The Art Spirit “Paint What You Feel
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th Art 85 anniversary edition henri the Art Spirit “Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.” The Art Spirit represents the best of the collected words, teachings, and letters of inspired artist and teacher Robert Henri. Filled with valuable technical advice as well as wisdom about the place of art and the the artist in American society, this classic work continues to be a must-read for all aspiring artists and lovers of art. “I would give anything to have come by this book years ago. It is in my Ar opinion comparable only to the notes of Leonardo and Sir Joshua…One of the finest voices which express the philosophy of modern men in painting.” —George Bellows t Spirit ROBERT HENRI (1865-1929) was an American artist, teacher, and an outspoken advocate of modernism in painting. He is best known for his leadership of the group of realist painters known as “The Eight,” later termed the Ashcan School. Henri was a devotee of realism and the usage of everyday city life as subject matter. He taught at the Art Students League in New York from 1915-1928, and had a profound influence upon early 20th century painters such as Stuart Davis, Rockwell Kent, and Edward Hopper. 4/c process PMS 877 Metallic Cover design by Nicole Caputo Cover illustration: Robert Henri, Rosaline, 1927 private collection US $19.95 / $24.00 CAN ISBN-13: 978-0-465-00263-4 ISBN-10: 0-465-00263-3 A Member of the Perseus Books Group www.basicbooks.com robert henri 0465002633-text 12/18/06 4:10 PM Page i THE ART SPIRIT 0465002633-text 1/4/07 4:57 PM Page ii Robert Henri (1865–1929) 0465002633-text 12/18/06 4:10 PM Page iii THE ART SPIRIT Robert Henri ` Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture Making, the Study of Art Generally, and on Appreciation. A Member of the Perseus Books Group 0465002633-text 12/18/06 4:10 PM Page iv Copyright 1923 by J. B. Lippincott Company. Copyright renewed 1951 by Violet Organ. Introduction copyright 1930 by J. B. Lippincott Company. Copyright renewed 1958 by Forbes Watson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016–8810. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more infor- mation, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge MA 02142, or call (617) 252-5298 or (800) 255-1514, or e-mail [email protected]. Designed by Jeff Williams Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Henri, Robert, 1865-1929. The art spirit : notes, articles, fragments of letters and talks to students, bearing on the concept and technique of picture making, the study of art generally, and on appreciation / Robert Henri ; compiled by Margery Ryerson ; introduction by Forbes Watson. p. cm. Originally published: Philadelphia : J.B. Lippincott, 1923. Includes index. ISBN 0-465-00263-3 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Art. 2. Art—Technique. 3. Art appreciation. I. Ryerson, Margery. II. Title. N7445.2.H46 2007 700'.18—dc22 2006038851 First edition published 1923 Icon paperback edition 1984 Basic Books edition 2007 10987654321 0465002633-text 12/18/06 4:10 PM Page 1 ROBERT HENRI Introduction by Forbes Watson ` No other American painter drew unto himself such a large, ardently personal group of followers as Robert Henri, whose death, July 12th, 1929, brought to an end a life of uncontaminated devotion to art. Henri was an inspired teacher with an extraordinary gift for verbal communication, with the personality and prophetic fire that transformed pupils into idolators. Not only so but he ardently believed in the close relation- ship of Art to Life—believed that Art is a matter in which not only professionals and students, but everyone is vitally concerned; and his contention is supported by the immense benefit that has accrued to France through its devotion to art and its production. The list of men now eminent who developed under Henri’s precepts is a long one. He sought, above all things, to cultivate spontaneity. He always attempted to bring out the native gift. He gave his followers complete respect for an American outlook. He showed them the Frenchmen but he 1 0465002633-text 12/18/06 4:10 PM Page 2 2 ` introduction did not encourage them to imitate the Frenchmen. Without jingo Henri taught them artistic self-respect. It was not a crime to look at American material with American eyes. Yet, for all the impulsion which he gave toward what might be called a native school, Henri was the first artist to spread in any broad way the news of the great French painters who made the nineteenth century such a glorious epoch. It is hard for us to realize that only a short generation ago changes in French art were not registered in New York with anything like the present rate of speed. New York had not then become the great financial centre of the world. French paintings were not then bought at such dazzling prices or in anything like the same quantity as now, nor had the collecting of Parisian art, popular as it was more than ten years ago, become the social mania in America that it is today. Curiously, although William Chase and other prominent American painters and painting teachers, who belonged to the period immediately preceding Henri’s reign, might have brought back from Europe for their future pupils the fresh news of Manet, Degas and the others, it remained for Henri, the great protagonist of a new American school, to be the first prophet to bring to students in any great num- bers, both a sense of the importance of the last half of the nineteenth century in French painting and a knowledge of the revived interest in such old masters as Frans Hals, Goya and El Greco. To be sure Chase talked to his students about El Greco before Henri started teaching, and other painters of Chase’s generation knew these things. But Henri was a far more dy- namic teacher than Chase. It required his extraordinary per- 0465002633-text 12/18/06 4:10 PM Page 3 introduction ` 3 sonal magnetism, his fervor, his passion for the verbal com- munication of his ideas to place before a vast succession of eager youth the new world of vision and to make general, knowledge which before had been too special to be effective. No one who has not felt the magnetic power of Henri, when he had before him an audience of ambitious students hun- gry for the master’s moving words, can appreciate the emo- tional devotion to art which he could inspire as could no other teacher. One had to know those students to realize how it could have been possible at that late date for a young painter to combine genuine painting eagerness with a sub- lime ignorance of the whole world of art that had its being outside of the Henri class. This ignorance in many of his students Henri set himself to overcome by opening their eyes to the fundamental meaning of art. But he did not hold up to them the art of the past or the great contemporary art of France as an ideal to imitate. One can hardly believe now, were the facts not so easy to establish, that many of the young men and women who studied under him, although so passionately interested in painting, first heard the names of Daumier, Manet, Degas, Goya and a host of others from the lips of Robert Henri. One wonders how some of them ever came to painting at all after exhibiting such surprising ability to dodge knowledge. Henri was not on the lookout for cultivation. Native talent, in whatever crude disguise it might appear, was what he sought. Let the untrained student be as naïve, as profoundly illiterate, as filled with aesthetic misconceptions as possible, Henri disregarded the outward dress and pointed lack of polish. He looked to the man’s potentialities, which he at- tempted to develop without regard to himself in time and 0465002633-text 12/18/06 4:10 PM Page 4 4 ` introduction energy. He demanded from his students a first hand emo- tion received not from art but from life. When Henri’s classes were at fever heat, impressionism was already being taught in the Pennsylvania Academy. Twachtman, who died in 1902, had inculcated impressionist theories of light in his students at The Art Students League. But Twachtman was an unwilling, comparatively inarticu- late teacher, capable of communicating only to the few some sense of his rare and subtle spirit. Henri, on the other hand was, as I have said, an inspired teacher, with an extraordi- nary gift for verbal communication. Henri never showed the slightest interest in the more sci- entific side of impressionism. The blond beauties of sunlit landscapes had no special appeal for him. What he did take from the impressionists and what, after all, was perhaps the most valuable contribution made by the group, the only contribution which they all made in common, was the idea of looking at contemporary life and contemporary scenes with a fresh, unprejudiced, unacademic eye.