Excerpt from Exhibition of Contemporary Scandinavian Art Held Under the Auspices of the American-Scandinavian Society

OT the least significant phase of esthetic expression has been the constant endeavour on the one hand to achieve a fusion of form, line, and colour that shall commend itself as universal in appeal, and on the other to preserve those fundamental factors which may be designated as national in substance. It is a struggle that has been waged unceasingly throughout the ages, and which repeats itself alike in the artistic development of every nation and every individual. The human spirit constantly seeks to voice in expansive fashion the great, typical impressions received from nature and from life, and yet has at the same time been endowed with the precious faculty of interpreting them after its own specific manner and largely according to a predetermined plan. If you attempt to deprive the creative impulse of its conscious or unconscious universality of utterance, or of its inherent nationality of accent, you go far toward destroying its significance, for art, whether pro duced in obscure wayside cottage, simple hut among the hills, or under the prestige of an organized institution, will instinctively seek to widen its outlook and clothe itself in a language for which it has the justification of an inalienable racial heritage.

It is to the enduring credit of the leading Scandinavian countries that they may be counted among those fortunate peoples who, despite external influences, have stoutly guarded their native artistic birthright. Their achieve ments in the field of painting, sculpture, architecture, and industrial design are refreshingly and unmistakably their own. Save in rare and isolated cases they do not speak, and do not attempt to speak, that superficial studio Volapiik, that facile salon Esperanto, which is so utterly devoid of character and vitality. You will remark above all in the production of each of these nations, and to a kindred degree in each instance, the salutary stamp of race and of country. It is in fact only the redoubtable Russians who can to-day compete with the sturdy Scandinavians in the possession of a spontaneous, unspoiled esthetic patrimony. The reasons for such a situation have in many respects been similar, if not, indeed, identical. As in the case of Russia, the relative geographical remoteness of the Peninsula, the barrier of an unfamiliar speech, and the fact that the pallid fervour of Christianity and the pagan richness of the Renais sance were comparatively late in making appearance on the scene, all tended toward preserving that integrity of expression alike in art, letters, and music which is their most distinctive possession. It must not, however, be jauntily assumed that the contribution of the Scandinavian nations to the sum of creative artistic effort is, save in a broad sense, one and the same. Their painting, in particular, divides itself into three well-defined schools, which developed at different intervals, and the leading features of which are manifestly at variance.

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