International studio (81.1925)

mceRnAcionAL

of its maker. Which definition explains why an
exact plaster cast of the Venus cle Medici falls
short of the original.

Reputation—Child of a Genius for Publicity
wedded to an Infallible Prescience in the matter
of Air Currents. This latter, to be fruitful, must
amount to a Gift for Prophecy, the older
and more scientific method favored by M. X,*
of immortal and romantic memory, being sadly
antiquated.

-, Effective—On the strength of which pic-
tures can be sold. Not always the same
thing.

Rhythm—An inner symmetry, composed of a
recurrence of stresses, of expected strength, at
expected intervals. The matter is simpler to
perceive than to express. But take an analogy
from nature. A wave, for example, rises, rears
and breaks, not haphazard, but in obedience to
law, pauses, gathers force, swells on to a climax,
then crashes, its mass shattered into a dozen
minor waves, which themselves break and ripple
away into nothing. And the fashion of its
breaking, whatever its irregularity, is in a
manner foreknown, expected, inevitably condi-
tioned by the law of its weight and speed. So
with a work of art. The force which brought it
into being is no less measurable, conditions no
less its moments of pause and its moments of

*For the sake of those who had not the advantages of a
romantic education he it said that this worthy man, valet to
the puissant Athos, occupied his leisure hours investigating
the direction of the Seine's current, by spitting into it.

onrush, strikes with inexorable exactitude the
hour for the final crashing of the wave. And
that measurable force is its rhythm.

Romantic—Hist. School of early nineteenth-
century poets and artists which proposed to
abolish the body of "law" which the Classicists
had deduced from study of the ancients, in
favo;r of a frank dependance upon nature, in
this i following, they imagined, the practice of
the middle ages. Thence, a Medievalist, cloth-
ing that imperfect age—for are not all ages,
even our very own, an inch or two below per-
fection?—in a white robe of sanctity which had
surprised its noble figures even more than it had
flattered them and incommoded not less than
either. Thence again, by a further extension,
a lover of past ages, veiled in the mists of time;
of gloomy spots, into which the sharp light of
day cannot penetrate, of fabulous far-off lands.
A fugitive from common things, bare walls,
familiar landscapes. A fugitive in the last
resort from Self. A pitiful person, to be sure,
very like you, dear reader, horribly like me.
Esth.—The popular antithesis between Ro-
mantic and Classicist may be expressed thus:
The latter place implicit trust in the formal, the
former in the mystical absolutes. To be explicit,
our Classicist has, with Plato, no doubt as to
the existence of an absolute equality, nor no
doubt as to the paramount importance of that
fact. Our Romantic, on the other hand, be-
lieves with an equal firmness in the existence of
an absolute love and places therein a confidence
no less implicit.

ADDENDA

B

Bohemian—The antithesis of the Bourgeois, re-
garded by that worthy man as an awful example
of the results of Extreme-ness. A spiritual free-
lance, brought into the world amid all the
esthetic bareness of a Lee Simonson setting, to
wit: one bed (double), one table (sans cloth),
three hard chairs (possibly antique) and a
mousetrap, and asking nothing of life but
health, freedom and a convenient pawnbroker.
His crest a champagne glass (inverted), his
motto Life a la carte.

C

Chiaroscuro—Scientific formula invented by the
firm of da Vinci Nachfolger for the manufacture
of artificial daylight. Later and more success-

fully adapted by rival concerns to the manufac-
ture of artificial darkness. Long obsolete, but
too resonant a word to be allowed to fall into
utter desuetude.

E

Extreme—All that the Bourgeois fears and so
hates. All that leads out of safety, over un-
charted seas, trackless prairies and unsealed
mountains into a land of adventure, discovery
and useless beauty—the discovery and beauty
which he, the valuable citizen, will later turn
to good and profitable account.

F

Fauve—Band of wild young men, headed by
Matisse, Rouault and other pupils of the late

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AUGUST I925