International studio (61.1917)

Maurice Sterne at Bali

who go to the North and South poles—and even
if the artist adventure only into his own street
the discovery he makes there may be valuable,
may reveal hidden wonders to the eye of man.
An artist, indeed, may have endless adventures
without going far; the value is not in where he
goes but in what he brings back.
Sterne has brought back reverence and repose
from Bali. He has not shown us the whole spirit
of the race, but he has made us look with rever-
ence on the people whom the ignorant call savage.
In a sense this is creative art. The Balinese and
their island have drawn out of Sterne what was
in his own soul, and—with the aid of his previous
careful study of the masters of the past, by in-
cessant work, he has found a medium which he
has made quite his own and has recorded in an
individual manner those acts which seemed vital
to him. His single figures are full of real beauty;
he has done his work infinitely well, even though
his outlook has been a limited one. He was moved
to repose but never to ecstasy by the shaven
nuns, yet the forms made by their postures are
recorded by him with a simplicity as strong as
their prayer; observation of a set of acts and
facts, rather than inspiration, seems to have de-
veloped him.
Everywhere Maurice Sterne is called an Amer-
ican painter, and so in truth he is. But it is only
a part of the truth, for his art has nothing Amer-
ican in it. It is the art of a Russian Jew who has
trained his mind, his eye and his hand in Paris,
Rome and Greece.
The great art produced by America—the art
of the Ucatan, so wonderful that it rivals the
early Egyptian art—has not touched him, and the
life of America, the thought of America, is for-
eign to him, too. It is the mystic tradition of
the Russian Jew which filters out into his art;
indeed he seems to have been very little influ-
enced by the Balinese, who have a most remark-
able art of their own. Those of his race have a
breath of the East in their soul and in going
among the Balinese he has completed himself,
found his own rhythm; for it is his rhythm as
much as theirs that pervades his portraits of
them.
Incidentally, like that of other explorers, his
work was done almost at the risk of his life. He
stayed longer than it is good to stay in that
climate and only left when the doctor came from
Java and asked him if he wished to have a palm

tree planted over him. He seems to have cared
little for recording or even for translating into
line or form the landscape and the vegetation of
the place; occasionally he has used a symbol of
his own suggestive of palm trees, but only as
background for a figure, nor has he wanted to
convey air, heat, sun, damp or any other climatic
condition which so largely creates the character
of both place and race. A few daily acts, the
form, and a certain attitude of the mind of the
people sufficed him. His work is satisfying as
far as he has taken it, and I look forward to his
future development along the lines he has at last
marked out for himself.
This exhibition with much new work has been
on view at the Bourgeois Galleries, 668 Fifth
Avenue, New York.

Courtesy Kraushaar Galleries


THE WHITE GIRL BY WHISTLER

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