WOMAN'S EXPRESSIVE BACK

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 154, 19 March 1918, Page 2

WOMAN'S EXPRESSIVE BACK

A new movement in art caught up by painters and sculptors has of late been developing a. now conception of tho mirror of the soul (states the "Chicago Herald"). This now idea has for its premiss the belief that woman's back really expresses her feelings, her manysided emotional nature, far more clearly than her eyes. C. Lynn Coy, a well-known sculptor of Chicago, has been of late also devoting himself, to this new phase, of art. Ho says: "1 weg.t to grand opera last wiiiter upon many occasions to study tho back of Isador Berger, the first violinist, since I wanted to put as much of tho expression of music as possible into a statue I was making of him.. "Whilo seated in tho audience I was struck by the astonishing studies of expression shown in the bare backs of tho women sitting about. Their shoulders reflected- the moods of the music to which they were listening so readily, and with such pronounced emphasis, that I began to catalogue them and transfer them into clay.

"Every different feeling which tho master 'music of grand opera evoked was plainly discernible in tho smooth, flexible backs before me. In the finale of 'Carmen' they would be tense with tragedy, although with the shoulders lifted a trifle from the influence of the barbaric strain in ttio Spanish music. "In 'Marion' they would also be tense with tragedy, although with the shoulders depressed and inclined forward, giving an entirely different expression. While the wonderful love music of Wagner's "Tristan awl Isolde' was in the air the back muscles would strike an entirely new posture, tho neck showing a trace of the surrender note in that opera. So on down through the manifold emotions expressed in music tho reflection was shown in tho backs before me."