His eyes wandered over the little room, which certainly did not seem very cheerful, and had, even on this summer day, a strangely chilling air. It is possible that this impression was caused in part by the peculiar decoration of the walls, that were but sparsely relieved by a few plain articles of furniture, a black leather sofa and a carved, worm-eaten wardrobe. Instead of framed pictures or engravings, wherever there was a vacant spot, and even behind the stove and in the niche of the solitary window, there were the most grotesque _silhouettes_ cut out of black paper and pasted on the bare plaster, which had once been painted white. They formed an extraordinary collection of figures, taken from the most different stations of life, most of them exhibited in ridiculous postures appropriate to their respective occupations--pedantic scholars, students, artists, women, ecclesiastics, and soldiers--all as if caught _in flagrante_ in their pet weaknesses and sins, and fixed upon the wall, standing revealed in shadowy outline. Yet an artist could not help taking delight in the broad yet spirited strokes with which each figure was portrayed; and it was simply the superabundance of these weird groups that covered the walls, and had already begun to overspread the smoke-stained ceiling, which was calculated to excite feverish dreams in a quiet brain if they were looked at for any length of time.
"You see now why I dragged you up here," said Schnetz, throwing off his riding-jacket and crossing his lean arms (round which flapped a pair of coarse shirtsleeves) behind his back. "From my intercourse with artists I have caught vanity enough to mercilessly entice inoffensive people into my den, although the black art which I pursue appears to very few of them to be worth the trouble of toiling up four flights of stairs to examine. Life viewed from the wrong side--the fancies of a misanthrope--a Thersites album, or rather nigrum--well, am I wrong in thinking that this world of shadows is even less to your taste than an ordinary art exhibition?
"But when you consider the matter more carefully, you will find it has its good side. What is it that is so absolutely lacking in all modern art, and the absence of which is the source of all other defects? Simply this: it no longer respects the _silhouette_! In landscape and _genre_, historical and portrait painting, yes, even in sculpture, you find everywhere a lot of pretty little tricks of execution; delicate shades, tones, and touches; a devilish careful, nervous, and, on the whole, attractive piece of work, but in it all not a single great feature; no strong decoration, no solid construction, the very shadow of which suggests something. Give me a pair of shears and a quire of black paper, and I will cut you out the whole history of art up to the nineteenth century; the Sistine Madonna and Claude Lorraine as well as Teniers and Ruysdael; Phidias and Michael Angelo as well as Bernini; so that every one of them shall make a good showing, the _rococo_ period included, which, after all, had something sounder at bottom than our boasted present. Take away from the latter its finical, over-refined tricks of color, and what is left? An incredible poverty of form, a little brilliancy or aspiring 'idealism,' and the bare canvas. The same thing might, it seems to me, be justly applied to our literature, and from that to all the other manifestations of our boasted civilization. But I, on the contrary, have from the very first devoted my attention to the essential part, the primary form, and the really determining outlines; and as these, unfortunately, only come out strongly in our sins and weaknesses, I have become a _silhouette_ cutter--an art that not only earns no bread, but even takes out of one's mouth the bread he might otherwise have gained. Naturally, mankind will never forgive one who shows it its dark side, and points out its excrescences and deformities and defects; for each individual thinks he is just the one all of whose sides the sun should especially light up."