The master is there... immobile... under the crude, white, sincere light of day. No shutters closed, no candles burning, no artificial mourning, a wrap of white wool in stiff folds over the stiff body... the long white hair flowing into the long white flowing beard... the strong powerful hands which have worked so much resting... ivory white as a white bird which has finished his flight, white flowers... and around... the studio, the wonderful bric-a-brac of masterpieces... the miscellaneous treasure of the collectioneur—of the artist, all that, surrounding the last repose of the Master... who has made that beauty, who has bought her, who has desired her, who has lived with her, for her, by her. The body of the dead sculptor seems to be his last work. His rest is like an ultimate sitting for the last creation... a definitive, plastic, realisation... of himself... the day gone out, the work finished.
The work finished? No. The work continues... he continues to radiate forces, and beauty and ideal. The work lives and will continue to live. The artistic treasure of a man like Rodin cannot have heirs. It is not like a lit candle which a genius receives and holds, then hands to a successor. Michael Angelo had copyists, he had no descendents. Rodin has... plagiarists, he cannot have disciples. Such an inspiration, such a method resides in one man. When that man disappears his light remains on the world, but it cannot be incarnated again. After the funeral of Rodin some of the younger artists seeming to be relieved by the disappearance of the inimitable Master, were ready to proclaim themselves his successors. "Le roi est mort, Vive le Roi!" No, in such a kingdom as the one of Art Rodin was alone in his dynasty. His throne must stay vacant. Rodin was the complete expression, the perfect expression of a finishing era. As the snow-crowned, formidable Shasta dominates colossal and alone the plains of the Northwest, Rodin stands, unique, complete, complex, on the closing of the last centuries... but... we must not try to build another summit of the same shape. That would look like an ant-hill or as the pyramids which are... graves... for kings... but graves for dead kings.
Rodin has made men marching. He knew... Now we must too... march forward... and always forward...
After all Rodin... like Michael Angelo... like Phidias... these are the luminous signs which light the paths of human progress. We have to go on... to go on... towards the horizon ever—devant nous.
THE ART OF JOHN STORRS
By the Editor
TWO exhibitions were open during the holiday season almost within a stone's throw of each other which showed two opposing tendencies. They were as the oil and the vinegar of a salad, each the complement of the other, each the reaction from the other. I enjoy the life of civilized man, the culture, the traditions of centuries, but when I have had my fill of culture I find nothing more relaxing and, in a way, more stimulating than to spend a few months in the back woods of Maine.
In the exhibition of Roerich we had the relaxation and, in a way, the stimulus of the backwoods, not of Maine, but of Russia, of Finland. In the art of John Storrs we had the culture, the tradition of centuries of Mediterranean civilization. John Storrs is by temperament a Latin, a Greek not a Northerner. His art is no less sane than
