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

Just to show what he can do in an academic way, the artist has a watercolor drawing of a
factory town across the Hudson that would restore the aforesaid commuter to a proper state
of self-respect under the circumstances we have just suggested. In one respect this painter’s
manner fails of the first purpose of all ultra-modernism. It is neither meaningless nor irritating,
but is merely naive.
Elizabeth Luther Carey in the “N. Y. Times”:
The exhibition of drawings and paintings by Oscar Bluemner at the Photo-Secession
Galleries reveals a sane and logical follower of modern theory. Mr. Bluemner has worked toward
an abstract presentation of natural scenes that shall not rob them of their recognizable quality.
He has taken the landscapes and town scenes of New Jersey and made pictures of them, leaving
out such ingredients of reality as were unsuited to his purpose and forcing appearances into com-
pliances with his artistic scheme, but never denying or discarding nature. His results, seen
chronologically, show an increasing gravity of color and largeness of construction. His training
as an architect stands him in good stead, enabling him not only to see the constructive relations
of his subject, but to stick to essential forms, whatever may happen to the minor detail. His
use of a white halo back of the principal objects has a look of mannerism, owing to its frequent
repetition, but it undeniably provides the effect of distance without the tawdry tricks of illusion.
The presence in one of the more interesting subjects of a pool of clear water, painted as realisti-
cally as Cranach painted his pool of the Fountain of Youth, throws a rather astonishing light
on the possibility of combining abstract and representative art without producing chaos.

Charles H. Caffin in the “N. Y. American”:
At No. 291 Fifth Avenue the gallery of the Photo-Secession is an exhibition of sculpture
and drawings by Eli Nadelman, an artist of Polish extraction who has been working for many
years in Paris.
It is an exhibition that should be visited and studied by every young painter and sculptor;
by every artist, that is to say, who has not yet become hardened by habit but is still in the
stage—not to be reckoned by years—of being open to impressions that are keenly related to
his art. For it is an exhibition at least of very remarkable craftsmanship. And it is a crafts-
manship, directly expressive of this artist’s conviction of the prime necessity, both in painting
and sculpture, of plasticity.
This conviction is stated by Nadelman in the foreword to the catalogue. Plasticity is
the chief article of his artistic belief. Nor do I understand from what he has written that he
believes he has invented something new.
On the contrary, he is only reminding himself and others whom it may concern of an old
principle that during the nineteenth century was crowded out of consideration by the artists’
preoccupation with naturalism and impressionism.
Whether they recorded what they saw or the impression which they had derived from
the things seen, they were satisfied to represent or interpret the subject mainly, if not exclu-
sively, as it appeals to the eye. They were little or not at all concerned with appealing to the
touch sensations; with interpreting, that is to say, a sense of the actual bulk and gravity of
objects, and with stimulating the spectator’s appreciation of form and of the significance of form
by actual or imagined sensations of touch.
Holding this belief that, as he says, it is “the plasticity of the image that awakes sensations
in us,” Nadelman inevitably rejects that kind of representation or interpretation which is ex-
pressed in “a geometrical abstract form.”
It is in his own application of his belief in plasticity that this exhibition is particularly
interesting. There are some pen and ink drawings, studies of the volume of form in heads and
draperies, in which the different directions and qualities of the several planes have been searched
most closely and rendered with enjoy ably conscientious precision.
And the severe exquisiteness of the craftsmanship is felt as a necessary expression of the
clarity and logic of the artist’s study. These drawings are technically and intellectually beauti-
ful and, put alongside of the average studies of form, would be apt to make the latter seem slip-
shod and inconclusive.
A similarly exquisite justness of means to end characterizes the modeling of the sculptures
according as their material is marble, bronze, wood or plaster. For, as every true technician