The Art Spirit By Robert Henri

1.

There is the new movement. There always has been the new movement and there always will be the new movement. It is strange that a thing which comes as regularly as clockwork should always be a surprise.

In new movements the pendulum takes a great swing, charlatans crowd in, innocent apes follow, the masters make their successes and they make their mistakes as all pioneers must do. It is necessary to pierce to the core to get at the value of a movement and not be confused by its sensational exterior.

2.

Here is the model with light on his face, a white collar, a brown coat, black tie, black hair, gray background.

I have named enough things to make a great picture.

Get the most expressive design out of these, each one treated as a simple mass.

See how much beauty in shape can be got out of the association of these notes: flesh, collar, coat, tie, hair, background.

They must all fit into the area of the canvas.

They must act and react on each other as the notes in music act and react on each other.

These six notes may, through their contrasts of shape, of color, of texture, produce powerful emotion.

To work this way is to work as a designer.

All good drawing or painting is compositional.

Better see what you can do on your canvas with these simple notes and for the time being let all details go.

It is useless to keep on adding things to a canvas.

Some painters put thousands of big and little features into a face, colors and more colors.

All day long they keep adding more and more.

They are like whales in a sea with their mouths wide open swallowing everything that comes along.

Much can be done with little.

3.

Many times in the work of the class I see things which are equal to the greatest. Flashes of truth and a technique so simple and comprehensive that nothing could be better.

Flashes come before a steady flame and flashes come only to die out.

Your work is intensely interesting to me. I come always to the class with expectancy.

If one could only know better when he has touched near the truth.

We are troubled by having two selves, the inner and the outer. The outer one is rather dull and lets great things go by.

4.

To a Teacher

If I were you I would prefer a short and courageous career in art teaching to one that would be prolonged by hedgings. What does it matter if by standing for the thing you really believe in, fighting for it, giving to others the reasons you have used in your own conviction, making no weak concessions, you fail. Such failure is success. You keep your likeness, anyhow. Besides, you can depend on it, there are everywhere some people who will recognize your wisdom, truth and courage, and you will be well repaid by having won the appreciation of such people, even if you come back, as a result, out of a job and strapped. Many people would denounce what I have said as sentimental or even wild fanaticism. But don’t be fooled. The diplomatic hedger is all about us. You and I have seen many of them grow up and develop their game. Some of them have bank accounts, and are very respectable and safe citizens, but we are well aware of the price paid and know it is far too dear. There are two classes of human beings. One has ideas, which it believes in fully, perhaps, but modifies to bring about “success.” The other class has ideas which it believes in and must carry out absolutely; success or no success. The first class has a tremendous majority, and they are all slaves. The second class are the only free people in the world. Some are kept under the grind of poverty. Some are sent to jail, but they are still the only free class. But the latter class does not always get ground under the heel, nor sent to jail. People are not always fools. There are those who only want “to be shown,” want to know, and there must be someone who has the courage to show them. These are the words of the old teacher before you again—get mad at me if you like—but it’s the same as I used to say when I was teacher and you were pupil, and it was such ideas, in which you then saw truth and value, that made you come to hear me. And it is because there are many people who are not fools and only want “to be shown,” that in spite of the conventions of institutions, there has always been a place open for me, although there has never been a time that failure has not been predicted.

5.

You go into a great cathedral and the impression may be deep upon you. Must you define what you have felt? If you can you are a poet—an artist. There are cathedrals which have measures of great and many meanings.

6.

The principles manifest in a Beethoven symphony are those of orderly growth.

A government could be constructed on the principle of a Beethoven symphony.

The principle of growth is important to your student who wishes to prepare himself before entering the art school. He should take such studies as lead to this knowledge.

An unrestricted study of sociology should interest him, for he must be intensely humane.

And in mathematics he should go just as far as he can, for proportion is his means of expression.

Ability to copy lines, shapes, tones, amounts to little.

Ability to correlate lines, shapes, tones, is the rare and necessary quality of the artist.

All good art is composition.

A portrait that is not a composition is not a portrait.

The painter deals with areas. He should know areas.

A line is not good because it is like a line.

A line is good because of its power related to other lines, which are powers.

Every line, area, tone, value, texture, in fact every effect produced in any way, including even the pressure of the brush, should be considered as a compositional or constructive element.

The substructure must be understood.

Any deviation in “finish” from the principle of the sub-structure is weakness and death to the thing as a work of art. It is clear to see how a thorough knowledge of geometry would be valuable to the artist whose ideas are to be expressed in apparently magical proportions.

It would be well for the artist to get his training in mathematics early so that his use of such knowledge will be “instinctive” later on. He should know while studying mathematics the great value the study is to give in his later work.

I am not proposing a “scientifically hampered” artist, but one who is unhampered by ignorance, who understands well the means he employs.

As to study for those in the industrial arts, I should say that the same principles as above mentioned should apply, for art is art, whether on a canvas, in stone, on a book cover, an advertisement or a piece of furniture.

In the class-study the current methods of hand and eye and very little head or heart procedure should be given up. There are thousands of art students in every big city. Art schools and art students. The schools have thousands, but they turn out few artists, and most that do turn out well are school renegades. The methods have not been the best.

Lines and forms should be regarded by the student from the very beginning as compositional factors, as measures.

The exterior of the model is not the model.

Any boy or girl sees more than the exterior. It is their nature to do so.

The methods of the art school of today bring them back to the surface so that they see the model in the terms of the surface and not in the terms of reality, and so their drawings and the art they produce may be but the negligible skill and trick, which have vogue for a while, and then die.

Lines and forms are not fixed things. They compose differently to different sensibilities, and to the same observer they change their endings and beginnings (although the model has not moved) because the individual cannot see always the same. He is sometimes his greater, sometimes his lesser self.

The student, from the beginning, should evoke his greater self, realize that his work is a matter of construction (and a different construction from that generally conceived in the art school).

The difference between light and artist’s pigments should be studied. They should not be confounded.

He should note the similarities which exist in color and music.

Intervals of color across the spectrum.

Intervals of color towards neutralization by mixing of complements.

Intervals in the mixing of colors with white and the constructive power which rests in the opposition of warm colors to cold colors.

I am not interested in art as a means of making a living, but I am interested in art as a means of living a life. It is the most important of all studies, and all studies are tributary to it.

I hope to see the heads of educational institutions give up the idea that their art teaching should be such as will prepare the student to earn the greatest amount of money. Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money. There are ever so many other better ways.

In the past every step of human progress has been directed by art and science. These two are inseparable, and cannot exist in their pure sense, the one without the other. Theirs has been the effort to apprehend from nature the principles by which we must live if we are to extricate ourselves from the uncertainties and misunderstandings in which we now find ourselves.

It is for this reason that art study should not be directed towards a commercial end. Educational institutions should assist the student and the public to a better understanding of the meaning of the word “art” and the need of study and individual development.

7.

Letter of Criticism - 2

Advice about your paintings is difficult. As I said to you before, I cannot interest myself in whether they will pass juries or not. More paintings have been spoiled during the process of their making, through such considerations, than the judgments of juries are worth.

The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture—however unreasonable this may sound. The picture, if a picture results, is a by-product and may be useful, valuable, interesting as a sign of what has past. The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.

These results, however crude, become dear to the artist who made them because they are records of states of being which he has enjoyed and which he would regain. They are likewise interesting to others because they are to some extent readable and reveal the possibilities of greater existence.

The picture is a by-product of such states as it is in the nature of man to desire. The object therefore is the state. We may even be negligible of the by-product, for it will be, inevitably, the likeness of its origin, however crude.

It is for this reason that we find at times works by children, or by savages, little acquainted with the possibilities of the materials they have left their impress on, and scant of tools to work with, filled with such qualities as to cause us to hail them as great works of art.

The need of activity, or expression, which the state evokes in most individuals is the cause of technical research. We make our discoveries of technique while in the state because then we are clear sighted. But at all times we are engaged in research. Our object is to be ready.

If a certain kind of activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.

There are artists who find themselves always at the easel saying that they want to be there, tools in hand; in the saddle urging on the great departure.

Contemplative appreciation of a trace; a picture, hearing music, observing a graceful gesture, may cause the spirit to flame up. We care for and treasure the traces of states of greater living, fuller functioning, because we want to live also, and they inspire to living. That is the value of “a work of art.” The traces are inevitable. The living is the thing.

The reason so many artists have lived to great age and have been so young at great age is that to such extent they have lived living, whereas most people live dying.

The states of which I have spoken are healthy states, they are natural—not supernatural. In them the mind and body, all the man, is in a state of order, perfect for functioning. Each time he attains the state he gains not only the greater life of the moment but an effect on mind and body which is lasting.

I have spoken of activity being inevitable as a result of such states, and the ancient Hindoo might be cited, sitting in contemplative inactivity, as refutal of this, but it is well to note that the only ground we have to believe in the loftiness of his contemplation has been through his words or his acts, however seldom these have taken place. The activity need not be violent or continuous.

The Hindoo’s state of contemplation is many times referred to as supreme or pure because of near total negation of material interests. Wherever we have had knowledge of the quality of his contemplation he has touched material things. He has left the trace which we may read. Purity is in the state, in being in the state, because the state is true living. Things touched while in this state are transformed into a likeness of the state. The stone of the ancient Greeks was so transformed.

The Hindoo denied the world and died of this denial. The Greek acknowledged the world and commanded it, made stone and the many things of life subservient to his state. The world won from him in the end, but his step was a stage gained in man’s struggle to live in full function. What we have that is great in old India is of those periods where man was so well in the state that he had no fear of material and made of it a vehicle of expression. His object was not to make Art. His object was to live. He did not fear what he touched as a result of the activity created by his state. In having his state and with free rein to the activity engendered by it, the inevitable happened—the by-product—art—the trace of his being.

In all times, as in our times, the domination of the world has stood the enemy of the artist—the one who would live. The demand to pass juries, to make the acceptable, the salable, fighting off the wolf from the door, obtaining of medals for the weight they have in waging the social war; all these things, certain and terrible in their exactions, have held the slave with his eye on the by-product, and the by-product has suffered, for the by-product cannot produce itself.

Things being as they are, the life of an artist is a battle wherein great economy must be exercised. The kind of economy which will result in moments of the purest freedom in spite of the world’s exactions.

If one is a painter this purest freedom must exist at the time of painting. This is as much as to say that a painter may give up his hope of making his living as a painter but must make it some other way. This is generally true, although some do, by a freak of appreciation, make enough while going their way to live sufficiently well. Perhaps this happens, but I am not sure but that there is some curtailing of the purity of the freedom.

I was once asked by a young artist whether he could hope to make any money out of his work if he continued in his particular style of painting. He happened to be a man of considerable talent and had great enthusiasm in his work. But I knew there was no public enthusiasm for such work. I remembered he had told me that before he got really into art he had made a living by designing labels for cans, tomato cans and the like. I advised him to make tomato-can labels and live well that he might be free to paint as he liked. It happened also that eventually people did buy his early pictures, although he was as far from pleasing by what he was doing at this time as ever before. He now lived on the sale of his old pictures and was as free to paint his new ones as he had been in the days of tomato cans.

What is past in this letter is the most important part of my advice to you in regard to your work. What follows probably will be more technical.

A fault I find is a lack of solidity. By solidity I mean the employment of bulk as a factor of expression. Forms interacting with forms. The weight and density of the sea. The bulk and hard resistance of rock. The cavern of the sky. A blouse with a body in it. A head with a back to it. Bulk is only one of the factors of expression, but it is a mighty force. Putting form against form, color against color, line against line, movement against movement, texture against texture and showing their interaction, showing through them the force which binds them, is the way of good painting and drawing. It’s a question of the life within.

How can solidity be obtained? What is the recipe? It is a matter of conception. If in your state you have the sense of it, in your work you will have the will for it. Whoever cares most for the body which the blouse screens from the eyes will paint the body in painting the blouse, for in the state one sees through. In like fashion the wrinkles and folds will become signs of movement, not only of a blouse but of the life one senses in the individual.

Very technically speaking, thicker paint, a fearlessness in painting over and not being afraid of spoiling in so doing, may be conducive to a development of more solidity, just as a larger brush will sometimes induce a broader treatment. There is some consideration of the nature of the materials you use in these statements, and there is the value of suggestion in them. But whatever dodge you try, what you will succeed in suggesting is only what you have actually conceived.

Of the three beach pictures, I like most in them the emotional quality. Like also the lilt of the gulls and the rhythm of movement in the gulls collectively. Solidity as I have described it would add much to the work. I may say that the compositions are rather the expected. In this regard I will refer to that rare quality of the unexpected in Chinese paintings. Also will remark that solidity does not require thickness of paint. A Chinese painting is almost invariably solid. A Sung drawing, though it may be but lines, very solid. The artist sensed form highly—got in his lines what he sensed because nothing else would satisfy him.

In the calm beach; red rock a good note, sea a bit attenuated, horizon line monotonous, ordinary, not richly expressive of what it means. This line is so important in the composition that it must be strong in interest. There must not be weakness of foreground. The eye is expected to pass over it because it must feel to be there, solid, and not attenuated.

Foregrounds being generally out of interest are hard to do. But they must be sufficient. The small canvas—feeling that it is wind-swept, good. But here meagre foreground. Three textures—sky, sea, sand. We consider red, yellow and blue-green a good chord in color if they are well differentiated. Sea, sky, sand are a good chord of textures if well differentiated.

The head. A background is a certain color, but see a head before it and the background color changes. A head makes its own background. Movements in background must grow out of head. We come to see only what relates. In your backgrounds I see paint-brush strokes, not forms related to head. Study massing of heads by masters. Dignity of each mass in relation with others. Every shape on a Velasquez head is a grand thing and every shape pays a compliment to the other shapes, an organization of great units. Note how few changes of direction in great drawing. Economy. When change occurs, it counts. Where is the dominant light? See how a master would mass the hair. Note that your sterno-mastoid sags, has not the grand gesture of youth and delicacy.

Notwithstanding all these criticisms you have heart for the work. You love the things. You have a heart feeling for the girl, and a respect. Forget about the exhibitions and the juries. Think less of the success of the by-product and you will have more success with it. Keep living. And that means keep on painting.