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

varied and more sensitive. Most remarkable, however, in its revelation of the child mind is a
drawing of pure imagination.
The child herself has given the clue to this arrangement of bands of color, which form
irregular concentric circles round a central white core. “The Soul of God,” she has lettered
on this drawing, “is like a Lily, pure, white, with golden thoughts in it.” And on the core
of this design, in letters of gold, she has written, “Good, I must do good,” and she adds, “And
good He always did.”
By another little girl is a number of pictures in which a horse is the chief motive. The
variety and truthful suggestion of its movements, and the way in which the details of landscape
are blended with the patterns of line and color are quite surprising.
But possibly, from a larger point of view, the most surprising thing about this exhibition
is the surprise we feel. It is an indication of our appalling ignorance of the miracle of the child
instinct and of our settled habit of ignoring it and thwarting its evolution by imposing upon it
our unscientific and unnatural conventions.
Mr. McBride in the New York Sun:
Owing to the difficulties that the customs authorities are having in deciding whether the
Brancusi sculptures are works of art or something else, Mr. Stieglitz explains, the present exhi-
bition of children’s work will be continued in the little gallery at 291 Fifth avenue for another
week. These drawings will pleasantly beguile a half an hour for any art lover, and particularly
will please those students who have been considering the lot of the primitive artists with envy.
The drawings certainly exhibit all the qualities that are so desperately lacking in the art
of today; imaginativeness, poetry, decoration and ideas. The childish admiration for horses is
much in evidence, and a majority of the sketches are of the noblest animal.
Adolph Wolff in the International:
It was not a pagan revel like the Kit Kat ball, but it was a post-impressionistic cubistic
futurist revel; and yet, it was not altogether a revel, the ball was meant for pleasure while the
exhibition was meant—for business. Excepting this slight difference the analogy is perfect.
As to the costume ball, so too the exhibition, the participants came not in their usual clothes,
but specially attired for the occasion. After the ball the revelers resumed their customary
garments; what will the artists do after the exhibition? Will they become their own dear familiar
selves again, or will they continue in their borrowed outfits? That is the question! A question
both tragic and amusing. At any rate the Montross micro-international show gives evidence
of the wonderful spirit of enterprise and the great faculty of adaptation characteristic of the
American business man and artist, two words well nigh synonymous nowadays. The group
of painters headed by Mr. Arthur B. Davies has shown that it is possible to give to the dear
public post-impressionism, cubism and futurism in a form refined, modified, made respectable
and acceptable to the best Society. Aye, even so to speak, Guaranteed under the Pure Food
and Drugs Act. Mr. Davies and his esteemed colleagues, as evidenced by the highly successful
efforts along these new lines, have rendered a signal service both to Art and their country.
* * * *
The exhibition of contemporary art at the National Arts Club was a further demonstration
of the fact that the best things suffer in bad company unless they are in the vast majority,
which alas, was not the case in this instance. An exhibition is somewhat like an orchestra:
each work on view contributes to the general effect on the eye as in the case of the orchestra,
on the ear. We either get a symphony visible or audible, or we get a rubbish heap of color or
sound. In both cases the finer things are lost. A bad one-man show in totality of effect is better
than most mixed shows. There is a certain unity in the one; the other is always more or less
a hodgepodge, and this, alas, in spite of the many good things it contained, is true of the exhibi-
tion of contemporaries at The National Arts Club. With all that, thanks to its note of sincerity,
this exhibition was infinitely superior to the Montross show.
* * * *
The Children’s Exhibition at the Photo-Secession Rooms, 291 Fifth Avenue, affected me
like the sweet fresh breeze that enters a stuffy room when the windows are thrown open on a
bright April morning. Free, frank and joyful are the Little Masters who have made those pic-

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