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

The new sculptor, you will have already surmised, is a modern of the moderns. He is
excessively refined, although those who hold that modern sculpture should imitate Greek
sculpture, in spite of the fact that modern life is nothing like the Greek, will hold otherwise. He
models in the modern “plastic” method.
He tries for the things that Rodin tried for, but being younger he tries in a more exuberant
way. He is in the lyric stage of his life and is busy singing. It is the Rodin of the drawings
that influenced him. He has not as yet looked through the “doors of hell.” He is so young
that no one so far has dared to tell him that there is a hell. I see no indications myself that he
will ever get hell into his work. But he should not be underestimated for that.
Even modern life has its lyric side. Only, only, lyricism has its dangers. Nature ordains
that pure singers die early. It’s the law. Shelley went quickly, and Chatterton quicker.
But who wouldn’t be a Shelley?
Some of this work is artificial. Almost as artificial as modern life. Profound observers
of humanity are aware that the three little locks of hair that curl so gracefully upon the smooth
foreheads of modern Parisiennes are not entirely the work of nature. No, indeed! Curious,
and I am told expensive, emollients are used upon rebellious tresses in order to overcome the
laws of gravity and the efFect of contrary winds.
The sculptor has taken almost as much pains to emphasize these curls as did the young
person herself who suggested the motif. Nevertheless, many people who wish to govern art
production with rules of steel will say such curls in art are immoral. I find that they do not
worry me at all.
There are other essays of art in the exhibition, such as drawings and reliefs, that have so
much strangeness that they will be at once seized upon by the opponents of “plasticity” as
justification for charges of insincerity against the artist. It is a matter of debate whether such
things should be shown, especially at a debut. They are experiments in different lines, and
some of these lines the artist will abandon later. It is scarcely necessary to take the public
into absolute confidence at a first appearance, or to show laboratory practice. One complete
bit of self-expression is more to the public than a hundred half truths—or ought to be.
-in the “Springfield Republican”:
A curiously lucid originality is what impresses the Evening Post’s critic in the exhibition
of sculpture and drawings by the Polish artist, Eli Nadelman, at the Photo-Secession gallery,
New York. The general impression, on entering the room where the principal works are shown,
is of a harmony possible only to a consistently developed idea of art. The work is consistent,
in fact, to a remarkable degree. It betrays no impulses, no uncontrolled nor unconscious mo-
ments. Everything is logical, clear, severely held within the rules of a chosen convention. It is
certain to give offense to those who place their simple faith in unquestioning imitation of nature,
for, although it is representative in a formal way, it is anything but naturalistic. There is a
certain sculptural importance in some of the figures and heads, in spite of the strong element
of caricature. For example, a small bronze figure gilded, a fat woman with tiny head and feet,
is absurd—it makes you laugh—and yet it is right! It contrives somehow to justify itself. In
the case of two marble heads with highly polished surface, like a head by the same artist shown
last season privately by an uptown dealer, the Greek convention is used with a sense of humor,
but the thing is definitely planned. It is understood. There is little or no emotional force in
the work, but there is logic, humor, knowledge, and a streak of art.
Forbes Watson in the “N. Y. Evening Post”:
A curiously lucid originality is to be noted in the exhibition of sculpture and drawings by
the Polish artist, Eli Nadelman, at the Photo-Secession Gallery, 291 Fifth Avenue. The gen-
eral impression, on entering the room where the principal works are shown is of a harmony
possible only to a consistently developed idea of art. The work is consistent, in fact, to a re-
markable degree. It betrays no impulses, no uncontrolled nor unconscious moments. Every-
thing is logical, clear, severely held within the rules of a chosen convention. It is certain to
give offence to those who place their simple faith in unquestioning imitation of nature, for,
although it is representative in a formal way, it is anything but naturalistic.
There is a certain sculptural importance in some of the figures and heads, in spite of the
strong element of caricature. For example, a small bronze figure gilded, a fat woman with tiny
head and feet, is absurb—it makes you laugh—and yet it is right! It contrives somehow to

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