The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1921-08-06
Frederic Haskin's Letter
,spoaa Correspondents d Ia
Pictures by a Writer.

! Sherwood Anderson's attitps. =.
ward art is further explaine5 =, 20
note which accompanies his s1 VI
bition: -''
There are certain things H..
haunt the mind. They cannot ~
! expressed in words except tbrores u
! the poet who occasionally rsissl
the power of words beyond the rs.1
possibility of words. '1'
Il am not a musician. but :, :
not unlikely that what | have -. -
TO do in form and color is rela,oG
to the impulse Of the musicisn
Some months ago | Was in =.
south and in a very colorful eopn
try. Before my house lay 2 bar
an outlet from the Gulf of MeYieo
There had been heavy rains W.
country and the red soil was waet
ed down into my little bav H..
bay became red. The morning ana
afternooa light falling on II ma.
color madness that got into nv
brain. Although l had now.
touched a brush l sent for brus5ss
and paints.
The adventures are nv inp.,
reactions from the things soo.
about me. They are done in ,ba
faith that an impulse needs to h
strong enough TO break tbropgS
technical training. In fact tech.
meal training might well DESTROY
the impulse.
To you they may be ugly, mean.
ingleSs, or beautiful. No dohbt an
of my inner thoughts and impulses
like your own if they could he
seen-would be to some ugly IN
others meaningless, and 10 s,,i,
others beautiful"
Cleon Throckmorton, an artis,
of this city, has given US the ar.
lists viewpoint of the Anderson ~.
hibit. He pointed out that an e1.
ample of Cubist art is not to ba
viewed in the same manner as oBs
would study a painting by Raphael
or Reynolds. Painters of academic
schools proceed on the promise tha,
the function of art is to create
beauty. The extreme modernist
sees no particular reason why ar
should be beautiful. Instead. he
aims to visualize and reproduce the
spirit of the thing painted, or the
emotion it arouses in him. He
eliminates all imitation of aetna!
forms because he claims these
serve as distractions from
the central thought of the picture.
The Key to the Puzzle.
Therefore, anyone looking al a
futuristic composition is not sup
posed to regard ii as a puzzle pic
ture in which a hidden object, de-
scribed in the title, is to be ferret
ed out. Instead, he puts on an ab-
stract frame of mind, and sits, ami
looks at the thing before him, and
tries to feel. But it's no use try
ing to explain a cubist picture, or
even emotions on looking at one
Either you get it or you don't We
refuse to say in which class we
fall
1t would seem that this futuristiC
kind Of art might indeed be spol-
taneous without the long appren-
necessary to achieve real
skill in academic painting. ANY one
endowed with the vision of a paint
ct might, as Mr.. Anderson suggests,
ind that technique would cTamp his
style.
With this, Mr.. Throckmortoa
loes not agree. Handling Of color,
ne says, is not dependent alone o.
vision. A painter may see clearly
n his mind the exact tints he
wishes to reproduce but getting
hem out Of the palette is another
problem. An amateur, he explain
ID, pointing to d lamp, could not
that green exactly on
PAPER. Great painters have studied
lay in and day out for years to
gain mastery of color.
After studying the Anderson pic
ures, this artist found the purely
distract, cubist pictures the most
Where the novelist
merely painted a realistic tree or
compromised by painting objects in
post-impressionistic manner, his
ack of technique became glaring.
Almost any amateur could do SINH
ar work.
Regarding the distractions, MI.
said: If you ad-
nit the modernistic premise OF GRE
ting the spiritual emotion by dis
ociating art from any concrete
orm, in one or tw instances he has
ucceeded- The Queen Walks By
he Sea and the Painters Pegas-
u.s." for example"
He added that the artistic novel
st seemed to have a talent for
and prOba bly, would rama
ather hight he kept on working.