The New York herald., 1922-05-10
Creation of Cabinet Post for
Architecture Would Mean
a 'Debauch.'
VILLAGERS RIDICULED
Macdougal Alleys Soul Is
Transparently Stupid,
Writer'S Opinion.

Charles Vein, business man, painter
and critic of decadent pictures and
those who make, exhibit or defend
them, sent yesterday to all members
of the Salmagundi Club, of which he
is a past president, brochure he has
written, called What Is Happening to
Art?"
The flavor of it may be guessed from
the sectional headings. among which
are "Are Our Art Museums Bolshe-
vik?" big Injin' Art" 1.-The Great
God Bunk" and "Tammanyizing Art"
The Metropolitans exhibition of
ost-Impressionism, which to Mr..
Vein is "Post-Sewerism," and which
he attacked last fall, again engages
his attention. He says that what he
protested against was "the misuse Of
the museums official media to feed
the public on pernicious claptrap,"
against "the greatest art institution in
the country being made an agency Of
fad factory, a part of the great art
claque," against "the protagonism of
the professional modernists.' He
asks:
How many generations of ethical
soundness will 1t take to repair the
| moral attrition of our youth? How
many generations will 1t take to repair
the aesthetic Bolshevism now being
propagated in most Of our art schools
by professional modernistS'? 1t is this
factor that makes discussion futile
about merely a passing wave Is the
creation Of a generation of rickety. hy-
drocephalic, pot-bellied children merely
passing wave? 1t will be visited upon
the third and fourth generations"
"Aesthetfc Upstairs in village
One OF the chapters OF the pamphlet
Is 'Macdougal Alley Paganism." Mr.
Vein says therein Their 'vamps'
cannot even vamp, their passion is as
spontaneous and as emotional as a
mechanical piano. their devilishness hu-
initiates the poor old devil by its ash
nimity. The outstanding quality
OF this faxed rottenness. imitation de-
generacy and puerile blasphemy Is its
transparent stupidity. But it promotes
evil just the same. We now have
multitude of aesthetic upstarts as
banal. vulgar. as stupid as the man
who delights in the display of his novel
wealth."
In his argument Mr.. Vein pays his
respects to "flapperism." He finds that
to the male of II near silk looks like
silk and lip sticked lips like cherries.
He continues:
But when the white collar man
reaches 80 he has become discriminat-
ing and wants the genuine. And in the
meantime the fiapper has ceased to flap !:
has destroyed her complexion and wiped
off natures bloom rom face and heart,
and so both fapper and fiappee are
stuck No wonder. then. that marriage
among the middle class is becoming
obsolete. We are not protesting so
much against clothes, or the lack of
them. but against psychological naked
ness. against the moral Cor immoraD
Standardization of womanhood. which is
as demoralizing as 1t is tiresome.
But moral or immoral. the girl with
the lip sticked mouth is loathsome. A
false complexion. false lips. false eye
brows. false shape and false armpits
are as ugly physically as is a false
heart psychologically. and nothing will
change that; no, not all the sophistries
and wretched taste and publicity seek
ing protagonism OF Geevee novelists and
paragraphers and weak minded educa-
tors"
s.C~ur