Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1913 (Heft 44))

It is sometimes a question in our minds whether it is Mr. Stieglitz or the pictures on the
wall at the Photo-Secession that constitute the exhibition. The pictures change from time
to time in the little room, different artists emerge from somewhere to puzzle us, and having
succeeded go again into the mist, but Mr. Stieglitz is always in the centre of the stage, con-
tinually challenging us, continually worrying us, teasing us, frightening and inflaming us
according to our various natures.
We suppose there have been more violent altercations upon the subject of art in that
gallery in the last ten years than in all the rest of the city combined, including even the Lotos
Club. The maimed, the blind and the halt among the academicians are held up relentlessly
to the light that we may see them as they are. The villains in that body—there are some,
it seems—are mentioned fearlessly by name and consigned to the exact strata that they shall
occupy in the new Stieglitz inferno. Had ever a detectaphone been installed in the establish-
ment we shudder to think of the consequences. As it is, the defenders of the faith, the faith
that was, that is, can be seen almost any day fleeing from the Walkowitz drawings with hands
raised to heaven, or eyes moist with vexatious tears as the minions of the little elevator con-
veys them down to outer darkness.
Of course business is not as it was. The great eruption of last year, when the armory
exhibition showed us fashions in art that none of us had dreamed of, and that were as repul-
sive to our eyes as the hobbled skirt was at first to ladies, cannot be duplicated even in minia-
ture so soon. Nature requires time to store up sufficient steam, gas or whatever it is for loud
noises. But on the other hand it would never do to close up the shop. Mr. Stieglitz therefore
resumes business at the old stand.
How people can have the heart to quarrel with Mr. Stieglitz we cannot comprehend.
Like Charles II., he never says an absolutely foolish thing. He is most guarded in his refer-
ences to Rembrandt. Comparisons between the work of Rembrandt and the particular young
artist who is exhibiting at the time in the Photo-Sesesh are always quoted. It is a young
Harvard student who hitherto had not been much interested in art who sees the marked
rapprochement between the new and the older master. It is a young lady, daughter of a
clergyman, who owns a precious Rembrandt etching and who finds that a Whistler cannot
be hung in the same room with it but that a Walkowitz can. There is no hint in this of Mr.
Stieglitz’s own opinion.
He says invariably that he has had no occult vision that these proteges of his are to be
the great men of the future. He merely feels that they are tender, sympathetic beings, who
seem to him keyed to our present needs. He doesn’t know that they are great, but he intends
to give them a chance to be great. Anything to quarrel about in that? On the contrary,
it’s fine.
*****
Mr. Walkowitz’s new work cannot properly be called cubistic. It is rhythmic, synthetic,
disintegrated, but it takes more than that to be cubic. In the unfairly cursory glimpse of
the drawings that the fates permitted us we detected no hint of fourth dimensions. We spent
an hour and a quarter in the gallery, ten minutes of which was devoted to the pictures and
one hour and five minutes to delightful conversation. Hence we feel we have a legitimate
excuse to go again—and we shall.
In the meantime we can only report vaguely of Mr. Walkowitz that the influences brought
to bear upon him during the past year have produced visible results. The work last year
had a hushed quality. It was as though some one were communicating to us in a whisper
the news of some dreadful calamity. The voice this year is distinctly louder. The colors
are brighter, much bolder, but still mournful. The people lying upon the grass in Central
Park are not holiday makers. There will never be a holiday for Mr. Walkowitz. Instead
they have been flung down in an exhausted state upon the lawn, worsted but still breathing
after another of the unkind tussles with misfortune that Mr. Walkowitz’s dream people are
always undergoing.