Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1914 (Heft 46))

CARICATURE: ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE

DURING my experience in the practice of caricature, I have come to the
conclusion through experimental analysis, that the facial expression
and the expression of the body of a man reveal only his habits, his
social customs, never or at any rate very seldom, his psychological self, and
absolutely never his specific value, place or significance in relation to existing
things.
Now matter cannot exist without spirit, nor can spirit exist without mat-
ter. But, though they are inseparable, they constitute two different entities.
We cannot therefore represent the spirit of a thing by its purely material
entity. We cannot represent materially something that is essentially imma-
terial, unless we do it by the use of symbols. Mathematics are essentially
symbolical, they are the purest expression of symbolism. They represent
material or immaterial things by abstract equivalents. We can represent
psychological and metaphysical entities by algebraic signs and solve their
problems through mathematics. We can represent the plastic psychology and
the plastic metaphysics of matter by their geometrical equivalents. But we
cannot represent both the psychology and the metaphysics of spirit and
matter by only one of the two methods. In order then to have a perfect rep-
resentation of an existing thing, we must represent it in its two essential
principles, spirit and matter, but also in conjunction with a third principle;
the initial force of the individual; force which binds the spirit and the matter
together and makes them actuate. This initial force marks the specific value
of things.
Limiting ourselves to the study of man, we can state the following:
! Memory—acquired knowledge.
Understanding—capability of learning—in-
telligence.
Volition—controller or regulator of physical
desires, vices and virtues.
2. Matter is represented, naturally, by the human body.
3. The initial force is represented by the trajectory that is marked by the
passage of the individual through life.
This passage of the individual through life must be related to the evolution
of humanity. Therefore, I consider five classes of trajectories.
I. Those that have no beginning and no end, that is, those belonging to
individuals who, by atavism, have a tacit or unacquired knowledge of the
general progress up to the time when they begin to actuate and during their
life contribute to the general progress without arriving at a conclusion.
II. Those that have no beginning, but have an end; belonging to indi-
viduals who are born under the same circumstances as the above, but who do
arrive at a conclusion.

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