{"id":1279,"date":"2014-10-21T17:32:41","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T17:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlepointpress.com\/traveltainted\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2015-03-15T13:02:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T17:02:08","slug":"credo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlepointpress.com\/traveltainted\/credo\/","title":{"rendered":"Credo"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“across a Greco . . . is written . . .”<\/p>\n

I have been urged by Mr. Lee Simonson \u2013 who, if he would, could do it much better (I too have other pleasures) \u2013 to write about my own paintings.<\/p>\n

At the start: “Why?”<\/p>\n

Haven’t I, in a way, painted them?<\/p>\n

Poems have been written by painters about their paintings, I know, and I have heard painters in my own time speak excitedly about their own work. \u00a0Colour and line can say quite a bit, unaided by words, when used by one for whom they are a means of expression. \u00a0Words are not to me a means.\u00a0 I can only paint.\u00a0 Many days I don’t feel that this is true, this “I can write.”\u00a0 To me words explain too much and say too little.<\/p>\n

If I could write and believed in having a cause, even a good cause \u2013 well, certainly I would write about the paintings which are being done at the moment in my country.\u00a0 Good things \u2013 many of them \u2013 and some, to me, great works.\u00a0 But I must leave this “cause” to time: time, the final critic and only creator of legend.\u00a0 I feel certain time and I shall agree.<\/p>\n

The idea of having painters write about their own paintings is to me not one which is likely to produce great results \u2013 add to the medium of words.\u00a0 And unless\u00a0this\u00a0addition is accomplished, why write?\u00a0 There comes to my mind only one thing written by a painter about his drawings which really added to literature; it is called “Venus and Tannhauser”\u00a0[by Aubrey Beardsley].<\/p>\n

However!<\/p>\n

Across the final surface \u2013 the touchable bloom if it were a peach \u2013 of any fine painting is written for those who dare to read that which the painter knew, that which he hoped to find out, or that which he \u2013 whatever!<\/p>\n

Across a Greco, across a Blake, across a Rubens, across a Watteau, across a Beardsley is written in larger letters than any printed page will ever dare to hold, or Broadway\u00a0fa\u00e7ade or roof support, what its creator had to say about it.\u00a0 To translate these painted sentences, whatever they\u00a0may be, into words \u2013 well, try it.\u00a0 With the best of luck the\u00a0“sea change” will be great.\u00a0 Or, granting a translation of this kind were successful, what would you have but what was there already, and as readable, and perhaps on repetition a trifle boring?<\/p>\n

Paintings are \u2013 and I call complete drawings, paintings too \u2013 to be looked at. \u00a0If the\u00a0“inner eye” does not glitter before certain contemporary “Calla Lillies,” certain American watercolours, certain of Florine [Stettheimer]’s or Peggy [Bacon]’s portraits, added physical words will not cause\u00a0it to glitter, even though spoken or written by [Walter] Pater or [James] Joyce.\u00a0 Your choice, ladies!<\/p>\n

For the painter, paintings are, wet or dry, just paintings.\u00a0 They are not arguments.\u00a0 They are not signs on the way to that supposed Nirvana: culture.\u00a0 They are not, however, “this must be printed in our new world” \u2013 so perhaps that “They are not,”\u00a0cannot be said.<\/p>\n

Paintings\u00a0must be looked at and looked at and looked at; they, I think, the good ones, like it.\u00a0 They must be understood, and that’s not the word either, through the eyes.\u00a0 No writing, no talking, no singing, no dancing will explain them.\u00a0 They are the final, the ‘nth whoopee of sight.\u00a0 A watermelon, a kiss, may be fair but after all have other uses.\u00a0 “Look at that!” is all that can be said before a great painting, at least by those who really see it.<\/p>\n

“And cannot words, written or spoken, help those who have partial or little sight for painting?”<\/p>\n

My answer to this question is No.\u00a0 Only prayer, and looking and looking at painting, and \u2013 prayer can\u00a0help.<\/p>\n

But those two will help you who do not see pictures.\u00a0 They will help, and some day when before a painting, you will see it without thought of the name of its author or amount paid.\u00a0 You will see it in its glory \u2013 in the world of paint. You will have received the stigmata.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Afterword<\/em><\/p>\n

This assessment first appeared in the September 1929 issue of Creative Arts Magazine <\/em>(3:5, 629-34).\u00a0 In all likelihood, the editor, stage designer Lee Simonson, titled it after a phrase in the text itself.\u00a0 Nearly a year before it was printed, Demuth had written to his friend and patron, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, to ask if he thought the article was “too light,” adding “tell Lee it will be under a thousand words \u2013 he wanted 1500. I couldn’t write a 1500 word thing on this subject [in] under fifty years.”<\/p>\n

Although Demuth initially aspired to a career as a writer when he was in his twenties, and turned out a full-length play as well as several short compositions, he was no prose stylist.\u00a0 In this breathless assessment of the aims of art \u2013 his own aims more by inference than explicitly \u2013 his syntax is often tortured, and his punctuation is as wild as that of a cheerful youngster decorating an enforced composition with squiggles, dots, and dashes when they happen to strike his fancy.\u00a0 They do not assist readers threading their way through the morass of hesitations and jump-starts enroute to a “Credo.”<\/p>\n

Demuth’s letters as well as this statement suggest that he wrote the way he talked, full of exclamation points, enthusiastic dashes, and self-interruptions.\u00a0 We have altered\u00a0no words whatever in his essay, but we have silently and conventionally corrected the punctuation,\u00a0anticipating the possible bewilderment of some readers, and we have bracketed clarifying information.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0J. Joel Farber and Bruce Kellner<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been urged by Mr. Lee Simonson \u2013 who, if he would, could do it much better (I too have other pleasures) \u2013 to write about my own paintings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[104],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTraveltainted | Credo - Turtle Point Press Magazine \/ TPPM<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.turtlepointpress.com\/traveltainted\/credo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Traveltainted | Credo - Turtle Point Press Magazine \/ TPPM\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have been urged by Mr. Lee Simonson \u2013 who, if he would, could do it much better (I too have other pleasures) \u2013 to write about my own paintings.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.turtlepointpress.com\/traveltainted\/credo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Turtle Point Press Magazine \/ TPPM\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-21T17:32:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-03-15T17:02:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.turtlepointpress.com\/traveltainted\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Demuth.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"382\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"638\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ruth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ruth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.turtlepointpress.com\/traveltainted\/credo\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.turtlepointpress.com\/traveltainted\/credo\/\",\"name\":\"Traveltainted | Credo - 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