The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1893-08-07
AMATEUR ARTISTS.
TIE PERSONS WHO WORK FCR
PLEASURE AND NOTOEiETY

T:.c I;eisi. of the Amateur and low 1t Is
Affecting; the Various Professions IN
Which ;IanISind = Trying to Iarn a Iiv-
inE-A metropolitan View.
The other day company Of American
artists seated at the cheap but filling re-
lection Of Gruyere cheese and the beer
Of the country amused itself by discuss
ing the serious want OF patronage fropf
which American art Is just now suffer
ing.
Il tell YOU" cried young painter Of
great talent, that the professional art
ist in this country IS worse OF than ever.
There was time some 10 or 90 years
ago when his prospects looked bright
and his outlook cheerful But today he
wastes all his time and energy on pot
boiling. and even his pot boilers have to
30 at a sacrifice"
There are too many of US" quoth
one OF his hearers. The supply ex-
ceeds the demand, and we are simply
paying, as III other walks of life, for the
crime of overproduction.'
There are not too many of u.s." re
lated the first speaker. Its the infer
nal amateurs who are doing work al
most as good as ours. and who are TN
derselling u.s. Ii IS the reign OF the am
ateurs which has taken all the gilt off
the gingerbread of the professional"
True, absolutely true, IN almost every
highway and byway Of modern industry.
The amateur is rapidly displacing the
professional to his own slight-sOTne-
times imperceptible benefit, and always
TO the others injury. When one stops
TO consider this truism, one is fairly
stunned by the magnitude and quantity
of the illustrations which proveit. Take,
for instance, the field to which the dis
cussion above quoted has relation. The
woods are full of amateur artists"
Hardly family now exists but has an
artistic son or daughter who neces-
sarily babbles the jargon of the craft
and spoils more canvas and wastes more
paint in week than most professional
artists can afford in year.
Not only do their execrabie compost
tons degrade the standard Of art, they
DO worse ard more material harm by
making values ridiculousiy cheap. Glad
to get anything at all-half the cost
sometimes of the material they use. The
amateur painters Of New YOrl, alone
constitute unconscicusly Il guild which
practically staryes out the profession.
And the worst Of it is that the amateurs
work is nothing like as conspicuously
bad il all instances as it used to be.
Sketchy and thin as the best of it may
be. it certainly complies with the ele-
i-lentary rules of art, and he must in
deed be bold critic who, comparing it
with the efforts of trained and expert
Oh iEoti
rounce it without exception rot and rub
bish.
The amateur actor and the amateur
actress have inflicted incalculable injury
on what calls itself specifically the pro-
fession. 1t is an open secret, for exam
pie, that the once profitable city of
Brooklyn has been made a positively
bad show town." as the phrase goes, by
the number and audacity of its amateurs
During the season they undertake per-
formances of the severest professional
character with prodigality of energy
and expenditure almost amounting to
profigate extravaganza which utterly
eclipses the productions of the regular
theaters. In fact, the Brooklyn amateurs
have all but destroyed the professional
rama in that city.
Again, the concert rooms of New York
fairly swarm with unpaid vocalists who
acquit themselves in many instances
gCite as we'll as their professional sisters
and brothers, and there are already so
many amateur instrumentalists in this
city eager to play in public who have no
urgent pecuniary need to do SO that it is
doubtful if the Musical Protective union
dare order another general strike here,
50 enormous would be the rush of fairly
competent amateur fddlers and others
to take the places of the strikers.
Rising higher in the social world, we
find bowling swells like SufTern Taller
basing their regulations entirely on their
knack of driving fourth hands en- anna
teur, so that the amateur coachman has
become really an important public char
acter and worthy of incessant notice
The amateur wing shot is another So
cial lion. Compared with the feats of
the plain, uncelebrated every day pot
hunters of Maryland and Pennsylvania,
the performances afield of George Work
and Edgar Murphy and De Forrest Maui
rice and the rest of them seem positively
puerile. But none the less are these lat
ter knights of the trigger exalted and ex-
tolied by the newspapers as nlarvels of
skill and vaunted among the possessions
Of which we ought all to be enthusiastic
ally proud. For are they not amateurs?
At the present rate of development
ore cannot be certain of the ultimate
limit Of amateur expansion. We shall,
beyond doubt, have amateur surgeons,
amateur lawyers, amateur journalists,
amateur BARRIERS, amateur tailors, anna
teur plumbers, amateur icemen, even
amateur day laborers, perhaps. Our
streets Will be patrolled by amateur po-
licemen, our conhagrations extinguished
by amateur fremen. And who can tell
when the amateur will have so profound
~ exhausted the honest occupations that
he will have to become an amateur Grim
iral?
Then shall we have our amateur bur-
glars, our amateur pickpockets, our am
GtCur hislUaymen, our amateur murder
ers The amateur shoplifter is already
formidable extant fact. What on earth
is there in our social code to make the
amateur homicide and the amateur river
pirate impossible?
Yes. i faith, this is the reign of the
amateur with engeance.-Archibald
Gordon in New York Recorder.