Studio: international art (41.1907)

The Mannheim Tercentenary Exhibition

"HESSIAN PEASANTS" BY KARL BANTZER

figured brocade, the furniture, cabinets, etc., being of what is known as the advanced school, are so

ebony, while the broad decorated cornice and ceiling infatuated by ugliness ? This mental warp is on

are gold. In contrast to this black groundwork the increase, and has spread to all countries; if it

the cabinet pictures gain a peculiar sparkling were confined to the German race alone it could

quality, the dark bronze of the busts (there is be better understood, for in the Teutonic charac-

nothing white in the room) helping to accentuate ter there is an odd love of the grotesquely ugly,
the brilliant patches of colour. The room by Hierl- . Bocklin amused himself, after any great effort to

Deronco has a wall-covering of violet purple moire work out a specially beautiful combination, by

silk, with a deeper shade on skirting board and modelling the most hideous faces j reproductions

floor, a rich gold ceiling, a Greek couch in bur- of them are used as keystones over doors and

nished gold and violet. The result of this daring windows, and their contortions interest the man

experiment is that the pictures, with only two in the street in every town in South Germany,
exceptions, are rendered muddy. For purposes of It is the photographic papers now which have

splendour of colour the nude has always been the got hold of the phrase " Art is Nature seen through

grand objective, so that the large nude Diana is a temperament," but very much work possesses

fittingly hung in this pagan blaze of purple and no trace of temperament beyond the elemental

gold. and primitive. In any work of really high art,

Here I am prompted to ask why so many artists, there ought to be a poetic aim, " the capacity to

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