The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-12-13
Continued from Last IsSme.)
XXXIV.
Paven Jerdanovitch

THIS book is supposed to deal with
writer's only; but it so happens
that / have been privileged for many
years to know great painter, one
whose revolutionary impulse may re-
make American art, and it seems to
me the reader will welcome brief
chapter about such a man.
Pavel Jerdanovitch is his name,
and you will not need to ask the land
of his nativity. He spent many years
among the cannibals of the South Sea
Islands, from which he derives his
directness of approach to the goal Of
his desires. Now he lives in Holly
wood, defending himself as best he
can against the cannibals of CONNER
cialism. He began his painting only
a few years ago, and I was present
at the birth of his impulse, and saw
his first masterpiece in becoming.
Now his fame is international-his
work has been exhibited in Chicago
and New York, and has won the plau-
dts of eminent critics in Paris.
The most conspicuous aspect of
this masters work is daring in the
use of color. 1t was John Ruskin
who first taught me to enjoy. color
in painting; l had been brought up
on the pastel shades of the decadents,
but Ruskin pointed out to me that
,4,,oz.o, o~J oIoroo,,+oJ ro1,Ie 1O1yo tho
brilliant primary colors, of which ma
ture herself has been so lavish. The
most famous of Pavel Jerdanovitch's
pictures is called aspiration" and
shows a woman of his cannibal tribes
the new and modernized cannibals
who apparently have washtubs and
wear cotton prints. The woman her.
self is stout, and colored like choco-
late caramels; she wears a red tur-
ban with large black spots, and yell
low dress with what appear to be
blue snails on it. She has what is
known in the technicalities of high
art as "a Gaugin eye; that is to say,
a front face eye set in a profile,
which is rather startling until you
have accustomed yourself to the con-
ventions of the new art. She has a
blue tub full of white soap-suds, and
all about her is vivid green grass,
and mauve mountains crowned by a
supernally blue sky. In front of the
woman sits a large red bird having
green wings with white stripes and
yellow tail. From clothes line
there wave two black socks; also a
merry shirt, pink on one side and
blue on the other-the kind they are
making now for sale to the cannibal
| trade. Behind the washerwoman is
her house, which is white, with red
chimney and yellow roof, and
alongside it stands a cosmos tree with
great white leaves. Close behind the
woman stands a cerise-colored milk
| ing-stool, and on it rests her purse; q
dark shadowy hand reaches out fo1
| it, but the woman does not notice, be-
cause her Gaugin eye is cast up tc
the bright colored bird in front al
her.
That is why the picture is called
"Aspiration," and you cannot really
understand it unless you have beer
privileged, as | have been, to hear
| the master himself expound it. The
bird is called the ''cosmic rooster,
and is symbol of suppressed de-
sres; it sits upon cross, which is
of course another symbol, and at the
other end of the clothes line is the
cosmos flower with white leaves, sig
nifying immortality. The entire
painting affords marvellous illus
tration Of the law of dynamic sym
metry; everything directs the eye Of
| the beholder towards the central sym