DOI Heft:
No. 82 (December, 1903)
DOI Artikel:American studio-talk
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26230#0211
772^2'<r<373 71^^
ness of the female figures in bright draperies, which
wrapt their svelte forms or dowed in decorative pro-
fusion, opened up to him vistas of imagination hith-
erto undreamed of. In the local museum he had
already become enamored of examples of the work
of Fortuny and Rico, falling under the spell of their
gemlike brilliance of coloring and the exquisite-
ness of their technique. Young as he was, he had
already feit beneath this prodigality of luxurious
detail the seriousness of Fortuny's point of viesv as
an artist; and he himself was serious in his art,
notwithstanding his lightsomeness of spirit.
It is a combination of qualities very unusual in
artists of the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races ; yet
Blum, of German parentage, conspicuously pos-
sessed it. It is apt to occur among the Latins, and
is never wanting from Japanese art, for the latter
invariably is conceived in seriousness and brought
forth in love. He was able to study it in compara-
tive fulness at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876,
where, also, he saw Fortuny's ^zzzzz'y^ TArrz-zzz^y.
He returned to Cincinnati as one to whom a new
heaven and a new earth had been revealed.
It is scarcely possible to enter into his point of
view, or to understatid his art, unless one realizes
with some exactness the purport of this Union of
gaiety and seriousness, since our experience is too
often of these qualities separated. In actual life we
are even apt to regard them as antipodal; while in
art the gay is often trivial, the serious unrelieved by
any vein of gaiety. Nor will it cover the matter
that the artist of light and fanciful subjects is often
very seriously concerned with problems of tech-
nique. The union of these two qualities, such as
characterizes the work of Fortuny, of the Japanese,
of Blum, is something much more essential; it has
its origin in the artist's attitude toward life, in an
overwhelming sense of beauty, which seems to him
the supreme happiness and worthy of his most ex-
acting endeavor. Moreover, it is beauty of the
most abstract kind, untinged with moral and reli-
gious beauty, absolutely free from the correlated
beauty of thought, whether in the direction of the
intellect or the senses. It is a beauty that is pas-
sionless, unconscious alike of yearning or of satished
desire, or of the pain of loss and disappointment.
It is as if the child's love of Howers were suddenly
incorporated into the maturity of a man's convic-
tions ; such a mingling of technical precision and
bird-like improvisation as characterizes the music
clxxviii
ETCHTNG BY ROBERT BLUM
ness of the female figures in bright draperies, which
wrapt their svelte forms or dowed in decorative pro-
fusion, opened up to him vistas of imagination hith-
erto undreamed of. In the local museum he had
already become enamored of examples of the work
of Fortuny and Rico, falling under the spell of their
gemlike brilliance of coloring and the exquisite-
ness of their technique. Young as he was, he had
already feit beneath this prodigality of luxurious
detail the seriousness of Fortuny's point of viesv as
an artist; and he himself was serious in his art,
notwithstanding his lightsomeness of spirit.
It is a combination of qualities very unusual in
artists of the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races ; yet
Blum, of German parentage, conspicuously pos-
sessed it. It is apt to occur among the Latins, and
is never wanting from Japanese art, for the latter
invariably is conceived in seriousness and brought
forth in love. He was able to study it in compara-
tive fulness at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876,
where, also, he saw Fortuny's ^zzzzz'y^ TArrz-zzz^y.
He returned to Cincinnati as one to whom a new
heaven and a new earth had been revealed.
It is scarcely possible to enter into his point of
view, or to understatid his art, unless one realizes
with some exactness the purport of this Union of
gaiety and seriousness, since our experience is too
often of these qualities separated. In actual life we
are even apt to regard them as antipodal; while in
art the gay is often trivial, the serious unrelieved by
any vein of gaiety. Nor will it cover the matter
that the artist of light and fanciful subjects is often
very seriously concerned with problems of tech-
nique. The union of these two qualities, such as
characterizes the work of Fortuny, of the Japanese,
of Blum, is something much more essential; it has
its origin in the artist's attitude toward life, in an
overwhelming sense of beauty, which seems to him
the supreme happiness and worthy of his most ex-
acting endeavor. Moreover, it is beauty of the
most abstract kind, untinged with moral and reli-
gious beauty, absolutely free from the correlated
beauty of thought, whether in the direction of the
intellect or the senses. It is a beauty that is pas-
sionless, unconscious alike of yearning or of satished
desire, or of the pain of loss and disappointment.
It is as if the child's love of Howers were suddenly
incorporated into the maturity of a man's convic-
tions ; such a mingling of technical precision and
bird-like improvisation as characterizes the music
clxxviii
ETCHTNG BY ROBERT BLUM