Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/455

Rh At the present day there is an unrest in the world of art, an unrest which has resulted in the creation of innumerable schools, each endeavoring by some peculiar method of its own to inculcate new principles and to establish new ideals. Within a short period of time realism has given place to impressionism, impressionism to post-impressionism, and this again has become parent for so many other "-isms," that, to follow them, has become almost impossible. However unpictorial from our ordinary viewpoint the creations of some present-day artists may appear to be, there is nevertheless in many of them some newly discovered truth; they are the steps in an evolution, and we may hope that some day the evolution will be consummated and. that from out of the apparent chaos, which at present exists, a really compelling picture will be created.

It is most of all in landscape painting that the evolution of modern art can be seen. The old landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Constable are no doubt full of charm, but they entirely lack the atmosphere and force of the so-called impressionist paintings of Monet, Sisley, Pissaro, etc. In the older landscapes an attempt was made to copy everything that could be seen by prolonged study, and the canvas was covered with detail to its very edges; in impressionism, it is merely the flash, the fleeting effect of the landscape which it is attempted to reproduce. There may indeed be considerable detail in certain portions of the picture, but the greater part is merely a color pattern. But after all such an impressionistic picture can occupy our attention for a moment only. We do indeed receive an impression more or less like that which the artist received on viewing his object, but closer study of the picture does not carry us farther; there is something absent from it with which nature abounds, something that compels us, as when viewing a landscape, to keep shifting our gaze from point to point, a restlessness, a constant source of interest and fascination. In post-impressionism the attempt is being made to supply this want, to compel us namely to regard more than the fleeting impression. The closer we study such a picture, if it be successful, the more comes out of it, colors by their influence on one another become changed in hue and saturation, a curiosity develops and, subconsciously, we are compelled to continue our study with the result that we get ever other and other effects. It is kinetic, not static, art; it is a pattern of nature designed to create visuo-psychic impressions expressing an idea rather than an object, subjective rather than objective.

There is a physiological reason for this visual restlessness and before we go into the science of colors it may be well to explain what this reason is. The innermost' layer of the eye, on to which images of exterior objects are focused, is specialized to react to sensation of light, thus setting up nerve impulses which are transmitted to the brain where they are interpreted. This layer of the eye is called the retina and it is