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Page 3
Again, let us take the case of the definitely religious picture.
[Footnote: Religion, in the sense of awe, is present in all true
art. But here I use the term in the narrower sense to mean
pictures of which the subject is connected with Christian or
other worship.]
It is not often that children draw religious scenes. More often
battles and pageants attract them. But since the revival of the
religious picture is so noticeable a factor in the new movement,
since the Byzantines painted almost entirely religious subjects,
and finally, since a book of such drawings by a child of twelve
has recently been published, I prefer to take them as my example.
Daphne Alien's religious drawings have the graceful charm of
childhood, but they are mere childish echoes of conventional
prettiness. Her talent, when mature, will turn to the charming
rather than to the vigorous. There could be no greater contrast
between such drawing and that of--say--Cimabue. Cimabue's
Madonnas are not pretty women, but huge, solemn symbols. Their
heads droop stiffly; their tenderness is universal. In Gauguin's
"Agony in the Garden" the figure of Christ is haggard with pain
and grief. These artists have filled their pictures with a bitter
experience which no child can possibly possess. I repeat,
therefore, that the analogy between Post-Impressionism and child-
art is a false analogy, and that for a trained man or woman to
paint as a child paints is an impossibility. [Footnote: I am well
aware that this statement is at variance with Kandinsky, who has
contributed a long article--"Uber die Formfrage"--to Der Blaue
Reiter, in which he argues the parallel between Post-
Impressionism and child vision, as exemplified in the work of
Henri Rousseau. Certainly Rousseau's vision is childlike. He has
had no artistic training and pretends to none. But I consider
that his art suffers so greatly from his lack of training, that
beyond a sentimental interest it has little to recommend it.]
All this does not presume to say that the "symbolist" school of
art is necessarily nobler than the "naturalist." I am making no
comparison, only a distinction. When the difference in aim is
fully realized, the Primitives can no longer be condemned as
incompetent, nor the moderns as lunatics, for such a condemnation
is made from a wrong point of view. Judgement must be passed, not
on the failure to achieve "naturalism" but on the failure to
express the inner meaning.
The brief historical survey attempted above ended with the names
of Cezanne and Gauguin, and for the purposes of this
Introduction, for the purpose, that is to say, of tracing the
genealogy of the Cubists and of Kandinsky, these two names may be
taken to represent the modern expression of the "symbolist"
tradition.
The difference between them is subtle but goes very deep. For
both the ultimate and internal significance of what they painted
counted for more than the significance which is momentary and
external. Cezanne saw in a tree, a heap of apples, a human face,
a group of bathing men or women, something more abiding than
either photography or impressionist painting could present. He
painted the "treeness" of the tree, as a modern critic has
admirably expressed it. But in everything he did he showed the
architectural mind of the true Frenchman. His landscape studies
were based on a profound sense of the structure of rocks and
hills, and being structural, his art depends essentially on
reality. Though he did not scruple, and rightly, to sacrifice
accuracy of form to the inner need, the material of which his art
was composed was drawn from the huge stores of actual nature.
Gauguin has greater solemnity and fire than Cezanne. His pictures
are tragic or passionate poems. He also sacrifices conventional
form to inner expression, but his art tends ever towards the
spiritual, towards that profounder emphasis which cannot be
expressed in natural objects nor in words. True his abandonment
of representative methods did not lead him to an abandonment of
natural terms of expression--that is to say human figures, trees
and animals do appear in his pictures. But that he was much
nearer a complete rejection of representation than was Cezanne is
shown by the course followed by their respective disciples.
The generation immediately subsequent to Cezanne, Herbin,
Vlaminck, Friesz, Marquet, etc., do little more than exaggerate
Cezanne's technique, until there appear the first signs of
Cubism. These are seen very clearly in Herbin. Objects begin to
be treated in flat planes. A round vase is represented by a
series of planes set one into the other, which at a distance
blend into a curve. This is the first stage.
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