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

work accomplished by Stieglitz. Success, and success on a large scale, is the only thing that
can make an impression on American mentality. Any effort, any tendency, which does not
possess the radiation of advertising remains practically ignored.
America waits, inertly, for its own potentiality to be expressed in art.
In politics, in industry, in science, in commerce, in finance, in the popular theatre, in
architecture, in sport, in dress—from hat to shoes—the American has known how to get rid of
European prejudices and has created his own laws in accordance with his own customs. But he
has found himself powerless to do the same in art or in literature. For it is true that to express
our character in art or in literature we must be absolutely conscious of ourselves or absolutely
unconscious of ourselves. And American artists have always had before them an inner censor-
ship formed by an exotic education. They do not see their surroundings at first hand. They
do not understand their milieu.
In all times art has been the synthesis of the beliefs of peoples. In America this synthesis
is an impossibility, because all beliefs exist here together. One lives here in a continuous change
which makes impossible the perpetuation and the universality of an idea. History in the United
States is impossible and meaningless. One lives here in the present. In a continuous struggle
to adapt oneself to the milieu. There are innumerable social groups which work to obtain gen-
eral laws—moral regulations like police regulations. But no one observes them. Each indi-
vidual remains isolated, struggling for his own physical and intellectual existence. In the
United States there is no general sentiment in any sphere of thought.
America has the same complex mentality as the true modern artist. The same eternal
sequence of emotions, and sensibility to surroundings. The same continual need of expressing
itself in the present and for the present; with joy in action, and with indifference to “arriving.”
For it is in action that America, like the modern artist finds its joy. The only difference is that
America has not yet learned to amuse itself.
The inhabitants of the artistic world in America are cold blooded animals. They live in
an imaginary and hybrid atmosphere. They have the mentality of homosexuals. They are
flowers of artificial breeding.
America does not feel for them even contempt.
Of all those who have come to conquer America, Picabia is the only one who has done
as did Cortez. He has burned his ship behind him. He does not protect himself with any
shield. He has married America like a man who is not afraid of consequences. He has ob-
tained results. And he has brought these to “291” which accepts them as experience, and
publishes them with the conviction that they have the positive value which all striving toward
objective truth possesses.
M. De Zayas.

-3-
EPITAPH FOR ALFRED STIEGLITZ *
Question not
My soul's demise
My friends consult
The query is the answer.
To my peace.
Marsden Hartley.

* From a letter to Alfred Stieglitz from Marsden Hartley, August I o,
is an epitaph ever one day it will read like this somewhat.99

1916: “I fancy if there

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