(It is no longer possible to ignore the teachings of Fried...)
It is no longer possible to ignore the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche, or to consider the trend of modern thought without giving the philosopher of the superman a prominent place in the list of thinkers who contributed to the store of present-day knowledge. His powerful and ruthless mind has had an influence on contemporary thought which even now, in the face of all the scholarly books of appreciation he has called forth, one is inclined to underestimate. No philosopher since Kant has left so undeniable an imprint on modern thought. Even Schopenhauer, whose influence coloured the greater part of Europe, made no such widespread impression. Nietzsche has penetrated into both England and America, two countries strangely impervious to rigorous philosophic ideals. Not only in ethics and literature do we find the moulding hand of Nietzsche at work, invigorating and solidifying; but in pedagogics and in art, in politics and religion, the influence of his doctrines is to be encountered. The books and essays in German elucidating his philosophy constitute a miniature library. Nearly as many books and articles have appeared in France, and the list of authors of these appreciations include many of the most noted modern scholars. Spain and Italy, likewise, have contributed works to an inquiry into his teachings; and in England and America numerous volumes dealing with the philosophy of the superman have appeared in recent years. In M. A. Mügge's excellent biography, "Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Work," there is appended a bibliography containing 850 titles, and this list by no means includes all the books and articles devoted to a consideration of this philosopher's doctrines.
Modern Painting Its Tendency and Meaning (Classic Reprint)
(And there are,, I believe, but very few persons not direc...)
And there are,, I believe, but very few persons not directly and seriously concerned with the production of pictures, who realise that this animating purpose has for its aim the solution of the profoundest problems of the creative will, that it is rooted deeply In the aesthetic consciousness, and that its evolution marks one of the most complex phases of human psychology. The habit of approaching a work of art from the naif standpoint of ones personal temperament or taste and of judging it haphazardly by its individual appeal, irrespective of its inherent esthetic merit, is so strongly implanted in the average spectator, that any attempt to define the principles of form and organisation underlying the eternal values of art is looked upon as an ad of gratuitous pedantry. But such principles exist, and if we are to judge works of art accurately and consistently these principles must be mastered. Otherwise we are without a standard, and all our opinions are but the outgrowth of the chaos of our moods A ny attempt to democratise art results only in the lowering of the artistic standard.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.
Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org
Willard Huntington Wright, known under the pseudonym S. S. Van Dine, was an American author, art critic and writer of detective fiction.
Background
Willard H. Wright was born on October 15, 1888, in Charlottesville, Virginia, the older in a family of two sons of Archibald Davenport Wright and Annie Van Vranken. His ancestors, both Dutch and English, were settlers in colonial America. His father, who had come to Charlottesville from Louisa County, Virginia, was a hotel owner; the family soon moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, and thence to California in 1900.
Education
Young Wright briefly attended St. Vincent's College (later Loyola University), Pomona College (1903 - 1904), and the University of Southern California, all in or near Los Angeles. In 1906 he entered Harvard College as a freshman but left at the end of the year to study art and music in Munich and Paris.
Career
Returning to California, Wright served as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1907 to 1913. For part of this time he was literary critic of Town Topics, 1910 - 1914, acting in addition as dramatic critic for the last two years, when he was also editing the magazine Smart Set. With the subsequent editors of the latter magazine, H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, Wright collaborated on Europe after 8:15 (1914), studies of night life in European capitals. In the same year he published a collection of verse, Songs of Youth. For two years he turned out nearly five columns of copy every day of the week; he was living in Paris and writing fourteen hours a day when the first World War broke out. After returning to America he had the first of a series of nervous breakdowns and spent two months in a sanatorium. Continuing his active literary career, Wright wrote a study of Nietzschean philosophy, What Nietzsche Taught (1915), followed by The Creative Will (1916), a study in aesthetics. His first novel, The Man of Promise (1916), a relentless study of the influence of woman on a writer, was criticized for its frankness and for the unattractive qualities of its central figure, though winning some critical praise for its strength and originality. Wright's most important early work, however, was in the field of art. As art critic of the Forum (1915 - 1916), International Studio (1916 - 1917), the San Francisco Bulletin (1918 - 1919), and Hearst's International Magazine (1922 - 1923) and in his books Modern Painting (1915) and The Future of Painting (1923) he championed vigorously, though not indiscriminately, the modernist trends of his day. One of the earliest critical champions of pure abstract form as the ultimate goal of art, he gave special approval to the "synchromists, " a school of painting, founded by his brother Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, which was related to the French "orphist" school and which used the receding and projecting qualities of color to create abstract form. In 1916 he played a leading part in organizing the Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters, held at the Anderson Galleries in New York City. Though neither as large nor as great in its popular impact as the famous "Armory Show" of 1913, this was an important exhibition, one of the significant events in the development of modern art in the United States. The second phase of Wright's career began early in 1923, when another and more severe breakdown confined him to bed till the middle of 1925. Forbidden by his physician to do any intensive reading, he was permitted detective novels, which were considered to be merely relaxing. Characteristically, he collected and studied hundreds of these, analyzing what he decided was a new genre of literary entertainment with a technique of its own and one that he could master. Creating a fictional detective, Philo Vance, he mapped out and wrote 30, 000-word synopses of three novels and sent them to Maxwell Perkins, literary editor of Charles Scribner's Sons, whom he had known at Harvard. Perkins accepted them at once. The first, The Benson Murder Case (1926), which Wright based on the recent mysterious murder of Joseph Bowne Elwell, a teacher of bridge, sold out its first printing in a week. The "Canary" Murder Case (1927) was as successful. The Greene Murder Case (1928) led best-seller lists, while The Bishop Murder Case (1929), first serialized in the American Magazine, outsold all the others. In two and a half years Wright made more money than in the previous fifteen years. The books were signed "S. S. Van Dine, " a pseudonym compounded from the abbreviation for steamship and an old family name (Van Dyne), since Wright hoped to resume more serious work under his own name. Well-written mystery novels were not numerous at the time, and the crisply told, intricately plotted "Philo Vance" stories appealed to a new and more sophisticated group of readers. The languid, supercilious Vance, with his ostentatiously displayed erudition, sometimes irritated them, but, as Wright remarked to Perkins, "the point was not whether people liked Vance but to make him distinctive, so that they could not forget him. " Vance also appeared in moving pictures, played by William Powell and others. There were twelve "Van Dine" novels in all, ending with The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1938), much inferior to the earlier novels, and The Winter Murder Case (1939), which was completely outlined but not finished in detail at the time of Wright's death. Willard Huntington Wright died on April 11, 1939, in New York City, of a coronary thrombosis at the age of 50. His ashes were scattered by plane over New York.
Quotations:
"We all do things in a certain individual way, according to our temperaments. "
"Every human act — no matter how large or how small— is a direct expression of
a man's personality, and bears the inevitable impress of his nature. "
Personality
Willard H. Wright once described himself as having a "pyriform cast of face, hair parted on the right side, prominent ears, waxed moustache, pointed Van Dyke, habitual cigarette and eyeglass. "
Connections
On July 13, 1907, Willard H. Wright married Katherine Belle Boynton at Seattle, Washington; they had one daughter, Beverley. After their divorce in 1930, Wright married Eleanor Rulapaugh, an artist.