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Like Rops, Kubin is a devil-worshipper, and his devils are as pleasant appearing as some of the Belgian's female Satans. I've studied the Sansara Blätter, the Weber Mappe, and Hermann Esswein's critical edition of various plates, beginning with one executed when Alfred was only sixteen; but in it may be found his principal qualities. Even at that age he was influenced by Breughel.
He is the eternal Sphinx of art, whether as portraitist, landscape painter, etcher, or revealer of the night side of life, of its bestiality, madness, cruelty, and terrific visions. But Velasquez and Vermeer are more sane. Anything I may write of Kubin, Munch, and Gauguin should be read in the light of my artistic credo.
Nero has reached the end of a world that he has depopulated; there remains the last ship-load of mankind which he is about to destroy at one swoop. The design is large in quality, the idea altogether in consonance with the early emotional attitude of Kubin toward life. Edvard Munch, the Norwegian, is a much bigger man and artist. The feminine note, despite his sensibility, is missing.
Kubin has illustrated Poe notably Berenice; of course the morbid grimace of that tale would attract him Gerard de Nerval's Aurelia, Märchen by W. Hauff, and his own volume of short stories entitled, Die andere Seite, written in the fantastic Poe key and with literary skill.
He burlesques the themes of Goya at times, and in him there is more than a streak of the cruelty which causes such a painful impression when viewing the Proverbs or the Disasters of War. Kubin has chosen to seek earlier than Goya for his artistic nourishment.
Then we see the shadow, a monstrous being pursuing through a lonely street at night a little burgher in a hurry to reach his bed. The "shudder" is there. Kubin has read Baudelaire. His Adventure resembles a warrior in No Man's Land confronted by a huge white boa-constrictor with the head of a blind woman, and she has a head upon which is abundant white hair. Puerile, perhaps, yet impressive.
Naturally, it is good to get away from the saccharine and the rococo, but vulgarity is always vulgarity and true art is never vulgar. However, Kubin has plenty of precedents. A ramble through any picture-gallery on the Continent will prove that human nature was the same five hundred years ago as it was in the Stone Age, as it is to-day, as it always will be.
Some of Rembrandt's etched plates are unmentionable, and Goya even went to further lengths. Now, Kubin is a lineal descendant of this Spaniard, minus his genius, for our young man is not a genius, despite his cleverness.
As others of the genus of lacerta they feed on flies and grasshoppers, which the large size of their mouths and peculiar structure of their bony tongues are well adapted for catching. THE KUBIN, Draco volans. Sinensis delt. A. Cardon sc. These do not connect with the fore and hind legs, as in the bat tribe, but are supported by an elongation of the alternate ribs, as pointed out by my friend Mr.
He has control of his technical forces and he never indulged in such nervous excesses as Kubin. Besides, he is sincere, while the other is usually cynical. He deals with the same old counters, love and death, debauchery and consequent corruption. He is an exponent of feverish visions, yet you never feel that he is borne down by his contact with dwellers on the threshold.
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