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

Here it is the use of the word “persuasive” which deserves attention, for Cortissoz’s standard of art is based entirely on the premise that it must “persuade” the spectator. The past has proved, however, that the opposite has frequently been the case. Ephemeral works (such as the fashionable portraits he extolls) do endeavor to persuade their public, but more authentic achievements are apt to refuse rather than ingratiate the observer; only long contemplation renders most of the deeper qualities apparent. Time seems to have shown that Picasso and Matisse are possessed of a technical skill that far transcends Sargent’s feeble knack of imitating nature.

The reactions of Mr. Cortissoz when confronted by contemporary abstract work must be seen to be appreciated.

Grapes of Wrath

Thomas Craven is more sophisticated than Cortissoz: on the other hand he can offer nothing to compete with the Cortissoz endurance Craven has had the sense to understand why Cortissoz became a laughing-stock. He (Craven) endowed with an equally insensitive hide, would strike hard, but he would cheerfully reverse a decision if the public ever showed signs of turning him into a joke.

Craven was one of the early apostles of “social realism” (the American scene). Hence he was from the beginning wrathfully opposed to any move in the direction of esthetic exploration for he has constantly (as demonstrated tellingly in his dealings with the old masters) displayed a noticeable lack of sensibility toward the internal properties of art. It was therefore quite natural that (with the possible exception of abstract paintings) Picasso should have been the chief target for his vituperation. A typical Craven article greeted the acquisition by a museum of Picasso’s Three Musicians only four years ago:

The hosts of French modernism in America, now a minority of dejected hero-worshippers, have been diligently on the job of late. Rallying round a fallen idol, the vested interests, collectors, nuts, and professional esthetes have joined the hands in a last desperate campaign to restore the tarnished-majesty of Picasso, a king without a kingdom, a ruler with a few loyal sycophants and courtiers but with no subjects in the ranks of genuine artists…His pictures were endorsed by kindred exponents of Bohemian infantilism like Gertrude Stein; by his literary friends who wrote volumes of pseudo-philosophic drivel on the spiritual advantage of cubes and cones…the Museum of Living art, of New York University, acquired the other day, an old piece of mangled trumpery by Picasso, etc. …

So much for the 1936 Craven. The next three years saw an immense activity in art appreciation, and in particular a public desire to understand contemporary art-developments which must have caused Craven many sleepless nights. At any rate it is a very chastened Craven that greets his public in A Treasury of Art Masterpieces (1939), for he now writes of Picasso:

It is not too much to say that no other artist has so strikingly impressed on areas of color and particles of matter, the individuality of genius. His great technical powers, his unrivaled inventiveness, and his exhaustive researches, etc. …

Let us not imagine that Craven has become any more sensitive to Picasso’s qualities than he was in 1936. His desire to be taken seriously as a critic is what caused him to back down. Between 1934 and 1939 he seems to have had a similar change of heart in regard to Seurat. We hope that he will perhaps send us a critique of our present show that we can compare it with what he may be writing about the abstract movement a few years hence.

“Categorical Imperative”

Edward Alden Jewel claims our recognition by sole virtue of his control over the art pages of The New York Times. In his endless columns of personal opinions and equivocal speculations, not to mention insults—and in a recently published book, Have We an American Art? Mr. Jewel has long reflected a completely superficial approach to the understanding of art. His arbitrary values and personal antipathies are presented with smug assurance. Any effort, indicative of a direct concern with the actual elements of plastic expression and with the development of concepts describing the action of these elements, is sneered at with the attitude that these are matters of general knowledge to be taken for granted. On the other hand, these amateurs typified by Mr. Jewel, (Lord knows how they manage to keep such important jobs) rank outsiders of the frustrated literary fridge, proffer spurious cultural idea such as the superiority of efforts to develop local idioms which are supposed to verify the esthetic, universal significance of plastic expression.

In these meanderings, daily and Sunday, Jewel never once approaches the problems of the artist from the viewpoint of his medium. No criticism is ever based upon a plastic conception. Despite the fact that he admits to what he prefers to call the “abstract principle”—volume, plane, line, color and movement are never a part of the discussion. No criticism is ever substantiated by the definition of the work of art as a particular combination of these elements, qualitatively formed. Instead, we see the feeble, patronizing flourishes of a pseudo-grand-inquisitor contented with his own status.

In the New York Times, Jewel blandly advertises his superiority over

the majestic Plato, with his dictum of “straight lines and curves and the shapes made from them, flat or solid, by the lathe, ruler and square,” (Mr. J now goes to town:) a dictum as decorative as it is decorous, and about as full of meat as an empty eggshell. 7–20–37

He presents such unique understanding as

…non-objective art appears in the main to be a matter of mathematics and geometry. 7–18–37

And the profound blurb,

It may be argues, for instance, and, I think with justice, that the African sculpture quest never led to very important plastic results…

… Does any of Picasso’s widely publicized [African-influenced work] hold up today? I have the gravest doubts it does. If you ask me what I think of the canvas entitled Corsage Jaune 1907-8 at the Valentine, I can only answer that in my honest opinion it is ridiculous, uncouth, and, except as it may be advanced to prove that a chimpanzee can be dressed in a woman’s garb, meaningless. 11–1–36

What profound critical capacity!

He quotes from George Vail,

…“music employs the mathematical precise symbols of tonal art for sounding the cavernous depths and threading the tortuous labryrinths of the human spirit” Can you find any such aspiring explanation in the neatly assembled dingbats of the non-objective painters? If so, your eye is far better than mine. 7–20–37

(The above, of course, are examples related to abstract art. Since we are obliged to limit ourselves here for reasons of space, it should be clearly understood that such a critic is equally incompetent to judge the qualities of the art of the past, and more important, to guide the public to an understanding of any aspect of history and tradition, past or present.)

Not much later, comes the astonishing announcement:

I cannot speak for anyone else in the critical brotherhood, but my own attitude towards this problem has all along been, and continues to be, one of cordial interest in what has been accomplished here and in what the abstract artists apparently aspire to achieve. 3–12–39

Jewel condescends even when he proclaims that which his job is supposed to preclude. However, his statement is not the truth. Jewel has never reported authorized and clear statements of the significance of the different tendencies in modern art which describe formal limits and objectives. His trick is to pick out some incidental ad to attempt to make it appear as the whole story. He disregards developments because he is incompetent to follow them. All finally becomes lost in the usual maze of obscure personal opinions. On one Sunday, Jewel was impressed enough by the battle to continue with,

…the abstract principle is a principle that cannot be dispensed with by any art worth our talking about…It is the backbone, the sine qua non of all true art, whether representational or non-representational. 3–12–39