The modern pictorial exhibition, with few exceptions, has, by those familiar with the subject, come to be regarded as a possibly necessary evil, and, in most cases, as the corruptor instead of the educator of public taste. Admirable in their original purpose, academic and art-organization exhibitions, with few exceptions, have degenerated into being conservators of esthetic snobbery or of the commercialization of art. The academy exhibitions have grown to be high-class marts for artistic wares, and are but a few degrees removed from the art dealer's gallery. By "making" certain artists and creating a demand for a certain class of work, they have educated the public along certain popular lines, and often shut the doors of recognition and success in the face of originality and progress. It is always unfortunate when an artist is dependent on his art for his living. It is degenerating when an artist's inspiration finds incentive in cupidity. It is vulgarizing, the longing for academic honors. The real artist is so much bigger as a man when he stands alone than he is as an academician, when he becomes one of a crowd. And yet it is all this that the modern academies and exhibitions have largely fostered.
It may surprise some readers when the assertion is made that this exhibition has been over a quarter of a century preparing. Yet such is the fact. For over twenty-five years I have watched exhibitions come and go and their wrecks as monuments to much wasted and misdirected endeavor. But, through it all, like a coral island being built up slowly, surely, under the surface has grown the spirit that finally unveils itself in its full ideality in this exhibition. It is said that whatever is good is worth fighting for. Every step of the way has been fought. The same elements that in the past made the old "Joint Exhibitions" impossible, and that diverted the Philadelphia Salons from their original high purpose into a sort of County Fair photo show, where vulgarity vied with vanity to be classed as artists with Rembrandt and Rubens, these same elements sought by every means to pull down this exhibition as they had others, and failing in that, to misrepresent it afterwards through dishonest misrepresentation. But the days of the power of these elements for mischief were passed. They had faded into mere shades, whose thin crackling voices were all that was left of them.
The force of purpose behind the "Secessionistic Idea," and the truth of the great principle it sought to shape into definite being–like all high and sound ideals when backed up by uncompromising, fearless truth–slowly but surely conquered, and set a standard of beauty that must eventually influence the world of modern art. ——
Largely to one man does the success of the Buffalo Exhibition, with all that that implies, belong. Over twenty-five years ago he recognized the possibilities of photography. He realized that there were many persons who, if they came to regard photography seriously as a possible means of original pictorial expression, would give to the world individual conceptions of the beautiful that could be produced through no other medium and for which the race would be richer; and that through a medium with which the general public was more intimately familiar than with any other, the public taste could through understanding be trained to a keener and truer and more catholic perception of beauty in all fields of artistic expression; and, furthermore, through such education of artistic perception to emphasize the principle that a large class of paintings–produced more beautifully and less mechanically through the medium of photography. This was the germination of the Secessionistic idea. Through writings and exhibitions the battle was begun and tirelessly waged with this end in view; and so it has gone on tirelessly for a quarter of a century, to be finally crowned with this splendid achhievement–the Buffalo Exhibition. ——
The charm and interest of this exhibition was so engrossing that it was only after several visits that I found myself able to regard it from the purely critical standpoint. It is the one complete presentation of the development (anabasis I was almost tempted to say, as it has been very like a military advance) of photography as a means of pictorial expression as an art. It is such an exhibition as will never again be gotten together, and might almost be said to be the final word, for, while new and beautiful work will continue to be created through this medium, no higher standards of expression will ever be reached.
In saying that it is complete, I do not overlook the fact that the exhibition did not include examples of the works of Mrs. Cameron and some others; but what Mrs. Cameron did in portraiture was more than done by Hill, whose work today after nearly fifty years represents the finest portraiture ever done by aid of photography. The Hill collection is splendid, vital, virile and by comparison, some of the finest of the modern portraiture shown in this collection seems thin, anemic and over-conscious. The exhibition afforded a rare opportunity for a comparative study of the work of the different exhibitors. The delicate poetic charm of White left the impression of the music of line, and the soft singing whisper of tone with only the ghost of a shadow of the personality behind their making. While the almost brutal strength of Steichen with its highlight accentuation carried the mind directly to the dominating personality of Steichen himself–big, rugged, full of activity, emotional, a veritable Danton among pictoralists, a mind whose mental horizon is very broad and whose convictions are very strong and eager to force themselves on others–a man certain to make staunch friends and bitter enemies, and with all, a good fighter and one free from petty jealousies. In the fine collection of Eugene's work, which in certain aspects possesses some of the characteristics of Hill, one feels the painter, the man who loves rich color for itself, who loves life, beautiful, jovial, healthy, full-blooded life, and glories in protraying it–a very meistersinger of the joy of living. Strongly and curiously did the pictures of Seeley contrast with those of Eugene–striking in composition, flat in treatment, decorative in character, and suggestive of the dreamy sadness of living ghosts. Coburn, on the other hand, dealt with neither the joy of living nor the sad dreams of living ghosts, but the problems of compositions as suggested by city scenes and streets. Here was the very evident influence of Japanese art in which there was little suggestion of feeling or color—but strong feeling for urban pictorial possibilities—that contrasts curiously with the purely architectural sense of Evans. The work of De Meyer proved one of the most attractive groups in the exhibition. Refined to a degree in both conception and treatment, at times quaint, at time piquant—always vivacious, finished and delightful, always showing exquisite taste and a masterful knowledge of technique, everything he displayed was of interest and his "Silver Skirt" was one of the most attractive pictures of the exhibition. How marked the contrast between this and the exhibition of Gertrude Käsebier, with its artistic irresponsibility and indifference to mere technique; its curious impulsiveness; its inner blind groping to express the protean self within—that finer, bigger self that cannot always find voice and that resents any seeming lack of appreciation on the part of others; of the respect that she feels is the due of the muse worships. Annie W. Brigman, on the other hand, seems to have sought to grasp the very soul of nature, and her entire collection is rhythmic with the poetry of nature, its bigness, its grandeur, its mystery. It is reminiscent of the Ovidean metamorphoses, and the "Midsummer Night's Dream"—pervaded with a certain bigness of feeling that the splendor of our Western nature seems to infuse into the soul. In this collection we quite lose sight of the personality of their maker in the poetry and charm of the themes portrayed.
By all odds the most complete and finest in every respect were the collections of D. O. Hill, J. Craig Annan and Alfred Stieglitz. The Hill collection was largely confined to portraiture. Those of Annan and Stieglitz covered a wider range and showed finely artistic perception and masterly technique, together with an unswerving sincerity of purpose. Both marked by a curiously keen sensitiveness, of which Annan's was perhaps the more poetic and gentle, Stieglitz's the more symphonic and aggressive, but both sure of touch and fertile of fancy. Amateurs in the real sense of that word, they represented at its best the work of their several countries, and I derived from the study of their work much the same pleasure that I enjoyed in going over the collection of original prints of some of the master etchers in the British Museum. As I enjoyed those etchings for their individual charm and beauty, for the sheer pleasure that their contemplation gave me, so did I enjoy these prints.——
My last visit to the Albright Art Gallery was on a dark, stormy day when snow and rain kept most people indoors. There were not many people there at the time and the overcast weather left the gallery interior in a semitwilight. After I had wandered round in final review, I sat down for a while to rest. In the quiet and semidusk of the nearly deserted gallery I fell open-eyed into a dream that metamorphosed all about me into vitally palpitating life. Out of each frame there seemed to flow a vital current of life, which commingling created a complex living, swirling, revolving miniature world. Visible to me were the creative forces behind all of these pictures—the lives that had gone into their making. Many of these forces were warring with themselves, warring with each other, seeking violently to rend the whole asunder. Many of them, apparently, if left to themselves, would have destroyed their own work. Clouds of jealousies from time to time obscured the whole. But all the while some central force held the mass together, drawing out and sometimes shaping the best work, helping those who stumbled and uniting all the complex, imaginative energy into one purposeful whole towards a definite end. This central observing, guiding mind appeared to see and understand the evolving minds about him, and to be endeavoring to evoke from each that which was finest and best, to be endeavoring to make each bigger and finer and immortal. And as he worked and planned a great structure seemed to be growing under his building—and all the while his eyes were fixed on a distant horizon from behind which shone a soft beautiful light, which was the glow of Beauty. And as this complex structure on which he worked expanded, grew, was raised up above the earth, slowly it became enveloped in the golden glow of this soft light. And somehow that for which this exhibiton about me stood, that which it represented, seemed to be the structure that had been raised by the tireless watcher out of the combined energy of these evolving, complex, divergent forces, which, left to themselves, would have wrought only destruction; and, votaries of beauty though they were, learned but slowly and imperfectly the great lesson of beauty.