International studio (51.1913/1914)

Revolutions and Reactions in Painting

Revolutions and reactions
IN PAINTING
BY DUNCAN PHILLIPS
Attempting to define what painting
ought to be, that profound critic, Thomas Coler-
idge, arrived at the true meaning of impressionism
in the pictorial arts. “Painting,” he said, “is the
middle quality between a thought and a thing,
the union of that which is nature with that which
is exclusively human.” Now among the great
impressionists this middle quality has been estab-
lished and maintained. In the best pictures by
Velasquez the balance was absolutely perfect. If
today he is considered the greatest painter of all
times, it is because, in making us see the truth of
just what he saw, he also made us feel the beauty
of just what he felt. Thus we learned from him
both the beauty of truth that is so variously
appealing to us all and the truth of beauty as
revealed to his individual consciousness. The
great landscape painters were equally true to this
esthetic impressionism. It was Constable who
first applied to the study of earth and sky the
great principle Velasquez had formulated, namely,
the difference between fact and appearance, be-
tween actuality and the truth of visual sensation.
Yet although this great pathfinder was the first
to do justice to the good, familiar world out-of-
doors, the first to discard the drop-curtain that
had so long passed for landscape, yet his daring
brush did not, in its pride, obtrude its new devices.
The balance was maintained. Once again, with
Corot it was the soul of the poet combined with
the enlightened skill of the observant naturalist
that cast both the illusion of reality and the spell
of fairyland over the commonplace suburbs of
Paris. It seems, then, that Coleridge was abso-
lutely right when he said, “Painting is the middle
quality between a thought and a thing.”
In approaching the exhibitions of these latter
days we discover at once how technique has come
to vaunt itself, to overwhelm both subject and
sentiment. The means of expression are of more
concern than the thing to be expressed, and all too
often, in spite of many pretensions to the con-
trary, painters express nothing but the newness of
their paint or the newness of their particular cult.
As I write, the air of studios in New York is
charged with much talk about painting, talk that
is full of fanaticism and mystification and real
concern for the future of art, all agitated by a
recent exposure of crass sensationalism in pictures
■—an International Exhibition of Modern Art

quite stupefying in its vulgarity. With this ex-
perience fresh in memory, the first thought that
occurs to me about contemporary painting is that
it is lawless, the second, following fast upon the
first, is that its lawlessness has in many cases made
the painter a slave to his own mad whims and bad
habits. Instead of trying to become like the Old
Masters, he tries to be what nobody ever wanted
to be before him. Superficially, such a philosophy
has a gallant air. Gauguin’s much-quoted classi-
fication of painters as either plagiarists or revolu-
tionists was like a call to battle. The motley
hoard of studio-adventurers heard the call. Today
they are riotously proclaiming that everything
shall be upside down, that in the new art no
woman need have a mouth. Instead she may
have four eyes, all on the same side of her face. It
is not true. But who shall say what is truth? A
woman with no mouth and four eyes will give a
man a new and strange emotion. That emotion
is art. Scratches of pale pink and blobs of blood-
red may not suit an anemic taste, but can we be
sure that it is not a very exquisite color scheme for
interior decoration. Who shall say what is
beauty? Pale pink and blood red will give a man
a new and strange emotion. That emotion is art.
So runs the philosophy of Matisse and his fol-
lowers.
But of course such extremists are anarchists,
not artists. They no more deserve consideration
as technicians (in this I agree with Kenyon Cox)
than the bad boys whose nasty smudges in colored
chalks they unconsciously imitate. When I say
that in these latter days technique has come to
vaunt itself, to overwhelm subject and sentiment,
I do not refer to the Futurists and Cubists nor any
other representatives of degeneracy in painting. I
am thinking, rather, of the most brilliant artists
of our period—men who are making the most
vivid history of our own time. Some of them are
Romanticists, others Realists, but an influence
common to both their camps keeps their advance
in a similar direction. This influence is the scien-
tific spirit of the age. Nature is now reverenced,
not so much for its spiritual appeal nor as a won-
drous background for the human drama but for
its evanescent effects, its fascinating problems.
The essential characteristic of the prevailing im-
pressionism is the delight in the display of skill.
Of course there are less adventurous spirits con-
tent to tell tales to the sentimental public in much
the old Victorian fashion or to follow the Barbizon
tradition in landscape with unassuming reverence.
But the bigger men have been ever abreast of the

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