The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1911-11-13
By ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.


II don't profess to know anything
about art, but l know what like"
This generally means that while
don't care to admit that my own taste
is absolutely unerring and correct. it is
true that l always like the best things
and the best things that don't like
are not the best. l do not need educa-
ton or experience because l know it
anyway"
And in superior tone.
These are the people who do not
care for what is strangely and weirdly
called 'classical music" and will say at
picture exhibitions, Just look at the
picture of that woman-the eyes fol-
low you every place you go in the
ROOM" and think they have delivered
themselves of profound, subtle and
personally conducted art criticism,
They also are apt to devour Marie
Coreli's novels under the impression
that the latter are literature. and de-
nominate an address by Bryan. DR..
Cook, Eugene Debs or Roosevelt as
perfectly grand"
They do not care for Mrs Fiske or
1bsen but they think Madame Sherry
is dandy"
(These, by the bye, are mere passing
observations and written on Monday
morning)
The truth is that there is no surer
indication of crudity than to take it for
granted that your grasp of any phase
Of art is the true one, nor any more
conspicuous placement of the intel
lectual dead-line than that complacen-
cy which poses as an authority.
For, after all, what does anyone
know about anything?
| knowledge is vast as the universe
and as incomprehensibIe.
| For the few stray odds and ends of
information that some have garnered
and sheathed the world stands awe
struck and wondering.
The only class of human beings that
really knows anything in it's essence
as in the artists the executant. The
| on-looker may draw his own conclu-
sions. But the latter are opinions. Not
knowledge.
And one of the first barriers toward
enlightenment is the inability to
recognize that which was yesterday
quoted from the play-"The Passing
of the Third Floor Back
"Ugliness is but skin-deep. The
business of art is to reveal the beauty
underlying all things"
Herein lies the finest expression of
art.
And it was exemplified no more SUI
perlatively, than in the painting of
Charles Conner, the Richmond artist
who died few years ago.
| This artist could translate group of
broken-down, decayed. delapidated old
buildings into thing of exquisite
beauty on canvas. The unseeing and
casual eye relegated to the limbo as
'hideous," "unsightly.
Conner saw ''the beauty underlying
all things" and turned them into radi-
ant expositions of reality through the
medium Of paint and canvas.
| Colin Campbell Cooper has given
the streets of New York on rainy days,
when all seems sordid, sooty, black
and baleful, a poetic glamour.
Brown-although derided of GER
tain set of the seudo-ultra-makes a
group of ragged, dirty, unkempt news
boys playing with NANCY dog on the
! curb, take on a seraphic charm. He
saw through the CRIME, the wonder
and exquisiteness of childhood, and
impinged it on canvas.
/ Rembrandt's Lesson in Anatomy
has for motif the dissecting of corpse
before a class of medical students-a
grewsome and repulsive subject to
the unthinking. The artist saw in 1t
that same underlying beauty and
painted one of the worlds master
| pieces.
Pennell sees an ugly railroad bridge,
etches its lines on a plate and pro-
duces a chef d oeuvre.
Duse, a great tragic actress, who, on
the glance would be called plain" has
that occult dramatic gift that hypnO
tizes an audience into the belief that
she's beautiful
Wagner takes base and earthly pas
sions and exalts them into heroic har
monies.
The Irregular features and ungalnly
| figure of Lincoln are nodded into god
like proportions by the sculptor Halls
took a stold old woman and made OF
her a study in color and line that is the
admiration of the ages.
For it is true, as says Shaw
The public must finally take, willy
nilly, what it's greatest artists choose
to give it, or else do without art
The artist is the great translator Of
life Through sound, through color
through the printed word. He con
centrates the emotions of humanity tc
the pinnacle of utterance.
1t is presumption indeed for the