The Art Spirit By Robert Henri

1.

Letter of Criticism - 7

General effect—far the best works I have seen of yours. Throughout there is a strong individual view of things. Individual enough to make them the unexpected, and therefore not likely to meet the formulated expectations of average “picture lovers.” The readers of the various books on “How to Appreciate Pictures” will not have learned how to appreciate yours, therefore pioneer-like you will have a rough road to travel with your public. Where others are clever and precise you are not. Where you are clever and precise, others are not. You have not interested yourself in these subjects in the expected ways. You have disregarded what you should have been conventionally expected to regard; have neglected, slighted, slurred, done poorly where you would be expected to do your best, and have done well with insistence, with interest, where others neglect.

For the critics of their times, Manet, Corot, Millet, took interest in the wrong side of things. They did not do the expected, but were pioneers—followed their very individual whims, told their publics what they wanted their publics to hear, not what their publics already knew and wanted to be told over again.

In all your pictures the eyes are remarkable no matter what may be my criticisms—technical, anatomical or otherwise. They are remarkable expressions of human sensitiveness. In the usual phraseology it might be said “They arrest,” “They haunt.” They are inscrutable, and yet they seem to invite one in. The six figures standing here before me look with their serious questioning eyes. They seem to ask me if there are not some deep sensations of life forgotten in this hurly-burly business of New York City.

You have study before you that will help you with this feeling you have about the “look of people.” You will gain by adding to your knowledge of the anatomy of an eye. You can learn much from cool study of a living eye. Examine it closely and record in your mind just what and where are its parts.

You want to know an eye, nose, mouth, skull, the muscles. The sources of information are many, first the living feature itself, examined, studied. Then books on anatomy, photographs from life, reproductions from the works of great masters, then again the living feature itself.

The muscles are functioning always in life. They show sometimes prominently—easy to see. An arm in its strength is not difficult because there the actions of the muscles are obvious. In other places it is hard to see the muscles, hard to see the action. One who knows what is under the skin will understand the slightest change on the surface. He is able to separate the important from the unimportant in all these evidences. He knows the nature of the thing. He sees the slightest sign that has meaning, and is not deceived by accidents.

If you actually know the human body you can draw most sensitive actions through clothes. You see the signs of life in the body through the clothes, and the wrinkles and folds of drapery become living things. You seize of them what is essential and discard the rest. Without knowledge and sense of the body, wrinkles and folds remain wrinkles and folds.

There are thousands, however, who have drawn from the nude model for years, and passed quite well according to school standards, but who, nevertheless, do not know the human body.

There are thousands who paint the features of the face and yet could not pass a childish examination in facial anatomy. This probably explains a good deal of the lifelessness existing in portraiture.

The tendency of your color is straight, healthy, honest. I know you have only to go on in order to develop a most expressive color.

In your picture called Grain I admire very much the rare independence in your vision of the sky.

The Brown-Eyed Girl with the Cat—Some frank notes in the cat’s head and good closed-eye character. Handsome in blue ribbon and the girl’s pigtails. Not quite enough “whole note” to the dress. There is a feeling for and a cherishing of the dress, but the underlying or mass color is not sufficient. You began painting variations before you established the mass. Not so in the hair, excellent; and the face excellent. I admire this. A fine piece of painting, a frank rendering of character. I believe this is a good likeness. It is certainly a distinct type.

When you are painting a background, don’t follow, unless there is a good reason to do so, the common habit of thinning the paint. Don’t try to spread too little paint over too great a surface. Mix if anything more than is needed. Put it on so that it will have the appearance of sufficiency. Repaint a background as many times as each new condition of the painting in the head or body calls for a change in the background. The reason for many a feeble, false or inefficient background is lack of energy to do the labor of it. Paint the background in such a way as to appear to pass back of the head, not simply up to it.

To return to the Little Girl and Cat, get a more beautiful relation in the proportions of the body, arms, legs and chair, more significantly appreciated. That leg is painfully brittle and thin. Your brush stroke is too often the same in figure, chair and background. In using everywhere this same stroke it becomes meaningless and it robs each part of character, texture, perspective and distance.

The Man, austere, grave, wonderfully fine eyes, but undoubtedly exaggerated in their forms. Look again. It is excellent over-characterization, nevertheless. Arms stiff and scrawny. Don’t believe they were so. Good chair. It holds him.

You are not yet a master of the medium, not yet in command, but fine of mind, serious, austere, showing that you are made of good stuff, should work. You will never become a popular painter. You are too much of an individual for that. Yours is a harder task, and one that will have fewer encouragers, but the popular painter is not in for as good a time as you are.

2.

Never change the course of a line until you have to. Never change the plane of a form until you have to. Never change the tone of a color or from one color to another until you have to.

If you follow these injunctions intelligently you will practice that great economy which is necessary to expression in your medium.

Every change must count, and count strong. There must be no quibbling. You have the observer of your work under control. Through the changes you lead him straight or crooked into your meaning. If you have digressed into triviality he must digress with you. Where you hesitate or are uncertain, he hesitates and is uncertain. If you are a quibbler and a flounderer, and not direct in your purpose, he turns his back on your work unless he is, himself, like you, happier in floundering.

Because the medium we use is very limited, we must exercise a great economy in its use.

No line or form or color must change until you are compelled by the necessity of the structure you are making to change it.

The need for change must be great. You only make the change because you must respond to an absolute demand.

You have reserved your forces but now you must expend them positively and effectively. A new course, full of meaning is to be taken, and by it the observer is to be carried deeper into your meaning. You have taken a positive step to force his understanding of your motive.

Some painters flutter all about their subjects, others are straight drivers to the essence of things.

A house has many windows, but a ray of light catches on one. It becomes the window which declares all windows. It is a builder and a vitalizer. It links with all the other structures—is one of the big factors in making the whole.

Your questions are, “What is essential?” and “How shall the greatest economy be practiced?”

Water runs down hill concisely. There is no quibbling about it. It does not have to run up hill in order to be entertaining. Man has always followed its course with fascination. The soul of man may reveal its mysteries through direct expression, simple speech, simple gesture, simple painting, just as the soul of the brook is expressed in full simplicity and economy.

One of the curses of art is “Art.” This filling up of things with “decoration,” with by-play, to make them “beautiful.”

When art has attained its place, surfaces will be infinitely less broken. There will then be millions less of things, less words, less gesture, less of everything. But each word and each gesture and everything will count in a fuller value.

When we have attained a sense of the relative value of things, we will need fewer things. We will not change a line or form or color until we have to—and when we do make a change, a wealth of meaning will then fill the world from this new gesture.

The most furnished rooms may have very little in them. The mere proportions of a room act on our sensibilities much more than is declared by our present consciousness. Man suffers, but it is in very little that he knows why he suffers. He is happy and he is equally ignorant. As he comes to know better the significance of change he can be less hurt and he can move more swiftly to his natural environment.

It is not the barrenness of an empty room, or an empty life that we seek, we would get rid of clutter, and thus get room for fullness.

On a face one accent rightly valued in all its powers is worth a thousand little forms. The little forms subtract more than they add. The right accent achieves.

Humanity may be divided into two distinct families. They are as different as opposites in their course of life. They do but confound each other in their effort to believe themselves alike. One family may be called the digressors— those who live with the billions of things, the billions of ideas which clutter up the surface of life.

The members of the other group tend toward a simplicity of sight, are conscious of a main current, are related to the past, see into the future, are not of the time present, but extend forward and back.

Be game—take a chance—don’t hide behind veils and veils of discretion. The spirit of youth should be in the young. Don’t try to be ponderous. Youth has clear eyes. Let your colors be as seen with clear eyes. Go forward with what you have to say, expressing things as you see them. You are new evidence, fresh and young. Your work, the spirit of youth, you are the progress of human evolution. If age dulls you it will be time enough then to be ponderous and heavy—or quit.

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be young, to continue growing—not to settle and accept.

The most beautiful life possible, wherein there is no sordidness, is only attainable by effort. To be free, to be happy and fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.

3.

On the steps of the Prado I met a well-known French painter who was there like myself studying the Spanish masters. It was in 1900 and the great exhibition of Goya’s work had just opened. He said “Have you seen the Goyas! A wonderful genius! What a pity he couldn’t draw!” Goya drew well enough to make this man think he was a genius, anyhow.

4.

Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time-worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended.

5.

We have Great Periods. Periods when we freshen, become disposed toward health and happiness, move forward into hopeful philosophy. Then comes the stamp of personal whim.

Technique becomes a tool, not an objective. We are interested and we have expressions we must make. All things are appreciated with an abundance of humor. There is an association with nature. Something happens between us and the flowers in a garden, a communication of gayety, a rhythm in the grass understood—something charming in a day’s wash hung on the line—a song running through it all. Associations with nature. It’s a state to be in and a state to paint in.

6.

There is a past, present and future in the fall of a dress. Don’t arrange it.

In the old days of long skirts the models used to wonder why I made them walk from the end of the room to the place where I would have them pose. They were to continue walking until I spoke, and then they were to stop and turn as though to hear what I had to say. It was not always a success, but eventually it would happen right, and the fall of the drapery would express the gesture of movement, the arrest and the possible next gesture. There would be a past, present and future, and there would be unity and rhythm in the dress.

7.

Continuity. You draw this leg as though it were near the body—so near that separation is not visible, yet you do not make me feel that the two are one. The leg must go right into and all through the body.

You can learn to make a good map of the model, but it will remain only a map unless you intend to make it more.

Map making is difficult, and in some cases useful, but our business is more important, infinitely more difficult and ever so much more interesting.

I do not say, however, but that a simply made map might serve you as something to underlay a drawing. But map making and drawing should not be confounded.

8.

We have our choice of living in the past or the future— the present being but for an instant—not that of course, in fact. In the future there is the reality. The past is the history of our failure in attaining it.

9.

Superficially there is negligence, but deep down in people there is love and craving for the beautiful. There are many who go through their whole lives without ever knowing when they have liked or what they have liked.

10.

Keep up the work. Try to reduce everything you see to the utmost simplicity. That is, let nothing but the things which are of the utmost importance to you have any place.

The more simply you see, the more simply you will render. People see too much, scatteringly.

A landscape has got to mean a great deal to anyone before it can be painted in any worthwhile way. It is harder to see a landscape than to paint it. This is true because there are lots of clever people who can paint anything, but, lacking the seeing power, paint nothing worthwhile.

The technique used to express a dull idea is of the nature of the idea, and however skilled it may be it is still dull. The technique of a fine idea is likewise born of the idea, and is like its parent. Seeing is not such an easy thing as it is supposed to be.

11.

Letter to the Class

Art Students League, 1915.

It is important that you reach out for all information regarding the materials you use. You must know your tools. You must have the best, and they must be in perfect arrangement for service. Painting requires great judgment and skill. In the effort to capture and record in paint one’s sensations, there must be no handicap with the materials. It is only now and again that the best masters succeed, even though they have a highly developed technique.

It is characteristic of the masters who have the ability to now and again succeed, that they profoundly study the means and ways of their expression. They insist on good tools, and they develop a remarkable order in their preparation for work, and this order continues throughout their performance.

To be negligent, to be above such mean things as the materials one handles, to be a sort of genius in a dream, is a common misconception of an artist’s state. On the contrary his whole success in self-expression depends on order, or balance, which, in fact, is not only the means to the end, but the work itself is great in measure as it stands as a manifestation of order and balance. Such works give us our vision of freedom. For freedom can only be obtained through order— through a just sense of the relative value of things.

The technique of painting begins with the simplest mechanical issues and extends through to the heights of science. You should begin with the simplest issues. See that your palette is a good tool, sizable for what you have to do. See that it is well set with clean pigment, ordered to the greatest convenience for your work. Be watchful of your need and enjoy the steady development of your craftsmanship. See to the size, quality and condition of your brushes, they are to be handled for a difficult operation. See to your medium. Are the cups right in size for your brushes? Are they securely attached in place most convenient for the service? Have you the rag and have you the other facilities for cleaning your brushes as you work? It is surprising how these and many more equally simple and equally important questions can seldom be answered in a favorable way.

A barber has an apparatus that is surprising, and all in such remarkable order. His intention is but to shave and cut hair with the least amount of discomfort to the sitter. An artist proposes to make a work of art, and while his work re-quires infinite skill, he is generally far behind the barber in the arrangement of the most ordinary necessities. Why should this be so? Why should a studio be a boudoir, a dream of oriental splendor to have tea in, a junk shop, a dirty place, and rarely a good convenient workshop for the kind of thought and the kind of work that the making of a good picture demands?

Why should a palette be a crust of dirty, dust collecting, dried up paint in which little inadequate squeezes of fresh paint become confounded? Why shouldn’t the whole thing be cleaned up every day, with ways devised for the saving overnight of the good paint that remains from the day’s work? The reason for all these things is that one does as one’s neighbor does, and as your neighbor is no more of a pioneer or inventor than you are yourself, you do not move out of your uncomfortable position until a new neighbor comes along and shoves you out of it—if such is possible, which it may not be, for many get ossified in matters of technique, and while they are not comfortable they are still immovable.

The thing to do is for each individual to wake up, to discover himself as a human being, with needs of his own. To look about, learn from all sources, look within, and find if he can invent for himself a vehicle for his self-expression. He has a world of precedents to begin on, some within his sight, and more can be found. Let him move about a bit; investigate the needs of his own case.

To have ideas one must have imagination.

To express ideas one must have science.

All this is to urge you to investigate, to read, to think. You will understand what the word technique refers to. You will wake up to the fact that the only education that counts is self-education. There are the facilities of the school, its advices, there are books, strengths and weaknesses of those about you. All these things are good materials to the one who will use them constructively.

12.

When I read about artists and their works I am not as a rule interested in what is said about their works, but am keen to know of the personalities of the artists themselves. If I want to know about a picture I go to see it or I get a reproduction. I find it is usually not at all like the writer’s description. Pictures explain themselves. They are their own describers.

Sometimes it does happen that the writer, in his effort to describe a picture, reveals himself; and if his philosophy is interesting it is worth hearing him, even if he has insisted on explaining a thing which is already self-explained.

When children are taken to a museum they are too often talked out of their personal appreciations.

A friend of mine took his two boys to the circus. It was their first circus. He was worried and discouraged because his boys did not get the thing. He kept saying to them “Look! Look!” but they were always looking the wrong way. It was pretty tough to find that his boys were not real boys. That night he left the table to read his paper. The boys remained with their mother, and from the next room he heard them tell what they had seen at the circus, and their account settled the matter. His boys were real boys! They had seen all and several times more than he had.