Cubists and Post-Impressionism

by Arthur Jerome Eddy

The philosophical student of the history of art has no trouble in tracing at any time the following currents:

A. The main stream which includes all art developments from the profoundest and most permanent to the most fleeting and superficial, from the soberest to the most extravagant.

B. B. +. Within the main current lesser currents of such magnitude that they frequently seem to dominate—and often do obscure the direction of—the main current; as, for instance, Impressionism dominated the art of France and influenced the art of the entire western world in the final years of the last century. These lesser currents have their effect on the main current, though their ultimate effect is never so revolutionary as their enthusiasts believe; the good in them is absorbed, the meretricious rejected.

C. C. C. +. Surface manifestations of all kinds, often so violent they disguise not only the main current, but the important subsidiary currents, and lead men to believe for the moment that art is reversing itself, that all that has been done is being undone, that chaos is taking the place of order. These subsidiary movements are with us always, evident in every exhibition; they are the experiments, the extravagances of each generation, of each decade, of each year. Some of them contain so much of truth they develop into B.—larger currents—“movements;” others are of such ephemeral importance they cause their sensations of the hour and pass away, leaving behind scarce distinguishable traces.

It is these last movements which, because they are new and strange, so impress critics and public that observation loses its sense of proportion; the force of the main current (A.) is lost sight of, and the strength of subsidiary currents (B. B. +) is overlooked.

The newest movements (C. C. C. +) are usually either too bitterly denounced or too widely praised, their true relationship is not perceived; all sense of perspective is lost in the immediate presence of the startling.

There are no hard and fast lines dividing any of these currents and movements. When and where they begin no one can say; when and where they end no one can tell.

Impressionism is identified with Monet more than any other painter, because all his life long he has been the steadfast and consistent exponent of extreme theories regarding the painting of light effects.

But Impressionism, even the painting of light effects, had its beginning long before Monet; with the beginning of painting itself, the germs were there.