Its completely integrated simplicity proclaims The Mountain to be one of those superlative aesthetic victories which are accidents of the complete intelligence, or the intelligence functioning at intuitional velocity. Its absolute sensual logic as perfectly transcends the merely exact arithmetic of the academies as the rhythm which utters its masses negates those static excrements of deliberate unthought which are the delight of certain would-be "primitives." Let us as a specimen of the latter take a painter: say Zorach. In being spectators of his work we are charmed, lulled, by the lure of shapes which imitate and we are tempted to say duplicate the early most simple compositions of mankind. Our intelligence is as it were temporarily numbed into inactivity by the work's "emotional appeal"—but only temporarily, since it is obvious that no art which depends for its recognition upon the casting of a spell on the intelligence can, except in the case of an undeveloped mind, endure beyond a few moments or a few hours at best. The spell wears off, the intelligence rushes in, the work is annihilated. Herein is discovered the secret of that "fakey" feeling with which we are inevitably left by the designs of this unquestionably sincere artist.
In contrast to this self consciously attempted naivete on the part of a twentieth-century adult there is unself conscious expression, that of the child who has not yet inherited the centuries and the savage whose identity with his environment has not yet become a prey to civilization, which—eminent aestheticians to the contrary—is of the utmost significance to aesthetics. The stories by Harlow Atwood in a recent number of Playboy, which unfortunately caters habitually to the Zorach audience, are a supreme and exquisite example. Two of Denise's paintings that Lachaise has, which she did before sophistication set in, are another. With Harlow and Denise, A.D. 19, are the authors respectively of that most amazingly beautiful of all American Indian folk-tales, The Man Who Married A Bear, and certain forms and colours out of Africa. All these demand for their complete appreciation that, far from being mere spectators, we allow our intelligences to be digested; and not until this occurs do they cease to excite in us amusement or mépris, and reveal their significance. That is to say, they require of us an intelligent process of the highest order, namely the negation on our part, by thinking, of thinking; whereas in an "art" which emulates naivete through intelligent processes the case is entirely different. In the work of
