NEW FORCES IN AMERICAN ART (Condensed from the Kenyon Review, Vol. I, No.2) By FORBES WATSON Section of Fine Arts, Treasury Department Procurement Division, Public Buildings Branch Washington, D. C. 61 NEW FORCES IN AMERICAN ART By FORBES WATSON I f society were suddenly empowered to establish arbi- trarily its own conception of the perfect conditions for the encouragement and production of art, it might easily end by killing art. On the other hand, if society were determined to have none of art, it probably would not suc- ceed in killing art. Obstinate spirits would paint in caves or carve the stocks of their guns. Something they would do to give vent to the creative impulse that is in every man, the impulse to express in images, the impulse from which art springs. This impulse can be hindered, thwarted, or made abortive by sufficiently unsympathetic social conditions, but the impulse has survived many wars and desperate odds so that it is by no means the hothouse plant that the art sentimentalists conceive it to be. Strong as it is in the face of its enemies, it has no armor to protect itself against its misguided friends. All it can do is to escape. Let me explain by examples. Globa I know a poet whose father is rich. Being a successful business man he is he is convinced that he knows how to make his son a successful poet. To this end he built his son a complete library, filled it with volumes of the world's famous poetry with shining leather backs. There are en- gravings of poets, busts of poets, celebrated sayings of (1) - poets in reticent frames. The room is soundproofed, air- conditioned, and looks upon a garden. The poet hates it and works elsewhere. This is not exclusively a poet's re- action. It's the reaction of every artist. I know a sculptor who married an heiress. She built him a mighty studio on her estate with a walled garden containing cop- ies of Michelangelo and Donatello. One morning he remark- ed idly at breakfast that he would like to make some draw- ings of elephants. A few days later an elephant arrived in the garden of his studio, a present from his rich wife. With a most ungrateful oath he rushed off to the city and hired a cheap working studio with no copies of Michel- angelo and no stalls for elephants. G These stories are both true and symptomatic. Every art- ist has had experiences with the same tormenting implica- tions. He has known the madness that uncomprehending kindness can awaken, a madness more baffling than the pains and struggles of adversity. Neither the individual nor society can do the right thing for art by pampering it. The instant society turns self-conscious and imposes upon the artist what it considers to be the perfect con- dition, art becomes flabby. There is an indestructible core of rebellion in every artist. Conditions imposed upon him which interfere with that core of rebellion are fundamentally wrong although on the surface they may ap- pear well-reasoned and ideal. The artist is both tough and delicate. He must be tough to have the backbone of steel, the unfaltering courage to support his own ideas against the whole world when necessary. He will brook no interference from society which attempts to smother his rebellion. At the same time he demands and needs so- ciety's support. He needs to be needed. If he is to in- terpret society, criticising, ridiculing, glorifying, his spirit must range freely. He flourishes when society ac- tively wants him and actively uses him to be its inter- preter. He does not flourish when society, misguided in (2) publicity were tiny, comparatively speaking hardly visi- ble. There were no popular magazines screaming art in raucous color. No politico-art organizations appeared before Congress. Art had not even conceived of the idea of making friends with labor. There were no lovalist artists, no communist artists, no fascist artists. Art was "interesting," polite, romantic, quietly fashionable, and not too brash for the tea table. Aside from the Na- tional Academy there were no artist clubs which had special powers. The number of dealers showing contemporary na- tive work was small. Art was definitely not news except for Richard Watson Gilder and Cecilia Beaux, and not strik- ing news for them unless it concerned Mr. Sargent. For the great American public native art and artists were forgivable if you liked them. The real thing was import- ed. To be an artist, when there were so many other things to do in America, was still considered a somewhat child- ishly individualistic effort to be different. Sargent of course was recognized. He had conquered the world of duchesses in London and duchesses then were not as comic as they are now. An American recognized in England was acceptable to America, especially one who had been so ex- orbitantly successful as Sargent. Whistler also won Amer- ica through London, though a different London. Ryder was held to be curious and surrounded with myths. Eakins was still a failure, as far as the public was concerned. Ho- mer, old and honored as a Civil War illustrator and later a painter of genre and the sea, genre and the sea, continued his growing success. In those days art was a lone wolf game. With- out a reputation the artist won nothing and the means for winning a name were entirely inadequate. Chase swaggered his flat-brimmed silk hat up and down Fifth Avenue and gave superb parties. Still earlier he had introduced both Paderewski and Carmencita to this country. Whistler, whose genius for publicity has not been excelled, kept his name in the British and American press. Sargent gave the rich the kind of portraits they wanted. By some means (7) M of his own invention the artist was forced to push him- self forward socially and personally. The days of causes were not vet, and the only advantage the artist had then in the hard battle to win success was that the battalions of artists were less crowded and the public more ingenu- ous than they were to become. The First Independent Exhibition in New York ushered in the days when artists not acceptable to the National Acad- emy and its affiliated official groups could be heard. Attacking and demanding groups of artists were ephemeral until Robert Henri brought his native eloquence and as- tonishing charm to the task of giving battle. Repeatedly he led his followers to the front. But by the time he and Sloan and the others had begun to win a public and to see prospects of genuine recognition, America had set out on another attempt to find the answer in France. The Armory Show of 1913 swept the budding Americans aside and so captured the imagination of the American public and the American artists that well into the twenties attention was centered much more on Post-impressionism, Cubism and other movements imported from France, than it was on those Americans, however gifted, who disdained the fashion of eclecticism and attempted to say something of their own in their own wav. The French who had been a hundred years the fashion be- came the rage. Collectors who did not have their Cézanne --sometimes only one, occasionally a group--and their Renoirs, as modern old master backgrounds for their Pi- cassos, Matisses, Derains, et al., were practically os- tracized from the higher circles of smart collecting. It was permissible, in these superior collections, to have a Ryder and, in due season, an Eakins. Even a Homer water color could be inserted without making one too commonly representative. What was most remarkable about these budding collections which insisted upon being called (8) "modern," was their astonishing similarity. In those days when the star system of collecting was at its height the same names reappeared with startling regularity. Need- less to say, discoveries were scarce. Of course the star system always existed, and perhaps always will exist, for collectors in search of fame, but from 1914 to 1917 and during the early twenties the American demand for Paris- made names rose to the pitch of folly and made fortunes for American dealers who previously had dealt in such forgotten men as Francis Murphy, Henry Ranger and Dwight Tryon. There was the most astonishing number of words being thrown about concerning the one undying hack term, "modern." The number of people who boasted falsely that they had bought their Cézannes years before the Armory Show was only equalled by the number of sculptors who, in an earlier era, had let it be known that they, each in turn, had been the favorite pupils of Rodin. All this profitable activity, which was calculated to show that America had at last escaped from its incurably innocent reliance on natural resemblance and could recognize a non- representational work of art, played its part in gradual- ly driving the American artist away from French influences. While a discouraging number of American artists had at- tempted to win their way into favor of the American market by emulating one member or another of the school of Paris, a surprisingly small number of them gained more than spas- modic success. It was time to rebel. The world of art in America, as elsewhere, was growing too eclectic to be bearable. The Americans did rebel, at least those who had anything on which to base rebellion. Whether their intentions were splendid and fine or merely desperate is quite another question. It was evident that if the Amer- ican buyers were going to be led like sheep to specialize in the work of artists promoted in Paris, and if they were going to sneer at the American artist who went to Paris for the sources of his inspiration, imitation was (و) defeating its own gainful ends. The American artists would be in no worse state if they turned their backs on Paris- aping and vanished into the heart of their own land to study and interpret a life to which they were born. A number of artists went perforce and, in retrospect, are being a little self-righteous about it. They forget that It had edu- the period of eclecticism was not all bad. cational value and it brought to America an amazing en- richment through the possession of superb modern French art, both painting and sculpture, but chiefly painting. It also brought many ragtag remnants of eclecticism and, just prior to the great financial crash, it gave birth to a thin-skinned snobbism and a voguish name-chasing that culminated in unproductive and unhealthy affectations. The American artist, by whom I mean simply the artist who, being of this country, went to the life he knew for his material, was desperately in need of champions. Sİ He found a few brave specimens. Unfortunately champion- ing is not synonymous with estimating or understanding, and the new American movement began its eventful course hampered by one of the lowest periods of American criti- cism. This combined jingoistic over-rating of Americans with equally jingoistic underrating of the French. By some of the more blindly ardent reviewers the French were blamed because the Americans had imitated them. Fortu- nately beneath the surface of all the jingoism a genuine American movement had begun. But the buying and collect- ing system had not changed. It was still the star-system. It was a system speculative and artificial. It discour- aged men from acquiring naturally the art that they want- ed. What is called the art market is in reality a name market. This market had turned its smiling countenance upon the native artists partly because the French market had been so absurdly overplayed, partly because leaders of French painting and sculpture had gone with undisguis- ed avarice into what Matisse is so fond of referring to (10) C C G Madag as their productive period, and partly because the boost- ers of American art had made a final impression on the collectors and the museums. Yet the necessity still de- volved upon the artists to make names artists to make names for themselves. The rush for fame was not an especially dignified spec- tacle. Quite talented artists began to devote a few more hours a day to publicity than to art. For the editor of a Time or of a Life they would stand on their heads, turn somersaults or roll over. Fortunately, beyond and above these noisy boys and girls there were developing groups of painters and sculptors who were both dignified about their publicity and serious about their work. 3. What might have happened to the American movement if the crash of 1929-1932 had not taken place we shall never know. We have heard again and again the tragic tales of individuals who were victims of the swollen bubble of mad speculation when the business world fell flat. Consider- ing the artists in the light of this mighty financial tumble we do not need to cite individuals who are direct- ly affected in order to make our point. With few excep- tions the entire world of artists was placed in desperate straits. The change came like a flash. Collectors and museums, the most generous of them, could not begin to meet the needs of the situation. On all sides one heard of this plan and that by which the artists might be saved, in some dire cases from starvation, and in a frightening number of cases from bitter hardships if not from actual lack of food. It was so clear that private resources could not save the save the country from incalculable spiritual loss and save the artists from hideous suffering that men and women began to cry out. They preached and they wrote. Meetings were called. Each person put forth his own pet scheme to rescue the artists. The situation grew more desperate. A man who could transform ideas into acts, who disregarded futilities and would stick to fundamentals, (11) K a man who could put effective forces in motion was des- perately needed. He appeared like a giant in the night. With incredible speed he metamorphosed our dreams of help- ing into a plan that worked. He actually placed the Unit- ed States in the lead as a country more intent upon the welfare of its artists than any other country. That man's name is Edward Bruce, the fountainhead of all that the United States has done for art in the past five years. When the whole thing started I worked with him day and night. It was December 8, 1933. A meeting was called. Mrs. Roosevelt was there, Frederic Delano, Rex Tugwell, Harry Hopkins, Olin Dows, a dozen museum directors from all parts of the country, Ned Bruce and myself. On the 12th of December, four days later, an office was in full swing in the Treasury Department, the first artists were on the pay roll, sixteen regional chairmen, directing re- gions which included the entire country, had been appoint- ed, and a system, new to the world, had been evolved for employing artists. This dynamic change was a one-man af- fair. I call it a dynamic change because in one large gesture it swept away the artificial relationship of art- ists and public which a middleman world had established, and restored a relationship such as existed in the most productive periods of art. If one's eyes are veiled with political prejudice it is impossible to diagnose what happened. Impartial analysis of what has taken place through the establishment of the Section of Fine Arts will overcome prejudice. The facts of procedure have appeared too often to require repetition. I want to repeat, how- ever, that the paintings and sculpture executed by the Section of Fine Arts are the result of open anonymous competitions. They have been selected on a basis of qual- ity and carried out by artists from all parts of the coun- try who were chosen on account of the quality of their work and for no other reason. This is provable by the fact that the work was selected before the name of the artist became known to the jury. (12) J I think it will take much longer to reach the right estimate of the work that the W. P. A. has done under Harry Hopkins and Holger Cahill than it will to estimate the work carried out under Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Edward Bruce. The plot of the former piece is infinitely more complicated. It has covered a larger field with less definite bounds. It has had to meet the heart-wringing complicated problems of relief. As I may have said, I am not attempting to judge the Government's activities in behalf of art except in so far as I think they are af- fecting the development of American art in general. Many artists have learned, first through the Public Works of Art Project and later through the W. P. A., that a small certain income with complete freedom to work is better than a haphazard income depending upon the whims of pri- vate buyers. I believe that the more certain income leads to a saner existence for the artist. Could there be a stronger force than the knowledge of the artist that he can live in his own community, develop his ideas out of a well rooted existence and sell his art to a client who buys it without ulterior motive? The fact that an agency of the Government has employed several hun- dred artists giving them complete freedom of expression, and the fact that it pays each artist at the same rate, suggest to my mind a situation so much more inspiring and direct than the complicated artificial system under which artists formerly were compelled to operate that I feel it is fair to characterize it as a powerful new force in American art. Add to this the obvious stimulant given to the artist through his knowing that his fellow citizens want his art and that in offering him an opportunity to contribute his share of the pictorial record of America they are doing so through an agency which has no politi- cal powers and no means of showing favoritism, and we have further evidence of a new force. (13) Ka } ¡ : : ¡ UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3 9015 00885 2892 i £ ६१३