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

FROM “291”—JULY-AUGUST NUMBER, 1915.
New York, at first, did not see. Afterward she did not want to see. Like a circumspect
young girl or a careful married woman, she has taken all possible precautions against assimilating
the spirit of modern art; rejecting a seed that would have found a most fertile soil. All genuine
American activities are entirely in accord with the spirit of modern art. But American in-
tellectuality is a protective covering which prevents all conception. This intellectuality is
borrowed, exotic. Better still, it is a paste diamond.
Beware, messieurs the Americans, of your intellectuals. They are dangerous counter-
feits. They believe themselves to have a luminous mission; but their light dazzles the eyes
instead of illuminating. They wish to impregnate you, believing themselves stallions when
they are but geldings. They are not a product of their country. Their ideal does not reach
beyond their personal interests.
The critics do not work to develop their knowledge, or to spread knowledge. They work
for a salary.
The press has established a false notion of American life. It has succeeded in creating in
the American people a fictitious need for a false art and a false literature. The press has in view
but one thing:—profit.
The real American life is still unexpressed.
America remains to be discovered.
Stieglitz wanted to work this miracle.
He wanted to discover America. Also, he wanted the Americans to discover themselves.
But, in pursuing his object, he employed the shield of psychology and metaphysics. He has
failed.
In order to attain living results, in order to create life—no shields!
Each manifestation of a progressing evolution must derive from an organism which has,
itself, evolved. To believe that artistic evolution is indicated by artists copying Broadway
girls instead of copying trees—is inane.
We have also moved on from the age of symbolism. It is only the day after that we
believe in the orange blossoms of the bride.
Art is a white lie that is only living when it is born of truth. And there is no other truth
than objective truth. The others are but prejudices.
Stieglitz tried to discover America with prejudices.
He first, and he alone, has placed before New York the various foundation supports of
the evolution of modern art.
He wished to work through suggestion.
But soon, commercialism brought an avalanche of paintings. Those lepers, those scullery
maids of art, those Sudras of progress—the copyists, got busy. They even believed themselves
to be part of the evolution because, instead of copying trees, they copied a method.
America remains to be discovered. And to do it there is but one way:—DISCOVER IT!
Stieglitz, at the head of a group which worked under the name of Photo-Secession, carried
the Photography which we may call static to the highest degree of perfection. He worked in
the American spirit. He married Man to Machinery and he obtained issue.
When he wanted to do the same with art, he imported works capable of serving as examples
of modern thought plastically expressed. His intention was to have them used as supports for
finding an expression of the conception of American life. He found against him open opposition
and servile imitation. He did not succeed in bringing out the individualistic expression of the
spirit of the community.
He has put the American art public to the test. He has fought to change good taste into
common sense. But he has not succeeded in putting in motion the enormous mass of the inertia
of this public’s self-sufficiency. America has not the slightest conception of the value of the

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