Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

66

V

THE ANCESTRY OF CUBISM

BY JAY HAMBIDGE AND GOVE HAMBIDGE

UBISM is an attempt to dissolve

[ocr errors]

facts entirely in design," some one has remarked. It is a pregnant phrase that sticks in the mind and touches many veins of thought. After decades of paintings from Salon and academy, suave, superficial, blatant with the wearisome technical daring of the virtuoso, or smeared thick with a syrup of pretty sentiment, we are ready for nearly anything, provided it smacks of really creative art. The artistic mind has for so long assiduously degraded itself to the position of an observant human camera that only a strong reaction can restore something of its original self-respect. That reaction takes place among certain men who are so alive to our artistic degradation that they feel realism to be a disgusting and intolerable thing; they eschew it completely, and take refuge in pure symbolic design. At least this ultra-idealism comports more with the dignity of creative art than ultra-naturalism. It is better that an artist be poeti

CUBISM

cally mad than a slave to endless copying. Art was not born to fill the position of a clerk in the outer office of nature.

EGYPTIAN CUBISM

But if a very meaty kernel is to be found in the basic idea of Cubism, there is much useless pulp surrounding it, and we are compelled to consider this pulp the real fruit of the movement. After a clear examination, it becomes evident that Cubic iconoclasm is, after all, superficial, even if we consider only its leaders, and put aside all those notorietylovers who follow in the van, together with the egomaniacs who are bent upon toying with their pet subjective perversions, and use violent art as a means. With design for a lever, the Cubists wish to break completely the grip of realistic art. Yet what do they give us in return? . Try as we may, we cannot but consider their own design ill digested and chaotic. It does not "reach" us in conditions either of normal or of abnormal appreciation. They have, indeed, substituted nothing generally constructive for that which they

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

would destroy. They have no design language; they have cut out their tongues in order to talk. Apparently well versed in the psychology and metaphysics of design, and equipped with a sane propaganda, they do not succeed in translating their theory. into real artistic terms.

In each individual case their work would seem to be

By permission of "L'Art et les Artsies
CUBISTIC TREATMENT
BY ALBRECHT DÜRER

the result of a union between an elementary geometry and those orthodox rules of composition that have been taught in art. schools for many decades. And the forms that result from this curious union are applied not according to any principles of organization, but under the guidance of personal caprice. The Cubist's criteria of design are purely subjective. They rest less upon original, wellordered, and deep foundations than upon old studio formulæ, and they are built from the outworn sticks of that very realistic and superficial art the CuMODERN COMPOSI- bists profess to condemn. Cubism is at bottom not radical, but blindly, haltingly conservative.

TION-SPEED

That type of the new art, for example, which in painting and sculpture merely aims to cubify actual form, to convey an impression by a ceaseless bald emphasis of planes, is as old as the schools of This and Memphis, when the Pharaohs first

placed their royal approval upon artistic conservatism. So the Egyptian sculptors cut heads and bodies, legs and arms, in flat planes, according to a rigid traditional procedure;. and so all sculptors with a strong sense of design have done since. It is part of the preliminary blocking necessitated by sculptural technic. Among painters,

the most conspicuous instance of the method is Albrecht Dürer, who theorized to the length of several books on geometry in art, and who left numerous Cubic studies among his sketches. As M. Louis Thomas suggested in an article in "L'Art et les Artistes" last year, what more complete Cubism could there be than certain of Dürer's sketches, here reproduced? Indeed, such a method of blocking out was taught for many years in some American art schools, and students still turn to it spontaneously. It is not a new method, due to profound scientific discoveries, as a few apologists of the movement would have us believe; rather, it places in the position of a finished product part of the age-old paraphernalia of all those who work in form.

MODERN COMPOSITION-LASAR

GEOMETRIC

VASES

The case is somewhat different with that other Cubism of Picasso, which discards even So slight a connection with reality, and

[graphic]
[graphic]

By permission of "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration" SCHEMATIC PAINTING BY HANNS PELLAR

deals in bare lines, circles, and angles, abstracted from any save a subjective and symbolic connection with the external world of tangible things. The pictures of Picasso aim at expression by pure design and symbolism; but the design they use fails because it is irritatingly capricious and personal. That great romanticist Plato, who reduced all things ultimately to ideal geometrical forms in a search for the geometrical soul of reality, in spirit furnishes Picasso with a working inspiration. Plato is reborn in Picasso, who consciously or not attempts to express the Platonic ideal pictorially. Out of mathematics we are to make art; with mathematics we may set forth our inner feelings and our attitude toward external solidities. It is a splendid conception, a daring attempt. In music it is accomplished daily, for here pure number, cut loose from any bond of materiality, stirs up direct emotion. Yet it is scarcely necessary to say that the Cubist painter cannot manipulate mathematical elements with the GEOMETRIC ADVER- unerringly efficient science of the musical

TISING DESIGN

composer. Indeed, he has no science; he stands upon a foundation of tenuous intellectualities, where the musician has a foundation of rock. A Cubist painting, with its nice adjustment of planes and argles and curves, fails to convey the impression that a symphony con

MARCO POLO-TEE

By permission of "Deutsche Kunst
und Dekoration "

GEOMETRIC POSTER DESIGN

BY LUDWIG HOHLWEIN

veys, because the means do not fit the ends.

In other words, the follower of Cubism is forced to utilize whatever broken and inefficient tools he can command for the building of his superstructure, because he has no scientific, coördinated principles of design. This applies also to the devotees of any of the new movements that insist upon the preeminence of design in graphic art. On the one hand, we have those who employ a confused elementary geometry after some esoteric fashion of their own; on the other, those who resort to the empirical methods of composition that have been stored up by generations of art schools, where the primary aim has always been to teach not design, but realistic representation. Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Matisse all stress rhythm of line, all play with this idea of expression by composition. Naturalism for them is only a fortuitous prop to design. Very well; but the difficulty is

[graphic]

By permission of "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration" GERMAN WALL-PAINTING

[graphic]
[graphic]

that they have ad- MEDIEVAL COMPOSI vanced no further in TION-GIOTTO

[graphic][merged small]

Lines

design than their predecessors of the Salon. They have nothing to contribute save an insistence upon the necessity of stripping to essentials. The pictures that they make are very much like the preliminary sketches of the veriest academist-the old feeling for "continuity of line," for "unity of mass," and no more. Lasar, in his "Practical Hints for Art Students," made up of a thousand studio formulæ, gives many rough compositions of this sort, and Harold Speed, in "The Practice and Science of Drawing," gives many more. drawn by a blind and groping intuition, masses placed with the hazardous guidance of "feeling" alone, and all grouped under innumerable empirical rules collected from special cases; as, a straight line so gives strength, a jagged line so gives discord, a curved line so gives harmony-all this is the substance of our modern knowledge of composition. Yet this is the basis upon which the radicals wish to build a new art. A vast series of empirical rules that furnish no answer to the question why-we cannot make much of these.

"Composition," says Lasar, "teaches how to express one's ideals in the most forcible manner." Save the ultra-realists, most modern artists from Kenyon Cox to Matisse would agree with this. Indeed, each group takes just this as the visible or invisible corner-stone of its particular creed, with the most diverse and chaotic results. The difficulty is that while we have a more or less satisfactory science of color and a consummate science of draftsmanship, we have scarcely made an approach toward a science of design. Design with us belongs to the realm of the occult and mystical, and this is one of our

greatest obstacles to real artistic achieve

ment.

There is, however, a phase of the movement toward composition more avowedly conservative than many of the recent isms that suggests more reasonable possibilities for progress. In Germany and Austria an intense desire for design has manifested itself in the last ten years in every phase of artistic activity. Not restricting themselves to composing in pictures alone, the Germans have produced ornaments, household utensils, furniture of all sorts, and all thoroughly well designed. They make tapestries and mural decorations in which the design is striking and insistent. They apply design to poster-work with astonishing results. Where advertisements not many years ago would have flaunted a crude and inefficient realism, they may now use wellplaced lettering alone, or forms that are meaningless save as elements of a unit composition. Even book illustration moves away from a naturalistic treatment toward a decorative one; and stage-scenery, discontented with presenting the thing as it is, strives to gain emotional tones and effects by the manipulation of design and color nearly unaided by realistic appearance. Most remarkable, perhaps, is the character of modern German architecture. House after house is laid out on rigid compositional lines, and interiors, from bathroom fixtures to card-tables, are precisely arranged in conformity with some definite

[graphic][merged small]

crystalline in the firmness of its design character.

And it must be noted that these household

[graphic]

utensils

in no way resemble the average American "art-craft," that monstrous product of bourgeois at

By permission of "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration " GEOMETRIC NEEDLEWORK DESIGNED BY

ELLA WELTMANN

tempts at the artistic; nor are the houses cast from the worn mint of the WilliamMorrisites. There is about all the work of the movement in Germany a certain freshness, a definite virility, that sets it off from other movements of the kind (Whistlerism in pictures, for example). Look ing at German and Austrian art, you can see pulses moving, see the whipping blood of life. There is not the pallid rigor of traditions long discarded, and

By permission of "Deutsche Kunst
und Dekoration "

CUBISTIC FURNITURE DESIGNED BY EMANUEL MARGOLD

the hollowness of conventions once useful, but now cast aside like an outgrown shell. Yet beneath, at the root of this feverish activity which results in unique and effective design, there lies an absurdly simple fact. Look at the vases on page 870. One is composed of three cylinders set upon three spheres as a base; the other of three long and three short cylinders. In each case the result is an equilateral triangle. Look at the wallpainting from a German school of design. Its structural skeleton is a double square, on the diagonals and natural divisions of which the design elements are arranged with a powerfully effective formalization. Look at the poster by Ludwig Hohlwein, a square

and a half long, with squares to furnish its chief striking quality. Look at the small advertisement on the same page, taken from a German magazine -whirling squares, suggestive of Cubism. Again, look at Pellar's painting, page 871, a square symmetrically divided. And look at the two hats designed by Emanuel Margold, architect. Their oddity comes from the fact that they, too, are composed with square and circle. Lastly, look at the needlework hatband at top of this page,

an arrangement of pure geometrical squares and circles alternating with formalized leaves. In every case there is a unique design that makes a strongly per

By permission of "Deutsche
Kunst und Dekoration "

CUBISTIC FURNITURE
DESIGNED BY EMANUEL
MARGOLD

[graphic]
[graphic]

sistent appeal to the attention.

The reason why this extraordinary productiveness can go on in Germany is, then, apparent. We need not ask how it happens that architects like Margold and Hohlwein are designing needlework, wallpaper, hats, advertising posters, dishes,

By permission of "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration" CUBISTIC INTERIOR DESIGNED BY EMANUEL MARGOLD

bric-à-brac, and carpets, all of a very high quality, when no American architect would dream of so multiform an activity. The truth is that the Germans have discovered one of the secrets of design, and once a man does this, he is driven to a productivity that he cannot stop. It is as though he had put on the dancing-shoes of the fairy-tale. With a simple geometrical figure, Margold can de

[graphic]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »