This Exhibition is an integral part of my life.
The work exhibited is now shown for the first time.
Most of it has been produced within the last year.
The pictures are an integral part of their makers.
That I know.
Are the pictures or their makers an integral part of
the America of to-day?
That I am still endeavoring to know.
Because of that—the inevitability of this
Exhibition—American.

ALFRED STIEGLITZ

ALFRED STIEGLITZ

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## SEVEN ALIVE

The city is very tired.
The men and women of the city are very tired.
When you have been a long time away from simple
elemental things, from wind, clouds, rain, fire, the
sea—these things become a little terrible.
What frightened children we are!

But always there is something happening.
Men constantly die, but men are also born again.
Here are seven artists bringing to you city dwellers
their moments of life.

They also are tired as you are tired; life presses
down upon them as it presses down upon you.
See them here in their moments of life—when life,
pumped through their bodies, crept down into their
fingers.

When they were alive and conscious of all—every-
thing—
When they were conscious of canvas, of color, of
textures—

When they were conscious of clouds, horses, fields,
winds, and water.

This show is for me the distillation of the clean
emotional life of seven real American artists.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

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A WAY TO LOOK AT THINGS

We have not yet made shoes that fit like sand
Nor clothes that fit like water
Nor thoughts that fit like air.
There is much to be done—
Works of nature are abstract.
They do not lean on other things for meanings.
The sea-gull is not like the sea
Nor the sun like the moon.
The sun draws water from the sea.
The clouds are not like either one—
They do not keep one form forever.
That the mountainside looks like a face is accidental.

ARTHUR G. DOVE

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THROUGH THE EYES OF A EUROPEAN
SCULPTOR

Do these American artists ask too much of the
public?

I was still feeling this question when I left Room
303, where I had just been confronted with these pic-
tures for the first time. They must bewilder, I felt,
even one whom the galleries of Europe and the inti-
mate contact with the battle of the arts had ceased to
startle. Was the Old World no longer the center?

Absorbed in these reflections I had made the me-
chanical movements which accompany one to a seat in
the subway.

Suddenly I noticed a Chinaman sitting opposite
myself, serene and solemn, deeply meditating, like a
personification of Buddha himself.

Far East! Sublime spirituality!

But—his jade-like hands were holding the Wall
Street Journal, and he chewed gum . . .

Was this "Americanization"? Was it true that
every nationality, every profession in this country
yields to the money-making business spirit with the
hope for quick "prosperity"?

It seemed to me that I had just discovered the con-
trary—at least in the work of a few artists. Most of
the pictures in Room 303 are—to me—*essentially*
*American* in more than the geographical sense.

But what *is* essentially American?

The skyscrapers, Jack Dempsey, the Five-and-Ten-
Cent Stores, Buffalo Bill, baseball, Henry Ford, and
perhaps even Wall Street? These form the European
conception: symbols of ingenuity, action, business, ad-
venture, exploiting discovery.

I see these Seven Americans using many of these
and other symbols to build universal reality out of the
"reality" which my Subway-Buddha had so intensely
acquired. In this work nothing has been "American-

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ized". Everything is American, even where subtle susceptibility to the finest achievements of Europe may be felt. They belong to the New World, to the world of to-day. They belong to no "School". They fit no "ism". Their daring self-consciousness forms their harmony.

European artists in their attempt to create an art of to-day meet the obstacle of cultural traditions of centuries in their blood. Visible traces of Julius Cæsar's campaigns stand in the middle of Paris, at the Rhine, and even in England. No escape for the European from the ruins of History!

Must not *America*, the country without Roman ruins, the country of keenest progress in mechanical technic and invention, the continent where the spirits of all peoples meet freely, offer just the atmosphere essential for the creation of an art of to-day?

Is America's to-day not already to-morrow? Aren't the evening papers out at 10 o'clock in the morning, and the next day's morning papers out the night before? Where on earth is there a second city like New York, offering to the artist's sensibility every vibration of his period?

Here in "Americanized" New York is the rhythm of to-day, mirrored in jazz. Machinery has changed our life in a way which is more than merely practical or economic.

Leonardo and Phidias and Richard Wagner are still "modern", that is, universal, and therefore they will be understood as long as humanity lives. They gave full expression to the spirit of *their period* and lived in a profoundly human contact with the "topics of the day".

The same tremendous responsibility of facing the significant problems of *his* period confronts the artist of to-day. And if he is able to express his reactions in universal language—

Then his "Broadway at Night" will be just as eternal as the frieze of the Parthenon.

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But that demands self-denial, loneliness, risking his existence. That is why there are so few explorers.

There are pictures in this exhibition which, in spite of their being "contemporary", could have been made 2,000 years ago or 5,000 years from to-day—because they are animated and dictated by the ever flowing sources of life itself.

These Seven Americans are explorers. They leave the traditional ruins to the archæologist.

I believe their creative self-discovery means nothing less than the discovery of America's independent rôle in the History of Art.

ARNOLD RÖNNEBECK

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## ALFRED STIEGLITZ

### 132-159 EQUIVALENTS

*(These photographs continue the search for my Truth—Photography. A. S.)*

As this Exhibition occurs in the year of the twentieth anniversary of the opening of "291"* and as it constitutes a part of that Progression, I here list a number of the outstanding public demonstrations at that laboratory:

Rodin drawings January, 1908 First American Exhibition

Henri Matisse April, 1908 First American Exhibition

Alfred Maurer (the modern) March, 1909 First American Exhibition

John Marin March, 1909 First Exhibition Anywhere

Marsden Hartley May, 1909 First Exhibition Anywhere

F. W. Hunter Japanese Prints (Sharaku and Utabara, etc.) May, 1909

*For the History of "291" refer to "Camera Work".

*"What Is 291?" See Camera Work, Number 47.

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Younger American Painters (Brinley, Carles, Dove, Fellowes, Hartley, Marin, Maurer, Steichen, Max Weber) March, 1910

Second Rodin Exhibition (drawings and Le Penseur) April, 1910

Marius De Zayas Caricatures January, 1909 First Exhibition Anywhere

Second De Zayas Exhibition ("A Social Satire") April, 1910

Small Paintings and Drawings by Henri Rousseau November, 1910 Introduction to America

Gordon Craig Etchings and Drawings December, 1910 First American Exhibition

Max Weber January, 1911 First Comprehensive Exhibition Anywhere

John Marin February, 1911 (Tyrolese Series) First One Man Show

Cézanne Water Colors March, 1911 Introduction of Cézanne to America

Toulouse-Lautrec Lithographs December, 1909 First American Exhibition

Second Matisse Exhibition February, 1910

Picasso Drawings & Water Colors (Cubism) April, 1911 First One Man Show Anywhere

Second Hartley Exhibition February, 1912

Arthur G. Dove March, 1912 First Exhibition Anywhere

Sculpture of Matisse March, 1912 First Sculpture Exhibition Anywhere

Drawings, Water Colors & Pastels By Children Aged 2 to 11 April, 1912 First Exhibition of its Kind Anywhere

Caricatures By Alfred J. Frueh November, 1912 First One Man Show

Abraham Walkowitz Drawings & Paintings December, 1912 First Comprehensive Exhibition

Third Marin Exhibition January, 1913

Francis Picabia March, 1913 First American One Man Show

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Third De Zayas Exhibition April, 1913

Second Walkowitz Exhibition November, 1913

Third Hartley Exhibition January, 1914

Brancusi March, 1914 First One Man Show Anywhere

Frank Burty April, 1914 First One Man Show Anywhere

Negro Sculpture November, 1914 First Exhibition of its Kind Anywhere

Second Picasso Exhibition together with Bracque
December, 1914

Second Picabia Exhibition January, 1915

Elie Nadelman December, 1915 First Comprehensive One Man Show

Oscar Bluemner November, 1915 First One Man Show Anywhere

Georgia O'Keeffe, C. Duncan, René Lafferty May, 1916 First Exhibition Anywhere

Fifth Hartley Exhibition January, 1917

Fourth Walkowitz Exhibition January, 1917

Sixth Marin Exhibition February, 1917

Gino Severini (Futurist) March, 1917 First American Exhibition

S. Macdonald Wright Paintings & Sculpture
March, 1917 First American One Man Show

Second Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibition April, 1917

The following photographers had one man shows at "291", beginning 1905: Robert Demachy, C. Puyo, René Le Bégue, Hans Watzek, Heinrich Kuehn, Hugo Henneberg, Gertrude Käsebier, Clarence White, J. Craig Annan, Fred. H. Evans, David Octavius Hill, Eduard J. Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Baron De Meyer, Annie W. Brigman, Frank Eugene, George Seeley, Paul Strand. Color Photography First Introduced to America, etc.

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