Modern Painting, Its Tendency and Meaning

7T| T !I f/-W,SANDIEG 31822017062449 T 1 NTN WJ .AKU ! I WRIGHT JNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO / 3 1822017062449 Modern Painting Central University Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due Courtesy Worcester Art Museum FEMME ACCROUPIE GAUGUIN Modern Painting Its Tendency and Meaning By W^illard Huntington Upright New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1922 COPYRIGHT, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY THE PLIMPTON PRESS NOR WOOD MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOREWORD beneath all great art there has been a definite animating purpose, a THATsingle and profound desire to reach a specific goal, has been but vaguely sensed by the general public and by the great majority of critics. And there are, I believe, but very few persons not directly and seriously concerned with the production of pictures, who realise that this animating purpose has for its aim the solution of the profoundest problems of the creative will, that it is rooted deeply in the aesthetic consciousness, and that its evolution marks one of the most complex phases of human psychology. The habit of approaching a work of art from the naif standpoint of one's personal temperament or taste and of judging it hap- hazardly by its individual appeal, irrespective of its inherent aesthetic merit, is so strongly implanted in the average spectator, that any attempt to define the principles of form and organisation underlying the eternal values of art is looked upon as an act of gratuitous ped- antry. But such principles exist, and if we are to judge works of art accurately and consist- ently these principles must be mastered. Other- wise we are without a standard, and all our opinions are but the outgrowth of the chaos of our moods. Any attempt to democratise art results only in the lowering of the artistic standard. Art cannot be taught; and a true appreciation of 8 FOREWORD it cannot grow up without a complete under- standing of the aesthetic laws governing it. Those qualities in painting by which it is ordi- narily judged are for the most part irrelevan- cies from the standpoint of pure aesthetics. They have as little to do with a picture's infixed greatness as the punctuation in Faust or the words of the Hymn to Joy in the Ninth Sym- phony. Small wonder that modern art has become a copious fountain-head of abuse and laughter; for modern art tends toward the elimination of all those accretions so beloved by the general literature, drama, sentiment, sym- bolism, anecdote, prettiness and photographic realism. This book inquires first into the function and psychology of all great art, and endeavours to define those elements which make for genuine worth in painting. Next it attempts to explain both the basic and superficial differences between "ancient" and "modern" art and to point out, as minutely as space will permit, the superiority of the new methods over the old. By this exposition an effort is made to indicate the raison d'etre of the modern procedure. After that, modern painters are taken up in the order of their importance to the evolution of painting during -the last hundred years. I have tried to answer the following questions: What men and movements mark the milestones in the develop- ment of the new idea? What have been the motivating forces of each of these schools? To what extent are their innovations significant: what ones touch organically on the vital problems of aesthetics; and what was their influence FOREWORD 9 on the men who came later? Out of what did the individual men spring; what forces and circumstances came together to make their exist- ence possible? What were their aims, and what were their actual achievements? What relation did they bear to one another, and in what way did they advance on one another? Where has modern art led, and what inspirational possi- bilities lie before it? Before setting out to solve these problems, all of which have their roots in the very organ- isms of the science of aesthetics, I have posed a definite rationale of valuation. My principles are based on the quickening ideals of all great art, and, if properly understood, I believe, they will answer every question which arises in the intelligent spectator when he stands before a piece of visual art, be it a Byzantine mosaic, a complicated organisation by Rubens, a linear arrangement by Picasso or an utterly worthless anecdote in paint by an English academician. Necessarily preoccupied with the application of my critical standard, I have had but little time and space to devote to its elucidation. Yet I have striven in this indirect process of state- ment to make my fundamental postulate suffi- ciently clear to enable the reader to recognise its truth and unity. Two years ago when I crowded my hypothesis into 7000 words in the Forum, and early last winter when I stated it in even briefer space in the New Age, I found that, although it took a new and difficult stand, there were many who grasped its essentials. Therefore I feel myself entitled to hope that in its present form it will be comprehensible even io FOREWORD to those whose minds are not trained in the complexities of aesthetic research. In stripping art of its intriguing charm and its soothing vagueness it is not my intention to do away with its power to delight. To the contrary, I believe that only by relieving painting of its dead cargo of literature, archaeology and illustration can it be made to function freely. Painting should be as pure an art as music, and the struggles of all great painters have been toward that goal. Its medium colour is as elemental as sound, and when properly presented (with the same scientific exactness as the harmonies of the tone-gamut) it is fully as capable of engendering aesthetic emotion as is music. Our delight in music, no matter how primitive, is not dependent on an imitation of natural sounds. Music's pleas- urable significance is primarily intellectual. So can painting, by its power to create emotion and not mere sensation, provoke deep aesthetic feeling of a far greater intensity than the delight derived from transcription and drama. Modern painting strives toward the heightening of emo- tional ecstasy; and my esthetique is intended to pave the way for an appreciation of art which will make possible the reception of that ecstasy. With this object ever in view I have weighed the painting of the last century, and have judged it solely by its ability or inability to call forth a profound aesthetic emotion. Almost any art can arouse pleasing sentiments. Only great art can give us intellectual rapture. W. H. W. Paris, 1915 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. ANCIENT AND MODERN ART . 17 II. PRECURSORS OF THE NEW ERA 34 " III. EDOUARD MANET . , . 64 IV. THE EARLY IMPRESSIONISTS 83 V. AUGUSTS RENOIR 107 VI. PAUL CEZANNE 129 VII. THE NEO-IMPRESSIONISTS ....... 164 VIII. GAUGUIN AND THE PONT-AVEN SCHOOL . 187 IX. DEGAS AND His CIRCLE 207 X. HENRI-MATISSE 222 XL PICASSO AND CUBISM 237 XII. FUTURISM 263 XIII. SYNCHROMISM 277 XIV. THE LESSER MODERNS 305 XV. CONCLUSION * . 327 INDEX . ... 343 Modern Painting Modern Painting ANCIENT AND MODERN ART the entire history of the fine arts, no period of aesthetic inno- THROUGHOUTvation and endeavour has 'suffered from public malignity, ridicule and ignorance as has painting during the last century. The reasons for this are many and, to the serious student of art history, obvious. The change between the old and the new order came swiftly and precipitously, like a cataclysm in the serenity of a summer night. The classic painters of the first half of the nineteenth century, such as David, Ingres, Gros and Gerard, were busy with their rehabilitation of ancient traditions, when without warning, save for the pale heresies of Constable, a new and rigorous regime was ushered in. It was Turner, Delacroix, Courbet and Daumier who entered the sacred temple, tore down the pillars which had supported it for cen- turies, and brought the entire structure of estab- lished values crashing down about them. They survived the debacle, and when eventually they laid aside their brushes for all time it was with the unassailable knowledge that they had accom- plished the greatest and most significant meta- morphosis in the history of any art. But even these hardy anarchists of the new order little dreamed of the extremes to which 18 MODERN PAINTING their heresies would lead. So precipitous and complex has been the evolution of modern painting that most of the most revolutionary moderns have failed to keep mental step with its develop- ments and divagations. During the past few years new modes and manners in art have sprung up with fungus-like rapidity. "Movements" and "schools" have followed one another with as- tounding pertinacity, each claiming that finality of expression which is the aim of all seekers for truth. And, with but few exceptions, the men who have instigated these innovations have been animated by a serious purpose that of master- ing the problem of aesthetic organisation and of circumscribing the one means for obtaining ultimate and indestructible results. But the problems of art, like those of life itself, are in the main unsolvable, and art must ever be an infinite search for the intractable. Form in painting, like the eternal readjustments and equilib- ria of life, is but an approximation to stability. The forces in all art are the forces of life, co- ordinated and organised.

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