International studio (81.1925)

inceRnACionAL

"lower Manhattan" by John marin

because he also made a flapper of things from the nizable as a Marin by one who had seen only this

ten-cent store pasted on cardboard and called her exhibition. But consistency is more often the

"Miss Woolworth." His titles, I think, get in the ruin of a painter than a virtue. Nor is the appeal

way of most spectators. Taken with the pictures which his pictures makes an intellectual one.

they are so suggestive that the mind becomes Although they are studies, and careful ones, of

involved in representative speculation and the New York, old houses, coast lines and boats, the

Tightness of his design is lost sight of. Perhaps, subject matter is not of primary interest. It would

in a future exhibition, he may be bold enough to be possible to write at length of the symbolism in

write across the top of his page in the catalogue some of his New York pictures but when that had

"a wicked and perverse generation seeketh for a been done we would be no nearer the thing which

sign, and there shall no sign be given it." gives those pictures their esthetic value. To me,

John Marin closes the show. Perhaps because his watercolors are emotionally exciting; some-

I like his part best I find it difficult to say why. thing in his arrangement of lines and forms and

Of all the painters in the group he is the keenest colors gives me great pleasure. I have a strong

experimenter although he has been the most con- suspicion that neither he nor I know exactly what

sistent in the development of his art. One of his that something is. There are plenty of formulas

watercolors of fifteen years ago, although vastly for the painting of pictures; but the formula for

different from his present work, would be recog- the creation of a work of art has yet to be written.

Illustrations by permission oj Alfred Stieglitz

MAY 1925

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