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

Willard Huntington Wright in the “International Studio”:
At 291 Fifth Avenue is an exhibition of considerable importance to those interested in
the more individual and vital expression of American Art. Here John Marin exposes about
thirty watercolors which show a remarkable year’s progress toward the profounder art prob-
lems—problems which every sincere modern artist must sooner or later solve for himself.
Marin, unlike many American painters, has chosen to devote his every energy to mastering
them; and it is refreshing to visit an exhibition where one is not confronted with obvious
limitation. Marin’s personality stands forth, healthy and strong, not dependent on the crutches
of second-hand inspiration.
While the passing craze of Futurism, the epidemic of unintelligent distortion seen en
courant in Cezanne and Matisse, and though sterile primitivism of Douanier Rousseau and Zak
have been sweeping over the field of our national art, Marin has forged ahead toward a goal
of his own imagining. No excess of enthusiasm for the easily achieved fame which comes from
painting a la mode has shunted him from his direct path. Beginning with almost literal transla-
tions from landscape, Marin has, in one short year, gone far toward conquering many of the
deeper concerns of composition. To say that he has achieved a finality would only give the
unjust impression that his vision and talent are restricted. He has made much progress; and
he still has some distance to go. But during his evolution he has not passed over any of the
vital lessons which might turn up later on to impede his final progress.
It is impossible to say that one painting of his is better than another. Marin is in process;
and we must judge almost every work of his from an individual standpoint of partial achievement.
In some of his pictures, where the delicacy and lightness are the result of the water-colorist’s
instinct, there is a completeness which tempts us to pass final judgment; but, on turning
round, we perceive that this completeness is much slighter and less advanced than the progress
made in another work where a more extended order has been attempted but not quite satis-
factorily attained. To criticise Marin justly one must judge him from each separate point in
his progress from which he has made his different studies.
From the very simplest types of order (such as a slight block form of objects) he has at-
tained to a rhythmic conception of his subject-matter until it has become almost abstract. In
this sense, he at times reveals a certain inevitable Chinese aspect. Some of his pictures betray
a great desire to see and feel, through intense concentration, the inherent (varying as the painter
varies) rhythm of his subject. Herein he attunes himself to Cezanne’s mental attitude. In
his latest paintings a process of elimination is going on; the objects, as such, have almost en-
tirely disappeared, and all that remains is the salient line, or combination of lines, which to him
expresses the plastic attraction of his natural inspiration.
His color is not at all times pleasing because it falls short of a complete gamut; but as
his sensitivity develops along the lines of volumnear balance and three-dimensional poise, the
comprehensiveness of his color will inevitably follow. At that time—and I predict that it is
not far distant—we may expect to see some of America’s most genuine expression delivered from
the shackles of European snobbery and standing on the high pinnacle of personal achievement.

Henry J. McBride in the “N. Y. Sun”:
“What one picks up in the course of years by contact with the world must in time incrust
itself on one’s personality. It stamps a man with the mark of his time. Yet, it is after all
only a dress put on a man’s own nature. But if there be a personality at the core then it will
mould the dress to its own forms and show its humanity beneath it.”
The above, which is culled from the foreword of the Walkowitz exhibition in the Photo-
Secession Gallery and has been written by the artist, will be subscribed to by most everybody.
It is in fact Schopenhauerian.
But not all who subscribe to what Mr. Walkowitz writes will subscribe to what he draws
and paints, or at least to what he chooses to exhibit at the present time. The work is too ab-
stract, too remote, from present-day streams of thought to gather any large audience. The
abstract is preached as a doctrine by many painters successfully, who, however, replace realism
with something sensuous. Colors may caress the eye as harmonious tones the ear, but Walkowitz
abstracts all that is physical into an intellectual brew that becomes at times dangerously thin.
Walkowitz is an artist of talent, but at his best (or rather, at his most accepted) he is
subtle and for the few. His drawings for the most part are drawn in faint lines, like airs played

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