Expressionism in Art
Cód:
491_9781443721226
EXPRESSIONS IN ART by SHELDON CHENEY. Originally printed in 1934. PREFACE: MANY artists and students will face a new essay on Modernist art with the sort of impatience manifested by John Marin. I had asked for photographs of his paintings. What he exclaimed. Another damn book Contemplating the burden of recent works in this field, I too am impelled to ask why I who once reformed and wrote no books for seven years should now offer a volume about Expressionism. My reason, I think, was this. There are books enough serving as introductions to Modernism, recounting its early history and pav ing the way to the first glimmers of understanding. But there is, in English, no book pretending to analysis of the characteristic ele ments in Expressionist art. Eleven years ago I wrote a frankly introductory work. Therein I was concerned to break down prejudice against the new art. I was trying to remove the blinders placed by academic teaching over the eyes of the average citizen, was hoping to pry open, a little, the too tightly closed mind of the student and observer. In those days, in the early Twenties, Modernist art was on the defensive. One broached the subject with apologies and explana tions. One took up arms self-consciously, even heroically, under the barrage of writings laid down by academic critics in defense of what is now obviously the old art. The whole subject of Modernism was surrounded by an atmosphere of battle, with the radicals on the challenging side. The introductory and apologetic books, my Primer and the variously admirable works of Wilenski, Bell and Eddy, belong to that earlier time, when the public was unconvinced and the Moderns a beleaguered minority. Today conditions are reversed. Expressionism if you will allow me the word is widely accepted, studied, even respectable. In this book, therefore, if I am wise, only minor effort will be expended to convince the reader that radical Modern art is logical and inevitable. I shall take for granted open-mind
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