The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-12-14
AMERICAN ART |S
 PLEASING ID PARIS Peaceful Invasion Has Given French New Ideas About
 United States Idealism

Paris, November 15.-(Reciprocal News Service.)--(By Mail)-Art follows the flag Whatever American business men are doing-and there is evidence that they are not idle-American artists have vast ed no time in following up the vista tion of your armies with striking proof that art in the United States does not lag behind the military genius which evolved those armies.
 We have in these days at the Luxem- burg an exhibition of paintings by Ameri- can artists which in it's own world IS arousing as much comment and as much enthusiasm as did the invasion of your soldier. Nothing could have been invent ed more happily to combat that false idea of Americanism which the present value of the dollar imposes upon too susceptible Europe. Here is evidence for our public of an America of which we are all too ignorant-the most striking evidence that Americanism is not synony- nous with materialism.
 If the exhibition were contributed en- tirely by the few individual American artists whose names are well known to us and whose art life is to a very large degree part of our own European art, the evidence would be less convincing.
  of course, there are, and it is not to be denied that in many of the other exhib itors the French influence, to our great satisfaction, is apparent. Bartlett, All exander, MacMonnies and Walter Gay are also well known to us. But the cata- logue, in what it tells us of the artists it introduces to us, informs us also in cidentally of the existence of art schools and academies in the United States which. to judge by the works of their graduates, have reached a point of tech nical and moral excellence with which the older scho ols of Europe will have to reckon. Not only Boston and New York, it seems, and not only the Art Students league, are advancing the cause of art in the United States and acquiring the char acter and prestige and, we doubt not the individuality of schools, and of all that we mean by schools, but Chicago and Buffalo and academies associated with the names of their states are also brought to the notice of the Parisian public in manner that cannot be ignored.
 It is fitting that in such an exhibition opened as it is in the very first days Of official peace the sufferings and achievements of war should not be for gotten The moment has been more than well remembered. Conspicuous between the Washington and Franklin of Houdon is a fine bust of President Wilson in bronze by Davidson, recent gift to the Luxembourg and in the same room are heads of Generals Pershing and Bliss and Admiral Benson.
 The most striking war picture, appro priately sent to the exhibition by the American Red Cross, is large canvas by Cameron Burnside. It is landscape of death and devastation; one sees the shattered houses and, standing out against the sky. the battered skeleton of Rheims cathedral. Builders scaffolding already rises from the ruins like a rain bow of hope for the resurrection of this place. The figures in this picture are nurse in blue. supported by two young girls representing Alsace and Lorraine offering to the French republic a crown of laurel, while sodier in khaki stands by, bearing in his hands document legibly inscribed ITO Immortal France. a Grateful Civilization