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

It wins a dominating power over the wall upon which it is placed by the penetrating truth of
its gentle, deeply sympathetic analysis and its admirable execution.
From a window of his dwelling Walkowitz has been able to study the simple and un-
conscious movements of the sturdy men that dig up the city’s streets at regular intervals.
This, it is true, is no unusual privilege, since there can scarcely be a spot of pavement in the
town that has not been displaced and replaced at least once or twice since last spring. But
not all of us can make such Use of an affliction as has this Russian American artist. He has
learned to apprehend tension and impact, the summoning of one’s forces and the delivery of
a blow with pick or shovel. He has studied the fight of struggling humans against the common
enemy and friend, gravitation. He has divined ways to communicate to eyes that have not
seen for themselves something of the passing beauty and interest of such things. What he
says is in the best sense true. He has seen, he knows. And after we have seen his drawings
we too know.
But Walkowitz does not hand us little bundles of ideas and impressions ready for instant
assimilation. He stimulates us, the onlookers, to meet him part way, by the exercise of our
imaginations. Was it not Baudelaire, speaking to a friend, who said in effect: “When your
imagination has traveled half way, to meet mine, as revealed in what I have written, then
between us we have produced a masterpiece ?”
J. N. Laurvik in the “Boston Transcript”:
The little gallery of the Photo-Secession, at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York, has once more
justified its existence by introducing, in an exhibition of paintings and drawings by A. Walko-
witz, one of the most interesting talents revealed to New York in many a year. This collection
of drawings, water-colors, monotypes and paintings breathes a pure, gentle spirit that feels
deeply and expresses its feeling with an intense, childlike naivete. To the undiscerning, casual
eye of the world these picnickers in the park, whose dresses make a variegated pattern on the
greensward, these portraits and groups of girls and men and women, will no doubt look like
the ill-considered work of a child with a natural gift for drawing. But there is something more
here, something deeper, that reveals the soul of the artist, as you will see if you examine the
nudes, a number of which are dancing figures done from memory after seeing Isadora Duncan.
These, and the others, no less than these, reveal a power of expressive draughtsmanship, in the
very best sense of the word, such as has seldom been equaled by any American artist. And
in all of these drawings one feels the artist mainly occupied with one thing: the revelation of
the elemental power of gesture, which he has been alert to catch at its most expressive point.
The rhythmic flow of human emotions, made manifest in expressive, natural gestures, is here
recorded with a simplicity and intensity that evoke pleasurable memories like the remembrance
of some untainted happiness. It is a sort of liberating art, that strikes down to the depths of
your being and sets your own emotions free.
That charming lady in a simple, flowing dress, who holds a small bouquet of flowers in
one hand, while she gently raises a fan in the other, is the personification of all the elusive and
alluring charms of womanhood, which finds its culminating expression in the gesture of the
uplifted arm. And like the drawing of the three girls exchanging their girlish confidences the
means employed are almost meagre to the point of paucity. Nothing could be at once more
simple and more captivating than this. Here is the figure of a man with upraised arms leading
an orchestra, and again in those arms, as well as in the listening poise of the head, as it were
drinking in the flow of harmony brought forth by the undulating arms, you have the majestic
power of measured gesture potently expressed. One feels the rhythmic, pulsating beat of
music flowing out from these uplifted arms, that express more of gentle urging than of dominant
command.
In the portrait head of an introspective, sad-faced man, a musician friend of the artist,
one is made aware of somewhat the same spirit, an intense brooding that would be melancholy
but for its inherent sweetness and soundness. Thus, despite its intensity, this art never becomes
morbid or decadent. It is essentially healthy and vigorous as is convincingly shown in the

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