Exhibition Quotes - page 5
All the pictures [in the exhibition, 1910] include a plus-factor, which robs the public [in Munich] of her pleasure but which is in every case the principal merit of the work; the completely spiritualized, de-materialized awardness of perception, which our fathers, the artists of the nineteenth century, never even tried to achieve in their 'pictures'. This bold undertaking, to take the 'matiere', which Impressionism sank its teeth into, and spiritualize it, is a necessary reaction, which began with Gauguin in Pont-Aven, and has already fostered innumerable experiments... The way the Munich public condemns the exhibition is almost amusing.
Franz Marc
Among the English, we see on one side an exhibition of grossness and impudence in wickedness, and on the other, we admire their strictness and lofty eminence in that which is good. In that country, interest and conscience measure every thing. There is nothing intermediate between the two motives.In France, on the contrary, the gap between interest and conscience is admirably filled by honour. ... In its origin, honour had for its office to take the place of conscience. Where it was deficient, honour presented itself the heir, the distant relation of conscience. ... But honour itself is becoming weak. ... If this progress continues, it will end by being extinguished. But which will then become the heir of honour? Will it be interest or conscience?
Alexandre Vinet