Emmerich Manual High School - Ivian Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

Page 22 text:

celebrated one of Rembrandt ' s many. It is an enormous canvas and the figures as I remember them are quite life size (a good copy of this painting hangs in the teachers ' assembly room at the school). It hung alone in a room entirely darkened except for a window at the side of the picture which threw exactly the light needed. It was a cloudy day, but such is the wonder and warmth of Rembrandt ' s coloring that one could not shake off the impres- sion that one was looking at the thing under a direct flood of brilliant sunlight. He has caught the sunshine with his brush, imprisoned it in paint and fixed it on canvas for so long as a shred of it shall last. EUNICE JAMESON. Amsterdam, Holland, September 26, ' 98. THE PRECEPT NEGATIVE To the Editor of the Annual : The Poet of Two Dimensions began the discussion, and all because the girl with a bit of purple at her throat had, over night (foolishly enough), tacked Isolde next to Le Exposition du Salon des Cent. Great Cazals ! Who made you ? Beardsley, sir. I dare say his mind was relieved when he put you on paper. A man of ideas need not always express himself in the lan- guage of the deaf and dumb. My master sketched me with his hands in his pockets. Which accounts for the utter absence of virtues. You lack drawing and color and — And delicacy, modestly ventured Boutet de Mouvel ' s La Petite Poucette. And notan, vaguely remarked the Hokusai looking into the dreamy distance of a Hiroshige for further inspiration. By Symous, began Isolde, virtue is a mere tradition and as unreasonable as the lav of precedence. Drawing was an art but once. It began with Raphael and ended with — Raphael. Since then it has been a means and not an end. As for color, why, it is simply a charitable medium by virtue of which man

Page 21 text:

Even then, for my part, I had not the slightest idea of what it could amount to to one who loved the gentle art of making pict- ures, but who knew very little about it. I believe, now, that I learned more in that one fag end of a day than I had ever learned when studying systematically under a good teacher. But it was all owing to a very delightful encounter. My sister and I were wandering around, looking at things pell mell, and suffice it to say without understanding. We had lingered long over the sketches and studies of some of Rem- brandt ' s best pictures, noticing his wonderful use of the line, al- though we didn ' t know then just what it was that made his figures look so mobile. In looking at those rough yet masterly sketches one felt a surety that they would never pall, that one could never really become familiar so as to have a contempt for them. As we were sitting in one of the alcoves which contained, perhaps, the most noted of Rembrandt ' s work and an insignifi- cant anatomical study, comparing them, we noticed an elderly gentleman doing the same thing that we were. In this country, where one only expects to hear one tongue, one is a little more careful about the tone of voice in which one makes remarks in public places. I do not think we were talking loudly, however, and it was a great surprise to us when we noticed that we were attracting the man ' s attention. It never occurred to us that he might understand what we were saying, for he was so strictly and uncompromisingly a German type. He came and seated himself on the divan beside us and be- gan pointing out the beauties of the masterpiece in faultless English, quite as if we had been properly and regularly made known to each other. He directed our attention to the golden light for which Rembrandt is so famous, and then to the drawing and character that each of the faces contained. He also discov- ered to us a place where Rembrandt ' s name had been signed and then painted over for some reason. He seemed to know a little anecdote or trick to each picture, and as we coaxed him back through the gallery, asking him about this head and that vast ox hung up in the cooling room of some butcher shop — he showed us something we had missed in each one. He encouraged us to express our likes and dislikes, confirming what was good in what we said and showing us where we were wrong. He took us down to see The Night Watch, another very

Page 23 text:

can hide his grotesque conception of nature. A clear brush need not resort to purple paragraphs. Madam, exclaimed Union Morale severely but with com- mendable politeness, a mood avec antipathie is not a principle of art. Man lives in the things that are, and to dwell on his short- comings and things negative is suicide because the effects (being subjective, of course) are bound to strike back. My Puvis de Chavannes sees nature through a nature and not through an ink- stand. May I ask you who wrote Faust? asked Isolde. And Union Morale answered, Gounod, of course. Not on your curves ! Curiously enough all color people say that. A German did it, my pretty thing. (Here the Fischer Aus- stellung poster looked superb; blushed and winked significantly.) He had no use for Sorboune greens or Pantheon purples, but not- withstanding his work is full of color because he understood and recognized the importance of values. Thereupon the two Steinlein Cats got into a purring argu- ment about their relative merits. Said the one: Yours is a queer point of view. Said the other: And therein lies its value — for in the inter- regnum between action and reaction there is always a period when a queer point of view forms the common meeting ground of all factions and schools. The vivacity of the whole thing was just a bit too oppressive for Gismonda. She looked her own lines over with pardonable pride and began: Before I came here I lived in a little cell by the sea. And as the days passed I saw the great ships with their sleek sides and well groomed decks steer clear of the long lines of red buoys in the channel and thus come safely to dock. Sometimes — once in a great, great while — I saw a smallish sail from some outland- ish port. Her bearded mariner heeded not the laid out channel, nor the splurges of red upon the water. He buoyed the rocks and thus his responsibility was greater — but his reward was grand. Life, discipline, art — everything is a matter of two pre- cepts. He who obeys the one follows tradition and convention, and is safe. He who follows the other has a dangerous way but it leads to individuality — and the solution of the personal equa- tion. We are all expressions of this negative tendency. Our masters have done away with the laws, the thousand little rules