is found in his own proposition—which is philosophically valid—that the universe is the atmosphere, the environment of every object from a grain of sand to a planet.
Hence the Futurist figure that shows a few houses, a bit of a railing, a glimpse of a distant square, is more comprehensive than the conventional bust to only an infinitesimal degree; only almost infinitesimal fractions of the enveloping universe are shown.
The effect is fragmentary and confusing.
Other sculptors, conspicuously Rodin in some of his work, get the effect of atmosphere and environment by detaching the figure or composition only partially from the block of marble or mass of bronze, leaving to the imagination of the observer the finishing of the work, the supplying of both environment and atmosphere.
That would seem to be the finer, the purer, the more abstract way.
In fact, there is an obvious contradiction between the creed of the Futurist sculptor and the Futurist writer.
The former feels impelled to show environment by encumbering his figure with an overwhelming mass of details, houses, railings, sidewalks, petty figures, etc., etc.—all the qualifying objects that happen within his vision, leaving nothing to the imagination of his observer; while the Futurist writer would eliminate from literature all adjectival and adverbial words and phrases, leaving the nouns (the simple figures of sculpture) to stand alone.
Many things can be done in painting that cannot be done in sculpture. A figure may be painted against a background of an entire city, or against the heavens; or it may be painted in the midst of a battle, or a train wreck; the flight of years can be indicated, centuries may be swept into one canvas.
In sculpture this cannot be done save, in a measure, in such crude mixtures of sculpture, relief, and painted scenes as those large circular panoramas so popular twenty years ago, where the spectator stood in the center—where the theory of the Futurist requires him to be—and gazed from life-size figures and objects at his feet across smaller and smaller, until reality imperceptibly joined the painted canvas, which gave a sense of great distance—entire battle-fields.
The Futurist sculptor cannot give this sense of environment and atmosphere by attaching diminutive houses and bits of balconies to the bust of a man.
In reading their extravagant declarations and denunciations of the past it must be remembered that extremes beget extremes, that enthusiasts habitually indulge in extravagant arguments and theories for the purpose of attracting attention and stimulating discussion.
In an address recently delivered in London, the leader of Futurism warned his hearers not to accept too literally the startling extravagances of some of the Futurist manifestoes and literature. He stated frankly that many of the most violent propositions were uttered for the purpose of arousing public attention to what they considered very real evils in our modern life. For instance, when the Futurists cry, “Down with all museums,” “Destroy all remains of antiquity,” they do not mean that if they were given the power they would do these things, but what they desire is to arouse Italy and the ancient world to the fact that Italy has a position as a modern nation. The Futurists resent the attitude of the world toward Rome and Athens; they resent the attitude of travelers who visit those two places solely to look at the remains of the ancient world; they believe that Italy is just as much a modern nation as is America, and that Rome is just as much alive as is New York, and they would have people come to Italy, not to see ruins, but to see her factories and industries and places of business. When one rightly considers the matter this is a very rational and patriotic attitude, and it is the only attitude that is wholly consistent with the development and progress of a nation as a vital force in the world of today.
Viewed in the light of the intense patriotism which is behind some of these wildly extravagant denunciations of the past, they do not seem so devoid of reason.
We in America have no past to oppress us; therefore it is difficult for us to realize the feeling of a modern nation, or a modern city, which the civilized world will not accept as modern, but insists upon viewing as a museum of antiquities.
The address referred to also said:
“Futurism was first put forward by me for the purpose of renovating and reawakening the Italian race to a true appreciation of the true art in literature as well as in painting and sculpture. Precisely because it has a splendid past, Italy is today in some sort disinherited. The cult of the past is upheld among them by a whole world of interested people, and the Futurist movement in its creative effort is hampered not only by such economic hindrances but by the mental cowardice of people.
“In art you must continually advance; those who stop are already dead, or candidates for death. The Romanticism of artists like Baudelaire and Wagner and Flaubert was inspired by two or three principles which are worn out today. ‘Salambo’ was the type romance of that old sensibility. In a certain sense such Romanticism is the identification of the
idea of beauty with the idea of woman. We are at the end of that period.
“Woman as the center, the obsession has already gone out of poetry. As a leit-motif she has no longer the same force; other problems have taken her place. According to our view, poetry is nothing but a more intense, a more exalted, life—and that is why we combat the constant intrusion into it of the ‘domestic triangle’ in various forms, and which has been its ruin.
“Now, Futurists are found everywhere. In England you have H. G. Wells. We all realize the need to be more rapid, more intense, more essential, and though our method of expression has been stigmatized as ‘telegraphic lyricism’ I take no exception to that so long as it makes people talk and brings them to examine our underlying rules of action.
“Art, either plastic or active, is not a religion. It is the best part of our strength, of our physiological being. It is, in consequence, absurd to consider it as a system, as something to worship with joined hands; it should express all the intensity of life—its beauty, greatness, its fire, its brutality, its sordidness.
“Futurism in poetry represents a realism profound, rapid, intense—the very complex of our life of today.”
XII
VIRILE-IMPRESSIONISM
WHAT is happening in America? Exactly what might be expected in a young, vigorous, and virile country.
America has been keenly susceptible to art influences from every section. Her students are everywhere, her exhibitions are gathered from the four quarters of the globe. She is very much alive to what Europe is doing, she has long been interested in what China and Japan have done.
While her art is in the main conservative, it is not the conservatism of stubbornness or stolidity, it is rather the conservatism of isolation; but her isolation is a thing of the past. Communication is so frequent, travel so easy, transportation so cheap, that both art and artists flow hither and thither almost unrestricted.
In spite of this freedom of inter-communication, the development of American art has been along independent lines—at least along one independent line, a line so individual in its characteristics it deserves the name American-Impressionism, or, more generically, Virile-Impressionism.
By Virile-Impressionism is meant a manner of viewing nature and a mode of painting quite different from the more superficial refinements of Impressionism on the one hand and the extraordinary developments of Post-Impressionism on the other.
Let us try to make this clear.
As already noted, Impressionism attained a logical end in the painting of brilliant light effects, especially in the works of the Neo-Impressionists, the pointillists.
In short, the drift of Impressionism in France was toward more and more brilliant reflections of the surfaces of things.
This extreme attentuation was quite foreign to the spirit of America, which is more material and practical.
It may be our fault, it is certainly our virtue, that we are material and practical in our outlook. In a big, sane sense we are dreamers. Only dreamers could carry the Panama Canal to completion, and, to mention lesser works, only dreamers could build such terminals as the Pennsylvania and New York Central in New York, and such buildings as the Woolworth and the Manhattan. But our dreams always take practical shape. We are a nation of inventors because we are a nation of dreamers.
Hence, while our artists were quick to respond to all that is good and strong in Impressionism, they found little satisfaction in the ultra-refinements of Neo-Impressionism.
The result was that when France pressed Impressionism to its extreme, a normal and healthy reaction took place in American art.
Many of the strong painters of America began doing things of their own. They still adhered closely to nature. They remained Impressionists in the older significance of the term, but they painted not the surfaces of things but the substance—in short, they were Cézanne-Impressionists as distinguished from Monet-Impressionists.
For instance, Winslow Homer was a great and true Impressionist, but he had nothing in common with the Neo-Impressionists, and little in common with Monet. He had, however, a great deal in common with Cézanne. His pictures give one an impression of nature herself, of the power of the sea, the adamant of the rocks, the significance of life, yet each one is an accurate transcript of what he saw. He did
not go into his studio and create pictures out of his imagination; he let his imagination play upon nature, but nature controlled all he did.
He was, in a sense, the greatest of American-Impressionists—he was a Virile-Impressionist.
There are many Virile-Impressionists in Europe, but they are so many individuals; here Virile-Impressionism is the result of racial, national, geographical conditions.
It was inevitable that Impressionism in America should follow along virile and substantial lines rather than along nervous and superficial; it is the way the country is built.
Sargent is a Virile-Impressionist. He paints striking likenesses, but he also paints marvellous characterizations; that is, he gets beneath the skin of his sitters and paints them as they are, not as they seem. His sense of color is very deficient; many of his portraits from a decorative point of view are almost the reverse of pleasing; he had not the faintest appreciation of the subtle refinements of the things Whistler strove so long and earnestly to achieve; in his best things he is strong and direct to the point of brutality—all of which is characteristic of Virile-Impressionism, and exactly what one would expect from a vigorous, muscular, frank American. Though Sargent spends most of his time on the other side, he is no more English than French; his pictures fit into an American exhibition far more comfortably than into the Royal Academy or the old Salon.
Robert Henri is another strong Virile-Impressionist.
The attitude of American painters toward the extreme modern developments is both curious and interesting.
On the opening of the International Exhibition there was an outburst of violent indignation from the older men, ordinary speech failed to express their feelings, and they rushed into print with language as violent as the press would accept. All that made lively reading and lent zest to current literature.
Six months later this feeling of angry opposition largely subsided. As an illustration, one of the bitterest of the Academicians accepted as a “good idea” the organization of an independent exhibition, open to artists without the intervention of a jury, under the auspices of the National Academy, as soon as a building could be provided that would adequately house all exhibitions.
Again, the very conservative authorities of a large art institute listened receptively to the suggestion that every art museum owed the public two things in the way of exhibitions:
First, exhibitions selected by juries which would give the public the benefit of the best expert judgment available.
Second, exhibitions wherein painters and sculptors barred by the juries would have opportunities to present their works to the judgment of the public.
In short, suggestions that would not have been listened to before the International are now discussed as quite within the range of possibilities.
There is no danger of these things coming to pass in the immediate future; there is still too much latent opposition, but the virulent has measurably subsided.
So much for the older men.
The younger were naturally much more tolerant. They were more—they were both curious and receptive. Many of them searched with eager eye for valuable hints, for ways and means to perfect their own art.
It was a great pleasure to watch and talk with these young men, the rising generation.
Many of them, to their own surprise, found they had been working along modern lines without fully realizing it.
They had not cut loose from Impressionism, but they were doing things constructively rather than superficially; they were painting like Cézanne rather than Monet.
If the attempt were made to name these younger men, the result would be injustice to many whose works are unknown to the writer, and the argument would be confused.
To speak, therefore, of one of the paintings reproduced, take the “Still Life,” by Kroll. In the decorative arrangement of the draperies and in the manner in which the fruit and stone jug are painted, the feeling is quite Post-Impressionistic; while the glimpse of the street out the window is purely Impressionistic.
That is to say, all within the window is painted solidly and constructively, quite under the influence of Cézanne; all that is without is painted fleetingly and superficially, more under the influence of Monet. It was done intentionally, to secure a certain effect of contrast; but the result is neither French-Impressionism nor Post-Impressionism, but American-Impressionism—a certain eclecticism.
The glimpse of the street is delightful, but the arbitrarily arranged interior is more than delightful; it possesses strength of line, fine color, and solid masses, done constructively.
Still, one has only to compare this picture with the “Still Life,” by Herbin, and the “Forest at Martigues,” by Derain, to see how close to nature it is, how Impressionistic it is as distinguished from the Post-Impressionistic, or creative, spirit.
Kroll painted what he felt, controlled by what he saw. Derain painted what he felt, influenced only slightly by what he had seen.
The foregoing illustrates the position of the more vigorous of the younger American painters; they are so strong, so virile, so muscular—let us say—that instinctively they lean toward the painting of things in a big, broad constructive manner; the refinements of superficial impressionism do not interest them.
At the same time they have not reached the point where they are willing to let go of nature entirely and do purely creative things.
Perhaps this is just as well.
America—like every new country—is so essentially practical, practical in even its most imaginative flights, that it is difficult for its painters to retire within themselves and do things that have only an esoteric or metaphysical relation to actualities; that sort of thing in both art and literature is much easier on the continent than in either England or America; it is especially easy in the highly charged and hyper-artificial atmosphere of Paris.
Purely creative work is done in a masterly manner—in his best things—by Arthur Davies. It is attempted and quite successfully by Kenneth Miller, to mention only two of many.
To the casual observer Davies may seem to lose himself at times in his theories, to press his dreams and speculations beyond the confines of his art, but on this point the opinion of the “casual observer” is of little value, for Davies’s pictures cannot be casually observed; they challenge the attention of the most serious and repay study. I make no pretense to having fathomed their mystery, to understanding their inner significance, but enjoy and have always enjoyed the marvellously fine way in which they are done, and their rare decorative quality.
Here is a man doing creative work, work in which he plays with and uses nature to attain ends far above and far removed from nature. He is in no sense a Virile-Impressionist, no one would think of classing him as an Impressionist at all. Yet he is not a Post-Impressionist as the term has been defined in this book.
He belongs rather to the class of inspired or poetic painters, a few of whom are with us always, men who neither found nor belong to a “school,” but who express on canvas or in stone their fancies in a way that reminds one of fairy-tales.
Davies may admire much of the work of some of the ultra Post-Impressionists; he likes, for instance, much of Matisse’s work; he may even fancy he has something in common with these men, but he has not. He was painting his pictures long before theirs were very much known, and he would have painted his if theirs had never been produced at all.
Matisse is moved by a spirit fundamentally different from that which animates Davies.
“The Bridge,” by Kroll, is another striking example of American-Impressionistic art. It is one of a series of pictures of lower New York, each painted “on the spot,” some from roofs and high places difficult of access and dangerous.
It is comparatively easy to go out and make a few sketches of portions of a city like New York and then retire to the studio and paint faint and superficial reproductions, such inadequate reproductions as appear on the walls of any metropolitan exhibition; it is quite another thing to plant one’s easel on slippery rocky heights and day after day, in the cold, paint from nature as directly as Monet ever painted and in a much more virile way.
It takes imagination and enthusiasm and the superb confidence of youth to attempt such colossal things, and it takes an unusual technical facility to “get away” with the attempt.
Winslow Homer’s name has been mentioned and mentioned with the respect due one of the greatest painters this country has produced, but the besetting weakness of picture buyers is undue reverence for the man who has “arrived,” above all for the master who is dead.
Better pictures are being painted in America today than Homer painted, and he would be the first to say so if living.
Since he painted his best pictures the art of painting has advanced, painters have improved their technic and broadened their outlook.
There are pictures being painted today by young Americans that will be worth far more than Homer’s, and that is said with the full realization that no lover of what is big and strong in art could ask for more virile impressions of nature than those of Homer at his best.
When the Morgan pictures were hanging in the Metropolitan Museum, acclaimed in parrot phrases by critics and visited by multitudes, it was a delight, a veritable refreshing of the soul, to get away from the smell of the dead into the living atmosphere of the Hearn collection and see pictures that belong to us, to our own times, that are flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone.
Every picture in the Morgan collection had its vital relation
to life once—when it was painted and where it was painted.
Not one has even a remote relation to the life of America.
They are valuable, very valuable, in the sense that old tapestries, old armor, old brocades, old pottery, etc., etc., are valuable—valuable as illustrating the history and development of painting, and beautiful as many old things are beautiful—but not half so beautiful as the living and breathing things of today.
But how can we appreciate the beauty of the things our painters and sculptors are doing when we are blind to the superb, the magnificent beauty of what our engineer-builders are doing—our steel “sky-scrapers”—America’s greatest achievement and unique contribution to the arts—an absolutely new architecture?
Though the artist may be quick to disavow all such intention, it is obvious that there is much Post-Impressionism in John W. Alexander’s work.
In both his technic and his inspiration he is very Post-Impressionistic.
In the delightful sweep of his line, and the purely decorative use of color, he departs far from nature.
The attitude of Sargent toward a model or sitter and that of Alexander are diametrically opposed, the one seeks to paint a vigorous characterization of the person before him, the other seeks to create a picture, and to do so by a technic so different from that commonly used it still occasions much of the wonderment it excited years ago.
Some of the portraits by Alexander are conspicuous on the walls of an exhibition for very much the same reasons such a picture as Van Rees’s “Maternity” would be conspicuous.
The landscape and cattle piece by Segonzac are both examples of Virile-Impressionism. But Segonzac has painted many other pictures that are Post-Impressionistic—arbitrary in design and execution, and still others that are both Virile-Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic, such as his large canvas, “A Pastoral,” shown at the International, wherein the cattle are Virile-Impressionistic creations while the nude figures and the entire scheme are purely Post-Impressionistic.
The two landscapes by Vlaminck and Charmy are good examples of the transition state from Virile-Impressionism to Post-Impressionism.
They are sufficiently close to nature to be Impressionistic in the large sense of the term; at the same time they are so arbitrary and decorative in technic as to be quite Post-Impressionistic. They are about as far removed from the average exhibition of Impressionistic pictures as they are from the creative and abstract art of the Cubists, yet they will hang with either without unduly shocking the spectator’s sense of the fitness of things.
The three Cardoza’s are purely Post-Impressionistic; they are charming examples of what might be called romantic Post-Impressionism as distinguished from the more abstract conceptions of the Cubists; they have no more relation to life than a fairy tale, rather less if anything, for they are primarily decorative rather than significant.
Zak’s “Shepherd” is also Post-Impressionistic, romantic in feeling like Cardoza’s, but of deeper human significance. The utter loneliness of the shepherd’s life, the monotony of its outlook, the note of resignation, are all as subtly indicated
as are any of the human qualities in Millet’s pictures of peasant life; yet in technic and composition the picture is essentially Post-Impressionistic, a decorative and musical work of the creative imagination. One would not be far astray in classing it with the poetic work of Arthur Davies.
XIII
SCULPTURE
DEVELOPMENTS in sculpture do not always parallel those in painting.
In comparison painting is so facile that it lends itself easily to experiments, responds quickly to moods and fancies. In short, painting is more susceptible—more volatile.
Not that the painter and the sculptor are different human beings, but the mediums whereby they express themselves are so different, and the demands for their work are so unequal, that sculpture usually lags behind in new ventures. The sculptor, however great his desire, cannot afford to make the experiments the painter makes, or at the best he can only embody his new ideas and aspirations in uninviting plaster casts.
He is bound by some of the conditions that hamper the architect, one of which is difficulty in finding a patron who will take the risk and pay the expense of innovations.
The reaction in sculpture has been from the classic along two opposed lines:
A. Back to nature.
B. Purely creative.
The movement back to nature, to a closer observation of life, even to the rendering of the human figure with brutal frankness, is exemplified in the work of Matisse, work so ugly—to most people—it seems a grotesque caricature of
the human form, but the human form today is never so symmetrical, so perfect as in classic sculpture, and one suspects the Greeks themselves idealized their young men and maidens.
Long before Matisse, Rodin started the “return to nature.” His “Age of Bronze,” 1877, was so literal a transcript it was denounced as a cast from life; sculptors and critics refused to believe human fingers could model so perfect an impression. His “Saint John,” “Eve,” “Bourgeois of Calais,” “Le Penseur,” “La Belle Heaulmière,” to mention only a few, were all created in a spirit diametrically opposed to the classic—yet Rodin is a most intelligent lover of the classic.
Per contra, most of Rodin’s marbles are a fine mixture of the classic and purely modern—of the classic and the romantic.
The point here is that in some of his bronzes he exhibits as clear and merciless an observation of nature as Matisse or any other modern. It may be said once for all that in the number and variety of things he does, in the manner in which he links past and present, Rodin stands quite alone among sculptors. If he has little sympathy with the extreme sculpture of the hour it is because life is short and in his life time he has covered so vast a territory, responded to so many impulses, ancient and modern, he is not unnaturally reluctant to embark upon new experiments or interest himself vitally in what others are doing.
The best American sculpture, even more than American painting, is solidly virile-impressionistic, notably the work of such men as Barnard and Borghlum. Davidson has one foot firmly planted within the confines of Post-Impressionism, but he has by no means cut loose from the past. His “Decorative Panel” in the Exhibition was purely post-impressionistic, a work of the imagination, while his figures were virile-impressionistic.
It is only by comparing the work of these new men with that of St. Gaudens, French, MacMonies—to mention no others—that one begins to rightly understand what is meant by the “reaction to nature.”
There is plenty of pure observation and plenty of fine imagination in the work of those three men, but there is also much of the purely classical, and not one of them showed or shows any desire to break with tradition, while the very essence of the modern movement is a disregard, conscious or unconscious, for tradition; in many of the new men there is a violent revolt against the domination of the past.
It is when we come to the work of Brancusi and Archipanko that we find the most startling examples of the reaction along purely creative lines.
Nature is purposely left far behind, as far behind as in Cubist pictures, and for very much the same reasons.
Of Brancusi something has been said already.
Of all the sculpture in the International Exhibition the two pieces that excited the most ridicule were Brancusi’s egg-shaped portrait of Mlle. Pogany and “Family Life” by Archipanko.
Both are creative works, products of the imagination, but in their inspiration they are fundamentally different.
In his symmetrical oval head with the spiral masses where the neck would be, it is apparent the sculptor’s interest is in the play of line and relation of masses, no profound human problem troubled him. That there is a relation between the strange shape of the head and his theories of life and art no
serious observer of his other work could doubt, but his unusual technic over-shadows other interest.
In his “Family Life,” the group of man, woman, child, Archipanko deliberately subordinated all thought of beauty of form to an attempt to realize in stone the relation in life that is at the very basis of human and social existence.
Spiritual, emotional, and mathematical intellectuality, too, is behind the family group of Archipanko. This group, in plaster, might have been made of dough. It represents a featureless, large, strong male—one gets the impression of strength from humps and lumps—an impression of a female, less vivid, and the vague knowledge that a child is mixed up in the general embrace. The faces are rather blocky, the whole group with arms intertwined—arms that end suddenly, no hands, might be the sketch of a sculpture to be. But when one gets an insight it is intensely more interesting. It is, eventually, clear that in portraying his idea of family love the sculptor has built his figures with pyramidal strength; they are grafted together with love and geometric design, their limbs are bracings, ties of strength, they represent, not individuals, but the structure itself of family life. Not family life as one sees it, but the unseen, the deep emotional unseen, and in making his group when the sculptor found himself verging upon the seen—that is, when he no longer felt the unseen—he stopped. Therefore the hands were not essential. And this expression is made in the simplest way. Some will hoot at it, but others will feel the respect that is due one who simplifies and expresses the deep things of life. You may say that such is literature in marble—well, it is the modernest sculpture.[66]
The group is so angular, so Cubist, so ugly according to accepted notions, that few look long enough to see what the sculptor means; yet strange as the group was it undeniably gave a powerful impression of the binding, the blending character of the family tie, a much more powerful impression than groups in conventional academic pose could give.
In considering the extreme modern movement in sculpture it must not be forgotten that groups and figures just as strange have been done in the past—that even queerer and more grotesque things have been used to adorn churches and altars.
True, those sculptures and carvings are naive and primitive, but may not the naive and primitive be closer to life and to life’s great truths than the sophisticated and classical?
That is the question.
The answer of the moderns is that the swing of the pendulum in art is from the naive and primitive through the more and more conventional to the fixed and lifeless mold of the classic and academic, then back again to the naive, traversing the romantic, in its course, both ways.
XIV
IN CONCLUSION
TO gather the loose ends of the argument in one skein.
Impressionism was the natural, the inevitable reaction from the romantic and story-telling art of the forties, fifties, and sixties—a return to nature from the studio, to works of the observation from works of the imagination.
Impressionism developed along three diverging lines:
A. Superficial Impressionism—Monet.
B. Realistic Impressionism—Manet.
C. Substantial Impressionism—Cézanne.
A. Superficial—the painting of light effects, the impressionism of Monet, culminated in the extreme refinements of the pointillists, the Neo-Impressionists, Seurat and Signac.
In superficial Impressionism the last word seems to have been said for the time being. Any number of delightful pictures—light effects—are being painted, and will continue to be painted, but the early enthusiasm has largely subsided.
Superficial Impressionism leads naturally to the painting of pure color effects—color music, orphism, compositional painting. After the last word in the observation of light effects Post-Impressionistic attempts to create pure color effects, irrespective of natural—that is a logical reaction.
B. Realistic Impressionism penetrates a little deeper. While Monet and his followers, Signac and Seurat, dealt more and more with the play of light on the surface of things, Manet and his followers painted closer to the heart of things.
While Monet was content to paint a hay stack twenty times in as many different lights, Manet preferred a touch of life and character in his pictures. While he was first and last a painter, he was not so absorbed in securing purely technical effects as to be wholly blind to the human element, hence his wonderful portraits, his bullfights, his glimpses of city life—pictures big in more senses than one.
Still he and his followers were primarily interested in the aspect of things, the characteristics as distinguished from the fundamental character of things. He penetrated far deeper than Monet, so much deeper the two had little in common, but he did not get so close to the heart that he forgot the skin; he was always a painter of appearances, but in a big as distinguished from a superficial way.
The realistic Impressionism of Manet has by no means run its course. Some of the finest painting in the world has been done and is being done along this line. It is the line of Franz Hals and Velasquez; it is the line of men so different as Whistler and Sargent in their best portraits.
The natural reaction from perfection in this line is higher accentuation of characteristics—in the extreme caricature.
That is, given the last word in the painting of character by great men in a solid way, the logical attempts of new men or lesser men will be the indication of character in a lighter and more superficial way. The penetrating observation of the older men gives way to the keen and playful fancies of the younger. The same sitter yields with the former a powerful portrait, with the latter a fascinating picture which may be quite as revealing both as a likeness and as a characterization.
C. Substantial Impressionism is not so easy to define and differentiate. It is far from superficial but has much in common with realistic.
It is easiest to simply say it is the Impressionism of Cézanne and those who have read what has already been said about Cézanne will understand.
Cézanne was not content to paint either the surface or the characteristics of things or people; he sought to go deeper, to get at the very substance and to place on canvas their elemental qualities.
As a natural result the longer he painted the less interesting his pictures became superficially, but the greater their interest fundamentally.
While Monet became more and more a popular painter, a painter for the dealer and the buyer, Cézanne became more and more a painter’s painter, doing things that only the technically skilled could rightly appreciate.
Interested solely in the profoundest problems of his art and painting only for those who had a very great knowledge of art, he attracted comparatively few followers; the path he followed promised little in the way of immediate fame and rewards.
Still during his last years he had his ardent admirers and after his death his simple, strong constructive, elemental pictures began to be widely appreciated.
They make no pretense to the superficial charm of color or composition that attracts the average observer, but they fascinate every man who studies things long enough to even partially understand what the artist was so earnestly trying to do.
Substantial or Cézanne Impressionism led naturally to the Virile-Impressionism of today, a way of seeing and painting things that is a compound of the Impressionism of Manet with that of Cézanne.
There is a great and glorious future for Virile-Impressionism. Some of the greatest portraits and pictures in the world will be painted with the penetrating vision of a Cézanne, modified by the clear, cool observation of a Manet.
The logical reaction from carrying observation of nature to the extent Cézanne carried it is painting of the substance of things creatively, theoretically, as in Cubism.
Cézanne carried the use of planes imitatively so far that it was but a step to their use arbitrarily and scientifically.
Substantial Impressionism leads naturally to substantial Post-Impressionism; or in other words, the substance of things painted impressionistically (more or less imitatively) leads logically to the painting of the substance of things creatively = Post-Impressionistically.