Applying these principles to the hand, he gets this result:
It is interesting to compare this sectional diagram of the hand with the hand of “The Man on the Balcony.”
Furthermore, one has but to consider the elemental lines at the top of the page with the words of Cézanne, quoted on page 43, and with the fundamental propositions of Chinese and Japanese art, to realize that in the last analysis the
minds of men in all ages and all countries follow very closely the same channels.
There are but two lines, curved and straight, and with these two lines all outward semblances of things are constructed. So far as the unaided eye is concerned, every curved line may be entirely composed of small straight lines, the curved effect being due to a series of minute angles.
The following are Durer’s diagrams showing how to obtain sections and modifications:
He applies these sections to the human figure as follows:
So far as the use of planes and angles is concerned, these diagrams by Durer should serve to disarm criticism. That the human figure can be decomposed into straight lines and angles will be a revelation to most of those who laughed at the Cubist paintings, and only the authority of a great name would convince that any good could result from such an analysis.
Suppose any one of the Durer diagrams had been framed and hung in the Cubist section; would it not have been treated with ridicule?
The men who arranged the exhibition could have played with critics and artists—the men who claim to know—by including many things of recognized position in academic art and teachings, which would have seemed as absurd as the newest of the new pictures.
* * *
The very high aesthetic value of drawing and painting in planes, and with small regard to the so-called laws of perspective, is illustrated in the rare beauty of Chinese and Japanese paintings. From the point of view of their greatest painters, we carry perspective and imitation to extremes that destroy art.
One value of the Cubist movement lies in arousing a sense of the strength possessed by the simple and elemental.
In oriental art, in archaic art, in primitive Italian art, in not a little modern decorative work, we have long recognized the beauty of drawing in planes and of the use of color arbitrarily. The Cubists are showing us—perhaps too violently and imperfectly—that it is possible to paint pictures and portraits in planes and masses without imitation. That it is possible we know, for the orientals have done it for two thousand years; nevertheless, we stubbornly resist the attempt in western art.
We acknowledge the singular beauty of the Italian primitives, yet we demand that portraits and paintings of today shall be carefully modelled in the vain effort to accurately and mechanically copy nature.
* * *
In some of Sargent’s best portraits not only the lights and shadows but character and personality are indicated by brush-strokes as arbitrary in line and color as those of a Cubist—strokes that follow neither the lines nor the colors of the original, but which convey with tremendous power the character.
Again, we all know how insipid are most of the portraits that are faithfully rounded and modelled to reproduce every curve of the sitters’ features.
The truth is there is more of Cubism in great painting than we dream, and the extravagances of the Cubists may serve to open our eyes to beauties we have always felt without quite understanding.
Take, for instance, the strongest things by Winslow Homer; the strength lies in the big, elemental manner in which the artist rendered his impressions in lines and masses which departed widely from photographic reproductions of scenes and people.
Rodin’s bronzes exhibit these same elemental qualities, qualities which are pushed to violent extremes in Cubist sculpture. But may it not be profoundly true that these very extremes, these very extravagances, by causing us to blink and rub our eyes, end in a finer understanding and appreciation of such work as Rodin’s?
His Balzac is, in a profound sense, his most colossal work, and at the same time his most elemental. In its simplicity, in its use of planes and masses, it is—one might say, solely for purposes of illustration—Cubist, with none of the extravagances of Cubism. It is purely Post-Impressionistic.
Twenty or twenty-five years ago painters who used a broad technic, and especially those who used the palette knife to lay the pigment in flat sweeps, were looked upon as charlatans and sensationalists. Today their pictures are accepted in the most conservative exhibitions and the public passes with scarcely a comment.
This broad technic is simply painting in planes—in a sense, simply modified Cubism.
To illustrate:
The surface of an orange may be so carefully painted or modelled in clay that the effect is a perfect sphere with no straight lines; or it may be painted or modelled in minute planes and no curved lines; or the use of planes may be carried so far the orange is represented by angles so sharp the shape is almost cubical—it is all a question of the extent to which the artist carries the use of plane surfaces. The fewer the planes used and the larger their size, the nearer the substance and more obvious the representation of mass.
The smaller the planes and the larger their number, the nearer the surface—the more superficial the representation.
* * *
The division of planes can be carried—geometrically—to such an extent that the unaided eye can no longer distinguish the minute flat surfaces, and the effect is a perfect sphere.
What is true concerning the painting or modelling of an orange is true of the painting or modelling of all objects.
* * *
“It has been charged that the new men are too much given to the geometrical. But geometrical figures are the essential elements of drawing. Geometry, the science which deals with extension, its measure and its relations, has ever been the basis of painting.
“Up to the present time the three dimensions of Euclid have sufficed to express the problems that infinity gives rise to in the souls of great artists.
“Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.
“Today philosophers do not confine their speculations to the three dimensions of Euclid. Painters, by intention, so to speak, have cause naturally to preoccupy themselves with these new lines of extension which, in the language of modern studios, are classed under the term, fourth dimension.”[38]
* * *
Speaking of Cézanne, it is said:
To him a sphere was not always round, a cube always square, or an ellipse always elliptical. Thus the traditional oval of the conventional face disappeared in his portraits, the generally accepted round surfaces of a vase or bowl was represented as flat and dented in spots and the horizontal stability of the horizon was rendered elliptical whenever it so appeared to him.
The general truthfulness of his observations may readily be tested by any one of normal vision who will carefully observe the actual appearance of the surfaces of a round sugar bowl, for example, when placed in the light of a window. It will be found that certain planes are as flat as the table, that others present the appearance of dents and hollows, and the more clearly this is perceived the more grotesque will the object appear as compared with the preconceived image of it established in our minds by the unconscious interaction of the sense of touch and sight.
We know that, scientifically regarded, there is no such thing as a round surface, that what appears to be such is simply the closely adjusted juxtaposition of infinitesimal planes that are each perfectly flat. And the very fact that painters refer to the surface of a figure as planes is indicative of a partial recognition of this basic characteristic of structure. Nevertheless, both artists and laymen persist in speaking of the roundness of a torso, for example, when in reality, if we could disassociate the sense of roundness from the appearance of roundness as did Cézanne, we would find large surfaces of spheroids quite flat. Therein lies the real secret of the art of Cézanne who is the first of realists.
In a sense, “Cubism” is a misleading term, for, in the first place, “Cubist” pictures are not painted in cubes, but in all sorts of angles and curves; in the second place, the theory does not call for angles.
The theory being the expression of emotion in line and color, there is no conceivable reason why cubes and angles should be used to the exclusion of curves, swirls, sweeps, dashes. On the contrary, of all forms, cubes and angles would seem to be the most inappropriate for emotional expression, since they are peculiarly suggestive of the geometrical and the matter-of-fact.
“Curvism” or “Swirlism” would describe the movement just as well, save that for the time being angles are very much in evidence.
Picabia says that “Cubism” is a misnomer for the movement. He says:
After impressionism, neo-impressionism, then cubism, which sought a geometric third dimension in painting, the expression of things seen in geometrical figures. But a purely subjective art cannot, of course, be bound by any form of expression the moment that expression becomes a convention, an established body of laws with accepted values. Therefore, he has cut loose from cubism, and is what, again for handy classification—an evil habit from which we cannot emancipate ourselves—may perhaps best be called “post-cubist,” with entirely unfettered, spontaneous, ever-varying means of expression in form and color waves, according to the commands, the needs, the inspiration of the impression, the mood received. Objective expression is strictly barred. He even ignores form as far as possible, seeking “color harmonies.” Harmony and equilibrium are his device.
* * *
But the Cubists are rapidly getting away from the cubes and angles. It is quite possible that a year or two hence we shall see no more purely Cubist pictures.
That does not mean the movement will come to an end—not at all. The movement toward abstract painting, toward the use of line and paint on canvas for mere pleasure of using them, and without copying objects in either life or nature, is in its infancy.
* * *
“But I don’t understand them!”
Is it necessary to your enjoyment that you should?
Do you understand what Caruso is singing?
Do you understand that French song reproduced by the phonograph?
Do you understand what the orchestra is playing?
Do you understand the pattern in that Persian rug?
How many people who rave over Japanese art have the remotest idea what this or that precious print or painting represents?
Does an intricate design on a bit of Oriental pottery please you? And is your enjoyment lessened one whit by the fact it is all a mystery to you?
Why will you accept as beautiful and buy at a high price a painting you do not understand because it is by a Chinese artist, and reject as ugly the painting by a French artist simply because you cannot see “what he is driving at”?
* * *
Suppose a Cubist picture is a beautiful scheme of color; is it less beautiful in color because you do not understand the painter’s theory? His painting may be fine, his theory absurd.
Would your enjoyment of Caruso be increased if he sang in English the ridiculous stuff he sings in Italian?
Fortunate it is for most grand opera that we do not understand—we are not diverted from the music by the nonsense of the libretto.
The enjoyment of music is a curious thing.
First of all, there are all kinds of music, from rag-time to Beethoven, and each kind has its following.
Then the following of each kind breaks up into its rag-time and Beethoven divisions.
That is to say, in an audience listening to rag-time there are always a few who enjoy the music in a Beethoven way—for what there is of real value in it.
While in an audience listening to a Beethoven symphony there are always a goodly number, often a big majority, who enjoy it in a rag-time way—just the emotional reaction, without knowing a thing about the music.
There are two entirely distinct enjoyments of the same composition—the purely intellectual and the purely emotional. There may be a mingling of the two, but as a rule what one gains the other loses.
The man who follows the score, is familiar with the different interpretations of this and that leader, whose ear catches every failure by any part of the orchestra to respond, and so on, and so on—that man is constantly holding his emotional response subject to his intellectual appreciation. What is a fine performance to most of the audience may be a very indifferent performance to him.
True, when the performance is so fine it carries him off his feet, then he gets an enjoyment—intellectual and emotional—far finer than the enjoyment experienced by others. In a sense, he is the one man worth playing for.
But while it is a fine thing to both understand and enjoy, understanding is not essential to enjoyment in the purely emotional sense—to the enjoyment most people feel when listening to music.
The voice of a street singer borne in upon the night air, even the sound of a hurdy-gurdy, pleases, though we do not
know the song or the air. There is a species of pleasure in not knowing that is dissipated when we recall or are told.
Many of our enjoyments are more than half dreamy. Is it not true that the dreamy element is essential to purely emotional enjoyment?
I confess to a very ignorant enjoyment of music. If I am at a concert I do not like to be told what it is all about. I enjoy good music without knowing or caring why, and I like to hear it without being seated where I am more than half-hypnotized by the rhythmical movements of the orchestra, especially the fascinating bowing of the violins.
* * *
What is true of the enjoyment of music should be true of the enjoyment of painting. But with painting, most people insist upon understanding. They will listen to Patti without knowing her language, but they will not look at a painting unless they know the painter’s language.
* * *
Why not accept at their face value all pictures that are beautiful in line and color, without bothering about their meaning? Perhaps they have no meaning beyond the vagrant fancy of the artist.
Take the three pictures by Sousa Cardoza. Suppose they have no more significance than so many illustrations to a fairy tale; they are interesting in line and fascinating in color. If the “Stronghold” had been on a Delft platter, or the “Leap of the Rabbit” on a piece of Persian pottery, everyone would have lauded their beauty, and collectors would give ten or twenty times the modest prices of the canvases.
When put to people in that matter-of-fact way the response is almost always favorable to the pictures.
In an interesting monograph entitled “Is It Art?”[39] the writer says:
It will be seen, therefore, that the efforts of these men to give a subjective rendering of actuality results in nothing better than a poorly realized form of objectivity which is as much the creation of the spectator as of the artist, inasmuch as the vaguely adumbrated forms in the picture simply serve as a hint to that reality of which it is a wilfully distorted symbol, and the discovery of the “mustard pot” would scarcely have been possible without the happy cooperation of the title with the spectator’s previous knowledge of the actual appearance of a mustard pot.
Without the intervention of the title and the association of ideas called forth thereby through the memory of past experiences with actuality, these pictures would be totally meaningless even to the most recondite. They would inevitably be reduced to a personal system of shorthand, an individual code, as it were, comprehensible only to the originator.
Regarded from that viewpoint, these enigmatic paintings and drawings may very possibly be altogether successful. At all events it is only fair to assume that these works express to the originator what he intended them to express. But it is quite obvious that they express something quite different to the spectator who has not been initiated into the meaning of this personal form of shorthand, and the appending of an objective title to what is intended as a subjective impression of the actual world hardly help him over the difficulty. On the contrary it takes him just that far away from the impression the artist desires to produce, plunging him deeper into that world of reality out of which he was to be extricated by this new art, and there is no doubt that in the minds of even the most intelligent spectator it only serves to reenforce his conception of reality upon which he is forced to fall back by the objective titles as well as the concrete representations of what is supposed to be a subjective mood.
I think it may safely be said that in no case does this mood manifest itself to the persons to whom it is addressed, although by a process of auto-hypnotism, a certain few no doubt succeed in making themselves believe that they penetrate the real inwardness of these arbitrarily individual mental processes. Granted that these very discerning ones do respond to the real intention of these abstractions it cannot be denied that this work is the most circumscribed in its appeal of anything so far produced in the name of art and, until its working premise is made clearer, its influence must be correspondingly limited. At present it appears to me to be a too purely personal equation to be intelligible to others than the artist himself and therefore, generally speaking, it can not be regarded as art, whatever else it may be. For that that communicates nothing expresses nothing and as the office of art is first and last expression this new form is as yet outside of the domain of art.
But that makes the attitude of the observer the test whether a given product is or is not art, while the true test is the attitude of the producer.
Whether a given work is or is not art is determined and forever fixed at the time of its production. If art to him who creates it, it is art to all humanity for all time; neither a man’s neighbors nor future generations can deprive it of its character.
* * *
Quite a good many years ago I made the attempt, in lecture and book form, to define art.[40]
What is Art? The question is as old as man himself, for we have no records of men without some manifestation of the art impulse....
Man is the combination of thought and symbol; thought striving to express itself, and symbol, the means whereby it achieves that end. The symbol may be sound, word, or song; or it may be line, form, or structure; it matters not. A cry is the language of the child; speech is the every-day utterance of the man; the heart of the singer bursts forth in song; the musician speaks in harmonies, the painter in line and color, the sculptor in form, the architect in structure, the poet in rhyme and rhythm—and each is silent save in his own way....
Now what is the distinction between thought expression which is art and thought expression which is not art?
In its broadest significance, and in its very essence, art is delight in thought and symbol.
Mark the union—art is delight in both the thought and the symbol. Without the double delight—the combination of these two quite distinct delights, there can be no art.
To the writer of prose there may come a beautiful fancy; he delights in it and hastens to record his thought. He may write the most flowing, the most perfect prose, but as he writes he is still occupied with his thought; his sole object is to find words which will but express it. The same fancy comes to the poet; he, too, delights in it, and seeks to record it; but when the poet touches pen to paper he is seized with a new and an entirely distinct delight, a delight in his method of expressing his thought; he may even permit his delight in his symbol, the flow, rhythm and ring of rhyme, to sweep him onward in forgetfulness of his first fancy—literature is filled with such examples.
Now and then a writer of prose expresses himself so finely, writes so well, that we feel instinctively and immediately not only the delight in the thought, but also a certain amount of delight in the manner of expressing the thought, in the style, ... and to the extent of the double delight such prose is art, for art, as we shall see, is by no means confined to the five so-called fine arts.
No hard and fast line can be drawn between that which is art and that which is not art, the one fades imperceptibly into the other.
And farther on in the same little volume:[41]
The current notions of art are such and the current notions of labor are such that it may seem to most of you as though any attempt to discuss the two together could result only in a waste of words; yet time was when art and labor were so intimately united in the great domain of human effort that the one almost invariably implied more or less of the other; and the time will yet be when there will be no labor without at least some art, even as there is now and ever has been no art without at least some labor.
Art lies not in the employment, but in the manner of the employment of the powers of nature for an end; not in the task, but in the attitude of the worker towards his task.
* * *
Whether a Cubist painting is or is not art does not depend upon the opinion of either critic or multitude; if it did it would be art to one man and not to another, art to one generation and not to another—an illogical conclusion.
Most Cubist pictures are plainly the work of men who are profoundly moved by an idea and who are striving to express that idea in a highly original manner. It may be the manner they have chosen is so abstract, so scientifically theoretical, that it will in the end—if pursued—kill the imagination, stifle all delight, and so result in failure as art expression; but so long as the men take sincere delight in both what they are trying to say and their manner of utterance, it is impossible to deny the character of art to their works.
In proportion to their originality and daring, there may be more of living and vital art in what they are doing than in the art of the academic painter who follows in the footsteps of others without any particular effort.
In other words, it is quite conceivable there may be more of vital and living art in a movement doomed to failure than in a movement that has achieved success and become stagnant.
The vitality lies in the element of earnest striving rather than in the direction the striving takes.
THE art that is at hand is a highly subjective art as distinguished from the highly objective art of the Impressionist and Realist, but no man can say just what forms this new art will assume.
Cubism is one attempt, Futurism is another, Compositional painting is another; there will be many more attempts before freedom of expression is attained.
Cubism is interesting because it accentuates the value of planes and shows what can be done with elemental propositions in drawing. But the student or painter who turns to Cubism because he thinks it is to become a fad and will pay, runs the risk of making a great mistake; he would better stick to older methods.
* * *
The Orphists have been mentioned; there were no Orphist pictures in the International Exhibition. The movement is based on the purely practical proposition that color in itself, and color alone without drawing, may be beautiful. So they just place lines and masses of color on a canvas and frame the canvas.
It sounds absurd, yet the theory is the very foundation of wall decoration, of interior furnishing, of dressmaking—the mere juxtaposition of masses of color, with or without pattern.
The Orphist “picture” may not be much of a picture in the accepted sense of the term, but it may afford pleasure as a color combination and may be of very real value to the decorator, the furnisher, the dressmaker, the scene-painter, the costumer.
The theory is not new. So long as man has loved color he has used it irrespective of pattern.
One part of the theory of the Cubists is as old as that of the Orphists. It is simply that the painter can do with line and color what the composer does with sound. In other words they demand the same freedom in the use of line and color that every great composer has in the use of sound.
If, for instance, a great musician composes a pastoral symphony does he imitate the mooing of cows, the bleating of lambs, the rippling of brooks? Such attempts would be recognized as cheap in the extreme.
“Very well,” the Cubist says, “if I paint a pastoral symphony why should I so much as suggest cows, sheep, landscape, brook? Why should people insist upon seeing in my painting what they cannot hear in Mozart’s or Beethoven’s music?”
* * *
The comparison which Picabia is fondest of making is that with absolute music. The rules of musical composition, he points out, are sufficiently hampering in themselves to the composer’s mood, or call it inspiration. Words, as of songs, still further confine his vision of melody, even though they give in the beginning the impression that evokes the mood. Songs without words, the expression of the impression made on him by a great poem without the necessity of following in musical form the literary form of the poet, leave him far freer, give his subjectivity far wider scope. Modern composers have rebelled against the old fetters; modern painters have begun to feel the same need of a freer, an absolute method of expression. Hence, “post-impressionism,” which refuses altogether to be bound by objectivity, by literal reproduction of the object seen, in connection with the mood, the after-impression, received and fixed on the canvas. A composer may be inspired by a walk in the country, says M. Picabia, and produce a production of the landscape scene, of its details of form and color? No; he expresses it in sound waves, he translates it into an expression of the impression, the mood. And as there are absolute sound waves, so there are absolute waves of color and form. Modern music has won its way; this modern painting, too, will find appreciation and understanding in the days to come.
* * *
The Cubists have set themselves a hard task. It is a good deal easier to sing an emotion than paint one. It is a good deal easier to paint an object than sing one—therein lies the trouble.
Yet in the beginning both music and painting were imitative. Music imitated natural sounds; drawing and painting imitated natural objects.
But soon men began to sing for the pleasure of singing and play on instruments for the pleasure of playing, and the imitation of natural sounds was left far behind as primitive and elemental, and music tended to become more and more expressive of emotions, elemental emotions at first, finer and purer emotions later, until in the western world abstract purity was reached in Beethoven.
Since Beethoven there has been a reaction to more imitative music, as in the operas of Wagner.
While music departed farther and farther from imitation of natural sounds, drawing and painting progressed toward the more perfect representation of natural objects.
Or rather painting developed along two distinct lines—one the more perfect representation of objects for the sake of the representation; the other compositions of line and color—not
imitative—for the sake of the pleasure afforded by the pattern and the color scheme.
This second development parallels that of music—compositions of line and color, like compositions of sound for the pleasure they give, and not for the associations they arouse.
Strange as it may sound, it is nevertheless true, that four-fifths of the pleasure we get in our daily lives out of line and color is not from the imitative development, the picture side, but from the non-imitative, the abstract side.
Our clothes, our homes, our public buildings, our cities, our landscapes are made beautiful by the use of line and color in patterns and masses—in harmonious composition. It is only here and there that we come in contact with either line or color used imitatively.
We all know how distressingly tiresome a wall-paper becomes if it is made up of imitative scenes—that is, a series of pictures, and the better the pictures the sooner we tire of the paper.
While a paper that contains no imitative spots, or in which the imitative features are so subdued and conventionalized we feel them rather than see them, may be restful and pleasing; and a wall that is a monotone if bordered by wainscoting and frieze in monotones, may wear the best of all.
* * *
But while the great, the practical use of line and color followed parallel lines with sound and got farther and farther away from imitative features, the art of painting, as it is commonly called, developed in just the opposite direction, it became more and more imitative, until of late years it would seem that the last word has been said in the reproduction of natural objects and natural light and color effects.
Of course the last word has not been said, and never will be said so long as individuals are born, but so much has been said that it is not surprising there is a reaction, nor is it surprising that one phase of this reaction should be an attempt to use line and color as the decorator and the dressmaker and a thousand others use them, to express and kindle pleasurable emotions.
In short it is not surprising that the painter of pictures should awaken to the realization of the fact that others use and have used, from the beginning, line and color to make delightful compositions that have no relation to natural objects, as the musician uses sound to make delightful compositions that have no relation to natural noises.
* * *
As a rule women have a finer instinct for the use and arrangement of color than painters. Few wives of painters would trust their husbands to decorate their dinner tables.
Look at the gruesome and ugly “still lifes” done by painters of renown. I saw one the other day of some fish on a platter by an American painter famous for such things. If his wife had found that platter of dead and clammy fish in her drawing room she would have exclaimed, “For goodness sake, how did that get in here? Take it back to the kitchen.”
* * *
Look at the naive and absurd compositions of flowers and fruit that painters put together to paint; no woman of taste would permit them on her tea table.
I know a charming woman whose dinner tables are a dream of beauty, veritable compositions in which flowers and fruits and lights and every detail are far more thoughtfully considered than are the details in most pictures. In short, without knowing it she creates a work of art each time she entertains. Imagine what her table would be if left to an artist or a committee of artists—or her husband!
Most painters’ studios are either devoid of all color arrangement or positively ugly.
So far as color goes many a portrait owes its success more to the modiste than the artist.
* * *
From the painting of color harmonies and line harmonies it is but a step to insist that line and color composition may be used like sound compositions to express one’s moods and emotions.
That is what these modern men are trying to do.
You may not think it is possible for them to succeed but why should you ridicule the attempt?
The attempt is an ambitious one, it is an attempt to extend the sphere of painting, and it may lead to new and beautiful things. Should we not watch it with interest and sympathy even if you think it foredoomed to failure?
* * *
Watch a painter preparing to paint a picture of still life. He takes a vase of flowers and places it on a table; beside it he poses, perhaps a brass bowl and some other objects, having regard throughout for light and, above all, for proportion and color. That is when he is really painting his picture, when he is really composing, receiving his impression, creating his subjective mood. The objective part of his work is done; all that remains now is to give expression to that impression, that mood. Instead of thus allowing his inspiration to gain its full value and significance, he sits down and reproduces it with a varying degree of literalness. He becomes nothing more or less than a copyist, a photographer of his own work. He kills within himself its subjective values, or, at best, seeks to give them expression filtered by objectivity. Or, again, consider the case of the portrait painter. He studies sitters from every point of view, gathering impressions. Then he begins to experiment with poses, draperies, light effects, seeking to heighten the impression already received from the sitter himself. At last he is content with pose, draperies, background, lights—his picture is there. But why, then, go to the trouble of painting it, of copying it? If the work he has done, finished in all its details, is to benefit him, he must proceed from it and beyond it. His real work then is to communicate to others the mood awakened in him.[42]
* * *
In another interview Picabia said:
You of New York should be quick to understand me and my fellow painters. Your New York is the cubist, the futurist city. It expresses in its architecture, its life, its spirit, the modern thought. You have passed through all the old schools, and are futurists in word and deed and thought. You have been affected by all these schools just as we have been affected by our older schools.
Because of your extreme modernity therefore, you should quickly understand the studies which I have made since my arrival in New York. They express the spirit of New York as I feel it, and the crowded streets of your city as I feel them, their surging, their unrest, their commercialism, and their atmospheric charm.
You see no form? No substance? Is it that I go out into your city and see nothing? I see much, much more, perhaps, than you who are used to it see. I see your stupendous skyscrapers, your mammoth buildings and marvellous subways, a thousand evidences of your great wealth on all sides. The tens of thousands of workers and toilers, your alert and shrewd-looking shop girls, all hurrying somewhere. I see your theater crowds at night gleaming, fluttering, smilingly happy, smartly gowned. There you have the spirit of modernity again.
But I do not paint these things which my eye sees. I paint that which my brain, my soul, sees. I walk from the Battery to Central Park. I mingle with your workers, and your Fifth Avenue mondaines. My brain gets the impression of each movement; there is the driving hurry of the former, their breathless haste to reach the place of their work in the morning and their equal haste to reach their homes at night. There is the languid grace of the latter, emanating a subtle perfume, a more subtle sensuousness.
I hear every language in the world spoken, the staccato of the New Yorker, the soft cadences of the Latin people, the heavy rumble of the Teuton, and the ensemble remains in my soul as the ensemble of some great opera.
At night from your harbor I look at your mammoth buildings. I see your city as a city of aerial lights and shadows; the streets are your shadows. Your harbor in the daylight shows the shipping
of a world, the flags of all countries add their color to that given by your sky, your waters, and your painted craft of every size.
I absorb these impressions. I am in no hurry to put them on canvas. I let them remain in my brain, and then when the spirit of creation is at flood-tide, I improvise my pictures as a musician improvises music. The harmonies of my studies grow and take form under my brush, as the musician’s harmonies grow under his fingers. His music is from his brain and his soul just as my studies are from my brain and soul. Is this not clear to you?
* * *
You say all this cannot be done.
That is precisely the question, and one thing certain, it cannot and will not be done, unless some one tries to do it.
It is just as legitimate to attempt to express one’s emotions by the use of line and color as by the use of sound as in music, or by the use of motion as in pantomime.
One man says, “I will paint the portrait of a beautiful woman.”
A second says, “I will not paint her portrait, but I will put on canvas a composition of colors so joyous it will express my admiration for her.”
A third says, “I will compose a sonata or a symphony or a ‘song without words’ to express my love for her.”
The public accepts without question the work of the first and third—the portrait painter and the musician—but rejects the work of the second—the painter of harmonies. Why? Because he does not copy the features and the dress of the woman.
Picabia again says: