The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-12-13

Dol, so that at first we are like the
washerwoman, and fail to notice the
hand of greed reaching for her purse.
1t is only after study and thought
that we discover another stroke of
genius: the only objects in the pic
ture which cast shadow are those
which are intended to have mystical
significance.
In short, this masterpiece of paint
ing is a bit of hilarious absurdity,
slapped onto canvas by my friend
Paul Jordan Smith, who besides being
novelist and scholar, is satirist
and wag. He sat himself down be-
fore an easel, without knowing any
more about painting than | do, and
proceeded to caricature the rubbish
which for the past fifteen or twenty
years has been palmed off on the
public as ''futurist" and primitive"
art. Having finished his labors, he
hung the result on his study wall,
and said nothing; and presently his
friends began to stare and ask ques-
tions. Paul Jordan, in his spirit of
waggery, began to take it seriously;
he evolved his "spiel" about the "cos-
mic rooster" and the claw of dynamic
symmetry" and he found that, in the
parlance of the advertising experts,
it went over
SO then he decided to become an
international figure, and invented the
romantic "Pavel Jerdanovitch," with
the Russian birth and the life among
the cannibals. He had photographs
of himself taken, dark and ferocious
Of aspect, and wild of eye. He paint
ed three additional horrors-one called
"Exaltation," portraying the costa
sizes of a native damsel who summons
up the courage to defy the tribal
taboo and eat the sacred banana; an
other called Alteration" portraying
a savage worshipping a piebald boa
constructor in Alaska, and third
called illumination" because it is
made up almost entirely of eyes.
'Exaltation" was Grated and shipped
to New York, where it was shown at
the Independent Exhibit, in the Wal
dorf -Astoria Hotel, March, 1925, and
solemnly discussed by the critics, and
made the subject of an elaborate ar
! ticle in a Paris art journal, "Revue
du Vrai ct du Beau" September 10,
1925, page Is. The picture of the
Washerwoman and the cosmic rooster
was shown at the "No-Jury Exhibit"
at Marshall Fields, in Chicago, Janu-
ary-February, 1926; and in the cart
World" of Tuesday, January &c, you
will find a feature article, proclaim
ing this as the most brilliant exhibit
of many moons. Out of the 480 pic
lures in the said brilliant exhibit, the
great art journal selected for repro
duction just one, and what do you
think it was? Aspiration" by Pavel
Jerdanovitch! The cosmic rooster!
1 So once more the fame of the great
cannibal painter reached Europe; he
was appraised and celebrated in lies
Artistes D'Aujourd'hui," and in LA
Revue Moderne," June 80, 1927, pages
10 and 10. This most exalted of art
magazines reproduces the cosmic
rooster, and also the Demonstration
in Alaska, and it says among lot
of assorted praise: Constructed on
large scale, in masses, with care
to mark the contrasts rather than the
exact perspective, the paintings of
Jerdanovitch have a decorative char
acter which is very interesting, and
lvhic happroaches them sometimes to
the paintings of Cezanne in the new
manner. Moreover the post-impres-
sionists are among the spiritual mas
ters of our painter, notably Gaugin,"
etc.
Magazines pass, but books endure;
and "our painter" has achieved inn
mortality in sumptuous volume
! lack words to tell how elegant it is,
but many painters would sell one Of
their Gaugin eyes to be included in it.
The title is: "L'Art Contemporain;
! Livre Dor: Avec Une Preface de M.