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

approaching the problem by a variety of different roads, are heading for the same end—the
abandonment of direct representation and the plastic rendering of abstract suggestions.
These artists are obeying an intuition which impels them to make this advance toward
abstract expression. For some ten years, long before he was aware of what was being done
in Europe, Walkowitz has felt the urge of this impulse.
If his subject, for example, were some workman at his arduous toil, it was not the per-
sonality of the individual, but the general idea of strength, concentrated on a mighty effort
that he sought to suggest. Were it two lovers, clasped in embrace, the nude form became
the symbol of the complete surrender of each to a union of spiritual ecstasy.
It is unnecessary to argue that this is a purer and higher kind of expression than that
which is derived from observing the love encounters of two specific individuals. Meanwhile
such expression is possible, though somewhat rare, in the case of painting, which is based on
the actual representation of the human form. The intuition of some modern artists aims
at a still more abstract means of expression.
Now the highest love, though it rises superior to flesh, has its roots in flesh. And this
is equally true whether the beauty of flesh, or its imagined beauty, stirs to an ecstasy of pas-
sion or the devastation of flesh excites a passion of pity. Our noblest as well as our lowest
emotions originate in flesh sensations.
Now, can the artist take the abstract idea of flesh, detached from particular reference
to the accident of the individual, and use it, in the way a musician uses a theme, as a motive
by means of which he may stimulate in others the abstract sensations and emotions of which
he himself is conscious?
This is what Walkowitz essays to do in many of these drawings. He takes from the
whole of the nude figure some part; gives you not the representation of it, but the sensation
of it, and composes it into a scheme in which, among the repetitions and varieties of rhythm
and tone, the sensation is felt like the motive in a fugue of music. The result is a har-
monic composition, based upon the theme of flesh, which stimulates pure abstractions
of sensation.
When an artist so works, on what does he rely? Firstly, upon stimulating in us
an imagined sense of touch; secondly, on the suggestion of life in every part of his
composition.
It is a long accepted fact that in comparison of sensations the eye-sense is but a pass-
port to the sense of touch; that an artist will most readily stir our emotions if in what he shows
us he can suggest the tactile values and through them stimulate the actual or imagined tactile
sense which is active or latent in every sentient being. Even a blind man can distinguish
by touch the difference between a live body and a dead one.
But the joy of touch sensation has its source in the life of the thing touched. If you have
any doubt of this pass your fingers over a live cat and then a dead one. But handle an in-
animate object, such as a bit of fine old Japanese lacquer work, and the joy of doing so has
its source in the creativeness of the artist, who has recreated his own sense of life in its exqui-
site contours and surfaces.
Now the modern artist is allying himself with the scientist and all modern thinkers in
conceiving of life as universal; a miracle of movement, derived no man knows whence, which
weaves the universe into a whole of related and conflicting rhythms. That which permeates
the whole exists in every part. So to an artist a single line, if it grow out of his own sense
of life, becomes a symbol of the universal life; and combinations of lines and tones and colors
become the abstract conception of universal relations and conflicts.
Do these drawings succeed in conveying to others the artist’s intention? If they do not,
the fault is not necessarily his. From a symphony each member of the audience receives
only what he is capable of receiving. Meanwhile, in music we have accustomed ourselves
to expect and to receive sensations that are abstract and all the more moving on that account.
How far can we extend a corresponding receptivity to abstractions interpreted through
drawing and color?

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