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

Or perhaps Mr. de Zayas will playfully insert a cabalistic • c” in the center of a cari-
cature of a dancer. Or again, as in his symbolic representation of Mr. Roosevelt, you will
find the sign of infinity divided by I set down as the equivalent of zero. Here the author
undoubtedly tripped; what he meant was the axiomatic statement that i divided by infinity
equals zero. But no matter.
Probably most persons who are confronted with this new kind of caricature or portraiture
will either grow angry and leave at this point or else they will ask Alfred Stieglitz, the presiding
genius of the gallery, what relation these extraordinary proclamations bear to art.
Now this is just what the wary Mr. Stieglitz has been waiting for. If you go away in a
huff he will smile to himself and tell his next guests about it with gusto. If you ask him the
natural question he will gleefully draw forth the latest issue of Camera Work and show you
a really profound chapter written by Mr. de Zayas upon “The Evolution of Form.” And then
he will point to a sentence in the artist’s printed statement regarding these strange
caricatures:
“They are not art, but simply a graphical and plastic synthesis of the analysis of individuals.”
And there you are. De Zayas further states that he represents (i) the spirit of man by
algebraic formulas; (2) man’s material self by geometrical equivalents, and (3) his initial
force, that which binds the spirit and the matter together and makes them actuate, he expresses
by trajectories within the rectangle that encloses the plastic expression and represents life.
Perhaps your best chance of solving these riddles will lie in looking at the caricature of
Stieglitz, not the admirable “relative” caricature showing his human aspect as he and John
Marin, the painter of live buildings, are seen together, but the “absolute” portrait diagram,
whose salient features are ten circles, two of them filled in with solid black, ranged symmetrically
in and upon an arborlike framework. There are some evidently complimentary algebraic
remarks here too.
Mr. Stieglitz will tell you with due solemnity that he himself recognizes what the artist-
analyst meant in this study of his net social and optical value combined. You may perceive
t, but again you may not.
Take next the portrait of Mr. Roosevelt, an enticing affair that might be the detail drawing
of a sort of electric wired bear trap with rows of sharp triangular shapes like shark teeth, the
whole to be interpreted in the light of the wise remark above referred to concerning the rela-
tions of infinity, one and zero.
And there are other celebrities. The Orphic painter, Picabia, seems to simmer down to
three arcs of circles pierced by a diagonal trajectory. Near this is a really handsome likeness
of Gaby Deslys, the dancer, with not one but five pairs of symmetrical and expressive pillars
supporting a horizontal trajectory over which is spread a splendid pattern of lines like a great
fan. If Mile. Deslys was really as overwhelming as this we regret not having seen her in her
material embodiment.
To be fair with Mr. de Zayas, of whose artistic ability along accepted lines and also of
whose mental vigor ample proof has been given before now, it must be added that he is obviously
in earnest. In the Camera Work chapter taken from the new book he is writing on form,
he begins by declaring that “art in its latest manifestation has opened its doors wide to science;
it has ceased to be merely emotional in order to become intellectual.”
And again he remarks that when “art felt the powerful influence of the progress of science
it awoke and broadened its horizon, calling to its aid the resources which science had accumu-
lated. Possibly this only means the absorption of art by science.”
It may be that Mr. de Zayas is a prophet. The impossible is happening every day in
the strange new phenomena of our time. At least he deserves to be seen and heard; he is
already reaching exactly the right audience at the Photo-Secession gallery.
Mr. R. Du Bois in “Arts and Decoration’’:
Another artist given to protect or to explain himself by the employment of words is the
caricaturist Marius De Zayas, whose exhibition at the Little Gallery of the Photo-Secession,
presided over by Preacher Alfred Stieglitz, continued to remain, the later portion, despite

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