Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1914 (Heft 45))

this was the first occasion on which America has seen his work in the originals.
Simplified in the extreme, Brancusi’s sculpture makes its appeal through the
sensitiveness of line and the marvelous quality of a form in which no detail
detracts from the unity of conception. Moreover, Brancusi’s technical
knowledge and feeling for the material are so keen that the same subject in-
volves certain differences of treatment according as it is wrought in bronze,
marble, or wood; and even defects in the material are made contributory to
the composition. Never before has an exhibition in the little gallery seemed
to be so complete, or the gallery itself so choicely fitted to its contents.
EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS BY FRANK BURTY
The Exhibition Season of “291” closed with an Exhibition of paintings
and drawings by Frank Burty, a young American, born and bred and living in
France. The quiet reserve of Burty’s paintings disappointed the New York
public, ever looking for sensationalism. The appreciation of the force con-
cealed in his measured expression, of the musical quality suggested by his
use of lines, and softened with vibrant tones, was left to the artists, and to a
few of the critics who visited the Exhibition. The paintings of Frank Burty
were shown from April sixth to May sixth.
Paul B. Haviland.

As is our custom, we reprint for the sake of record, some of the Press
Comments upon above exhibitions:
Mr. McBride in the New York Sun:
The three forewords are lovely. First there is Mabel Dodge’s, saying that if Marsden
Hartley’s pictures do not cure you at least they will not kill you and advising you to try them.
She warns you quite honestly that they may arouse in you your own feelings, but that is only
part of the treatment and you should not be alarmed, but just swallow them down.
Then there is Hartley’s own foreword in which he says, “What’s the blank blank use of
blank blank forewords anyhow? Forewords ain’t no good.”
And then there is a wonderful foreword by the great Gertrude Stein, which she has made
quite simple for us so we will all understand and has written it in the form of a play. The
characters are a cook, a dark, Marsden Hartley and a soldiers’ chorus, and in the last act there’s
the wedding, and they live happy ever after. Marsden marries the cook of course. Lucky
dog! We shall all go to his dinner parties. But of course the wedding cannot take place until
after he sells a few of the pictures.
What superb pictures! They’ll sell, sure. Everybody will wish to have one. But the
exhibition lasts until February 5, and you can’t take the pictures away until then no matter
how many you buy.
As the forewords are sure to raise a rumpus, sure to be read with the emphasis upon the
wrong words by pig-headed philistines, to rural audiences who will guffaw loudly their own lack
of sensitiveness, we hasten to give Miss Stein’s foreword in its entirety, that those who are
“en rapport,” as Mrs. Dodge puts it, may be consoled by it, uplifted and “intensified in their
own being,” and those who wish to guffaw may guffaw and get it over with.
We shan’t give all of Mabel Dodge’s. She tells too much. What’s the use of giving
everything away? We are all entitled to our little mysteries, especially Gertrude. Why did she
say “Pictures must be seen and felt directly in order to be received. No other introduction is
necessary, or can be anything more than futile. As futile as the description of music?” Why

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