The Art of the Moving Picture | Page 2

should here be recorded, acquired much of the
vision of his seeing eye through an early training in art. Vachel Lindsay
(as he himself proudly asserts) was a student at the Institute in Chicago
for four years, spent one more at the League and at Chase's in New
York, and for four more haunted the Metropolitan Museum, lecturing
to his fellows on every art there shown from the Egyptian to that of
Arthur B. Davies.
Only such a background as this could have evolved the conception of
"Architecture, sculpture, and painting in motion" and given authenticity
to its presentation. The validity of Lindsay's analysis is attested by
Freeburg's helpful characterization, "Composition in fluid forms,"
which it seems to have suggested. To Lindsay's category one would be
tempted to add, "pattern in motion," applying it to such a film as the
"Caligari" which he and I have seen together and discussed during
these past few days. Pattern in this connection would imply an
emphasis on the intrinsic suggestion of the spot and shape apart from

their immediate relation to the appearance of natural objects. But this is
a digression. It simply serves to show the breadth and adaptability of
Lindsay's method.
The book was written for a visual-minded public and for those who
would be its leaders. A long, long line of picture-readers trailing from
the dawn of history, stimulated all the masterpieces of pictorial art from
Altamira to Michelangelo. For less than five centuries now Gutenberg
has had them scurrying to learn their A, B, C's, but they are drifting
back to their old ways again, and nightly are forming themselves in
cues at the doorways of the "Isis," the "Tivoli," and the "Riviera," the
while it is sadly noted that "'the pictures' are driving literature off the
parlor table."
With the creative implications of this new pictorial art, with the whole
visual-minded race clamoring for more, what may we not dream in the
way of a new renaissance? How are we to step in to the possession of
such a destiny? Are the institutions with a purely literary theory of life
going to meet the need? Are the art schools and the art museums
making themselves ready to assimilate a new art form? Or what is the
type of institution that will ultimately take the position of leadership in
culture through this new universal instrument?
What possibilities lie in this art, once it is understood and developed, to
plant new conceptions of civic and national idealism? How far may it
go in cultivating concerted emotion in the now ungoverned crowd?
Such questions as these can be answered only by minds with the
imagination to see art as a reality; with faith to visualize for the little
mid-western "home town" a new and living Pallas Athena; with
courage to raze the very houses of the city to make new and greater
forums and "civic centres."
For ourselves in Denver, we shall try to do justice to the new Muse. In
the museum which we build we shall provide a shrine for her. We shall
first endeavor by those simple means which lie to our hands, to know
the areas of charm and imagination which remain as yet an untilled
field of her domain. Plowing is a simple art, but it requires much sweat.
This at least we know--to the expenditure we cheerfully consent. So

much for the beginning. It would be boastful to describe plans to keep
pace with the enlarging of the motion picture field before a real
beginning is made. But with youth in its favor, the Denver Art Museum
hopes yet to see this art set in its rightful place with painting, sculpture,
architecture, and the handicrafts--hopes yet to be an instrument in the
great work of making this art real as those others are being even now
made real, to the expanding vision of an eager people.
GEORGE WILLIAM EGGERS Director The Denver Art Association
DENVER, COLORADO, New Year's Day, 1922.

BOOK I--THE GENERAL PHOTOPLAY SITUATION IN
AMERICA, JANUARY 1, 1922
Especially as Viewed from the Heights of the Civic Centre at Denver,
Colorado, and the Denver Art Museum, Which Is to Be a Leading
Feature of This Civic Centre
In the second chapter of book two, on page 8, the theoretical outline
begins, with a discussion of the Photoplay of Action. I put there on
record the first crude commercial films that in any way establish the
principle. There can never be but one first of anything, and if the
negatives of these films survive the shrinking and the warping that
comes with time, they will still be, in a certain sense, classic, and ten
years hence or two years hence will still be better remembered than any
films of the current releases, which come on