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

It is the kind of mind that, though one may not be able to appreciate its products, is
worth examining for the sake of its processes. How shall one approach them? By way of an
experiment, let us imagine ourselves in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We have been present at a
service perhaps; the sound of voices is hushed and the last strains of the organ are dying away
amid the aisles and vaulting. Our eyes and ears have been saturated with sensations; but in
the pause that follows, instead of being more or less hypnotised by the various impressions,
let us suppose that our intellectual faculties are quickened to an intense degree of activity. We
become acutely aware of the embodied forces that produced the sensations.
The column, as a column, is forgotten in the sense of its being a support; the arch is real-
ized in its capacity of sustaining the weight of the clerestory, and the vaulting is analyzed as an
adjustment of conflicting strains, the lateral pressures of which are offset by side aisles and
flying buttresses. Intellectually, or, as we say, in our mind’s eye, we have pictured the edifice
as a bodiless structure of innumerable forces, some in correspondence, some in conflict, but all
organically harmonized by the engineering intellect of the architect.
Then, into this skeleton of intellectualized sensations, may pass an intellectualized impres-
sion of the music. Part of it was human, part instrumental. But the consciousness of the
congregation and the organ have all but left our memory; it is the varieties and qualities of
sound, its crescendos and diminuendos, and, above all, its rhythms, that hold our mind in this
moment of intense activity.
Again, the impulse to sensation has been one of corresponding and conflicting forces,
organically harmonized into rhythmic structure.
Now, supposing one wished to communicate these intellectualized sensations to some one
else. Personally I should try to do it by a few words, selected to indicate my train of thought,
and uttered with suitable variety of pitch and tonal shading, while I filled in the expression by
pantomimic gesture. Meanwhile, if it were possible to photograph the inflection of the voice
and the cadence of gesture with the words appearing in print as they occur, the result would
be a moving picture of my intellectualized sensations.
This in a way is what Picasso does; only his picture is once and for all in front of us, and
instead of rambling on as mine would do, is itself a structure of harmonic completeness.
Whether you care to have even intellectualized sensations conveyed to you in so rarified
an abstract form is another matter. Meanwhile the processes of Picasso’s mind, as laid bare
in these drawings, might well be studied by our artists, not for imitation—they are too personal
to this particular artist—but for the purpose of eliminating from their work its concrete super-
fluities and raising its capacity of intellectual suggestiveness.
Manuel Komroff in the “N. Y. Call”:
Perhaps the last word of the futurists—and perhaps not. Picasso’s development from
his pictures shown at the International Exhibition in 1913, and his work shown this summer
at the Washington Square Gallery, is not very great, yet one can easily see the great struggle
and attempt he is making for a newer form. A form of picture which would translate graph-
ically an emotion of music. In a small way this is quite possible, as his exhibition at 291 Fifth
Avenue shows, but one is inclined to feel as though the attempt is not as successful as it might
have been. Of course, I speak only for myself; some of my friends say that the work is successful
in transmitting the sensation of music, while, on the other hand, some say it is impossible.
One can only judge such things for one’s self.

Elizabeth Luther Carey in the “N. Y. Times”:
Picabia is now at the Photo-Secession Gallery, with an exhibition logically following that
of Picasso last month. Three pictures with titles have perhaps a direct bearing upon the
artist’s intention, but are not to be read by one who runs except in their detachment, “Marriage
Comique” is one, and another is “Je revois en souvenire ma chere Udnie,” both most unpleasant
arrangements of strangely sinister abstract forms that convey the sense of evil without direct
statement. A much breezier though still abstract composition is that entitled “C’est de moi
qu’il s’agit.” On the whole it is not an agreeable change from Picasso, whose strangeness is
more often than not sheer beauty.
Probably we shall have another chance to appreciate Picasso. “If at first you don’t
succeed-” In time, no doubt, such is the assiduity of those charged with the education
of the public, we shall have all the Picassos, the many gifted personalities working through

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