Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and PoetsHartley, Marsden
History
Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets
Hartley, Marsden
Art; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism; Vaudeville
Men like Pissarro and Sisley were not forgetting Courbet and his
admirable knowledge of reality. They were not concerned with the
spectacular aspect of the impressionistic principle, not nearly so
much as with the satisfying realization of the object under the
influence of the new scientific problem in esthetics with which they
were concerned. For myself I am out of touch with Monet as a creator
and I find myself extracting far more satisfaction and belief from
Pissarro and Sisley, who deal with the problem of nature plus idea,
with a much greater degree of let me even say sincerity, by reason of
one fact and perhaps the most important one: they were not dramatizing
the idea in hand. They were not creating a furor with pink and
lavender haystacks. They were satisfied that there was still something
to be found in the old arrangement of negative and positive tones as
they were understood before the application of the spectrum turned the
brains and sensibilities of men. In other words Courbet survived while
the Barbizonians perished. There was an undeniable realization of fact
still there, clamoring for consideration. There was the reality then
even as now, as always. With Pissarro and Sisley there appeared the
true separation of tone, making itself felt most intelligently in the
work of these men from whom the real separatists Seurat, Signac, and
Cross were to realize their principle of pointilism, of which
principle Seurat was to prove himself the most satisfactory creative
exponent.
The world of art lost a very great deal in the untimely death of
Seurat; he was a young man of great artistic and intellectual gifts.
There was an artist by the name of Vignon who came in for his share
during the impressionistic period, probably not with any more dramatic
glamour than he achieves now by his very simple and unpretentious
pictures. I am sorry for my own pleasure that I have not been able to
see more of this artist's pictures from whom I think our own Theodore
Robinson must have gained a deal of strength for his own bridge
building between Bastien Le Page and the Monet "eccentricity," so to
call it.
There is always a reason for reticence, and it is usually apt to come
from thinking. Sisley and Pissarro, Vignon, Seurat, and Robinson were
thinking out a way to legitimize the new fantastic craze for prismatic
violence, and they found it in the direct consideration for the fact.
They knew that without objects light would have nowhere to fall, that
the earth confronted them with indispensable phenomena each one of
which had its reason for being. They were finding instead of losing
their heads, which is always a matter of praise. I could stay with
almost any Pissarro or Sisley I have ever seen, as I could always want
any Seurat near me, just as I could wish almost any Monet out of sight
because I find it submerged with emotional extravagance, too much
enthusiasm for his new pet idea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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