WHAT PRICE PUBLIC ART?

Evening Star, Issue 21714, 8 May 1934, Page 2

WHAT PRICE PUBLIC ART?

AMERICA'S PLAN TO FIND WORK FOR ARTISTS SPECULATION OVER RESULTS The United States Government’s project to help needy artists by setting them to work decorating public buildings was sure to rouse speculation as' to the results in the form of art (says 'The Literary Digest’). One impression was that , the decorations were not to be left in the artist’s hands in the choice of subject, but were to be “ records of national activities, especially under the'recovery programme,” which led the Baltimore ‘ Sun ’ to paraphrase the order as “ the Bide Eagle scream in art as well as in industry.” It amused itself in suggesting some themes in the tradition of historical painting, such as “ President Roosevelt Crossing the fee,” “ General, Johnson Freeing the Wage Slaves,” “ Flight of the Dollar,” “Spirit of ’2O “Price Level.” It enjoined the various committees to keep an eye on the artists, after what the Rockefellers went through with Diego Rivera. “These artists are natural Bolshevists, and some morning • the Collector of Customs at Galveston, Texas, will wake up to find down in the lower left hand corner of a grand panorama, described as ‘ Roosevelt Leading the Rugged. Individualists Out of tbe Wilderness,’ a diminutive figure of a fat man named Hoover, fishing with one hand and! with the other, thumbing his nose at the whole thing.” The Troy ‘ Times ’ also played with the idea, imagining representatives of the delicatessen ” school painting “still—very still—life studies of bananas,'carrots, and onions, gayly exposed in a bowl ” ; or “ Tbe dilapidated outhouse and barn school,” taking the leaning tower of Pisa as a model and thinking nothing of -the-force of gravity. It quoted Vladimir Mostli, a leading artist in Pittsburgh;— " Suppose that among the boys and girls who go to work. painting murals in public buildings there arc preBaphaelites and painters of nudes. What would it bo like to- have said painters of nudes putting a lot of the sqine on the walls of a school? Ur the pre-Raphaelites doing Diogenes in a barrel to remind tbe taxpayers that they arc in the same?” Some of tile older artists like Harry 'W.' Watrons, "president of the National Academy of Design, are fearful that the project reveals “ an atmosphere of exploitation of so-called ‘ modern art.’ ” But Mrs Juliana R Force, director of the- -Whitney Museum of American Art. and also appointed head of the New York branch .of CWA, asserted that her “ instructions from the. Government are to relieve artists in distress, not to promote any particular kind of art.”

Jo Davidson, American sculptor, hailed the project on his recent arrival'from Europe and blew a fl esh wind of common sense upon the controversy over the kind of art we are likely to get;

“ Some of the work, unquestionably a good bit of it, will be bad. But that’s all right. There'll probably be lots oT arguments and criticism, too. People will, be complaining that the idea is a failure before it’s even started, and artists will kick about obstacles to their inspiration and ■ all that sort of rot. That’s all right, t°o. People aren’t gods. And if there is any great art to bo expressed, this is the best way to bring it out. “ Time will decide what is good. The' important thing is to put the artists to work. And only the Government can employ the artist this way.’’

Davidson has no fear that the artist himself is going to get any harm from the “ official nature of such employment ” : 1 “Official art! What was Greece, what was Egypt, what was India? Wasn’t that official art? - Did it matter to the artists of India that Buddha had to be pictured with definite, immutable gestures; J Does it make any difference that Venus do Medici had always to be portrayed the same way? That doesn’t make all the Venn sea alike. The greatness of some exists anyway.’’