The feat is a seemingly impossible one. Perhaps neither the Cubists nor the Futurists have accomplished it successfully; but because it is difficult is no reason why the attempt should not be made.
Theoretically there is nothing to be said against pictures which show what both the eye and the mind’s eye of the artist see.
The works of the ultra-modern men can be understood only by the aid of the imagination, by the aid of the mind’s eye to see through, and about and into things, to see the inner conditions, happenings, and significance of things.
Stated in other terms, the extreme modern is no longer content to paint what is before his eyes at a given moment and from a given point of view; he is no longer content to act the part of a camera, making reproductions of what is in front of it. He demands the freedom to walk around his subject, fly over it, enter it, find out all about it, and then record on canvas the sum and substance of his observations and reflections. The result may not look like a cathedral, but if done by a genius it may give a fine impression of certain salient features of the building, inside and out, and also a vivid impression of some of its great ceremonies. Why not try to paint the power as well as the proportions?
If the American public found the work of Lehmbruck and Brancusi queer, what would it think of the Futurist sculpture?
The two female figures exhibited by Lehmbruck were simply decorative elongations of natural forms. In technic they were quite conventional. Their modelling was along purely classical lines, far more severely classical than much of the realistic work of Rodin.
The heads by Brancusi were idealistic in the extreme; the sculptor carried his theories of mass and form so far he deliberately lost all resemblance to actuality. He uses his subjects as motives rather than models. In this respect he is not unlike—though more extreme than—the great Japanese and Chinese artists, who use life and nature arbitrarily to secure the results they desire.
I have a golden bronze head—a “Sleeping Muse,” by
