The Art Spirit By Robert Henri

1.

Gesture, the most ancient form of expression—of communication between living creatures.

A language we have almost lost.

Its infinite possibilities of expression.

To recapture gesture as a means of expression would mean not only added powers of communication but would mean also a greater health and strength.

2.

In great cities public art galleries are generally put in out-of-the-way places—remote from most of the people. A visit requires an elaborate effort and more time in going and coming than people can spare.

Having an idea of the educational influence of art, I would like to see many small well-organized art galleries scattered over a city, furnishing easy access to each community—whatever that community might happen to be, rich, poor, business or residential.

In the same spirit I favor the Little Theatre movement, and I would like to see places in every neighborhood for good music by the best of musicians, so that their precious influence might be spread over all the community. This of course could not be done so long as the only will comes from the box office.

As to the art galleries, what I am thinking of particularly is rotary exhibitions of the best works owned by the great central museum. In this way a series of very fine collections would be kept in motion going to the people.

Anyone can see the pleasure and the benefit these exhibitions would give, how they would be frequented in spare hours by those who rarely have more than an hour’s freedom at any one time.

The existence of these small neighborhood galleries would in no way deflect from the importance or the usefulness of the big museum—in fact they would be a great help.

3.

If you have the idea that an artist is not a decidedly practical person, get over it.

Don’t think that Frans Hals was drunk when he painted his vital pictures. Let the romancing historians think so, but just look at one of his heads and realize what cool generalship and positive, immediate decision were necessary to place those solid forms in action and to render so much completion with such simple strokes. Wonderful judgment in the conception and execution of these works. A great order in them. The whole thing an invention. No copying. He must have had a fine working mind and he must have used it as its master. I’ll bet his tools were the best, and everything in the right condition, and the right place, for immediate use.

One man, all distinguished bearing, another fat and soft, with a ribald joke on his lip, one made of iron, and by his side a dandy.

Frans Hals liked them all for what they were and he gave his best to each one.

Every bit of Frans Hals’ painting is sheer invention. Examine the structure in the strokes which make the heads. They are parts of mighty buildings. Look at a mere tassel on a boot or a sword hilt, you will find it a marvelous composition.

Frans Hals was a man of wonderful judgment. He saw life and people in his own peculiar way and he was a supreme master of the tools in his hands.

4.

I believe that keeping one’s faculties in full exercise is the secret of good health and longevity. It made Titian a young man at nearly a hundred.

Perhaps mental inactivity is the most fatiguing thing in the world. It is a common thing for businessmen to die soon after they retire. That is, if they do not take up some new enterprise in life.

There are cases of actual rejuvenation as a result of new enterprise more interesting than that which preceded.

5.

Critical judgment of a picture is often given without a moment’s hesitation. I have seen a whole gallery of pictures condemned with a sweep of the eye. I remember hearing a prominent artist on entering a gallery declare “My eight-year-old child could do better than this.” The subject of the charge was a collection of modern pictures with which the artist was not familiar. There were pictures by Matisse, Cézanne and others. Works of highly intelligent men; great students along a different line. The works, whatever anyone might think of them, were the results of years of study. The “critical judgment” of them was accomplished in a sweep of the eye.

All kinds of critics, professional, artist, student and lay critics are prone to bring with them their preconceived ideas. Many of them are outraged if they do not find what they expect. Such people want peace—they want no new sensations, and they want nothing that is hard to get.

The critical spirit which is yet to develop will invite difficulties, will wish to be disturbed into revaluations. New works will inspire to further energy. I have seen a picture judged, acknowledged as good, and bought by a man without turning a hair. He bought it really because it did not give him a kick. It was a further proof that what he already knew was sufficient. He bought it to dam the stream of his own development.

6.

There is an idea in America that people can be told how to appreciate pictures. Whereas the appreciation of art is a very personal and special response to creative work. And it must be a part of the province of the artist so to present his work as to help create this response.

7.

The grip of a line.

Note how a line takes hold.

It hooks the vital parts together.

It binds the composition.

Look well at the model and look well at the drawings of masters and you will see why I speak of the hook of a line, which grips.

See the drawings of Rembrandt, the Chinese and the Japanese masters.

8.

There is a portrait in the Louvre which has a great abrasion on the face, but somehow the abrasion does not spoil the work. It is there but it does not count.

The picture is the work of Tintoretto—a great master. His organization of forms is so powerful that it carries through the obliterated place.

9.

When you make figures in composition you may discover that you do not know the figure. Students work in schools making life studies for years, win the prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy. It is the common defect of modern art study. Too many students do not know why they draw.

If you are studying art and not making compositions, my advice is to begin immediately. You study from the model mainly to get experience. Your composition is the expression of your interests and in making your compositions you apply what you learn when working from the model. Your object in painting from the model is not to become a painter of school studies, but to become a painter of whatever you have to express with figures, portraits, landscapes, street scenes, anything, in fact, that interests you.

10.

Letter of Criticism - 6

Drawing, disconcerted, going at random, now after one idea, now after another. Good drawing comes of a concerted movement, the selection of certain things, and the specifying of them with an end in view. To the expression of this end all the parts of the canvas must work. Features or parts of features, or accessories, all must be treated as factors in a general movement. However interesting they may be in themselves, in a painting they are parts of a sequence more important than themselves.

Throughout the whole canvas you should think of the effect of the big masses of color in their relation to each other. In a good canvas these big masses work together, have constructive effect on one another, just as in music. In well composed music you can’t get away from the motive.

A hundred artists might work with you from that same subject, The Girl and the Goldfish, and assuming them all to be good artists, each one of them because of his motive would render the nose, the neck, the fish, all the parts, all the colors and all the values in different ways, some eliminating where others accentuate, and all the pictures, although different, would look like the model, all of them beautiful because the factors of each picture are selected and assembled with relation to their constructive value.

Now to deal with the work from another viewpoint and give you further criticism I will say that my impression of your two paintings made me feel that in doing them you were trying to fit yourself into a kind of work, done to your admiration by another artist, but quite outside your power of concept. I think your only salvation is in finding yourself, and you will never find yourself unless you quit preconceiving what you will be when you have found yourself. What, after all, are your greatest, deepest, and all-possessing interests? Most people seem to think they are great enough to know beforehand, and what generally results is that they imprison themselves in some sort of Girl and Goldfish subject, which, as I say, they may admire from the hand of another but for which they have no personal vocation. Those who are so imprisoned work like prisoners. You can see where the heart is out of it. Pictures tell the story of actual impulse in the artist—or the lack of it.

What you need is to free yourself from your own preconceived ideas about yourself. It will take a revolution to do it, and many times you will think yourself on the road only to find that the old habit has possessed you again with a new preconception. But if you can at least to a degree free your- self, take your head off your heart and give the latter a chance, something may come of it. The results will not be what you expect, but they will be like you and will be the best that can come from you. There will be a lot more pleasure in the doing.

Now these are only my opinions, I do not say they are final, nor do I say they are right, but they are my opinions. You have asked for them, and at any rate they are kinder to you than they are harsh to the two pictures.

11.

You are often told that your painting is “very good— as far as it goes—but you should carry it further.” You proceed to “carry it further,” and find yourself carrying it backward. The trouble is most likely that you have added things to it where what was needed was a coördination of what had already been set down.

12.

Some people study hard for a time, then they “graduate” and sink back into the little they have learned.

There are many kinds of study. Those whose study is of the real and rare kind get the habit. They can’t throw it off. It’s too good. They go on studying all their lives, and they have wonderful lives.

13.

It is not desirable to devote all your time to an appreciation of art. Art should drive you forth. It should be an incentive to life. The greatest value of art to the appreciator is in that it stimulates to personal activity.

14.

When you have made a sketch, close your box—walk away—then open your box. Maybe you will see that you have deflected from your original idea. What you have painted is not what seized you in the beginning—a vital impulse has been lost—go back and go after that first seizing idea—and refuse to be mastered by material things.

15.

It is a mistake to think that spirituality is seen only through a mist.

16.

There are some painters who deal with the play of light as the most graceful thing that exists.

17.

What does a man see when he goes to the Indian Dance? What are all these impressions? I have gone to many, had a perfectly delightful time, and then later hearing others talking of what they had seen, have found that from their point of view I had missed everything of importance. I have gone again and have struggled to see the “right” things. In doing so I have felt quite educational, but I have not had any happiness. The effort has prevented me from seeing what are my things in the dance. But what does a man see when he sees his own things? A few have found out—somewhat.

If a picture is not of these self-seen things, then it must be a mighty interesting accounting of externals. It must be strong in its kind. It would be a big job really to paint the Snake Dance. I have never seen it, but of course with my knowledge of other Indian dances, I have a ground to base imagination on. I know that I would see a vast country, an immense sky, great space. In this great space there would be the mesa, the pueblo, the little crowd of spectators, and then the dancers with rattlesnakes in their mouths. Something happening way off there, a little speck on the face of the earth. But how would I see it? Would it not be a reversal of all these proportions; the smallest become the largest. I can believe that the tiny little snakes would so enlarge upon me that I would be filled with an overpowering sense of their writhing strength, their quick and slow movements, strike and poison. They would dominate the sky and the mountains, which would have to take shapes according to them. It would be the Snake Dance filling the universe.

Isadora Duncan dances and fills the universe. She exceeds all ordinary measure.

The difficulty for us is to know what, or how we see material things, when we are seeing beyond material things. If we could only know what we see, and paint what we see!

18.

I am glad to hear that you propose to take the bit in your teeth and buck for freedom. There is little use in painting—in living in fact—unless you let yourself grow your natural course.

You will have a wonderful time. Others (those who wish to dictate) will not be satisfied perhaps—but they are never satisfied anyway—and you will give them better than they know. At any rate what you will give will be news from your country. The big men have been rare simply because most men heed dictators.

Nobody wanted Walt Whitman, but Walt Whitman wanted himself, and it is well for us that he did.

Of course it is not easy to go one’s road. Because of our education we continually get off our track, but the fight is a good one and there is joy in it if there is any success at all. After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art. Art is a result. It is the trace of those who have led their lives. It is interesting to us because we read the struggle and the degree of success the man made in his struggle to live. The great question is: “What is worth while?” The majority of people have failed to ask themselves seriously enough, and have failed to try seriously enough to answer this question.

Life is being wasted. The human family is not having half the fun that is its due, not making the beautiful things it would make, and each one is not as good news to the other as he might be, just because we are educated off our natural track. We need another form of education.

The great revolution in the world which is to equalize opportunity, bring peace and freedom, must be a spiritual revolution. A new will must come. This will is a very personal thing in each one.

Our education has led away from the realization that the mystery of nature is in each man. When we are wiser we will not assume to mould ourselves, but will make our ignorance stand aside—hands off—and we will watch our own development. We will learn from ourselves. This habit of conducting nature is a bad one.

If those who work in both pastels and oils could get a bit of the quality of the one into the other a good thing would happen. For instance, here is a pastel all gay and pale in its pastel lightness and there an oil deep in oily sogginess. The pastel would benefit by a deeper note and a textural unity of surface and the oil might come up out of the gloom into which you have let it sink. It is not dark because you willed it so. It is not lighter or more luminous simply because you did not will strong enough to have it so. In too many cases pastel stays pale because it wants to be pale. Oil becomes dark and muddy because it is easy for it to sink into depths, and the artist is victim, not master.