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

Secession Gallery, will be accepted as a vagary or a truth remains to be seen. No one who has
seen him and heard him talk would ever doubt his motives.
Ben Benn in “Revolt”:
“291” has come to life again with an exhibition of watercolors and drawings by Walko-
witz. Speaking of life, the walls vibrate with color and forms seldom experienced. In some of
his drawings one feels that he is interested in interpreting sound and in others emotion.
He succeeded where a great many have failed.
He interprets sound, graphically using subjective means. The human form he uses
synthetically based upon his life’s experience and aesthetic principles.
His understanding of modern art has not defaced the old masters, they are still new to him.
Judging from his work they always will be, because he is a true artist whose works have a past,
present and future.
The music of Beethoven vibrates all through his works. In Walkowitz’s more recent
work, where his means of expression are through those of Nature he touches the cosmos.
A great many will no doubt dispute the idea, what has graphic art to do with music and
cosmos: perhaps it has been impossible to interpret these elements until now. If you wish to
be convinced, go to see the works of Walkowitz and take your time—for to really get the full
benefit of this exhibit, only one person at a time should be allowed in the gallery.
Willard Huntington Wright in the “Forum”:
Among the strangest and most serious of modern art stands the work of Walkowitz. Its
strangeness lies in its total detachment from the easily recognized methods of the modern lead-
ers and in its slowness and reticence in giving itself to the spectator. At first sight there is
merely a medley of harmonious lines, done for the most part in crayon and pencil, which on
closer study resolve themselves into the salient contoural forms of the human body, landscape,
portrait and still-life. Thus from his work one receives the emotion of form while dispensing
with the actual objective model. Strangely enough, there are traces of admiration for the
ancient masters in both the simplest and most complex of Walkowitz’s pictures. In one work,
for example, is found the frieze form of composition even more simply stated than in the Byzan-
tine mosaics: here Walkowitz has utilized the full human figure (as one utilizes flowers) in an
ordered decoration whose colors and drawing, while simple to a great extent, attract and impel
further study. In other of his later works there are the complicated linear organizations of
Michelangeloesque nudes, worked into subtle and intricate plays of space filling. Consequently
these require greater concentration, and, as a result, give greater aesthetic pleasure when
visualized. Walkowitz uses nature as an inspiration for a highly abstract method of creation;
and in him are many of the traits which have become familiar to us in the works of Picasso.
In fact, his talent is not dissimilar to Picasso’s, though perhaps a bit more robust. His grada-
tions of tone are like poems of light and shadow, and it is not difficult to see that this artist has
had more extensive self-training on the profounder side of draughtsmanship than many Ameri-
can artists who enjoy a wider reputation. In all his work there is a sense of qualitatively limit-
less space which only comes to one whose knowledge of form is extended. For him I predict a
future equaled by few of this country, both as to his color and his work in black and white.

Charles H. Caffin in the “N. Y. American”:
An exhibition of photographs by Paul Strand is being held at the Gallery of the Photo-
Secession, No. 291 Fifth Avenue. Comprising views of New York and other places, they are
what are known as “straight” photographs, done by the platinum process. There has been
no tampering with the negative, nor have any alterations been made at any part of the process
between the snapping of the shutter and the mounting of the picture. Thus the views are in the
strictest sense records of actual objectivity.
It is significant that they should be exhibited just at the present moment when the com-
parative methods of objective and abstract art are occupying so many minds and the Forum
Exhibition, which largely represents a reaction from objective, illustrative or representative
painting—call it as you will—is in full swing. For these photographs can scarcely fail to give
pleasure in varying degree to all sorts and conditions of people. They are, in fact, an un-
answerable witness to the pleasure and interest that the objective holds for us.

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