I knew nothing of the simplification at which he aimed.
I remember a still-life of oranges on a plate, and I
was bothered because the plate was not round and the oranges
were lop-sided. The portraits were a little larger than
life-size, and this gave them an ungainly look. To my eyes the
faces looked like caricatures. They were painted in a way
that was entirely new to me. The landscapes puzzled me even more.
There were two or three pictures of the forest at
Fontainebleau and several of streets in Paris: my first feeling
was that they might have been painted by a drunken cabdriver.
I was perfectly bewildered. The colour seemed to
me extraordinarily crude. It passed through my mind that the
whole thing was a stupendous, incomprehensible farce.
Now that I look back I am more than ever impressed by
Stroeve's acuteness. He saw from the first that here was a
revolution in art, and he recognised in its beginnings the
genius which now all the world allows.
But if I was puzzled and disconcerted, I was not unimpressed.
Even I, in my colossal ignorance, could not but feel that
here, trying to express itself, was real power.
Pages:
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253