The Art Critics —! How Do They Serve the Public? What Do They Say? How Much Do They Know? Let’s Look at the Record!

But then, with another thrust, he belies the facts and states that the abstract artist holds the past in “disesteem” Then follows the opinion that

Their art is of decorative order, and should indeed find its most effective serviceability in use as a decorative adjunct of architecture. All this to be judged so, “…except by such of us as may be qualified to breathe with comfort in the chill stratosphere of Platonic, not to say Euclidean attitudes.”

This proves that Jewel’s new disguise is obviously as poor as the old one. Still he harps, with the nauseating ignorance of abstract art, by the inference of his earlier mathematical blurb, which has nothing whatsoever to do with it; and again his inferiority complex toward Plato.

Men of this confusion have actually intimated that abstract art is a menace to American culture. Mr. Jewel has had the temerity to question the admission of several Picassos in the latter’s recent demonstration at the Museum of Modern Art, using such adjectives as, monstrosities, pathological, etc. Since a fundamental approach to art is completely outside their ken, these critics usually pick up the themes defensive of their egos, and vent their frustration on those whose effort speaks in terms too remote or profound for their personal limitations. In his book on Have We an American Art? ( Longmans, Green and Company, 1939) Jewels says:

…thousand of our artists fall into the springe thus succulently baited. They become little mimics, and sometimes very accomplished mimics indeed—a fact attested in particular just now by some of our non-objective abstractionists. They follow the leader…And they do this instead of following the counsel of the still small voice. Yes, they become, if harsh terms we must use, parasites and sycophants. As a rule they adhere to no steadfast loyalties…

They lap up praise when it is meted out to them by the flattering abroad and by the expatriate entourage of reigning favorites abroad. But when, perchance, a critic of their “adoptive” realm itself turns upon them, and taking their little admirations and sponging and adaptations as a text, deplores the apparent fact, that there is no “American”, then how incredulous and hurt and bewildered they are… p. 166.

The inferences are a gross misrepresentation of the facts, as anyone who knows the least about abstract art. But here Jewel is up to his own alley and he further expands by reference to an English “brother’s” statement about the work of Benton, Burchfield, Cadmus, duBois, Marsh. Says Jewel:

In them a native note seemed to him to be sounded. They formed the nucleus of the “authentic stuff.”

This, after the critic had complemented them with:

…men whose eyes are turned resolutely away from Europe. The results are sometimes queer and sometimes deplorable, but they are certainly honest…Some of them have an unabashed, raw vulgarity…p. 54.

Jewel is trying awfully hard to prove he has something there. Then, of all people, he asks:

“…Had most Frenchmen…the remotest idea as to what Henri Matisse’s art signified, or the art of the other Fauves, and of the Cubists” p. 91.

Jewel would have us believe that the easy way he mentions the above gives proof that he has a better understanding! What a hoax!

While concerning himself at great length with other opinions from the “brotherhood” as to whether or not we have an American Art, he speaks of

…our infamous national inferiority complex.

In one place he finally launches forth with,

…Yes, I am prepared to affirm, not tentatively, not timidly, not apologetically, not yet bumptuously, but instead as a Categorical Imperative, that we have an American art because we are Americans. p. 118.

He also says:

…man is what he eats …Group traits are inextricably related to products of a given area, a specific soil. p. 112.

… Complete “Americanization” …might not be achieved short of the second, or even the third, generation, if the process of becoming “Naturalized” occurred after the formative years of a man’s life had yielded indelible attachment to…a previous environment. p. 174.

The last smell suspiciously close to something very rotten emanating from Central Europe.

Also Ran

Whatever may be the demerits of Jewel’s approach neither he (nor any one else) has been able to compete with the ignorance and perversity shown by his henchman Devree. Fortunately Devree’s few attempts at full-length articles in the Times proved so disastrous that he has for some years been relegated to a series of cryptic paragraphs at the rear-end of the Sunday supplement. Esthetic analysis has always been outside the scope of Devree’s mentality and he frankly grasps little that transcends the level of ye olde art-shoppes. (the “distance and woodsy” feel of a landscape, New York Times, Nov. 12, 1933, or “delightfully sketchy little papers,” ibid. March 31, 1935.) Serious approaches to contemporary creative endeavor stir him into a small but waspish annoyance. For instance, he once curiously made an excursion to Moscow and wandered through the famous Museum of Western Art:

Another gallery holds thirty-five Picassos—from the boy on the ball, the old Jew, and the Rendez-vous of the blue period to fooleries which include bits of pasted newspaper and sawdust. New York Times, Aug 4, 1935

The papier collés of the Cubists, which are recognized as having been one of the turning-points of the modern architectonic traditions, are indeed nothing but “fooleries” to Devree. And the whole world of tactile sensation that is still being opened by the abstract painters in Europe and America is obviously closed to him as well. It follows quite naturally that he should have written of Arp as follows:

Fifteen gouaches by Hans Arp provide mild amusement if nothing else. It is explained that Arp has been identified with Dada, super-realist, and creative-abstraction groups. The present experiments resemble subdivisions of the amoeba or germ-plasm under the microscope. New York Times, Feb. 11, 1934

Like Cortissoz, Devree can see pictures only from his own limited point of view, as illustrations, as pictures of something. Arp on the other hand, does not try to imitate nature. He is not being mildly amusing. He is not portraying amoebas. He is not portraying any counterfeit of the visual world but creating works which are things in themselves. This a principle of abstract art toward which Devree has never bothered to orientate his eyes or mind.

Small Fry

The art pages of the New York Post and World-Telegram are conducted with a less serious demeanor and are probably the least read sections of those papers. This does not mean that Jerome Klein of the Post is not perhaps the most ferocious of all abstract art’s journalistic enemies. Klein is the only one, however, who opposes it because it fails to satisfy his carnal appetite:

Oh, you super-cerebrals! Don’t you know that the brain is sterile unless it correlates the functions of the whole man? How about exploring the regions below the neck? New York Post, Feb 5, 1938

In the above Klein is fulminating (as usual) against a non-objective exhibition. We can understand how portraits, figure-pieces, and even still-lives can appeal to the lower portions of Klein’s anatomy. How does he feel about landscapes?