International studio (81.1925)

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that Seurat's whole reputation has been built up,
partly on the one, partly on the other. On the
one hand, the Neo-Impressionists have boomed
him as their most distinguished member. On the
other, the Cubists have done him honor, as to an
ancestor. Both have used him to support their
own theories, further their own ends.

In such a case, in which theory plays so dis-
proportionate a part, and critics conspire to
emphasize purely relative values, one can hardly
escape an occasional doubt. Is this man really,
one asks oneself, as great as he is cracked up to be?
Or shall we wake up one fine day to find that
behind these theories there is no creative power,
behind this superb facade of lines and forms per-
fectly balanced one with the other there is a bone-
less, fleshless void, bloodless, filled with sawdust?
That we have been worshipping, in fact, an
elegant mummy?

The question is immeasurably complicated by
the fact that Seurat was himself an incorrigible
theorist, and one moreover whose theories were
never as it were held in subordination, but stated
clearly, aggressively, as a writer might put his
thesis in block capitals at the beginning of his
book. Not even the veriest beginner in such
matters can escape them. Even if he is innocent
of their import, he cannot escape the conscious-
ness of having entered a world in which Law, as
inflexible as was ever devised by Prussian drill
sergeant, is as inexorably enforced. "Seurat etait
exactement 1'oppose de ce que je me permets d'appeler
le peintre-ruminant," said Lhote and for once he
understates his case. Of almost no great painter
can one say that he is a pure peintre-ruminant.
All, consciously or sub-consciously, obey laws,
whether inherited or of their own making, shape
their material in conformity with a concept, call
plan and freedom into conference and make them
strike a bargain. But between the frank give and
take, the playful balance of will and invention of
a Seurat, ordering every line down to its most
minute variation from the normal, be it curve or
straight, answering it with another line as ordered
and as minutely varied, delimiting every area of
light and shade with terrifying exactitude, there
is a vast gulf fixed. No one in the history of
modern painting, not the Cubists, not the Pere
Ingres himself, from whom both he and they may
be said in some sort to derive, has dared to entrust
the reins of government so completely to the will.

What then were the theories on which he built?

"Art," he said—the passage has been often
quoted, but can one escape quoting it again—"is
harmony. Harmony is the conciliation of con-
traries, the conciliation of similars (related shades)

of tone, color and line; tone means light and dark;
color means red and its complementary green,
orange and blue, yellow and violet; line means
angles built above or below the horizontal. These
different harmonies are variously combined to
evoke calm, gaiety, sadness. Gaiety in relation
to tone implies a luminous dominant, in relation
to color a warm dominant, in relation to line,
ascent (angles above the horizontal). Calm in
relation to tone implies a balance of light and dark,
in relation to color, a balance of warm and cold,
in relation to line, the horizontal. Sadness in rela-
tion to tone implies a dark dominant, in relation
to color a cold dominant, in relation to line,
descent (angles below the horizontal)."

In other words, Seurat proclaims the existence
of two fixed standards by which the painter-
navigator can steer. For design the horizontal,
for color the perfect balance of light and dark, of
warm and cold, provide a norm from which every
slightest deviation can be accurately measured.
This dual norm, which he calls "calm," he envis-
ages as lying in the exact centre of expression, the
poles of which are gaiety, the perpendicular of
ascent, and sadness, the perpendicular of descent.
In between, accurately measured on the angles of
descent, he every shade of human emotion.

A more simple and at the same time more
thorughgoing esthetic was, I think, never pro-
pounded by artist. It is indeed both more and
less than an esthetic. Less, in that it reverses the
natural order of things and sets the means of
expression before the thing to be expressed. More,
in that it claims to transcend theory, to have dis-
covered in fact the perfect means of expression,
susceptible of nothing less than scientific applica-
tion.

Now it is not hard to imagine, even without
concrete examples before one, whither such a
scientific esthetic, to which must of course be
added a reasonable adherence to Signac's divi-
sionist theories, is likely to lead. For the chaos of
pure Impressionism, which one might compare to
an essay in musical harmonies written without
key signature or bar division, it proposes to sub-
stitute an order based, as to key signature, on the
horizontal, as to rhythm, on contrasts recurring
at stated intervals, the exact strength of which
can be accurately forecast. The resultant may be
harmony, but it is exceedingly unlikely to be art.
As unlikely, in fact, as for a musical structure,
which relies for its stability on incessant and
regular returns to the tonic or to some stated
interval from the tonic, to be music. The mo-
notony of the one will be found in all probability
a close parallel for the monotony of the other.

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