DOI issue:
Nr. 193 (März 1913)
DOI article:Brinton, Christian: Fashions in art
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43452#0363
Fashions in Art
PAUL CEZANNE BY HIMSELF
walk, or should walk, with every show of humility
the men of the present. It is this movement,
inaugurated in specific fashion by this incom-
parable trio of esthetic individualists, though
already, of course, foreshadowed in the work of
Ingres, Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet, that the
newly formed Association of American Painters
and Sculptors has aimed to illustrate in their
exhibition at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory.
At very considerable expense, arid with an un-
common show of energy and determination, this
society, of which Mr. Arthur B. Davies is Presi-
dent, has collected and installed an exhibition
of retrospective and contemporary painting and
sculpture both native and foreign which bids
fair to mark an epoch in the development of
American artistic taste. It will be the pleasure
and privilege of the International Studio to con-
sider this display in detail next month, and to
publish as well an important selection of illustra-
tions covering the work on view. For the present
we are obliged however, to content ourselves with
this preliminary announcement of the aim and
scope of the undertaking as a whole.
Nothing of the kind has hereto been attempted
in this country and all praise and encouragement
are due those responsible for the venture. It
is precisely this sort of stimulus that we need in
America. We are, in art matters, far too timid.
We lack the courage and decision to see and judge
for ourselves. Something of the old-time spirit
of colonial dependence still clings to us, and it
seems in many quarters to have degenerated into
positive provincialism. There are those who
apparently do not wish this provincialism dis-
turbed, and apropos it is difficult not to contrast
the frank, open-door attitude of the Association
of American Painters and Sculptors with the essen-
tially protective policy of an older body whose
name shall be left to your own ready intuition.
Coincidentally with the exhibition itself, comes
the encouraging announcement that the new
society has recently taken steps toward having the
absurd and illogical tariff upon art readjusted, and
more especially the twenty-year provision regard-
ing paintings. Nothing could be more patheti-
cally provincial, and at the same time ludicrous,
than the exaction of a duty upon pictures, simply
because they happen to have been painted within
the past score of years, for it is precisely the can-
vases of the current generation which are of the
most significance, alike to the painter and the
public. It is certainly time this matter were
taken up in all seriousness, and every success to
those who would rid us of the distinction of crudely
confusing issues esthetic and economic.
PAUL GAUGUIN
BY HIMSELF
X
PAUL CEZANNE BY HIMSELF
walk, or should walk, with every show of humility
the men of the present. It is this movement,
inaugurated in specific fashion by this incom-
parable trio of esthetic individualists, though
already, of course, foreshadowed in the work of
Ingres, Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet, that the
newly formed Association of American Painters
and Sculptors has aimed to illustrate in their
exhibition at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory.
At very considerable expense, arid with an un-
common show of energy and determination, this
society, of which Mr. Arthur B. Davies is Presi-
dent, has collected and installed an exhibition
of retrospective and contemporary painting and
sculpture both native and foreign which bids
fair to mark an epoch in the development of
American artistic taste. It will be the pleasure
and privilege of the International Studio to con-
sider this display in detail next month, and to
publish as well an important selection of illustra-
tions covering the work on view. For the present
we are obliged however, to content ourselves with
this preliminary announcement of the aim and
scope of the undertaking as a whole.
Nothing of the kind has hereto been attempted
in this country and all praise and encouragement
are due those responsible for the venture. It
is precisely this sort of stimulus that we need in
America. We are, in art matters, far too timid.
We lack the courage and decision to see and judge
for ourselves. Something of the old-time spirit
of colonial dependence still clings to us, and it
seems in many quarters to have degenerated into
positive provincialism. There are those who
apparently do not wish this provincialism dis-
turbed, and apropos it is difficult not to contrast
the frank, open-door attitude of the Association
of American Painters and Sculptors with the essen-
tially protective policy of an older body whose
name shall be left to your own ready intuition.
Coincidentally with the exhibition itself, comes
the encouraging announcement that the new
society has recently taken steps toward having the
absurd and illogical tariff upon art readjusted, and
more especially the twenty-year provision regard-
ing paintings. Nothing could be more patheti-
cally provincial, and at the same time ludicrous,
than the exaction of a duty upon pictures, simply
because they happen to have been painted within
the past score of years, for it is precisely the can-
vases of the current generation which are of the
most significance, alike to the painter and the
public. It is certainly time this matter were
taken up in all seriousness, and every success to
those who would rid us of the distinction of crudely
confusing issues esthetic and economic.
PAUL GAUGUIN
BY HIMSELF
X