DOI Heft:
No. 208 (June, 1914)
DOI Artikel:Peckham, W. G.: Russian art and American
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43455#0478
Russian Art and American
Russian art and American
BY W. G. PECKHAM
Russia has more of her children in
New York City than has any other
nation. No Russian artist has a picture in New
York’s Art Museum. This is as if New York’s
Library had no Tolstoi in it. It is as if an ency-
clopaedic collection of music should leave out
Tchaikowsky, Rubinstein, Glinka, Musorgsky and
Rimsky-Korsakow. In Russia the climate is dra-
matic. The climatic and racial conditions produce
tragedy. Whether or not Orestes lived and suf-
fered, there is no doubt that the children of Russia
suffer and experience realities. There is in Lon-
don a street through which great Oliver’s corpse
was dragged by the feet at the tail of a cart.
There are places in Paris that call shrilly to us
with some fiendish story. Every corner in Peters-
burg or Moscow has some gruesome remembrance.
Here wicked von Plehve was recently blown to
bits. This cathedral is built where they bombed
a good czar. Who did it? Here Peter the Great
drove his royal sister to insanity. Nearby on the
Neva, lately, the mutinous fleet was to surround
the royal yacht, and sink it, with the royal babies.
The dungeons under the Neva mean necessary
death.
Upheavals of nature produce developments in
art. Shakespeare was the product of the same
climacteric as were the men who defeated the
Grand Armada. Murillo, Velasquez and their
train were the fruit of the glory and agony of
Spain, as much as were Ferdinand and Isabella
and Torquemada of the Inquisition. Out of
storm and stress rose likewise Milton, Dante,
Michael Angelo and Goethe. Whether the First
Cause for Russia is of a celestial or infernal origin,
Russia has had elemental exaltations and repres-
sions in the present generation. The emancipa-
tion of the serfs, the Nihilistic agitations, the col-
ossal developments in manufacturing, and un-
happy wars—all under dark heavens—-have pro-
duced the musicians, and also Tolstoi, Turgeniev
and Dostoievski. What have these people of their
own in art and what do we offer them in lieu of
their own? I speak not of La Farge, Abbey, Sar-
gent and their peers, but of our popular exhibi-
tions of art. Of our recent Academy Exhibition,
the art critic of the Times says: “It seemed that
painters of landscapes and their adjuncts, vege-
table and animal, could see nothing but purple.
There were purple meadows, purple trees, purple
atmosphere, purple clouds, purple pigs, purple
TOLSTOI BY ELIAS REPIN
skies—-even purple cows.” An American painter,
writing in Scribner’s, speaks of an artist who said
that all American colours were “impossible,” and
especially said of our autumn colours- ‘'‘‘Mon ami,
je n’aime pas la nature dans ses robes de harlequin.”
cxxi
Russian art and American
BY W. G. PECKHAM
Russia has more of her children in
New York City than has any other
nation. No Russian artist has a picture in New
York’s Art Museum. This is as if New York’s
Library had no Tolstoi in it. It is as if an ency-
clopaedic collection of music should leave out
Tchaikowsky, Rubinstein, Glinka, Musorgsky and
Rimsky-Korsakow. In Russia the climate is dra-
matic. The climatic and racial conditions produce
tragedy. Whether or not Orestes lived and suf-
fered, there is no doubt that the children of Russia
suffer and experience realities. There is in Lon-
don a street through which great Oliver’s corpse
was dragged by the feet at the tail of a cart.
There are places in Paris that call shrilly to us
with some fiendish story. Every corner in Peters-
burg or Moscow has some gruesome remembrance.
Here wicked von Plehve was recently blown to
bits. This cathedral is built where they bombed
a good czar. Who did it? Here Peter the Great
drove his royal sister to insanity. Nearby on the
Neva, lately, the mutinous fleet was to surround
the royal yacht, and sink it, with the royal babies.
The dungeons under the Neva mean necessary
death.
Upheavals of nature produce developments in
art. Shakespeare was the product of the same
climacteric as were the men who defeated the
Grand Armada. Murillo, Velasquez and their
train were the fruit of the glory and agony of
Spain, as much as were Ferdinand and Isabella
and Torquemada of the Inquisition. Out of
storm and stress rose likewise Milton, Dante,
Michael Angelo and Goethe. Whether the First
Cause for Russia is of a celestial or infernal origin,
Russia has had elemental exaltations and repres-
sions in the present generation. The emancipa-
tion of the serfs, the Nihilistic agitations, the col-
ossal developments in manufacturing, and un-
happy wars—all under dark heavens—-have pro-
duced the musicians, and also Tolstoi, Turgeniev
and Dostoievski. What have these people of their
own in art and what do we offer them in lieu of
their own? I speak not of La Farge, Abbey, Sar-
gent and their peers, but of our popular exhibi-
tions of art. Of our recent Academy Exhibition,
the art critic of the Times says: “It seemed that
painters of landscapes and their adjuncts, vege-
table and animal, could see nothing but purple.
There were purple meadows, purple trees, purple
atmosphere, purple clouds, purple pigs, purple
TOLSTOI BY ELIAS REPIN
skies—-even purple cows.” An American painter,
writing in Scribner’s, speaks of an artist who said
that all American colours were “impossible,” and
especially said of our autumn colours- ‘'‘‘Mon ami,
je n’aime pas la nature dans ses robes de harlequin.”
cxxi