The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-03-20
BY Joseph Freeman.

L saw that art could not long escape
the effects of machinery and the fac
tory system. He posed the problem,
and answered it, fifty years before the
painters and poets Of Europe became
aware that the revolution in produc-
ton demanded a revolution both in
the content and form of their arts.
In the "Critique of Political Economy"
Marx asked:
ais the view Of nature and OF
social relations which shaped
Greek imagination and Greek art
possible in the age of automatic
machinery, and railways, and To-
comotives, and electric teIe-
graphs? All mythology mas
tiers and dominates and shapes
the forces of nature in and
through the Imagination; hence
il disappears as soon as man gains
mastery over the forces of nature.
What becomes Of the Goddess
Fame side by side with Printing
House Square Tor Times Square)2
Looking at it from another
side: is Achilles possible side by
side with powder and lead? Or
is the IIIiad at. all comparable
with the printing press and steam
press?"
Long after Marks general view
point became a dynamic factor in the
political and economic life Of the
world, painters continued to evade the
mechanical world about them. Their
revolt against the ugliness of factory
towns manifested itself in landscape
paintings; it is noteworthy fact
that not until the rise of the dirty
factory town did western European
painters discover the profuse beauties
of the country. They sought relief
from smokestacks in trees, from trains
in birds, from slums in fields. Con-
sciously or unconsciously the "mythol-
ogy" ii. e., weltanschauung of 18th
century painters was derived from
Rousseau and the classical political
economists. It's keystone is laissez
faire; it's aesthetic maintains that the
artist is "a divine, unique creature,
above social classes and unconcerned
with the contemporary world. His
chief subjects are nature and the in
dividual man.
BY the first decade of the 10th cen
fury machinery had so transformed
the western world that the sysmo-
graphic temperaments among bour-
geois artists could no longer fail to
register the earthquake that had been
shaking the world for over century.
Futurism, cubism and other move
ments attempted to break away from
the traditions of representation and
agriculture in painting, and to achieve
abstraction in form and modernity in
content.
These early revolutions in art were
one-sided; they were general strikes
whose force was concentrated on this
or that isolated factor of the old
aesthetic. They succeeded in weak
ening the old traditions. They were
also rich experiments, containing the
germs of principles which had yet to
be grasped and synthesized. They
were, so to say, the 1905" Of modern
painting, a preparation for the more
significant 1917"
THE first American synthesis Of
i modern tendencies in painting has
been made by Louis Lozowick, whose
canvasses and drawings have just
been exhibited in New York. Without
attributing any mystical significance
to inmate racial tendencies" it Is
nevertheless interesting to observe
that Lozowick is a Jew of Russian
birth and American education. The
importance of this personal organiza
ton of backgrounds is reflected
among other qualities-in the power
full and original work of the artist
His subject matter is American; hi