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

and in conjunction with elaborate chiaroscuro, it is here applied in broad daylight to increase
the actuality of the facts.
In this rendering of light Burty displays a feeling for and familiarity with chromatics that
may well be an echo of his musical training. His color values are singularly sensitive and withal
virile in expression. For this young painter, so far, is not bent on idealizing the actual.
I would rather say the motive is the reverse—namely, to actualize the idea.
Mr. McBride in the New York Sun:
What would be considered a courageous act in any one else, but with Mr. Stieglitz will
pass as a matter of course, is his giving a “first appearance” to Frank Burty of Paris. It is
literally a first appearance anywhere for Mr. Burty, as he has not shown even in Paris. This
must be mere self-restraint upon Mr. Burty’s part, since these things would have a “success
fou” over there, being decidedly in the mode. Here their success is problematical, especially
since Mr. Cox has begun raging up and down through the land, frightening people away from the
Photo-Sesesh. Possibly not more than twenty-four people in all will truly like them at first
sight, but we beg to be included in the number.
Mr. Burty’s history is slight, but as far as it goes interesting. It seems that he has only
been painting four years. He went abroad—he is an American—to study music, and it is said
that it was while sitting for a portrait to Pablo Picasso that the scales fell from his eyes and he
received cubistic sight forthwith and has had the power to feel and project in four dimensions
ever since.
The history stops there. Whether Pablo Picasso counselled him to study with a plumb
line in the Academie Julien or gave him of his own knowledge is not said. Certainly long before
the four years were up “this one,” to quote Miss Gertrude Stein, “knew that what he was
doing would do for others.” A New York connoisseur bought Mr. Burty’s “Fortifications.”
Mr. Stieglitz saw it and knew instantly that an exhibition of such work would do for him.
Now that all the pictures are hung he is as pleased as Punch with it. Mr. Walkowitz also
likes it. Mr. Marin, Paul Haviland, Mr. Hapgood, Mr. de Zayas, Mrs. Mabel Dodge, all
approve of it. The chance to be number nine upon this list is yours, dear reader. The rush
has not yet begun. ,
* * * *
The “Fortifications” was painted in 1911, one year after Mr. Burty (pronounced “beer-
tea”) had begun the study of painting. This picture must have amazed and chagrined his pre-
ceptor. It falls to the lot of every instructor to have his pupils chance upon the most heaven-
sent subjects. The fortifications of Paris constitute a perfect theme for a new artist. Mr. Burty
only cubed the soft gray sky. The rest of the picture cubed itself. Its realism is undeniable.
Such cubism is easy to understand. All of Mr. Burty’s work will be sufficiently understood by
every one, for that matter. Apparently his chief desire is to be frank, not to be mysterious, and
he is a cubist only in the sense that Cezanne is. However, he doesn’t follow Cezanne in style.
His nudes and other figure pieces, his still lifes and landscapes are well drawn, in the dis-
turbing modern fashion. The proportions are well enough; the solidity of ladies’ chests and
arms is indicated as firmly as in the best German work, but arrived at with greater economy
of means; the characterization is excellent; the line and color both have the peculiar searching,
nervously sensitive and incessantly truthful air that baffles description, but is ever present in
good “modern art.” The realism that is attained by this nervous line and nervous color offends
the philistines because it is realism. The philistines never begin to hearken to truth until the
speaker has reiterated it so often that his voice takes on the mechanical tones of habit. The
individual of taste, however, gets from Mr. Burty, M. Bonnard, Vallotton, Vuillard and the
others the pleasurable sense of participating in a voyage of discovery. Just how far it will be
continued does not worry these sensible voyageurs. It is not, thank heaven, a Cook’s tour.
We can jump off when we wish.
Mr. Burty is at the beginning of what may be a career. He is not a master, not a leader,
as yet. But he does more than merely rattle Picasso’s dice from the box. He has taken prin-
ciples, not formulas, from his modern friends. Consequently, the peculiar shadow upon the
red tiles under the homely young lady who sits by the window is borrowed not from Matisse,
but from nature. The iron grill has qualities we have seen ourselves in iron grills, but never
before just like that in paint. The iron grill is by no means wonderful, but it is as seen by Mr.