Sheldon Cheney

Expressionism in Art Sheldon Cheney

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-mindedness, if not a practiced appreciation of old and contemporary Expressionist works. After some clearing of the ground, and the establishing of defini tions, I shall explain, so far as my present understanding serves, the special means by which artists are accomplishing a return to essen tially expressive and creative art. I plan to describe technical methods, report theories, and sketch so much of the social back ground as may seem to have characteristic influence upon advanced practice. My first aim is to aid the student in opening the way to under standing and enjoyment. I hope, in addition, that practicing artists will find the book clarifying though I want no one to seek herein a formula for creative accomplishment. True Expressionism goes deeper than that. The book is at once my most independent and personal expres sion upon art, and a confession that I have no original theory of Modernism. Even while relying upon my own reactions to and study of living art works, I can claim no originality for the explana tions and analyses set forth and certainly I make no pretense to omniscience in any part of the vast field surveyed. I have merely collated more recorded opinions and expositions than any earlier writer, and I am attempting a digest in readable form, along the line of my own seeing...