DISCOVERY 



215 



and durable like the art of the old masters," and he 

 used its colour methods chiefly for the purpose of 

 imparting an appearance of solidity to still life. His 

 follower, Van Gogh (1853-1890), a Dutchman, devoted 

 himself more to human studies, gaining his colour 

 effects by the blending of lines of colour. Paul 

 Gauguin (184S-1903) supplies the romantic element in 

 the movement, and, indeed, though not a great artist, 

 it was he who inspired the reaction against the realism 

 of the Impressionists. He went to live in Tahiti, where 

 he led, or believed he led, such a pleasantly barbarous 

 life that he became obsessed with the idea that 

 civilisation was' a disease. It was more through his 

 letters than through his paintings that he advocated 

 those theories which gave rise to the school of Fauvistes. 



The Fauviste movement was originally a Paris 

 movement. The Fauvistes, tired of the scientific 

 methods of the Impressionists, said in so many words, 

 " Art is getting jaded by civilisation. The only way 

 to restore it is to start all over afresh." So they threw 

 away all traditions and started to paint as they 

 considered savages or children would paint. Their 

 creations have outdone Margaritone and Cimabue, 

 the early Italian painters, for simplicity and angularity. 

 The chief exponent of this school is M. Henri Matisse, 

 and its followers in England, Mr. J. D. Fcrgusson and 

 Miss Anne Estelle Rice. 



Cubism sprang out of the attempts by the Fauvistes 

 to exaggerate the angularities and cubic forms used by 

 Cezanne to give objects the appearance of solidity. Its 

 methods are based on the obviously fallacious argument 

 that a " painting entirely composed of straight lines 

 is stronger and, therefore, more beautiful than a 

 painting containing curved lines." Its early exponents 

 cut up their objects for representation into geometrical 

 forms. Its later followers, headed by M. Picasso, a 

 Spaniard, have made it still more complicated by 

 shuffling those forms. For instance, if they wish to 

 represent a simple object like a vase, they show bits 

 of its exterior and its interior, and chips of shade and 

 light all mingled in an indiscriminate mass. 



This sectional representation of objects has been 

 developed by an Italian school, the Futurists. To my 

 mind their work is based on a stronger creed than that 

 of the Cubists, for they use their straight lines, their 

 angularities and cubes to express movement and the 

 sensation of movement. In a sense, therefore, 

 their pictures attempt to express abstract ideas, as well 

 as to represent objects. Wassily Kandinskay, a 

 Russian, whose pictures have been largely exhibited 

 at Munich, has gone further still, and has attempted 

 to represent by lines and colours nothing but abstract 

 ideas and emotions. His Expressionism, as he calls it, 

 endeavours to do w'hat music does — to give sensations 

 and emotions without using material associations. 



These movements had little following in England 

 till after the Impressionist exhibition at the Grafton 

 Galleries in 1910. Mr. Walter Sickert introduced the 

 mosaic-like quality of the Impressionists into his work, 

 but has generally confined himself to rcprcducirg soft 

 lights and shades. The reaction against Impressionism 

 is represented in the works of Mr. Augustus John. He 

 is what I should call an "atmospheric " painter. After 

 looking at a picture such as The Ballad Seller shown 

 at the Nameless Exhibition, the impression that one 

 takes away from it is not so much one of an unkempt 

 woman, with a sheaf of ballads in one hand, a baby on 

 the other ann, and a dirty child at her side, as of a 

 sensation of hopeless squalor. Again, after looking at 

 his portraits, it is the character of the person portrayed 

 rather than the outlines of his face that one takes 

 away as a lasting impression. 



A British product is Vorticism, though this is really a 

 combination of Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism. 

 Some critics consider that Mr. Wyndham Lewis is its 

 most capable exponent. He is perhaps its most typical 

 exponent. To me his work is repellent, and I far 

 prefer the productions of Mr. Nevinson. This great 

 young artist has used the methods of the Vorticists 

 moderately and with a definite effect. He had, of 

 course, his opportunity in the war, the sensations and 

 atmosphere of which his lines and angles and slight 

 distensions of objects rendered with an uncanny power. 

 No one, who has seen them, can forget the vividness 

 and shock of his exploding shells or the Ufe-likeness 

 of his haggard soldiers in the trenches. As he gauged 

 the destructive, machine-like atmosphere of modem 

 war, so Mr. Edward Wadsworth, also using Vorticist 

 methods, has since gauged the sordid, machine-like 

 atmosphere of the Black Country. 



One has to take most of these modern movements 

 in painting " cum grano." Many of them by accen- 

 tuating single ideas or methods are decadent. But 

 it is a dangerous thing to laugh at them as mere 

 " rubbish." They are experiments which may gradually 

 consolidate themselves into something more permanent 

 and valuable. 



The idea of Expressionism is peculiarly interesting. 

 How successful will ever be the method of conveying 

 emotions and sensations by colours it is difficult to 

 prophesy. That colours have soothing and diverting 

 effects on individuals was shown to a certain extent 

 by their application to cases of shell-shock during the 

 war. Here, however, we enter into a land of con- 

 jecture. . . . The period, when painters, by means of 

 arrangements of colours, will be able to play on 

 our emotions as fully and deeply as musicians, 

 is probably as far off as the period when scien- 

 tists will keep us alive on gases instead of solid 

 food. 



