This characteristic has,
undoubtedly, puzzled and repelled the foreigner. It is a time when the
madness for novelty seems to be carrying everything before it, when
anything may be accepted so long as it is or seems new, when the effort
of all artists is to get rid of conventions and to shake off the
"shackles of tradition." Here is a new people in the blessed state of
having no traditions to shake off and from whom, therefore, some peppery
wildness might be expected for the tickling of jaded palates. Behold,
they are sturdily setting themselves to recover for art the things the
others have thrown away! They are trying to revive the old fashion of
thoughtful composition, the old fashion of good drawing, the old fashion
of lovely color, and the old fashion of sound and beautiful workmanship.
This conservatism of American painting, however, is not of the kind that
still marks so much of the painting of England. Excepting exceptions,
English painting is somewhat stolidly staying where it was. America's
conservatism is ardent, determined, living. It is not standing still;
it is going somewhere as rapidly as possible--it might, perhaps, be more
truly called not conservatism but reaction. We have, of course, our
ultramodernists, but their audacities are mild compared to those of the
French or German models they imitate.
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