E. E. Cummings: Modernist Painter and Poet Author(s): Milton A. Cohen Source: Smithsonian Studies in American Art, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring, 1990), pp. 54-74 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3108985 . Accessed: 05/04/2011 17:57

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http://www.jstor.org E. E. Cummings Modenist Painter and Poet

Milton A. Cohen As painters took down their can- 1965), Max Weber (1881-1961), vases after the huge 1919 exhibi- and Edward Bruce (1879-1943).2 tion of the Society of Independent Cummings's letter refers to three Artists in New York, one young art- highly influential artists in postwar ist eagerly wrote to his parents of New York: the Cubist painter his success: Albert Gleizes, the sculptor Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935), and the You may be glad to know that painter and director of the Society Gleizes(the 'first cubist"-probably of Artists,Walter the most individual,though some- Independent Pach Their what abstract in (1883-1958). recogni- cold, painter Gleizes's-of a Picasso-best tion-especially America,and-after first effort known a young painter's public among painters of is and use Lachaise's significant, Cummings type-was(to phrase) seemed to be "TAKENOUT OF HIS FEET" the making important by contacts in the New York art two mine at the things of Indepen- world a few months after his dent. to said only According Nagle,he from the in later on that were the "best discharge army Jan- they 1919. this in in oil" that he had seen uary By time, fact, things Lachaise was his close friend and "in America".Mr. [Walter]Pach, mentor, visiting Cummings's the director,was(as you may studio often and offering him ad- imagine)highly pleased;and said vice and encouragement. Two very pleasant things a propos weeks before Cummings wrote to when Nagle and I came to take his parents about the exhibition, away our things.1 Isabel Lachaise, the sculptor's wife, The painter who penned these ex- had asked him: "How does it feel uberant words was the twenty- to be the sensation of the Inde- four-year-old E. E. Cummings pendent? That's what everyone is (1894-1962), and this was his first telling me."3 public exhibition. Was Cummings the "sensation" One of the paintings that im- of the 1919 Independent? Besides pressed Albert Gleizes (1881- the opinions of Gleizes and Pach 1953) was a large, square oil that Cummings recorded, more Cummings called Sound Number objective facts confirm that his 1 (fig. 1). A casual glance reveals work was noticed. First, of the an abstract formalism analogous to more than six hundred canvases the "defamiliarized"surfaces vying for the attention of the jour- Cummings was then devising in nalists covering the exhibition, his poetry, a style that placed him Cummings's abstractions were in the orbit (though not in the ac- among the few that received spe- of such mention: "The brilliant Self-Portrait,1958. Oil on canvas, 20 x 15 quaintance) contempo- cific sally in. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian raries as Morgan Russell (1886- in color by Mr. Cummings will Institution 1953), AbrahamWalkowitz (1881- greatly impress those who have

55 Smithsonian Studies in American Art

1 Sound Number 1, 1919. Oil on canvas, 35 arrived at an appreciation of the lage. He was even nominated x in. The Museum 35 Metropolitan of Art, abstract in art,"wrote a reporter (though not elected) as one of the Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982 for the New YorkSun. Cummings twenty directors for the next Inde- also received invitations to exhibit pendent exhibition.4 elsewhere: at the Penguin Gallery, Whether these facts prove that where he showed Sound Number Cummings's premiere was a "sen- 2 (fig. 2) while the Independent sation," they do suggest that by was still on, and, as a result of his April 1919, on the basis of his Independent entries, at an un- public work, he was more likely named gallery in Greenwich Vil- to have been known (if at all) as a

56 Spring 1990 2 Sound Number 2, 1919. Oil on paper, 19 x 24 in. Memorial Art Gallenr of the Universityof Rochester,Gift of a friend of the gallery in memory of Hildegarde Lasell Watson

painter than a poet. Outside of his a pupil's originality is "irrevocably poems in the Harvard Monthly diluted" if not "entirely elimi- and a conventional piece or two nated." He cited both Lachaise and in the Boston Evening Transcript, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) as Cummings's published poems by proof that "the man who by the 1919 numbered eight, appearing gods has been fated to express in a little-read, privately printed himself will succeed in expressing volume, Eight Harvard Poets himself in spite of all schools."6 (1917). Several years were to pass To nurture this independence before this public perception and self-expression-qualities he would change. For those today cherished throughout his life- who know Cummings only as a Cummings set about teaching him- poet, however, his painterly iden- self the fundamentals of his craft tity in these years is intriguing. from a modernist perspective. A determined autodidact, he de- The Modernist Painter voured every available work on Perhaps the two signal facts about modern painting, even translating Cummings's background as a for himself A. J. Meier-Graefe's painter are that he was entirely Cezanne und sein Kreis (1918). self-taught and entirely serious Cummings eagerly attended mod- about teaching himself. Although ernist exhibitions beginning with he painted and drew from child- the 1913 Armory Show in Boston, hood, he began painting in ear- and, more important, he studied nest only during his last years at intensively on canvas, sketch pad, Harvard, 1915-16, when he be- and notepaper the way basic ele- came avidly interested in Mod- ments of painting interacted. His ernism in all the arts.5Identifying notes on painting in these years, himself with the avant-garde,how- preserved at the Houghton Library ever, he equated academic instruc- at HarvardUniversity, are exten- tion with creative suicide. In art sive and far exceed his notes on schools, Cummings wrote in 1920, poetry.

57 Smithsonian Studies in American Art Of the Modernists whose tech- His constant reports home about niques Cummings studied- his painting suggest that, like so Cezanne, Pablo Picasso (1881- many artists of middle-class fami- 1973), Gleizes, Henri Gaudier- lies, Cummings had to convince Brzeska (1891-1915), and the Fu- his parents (who were still paying turists-Cezanne was clearly the the bills, after all) of his vocational most influential. Quotations from intent and to free himself of their Cezanne's letters and his aesthetic well-intentioned urging that he opinions, as recorded by Emile pursue the more rewarding career Bernard or interpreted by W. H. of writing prose. The letter he Wright and Meier-Graefe, turn up wrote to his mother on 2 March often in Cummings's notes. But as 1922, excerpted below, reveals his with his study of the other mod- exasperation.8 ernist masters, what Cummings But his parents were not the sought was not to imitate but to only ones Cummings had to con- develop his own style. Thus he vince: there was also himself. His wrote to his mother in 1922, "In roommate at the time, William great part I've been using the Slater Brown, asked him (with the world famous Cezanne palette ... frankness permitted a roommate) but employing it not a Cezanne in why he should work so hard at his watercolors-feeling me out painting when he was far more with it, rather; me times water skillful at writing poetry. Cum- times paper times dejaunir [?] so mings replied that because it was to speak."7Shaping his mastery of harder for him to paint, "it was modernist techniques and his own artisticallymore important to aesthetic principles into an orig- achieve something in the more inal style was what mattered most difficult medium."9The argument to Cummings the painter, as it did seems contrived to convince him- to Cummings the poet. self as much as his roommate. Poetry was, of course, always a Similarly, Cummings's frequent full partner in Cummings's self- declarations of painterly intent to concept as an artist. When he his parents might be seen as pro- moved into his first New York testing too much, bolstering his studio in January 1917, he was own uncertainty. fully determined to pursue two ca- But despite parental pressure, reers simultaneously-and with the difficulty of the medium, the luck even support himself as well. nagging question of identity, and He composed poems and even two major interruptions-nine briefly held a conventional job months driving American ambu- with a mail-order bookseller lances and enduring internment in during the day yet rallied his French prisons in 1917 and six energies to paint "8-12" each months training in army boot night, as he informed his parents. camp from 1918 to 1919-

Must I roar out that there are, live, eat, exist persons of sensitiveness stienesto whom the (as you infer) intelligence un-thorough-bred branches of my interest (e.g. poetry painting) ... appear as a more formidable achievement than prose? Or does the penchan[t] for running somebody else's mentality strike deeper than else within the ? Not sooth! aught Patemalmat heasheart'

(Letter to Rebecca Cummings)

58 Spring 1990 3 Noise Number 5, 1919-20. Oil on canvas, Cummings kept painting. By 1920, Russell may also have inspired 401/2 x 401/2 in. State Universityof New he had worked on ten abstractions Cummings's penchant for bio- York at Foundation College Brockport in the series begun the year be- morphic abstraction in sub- fore, for his entries in the 1920 In- merging figurative motifs just 4 Sound Number 5, 1920. Oil on canvas, 42 exhibition were enti- below the surface of an abstract x 36 in. State University New York dependent of tled Noise Number and Sound Both College at Brockport Foundation 5 design. Sound Number 5 and Number 5 (figs. 3, 4). Synchromy in Orange abstract a Not surprisingly, these early ab- torso in contrapposto into large stractions bear the imprint of sev- color planes. Sometimes, in fact, eral Modernists whom Cummings Cummings's figures break through admired. Sound Number 5 recalls the abstract surface, as the ele- the synchromist abstractions of phant does in Noise Number 1 Morgan Russell such as Synchromy (fig. 6), his other entry to the 1919 in Orange: To Form (fig. 5). Independent. Essentially, however, Cummings learned of Synchro- he thought of his motifs as "or- mism through Willard Huntington ganizations of colour and line."10 Wright'sModem Painting: Its Picasso's Cubism, the Futurists, Tendency and Meaning (1915). and their American exponents also The brother of the synchromist informed Cummings's early aes- painter Stanton MacDonald-Wright thetics. He admired Picasso's (1890-1973), W. H. Wright publi- "elimination of [the] trivial, pretty, cized the movement, explained its [and] charming" in directly con- aesthetics, and displayed its paint- veying "sensations of weight, so- ings at the Forum exhi- and he 5 Russell, in To important lidity, Depth (hugeness)," Morgan Synchromy Orange: bition Form, 1913-14. Oil on canvas, 135 x of 1916, which Cummings even devoted an entire poem to 1211/2 in. Albrigbt-KnoxArt Gallery, probably attended. From Wright's Picasso, concluding, "You hew Buffalo, New York, Gift of Seymour H. discussions and Russell's applica- form truly." But Cummings dis- Knox, 1958 tions, Cummings derived his in- liked Cubism's ponderousness and terest in juxtaposing color planes stasis: Cubism created a "cold and to achieve the "bumps and hol- frozen grammar" and adminis- lows" of three-dimensional form. tered "an overdose of architecture

59 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 6 Noise Number 1, 1919. Oil on canvas, 36 to the human form," he com- they transform these influences x 36 in. State New York Universityof plained in 1918.11Futurist dyna- into a whole. Their College at Brockport Foundation unique poised mism nicely compensated Cubist tensions of planar solidity and dy- stasis, but Cummings distrusted namism, of an abstract and 7 Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights:Coney Island, design 1913. Oil on canzas, 76 x 84 in. Yale the Futurists'posturing bravado: its figurative origins, embody aes- UniversityArt Gallery, New Haven, early and late, he respected indi- thetic ideas Cummings had devel- Connecticut, Gift of Collection Societe viduals, not groups. Among Fu- oped in his notes and applied to Anonyme turist-inspired American painters, his poetry as well. he especially admired Joseph The public response to Stella (1880-1946) and John Marin Cummings's entries at the 1920 In- (1870-1953). Cummings met dependent exhibition must have Stella in 1919, and Stella's Battle exceeded his most optimistic ex- of Lights:Coney Island (fig. 7) pectations. This time reviewers probably inspired the tangle of from four newspapers mentioned serpentine and jagged lines and his paintings. One called them elliptical curves that Cummings "a striking bit of post-impres- created a few months later in sionism." Another recommended Noise Number 5. Like Stella, that Cummings's paintings be in- Cummings went to Coney Island cluded in future exhibitions of ab- to "capture colour and motion." stract art. The most detailed re- And like Marin, he found New view appeared in the Evening Post: York skyscrapers, such as the Woolworth Building (fig. 8), alive E. E. Cummings entitles one of and dynamic-apt subjects for these [abstractions] "NoiseNumber paintings such as New York, 1927 5" and the other "Sound Number (fig. 9) and its poetic counterpart 5". Of the two, we preferred the "at the ferocious phenomenon of noise; both of them are interesting. 5 o'clock i find myself."12For all Of course, these irregular patterns their indebtedness, however, of sharp positive color are banners Cummings's early abstractions re- of a small army of theorists,and tain their individuality in the way the theories will either entrance

60 Spring 1990 8 John Marin, Lower Manhattan(Composing you or set your teeth on edge, ac- features of the comedian: his for- derived from of top Woolworth), 1922. cording to the bias of your theo- lorn shuffle, legs and feet seeming Watercolor and charcoal with paper ries. But the can be to fold into each other; his cutout attached with thread on paper, if paintings tragi- 215/8 x 267/8 in. The Museum of Modern looked at with the eye, if they can comic nature in the rose and cane; Art, Lillie P. Bliss Bequest be seen as frankly as one sees the the ingratiating,waifish smile in pattern of a roll of linoleum they the subserviently bent head; and 9 New York, 1927, 1926-27. Oil on canvas, are bound to be admired.13 his nimble dexterity both in bal- 67 x 42 in. Published in E. E. Cummings, ancing the rose and in seeming to CIOPW York: (New Covici-Friede,1931) In the spring of 1920, come toward the viewer with his Cummings was busily developing top half while moving away with another outlet for his art and his bottom half. writing: Dial magazine, which had Given the modernist audience been recently taken over by his for these Dial drawings (not to two close friends, Scofield Thayer mention the distinguished com- (1890-1982) and Sibley Watson pany they kept with works of (1894-1982). Under their superb Picasso, Andre Derain [1880- guidance, it would become the 1954], Henri Matisse [1869-1954], best and most influential little and others), and given that magazine of the 1920s, and Cummings's large abstractions Cummings's work-poems, essays, caught the eye-and usually the paintings, and twenty-two line approval-of journalists covering drawings-graced mary of its is- every Independent exhibition he sues over the next nine years. entered from 1919 to 1924, Here his poetic innovations often Cummings seemed well on his appeared alongside his line draw- way to establishing himself pub- ings. The best of these drawings, licly, like Dante Gabriel Rossetti such as Charles Spencer Chaplin, (1828-1882) before him, as an reveal Cummings's talent for com- artist of two equal callings, a Mod- pressing character and motion ernist of poetry and painting. In- into a few sinuous strokes (fig. deed, in one of the first serious 10). His fluent line fuses several studies of Cummings's poetry in

61 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1923, the critic Gorham Munson loner. His distrust of coteries may concluded that "a complete study have prevented his making impor- of Cummings should take pene- tant contacts with other painters trating account of his painting and and patrons, but his distrust of drawing, and no estimate of his himself probably explains his re- literary work can begin without luctance to seek out one-artist noting the important fact that shows. He may not have felt Cummings is a painter."14 ready yet. Just how thoroughly Cummings Such reluctance may also partly himself believed this "fact,"how- explain Cummings's decision to ever, is open to question. Despite leave America in 1921 and settle his steady output of large abstrac- in Paris for the next three years. tions (at least fifteen by 1921), his To judge from the hundreds of early successes, and his declara- drawings he made abroad, he ap- tions to his parents, peculiar parently felt the need to rethink lapses in his emerging career as a his aesthetics and rework his tech- painter hint at professional uncer- niques.15In Paris he had easy ac- tainty. For one thing, Cummings cess to his favorite artists, and the was not in ex- sketch was a convenient 10 Charles 1924. Ink aggressive seeking pad place Spencer Chaplin, in ideas drawing published in the Dial 76 (March hibitions and one-artist shows to work out compositional 1924): 248 the 1920s, settling instead for a gleaned from the Bernheim-Jeune place in the yearly Independent Gallery and the Luxembourg Mu- exhibition. The Dial, of course, seum. But in America, Cummings's carried his line drawings to an in- painting virtually disappeared. The fluential readership, but reproduc- Sounds and Noises yielded to si- tions in a magazine are no substi- lence, and only a few of his water- tute for paintings in a gallery. colors were exhibited. Moreover, the mediocre quality of At the same time, however, several drawings published in the Cummings's literary reputation Dial (e.g., fig. 11) suggests that blossomed with the publication of Thayer and Watson may have The Enormous Room in 1922, Tu- placed personal friendship over lips and Chimneys in 1923, and their much-vaunted taste. Such poems in numerous little maga- preferential treatment could have zines. And unlike his abstract stunted Cummings's ability to criti- painting, which belonged to a cize his own work, judgment he broader modernist movement, his badly needed if no art teacher was poems had indeed "done some- to look over his shoulder. Equally thing FIRST,"as he boasted to his important, after 1919 Cummings father. His typographical innova- did not generally associate with tions sparked an immediate and painters. Certainly he knew of the lasting controversy, and Cummings circle of Alfred Stieglitz (1864- was soon known for them. Thus 1946) and probably visited we find the potent irony that Stieglitz's gallery "291," but he when he returned to America in 11 A Line Drawing, 1922. Ink drawing made no contacts with this December 1923, Cummings still published in the Dial 72 (January 1922): impre- 46 sario who might have arranged a considered himself "primarilya one-artist show for him as he had painter," as he wrote to his father, done for so many other young yet to a journalist reviewing his Modernists. Apart from Lachaise painting at the 1924 Independent and his stepson, the painter exhibition, he was already "better Edward Nagle (1893-?), known as a poet and novelist."16 Cummings's friends were nearly What heightens this irony is all writers or Harvardchums, and that Cummings's painting had ma- he was aloof to gallery politics, a tured during his Parisian hiatus.

62 Spring 1990 12 Noise Number 12, 1924. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 in. Iconography Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Universityof Texas at Austin

13 Noise Number 13, 1925. Oil on canvas, 5912 x 43 in. Private collection, New York

His Noise Number 12 of 1924 and impressed a reporter from the Noise Number 13 of the following New York Sun and Globe as being year are markedly superior to the especially apt: he gave Noise earlier abstractions in their fluency Number 12 premier mention in of line, concentrated force, and reviewing the 1924 Independent.18 balance of planar weight and dy- If Noise Number 12 portrays namism (figs. 12, 13). The noise of fluent rhythms, Noise Number 13 Noise Number 12, for example, is emphasizes conflicting tensions of clearly jazz, conveyed not only by expansion and contraction. Tubes the central figure suggesting a sax- and cones push in toward the ophone and the silhouetted hints center, spirals spin out toward the of toe tapping and faces and hands edges and coil inward to suggest making music, but also by the three-dimensional depth, and the flowing, twisting, and jaggedly syn- foreshortened cylinder at bottom copated rhythm lines.17The aural center leads down into the design metaphor of these visual images to convey height. These conflicts

63 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 14 sea, 1944. Oil on canvasboard, 12 x 16 in. State University of New York College at Brockport Foundation

15 View from Joy Farm:Mt. Chocorua, 1941. Oil on canvas, 38 x 48 in. Private collection

of directional force and dimension (charcoal, ink, oil, pencil, water- create (to quote from Cummings's color). But it proved to be his fare- play Him) "a kinesis fatally com- well to modernist abstraction:late posed of countless mutually de- in 1926 he revealed, in a letter to pendent stresses, a product-and- his mother, that he hoped "to re- quotient of innumerable perfectly sume Painting but in a new interrelated tensions." Cummings direction."19 liked this oil well enough to have The "new direction" developed it reproduced several times: in the in New York, 1927, an ambitious 1925 Independent catalogue, in oil that superimposes a larger- the Dial of August 1927, and in his than-life nude over a Marinesque 1931 art book, entitled CIOPW melange of tulips, chimneys, and

64 Spring 1990 skyscrapers (see fig. 9). Clearly his animus, his identity as an Cummings was seeking a style that artist?For a poet and painter who would reconcile the figurative and revered nature as deeply as abstractwithout sacrificing either. Cummings did-and who specu- In this retreat from modernist ab- lated in Jungian terms on the fem- straction, he was certainly not inine side of his creativity-this alone. Indeed, by 1926 scarcely need to express the relation be- any American painter besides tween self and nature, male and Arthur Dove (1880-1946) and female, was as essential to his ar- Stuart Davis (1894-1964) main- tistic identity as his need to recon- tained the abstract styles of the cile the figural and abstractwas to teens. As the critic Sam Hunter his aesthetics.21 observed, "The rapid decline of Cummings felt that his new di- American experimental art [in the rection suited his identity as an early 1920s] left a vacuum which artist. In encouraging spontaneity increasingly all but the most reso- and self-expression, it permitted lute innovators filled by relaxing his painting "to live suddenly into less demanding styles of re- without thinking," as he put it in alism or eclecticism."20But just as one early poem.22 Expressive with his development of a mod- freedom, in turn, encouraged sty- ernist style, external fashion mat- listic uniqueness, an all-important tered far less to Cummings than quality for this artist. For several did a personal aesthetics, which reasons, however, Cummings's 16 Untitled (Man Moon), n.d. Oil Worshiping abstraction could no fulfill. abandonment of modernist ab- on cardboard, 15 x 8 in. State Universityof longer New York College at Brockport Foundation His "new direction," moreover, straction proved to be a critical did not evolve into a single style, disaster. While he tinkered with for he painted in several styles in his new direction, he became subsequent years, from the even more reticent to display his expressionism of sea (fig. 14), to work outside the yearly Indepen- the naturalism of Viewfrom Joy dent exhibition. Not until 1931 did Farm: Mt. Chocorua (fig. 15), to he "go public" with two one-artist the dreamy sort of night painting shows and with his art book of Untitled (fig. 16). CIOPW.By this time, however, he By "new direction," Cummings had published five volumes of po- meant less a new style than a new etry, participated in a sixth, and orientation to the subject, one that written a book-length narrative,a abandoned the detached objec- play (produced in 1927), and tivity of Modernism for an about two dozen short essays for engaged subjectivity and that the Dial and Vanity Fair. embraced nature as a medium of If Cummings was "better self-expression rather than as an known as a poet and novelist" in accessory to an abstract design. As 1924, he was likely known only as in New York, 1927, he sought to a writer by 1931. Critics who re- transcend categorical distinctions viewed his one-artist shows in the between abstract and figural, nat- years thereafter-notably in 1934, ural and human: his trees twist an- 1944, and 1949-invariably ex- thropomorphically; his clouds pressed surprise on learning that swirl apocalyptically. In his Self- the bad boy of American letters Portrait with Sketchpad, for ex- also painted; they thus viewed the ample, the tree trunk-a curving paintings as "A Parenthesis to the feminine torso-extends a shel- Career of a Poet," as Hilton tering branch over the artist (fig. Kramer entitled a 1968 review. 17). Is she the artist's muse or the The critics were also surprised- Jungian complement, the anima, to unpleasantly, for the most part-

65 Smithsonian Studies in American Art 17 Self-Portraitwith Sketchpad, 1939. Oil on canvas, 43 x 311/2 in. Iconography Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Universityof Texas at Austin

that Cummings's postmodernist that painting was only a pastime painting did not pose the visual for him. In turn, their coolness to challenge of his writing. Henry his later work and misreading of McBride's response to Cummings's his seriousness probably kept him 1934 exhibition is typical: "You from exhibiting more often (he could never imagine [the paint- had ten one-artist shows after ings] to be by the author of 'Eimi.' 1927) and impelled him after 1949 They are thin, uncertain, and sepa- to seek safer havens, like Roch- rated by some curious wall of in- ester, New York, when he did ex- hibition from the medium."23 hibit: thus the vicious circle of pri- Cummings's stylistic mean- vacy causing misconception and dering in his later work strength- misconception causing greater ened the critics' misconception privacy.

66 Spring 1990 Whether Cummings could have and composing with the Munich succeeded in establishing a public expressionist group Blaue Reiter; persona as a painter had he con- and in the influence that Marcel tinued his modernist style is a Duchamp (1887-1968), Charles moot but interesting question. All Sheeler (1883-1965), and Charles the abstractions he exhibited pub- Demuth (1883-1939) exerted on licly proved their power to cap- William Carlos Williams's (1883- ture the eye, just as his early po- 1963) poetry, to cite but a few in- etry did. His last abstractions, stances. But perhaps for no one Noise Number 12 and Noise more than Cummings were two Number 13, moreover, demon- arts so closely connected and mu- strate an impressive growth in sty- tually interactive, since he not only listic confidence and suggest that, devoted equal time to each but had he continued in this vein, he also guided them both by a might have developed a distinctly common set of aesthetic personal and recognizable brand principles. of Modernism, as Stuart Davis did, Early on, critics recognized the for example, even as modernist importance of considering to- abstraction faded from the Amer- gether Cummings's "twin obses- ican scene. But Cummings's failure sions," as he called them, but this to develop his painterly potential awareness soon faded with his in the early 1920s to match his public persona as a painter and burgeoning reputation as a writer did not reemerge until the late and his abandonment of Mod- 1970s. Comparative studies since ernism later in the decade effec- then have noted parallels in sub- tively consigned his later painting ject matter, genre, technique, and, to obscurity. more recently, aesthetics.25All these approaches deserve mention to emphasize how Painting and Poem: Some profoundly Cummings's visual imagination in- Comparative Approaches formed his poetry-but not equal In a catalogue statement for one mention, since they do not equally of his one-artist shows, Cummings delineate the relations between posed and answered a persistent his arts. Similarly, any comparative question about how his two arts method must be sensitive to dif- cohered in practice: ferences in Cummings's practice and skill in the two arts and to Tell me, doesn't your painting in- their apparent stylistic divergences. terfere with your writing? Given Cummings's re- Quite the contrary: they love each strong to the and his un- other dearly.24 sponse subject abashed romanticism, it is hardly Indeed, that "mutual love" marked surprising that the things he cared the modernist movement as a about-mountains and flowers, whole. Interminglings of the arts friends and lovers-should inhabit were visible everywhere: in his poems and later canvases RichardWagner's (1813-1883) equally. Even the most casual Gesamtkunstwerk;in the Symbol- reader of his poems, for example, ists' colloquies and shared sub- quickly discerns how profoundly jects; in Ezra Pound's (1885-1972) Cummings loved nature, a love forays into other arts to expand that, in fusing childlike joy and re- his concept of the image; in ligious reverence, could reach a Gertrude Stein's (1874-1946) pitch of lyrical ecstasy, or just as Cubist-inspired portraits; in Arnold easily fall into saccharine Schonberg's (1874-1951) painting sentimentality:

67 Smithsonian Studies in American Art when faces called flowers float out of the ground

-it's april(yes,april;mydarling)it's spring! yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be (yes the mountains are dancing together)26

The same two-edged potential sky, recalls the nature poems that, holds for the views of Mount Cho- although carefully crafted, evoke a corua that Cummings painted tire- startling moment-a lightning lessly from his family's farm in the bolt, for example, as in the poem White Mountains of New Hamp- "n(o)w," excerpted below-with shire, much as his hero, Paul the feeling of spontaneity.2' Cezanne, repeatedly returned to Comparisons of subject matter the distant motif of Mont Sainte- in the paintings and poems may Victoire. Indeed, Cummings's View reveal shared themes and likewise from Joy Farm (see fig. 15) even suggest parallel strengths (inspired borrows the framing motif from spontaneity) and weaknesses (sen- Cezanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire timentality, triteness) to which (1886-88, Courtauld Institute). As Cummings's work in each medium Viewfrom Joy Farm suggests, is prone. But such comparisons do these landscapes, while technically not really explain how his painting accomplished, sometimes lapse relates to his poetry. into prettiness and conventionality. Genre brings us a little closer. Occasionally, though, when inspi- The other side of Cummings's lyr- ration overcame his chronic un- ical affirmationwas his corrosive certainty in oils, Cummings could satire and biting portraiture. As his turn out impressive work, particu- Chaplin (see fig. 10) shows, Cum- larly in watercolors calling for mings had a caricaturist'seye for light, fast brushwork. His painting telling detail. Even in a drawing Untitled (fig. 18), in capturing one obviously tossed off in a hurry, moment of a shifting, tumultuous such as one of his friend and pa-

n(o)w

the how dis(appeared cleverly)world

iS Slapped:with;liGhtninG

at which(shal)lpounceupcrackw(ill)jumps

of THuNdeRB loSSo!M

(Excerpt from E. E. Cummings, "n(o)w")

68 Spring 1990 18 Untitled (Landscape with Stormy Sky), n.d. Watercolor on paper, 812 x 11 in. Prizate tron Scofield collection Thayer, Cummings ygUDuh wittily captures Thayer's aristo- cratically arched brow and dan- ydoan dified bow mouth (fig. 19). In yunnuhstan Cummings's poetry, satire figures even more prominently. It pro- ydoan o vided the perfect medium to at- yunnuhstan dem tack values he opposed, for the yguduh ged Reverend Edward Cummings's son was, beneath his celebrations of yunnuhstan dem doidee the senses, a moralist, albeit a yguduh ged riduh o nudn witty one. As both his contempo- ydoan raries and his recorded Nonlec- LISNbud LISN tures he had a ear confirm, superb dem and voice for mimicry.28Witness his evocation of the half-formed gud am thoughts, half-swallowed syllables, and half-human of this savagery lidl yelluh bas South Boston on "tough" opining tuds weer goin what wartime America should do to the Japanese: duhSIVILEYEzum29

69 Smithsonian Studies in American Art Both expressions of satire dem- larity, enhanced and even onstrate Cummings's sensitivity to stimulated Cummings's visual dis- visual and aural nuance and his locations. One element in both ability to exaggerate nuance into media can serve as an example. caricature and mimicry. Yet poetry As a painter, Cummings knew gave him more opportunity for how directly line creates or subtlety, for thematic complexity impedes motion. As he acknowl- and double entendre, such as slip- edged in his foreword to is 5, his ping "EYE"into "SIVILEYEz"to 1926 book of poems, "I am abnor- recall one moral code that the mally fond of that precision which speaker would no doubt affirm: creates movement." His unpub- "an eye for an eye." With brush lished notes, moreover, speculate and pen, Cummings was no often and in detail on methods to George Grosz (1893-1959) and achieve motion in both arts and could not achieve a comparable the types of motion various lines subtlety. effect.30Not surprisingly, then, When we turn to the visual de- such abstractions as Noise Number vices in Cummings's poetry and 1 (see fig. 6) emphasize lines that them to de- create arcs 19 Untitled (Scofield Thayer), before 1923. compare analogous dynamism-sweeping Pencil drawing, 81/2x 11 in. E. E. vices in his paintings and to the and curves, diagonals-while es- Cummings Papers, Houghton Library, aesthetic principles generating chewing more static horizontals Hanrard University both, the connections between the and verticals. two arts become tighter. Although In Cummings's poems, line is Cummings's famous typographical more complex, for it functions in innovations in one sense came out dimensions of space and time si- of the free verse movement of the multaneously.31As the poem un- teens and owe much to Pound folds temporally, the narrative line and perhaps to Guillaume conveys motion through its pace, Apollinaire (1880-1918), they owe its accelerations and retards. Si- even more to his own painterly vi- multaneously, however, the short sion-only now the typewriter lyric (Cummings's metier) exists served as his paintbrush. In this in space, its line lengths and regard, critics have often and placements immediately appre- rightly observed how much the hensible to the eye. Cummings ex- typewriter, with its sharply delin- ploited both of these linear di- eated print, its precision of place- mensions to generate the motions ment, and its mechanical regu- of his well-known "BuffaloBill's":

Buffalo Bill's defunct who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat Jesus

he was a handsome man and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death32

70 Spring 1990 Spatially,the lines lengthen in development but also the reader's the poem's top half as they move perception and experience of it. farther to the right. They reach The full power of Cummings's their extremity with the expletive visual imagination-the painterly "Jesus,"then retreat and shorten vision of his poems-occurs in in the lower half, returning finally poems that must be seen and can to the left margin with "Mister scarcely be read orally, such as Death." A diagram of the extremi- "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r,"reprinted ties of this progression and reces- below.33 sion produces an arrowhead-an The transformations of "r-p-o-p- appropriate shape to associate h-e-s-s-a-g-r"are almost exclusively with this famous Indian scout- visual, not only in the scrambled with its point of maximum force at letters of "grasshopper"that grad- 'Jesus." Temporally, the poem's ually unscramble themselves but pacing begins slowly with the an- also in the tmesis of "rearrang- nouncement of Buffalo Bill's death ingly become"-a simultaneous spaced over two lines, gradually presentation that virtually defies accelerates as his dynamic life is coherent oral reading-and in the recalled, and reaches its peak of falling "1/ eA / !p:"with its capital acceleration and greatest intensity "A"suggesting the apex of the grass- when Buffalo Bill himself was hopper's leap. In exploiting the most magnificently alive: "and visual potential of each black mark break onetwothreefourfive pi- on his white page-its potential as geonsjustlikethat /Jesus." As the ideograph, as abstract shape, as line shortens and returns to the implied line, as something to slow left margin-the margin of death or speed the pacing, as visual em- and the present-the pace decel- bodiment of semantic meaning- erates, the intensity slackens, and Cummings made the real subject the poem grounds to an emphatic of his poems the experience of halt on "Death."Linear spacing reading and seeing them: their and pace thus work in perfect syn- process, their continuous be- chrony to create motion and in- coming, their inexhaustible trans- tensity by controlling not only the formativeness. Ironically, though, poem's visual form and thematic even as they give the effect of

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r who a)s w(e loo)k upnowgath PPEGORHRASS eringint(o- aThe):l eA

S a (r rivlnG .gRrEaPsPhOs) to rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly ,grasshopper;

(E. E. Cummings, "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r")

71 Smithsonian Studies in American Art spontaneity, of "happening" on pearance. His painting, by contrast, the page, they result from the cal- gravitated toward one or the other culated placement of each mark: of these poles but seldom inte- Cummings planned his spon- grated them successfully. The cal- taneity.3"In his painting after 1926, culated paintings, such as View by contrast, Cummings usually from Joy Farm (see fig. 15), thus pursued this spontaneity more di- risked stodginess and convention- rectly through a kinetic technique, ality, while the "spontaneous" or, as he put it in one private style could produce a muddle note, "chunking ahead with a big when it was not inspired. brush held loosely & loaded with William Slater Brown was per- paint."35The painting sea is one of haps right to question from the the more successful examples of outset Cummings's dogged persis- this style (see fig. 14). tence in painting when words In virtually all respects, then, were clearly his medium. Cummings's poetry was more Cummings was a born writer, a complex and subtle than his self-made painter. Yet one cannot painting. By responding to the help but respect his perseverance slightest nuance of language and as a painter who endured all intensifying such nuances with his manner of disappointments: bad visual imagination, he was able to reviews, indifference and igno- manipulate and exploit words in rance, misconceptions about his more ways to effect more kinds seriousness, and, potentially most and dimensions of meaning- crippling of all, self-doubts about visual, aural, semantic, and syn- his aims.36Cummings weathered tactic-than he could achieve them all and continued painting to through his painting. The "calcu- the day he died. Whatever their lated spontaneity" of his poems, stutterings of facility, their lapses moreover, permitted a fine bal- of critical judgment, his paintings ance between thought and feeling, bespeak an artist for whom the between the poem's disciplined self-created identity of "poet and construction and its visceral ap- painter" was indivisible.

Notes

1 E. E. Cummings to Rebecca H. p. 58. For other references to Lachaise, Cummings, 24 April 1919, Selected Let- see letters dated 1918-20, pp. 45-63. ters ofEEE. Cummings, ed. F. W. 4 "Independents Run Gamut in Art Dupee and George Stade (New York: Show," New York Sun, 30 March 1919, Harcourt Brace & World, 1969), p. 58. p. 14, col. 3. On Cummings's gallery 2 Although the term "defamiliarization" invitations, see Cummings to Rebecca belongs to Russian Formalism, Cummings, 7 April and 24 April 1919, Cummings's notes show that he pur- Selected Letters,ed. Dupee and Stade, sued the same effect in his poetry pp. 57-58. On his nomination to the through visual displacements in board of directors of the Independent, spacing and typography. See Milton A. see Richard S. Kennedy, Dreams in the Cohen, "E. E. Cummings' Sleight-of- Mirror:A Biography of E. E. Hand: Perceptual Ambiguity in His Cummings (New York: Liveright, Early Poetry, Painting, and Career," 1980), p. 204. Universit, of Hartford Studies in Liter- 5 Cummings's 1915 com- ature 15, no. 1 (1983): 33-46. undergraduate mencement address, "The New Art," 3 Isabel Lachaise, quoted in Cummings reflects his familiaritywith an impres- to Rebecca Cummings, 7 April 1919, sive range of avant-gardeartists, in- Selected Letters,ed. Dupee and Stade, cluding Igor Stravinsky(1882-1971)

72 Spring 1990 and Arnold Schonberg, Paul Cezanne, March 1920, p. 8, col. 3; S. Jay Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, and Kaufman,review of the 1920 Indepen- Gertrude Stein. Reprinted in E. E. dent exhibition, New York Globe and Cummings: A Miscellany Revised, ed. Advertiser,quoted in Kennedy, Dreams George J. Firmage (New York: Oc- in the Mirror, p. 211; review in New tober House, 1965), pp. 5-11. See also York Evening Post, 12 March 1920, p. Kennedy, Dreams in the Mirror, pp. 11, cols. 4-5. 78-82; John Dos Passos, The Best 14 Gorham Times (New York: New American Li- Munson, "Syrinx,"Secession 5 in brary, 1966), p. 35. (July 1923): 2-11, reprinted E. E. Cummings and the Critics,ed. Stanley 6 E. E. Cummings, "Gaston Lachaise," V. Baum (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan Dial, February 1920, reprinted in Mis- State University Press, 1962), pp. 9-18. cellany Revised, ed. Firmage, pp. 16-17. 15 Cummings's Parisian drawings, in the Cummings Papers, Houghton Library, 7 Willard H. Wright,Moder Painting: are easily datable by their French wa- Its Tendency and Meaning (New York: termark-the same paper he used in John Lane, 1915); Emile Bernard, Sou- dated letters home. venirs sur Paul Cezanne (Paris: So- 16 Cummings to Edward 22 ciete des Trente, 1912); Cummings to Cummings, 1920, Selected ed. Rebecca Cummings, 2 March 1922, E. May Letters, Dupee and Stade, 71; to Edward E. Cummings Papers, Houghton Li- p. Cummings Cummings, 5 December 1923, brary, HarvardUniversity, Cambridge, Mass. Cummings Papers; review in New York Sun and Globe, 6 March 1924, p. 16, 8 Cummings to Rebecca Cummings, 19 cols. 2-3. February 1917 and 2 March 1922, 17 Cummings Papers. Compare Cummings's poem "ta," which depicts a toe tapping to synco- 9 in Cummings, quoted Kennedy, pated jazz. III, Portraits,& [AND] in the Dreams Mirror, p. 166. (1925), reprinted in Complete Poems, 107. 10 Cummings to Rebecca Cummings, 2 p. March 1922 and 18June 1918, 18 New YorkSun and Globe, 6 March Cummings Papers. So devoted was 1924, p. 16. Cummings to Wright's criticism (which 19 E. E. Him York: Boni included brilliant exegeses of Cummings, (New & 1927), act 1, sc. Cezanne's techniques) that to praise Liveright, 4; to Rebecca 4 his college friend Scofield Thayer, Cummings Cummings, October Cummings dubbed him "W.H. 1926, Cummings Papers. W[right], Jr." 20 Sam Hunter and John Jacobus, Amer- ican Art the 11 Cummings, "Notes," ca. early 1920s, of 20th Century (New York:Abrams, 1973), 120. Cummings Papers; E. E. Cummings, p. "Picasso,"iii, Portraits,XLI Poems 21 Cummings, "Notes," ca. 1940s, (1925), reprinted in E. E. Cummings: Cummings Papers. Complete Poems 1913-1962 (New 22 E. E. "let's live York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Cummings, suddenly without Sonnets-Actual- 1980), p. 195; Cummings, "Notes," ca. thinking," Dx, & in 1918, Cummings Papers. ities, [AND], reprinted Complete Poems, p. 160. 12 Cummings to Rebecca Cummings, 18 23 Hilton "A Parenthesis June 1918 and 2 March 1919, Kramer, to the Career of a Poet," New York 16 Cummings Papers; E. E. Cummings, Times, March cols. "at the ferocious phenomenon of 1968, p. 26, 1-3; Henry review of 5 o'clock i find myself," rx, Portraits, McBride, Cummings's 1934 exhibition, New York 3 XLIPoems, reprinted in Complete Sun, February 1934, 9, cols. 1-2. Poems, p. 201. In 1925 Cummings p. called Marin "America'sgreatest living 24 E. E. Cummings, "Foreword to an Ex- painter" in an article that also refers to hibit: II," from catalogue of one-artist their common motif, the Woolworth show at the Memorial Gallery, Roch- Building. "The Adult, the Artist,and ester, N.Y.,May 1945, reprinted in Mis- the Circus,"Vanity Fair, October 1925, cellany Revised, ed. Firmage, pp. reprinted in Miscellany Revised, ed. 316-17. Firmage, pp. 112-13. 25 Munson, "Syrinx."Besides an impres- 13 "L'ArtPour L'ArtRevels in Splash of sionistic chapter on Cummings as Naked Truth,"New York World, 12 artist in Charles Norman's biography

73 Smithsonian Studies in American Art The Magic Maker:E. E. Cummings 29 E. E. Cummings, "ygUDuh,"VII, 1 x 1 (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), pp. [One Times One] (1944), reprinted in 255-76, and chronological references Complete Poems, p. 547. in Kennedy's biography Dreams in the 30 E. E. Cummings, foreword to is 5 Mirror, the chief work on Cummings's (1926), reprinted in Complete Poems, painting is by Rushworth Kidder: p. 223. See also Cohen, Poetand- "E. E. Cummings, Painter,"Harvard Li- Painter, p. 151. brary Bulletin 23 (April 1975): 117-38; "'Author of Pictures':A Study of 31 Of course line in painting can also Cummings's Line Drawings in The convey passing time, as painters from Dial," Contemporary Literature 17 Tommaso Giovanni di Masaccio (1976): 470-505; "'Twin Obsessions': (1401-1428) to Picasso have demon- The Poetry and Paintings of E. E. strated. But Cummings, in striving for Cummings," Georgia Review 32 instantaneity in his painting, ignored (Summer 1978): 342-68; "Cummings this potential. and Cubism,"Journal of Modern Liter- 32 E. E. Cummings, "BuffaloBill's," vii, ature 7 1979): 225-91; and by (April and Milton A. Cohen: PoetandPainter: The Portraits,TULIPS, Tulips Chimneys (1923), reprinted in Complete Poems, Aestheticsof E. E. Cummings's Early p. 60. Work (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), pp. 33-64; E. E. 33 E. E. Cummings, "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r," Cummings' Paintings: The Hidden Ca- 13, No Thanks (1935), reprinted in reer (Dallas: University of Texas at Complete Poems, p. 396. Dallas and Dallas Public Library,1982). 34 In E. E. Cummings: The Poet as Artist 26 E. E. Cummings, "when faces called (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University flowers float out of the ground," 67, Press, 1960), chap. 5, Norman XAIPE(1950), reprinted in Complete Friedman traced Cummings's poem Poems, p. 665. This and other poems "rosetree,rosetree" through numerous by Cummings appearing in this article drafts. Both as dynamic process and are reprinted by persmission of Live- crafted object, his poems confirm right Publishing Corp. ? 1923, 1925, Cummings in the classical role of 1931, and renewed 1951, 1953, 1959 maker-poietes,as he himself acknowl- by E. E. Cummings; ? 1973, 1976, edged: "If a poet is anybody, he is 1978, 1979 by the Trustees for the somebody ... who is obsessed by E. E. Cummings Trust; ( 1973, 1976, Making."Foreword to is 5, reprinted 1978, 1979 by George James Firmage. in Complete Poems, p. 223. 27 E. E. Cummings, "n(o)w," xxxviii, 35 Cummings, "Notes," 1940, Cummings W[ViVa] (1931), reprinted in Com- Papers. plete Poems, p. 347. 36 As late as 1940, Cummings could de- 28 E. E. Cummings, i: Six Nonlectures, clare, "ApparentlyI've found my style Charles Eliot Norton Lectures re- in painting," confirming not the dis- corded at Sanders Theatre, Harvard covery so much as the search. "Notes," University, 1952-53, phonograph rec- 1940, Cummings Papers. ords, Caedmon TX 1186-91, 1965.

74 Spring 1990