Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1916 (Heft 48))

point of view of expression, have really done work of any importance. And
by importance we mean work that has some relatively lasting quality, that
element which gives all art its real significance.
HARTLEY EXHIBITION
Towards the end of December, Marsden Hartley returned from a two
years’ stay in Berlin. The pictures which he had painted there during that
time were held up in transit, owing to the War, so that they did not arrive in
New York until April first. Forty of these pictures, oil paintings, were hung
in the “291” rooms from April fourth to May twenty-second. We reprint
the leaflet which accompanied this exhibition.
The pictures in this present exhibition are the work of the past two years. The entire
series forming my first one-man show in Europe which took place in Europe last October.
These pictures were to have been shown in these galleries as previously announced in February,
but owing to blockades, war difficulties, etcetera, they have only just arrived. The Germanic
group is but part of a series which I had contemplated of movements in various areas of war
activity from which I was prevented, owing to the difficulties of travel. The forms are only
those which I have observed casually from day to day. There is no hidden symbolism whatso-
ever in them; there is no slight intention of that anywhere. Things under observation, just
pictures of any day, any hour. I have expressed only what I have seen. They are merely
consultations of the eye—in no sense problem; my notion of the purely pictural.
Marsden Hartley.
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE—C. DUNCAN—RENE LAFFERTY
In spite of the lateness of the season when the chief art critics of the
New York papers had already been laid off for the summer, “291,” from
May twenty-third to July fifth, presented to the public for the first time the
work of three young people: ten charcoal drawings by Georgia O’Keeffe of
Virginia, occupying the walls of the main room; two watercolors and one
drawing by C. Duncan of New York, and three oils by Rene Lafferty of
Philadelphia, occupying the walls of the small inner room.
This exhibition, mainly owing to Miss O’Keeffe’s drawings, attracted
many visitors and aroused unusual interest and discussion. It was different
from anything that had been shown at “291.” Three big, fine natures were
represented. Miss O’Keeffe’s drawings besides their other value were of
intense interest from a psycho-analytical point of view. “291” had never
before seen woman express herself so frankly on paper.

Relating to this exhibition we print a short critique written for, and a
letter sent to, us:
The story of aesthetic is song of a widening consciousness. One contradiction is the
Puritan fathers making brittle halos from narrowness, Pedantry burnished and with the nervous-
ness of combined duty and unintelligence distributed them. Clear living though is clear assayor
moving always with sensitiveness and compelling slow resource to its often tragic end.
Among the few incomparable assets are the fire and flow of a fresh sensualism; tremulous,
giving—a flower, opening; colossal with rise and surge of interwinding Niagara rapid; or stifled
internecine, insipid, dishonest, with the assistance of parental and social ignorance and coward-
ice. Its beauty in Anglo-Saxon cultures today pays the cost of an insufficiency that must be
incomparable in history.
Miss Virginia O’Keeffe’s drawings in the season’s last exhibit at “291” make this reflec-
tion unavoidable. Behind these delicate, frequently immense, feminine forms the world is
distant. Poised and quick—elate—teeming a deep rain; erect, high, wide turning, unre-

12