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

explain away this “expression,” but as Stieglitz could not make his own wheels and algebraic
formulae clear, we have our doubts. Could these circles in the caricaturists’ design of Stieglitz’s
personality be something of a subtle joke on the part of de Zayas?
“A New York Society Leader” is represented here as a sort of black eclipse overshadow-
ing some curved lines. Picabia, who is partly responsible for this disease attacking de
Zayas, is represented as three half-portions of shark’s teeth with three formulae written
between the jags of the teeth as: a plus b plus c; and a plus b; and B, there being a tre-
mendous significance in the proper capitalization of these letter-symbols. If Gaby Deslys
ever sees the burst of black crayon over some wabbly designs that is her “expression” she
will exclaim “Jamais!” and arrive at being a real Futurist by destroying it. And we
wouldn’t blame her a bit. Just to show how easy it is to be in the Matisse galley, if you
want to row with that crew, de Zayas has done a caricature of Regina Badet in the Post-
Impression vein which is a little too lovely in form and a great deal too nice in color to be a
really truly Matisse.
J. Edgar Chamberlin in the “N. Y. Mail”:
Marius de Zayas, in his exhibition of caricatures at the Photo-Secession Gallery, has two
kinds of pictures. One set we may call the real caricature—the caricature of men and women
in which some trait or characteristic is exaggerated in such a way as to make the picture look
more like the person than the person looks like himself. Several of these are excellent—notably
the caricature of Rodin, which is superb, and that of Charles Darnton, which is one of the
most brilliant examples of work of that sort that has ever been seen in this town.
The other sort is a caricature of the caricature. It gives us a lot of black disks for a man
who wears eye-glasses, and puts an algebraic equation, or rather a lot of algebraic symbols
that make no equation at all, in the place of a man’s mouth. For Gaby Deslys it gives us an
explosion of fluff all going upward, and a complicated design of wriggles underneath, suggesting
about a hundred legs.
In all this, of course, Mr. de Zayas is only having fun with his public, and incidentally
caricaturing cubism and futurism. He says he isn’t—he makes a great bluff at sincerity and
purpose, and the “conjunction of spirit and matter,” but that only serves to make the whole
thing a better joke.
If the reader goes to see Mr. de Zayas’s exhibition, he may not be able to see the joke in
the algebraic and geometrical caricatures, but he will see something original, and he will see
great art in the half dozen comprehensible caricatures.
Royal Cortissoz in the “N. Y. Tribune”:
The last exhibition of the season at the Photo-Secession Gallery is one of caricatures,
“absolute and relative,” by Marius de Zayas. It forms a sort of postscript to the freakish side
of the recent Armory show, an affair of bizarre absurdity. In a few of his caricatures, those
which we suppose are to be taken as “relative,” Mr. de Zayas treats his figures in a rational
manner and is cleverly amusing. The “absolute” performances suggest the disordered
dreams of some Cubist mathematician. Travelers back from Africa sometimes tell weird
tales about the transmission of news among the natives in that mysterious continent. When
Major General Sir Steptoe Powncey makes a sudden foray out of Stellenbosch and inconti-
nently casts a shoe, to the exacerbation of every nerve possessed by every member of his staff,
it is said that whole parasangs away, in the heart of the jungle, some cheerful nigger will turn
over and report to his fellow tribesmen that they must look out for squalls, as “Massa Powncey
hab cast a shoe; he mad almost to bust.” Perhaps if that dusky oracle could be brought
to the Photo-Secession Gallery he might, with a savage’s clairvoyance, divine what is hidden
in these caricatures. It is altogether too “absolute” for us to sense it.
Charles H. Caffin in the “N. Y. American”:
Marius de Zayas is exhibiting a few of his latest caricatures at the Little Gallery, No. 291
Fifth Avenue. Here is an artist whose very unusual ability New York has all but overlooked.

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