Form, it cannot produce a work which
fully realizes the preconceived idea, because imagination always goes further
than realization. Mystery has been suppressed, and with mystery faith has
disappeared. We could make a Colossus of Rhodes, but not the Sphinx.
Each epoch of the history of Art is characterized by a particular expression
of Form. A peculiar evolution of Form corresponds to each one of the states
of anthropological development. From the primitive races, to the white ones,
which are the latest in evolution and consequently the most advanced, Form,
starting from the fantastic, has evolved to a conventional naturalism. But,
when we get to our own epoch, we find, that a special Form is lacking in
Art, for Form in contemporary Art is nothing but the result of the adapta-
tion of all the other forms which existed previous to the conditions of our
epoch. Nevertheless we cannot rightly say that a true eclecticism exists.
It may be held that this combination constitutes a special form, but in fact
it does not constitute anything but a special deformation.
Art is devouring Art. Conservative artists, with the faith of fanaticism,
constantly seek inspiration in the museums of art. Progressive artists squeeze
the last idea out of the ethnographical museums, which ought also to be
considered as museums of art. Both build on the past. Picasso is perhaps
the only artist who in our time works in search of a new form. But Picasso
is only an analyst; up to the present his productions reveal solely the plastic
analysis of artistic form without arriving at a definite synthesis. His labor is
in opposite direction to the concrete. His starting point is the most primitive
*The attention of readers of this essay is called to Mr. De Zayas’s essay,
“The Sun Has Set,” published in Camera Work, Number XXXIX.—Editors.

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