Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1914 (Heft 47))

MULTUM IN PARVO

The ability to offer much in little has always seemed the specific achieve-
ment of 291. There may be misgivings as to the orthodoxy of what is
presented; there can be no gainsaying the manner in which the various
aesthetic phenomena are placed upon view. No gallery the world over is so
direct in appeal, or so diagnostic in method. 291 goes straight to the heart
of things and, in consequence, its message has acquired a penetrative power
which is frankly unparalleled. You cannot sympathetically' examine the
more exclusive manifestations of art under a vast expanse of glass and steel.
Large exhibitions are extensive and impersonal, small ones intensive and
individual, and it is the recognition of this fundamental truism that, more
than anything, accounts for the effectiveness of 291.
Compact and concentrated, the periodic demonstrations to which we are
accustomed at 291 possess that dynamic impetus without which art de-
generates into a sterile and soulless formula. One thinks of 291 as an outpost,
an experimental station, quite as much as a gallery, and nothing could be
more stimulating than such a state of mind. An institution, though by no
means institutional, 291 betrays no set programme, no suspicion of parti-
pris. Casual fragments by the supreme protagonists of the modern move-
ment, Cezanne and Rodin, the naive pencillings of a mere anonymous
child, or the austere abstraction of Pablo Picasso find equal consideration
upon these modest wall surfaces. You may, indeed, glean as much by noting
the emplacement of a bowl of flowers or a sprig of autumn leaves as from
an exhibition itself. The essential fact about 291 is that every detail illus-
trates that most salutary of principles, the principle of aesthetic vitality.
Art is here regarded as a living organism, as something fluid and fluxional,
not fixed and final.
And yet, despite the spirit of ferment which is the keynote of these dis-
plays, there is nothing strident or aggressive about 291. A genial liftman
from southern isles greets you in mellow monosyllables. The presiding aegis
amid more rarefied regions above descants upon his aims and ambitions with
a militancy more persuasive than pugnacious. A decade has drifted by
since he first entered the lists, for this year, be it known, marks the decennial
of 291. The cause which he espoused almost single-handed has become a
characteristic feature of the progressive development of modern art, yet he
and his setting have survived unchanged. Multum in parvo has remained
his motto, and to this has been coupled an indifference to material con-
siderations as rare as it is refreshing.
The chief reason why we spontaneously concur in proffering this sym-
posium is because 291 has taught us not alone to seek for much in little.
It has, above all, taught us to consider art not as a career, or a profession,
but as a spiritual experience.
Christian Brinton

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