## FRIENDS of ART

The glowing coals of the current season of art exhibitions are simmering down to a slow sputtering flame that will presently be banked until the fall of the year when fresh fuel will again coax the gutted fire into new life. Several of the art galleries have already taken in their shingles and drawn down their shades; others are busy making plans for the coming season; the artists too are rummaging about, looking correspondingly over train schedules and road maps, and prayerfully hoping that some heaven-sent Mycaenus will come along and make it possible for them to revive their deflated spirits against another winter of hard work on empty stomachs.

### Art Patronage - A Fata Morgana

Only a sentimentalist can offer them any hope. They know and we know that most of the so-called patrons of art are too busy buying dead old masters to think of the living masters who will soon be dead, thanks to the systematic neglect of those who might have helped them live. It is a disgraceful business that makes the artist a slave of circumstance. Occasionally he is thrown a crumb from the fat dimpled hand of high society and he scurries off to consume it. This has been going on for so long that most of us have begun to think that it is a necessary part of the scheme of things. Like the political corruption that flows through society's bloodstream; like the vast slum areas that crouch in the shadows of our tenantless billion dollar skyscrapers.

### Why Artists Starve

True, that the P. W. A. P. has tried to remedy this, and that there are a few patrons and galleries with unselfish courage. However, it is only in theory that the artist is respected. In practice, he is the scapegoat of society and the object of ridicule, and the finer the artist, the more difficulty he has in raising his voice above the multitude. The inferior artists always manage to wheedle their way into the good graces of wealthy collectors. The first-rate artists, unable to bootlick their way into popularity, struggle against enormous odds and seldom live to enjoy the respect they deserve.

Daumier, the great French painter and satirist, would have starved to death if his friend, the painter, Corot, hadn't offered him bed and board. Today our museums and collectors shell out thousands of dollars for a small painting by Daumier and consider themselves lucky. The whole history of modern art is a continuous story of indescribable cruelty suffered by our best artists at the hands of society. It is high time that we did something to atone for our sins. The trouble is that those of us who wish to do something are powerless, and those who have the power, are wishless. If, however, we can't help with money, we can with appreciation and understanding. Moral support is worth a great deal to the artist, even though it cannot pay his rent or grocery bill.

### Art Appreciation - The Dead and The Living

I can hear you asking yourself — "How am I to distinguish between the artist who is worthy of support and the artist who isn't?" Your feelings must be your guide. You are sure to make mistakes. But if you don't, you're not human. The important thing to keep in mind is that your first duty is to the artists in our midst, not to the noble dead. The living, not the dead, need our encouragement. And, incidentally, the shortest road to the appreciation of art is to start with the contemporary artists and work back to the ancients. This is just as true of literature and music as it is of art. The person who can enjoy Dickens, but complains there is no modern writer worth reading; who is a Beethoven enthusiast, but finds Stravinski meaningless; who has visited every cathedral in Europe, but has no eyes for the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, — this person, I insist is a pedant.

To worship the entombed images of the past and ignore the warm body of the present is a misuse of the gift of life which was given us.

### The Meaning of These Broadcasts

It was because I felt this so strongly that I undertook this series of broadcasts to tell you about the artists who are struggling to say the things that so many of us feel but cannot express; the artists who are trying desperately to make sense of the riddle of modern life; who can help us enter a world that most of us would never discover by ourselves. Their job is not to help us escape from life but rather to enjoy it more completely. Of course there are thousands of artists who would say that that is exactly what they are trying to do, but I do not believe that they have all succeeded or can succeed. The creation of art is more than a wishfulfillment.

If you were to choose the chaff from the grain yourself you might be confused by so much that pretends to be art but is only artifice. I thought I might help you through this maze of meaning by placing my experience at your disposal. It was not my intention to convert you to my point of view. If you believe as I do because you have found my judgments stimulating, and because they stand up under the severest tests you can put them to, — then I have served my purpose. To accept my opinions without verifying them for yourself is valueless, even harmful to your own development as a critical individual. Naturally I do hope that I have struck a bell in you that rings clear, but I am merely a guide, not a drill-master and you are free to make your own laws, at the dictation of your own feelings. But more of this at another time.

### Thomas Craven - Fascist

For the moment, however, I want to talk to you about a book on Modern Art that is arousing a great deal of heated discussion. The book is by THOMAS CRAVEN, a vitriolic critic who believes there are only two ways to approach a subject: one is to demolish it with a stench bomb of malodorous denunciation; the other, to shower it with sugar kisses of uncritical praise. His judgements, as a result, form a variable emulsion of bilious and syrupy half-truths. But whether he is right or wrong, he is readable and stimulating, if not nourishing.

### Slaying the Jabberwocky

Thomas Craven is a mish-mash of many curious elements: he has the vituperative arbor and bigotry of a Holy-Roller; when he writes about his beloved Middle-West he is as maudlin as a beer-saturated Prussian officer; he has a talent for scurrilous criticism that outMenckens Mencken; the word "Bohemian" sends him into a froth of volcanic indignation; dubbed "the quacking indigents of Montmartre," that the flesional behind the long skirts of critical objectivity; he has a deep streak of the Puritan salvationist in him that is more vulgar and viciously nasty than the sensuality which he is forever condemning in others; he is the type of American, "Vice," "Crime," "Obscenity," "Iniquity," are some of his epithetical weapons; "To gamble, drink and ravin girls," Craven-Comstock tells us, "are Bohemian pastimes."

You will naturally wonder what all this has to do with Art. Strictly speaking, it is a book of gossip about artists. We learn that Matisse had an illegitimate daughter; how that "gifted wastrel," Modigliani, walked off with Picasso's mistress-model; and many other irrelevant though diverting details that are spiced with aphrodisiacal tidbits to make the pudding more salable. I hope I am not making the book sound too appetizing, for that was not my intention.

### Jew-Baiting?

I haven't quite made up my mind whether or not Craven is a Jew-Baiter. If he isn't, he sounds like one. What do

you make of this: Max Jacob is described as "an apostate Jew," Marc Chagall, "a Russian Jew," Alfred Stieglitz, "a Hoboken Jew," Chaim Soutine, "a Lithuanian Jew," and he called someone else a Polish Jew who wasn't a Jew at all and threatened to sue him for libel. If appearances mean anything, then this list looks very much like the calling-card of a Nazi on the make.

### Figs and Thistles

Yet despite this, there is a credit column to Craven's balance sheet. His uncompromising contempt for the hot-house fabrications that masquerade as modern art, is in part, justified. And, theoretically, he is on solid ground when he argues that "Art is a social phenomena, or it is nothing." When, however, he states that the "New Deal" in American Art is represented by such men as John Curry, Reginald Marsh and Thomas Benton, then I am convinced that Craven is fighting a just war with the wrong soldiers. What fascinates him in the painting of these American Sceners, is subject-matter primarily. As long as he can find a tornado or crapshooter in a picture, he seems to feel that it has social value. As subject-painters, Craven's favorites cannot hold a candle up to Georges Rouault, the Frenchman, who is slighted in passing, to John Marin, the American, who is contemnously described as "the arch offender against law and order," or to James Ensor, the Belgian, one of the really great figures in contemporary art whose name is not even mentioned.

To say, as Craven does, that Cubism and all other non-representational art forms speak a technical gibberish devoid of human or social content, may be encouraging to those who, like Craven, are constitutionally unable to understand a non-literary art. On the face of it, this statement is fallacious. There is no reason why the social scene should be the only aspect of humanity that offers fertile soil for the artist. After the thin sugar-coating of Craven's credo has melted, all that remains is the bitter pill of scurvy Nationalism. This is disguised with some very impressive, high-sounding phrases; but they are only hired applauders at an incredibly dull show.

### A Circus Horse

At no time does one have the feeling that Craven has ever stood before a picture which gave him an intense joy, or, at least, he gives no indication of it. He has made a business of criticism, but I do not believe that the job of actually experiencing works of art affords him any real pleasure. It is true that he writes very cleverly; but it is a kind of literary showmanship. He knows how to measure his audience and give it enough of what it wants plus enough of himself to make the finished product the talk of the town. Which it probably will be because he is playing into the hands of those who are not interested in art but in the insinuated smut which Craven interpolates with the skill of a practised smutician. It should be said in Craven's behalf, that he is one of the few critics who has never sold himself out to the vested interests of art; that his opinions, however inflammatory or stupid, are his own.

Craven, — to sum him up in a sentence, — is diabolically cunning, nasty as a spinster, camouflages his ignorance with juicy passages designed to excite one's erotic imagination, has the right point of view about the function of art but pushes it to ridiculous conclusions, and vitiates everything that is valid in his book by the feeling, communicated to this reader, that he wouldn't know a real work of art if he saw one.

This talk was broadcast over WOR Thursday, May 24th at 11:30 A.M. Quotations may be made in whole or in part by crediting E. M. Benson, Art Today, A Radio Review

A GUIDE TO THE ART EXHIBITIONS

GALLERIES

AN AMERICAN PLACE, 509 Madison Avenue
Arthur G. Dove, paintings old and new, - to end of May

ARGENT, 42 West 57th Street
group exhibition by members of the National Association
of Women Painters and Sculptors, - to September 1st

BRUMMER, 55 East 57th Street
classical sculpture, painting and other works of art

CONTEMPORA ART CIRCLE, 509 Madison Avenue
group show, - to end of June

CONTEMPORARY ARTS, 41 West 54th Street
Boston Society of Independent Artists, first exhibition
in New York, - May 14th to June 9th

EIGHTH STREET, 61 West 8th Street
second anniversary group show of painting and sculp-
ture by Burliuk, Datz, De Martini, Dirk, Foy, Goodelman
Levinson, Liberte, Weston, - to end of May

HARRIMAN, MARIE, 61 East 57th Street
summer show

JUMBO SHOP, 28 West 8th Street
mural by Guy Pene du Bois

KEPPEL, FREDERICK, 16 East 57th Street
classic modern etchings by Hayden, Whistler, Meryon,
Zorn and others

KLEEMANN-THORMAN, 38 East 57th Street
group show of paintings and water-colors by Albert
Sterner, Eugene Higgins, Umberto Romano, and others;
also exhibition of twenty-five new prints

KNOEDLER, 14 East 57th Street
racing pictures and prints, - to June 2nd

KRAUSHAAR, 680 Fifth Avenue
group summer show

MACBETH, 15 East 57th Street
review of the season

MONTROSS, 785 Fifth Avenue
sculptures of Miss Conway Sawyer, - to June 2nd

REHN, 683 Fifth Avenue
summer show

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No. 5

REINHARDT, 730 Fifth Avenue
paintings by old and modern masters

SULLIVAN, 111 East 62nd Street
paintings by Andre Bauchant

VALENTINE, 69 East 57th Street
group of contemporary French and American paintings

WEYHE, 794 Lexington Avenue
permanent exhibition of modern prints, sculpture and
painting

WILDENSTEIN, 19 East 64th Street
sculpture by Boris Lovet-Lorski, - to May 26th

MUSEUMS, SCHOOLS, SOCIETIES

ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE OF NEW YORK, 215 West
57th Street - annual exhibition

ART STUDENTS LEAGUE, 215 West 57th Street
annual exhibition of students' work

BROOKLYN MUSEUM, Eastern Parkway
modern paintings and sculpture in permanent collection

COOPER UNION ART SCHOOL, Union Square
annual exhibition of students' work and exhibition of
19th and 20th century paintings

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, Hanover, N. H.
Baker Library - murals by Jose Clemente Orozco

MUSEUM OF LIVING ART, New York University, 100
Washington Square East, - permanent exhibition of
progressive XXth century artists; open 9 a. m. to 10 p.m.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, 11 West 53rd Street
exhibition of entire Bliss Collection, - from May 16th
through summer; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 2 to 5 p.m.
Sundays

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, Fifth Avenue at
82nd Street - permanent exhibition of modern paintings,
sculpture, ceramics, prints; also exhibition of landscape
paintings; daily 10—5, Saturday 10—6, Sunday 1—6,
Monday and Friday 25c

NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH, 66 West 12th
Street, permanent murals by Orozco and Thomas Benton

NEW WORKERS SCHOOL, 51 West 14th Street,
frescoes by Diego Rivera

NEWARK MUSEUM, Newark, New Jersey
modern American oils, water-colors and sculpture in
permanent collection; also exhibition of Chinese and
Japanese prints; daily 12—5, Sunday 2—6, closed Mon-
days and holidays

ROERICH MUSEUM, 103rd Street and Riverside Drive
exhibition of student work

YMHA and YWHA, 625 High Street, Newark, N. J.
four group shows of modern European, American and
local artists

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## ASADATA DAFORA

Asadata Dafora, the author and director, (who also plays the role of the bridegroom) created this extraordinary opera of native African dances and music from authentic material he gathered in long years of travel, study and observation throughout Africa. He is a native of Sierra Leone, West Africa, and has devoted all of his life to an intense study of that continent's art, its customs and its folk lore, as exemplified in the emotional expressions of the dance, song, and acting.

He is himself a famous interpretive dancer, besides being one of the greatest living authorities on African art. For many years he was an instructor in the above subjects, and has travelled throughout Europe and America, as well as in his own land, teaching in the most eminent schools, and lecturing before learned societies and the general public.

During the last few years, he has formed a group of experienced African dancers and trained them for the purpose of presenting to the American public sketches, accompanied by dancing and song, depicting authentic African folk-lore.

### CAST:

<table><tr><td>Bridegroom</td><td>ASADATA DAFORA</td></tr><tr><td>Bride</td><td>MUSU ESAMI</td></tr><tr><td>Witch Doctor</td><td>ABDUL ASSEN</td></tr><tr><td>Witch Woman</td><td>MIRAMMU</td></tr><tr><td>Otobone</td><td>RIMARU SHIKERU</td></tr><tr><td>Agunda Dancer</td><td>MATTA</td></tr><tr><td>Chief Burah</td><td>TUGUESE</td></tr><tr><td>Eboe (Eccentric Dancer)</td><td>ALALA</td></tr></table>

Matrons, maidens, warriors, specialty dancers.

### Drummers:

ABRODUN SALAKO - UDO ENO - SAKOR JAR - EZEBRO EJIOHO

## Synopsis of "Kykunkor"

### I.

The Mendi Tribe maidens undergo training in the bush, (or finishing school) for six months or a year, to learn their domestic duties, and tribal rites and secrets known only to the women. They are beating rice under the direction of a cheperon, the OTOBONE, who is assisted by other matrons, when BOKARI, from the near-by Temini tribe, comes to pick a bride. The OTOBONE, over-joyed, hurries the maidens into the hut to prepare themselves, and the matrons clear the ground for the dancing. The maidens dance the BONDA, or maiden dance, and BOKARI selects his bride from among them. He then sings his love to his bride, and together they dance the SUSU, or engagement dance. BOKARI summons his followers and commands them to prepare a feast. They carry on their kill, a wild cow. For the bride's tribe, this is a bad omen. She and her attendants kneel and sing to drive out any evil spirits. The trousseau is then prepared. Meanwhile, PURAH, the groom's father, and chief of the Temini tribe, arrives with gifts. In his honor the FUGULE, or dance of welcome, is given, and then the AGUGA, a dance depicting the strength of man.

### INTERMISSION — 5 MINUTES.

### II.

The groom sings the wedding song, telling his father of his love, and the gifts the bride will bring the chief. The slave girls dance for the chief and are accented by him. The marriage service begins. The bride is called, and the OTOBONE sings of her love for the girl who is leaving her care. A song of thanks follows, and the groom dances. Then he and the bride dance the APOMBA or wedding dance. KYKUNKOR, the witch woman, appears, sent by a jealous rival. She casts a spell over the groom, and he falls stricken. A devil dancer is called, to cast out the evil spirit, and dances the OUMMOIE. She fails, and the Witch Doctor is then brought. With prayer and magic, he saves the groom from death.

### INTERMISSION — 15 MINUTES.

The festival starts in real earnest. There is first the AGUNDA, the dance of joy; then the EBOE, the jester, dances. THE BATTOO or dance of challenge, follows, then the war-dance, and then the JABAWA, or festival dance.

### SCENE: AFRICAN MAIDEN VILLAGE

<table><tr><td>Manager for "Kykunkor"</td><td>Anne Kennedy</td></tr><tr><td>Stage Manager</td><td>Emmanuel Berlant</td></tr><tr><td>Treasurer</td><td>Jack Greenwald</td></tr><tr><td>Press Representative</td><td>Martha Dreiblatt</td></tr></table>

Help on Costumes was given by Josephine Handelsman

# "KYKUNKOR"

Praise from the dance, drama and music critics is unanimous!

JOHN MARTIN, N. Y. TIMES: "Here by all means is one of the most exciting dance performances of the season . . . Those who have delved into the origins of the arts and have read tomes about primitive dancing in which the dancers worked themselves into a frenzy, will find here the exemplification in the flesh of just such dancing . . . The effect of watching such authentic frenzy is impossible to describe . . . It certainly has an abundance of attractions, not only for the dance enthusiast, but for the folklorist, the musical minded, the theatre lover, and even the casual entertainment seeker who is out for a thrill."

JOHN MASON BROWN, N. Y. POST: "But it is crowded to overflowing these nights, for on that makeshift platform is being offered a production which is one of the most unusual spectacles of the winter . . . its dancing is possessed of an amazing primitive energy, it comes to New York as an interesting novelty, and the mad beat of its tom-toms is in itself enough to recommend it to your attention."

THE NEW YORKER: "One of the most exciting stage presentations in town. You may have to sit on the top of a piano, but it's worth it."

W. J. HENDERSON, EVENING SUN: "The entire exhibition is novel . . . Furthermore, there is some extraordinary acting. Every actor in town ought to see Abdul Assen's impersonation of the witch doctor. Here is passionate emotion of immense power . . . This show is real news . . . On Wednesday night (May 23rd) the show will open again in the Chanin Auditorium, atop the Chanin Building in Forty-second street. And it will probably remain for a protracted period."

BURNS MANTLE DAILY NEWS: "You are going to hear a lot about "Kykunkor" in the next few weeks. And the longer you wait, the harder it is going to be to get in."

ROBERT GARLAND, WORLD-TELEGRAM: "One of the most exciting entertainments current in our town. And one of the most exotic. There is a sincerity, a frenzy and a sense of improvisation not to be ignored."

CHANIN AUDITORIUM

Chanin Building

122 EAST 42nd STREET

Nightly, Except Sundays, At 9.

Phone MUrray Hill 4-9839

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