International studio (49.1913)

Evolution not Revolution in Art

little by little stooped to a sort of debased illusion-
ism, and in order to extricate ourselves from the
stupidity and stagnation of such a predicament
we have gone back to the fountain heads of primi-
tive art as they may be found in Hindu-China or
Yucatan, on the plains of Mongolia, in the basin of
the Nile, or among the shimmering islands of the
Polynesian archipelago.
Distinctly less revolutionary than reactionary,
the modernists have merely reverted to an earlier
type of art, and in doing so it was inevitably to the
East that they were forced to turn. The present
movement, of which we hear so much, possibly too
much, represents more than anything the subtle
ascendancy of Orient over Occident. The first
premonition of this impending triumph was appar-
ent as far back as the early ’sixties of the past cen-
tury, when a certain Mme. Desoye opened in Paris
a modest shop where she sold Japanese prints,
pottery, screens and the like, and succeeded in
attracting the notice of Bracquemond, Louis
Gonse, the de Goncourts and other discerning

spirits. Scattered quite by chance, the seed soon
bore fruit in more than one quarter. Though
Whistler paid his tribute in explicit fashion, it was
Manet who, inspired by the Spaniards and freed
from scholastic influences by the sturdy example
of Courbet, first seized upon the essentials of
Eastern art—-the simplicity of outline, the juxta-
position of pure color tones, and the substitution
for elaborate modelling of flat surfaces without the
use of shadow. The virtual precursor of the
Impressionists, on the one hand, Manet may also
be ranked as the pioneer Expressionist, for it was
indisputably from him that Cezanne received hints
of that structural and chromatic integrity which
became the keynote of his method and the corner-
stone of subsequent achievement.
We shall not pause to trace this movement in all
it manifold ramifications. The significant point
is that one after another the succeeding men threw
over the cumbersome counsels of the schools and
went straight to the heart of things. You will find
Cezanne, ever sane and balanced, calmly extract-
ing from nature and natural
appearances their organic
unity. You will see Gau-
guin, the so-called barbarian,
depicting life and scene in
far-off Tahiti with a subdued
splendor of tone and stateli-
ness of pose that hark back
through Degas, Ingres, and
Prudhon to the ordered spa-
ciousness of Classic times.
And, lastly, you will be con-
fronted in Van Gogh with a
fusion of Gothic fervor and
sheer dynamic force which
gives his tortured landscapes
something of the eternal
throb of creative energy.
Each, after his own particu-
lar fashion, strove to free
eye and mind alike from the
meticulous elaboration of
academic practice and from
the popular fetish of purely
descriptive presentation.
Each sought not the sub-
stance but the spirit, and
that is why together they
constitute the initiators of
latter-day painting.
Once the importance of
the lesson taught by these


THE WAY DOWN TO THE SEA

BY AUGUSTUS E. JOHN

XXX