The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-02-08
Art in indianapolis
BY ANTON SCHERRER
VXTILBUR PEAT promises to produce '

XXTILBUR PEAT promises to produce Walter pacb
w in person next Monday evening at the Heron
Art institute. Mr. Pach will discuss Modern Art"
AS rule, painters like to talk; Walter Pach more
SO than most. He learned to talk in the studio of
ROBERT Henri the most articulate painter America
ever hao He learned to paint there, too, in COM
pany with George Bellows, Rockwell Kent and our
own Clifton Wheeler. Before that he studied with
Leigh Hunt and William M. Chase
In 1877, with Mr. Wheeler as buddy Pach went
TO Paris saw Matisse painting felt blow between
tne eyes, After that, he surrendered to modern art
and looked up Critic Ellie Faure and Leo Stein
(Gertrude's brother) who, more than anybody else
at the time, seemed to know what it was all about
Back in New York he helped to organize the notor-
Armory Show of 1912 which set tongues wagging
1t was Americas introduction Matsse Picasso and
Cezanne.
Since then, Mr. Pach has blazed defense of
modern art by way OF books newspaper columns and
lectures, in the CT which he has dented the
regulations of Alma-Taoema, Blashfeld, Zuoaga
and Sargent.
LIS persuasiveness moved the Metropolitan Art
Museum to consign Emanuel Leutze's Wash
ington Crossing the Delaware" to the cellar. His
"Ananias, or the False Artist" 1929 is probably
his best known book; his scholarly translation of
Ellie Faures vast and authoritative History of Art
1890 is worth anybody's time. Between books Mr..
Pach continues to paint continues to sell his pic
lures. Manhattsn's Metropolitan owns four.
Walter Pachs enemies call him names; his
friends continue to cosher him with nicknames AS
youngster, he was known Rabbits" because he
raised them; sophomore, "Piney," because his
hair bristed.
George Bellows called him "Psysche" (short for
"encyclopaeda'O Pach's favorite barber nicknamed
him "Hawser," tribute to his uneompromising
travelled mustache.
Clifton Wheeler maintains strictly neutral posi-
ton, continues to call him "Pach," for short.
LMOST the only subject in which our interest
n never flags for so much as an instant is fash
ions in art. How excited we then TO learn
that the Heron Art people had acquired landscape
by Hobbema (circa 1660) apparently unmindful Of
the fact that it is fashion among intelectuals of
today to disparage Dutch paintings
Our wonder wdens with the discovery that it is
lovely picture that anybody can like without
struggle.
We have no quarrel with the intellectuals. AS
a matter of fact, we like them, but do wish they
would mend their manners. We don't like their
determined way of worshippng only at affairs un-
profaned by the vulgar, for instance Nor. do We
like their way of side-stepping the kind of beauty
the crowd goes in for.
The only way know of putting the intellectuals
into their proper place is to remind them that they
piping mad mid Victorian tune first expressed
by Charles Kingsley, snob, who said that ANY
goose sees glory in the Matterhorn." Perhaps: but
the glory that goose may well be better
worth seeing than more esoteric beauties.
And anyway. beauty is sacrament, which. like
all other sacraments. is not reserved for the elect
We hcre we don't have to mention the subject again.