THREE BOOKS ON ART.t Mn, CAFFIN is a good and
sensible guide.' His method is to take two contrasting pictures and describe them and their painters' aims, and thus he discloses fundamental principles. For instance, he contrasts two portraits, one by Titian and the other by Holbein, pointing out that the first painter tried to exclude everything that could be loft out, while the other put in everything he could short of causing confusion.. Holbein by his method makes us feel that we are on intimate terms with his sitter, Georg Gyze, and know all about the details of his person and surroundings. Titian tells us nothing about the daily life of the "Man with the Glove," but instead gives us an insight into the man's mood and temperament. Mr. Calla has pursued the same method with modern painters,9 and also with success. Particularly interesting are the chapters he devotes to the Post-Impressionists, for his criticisms are sober and balanced. In the following sentences we find very well put the underlying cause of the new departures in art, Whether we think the solution of the peoblem has been found or not,. we must still admit that the problem is there " Channe cared as little as possible about representation ; his motive not being, as we have said, to record the visual impression, but the mental or emotional sensation which the sight of the object had aroused in him. Hence he employed this method of solid construction in space in order to make his subject not more lifelike to the eye, but more impressive to the imagination. This difference of motive is quite simple when once it has been grasped; and grasped it must be, if we are to understand the latest trend of painting. The only difficulty in grasping it is the fact that we have become so accustomed to judging a picture chiefly and almost solely by the evidence of the eye. We have been brought up to this by impressionism and the naturalistic motive, which for half a century have dominated painting. It has been the painter's practice to represent his subject as much like nature as possible, and to base his claim to notice on the nature-like character of his representation. So we have gained the habit of admiring his work because it seems to us to be so lifelike. But, when you come to think of it, this is as much as to say that it is only the things of the eye which are important, and that only visual impressions are to be valued. This, indeed, has been the actual, if unconscious, attitude of a, great many painters, and of a large part of the public, towards pictures; and it corresponds to the materialistic standard which has prevailed generally in the affairs of life."
Mr. Caffin only just touches on Cubism, but what he says appears to us to be true when he points out that "to resolve the human form into a construotive equivalent of cones, cubes, and spheres" is to make the mistake of the later Impressionists, who tried to be scientific in their prismatic effects.
This subject can be pursued further in a book coming from America by Mr. A. 3. Eddy,' but, alas ! we leave behind Mr. Caffin's scholarly clearness and calm judgment and plunge into a vortex of Cubists, Orphists, Futurists, Post-Cubists, Virile-Impressionists, and other fearful wildfowl. This book contains a quantity of explanatory material heaped together without much cohesion, though often things of interest are to be found scattered up and down its pages. The following quotation gives an example of the author's style, though it does not include a split infinitive, as does a preceding paragraph. Perhaps this modern form of grammar is Orphic or Post-Cubic 1— " Imagine the editorial room of a live, up-to-date newspaper— say a typical yellow journal—hung with Titians and Rembrandts ! The paper would be paralysed, the editorial staff would be depressed by the dignity and the sobriety, by the old-world flavour. Whereas a lot of Cubist, Futurist, Orphist pictures would be quite in keeping with modern journalistic methods and stimulating in the extreme. In the picturesque language of current journalism, they would be 'live stuff.'"
We wonder how M. Picasso and other Cubists, who take themselves very seriously indeed, will like it when they find out that they are merely the expression in paint of the spirit of the " yellow " Press of America!
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