International studio (49.1913)

Fashions in Art


Courtesy of the Montross Galleries
FENCING MASTER BY GARI MELCHERS

the bold, pure coloring, strength of design, and
vigorous vision of the moderns. Perhaps the
leading characteristic of this work is a salutary
robustness which is far removed from the nervous
delicacy and hypersensitiveness typical of so
much present-day production. A portrait such
as that of The Fencing Master will live, and so
also will certain of these Dutch mothers seated
in the open holding their babies in their arms,
the green vesture of spring about them, and
the stamp of health upon their broad brows.
While the art of Mr. Melchers is in no degree
transitional—it being too firmly grounded to
admit of any such interpretation—yet in a mea-
sure it looks backward toward the calm triumphs
of the past and forward into the stirring and still
unformulated tendencies of the future—the future
to which we herewith turn our attention.

MAURER AND EXPRESSIONISM
II. THE NEW. There is no gainsaying the
fact that the eager quest of novelty is quite as
much a mode as is the placid reliance upon
precedent. If it be the fashion in certain pluto-
cratic quarters to patronize only that which is
hallowed by the past, it is quite as obviously the
habit elsewhere solely to tolerate that which is
feverishly, not to say flagrantly, modern. The
argument is, however, vastly in favor of the latter
group. They are at least esthetically alive, not
languidly somnolent. They breathe the atmo-
sphere of their own day and generation and
respond to those vital, formative currents, social,
scientific, and intellectual which are surging
about us in splendid unrest. They are animated
and experimental in their attitude toward their
work, and the future is undoubtedly theirs. It
is in this spirit that Alfred Maurer exhibited
recently a series of landscapes, portrait heads
and still-life subjects done under the inspira-
tion of Henri-Matisse and his school. Maur-
er’s conversion took place some four or five
years ago, since when he has revealed an in-
creasingly strong grasp of the essentials of the
modern movement and has displayed, above all,
an individual richness and beauty of coloration
which rank him well in the forefront of that
courageous little band which has recently brought
from overseas the gospel of Expressionism.
Though Mr. Maurer seems to cling to the term
Post-Impressionist, a distinctly more comprehen-
sive and more characteristic caption for the new
manifestation as a whole is that of Expressionism.
Anything and everything that comes after Impres-
sionism may obviously be described as Post-
Impressionist, whereas Expressionism means but
one thing, and is certainly the appellation which
should be adopted by those whose interest in the
movement goes beyond the mere circulating of a
convenient catch-word.
Greatly to the consternation of conservative
stay-at-homes the tendencies represented by Mr.
Maurer and his colleagues are rapidly gaining
ground in our midst. A short time since, these
men were described as pictorial lunatics. Almost
everyone sought to laugh their efforts to scorn.
The older and more uniformly successful of our
painters in particular were crudely jocose or
positively crass in their attitude, and yet the
moment has come when the general public is
eager to know something about the situation at
first hand and to see and study for itself the

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