International studio (56.1915)

Synchromism

SYNCHROMISM
BY WILLARD HUNTINGTON
WRIGHT
Three great epochs in painting have
been brought to a close. The first was the longest,
and extended through more than two centuries.
The last two epochs have required less than a
hundred years for their fulfilment. Each cycle
dealt with a specific phase of painting and
developed that phase until its technical possi-
bilities were exhausted. The ultimate aim of all
great painting was purification, but before that
could come about many theories had to be tested;
many consummations had to take place; many
problems had to be solved. In the course of this
evolution many irrelevant factors found their
way into painting. The men of the first epoch
used primitive and obvious materials to express
their forms. When the new means were ascertained
by modern painters, it was necessary to eliminate
the former media. The subject-matter of paint-
ing—that is, the recognisable object, the human
obstacle—had to be forced out to permit of the
introduction of colour, which had become an
inseparable adjunct of form. To effect the
coalition of pure composition and the newer
methods was a difficult feat, for so long had the
world been accustomed to the pictorial aspect of
painting, that it had come to look upon subject-
matter as a cardinal requisite to plastic creation.
The first epoch began with the advent of oil
painting about 1400, and went forward, building
and developing, until it reached realisation early
in the seventeenth century. Knowing that or-
ganised form is the basis of all aesthetic emotion,
the old masters strove to find the psychological
principles for co-ordinating volume. Their means
were naturally superficial, for their initial con-
cern was to determine what they should do, not
how they should do it. In expressing the form
they deemed necessary to great art, they used the
material already at their disposal, namely: ob-
jective nature. They organised and made rhyth-
mic the objects about them, more especially the
human body which permitted of many variations
and groupings and which was in itself an ensemble.
And furthermore they had discovered that move-
ment—an indispensable attribute of the most
highly emotional composition—was best expressed
by the poise of the human figure. Colour to these
men was only an addendum to drawing. They

conceived form in black and white, and sought
to reinforce their work by the realistic use of
pigments. That colour was an infixed element
of organisation they never suspected. Their
preoccupation was along different lines. The
greatest exponents of intense composition during
the first epoch were Tintoretto, Giorgione,
Masaccio, Giotto, Veronese, El Greco and Rubens.
These men were primarily interested in discover-
ing absolute laws for formal rhythm. The
mimetic quality of their work was a deputised
consideration. In Rubens was consummated the
aims of the older painters; that is, he attained to
the highest degree of compositional plasticity
which was possible with the fixed means of his
period. In him the first cycle terminated. There
was no longer any advance to be made in the art
of painting until a new method of expression
should be unearthed. However, the principles of
form laid down by these old masters were funda-
mental and unalterable. Upon them all great
painting must ever be based. They are intimately
connected with the very organisms of human ex-
istence, and can never be changed until the nature
of mankind shall change.
After Rubens a short period of decadence set
in. The older methods no longer afforded in-
spiration. About the beginning of the nine-
teenth century the second cycle of painting was
ushered in by Turner, Constable and Delacroix.
These men realising that, until new means were
discovered, art could be only a variation of what
had come before, turned their attention to finding
a procedure by which the ambitions of the artist
could be more profoundly realised. This second
cycle was one of research and analysis, of scien-
tific experimentation and data gathering. The
new men first made inquiry into colour from the
standpoint of its dramatic potentialities. Natural-
ism was born. While Delacroix was busy apply-
ing the rudiments of colour science to thematic
romanticism, Courbet was at work tearing down
the tenets of conventionalism in subject-matter,
and Daumier was experimenting in the simultane-
ity of form and drawing. Manet liberated the
painter from set themes, and thereby broadened
the material field of composition. The Im-
pressionists followed, and, by labourious investi-
gations into nature’s methods, probed the secrets
of colour in relation to light. The Neo-Impres-
sionists went further afield with scientific obser-
vations; and finally Renoir, assimilating all the

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