sion is for him imperative
only as affording him relief from the tradition of his medium. John
Marin employs all the restrictions of water-color with the wisdom that
is necessary in the case. He says that paper plus water, plus emotion
will give a result in themselves and proceeds with the idea at hand in
what may without the least temerity be called a masterly fashion; he
has run the gamut of experience with his materials from the earliest
Turner tonalities, through Whisterian vagaries on to American
definiteness, and has incidentally noted that the Chinese have been
probably the only supreme masters of the wash in the history of
water-color painting. I can say for myself that Marin produces the
liveliest, handsomest wash that is producible or that has ever been
accomplished in the field of water-color painting. Perhaps many of the
pictures of John Marin were not always satisfying in the tactile sense
because many of them are taken up with an inevitable passion for
technical virtuosity, which is no mean distinction in itself but we
are not satisfied as once we were with this passion for audacity and
virtuosity. We have learned that spatial existence and spatial
relationships are the important essentials in any work of art. The
precise ratio of thought accompanied by exactitude of emotion for the
given idea is a matter of serious consideration with the modern
artists of today. That is the special value of modern painting to the
development of art.

The Chinese really knew just what a wash was capable of, and confined
themselves to the majesty of the limitations at hand. John Marin has
been wise in this also though he is not precisely fanatical, which may
be his chief defect, and it is probably true that the greatest
experimenters have shown fanatical tendency, which is only the
accentuated spirit of obsession for an idea. How else does one hold a
vision? It is the only way for an artist to produce plastic exactitude
between two planes of sensation or thought. The parts must be as
perfect as the whole and in the best art this is so. There must be the
sense of "existence" everywhere and it might even be said that the
cool hue of the intellect is the first premise in a true work of art.
Virtuosity is a state of expression but it is not the final state. One
must search for as well as find the sequential quality which is
necessitated for the safe arrival of a work of art into the sphere of
esthetic existence.

The water-c