Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/237

Rh to touch it, and to believe something is, not completely to understand it, Cézanne was compelled to mis- or disbelieve and to dis- or misunderstand "Nature"; and he disbelieved and misunderstood it at the age of faith and hope so violently and so carefully as to present us with a significant conjugation of the chromatic verb which is just as inherently intense as, from the plastic standpoint, declensions and nouns are inherently flabby. Precisely in this sense Cézanne became truly naif—not by superficially contemplating and admiring the art of primitive peoples, but by carefully misbelieving and violently disunderstanding a second-hand world.

To the vocal gesture with preceded grammar Lachaise is completely sensitive. Consequently, in his enormous and exquisite way, Lachaise negates OF with IS. To say that the 1918 exhibition at the Bourgeois Galleries drew from the "critics" more statements of ungentle unintelligence, and from the gallery-going public more expressions of enthusiastic ignorance, than any one-man show of sculpture previously held on the Avenue, is but to do justice to all concerned, including Monsieur Bourgeois. The Elevation, which, as we have already noted, occasioned, in the case of Mr. McBride, the sole unbiased reaction of "criticism" to this exhibition, was responsible for, on the one hand, more unclever exasperation and on the other more fulsome ecstasy than all the rest of the show put together. Lest any should accuse us of hyperbole, we will quote a sample of each "point of view" and let the reader decide for himself whether or no one is more incredibly meaningless than the other.

"It might be a satire on the stout woman who pinches her waist and wears high heels that stand her on her toes for life, or it might be an idealization of her. The answer is in the point of view. Mr. Lachaise is himself not very definite on this score. If it is a satire, it is curious that he should employ the figure as a motif so often. Mr. Lachaise is one of those modernists who hark back to the serenity of Greece and forward to new rhythms which shall be more active.

"She is the mother of men, with the scorn of wisdom and dominance on her brow. She is an unathletic—a queen bee-Amazon, different both from the 'clinging vine' or the pioneer companion that her mothers were. She is the creature toward which creation groaneth. She is man's old 'delicious burden,' buoyed by his reverence like a mist above the ground."