Another man painting his impressions of the same subject might catch
glimpses of entirely different features.
If we can _in our mind’s eye_ see what is behind an object; if, for
instance, we can picture to ourselves clearly the children playing in
the yard back of a house, why may not the painter, if he chooses,
suggest to us in his picture of the house the vital feature of the
children in the rear?
The feat is a seemingly impossible one. Perhaps neither the Cubists nor
the Futurists have accomplished it successfully; but because it is
difficult is no reason why the attempt should not be made.
_Theoretically_ there is nothing to be said against pictures which show
what both the _eye_ and the _mind’s eye_ of the artist see.
The works of the ultra-modern men can be understood only by the aid
of the imagination, by the aid of the _mind’s eye_ to see
_through_, and _about_ and _into_ things, to see the _inner_
conditions, happenings, and significance of things.
Stated in other terms, the extreme modern is no longer content to
paint what is before his eyes at a given moment and from a given
point of view; he is no longer content to act the part of a camera,
making reproductions of what is in front of it. He demands the
freedom to walk around his subject, fly over it, enter it, find out
all about it, and then record on canvas the sum and substance of
his observations _and_ reflections. The result may not look like a
cathedral, but if done by a genius it may give a fine impression of
certain salient features of the building, inside and out, and also
a vivid impression of some of its great ceremonies. Why not try to
paint the _power_ as well as the proportions?
* * * * *
If the American public found the work of Lehmbruck and Brancusi queer,
what would it think of the Futurist sculpture?
The two female figures exhibited by Lehmbruck were simply decorative
elongations of natural forms. In technic they were quite conventional.
Their modelling was along purely classical lines, far more severely
classical than much of the realistic work of Rodin.
The heads by Brancusi were idealistic in the extreme; the sculptor
carried his theories of mass and form so far he deliberately lost all
resemblance to actuality. He uses his subjects as motives rather than
models. In this respect he is not unlike--though more extreme than--the
great Japanese and Chinese artists, who use life and nature arbitrarily
to secure the results they desire.
I have a golden bronze head--a “Sleeping Muse,” by
[Illustration: SEGONZAC Pasturage]
Brancusi--so simple, so severe in its beauty, it might have come from
the Orient.
* * * * *
Of this head and two other pieces of sculpture exhibited by Brancusi in
July, 1913, at the Allied Artists’ Exhibition in London, Roger Fry said
in “The Nation,” August 2:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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