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

frankly rendered nudes, wherein one finds no trace of doubtful sub-meaning. The grace, the
suppleness, the strength of woman finds varying expression in these drawings. Best of all the
merchant is nowhere in evidence; first and last it is the artist that you are made conscious of,
and in this case the artist is well worth reckoning with.
Charles H. Caffin in the “N. Y. American”:
“The Little Gallery,” No. 291 Fifth Avenue, has become known as an incubator of artistic
ideas. Some regard it as a hothouse of artistic anarchy. Possibly it is, and thereby the more
desirable and needful.
For the average American, despite his boast of progressiveness, is apt, in matters in-
tellectual and esthetic, to be as narrow and smugly complacent as our Puritan forbears in
matters of religion and morality.
It is a good thing for any community to have a “chief among us,” taking notes; and such
is the role of Mr. Alfred Stieglitz, the inspirer and perpetuator of “The Little Gallery,” who
in the fullest sense of that lively and stimulating institution is IT.
He introduced to our notice Rodin as a draughtsman; and to-day, in consequence, the
Metropolitan Museum includes in its permanent collection some of that sculptor’s drawings,
hung, however, where they cannot be seen to advantage.
Thus the idea germinates and grows toward either futility or wholesomeness.
But I started to speak of an exhibition of drawings by A. Walkowitz, the latest of the
younger men to whom Alfred Stieglitz has held out a helping hand, because he believes in him
and would give others a chance of recognizing his merit.
I know Walkowitz as a man may know another by meeting him occasionally. I have
gathered a little of the man himself from what he says, still more from his silences, and most
from the vivid testimony of his work.
Before you look at his drawings I would stop you on the threshold and ask you what you
are in search of. If you are only interested in drawings that fulfill the exactitudes of form
and proportion quite properly demanded of students in the schools I would advise you to turn
back and ring the elevator bell. This exhibition is not for you.
Each one of these drawings is interpretative of a mood of feeling — of feeling derived from
knowledge. Here, for example, is an iron puddler, gripping the tongs as he drags a bar of
red-hot metal.
The character of the action and the strain on the several parts of the body have been
carefully studied; but it is not the knowledge thus acquired which is here represented. The
knowledge has been translated into feeling. That is to say, the artist, having the actor’s
imagination, has felt in his own muscles the strain of the action and realized the actual character
of this man and his work. So what we get in the drawing is a visualized impression of uncouth
power concentrated on a great effort.
For contrast, turn to one of the studies of Isadora Duncan. Like all the other drawings
here, they are not done from the model; they could not be, for none record a pose; all interpret
the fluidity of movement. They are the products of memorized knowledge, translated, as I have
said, into realized sensation.
In these Duncan drawings is very apparent the artist’s ability not only to suggest fluidity
of movement but also to connect up each part of the movement with every other part — in a
word, to unify the movement into a harmoniously balanced, rhythmically related whole.
These qualities of fluid action and complete harmony of impression more or less distin-
guish all the drawings. They are not the only merits, but are enough in themselves to stamp
the exhibition as one of quite unusual interest and excellence.
Elizabeth Luther Carey in the “N. Y. Times”:
When we first encountered Mr. Walkowitz, two or three years ago, we tagged him Post-
Impressionist. Nothing could have been more foolish. Since then we have learned the futility
of titles with capitals, and we look at the interesting drawings now hanging in the Photo-Se-

29