DOI Artikel:
John W. Breyfogle, 291
DOI Artikel:William Zorach, 291
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31336#0042
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291
An arena for disembodied souls; for star dust, molecules, animalcula.
House of crying dust and living winds.
An up-side-down house; idealistic backward and reformatory; builded
upon empty space between existences as a Forum for speechless life essence.
Place for utterance of unformable thoughts; for cries of cosmic labour.
Birthplace of psychic electrons. Fountain of Youth. Phoenix nest.
To enter is to leave life; to rest, to rejuvenate; to remain is decay.
John W. Breyfogle
29I
About six or seven years ago I heard a lecture at the Art Students League
—I think it was by Albert Sterner—and in the course of the lecture he men-
tioned “291” Fifth Avenue. He spoke of weird drawings such as any child
could do, and groups of long-haired individuals who stood around and raved
about them. While he was talking, I jotted down “291,” “Stieglitz,” and
decided to go the next morning and see for myself.
I rode up in the tiny elevator and entered the little gallery. The quiet
light was full of a soothing mystic feeling and around the room, and on the
square under glass in the middle of the room, I looked at what I now know
were Matisse drawings. I was all alone and I stood and absorbed the atmos-
phere of the place and of the drawings. They had no meaning to me as Art
as I then knew Art, but the feeling I got from them still clings to me and
always will. It was the feeling of a bigger, deeper, more simple and archaic
world. I stood long and absorbed “291”—the quiet, peaceful little room,
the strange and wonderful life revealed to me and the square-faced, bushy-
haired man with penetrating eyes that swayed in and swayed out of the
doorway. I left feeling I had seen something living, something that would
live with me, and that has lived with me. For now after an absence of three
years I have visited “291” very often and to me it is a wonderful living
place palpitating with red blood—a place to which people bring their finest
and that brings out the finest that is within all those that come in actual
contact with it.
William Zorach
38
An arena for disembodied souls; for star dust, molecules, animalcula.
House of crying dust and living winds.
An up-side-down house; idealistic backward and reformatory; builded
upon empty space between existences as a Forum for speechless life essence.
Place for utterance of unformable thoughts; for cries of cosmic labour.
Birthplace of psychic electrons. Fountain of Youth. Phoenix nest.
To enter is to leave life; to rest, to rejuvenate; to remain is decay.
John W. Breyfogle
29I
About six or seven years ago I heard a lecture at the Art Students League
—I think it was by Albert Sterner—and in the course of the lecture he men-
tioned “291” Fifth Avenue. He spoke of weird drawings such as any child
could do, and groups of long-haired individuals who stood around and raved
about them. While he was talking, I jotted down “291,” “Stieglitz,” and
decided to go the next morning and see for myself.
I rode up in the tiny elevator and entered the little gallery. The quiet
light was full of a soothing mystic feeling and around the room, and on the
square under glass in the middle of the room, I looked at what I now know
were Matisse drawings. I was all alone and I stood and absorbed the atmos-
phere of the place and of the drawings. They had no meaning to me as Art
as I then knew Art, but the feeling I got from them still clings to me and
always will. It was the feeling of a bigger, deeper, more simple and archaic
world. I stood long and absorbed “291”—the quiet, peaceful little room,
the strange and wonderful life revealed to me and the square-faced, bushy-
haired man with penetrating eyes that swayed in and swayed out of the
doorway. I left feeling I had seen something living, something that would
live with me, and that has lived with me. For now after an absence of three
years I have visited “291” very often and to me it is a wonderful living
place palpitating with red blood—a place to which people bring their finest
and that brings out the finest that is within all those that come in actual
contact with it.
William Zorach
38
