Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Heft 42-43))

NOTES ON “291”

WATER-COLORS BY JOHN MARIN
THE new work and further progress in water-colors and oil, of John
Marin, entitled him to a fourth exhibition at “291.” His previous
exhibitions were reviewed in Camera Work Numbers XXVII, XXX,
and XXXVI. The last exhibition included landscapes made in the Berk-
shires and in the Adirondacks, as well as a series of water-colors of New York.
These latter, manifesting the newest and most advanced element of Marin’s
vision, were most worthy of closest study. Such a radical departure from
any previous interpretation of New York, so far attempted in any medium,
required adjustment of the point of view on the part of the public. Marin
set forth, in a few lines, for the benefit of the visitors of the Little Gallery, a
statement of the mood which inspired his interpretations of New York. As
no more enlightening statement could be made, we reprint it in full for the
benefit of the readers of Camera Work:

The later pictures of New York shown in this exhibition may need the help of an
explanation. These few words are written to quicken your response to my point of view.
Shall we consider the life of a great city as confined simply to the people and animals
on its streets and in its buildings? Are the buildings themselves dead? We have been told
somewhere that a work of art is a thing alive. You cannot create a work of art unless the
things you behold respond to something within you. Therefore if these buildings move me
they too must have life. Thus the whole city is alive; buildings, people, all are alive; and the
more they move me the more I feel them to be alive.
It is this ‘moving of me’ that I try to express, so that I may recall the spell I have been
under and behold the expression of the different emotions that have been called into being.
How am I to express what I feel so that its expression will bring me back under the spells?
Shall I copy facts photographically?
I see great forces at work; great movements; the large buildings and the small buildings;
the warring of the great and the small; influences of one mass on another greater or smaller mass.
Feelings are aroused which give me the desire to express the reaction of these ‘pull forces,’
those influences which play with one another; great masses pulling smaller masses, each subject
in some degree to the other’s power.
In life all things come under the magnetic influence of other things; the bigger assert
themselves strongly, the smaller not so much, but still they assert themselves, and though
hidden they strive to be seen and in so doing change their bent and direction.
While these powers are at work pushing, pulling, sideways, downwards, upwards, I can
hear the sound of their strife and there is great music being played.
And so I try to express graphically what a great city is doing. Within the frames there
must be a balance, a controlling of these warring, pushing, pulling forces. This is what I am
trying to realize. But we are all human.
Photo-Secession Gallery, Marin Exhibition, 1913. John Marin.

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART
The Exhibition of the Marin water-colors closed when the Exhibition
of International Art arranged by the International Society of Painters and
Sculptors (Mr. Arthur B. Davies, President; and Mr. Walt Kuhn, Secretary)
opened its doors at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory in New York. An
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