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

Mr. Stieglitz’s sermons, delightfully enigmatical. Mr. De Zayas in a preface written for the
catalogue of his exhibition has given a cue to the modern movement in art that has, at least,
the virtue of precision.
“ During my experience in the practice of caricature I have come to the conclusion through
experimental analysis, that the facial expression and the expression of the body of a man reveal
only his habits, his social customs, never or at any rate very seldom, his psychological self, and
absolutely never his specific value, place or significance in relation to existing things.
“Now matter cannot exist without spirit, nor can spirit exist without matter. But though
they are inseparable, they constitute two different entities. We cannot therefore represent
the spirit of a thing by its purely material entity. We cannot represent materially something
that is essentially immaterial, unless we do it by the use of symbols. Mathematics are essenti-
ally symbolical, they are the purest expression of symbolism. They represent material or
immaterial things by abstract equivalents. We can represent psychological and metaphysical
entities by algebraic signs and solve their problems through mathematics. We can represent
the plastic psychology and the plastic metaphysics of matter by their geometrical equivalents.
But we cannot represent both the psychology and the metaphysics of spirit and matter by only
one of the two methods. In order then to have a perfect representation of an existing thing,
we must represent it in its two essential principles, spirit and matter, but also in conjunction
with a third principle: the initial force of the individual; force which binds the spirit and the
matter together and makes them actuate. The initial force marks the specific value of things.”
I am inclined to believe that Monsieur De Zayas has his tongue in his cheek. The cari-
caturist is naturally a humorist, sometimes he is a practical joker and a few are to be found
so busy with the ridiculous in others that they have no time to take up by gazing into a mirror.
The best of the caricatures in this collection was representative; in it appeared the mediaeval
physiognomy of John Marin, famous for his interpretation of the new Woolworth Building,
presided over, as is the gallery, by High Priest Stieglitz.

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