International studio (51.1913/1914)

Revolutions and Reactions in Painting

children and benighted savages, patterns not only
crude but deliberately false, and insanely, repul-
sively depraved. The Cubists are simply ridicu-
lous. Matisse is also poisonous.
But we need not tremble for the future of art in
America because of the International Exhibition
of Modern Art and the widespread excitement it
has created. All shall be for the best. By con-
trast with the aberrations of these extremists from
abroad, what now seems too radical in the work of
many vital and genuinely progressive painters will
appear safe and sane.
Reaction to a period of sensitive estheticism
and sound intellectuality seems inevitable. There
will be, unless I am much mistaken, a return,
if not to classic formula, at least to a classic re-
spect for form. Of course, we shall not lose the
value of what we have so recently gained; the
recognition of beauty in modern life, even its
momentary appearances, a palette true to the
lights and darks of the all-pervading atmosphere,
the mastery of simplification and synthesis, the
personal way of seeing and recording vision that
constitutes what we mean by the word “style.”
Subjects will soon be once again of real importance
to pictures, although they will have to be subtly
suggestive rather than tediously descriptive, as in
the olden days. For instance, we need no longer
go to the Orient to be Orientalists. With suffi-
cient insight and imagination we can find Oriental
suggestions in chance observations of life close at
hand. The landscapes of Augustus John—-
painted in Provence and even in Wales—have
that disturbing brilliancy of opposed tones—of
deep blues and pale greens and crushed-strawberry
pinks—-that suggest the backgrounds of Persian
miniatures. Several American painters have
recently evoked for m —not the memory of East-
ern art but the Eastern color-dream in the
abstract. And they have, almost accidentally,
happened upon this fragrant charm of suggestion
in the midst of the most matter-of-fact observa-
tions of things as they are. Jerome Myers discov-
ered that a corner of the New York Ghetto could
be easily transfigured by sunset haze into a market
city of Arabia. George Woodbury found a swim-
ming hole where the water is peacock blue and the
rocks golden brown, that would easily transport
the mind to the haunts of thieves in the Arabian
Nights by merely hollowing the rocks into a cave,
and supplying the necessary touches of scarlet by
the caps of girls bathing. At the Spring Academy
a prize was awarded to Gifford Beal for a picture
entitled The, Elephants are Coming. In all mag-

nificance they emerge into strong sunlight from
the shadow of a great tent, and although it is only
a circus tent and the gorgeous trappings are much
the worse for wear, yet the suggestion is of India
and of a great Rajah’s encampment. I speak of
these pictures because they illustrate, for the
moment’s need, the combined qualities of personal
impressionism and decorative imagination that I
feel sure will characterize the real “art of the
future.” It is significant that none of these pic-
tures were painted by romanticists or colorists.
In the steady upward progress of art in this
country to the great Renaissance that is surely
coming we need none of this sensationalism, so
recently imported from the old world. What we
need is the inspiring self-reliance of our own
American masters, George Inness and Winslow
Homer—men who dared to be true to Nature and
to their own dreams, above and beyond the agita-
tion of the Schools and their little revolutions,
consecrated always to those special beauties of the
visible world that particularly thrilled their souls.
Truth they recognized as the painter’s personal
conception of nature’s character, beauty as the
painter’s personal selection of nature’s enchant-
ment, art as the finished product, created from
nature’s raw materials, to the end that a richer
life might result. For that is the purpose of art;
not art for the sake of art, certainly not art for the
sake of sensation, but art that will stimulate in us
a deeper appreciation of the glorious privilege of
living.
l^EW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
The exhibition of color etchings in the
Stuart Gallery has been replaced by one of etch-
ings by Frank Brangwyn. The work shown is
fairly representative, and gives one a good idea of
the salient and essential qualities of this artist’s
style. The boldness and freedom of these plates
and their size make them quite predestined to
serve as wall decorations, and this fact is empha-
sized somewhat by the manner in which they are
displayed here. In Brangwyn’s work it is perhaps
less the line that is in evidence than strong and
effective contrasts of light and shade, rendered in
a large way, with vehemence and with big deco-
rative effect. Much in this is due to manipula-
tion in printing. Yet there are smaller plates by
him in which there is delightfully delicate biting
in the background, indicating the ever-proper
adaptation of means to end.
The exhibition will be on view until the middle
of January next.

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