DOI Heft:
Nr. 232 (June 1915)
DOI Artikel:Paint and progress
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43461#0326
Paint and Progress
AINT AND PROGRESS
BY CHARLES L. BUCHANAN
When we are asked to consider the re¬
cent exhibition of contemporary art organ-
ized by the Forum Committee and held at the An-
derson Galleries in this city, it is our bounden duty
to approach the affair with our minds purged of
prejudice and preconceived points of view. Any
other attitude of mind is absolutely inadequate
and indefensible. We may dismiss as unworthy
of serious consideration the hum-drum charges
that are trumped up and bandied around about
this sort of thing. It is, for example, quite incon-
ceivable that a world-wide generation in art has
embarked upon a cleverly calculated campaign
of aesthetic hocus-pocus. It is inconceivable that
these people are every one of them insincere.
Such an assumption is childish, incompetent and
ridiculous. Work of this kind may make no per-
sonal appeal to us; it may, as a matter of fact,
be utterly incomprehensible and partially repel-
lent to us. But that is a purely negative consid-
eration. Whether we like it or not we are under
obligation at least passively to accept it as a
force of potential if not actual significance in
the art of to-day.
In its attempt to refute this type of painting,
conservatism, as represented by Mr. Royal Cor-
tissoz, for example, makes the following unfor-
tunate statement: “If a work of art does not
explain itself you may depend upon it that there
is something wrong there.” But that a work of
art—the great work of art—does not explain itself
is the crudest of truisms. It is, for instance, in-
conceivable to us that Wagner’s Tristan—by all
odds the most acute, vital and exquisite exploi-
tation of human emotion that has so far been
given to the world—should ever have failed to
evoke an immediate response from the heart of
man. The incontestable fact remains that Tris-
tan was as much of a puzzle to its generation as
Mr. Leo Ornstein (if I may be allowed the some-
what impious juxtaposition) is to his. The state-
ment of Mr. Cortissoz is in no degree an adequate
measure of his critical capacity, for he knows as
well as any one else that the entire history of
art is a record of stupidities, lack of percep-
tions, and antagonisms on the part of press
and public to whatever it did not immediately
comprehend. So we can get nowhere along that
line; nor will a mere condemnation help any.
Nothing in the world is easier than to dismiss as
negligible an art that you do not personally enjoy.
The difficult thing is to furnish an intelligent,
illuminative reason for doing so.
On the other hand, when Mr. Cortissoz dis-
misses as negligible the kind of painting repre-
sented at the Anderson Galleries he commits no
more flagrant an offense against an equitable art
sentiment than the partisans of this kind of
painting commit when they dismiss as negligible
the kind of painting indorsed by Mr. Cortissoz.
The thing is a very palpable stand-off, a cancella-
tion so to speak; although I am inclined to believe
that the conservatism of Mr. Cortissoz is a less
injurious influence in art than the impetuous,
intolerant and, I fear, superficial progressiveness
of much of the modern attitude. Emphasis can-
not be too strongly laid upon the fact that if we
are to forbid ourselves a too comfortable acqui-
escence in aesthetic formulas of yesterday, we
must also guard ourselves against a too facile
acceptance of what purports to be the aesthetic
formulas of to-morrow. In other words we must
not allow ourselves to be intimidated into an
exclusive preoccupation with novelty for the sheer
sake of novelty. The truth lies midway. I am
willing, for example, to go to the Forum Exhibi-
tion, or wherever else various ultra tendencies in
painting are in evidence, with the absolutely
honest desire to acquaint myself with whatever
principle and actuating impulse there is back of
this kind of work. I strive to overcome an in-
herent disinclination and lack of interest. I take
for granted that I am witnessing something more
than a mere hodge-podge of unbridled idiosyn-
crasy. I assume that this work possesses both
significance and sincerity. I am willing, I repeat,
to concede any amount of a potential value to
this painting. I am willing to believe that it
may be the painting of to-morrow. I am willing
to allow it any amount of latitude, not even ask-
ing that it conciliate in the slightest degree my
old-fashioned sentiments or afford me an emo-
tional gratification. But what I am not willing
to do is to accept this painting at the expense of
every other kind of painting that is being pro-
duced in this country to-day; and that is pre-
cisely what its various advocates and practition-
ers demand of you if you are not to be cast out
into the utter darkness of an eternal aesthetic
damnation. I do not believe that a total adher-
ence to this kind of painting, a total abjuration
CXII
AINT AND PROGRESS
BY CHARLES L. BUCHANAN
When we are asked to consider the re¬
cent exhibition of contemporary art organ-
ized by the Forum Committee and held at the An-
derson Galleries in this city, it is our bounden duty
to approach the affair with our minds purged of
prejudice and preconceived points of view. Any
other attitude of mind is absolutely inadequate
and indefensible. We may dismiss as unworthy
of serious consideration the hum-drum charges
that are trumped up and bandied around about
this sort of thing. It is, for example, quite incon-
ceivable that a world-wide generation in art has
embarked upon a cleverly calculated campaign
of aesthetic hocus-pocus. It is inconceivable that
these people are every one of them insincere.
Such an assumption is childish, incompetent and
ridiculous. Work of this kind may make no per-
sonal appeal to us; it may, as a matter of fact,
be utterly incomprehensible and partially repel-
lent to us. But that is a purely negative consid-
eration. Whether we like it or not we are under
obligation at least passively to accept it as a
force of potential if not actual significance in
the art of to-day.
In its attempt to refute this type of painting,
conservatism, as represented by Mr. Royal Cor-
tissoz, for example, makes the following unfor-
tunate statement: “If a work of art does not
explain itself you may depend upon it that there
is something wrong there.” But that a work of
art—the great work of art—does not explain itself
is the crudest of truisms. It is, for instance, in-
conceivable to us that Wagner’s Tristan—by all
odds the most acute, vital and exquisite exploi-
tation of human emotion that has so far been
given to the world—should ever have failed to
evoke an immediate response from the heart of
man. The incontestable fact remains that Tris-
tan was as much of a puzzle to its generation as
Mr. Leo Ornstein (if I may be allowed the some-
what impious juxtaposition) is to his. The state-
ment of Mr. Cortissoz is in no degree an adequate
measure of his critical capacity, for he knows as
well as any one else that the entire history of
art is a record of stupidities, lack of percep-
tions, and antagonisms on the part of press
and public to whatever it did not immediately
comprehend. So we can get nowhere along that
line; nor will a mere condemnation help any.
Nothing in the world is easier than to dismiss as
negligible an art that you do not personally enjoy.
The difficult thing is to furnish an intelligent,
illuminative reason for doing so.
On the other hand, when Mr. Cortissoz dis-
misses as negligible the kind of painting repre-
sented at the Anderson Galleries he commits no
more flagrant an offense against an equitable art
sentiment than the partisans of this kind of
painting commit when they dismiss as negligible
the kind of painting indorsed by Mr. Cortissoz.
The thing is a very palpable stand-off, a cancella-
tion so to speak; although I am inclined to believe
that the conservatism of Mr. Cortissoz is a less
injurious influence in art than the impetuous,
intolerant and, I fear, superficial progressiveness
of much of the modern attitude. Emphasis can-
not be too strongly laid upon the fact that if we
are to forbid ourselves a too comfortable acqui-
escence in aesthetic formulas of yesterday, we
must also guard ourselves against a too facile
acceptance of what purports to be the aesthetic
formulas of to-morrow. In other words we must
not allow ourselves to be intimidated into an
exclusive preoccupation with novelty for the sheer
sake of novelty. The truth lies midway. I am
willing, for example, to go to the Forum Exhibi-
tion, or wherever else various ultra tendencies in
painting are in evidence, with the absolutely
honest desire to acquaint myself with whatever
principle and actuating impulse there is back of
this kind of work. I strive to overcome an in-
herent disinclination and lack of interest. I take
for granted that I am witnessing something more
than a mere hodge-podge of unbridled idiosyn-
crasy. I assume that this work possesses both
significance and sincerity. I am willing, I repeat,
to concede any amount of a potential value to
this painting. I am willing to believe that it
may be the painting of to-morrow. I am willing
to allow it any amount of latitude, not even ask-
ing that it conciliate in the slightest degree my
old-fashioned sentiments or afford me an emo-
tional gratification. But what I am not willing
to do is to accept this painting at the expense of
every other kind of painting that is being pro-
duced in this country to-day; and that is pre-
cisely what its various advocates and practition-
ers demand of you if you are not to be cast out
into the utter darkness of an eternal aesthetic
damnation. I do not believe that a total adher-
ence to this kind of painting, a total abjuration
CXII