"IN OTHER WORDS."

A conversation; three progressives.

S (*spectator*, or *public*): — — — In other words: Is the war to rid civilized society of its hypocrisies?

C (*critic*): Let us hope so, for Art's sake. Art, certainly, anticipated this war against superstitions and worthless traditions.

S: I somewhat expected a compromise—or a transition—between the academical and the new; some are trying it and give people a chance to enjoy both in one and to invest their money both ways. I am doubtful and feel insecure; Life is incomplete without Art. Should all its values and standards change again?

C: Art is not an external thing and fixed, it is one of the elements of human life; Art is a process of mind; only it is the last element to free itself. Art is man's divine instinct for creation; it is latent in every human being, it corresponds to 're-creation.'

Art lifts our innate sense of beauty to that final consciousness to which Life aspires. In the way you approach and receive Art, your own mind is revealed.

A (*artist*, *a painter*) : Beauty charms our senses, Art stirs our soul. The pre-Giottos, Primitives, and Old-Masters had both; realism and impressionism sacrificed nearly all beauty to sensual effect. ART is the HELEN of COSMOS.

S: In other words: Art once divorced Religion and married Science. Or: the new forms and color are a response to Modern Spirit, are they not?

A: Socrates, who when young was a sculptor, said: 'The function of the artist is to present the workings of the mind' (Holborn).

C: Art is through Vision and Imagination, hence a work of Art is a modification or transfiguration of our ordinary sensuous experience; of the appearance of NATURE. Faithful representation is not Art.

S: In other words: The last two centuries saw Art declining and decadent, and we are fools to accept as Art that which is mere imitation of reality, sensational effect, pose, empty virtuosity of technique.

C: We have given to that 'Art' our best: cold cash. To most people Art is still a manufactured article of some standard perfection and of a quotable price,—an attribute —of the 'Clique of the Cultivated.' Future Art will again be expression and function of all human life. We have misunderstood the arts and confounded one with another. Each Art is Concentration upon

4

one of our organs of sense. Most men's are so dulled, however, that they fear pure color, unusual form.

S: Mainly, because of pragmatical education or view-of-life.

A: The child's purer senses and feelings are closer to ART, so long as its inherited and natural instincts are not artificially suffocated.

C: There is the whole matter. Let it be written over the gate of Art: 'All ye who enter here, leave Self behind.' Art and the new art require an attitude of disinterested contemplation, collaborating vision, self-denial. Art—after all—is a mystery.

S: No less so than Time and Space.

## ALL IS IN SPACE.

We can conceive every idea and thought, every feeling and passion, Time itself, only by way of Space. We can imagine Creation, only by excluding from it and presupposing Space.

A: Space is the fundamental Term of Modern Art, as Line was the term of Mediæval Art, as Light was the term of Humanistic Art.

C: Art and Space are a creative Duality. Space sounds in Beethoven and Bach. Space is dynamic in Angelo's Slave. Space is the measure of Cathedrals, —the rhythm in poem or in dance, —color of Rubens.

5

Space gilds the sky around Saints,
—extends the smile of Mona Lisa.

Giotto recognized Space as an expressive element of composition—latent in all preceding painting.

In Space Drama organizes, or the personalities created by Dante and Æschylos, or that of Faust, evolve.—

As Space is not concrete, but our own ultimate abstract conception, we cannot visualize Space through faithful Imitation of external forms or effects, but only through Imagination from within. Think of the Chinese or Van Eycks.

S: In other words: all Art is Symbol.

A: Form is change of Density as distinguished by any one of our senses. All Space being filled with densities, there really is no form, only continuity. Moreover, we may perceive Form, separate or continuous, one way or another, either as corporeal objects; or as effects of light and shadow; or as shapes of reflections or of vapor; as line, color or tone. And the Artist can see and create also abstract Feeling—Form and—Color, and is free to transform Reality into them. We now organize Space as a pictorial unity. We no longer separate a 'portrait' from a background, objects from spacial voids. Landscape becomes a concave space-form.—We discard the Accidental and Non-essential, such as the 'moment' of the impressionist,

6

the commonplace of the realist. 'Accurate' perspective and atmosphere and illumination are, pictorially, false. Science has made Space unfeared, but has not lifted its mystery. This we feel in every attempt to contemplate and realize a pictorial motif as a larger form of Space, in abstract values, related solely to Beauty and Emotion. Thus we find a boundless extension of possibilities of Form and harmonies of Color, when we see realities of nature in those new relations.

That is, in short, the difference between a passing materialistic art and the New Art.

C: Classic Modernity.

S: I have to unlearn; what message has new Art to say?

C: 'Say'?! Art has not a program, only problem. 'Unless you feel it, you will never grasp it.' In selfless contemplation only we learn to see—with our eyes shut. The humble life-drama of a flower evolves in form and color no less significantly than that of mountain, sea or star. Creation is projection into Space.

S: Do you feel equal to the magnitude of Space?

C: Art does not scale by carpenter's rule; the ant beholds a larger world than man does. Not quantity but quality of Space; as tone, as line, as color; disposed through our free will.

Plastic quality as it lives in the Primitives,

7

inch for inch—infused with our own
blood!

S: In other words: the new 'Pictorial,' 'c'est la peinture moderne.'

A: Words! Knowledge is a flat thing, as can-
vas. Feeling is Depth, like Space. Paint-
ing is a problem of Deep—Flat.

C: And Art is feeling in material.

A: Pain-, Pain-t, Paint-ing.

S: The prospect is transfixing like an appar-
tion,—I hang on words—of —

C: DRAMATIZATION OF SPACE.

S: Must I, then, sacrifice entirely my old point-
of-view? I long felt its contracting effect,
I longed for soul-expansion.

C: We must needs break with what we cannot
bend. The new spectator awaits rebirth
as well as the new dealer.
Co-operation.

S: That critic-dealer would be prestidigitateur,
a quickener. Will the new Art become
fashionable, popular?

A: Society gyrates by fads and fashions.
It was bad fashion, some fifty years ago,
to be in good health.

S: In other words: the Present has been suffer-
ing with 'Artisticitis.'

A: Art, in the higher sense, never even stirred
a populace, while religious creeds made
fanatics. Art revolves in periods of six
hundred years.

8

S: What is the guarantee? I heard that word.

C: Art, like religion, gives no reward of proof
for the Faith it asks.

A: 'If we follow Nature, we shall never err,'
said Cicero. Is the artist's inner Self not
part of Nature?

S: And isn't the Spectator's?
Why have dealers, galleries, critics, mu-
seums at all?

C: They had none before Education separated
man from man. Why have doctors' of-
fices? 'To know is to err,' to live is to
fight. It is the ages-old life-blood of deep-
down emotions that has become stagnant
in the sub-consciousness of the human
masses,—that life-blood from which once
Classical, Chinese, Negro, Gothic Arts have
sprung, and which now again struggles
toward consciousness and labors for self-
expression.

VOICE from '291': I told you so. You state the
raison d'être of a movement now existing
since twenty years, of a Cézanne, a van
Gogh, and —

C: And the constitutional right of every indi-
vidual to his personality and its free ex-
pression.

S: In the words of Emerson: Life is
EXPRESSION.

O. BLUEMNER.

New York,
March, 1918.

9

CATALOGUE
OF AN
EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART
HELD AT THE
BOURGEOIS GALLERIES
MARCH-APRIL
1918

## INTRODUCTION

In connection with the public view of New York Interpreted recently acquired by the Newark Museum, we are presenting a retro- spective showing of work in several media by Joseph Stella produced over a period of years. These paintings and drawings well represent this distinguished artist, who has had so prominent a part in the American art of the past thirty years.

Stella was born in Muro Lucano, Italy, June 13, 1880. His youth was passed in the romantic and beautiful surroundings of this medieval town in the south of Italy. Of his youth there he has said "the Giotto-like native town was enchanting with Vergilian rural beauty smiling all around, while endless successive spectacles, as performed by colossal clouds on blue vastness of sky, were continually keeping my soul in ecstasy with celestial visions."

A college education in the traditional form followed. He was destined by his father for the practice of medicine, a pursuit in which his older brother, Dr. Antonio Stella, was engaged with great distinc- tion. However, the mind and heart of Joseph were filled with his visions. After two years of medicine, he abandoned it and devoted himself entirely to painting.

Soon after completing his college education he came to New York. There he has remained except for visits, for inspiration and study, to his native Italy and to France.

Like his gifted friend, the late Gaston Lachaise, though a genuine and loyal son of his native land, he found his greatest inspiration and enthusiasm in the country of his adoption. He became an American citizen as promptly as possible and with his great powers of assimila- lation began to absorb the America which appealed so much to his imagination.

Of his student days in New York, he has said "my chief concern was to draw all the time directly from the people—catching them unaware, not posing, in the parks, in the streets, on the elevated trains."

6

One of his earliest paintings, a portrait of an old man, was exhibited at the American Artists' League Exhibition where it met with favor. This brought to him a commission from Dr. Lyman Abbott, Editor of the OUTLOOK to complete a series of drawings dealing with emigrants. These were completed as well as similar efforts for other magazines.

From the beginning he was moved by the vitality of this country and the drama of its great industries. In 1908 he was sent to Pitts- burgh by the SURVEY to study the steel mills and their workers. This he did not only as one concerned with the human side of the lives and interests of the workers but also with the artistic possibilities of "the unceasing volcanic explosions of the steel mills, the yellow Allegheny river, cutting its tortuous snakelike course through fog and smoke." This visit resulted in about one hundred drawings in charcoal and pastel, which were published in the Charity magazine and shown in the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, in Chicago and elsewhere.

1909 to 1912 was spent in Italy and France in study and in inti- mate association with the most progressive artists in those countries. In 1910, the City of Rome acquired one of his paintings from an international exhibition there.

He returned to New York in 1913 in time for the Armory Show and exhibited three paintings there. In common with many other American artists he was greatly stimulated by this spectacular Exhibition of Modern Art. One of the first products of this new inspiration was his large canvas Battle of Lights, Mardi Gras, Coney Island. He then followed with many paintings of New York, Brooklyn Bridge, and a great variety of subjects inspired by what he has termed the "new American elements of modern civilization."

The five large panels portraying New York Interpreted, which are now shown so impressively in this Museum were painted in 1922. They are without doubt one of the most striking and important memorials which remain of the strivings and emotions which engaged the more sensitive and individual artists of the first quarter of this century. More recently Stella has added to his production significant works, the result of visits to Africa and the West Indies.

7

His brilliant American Landscape now included in the distin-
guished exhibition of Art In Our Time being shown at the Museum
of Modern Art of New York will, when that exhibition closes, go to
the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, to become a part of its permanent
collections.

Joseph Stella as an artist may be characterized briefly by the
words enthusiasm, vitality and unusual sensitiveness to beauty. In
his active life he has made a marked contribution to the artistic heri-
tage of our country. Though his works may be found in many
museums and private collections, it has seemed to us that in connection
with the installation of what is perhaps his most significant produc-
tion New York Interpreted, it is but appropriate and proper that the
Newark Museum should bring together for the delight of all who
may come, this complete demonstration of the many-sided talent of
Joseph Stella.

ARTHUR F. EGNER

3

THE CATALOG

PAINTINGS

1 THE LITTLE LAKE. ITALY, 1920

2 FACTORIES—NEW JERSEY. 1920

3 NEW YORK INTERPRETED. 1922 *Illustrated*

4 MADONNA. 1925

5 SOULS IN PURGATORY. ITALY, 1929 *Illustrated*

6 TWILIGHT. ITALY, 1929

7 LENT. ITALY, 1929

8 SPARROWS. ITALY, 1929 *Illustrated*

9 COUNTRY PRIEST. ITALY, 1929

10 MARIONETTES. ITALY, 1929 *Illustrated*

11 THE FOUNTAIN. ITALY, 1929

12 NOCTURNE. PARIS, 1929

13 ROOF TOPS. PARIS, 1930

14 ARAB WOMAN. ALGIERS, AFRICA 1930

15 GREEN LEAF. ALGIERS, AFRICA 1930

16 AFRICA. ALGIERS, AFRICA 1930

17 LA CRÈCHE. ITALY, 1930 *Illustrated*

18 FLOWERS. ITALY, 1931 *Illustrated*

19 THE OX. ITALY, 1931

20 HEAD OF CHRIST. PARIS, 1931

21 PORTRAIT. PARIS, 1931 *Illustrated*

22 CHRISTMAS EVE. 1932

23 CHRISTMAS FANTASY. 1937 *Illustrated*

24 SPRING IN THE BRONX. 1937 *Illustrated*

25 SELF PORTRAIT. 1937

26 ITALIAN VILLAGE. 1938

9

“THE PROW”

**W**HO is Joseph Stella? Is he an American? An Italian? Who is he? And how comes it that he of all painters should be constantly interpreting New York?

**I**THINK New York can claim him for her own. For, though born in Italy, where he received his art education in Rome, and later joined the Italian Futurists — New York left her impress upon him so strongly, when on a visit here as a lad of fifteen — that he could never again escape her — for New York had chosen him — claimed him — as her interpreter.

**A**ND New York was wise to claim him as her interpreter — for few painters have ever lived who had the amount of vitality to give that New York demands — and Stella is vital. Besides, Stella has given his all to this young giant throbbing, pulsating with life — not the life of flesh and blood — but of cold, hard steel. Cold, powerful steel girders — drilled, driven into rocks — and it is this very coldness which Stella emphasizes — Stella, who came from warm and sunny Italy — from the land of warmth and sunshine — the land of soft contours and gay, happy people — the land of dreams — not of hard, cold realities.

**T**HIS son of Italy has left all the softness, all the warmth, for the call of the brilliancy that steel has to give — for the call of the brilliancy of the flare of the electric lights — which dazzle but never warm. He has brought out the hardness

THE GREAT WHITE WAY
LEAVING THE SUBWAY

which underlies all this brilliancy — and it is this hardness that he has emphasized in his "New York Interpreted," which causes us to call a halt —

IS THIS New York? Is this hard, cruel young giant — our New York? We stand amazed at the centre picture, where our skyscrapers, as the prow of a boat, cut through the waves of life. What are they pushing aside as they move along in their powerful way, along the sea of adventure? What goes under as they plough along, cutting deep? Is no mercy to be found — only hard, cold, metal brilliancy?

WE TURN to either side. We feel the sub-way, the sensation as we leave it to enter the blaze of Broadway. That it could ever have been interpreted — that sensation — the glare and the noise. Only the Futurist School, "the would-be depictors of sound and movement," could have rendered that sensation — that thrill at once vital and chilling which creeps over one as one loses oneself in the moving mass on Broadway. That strange sensation as you walk over the glass streets which leave you wondering whether they will ever suck you in — a sea of light over which and through which you pass as in a maze of expectation.

AND THEN — then you suddenly breathe — you once more begin to feel human — but why? You have reached the harbor — you are standing where all the arteries of this great giant meet — at the Battery — and the quiet of the sea and

THE BATTERY

sky overwhelm you — You are silent — You have
left the noise and glare of Broadway — the
metallic brilliancy without warmth. You have
left the prow of the boat — the ruthlessness of
which cut through you. All the hardness and
brilliancy fade away in the stillness of night.
The all-embracing quiet once more gives you
poise — once more tells you—that this cold, if
glorious Babylon is not all — not all New York —

IT IS here where the poet joins the painter —
for Stella is that rare combination of a poet-
painter. He first amazed us with his interpreta-
tion of Coney Island, called the "Battle of Light."
Then half a dozen years later, his Brooklyn
Bridge claimed the admiration of the understand-
ing ones — for "he made a synthetic semi-
abstract representation of the Brooklyn Bridge,
that engineering epic in steel, a sinewed span of
human energy."

AND NOW —

IN HIS "New York Interpreted" he has shown
us how inhuman human energy can become.

IT WAS only possible to interpret such feelings,
such sensations in the world of Paint — in
abstract forms. The inhumanness of New York,
its cold, hard, metallic brilliancy, could never
have been expressed along the old lines. New
energies demand new expressions. And this was
his — Stella's — triumph, for the artist who
wants to be an interpreter of his day must develop

$10.00 MEMBERSHIP includes—Free admission to the Gallery and Reference Library—Free admission to 3 lectures and the receipt of 2 pamphlets.

$5.00 MEMBERSHIP includes—Free admission to the Gallery and Reference Library—Free admission to 2 lectures and the receipt of 1 pamphlet.

Published by the
SOCIÉTÉ ANONYME, Inc.
19 East 47th St., New York