New-York tribune., 1921-06-05
Some Letters
The Artist Makes His Profess
sion of Faith

| AS was, aiu pTOQQ TO say, COM
! plete sympathy between us, and he
/ often wrote to me freely of his ideas.
| lie had none of the narrow minded
! painters prejudice against the art Of
| criticism. 1t WAS useful art as he
/ saw 1t, so long as the critic was not
1 barker so long as he had "the Old
! World aesthetic attitude, that of a
! Latin blooded beauty seeker and not a
! New England measles-hunter" His
| New England origin must have counted.
| think, in his growth as naturalist,
but in matters of art he was of another
country. "Oh. YOU and I are Mantle
gnas and Gozzolis, not Yankees" he ex-
claims in one of his letters; and how,
among Yankees, he hated what he
called the "measles- hunter" alike in
criticism and in art. Here are some
expressions of his feeling:
To-day people call it not telling the
truth If you paint them the flower or
serve them the apple to eat. They say
now that we know both the flower and
the apple are made of the manure in
the ground beneath them; you would
tell more truth if you serve them, in
stead, handfuls of manure, straight
| here Is what they don't know Being
cheated by the general resemblance of
q human figure in some work of art to
everybody they see about them, and to
photographs, while a Beethoven SYM
phony has no corresponding resem-
olance to the daily sounds about them,
| they don't guess (and never willy that
| the essential difference between the
artlst's figure and the actual human
beings that swarm about us is exactly
as total as that between the symphony
end the noises in our daily life. Both
works of art are absolute births, exactly
as real as the physical one 1t is the
accident of many related circum stances
that the pictured human has so much
more aspect of photography than the
symphony has Of photography. Per-
maps Fromentin's art is nature seen
through temperament is almost suf-
hclent, but what great art means is
that it comes out of it's matrix con-
slsting of only such, and SO much
head, ear, lip, neck, hand, action, color,
ETC., as went to make the cherished
image that love set growing in that
heart"
The impulse to clarity his thoughts
or this problem overlook him again
and again, always carrying him to the
same lofty conclusion. One Of his let
ters is SO Illuminating on his point of
view that cite it intact, as follows:
"The violin, whose strings ring when
ever their note is sounded by an out
SIDE instrument, is pure symbol of
the poet. In the poet, cumulative
images of every form of beauty begin
Iflfo tr +l,o
till, in his early maturity, these have
become true touchstones, like the
violin string. Let the painter once
look upon a person who has, beneath
no matter how many surface defects,
one dominant greatness-purity at
heart and fiery love Of truth and
beauty-and in his own heart the
brilliant ringing clearness and takes
the helm, saying: Watch this being!
Thou wilt surely see, now and then,
the being she really is Otis she now!)
come forth and be fully in sight.
Watch, then, and take in how she
looks, for in those aroused moments
she dominates the whole face and
body, ruling all their details into her
heavenly form Now he who in this
after waits, no matter how long. When
he finds himself at the end of his last
supply he waits, as it were, outside
her window, sure that when she once
more stands there in his sight he will
I quickly sees how to go on with his
picture Of her Dear Cortissoz, this is
absolutely the way I work. You de-
lineate it almost clearly. 1t is because
you see it that | feel could crys-
tallize you a little.
Right you are. alas; the whole
of ~ 1itarafy,ra iS for ha
time off the planet. Man, finding him
self up against that (if he knew IT'D
greatest blessing, the obvious impossi-
bility of ever understanding existence,
will forever swing between periods of
worship and periods like our present
one. He is like frog in a tub; he
can see the light and jump up at it,
but never jump out, and when he tires
of this he finds that searching the
tubs corners still offers no escape. So
with man, his epochs of worship will
such as we are now somewhere near
the end of--of self-deluding digging,
egged on by the elation of unearthing
so many of the never before dreamed
of tools that God evidently uses
gravitation, steam, electricity, radium,
etc.
''In due time man will again tire of
this hope and again be the simple wor-
Shipping know-nothing. His cosmos
theories will forever be on the same
principle as the theories of worm,
hatched in an apple and still in the
apple, might be of the apples external
/ aspect The world is now all for what
they call science, and they weigh music,
painting and poetry by what it can
do in this field. Or, say, man is a
child that awakes, out of the grass, and
gazes awhile at the toys his parents
have set about him, till, wider awake,
he begins to work them and learn what
they can do. Elated at finding out
some of the stunts the lightning toy
can do and what the steam one, etc,
he comes to feel very big and forgets
that he doesn't know, and can't, where
they came from. So, for the time, there
lowers on his horizon no wholesome
reminder that he is forever (thank
heaven) stumped.
"rhe horrible Nemesis that lies in
wait for this individualism is the mon
keytiedness of to-day's craftsmen. Of
! old. each apprentice stroye merely to
help some beautiful picture to get born
and placed where it would help the
world, and this habit of seif-sub bordina-
tion attended each Of them in his SUBJ
sequent masteryears. Behold, now, the
whispers creep through the crowd that
self must assert itself, and change