The Coolidge examiner., 1938-01-27
Right, Left
and Center
Represented

Right, Left Right, left and
and Center center, in the or
Re1resented der named, Jose
Maria Sert, Diego
Rivera and Frank Brangwyn, were
the muralistS.
There was an inevitable clash,
and now, after five years, compro-
mise. Lenin's head, by the hard
boiled, hard-bitten Mexican Rivera,
blocked out in 1884, has been re-
placed by conventional mural by
the Spanish Sr. Sert, with the ortho-
doX theme of Americas continuing
development along the old lines. The
compromise appears in Sr. Sert's
restrained sepia monochrome, in
stead of his usual lavish outpouring
of gold and scarlet, verdant green
and ecstatic blue.
Sr Sert is the most millionairish
of all living painters. Here he pipes
down. If we didn't go left with Len
in, our new era isn't going to be
as gaudy as the last one.
1t will be a sober, industrious,
thrifty. monochrome age, with no
more high kicking and low think
ing. That seems to be what Sr.
Sert and the Rockefeller Center
people are saying.
When the big, booming, sixty-one-
year-old Spanish painter is going
strong, he makes Vernonese Just
wet wash with a touch of bluing.
He was a regular standby and
emergency painter for his friend,
King Alfonso. Con mucho gusto,"
he can swing the whole spectrum,
with bold, regal effects which are
the delight of kings.
He has done many magnificent
rooms in Europe, including the Ma
drid chapel of the duke Of Alba,
now Francois commercial envoy to
England, and Sir Phillip Sassoon's
resplendent bathrooms. His first
exhibition in this country was in
1924, when he received prolonged
critical salvos.
He was born in Barcelona of the
ancient Spanish gentry, and studied
in Paris in his
Sert Swings early youth.
Spectrum From the first
With Gusfo he developed bold
ness and exuber-
ance, both in color and technique.
Briffault's pre-war Europe-which
was to have gone on forever, but
didn' t-knew him for its very own.
His new monochrome fits an age
''sicklied DER with the pale cast of
thought"
In the current argument between
government and business, it is in
teresting to note that the temple of
business gets back to the Muses.
and the classical symbols Of work
and labor, after its brief leftward
deviation in 1888. In Washington,
such bold innovators as Henry Var
mum Poor and George Biddle still
state tortuous new themes in the
government murals. But there's not
so much splash in those Rockefeller
Center murals as there might have
been in, say, 1928.
YOUNG BURGESS MEREDITH,
at the age of twenty-eight, is
picked to run Actors Equity associa-
ton, for time at least. A star on
-. Broadway, coun-
Meredtth try squire, a Hol-
Was Tossed lywood success.
on Upgrade he has had more
ssing around
than a roller-coaster addict, with
the upgrade all in the depression
years.
In Lakewood, suburb Of Cleve-
land, his father was doctor and
his grandfather an evangelist. His
Uncle Joe, whom ne greatly ad-
mired, was in vaudeville.
He washed dishes and tended fur
naces during one sad and lonely
year at Amherst, ran a haberdash-
cry shop with his brother in Cleve-
land, went bankrupt, was a reporter
on the Stamford Advocate, until
they caught him at it, sold roofing,
vacuum cleaners and cosmetics,
worked in Macy's department store,
sang in church choirs for "a Sun
day, lived week on breakfast food
samples, and was for time one of
the migrant army of jobless youth.
The depression brought him luck.
In 1929, he got a letter of introduc-
tion to Eva le Gallienne and a pay
less job as an apprentice actor His
climb was slow
Depression He first attained
Was Really high visibility in
Lady Luck She Loves Me
Not" in 1888. He
cinched his gains in his three Max
well Anderson plays, 'Winterset,"
High Tor" and Star Wagon"
His estate is near that of Mr.. An
derson in Rockland county, New
York, where he is very busy with
house-building, dogs, and books. He
has an eager, avid mind. buzzing
with new ideas.
He is a faithful intellectual under