Exhibitionism

“ Those who are now to be found there, however, have come to look at the Exhibition, and not to make an exhibition of themselves. There is no air of display about them—no social falsity—all is the plain unvarnished truth. ”

“ Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to amuse. If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty! ”

“ And thus is there a perpetual exhibition of whatever is curious in nature or art, exquisite in workmanship, or singular in costume; and the display is perpetually varying as the ingenuity of trade, and the absurdity of fashion, are ever producing something new. ”

“ One has but to open the door to any forces of exhibition at all worthy of the name in order to see the imaging and qualifying agency called at once into play and put on its mettle. We may traverse acres of pretended exhibitory prose from which the touch that directly evokes and finely presents, the touch that operates for closeness and for charm, for conviction and illusion, for communication, in a word, is unsurpassably absent. ”

“ And if it were not an inadmissible theory that the action or the structure of a play might be utterly disjointed and dislocated in order to ensure the complete presentation or development, the alternate exhibition or exposure, of each figure in the revolving gallery of a satirical series, we could hardly fear that our admiration of the component parts which fail to compose a coherent or harmonious work of art could possibly carry us too far into extravagance of applause. ”

“ Now, the Great Exhibition, looked at in its true light, is, we say once more, a huge academy for teaching men the laws of the material universe, by demonstrating the various triumphs of the useful arts over external nature. ”

“ Of these indeed the main part of an exhibition must usually be made up; of mediocrities and ingenuities which art must on the whole ignore and put aside without rebuke, though they may not call aloud for fire to consume them. ”

“ Observe a man at a picture exhibition—a man who begins at number one on the catalogue and goes right through with solemn persistence until he arrives at the longest number at the last page, and the uttermost corner of the last gallery. ”

“ The exhibition they make of their feelings is not a touching sight, yet it shows how deeply they have been touched, how deeply their purses have been touched; for to lay hands on their purses is to lay hands on their souls. ”

“ C'est un spectacle tout a fait superbe." It is this taste for spectacles, this inordinate passion for every thing producing effect, every thing which can add in this manner to what they conceive ought to be the necessary arrangement in all public exhibitions, which has, in many of these exhibitions, completely destroyed all the deeper feelings which they would otherwise naturally be calculated to produce. ”

“ It is the display of models of human nature developed to an extreme degree of strength, beauty, and flexibility,—a display which tends to mould the eyes of the spectators, and through their eyes to affect their souls and to exert educational influence on future generations. Every spectator should be kindled by the sight to secure for himself, for the highest fulfilment of life under the eyes of God, the exemplary development which these performers have so laboriously won for the mere purpose of exhibition and pay. ”

“ If you can so work upon your delicate surface as to mould it close to your noble soul; if in the gallery of the world you can unveil yourself for a thousand pair of eyes to see, and praise God for the right to see—why, what an artist you are, and what an audience you have! ”

“ Well, we have now covered, in an elementary way, about every important species of art show, except one, the most human perhaps of all, that held annually on Fifty-seventh Street. We should hardly have time to go up there to-day. I'll tell you about it. There are several reasons why this exhibition is the most human perhaps of all. One is that more people go than to any other. And these people, taken by and large, are more human, too, than one sees at most art exhibitions, that is more like just ordinary people. ”

“ The fruitful spectacle of art exhibitions, I think, presents nothing which gives one a more gratifying sense of their dignity and of the imperial character of Art than the presence there of these patently highly solvent, ruddy joweled, admirably tailored, and impressively worldly looking connoisseurs of painting to be seen scrutinising the pictures at close range, in a near-sighted way, and rather grimly, as though somewhat sceptically appraising possibly dubious merchandise. ”

“ An exhibition, as I have already insisted, is but a small part of the Arts & Crafts movement, which is a movement in the main of ideas and not of objets d'art, & there is a danger in the constant repetition of exhibitions, civic, national, and international, of public attention being diverted from the movement of ideas, & action thereupon, to the mere production and exhibition of exhibits. ”

“ The spectator who misses the allusions, the meaning of his subject-pictures, nevertheless finds matter for full and intense enjoyment as he contemplates the lovely fabrics, the cool half-shades, the clear sunlight, the exquisite flowers, the heat-saturated sea and sky, the marbles and the bric-à-brac that appear on almost every canvas, and are painted with a skill, a consummate science that captivates the connoisseur, and with a reality that delights the uninstructed crowd. ”

“ The great expositions of the past quarter of a century, while they have contributed immeasurably to the popularization of art and to the familiarization of the public with the work of individual painters and sculptors, have yet, in many ways, been a demoralizing influence in their insidious temptation to produce pictures or plastic art calculated to arrest immediate attention, thus putting a premium on the spectacular, the sensational, on that which makes the most immediate and direct appeal to the senses. ”

“ As the mass of the public form their judgment of works of art more by what they are told by the diurnal prints, than by what they feel or know, there is no doubt that these unwarrantable criticisms had their effect in checking the desire of many persons to visit the exhibition. ”

“ Many may say we bring out much that is not in it. This maybe partly true, and is rather to that extent an enhancement of its worth. But the real truth is, that there is all this in it, if it be but sought for and received in simplicity and reverence. The materials for imagination are there; let the spectator apprehend them in the like spirit, and he will feel all, and more than we have described. Let a man try to bring anything out of some of the many landscapes we see in our Exhibitions, and he may be strong and willing, but it will prove too hard for him ”

“ Can the spectator, from the unmeaning strip of foreground, derive any conception of the figures yet concealed? Much less is he able to criticize their proportions, or beauty, or perspective, or even the design of the artist? ”

“ Within the den are carved and painted several figures of men, in the midst of darting, leaping flames, upon whose faces there is an expression of intense anguish. Doubtless the intention of those who conceived this astounding exhibition was to impress upon the mind of the spectator the sufferings of the unrepentant wicked. It is hardly possible that this effect could ever have been produced upon the minds of sensible men. ”

“ If one wishes to form an idea of the vast numbers of indifferent paintings which are annually produced in England, he should visit, as I did, another exhibition, a large gallery lighted from above, in which each artist, most of them of the younger or obscurer class, takes a certain number of feet on the wall and exhibits just what he pleases. Every man is his own hanging committee, and if his pictures are not placed in the most advantageous position, it is his own fault. ”

“ We quitted the exhibition, and walking at a melancholy pace, with our long, lean visage bent towards the earth, we were accosted by a man—an odd-looking person, with a box at his back—who begged we would stop and see his show. ”

“ It is true, my Lord, there are many public exhibitions for the sale of works of art; but the privileges of them have been so vimuch abused, that many artists of considerable eminence, decline sending their performances to them. ”

“ While many books have been written descriptive of the Exposition, none has succeeded in accounting completely for the joy we have in yonder miracle of beauty. And this through no fault of the writers. When all has been said concerning plan and execution there is still a subtle something not spatialized for consciousness. Length, breadth, and height do not suffice to set forth the ways of our delight in it. ”

“ Cubists and Post-Impressionism
I
A SENSATION SINCE the exhibit at the Columbian Exposition (1893) nothing has happened in the world of American art so stimulating as the recent INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART. New York and Chicago, spring of 1913. [1]
“Stimulating” is the word, for while the recent exhibition may have lacked some of the good, solidly painted pictures found in the earlier, it contained so much that was fresh, new, original—eccentric, if you prefer—that it gave our art-world food for thought—and heated controversy.
Art thrives on controversy—like every human endeavor. ”

“ It would not be rash to say that more expository thinking is done than any other kind of mental activity. The child who dismantles a clock to find its secret is doing expository thinking; the official, of however complicated a business, who ponders ways and means, is trying to satisfy his business curiosity; the artist who studies the effect of balance, of light and shade, of exclusion or inclusion, is thinking in exposition; politicians are ceaselessly active in explaining to themselves how they may, and to their constituents how they did. We cannot escape Exposition. ”

“ In a picture-gallery, at an exhibition of marbles, etc., nothing can be more indicative of a want of refinement sufficient to appreciate true art, than the impertinence exhibited in audible comments upon the subjects before you, and in interfering with the enjoyment of others by passing before them, moving seats noisily, talking and laughing aloud, etc. With persons of taste and refinement, there is an almost religious sacredness in the presence of the creations of genius, to desecrate which, is as vulgar as it is irreverential of the beautiful and the good. ”

“ But this is not the only objection to these great galleries. The multitude of objects—it may be of pictures—exhibited creates a state of mind in the visitor which prevents his enjoyment of the works of art so exhibited. ”

“ Here and there, it is true, you find the aesthete in effect among dealers: the wired moustaches, the spindle-legged voice, and the ardent spirit in discussing his wares with lady visitors. Our horsey type seems rather ponderous and phlegmatic in this matter. Then there is, too, a land of art exhibition which is very close indeed to Art, a kind of spirited propaganda, in fact, which is presided over by those of hierarchical character, beings as to hair and cravat, swarthy complexion and mystic gesticulation, holy from the world and mocked by the profane. ”

“ The end of this imitative, reproductive, and creative exhibition is, as has already been said, to enable the spectator to transpose himself out of himself into others, assimilating them to himself or himself to them, thus unlimitedly exchanging his personality and its conscious contents. ”

“ On the one side we have indeed merely the substantial subject-matter predominant, but in the detailed exposition, in the lucid, and at the same time exhaustive variety of traits, which complete the definition of the appearance, and place it before us in its transparent vitality, the spectator is at the same time freed from the thing in its baldness, in so far as he possesses and is wholly face to face with its concrete life. ”

“ And so, when we enter an exhibition, as we have no definite standard of truth before us, our feelings are toned down and subdued to the quietness of color which is all that human power can ordinarily attain to ”

“ There is a great deal of freedom in the Exhibition. The servant who walks behind his mistress through the Park feels that he can crowd against her in the Exhibition. The Queen and the day labourer, the Prince and the merchant, the peer and the pauper, the Celt and the Saxon, the Greek and the Frank, the Hebrew and the Russ, all meet here upon terms of perfect equality. ”

“ And what kind of an exhibition do you suppose that man made of himself the other day. Why, this refractory young individual couldn’t be persuaded to walk towards home in any other way, when they had him out for an airing, and what does this old friend of mine do, but allow a handkerchief to be pinned to his coat-tail, and go prancing along the street like a horse for the spoiled brat to drive. ”

“ A few persons have of course drifted into the exhibition out of curiosity or from lack of something better to do. So much is evident at once, for these file past the walls listlessly, seldom stopping, and then but to glance at those pictures which are most obviously like the familiar object they pretend to represent,—such as the bowl of flowers which the beholder can almost smell, the theatre-checks and five-dollar note pasted on a wall which tempt him to finger them, or the panel of game birds which puzzles him to determine whether the birds are real or not. ”

“ In the development of art all these exhibitions have their values. They are not unlike an army in a campaign, with its scouts, its skirmishers, its advance guard, and its more slowly moving main body—in the end it is the main body that does the most work. ”