International studio (81.1925)

mceRnACionAL

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critics of modern art to group them with the
author of Retrogression. Nor does Mr. Cook him-
self do them that honor. But, as might be ex-
pected, he has a most unusual theory as to why
otherwise reputable critics have praised the works
which he condemns. "Critics were fed-up with,
and nauseated by, good art, and screamed for
change, the more violent the better. As a boy I
sickened myself with strawberries and cream, and
for years after the very thought of cream caused
nausea. People who have, under doctor's orders,
lived for a time on milk hate it ever after. So if
we had acted as did the new critics we should have
denounced milk and cream as detestable things!
There is a likeness between all forms of 'taste'—
they are soon satisfied, and excess produces dis-
gust."

Pictures comparable to "strawberries and
cream" we have always with us in abundance but
what, in the name of whatever mystical deity Mr.
Cook worships, have they to do with art? Al-
though there are few persons so completely lacking
in esthetic feeling as to draw such parallels, some
form of that comparison is, I believe, at the bottom
of most of the adverse criticism of modern paint-
ing. Too often art is thought of as a sort of dessert
and a conversational knowledge thereof as the
frosting on a polite education.

And it is exactly this "strawberries and cream"
school of art, the art which has always been most
popular with those persons, vastly in the majority,
whose primitive instincts civilization has dulled
and who have not yet learned to appreciate a more
sophisticated statement of reality, against which
the moderns revolted. Not, as Mr. Cook says,
against "everything essential to fine art." The
modern movement has, in fact, been a renaissance
rather than a revolt; in the work of its masters
are to be found the qualities which have charac-
terized the great art of the past. The difference
between a modern and an old master is one of
externals only, little greater than that between a
Rembrandt and a Botticelli.

The differences between the art of successive
periods have been chiefly those of emphasis. In
the great mosaics of the sixth and seventh cen-
turies as well as in pre-Renaissance Italian paint-
ing other qualities were sacrificed to design; during
the Renaissance in Italy and its Flemish counter-
part greater attention was given to the subject
matter and literary content of pictures and the
design, or organization, though present, was less
obvious; the painters of that and later periods
who sacrificed everything to their "story" pro-
duced nothing which can be called great.

A study of any of the great schools of art, from

the Chinese and the Egyptian to Rembrandt,
indicates that whatever else they may contain,
works of art have the one constant element of
design. No one believes that a Chinese landscape
is the photographic portrait of a mountain or
waterfall; it is obviously an arrangement of nat-
ural forms to suit the esthetic needs of the artist.
No one believes that the architecturally massed
sculptures of the Egyptians represent the men and
women of their time exactly as they appeared;
again they are arrangements of form, this time
human, into something esthetically satisfying. A
motion picture of the Panathenaic procession
would have borne faint resemblance to the render-
ing of the procession in the frieze of the Parthenon;
here, perhaps more than in any other work of art,
certainly more than in any other of similar size,
is the adaptation of form to esthetic design
evident. And yet the most conservative critics
and historians have called the Parthenon frieze
the greatest sculptural work in the world. As we
have seen, the Byzantines sacrificed natural ap-
pearance to design, and yet the mosaics in Ra-
venna are generally regarded as art of the highest
order. Giotto and his followers, the masters of the
pre-Renaissance, built their Madonnas and saints
into designs almost architectural in their structure.
Leonardo and Michelangelo, the two greatest
figures of the Renaissance, in spite of the fact that
they followed natural appearance more closely
than their predecessors, nevertheless forced nature
into the unnatural arrangements which their
esthetic sense demanded. Compare the works of
del Sarto or Murillo with those of these other
masters. It will be found that both the Italian
and Spaniard have painted figures anatomically
more perfect in settings photographically more
correct; their drawing conforms to Mr. Cook's
standard as that of the others does not; the
element of design is almost completely sacrificed
to make way for a closer approach to naturalness;
yet no one questions a ranking which puts Michel-
angelo and Leonardo before the others. It is not
his subject matter which makes Rembrandt great.
It is the fact that in his paintings is so strongly
present the element of esthetic design which has
characterized the work of every master.

Does it seem reasonable to suppose that es-
thetics have completely changed in modern times;
that the thing by which we differentiate between
art and prettiness in the work of the ancients is
no longer applicable? To me it seems more prob-
able that those works of the present day in which
natural form has been constrained to meet esthetic
need will, in the future, be regarded as the master-
pieces of this age.

three twelve

july 1925