International studio (60.1916/1917)

Modern Art: The New Spirit in America

season, and that which interests the critic is the
progress made during the summer. Kroll, Ben-
ton and McFee are conspicuous among those who
have consciously gone forward. Kroll in partic-
ular has changed for the better. Not long ago
this painter’s work was systematised and insen-
sitive—the kind of work which any one of a hun-
dred meagrely talented young men might have
done—but in his present picture, Two Rivers, is
to be remarked a new attitude, a new awakened
impulse in his approach to his subject. He has
studied Cezanne, and that master of landscape is
unmistakably leading him toward a profounder
and surer vision.
Kroll has yet to comprehend Cezanne, but
his colour is better, his handling freer, and his
recognisable form more precise.
Benton, too, is forging ahead. Although there
is a certain stiffness in his figures, they reveal a
genuine feeling for plasticity in drawing. His
lines are still sharp, his colours harsh, and his
draughtsmanship is laboured; but withal his pic-
ture attests to a knowledge which in time may
give birth to rhythmically solid art of a high
order. He has an understanding of compositional
form in three dimensions; and while his work now
bears the mark of too self-conscious study, it is
preoccupied with profound problems and worthy
of respect.
McFee’s Interior with Still-Life is highly sensi-
tive in its planar expression, possessing some of
the delicate beauty of an early Picasso. How-
ever, it is a representation which is colder than
it should be—the result of too concentrated an
interest in his method and medium. In time, no
doubt, this coldness will disappear, leaving him
free to master his artistic desire. At present he
is a craftsman—a sensitive, artistic craftsman to
be sure, but nevertheless a painter who has a
system which needs continual watching and
nursing.
Halpert unfortunately shows no progress. He
has gained in neither sensitivity nor vision; and
his colours, though greyish, are, as usual, either
heavy or discordant. His Cathedra^: Toledo is
little more than a school drawing in the early
manner of Delaunay, with certain Puy-Manguin-
Friesz-Vlaminck tendencies bent to professional
ends. Halpert’s work, almost alone amid that of
the young men of talent in America, breathes a
narrow contentment with what he has accom-
plished.

Man Ray’s offerings are very early, and are in
no way representative of his two-dimensional
talent, lacking even his later richness. Of’s very
lovely Renoiresque landscapes are not new, but
they possess a permanent beauty which makes
them at all times acceptable. Ben Benn has been
caught in the futile ultra-realism of Rivera—that
realism which evolved from Pointillism and is the
logical culmination of an extended and unre-
pressed Cubism. Dasburg’s portrait is not what
one was led to expect while contemplating his
last year’s work; but here is a painter who is
attacking difficult problems, and he must pass
through many phases before he attains his high
ambitions.
In all these works mentioned, and in many
more by men of whom I shall speak later, there
are to be found two distinct impulses. First,
there is that vague and, at bottom, inarticulate
impulse which makes of art a vision of mystery
and chaos, a half-seen, helf-felt emotion which
has been caught in a flash by the inner con-
sciousness. Painters of this type of mind are
pre-eminently abstract and metaphysical: life to
them is symbolic, possessed of a hidden, inner
significance. Their pictures are poetic rather
than formally plastic. The other temperamental
impulse results in a spontaneous reaction to the
visual beauty in nature. Painters of this latter
type interpret nature, not as a series of associative
symbols, but as a collection of forms answering
to the physical needs of composition.
In the greatest art, of course, both impulses
must have come together and been wholly amal-
gamated; but at present the exponents of the new
work lack that unity of inner and outer beauty
which the highest achievement demands. Up to
now we have had mostly experiments—the work
of pioneers rather than achievers. Much of it is
indeed worthy and fraught with far-flung im-
portance; and the roads opening up before these
efforts of to-day will be the highways of the artists
of to-morrow.
The coming month will see three exhibitions
of the new work—each representing a distinct
phase of modern art.
At 291 Fifth Avenue Walkowitz will expose.
At the Daniel Gallery the work of William and
Marguerite Zorach will be on view.
At the Modern Gallery will be pictures by
Derain, Vlaminck and Burty.

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