DOI Heft:
No. 207 (May, 1914)
DOI Artikel:Brinton, Christian: Apropos of Albert Sterner
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43455#0428
INTERNATIONAL
STUDIO
VOL. Lil. No. 207 Copyright, 1914, by John Lane Company MAY, 1914
A PROPOS OF ALBERT STERNER
/\ BY CHRISTIAN BRINTON
* * Let us for to-day put aside category
and classification. Let us suppress the
list of portraits the subject of our causerie has
painted, say nothing of the prizes he has procured,
the museums which have purchased his works, or
the various professional organizations he has dig-
nified with his presidency. In order properly to
approach him you must employ a certain flexibil-
ity of mind and mood. If you persist in thinking
of him in conventional terms you will fail to grasp
the significance of his personality or the spirit of
his production. It is not the externals that here
count, but rather those mainsprings of feeling and
impulse which are the essence of creative activity
in any field of endeavour.
Somewhere—call it for the sake of compre-
hensiveness London—there was born, say half a
century since, a lad whose destiny it was to remain
throughout his lifetime in a state of animated sus-
pension. The fact that he in due course -devel-
oped into an artist is less significant than,th.e -fact
that he has been able so successfully to resist the
process of esthetic precipitation. He in brief
never became solidified, and his work gradually
grew to be appreciated quite as much for what it
was not as for what it actually was. Next to the
possession of a restless, cosmopolitan racial heri-
tage, the most conspicuous feature of his tempera-
ment is that he has never been willing, or able, to
evolve a set formula. Each subject seems to exact
its own special treatment, and that is why his
work as a whole remains so elusive and unequal.
Art with him has not yet, and doubtless never will,
become a standardized product.
Whatever your accomplishments in other direc-
AMOUR MORT LITHOGRAPH BY ALBERT STERNER
LXXI
STUDIO
VOL. Lil. No. 207 Copyright, 1914, by John Lane Company MAY, 1914
A PROPOS OF ALBERT STERNER
/\ BY CHRISTIAN BRINTON
* * Let us for to-day put aside category
and classification. Let us suppress the
list of portraits the subject of our causerie has
painted, say nothing of the prizes he has procured,
the museums which have purchased his works, or
the various professional organizations he has dig-
nified with his presidency. In order properly to
approach him you must employ a certain flexibil-
ity of mind and mood. If you persist in thinking
of him in conventional terms you will fail to grasp
the significance of his personality or the spirit of
his production. It is not the externals that here
count, but rather those mainsprings of feeling and
impulse which are the essence of creative activity
in any field of endeavour.
Somewhere—call it for the sake of compre-
hensiveness London—there was born, say half a
century since, a lad whose destiny it was to remain
throughout his lifetime in a state of animated sus-
pension. The fact that he in due course -devel-
oped into an artist is less significant than,th.e -fact
that he has been able so successfully to resist the
process of esthetic precipitation. He in brief
never became solidified, and his work gradually
grew to be appreciated quite as much for what it
was not as for what it actually was. Next to the
possession of a restless, cosmopolitan racial heri-
tage, the most conspicuous feature of his tempera-
ment is that he has never been willing, or able, to
evolve a set formula. Each subject seems to exact
its own special treatment, and that is why his
work as a whole remains so elusive and unequal.
Art with him has not yet, and doubtless never will,
become a standardized product.
Whatever your accomplishments in other direc-
AMOUR MORT LITHOGRAPH BY ALBERT STERNER
LXXI