CITY
STATE
ZIP

Georgia O'Keeffe
Lake George
N.Y.

P.O. B. 201
Please deliver.

By way of a "bonne bouche" to
close the season, the gallery known
as the American Place, directed by
Alfred Stieglitz, puts on exhibition a
selected group of paintings by the
artists who occupied the galleries
during the winter; John Marin,
Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe,
Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley.

Each artist is represented by im-
portant works and they have been
given plenty of space and careful
hanging, so that the American Place
now looks as well as it possibly can
look. As there is continually a new
public to be instructed about the tra-
ditions of the American Place, this
is as good an opportunity as may be
offered in which to study the range
of the gallery. By Mr. Marin there
is a strongly visioned marine, a rug-
ged landscape from the Southwest
and a stylized impression of Indian
life; by Mr. Demuth there is an ele-
gant reaction to the machine age; by
Miss O'Keeffe there is the horse-
skull of the plains, just as elegant in
her picture as the clean factories of
Mr. Demuth; and by Mr. Hartley a
landscape and Mr. Dove a sea-ab-
straction, both of great charm.

Georgia O'Heghe
Hotel Skelton

Desnight line -
449 St

New York

2020

Please deliver

[Sept. 28/32]

S. MacDonald Wright Exhibition - An American Place

An American Culture, like every historical culture must have the acculturative traits of the cultures it has contacted. Differences in cultures are produced by the patterns the qualitative racial temperament assembles. Every culture conceives reality as bipartite - as phenomena and noumena. To me reality exists within - hence my lack of interest in the topical. Art is both a method of expressing the fundamental desiderata of all mankind and of avoiding the immediacies of transient "idle excitements". Subject matter is valuable only as a symbol of the content - the content is the author - and the author can only express one thing - himself. In these works the "esthetic apperception", so necessary to the construction of the modernist intellectualism has given first place to direct absorption in subject matter. Finding myself divested of theories in a theoretical era, it is with a certain tentative humility that I submit the works to the public.

(Signed) S. MacDonald Wright

List of Paintings

1. Zdrusht and his Fravashi

2. Lao Tzu and Yin Hi

3. Siddhartha and Nanda
   From a series of 12 "Ancient Heroes"

4. Night

5. Fisherman

6. Cocked Dice

7. Portrait of S.M.W.

8. Korai Yaki still-life

9. Japanese Fruit

10. Young Japan - Frank Tuttle Collection.

11. Young China - S.S. Van Dine

12. Yin - Stringfield Collection

13. Three Women - Riza Royce

Georgia O'Keeffe
Lake Erie
m.L.

P.O.B.
201

GRAND CEN. ANNEX NY
SEP 23 1932 3-30PM.

JOHN MARIN AND THE REAL AMERICA

WHEN pigment has the luminosity of inner spiritual birth, when bright rivulets of color evidence the delight in vision that coursed through the painter's body, then painting becomes something more than self-indulgence, flattery or commerce. This occurred to me as I looked with wonder on the 1931-1932 years' work of John Marin shown beginning this week, and into December, in An American Place. With wonder, because I saw a medium, oil paint, handled with the same freshness and triumphant imagination as Marin had handled water color. And as there is no one in the known history of visual record who has made such an orchestral medium of water color as John Marin, so it seems to me there is none who in the oil medium has so fluidly, so joyously related the outpouring of inner impulse with the worldly shapes in which that impulse finds its reality.

Looking on these works the essential conflict was il-
lumined for me anew, that divides what is called the
academician from the insurgent, living creative force.

The academician borrows his terms, his logic, from any
past which will contribute to easily interpreted recogni-
tion. His skill is inscribed as a decoration upon his theme.
He yields to innovation with a conscious deference to the
slow dispersion of new vision.

The creator, and in this sense I think of Marin, joys in
his visions and in his medium as the young lover joys in
love, his accent has the awkwardness, the strangeness in the
proportion, of true beauty, for he is neither afraid of direct
outpouring of the heart nor deferential to the social con-
vention to which the heart is always an unwelcome in-
truder. So when I looked on the water colors and drawings
that had the mysticity—which means the intense factual
realisation—of the greatest Chinese painting; and on the
oil paintings which in the midst of their fiery, nervous rest-
lessness and fluidity had the inner stability and agelessness
of Egyptian sculpture, it seemed that Marin was leaping as
far in advance of oil painters of the static tradition as he
had outdistanced and created a new world for, water color-
ists. He seemed to be literally creating and recreating the
oil painting mode of utterance, imparting to it a new ur-
gence of inner movement, related in the grand sense to
those movements which great poets and musicians have
always known and absorbed, the movements of tides, of
suns, of winds, and of the human spirit.

It happens that the work is shown in a month and year
when we are witnesses to a political shame that is the froth
on the ferment of national corruption. So deep is this cor-
ruption and so all-embracing, that it has extended from the
businessmen rulers of the land to their puppets who go
through the weary gestures of soliciting the popular and
uninformed suffrage. The corruption that is manifest in
what is called business, politics, and social life, casts its
shadow upon the realm of the arts. The mechanics of the
sale, touting and—incidentally—the manufacture of what

passes current for painting and other human utterance in
this realm, are all too familiar. So that the pure, the exalted
and the true are prejudiced in their very being amid a
society of such human beings as we know.

All the more stirring is the contrast with this world—
and visually as well as spiritually things live by contrast—of
the light-drenched, shimmering and intoxicating visions
which Marin out of the purity of his spirit and the mastery
of his hands has realised. He and his work are a fruit of
the most creative criticism of which I have any knowledge
in our time, the criticism of Alfred Stieglitz, which, in a
succession of small-room battlegrounds has kept alive, fos-
tered, stimulated, championed and defended from the de-
graded tastes of current society and the slimy assaults of
commercialism, such a spirit as John Marin. It is this spirit
which is the heir to the real America, the work and the
bequest to the world of the few: of Emerson, Lincoln,
Thoreau, Poe, John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison,
Ralph Earle, Walt Whitman, Arthur Dove, Emily Dickin-
son, Herman Melville, and others whose names are ever
fresh in the company of American seers, poets and living
spirits.

Herbert J. Seligmann

3 November 1932

"IT MUST BE SAID"
NUMBER ONE
AN AMERICAN PLACE

The questions on this blank are intended to indicate your interests and attitudes. It is not an intelligence test, nor are there any right or wrong answers.

In front of each question you will find: "Yes No ?"

If your answer is "Yes," draw a circle around the "Yes." If your answer is "No," draw a circle around the "No." If you are entirely unable to answer either "Yes" or "No" to the question, then draw a circle around the question mark.

1. Yes No ? Does it make you uncomfortable to be "different" or unconventional?

2. Yes No ? Do you day-dream frequently?

3. Yes No ? Do you usually work things out for yourself rather than get someone to show you?

4. Yes No ? Have you ever crossed the street to avoid meeting some person?

5. Yes No ? Can you stand criticism without feeling hurt?

6. Yes No ? Do you ever give money to beggars?

7. Yes No ? Do you prefer to associate with people who are younger than yourself?

8. Yes No ? Do you often feel just miserable?

9. Yes No ? Do you dislike finding your way about in strange places?

10. Yes No ? Are you easily discouraged when the opinions of others differ from your own?

11. Yes No ? Do you try to get your own way even if you have to fight for it?

12. Yes No ? Do you blush very often?

13. Yes No ? Do athletics interest you more than intellectual affairs?

14. Yes No ? Do you consider yourself a rather nervous person?

15. Yes No ? Do you usually object when a person steps in front of you in a line of people?

16. Yes No ? Have you ever tried to argue or bluff your way past a guard or doorman?

17. Yes No ? Are you much affected by the praise or blame of many people?

18. Yes No ? Are you touchy on various subjects?

19. Yes No ? Do you frequently argue over prices with tradesmen or junkmen?

20. Yes No ? Do you feel self-conscious in the presence of superiors in the academic or business world?

21. Yes No ? Do ideas often run through your head so that you cannot sleep?

22. Yes No ? Are you slow in making decisions?

23. Yes No ? Do you think you could become so absorbed in creative work that you would notice a lack of intimate friends?

24. Yes No ? Are you troubled with shyness?

25. Yes No ? Are you inclined to study the motives of other people carefully?

26. Yes No ? Do you frequently feel grouchy?

27. Yes No ? Do your interests change rapidly?

28. Yes No ? Are you very talkative at social gatherings?

29. Yes No ? Do you ever heckle or question a public speaker?

30. Yes No ? Do you very much mind taking back articles you have purchased at stores?

31. Yes No ? Do you see more fun or humor in things when you are in a group than when alone?

32. Yes No ? Do you prefer travelling with someone who will make all the necessary arrangements to the adventure of travelling alone?

33. Yes No ? Would you rather work for yourself than carry out the program of a superior whom you respect?

34. Yes No ? Can you usually express yourself better in speech than in writing?

35. Yes No ? Would you dislike any work which might take you into isolation for a few years, such as forest ranging, etc.?

36. Yes No ? Have you ever solicited funds for a cause in which you were interested?

37. Yes No ? Do you usually try to avoid dictatorial or "bossy" people?

38. Yes No ? Do you find conversation more helpful in formulating your ideas than reading?

39. Yes No ? Do you worry too long over humiliating experiences?

40. Yes No ? Have you ever organized any clubs, teams, or other groups on your own initiative?

41. Yes No ? If you see an accident do you quickly take an active part in giving aid?

42. Yes No ? Do you get stage fright?

43. Yes No ? Do you like to bear responsibilities alone?

44. Yes No ? Have books been more entertaining to you than companions?

45. Yes No ? Have you ever had spells of dizziness?

46. Yes No ? Do jeers humiliate you even when you know you are right?

47. Yes No ? Do you want someone to be with you when you receive bad news?

48. Yes No ? Does it bother you to have people watch you at work even when you do it well?

49. Yes No ? Do you often experience periods of loneliness?

50. Yes No ? Do you usually try to avoid arguments?

51. Yes No ? Are your feelings easily hurt?

52. Yes No ? Do you usually prefer to do your own planning alone rather than with others?

53. Yes No ? Do you find that telling others of your own personal good news is the greatest part of the enjoyment of it?

54. Yes No ? Do you often feel lonesome when you are with other people?

55. Yes No ? Are you thrifty and careful about making loans?

56. Yes No ? Are you careful not to say things to hurt other people's feelings?

57. Yes No ? Are you easily moved to tears?

58. Yes No ? Do you ever complain to the waiter when you are served inferior or poorly prepared food?

59. Yes No ? Do you find it difficult to speak in public?

60. Yes No ? Do you ever rewrite your letters before mailing them?

61. Yes No ? Do you usually enjoy spending an evening alone?

62. Yes No ? Do you make new friends easily?

63. Yes No ? If you are dining out do you prefer to have someone else order dinner for you?

64. Yes No ? Do you usually feel a great deal of hesitancy over borrowing an article from an acquaintance?

65. Yes No ? Are you greatly embarrassed if you have greeted a stranger whom you have mistaken for an acquaintance?

66. Yes No ? Do you find it difficult to get rid of a salesman?

67. Yes No ? Do people ever come to you for advice?

68. Yes No ? Do you usually ignore the feelings of others when accomplishing some end which is important to you?

69. Yes No ? Do you often find that you cannot make up your mind until the time for action has passed?

70. Yes No ? Do you especially like to have attention from acquaintances when you are ill?

71. Yes No ? Do you experience many pleasant or unpleasant moods?

72. Yes No ? Are you troubled with feelings of inferiority?

73. Yes No ? Does some particularly useless thought keep coming into your mind to bother you?

74. Yes No ? Do you ever upbraid a workman who fails to have your work done on time?

75. Yes No ? Are you able to play your best in a game or contest against an opponent who is greatly superior to you?

76. Yes No ? Have you frequently appeared as a lecturer or entertainer before groups of people?

77. Yes No ? Are people sometimes successful in taking advantage of you?

78. Yes No ? When you are in low spirits do you try to find someone to cheer you up?

79. Yes No ? Can you usually understand a problem better by studying it out alone than by discussing it with others?

80. Yes No ? Do you lack self-confidence?

81. Yes No ? Does admiration gratify you more than achievement?

82. Yes No ? Are you willing to take a chance alone in a situation of doubtful outcome?

83. Yes No ? Does your ambition need occasional stimulation through contact with successful people?

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>84.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you usually avoid asking advice?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>85.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you consider the observance of social customs and manners an essential aspect of life?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>86.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>If you are spending an evening in the company of other people do you usually let someone else decide upon the entertainment?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>87.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you take the responsibility for introducing people at a party?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>88.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>If you came late to a meeting would you rather stand than take a front seat?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>89.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you like to get many views from others before making an important decision?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>90.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you try to treat a domineering person the same as he treats you?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>91.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Does your mind often wander so badly that you lose track of what you are doing?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>92.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you ever argue a point with an older person whom you respect?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>93.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you have difficulty in making up your mind for yourself?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>94.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you ever take the lead to enliven a dull party?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>95.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Would you "have it out" with a person who spread untrue rumors about you?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>96.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>At a reception or tea do you feel reluctant to meet the most important person present?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>97.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you find that people are more stimulating to you than anything else?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>98.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you prefer a play to a dance?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>99.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you tend to be radical in your political, religious, or social beliefs?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>100.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you prefer to be alone at times of emotional stress?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>101.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you usually prefer to work with others?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>102.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you usually work better when you are praised?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>103.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you have difficulty in starting a conversation with a stranger?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>104.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do your feelings alternate between happiness and sadness without apparent reason?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>105.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Are you systematic in caring for your personal property?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>106.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you worry over possible misfortunes?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>107.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you usually prefer to keep your feelings to yourself?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>108.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Can you stick to a tiresome task for a long time without someone prodding or encouraging you?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>109.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you get as many ideas at the time of reading a book as you do from a discussion of it afterward?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>110.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you usually face your troubles alone without seeking help?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>111.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Have you been the recognized leader (president, captain, chairman) of a group within the last five years?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>112.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you prefer making hurried decisions alone?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>113.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>If you were hiking with a group of people, where none of you knew the way, would you probably let someone else take the full responsibility for guiding the party?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>114.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Are you troubled with the idea that people on the street are watching you?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>115.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Are you often in a state of excitement?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>116.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Are you considered to be critical of other people?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>117.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you usually try to take added responsibilities on yourself?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>118.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you keep in the background at social functions?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>119.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you greatly dislike being told how you should do things?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>120.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you feel that marriage is essential to your present or future happiness?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>121.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Do you like to be with people a great deal?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>122.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Can you be optimistic when others about you are greatly depressed?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>123.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Does discipline make you discontented?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>124.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Are you usually considered to be indifferent to the opposite sex?</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>125.</td>
    <td>Yes</td>
    <td>No</td>
    <td>?</td>
    <td>Would you feel very self-conscious if you had to volunteer an idea to start a discussion among a group of people?</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Georgia O'Keefe
Lake George
M.Y.

P.O.B.
201

Georgia O'Keeffe
Lake George
M.L.

P.O.B.
201

AND CENT. ANNEX
NOV 26
10-PM
1932 & V

## Uptown Market
Opened to Sell
Work of Artists

Paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints and sculpture by more than two hundred artists of recognized talent, who are feeling the stress of the present crisis, are now on exhibition for sale in an Indoor Art Market at 134 East 74th Street. The project has been sponsored and subsidized by Mr. and Mrs. Lucien Tyng of 620 Park Avenue, and will be under the direction of a committee of forty-nine prominent art collectors, who are, according to the announcement "interested in easing the unfortunate situation of artists of unquestioned reputation whose market has been sharply curtailed in the past few years, and who have responded gratefully to this opportunity of finding a clientele."

Three large rooms at the Seventy-fourth Street address are aside for the market, which will be open daily from ten in the morning until ten at night.

The committee for the Indoor Art Market includes among its many prominent members: Mrs. Arthur Aldis, Chester Aldrich, Erwin S. Barrie, Mrs. Linzee Blagden, Mrs. Karl Bitter, Rachel Crothers, Frank Crowninshield, Mrs. W. B. Force, Mr. and Mrs. Averill Harriman, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Lewisohn, Mrs. Audrey MacMahon, Marie Sterner, Dr. and Mrs. Benjamin Watson and Mrs. Egerton Winthrop.

## Many Speakers at
Brown University
Art Conference

Frank Lloyd Wright, the Wisconsin architect, speaking last week at the Institute of Art at Brown University, ridiculed Yale University for its "foolish" perpetuation of modern architecture, according to the report appearing in the New York Times.

A great civilization was known by what it left behind, he added, and if America were destroyed as it stands today, the archaeologists of the future would dig into the ruins and find only, from bathrooms, that "we were a sanitary people" who erected masses of masonry, the component parts of which had no relation one to the other. He criticized modern education as being productive of sterility and not culture.

The Institute of Art held a three-day conference last week in the Little Theatre of Faunce House at Brown, Dr. A. D. Mead, vice-president of the university, opening the first session. In addition to Mr. Wright, Thomas H. Benton, the mural painter, spoke on "Mural Painting in Contemporary Art."

The speakers and their subjects were Professor Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., of Princeton University, "The Art of Giving Art Collections"; Dean Everett V. Meeks of the Yale School of Fine Arts, "The Fine Arts in Education," and Professor Kenneth J. Conant of Harvard University, "The Contribution of Archaeology to Art."

## BRUSSELS PLANS
1935 EXHIBITION

Preparations are now under way for a large exhibition to be held in Brussels in 1935. The scope of the show is outlined in an interesting article in the Paris Mail, which we reprint in part below.

Mr. Paul Lambotte, Belgian Commissioner for Fine Arts, announces that "One section will be devoted to five centuries of Brussels art 1400-1900. We shall endeavor to bring together the principal works by painters and artists of this district, Flemish art properly so-called having already been displayed in Antwerp."

Roger van der Weyden, who died in Brussels in 1464, will be very well represented as well as van der Goes and Gossum van der Weyden. Among the artists whose works will be shown are the unknown master who painted the "Legend of Sainte Barbe," the Master of Dillingham Abbey, van Orley, Pieter Breughel the elder and other Breughels, and several XVIIth century painters, including Teniers, van Tilborg, Jacques van Arthois, van Craesbeek, Pierre Meert and others who, though not all born in Brussels, lived and died there, and can be claimed as belonging to the Brussels school.

The exhibition will also provide us with a complete history of Brussels tapestry.

## The Howard Young
Galleries Re-open
In New Quarters

The Howard Young Galleries, forced to vacate their former quarters on Fifth Avenue opposite the Cathedral by the advancing wrecking crews of Rockefeller Center, take up residence in the Cammeyer Building over the way and a bit to the north. This makes the second art opening of the week, what with the inauguration of the new Wildenstein Galleries. Instead of moving into the up-town territory that the Wildenstein group have sanctioned by their handsome new home in Sixty-fourth Street, Mr. Young clings to the more mid-town territory that he has made his own these past years. His new galleries are in many ways more effectively arranged than the old rooms, although the actual floor space is pretty much the same. A handsome entrance hall with a semblance of stone-facing and heavy woodwork makes a suitable setting for the old Italian masters that hang there as part of the inaugural display. Under the lights the various panels glow with the full force of their care-

(Continued on page 10)

## TAFT MUSEUM TO
OPEN NOVEMBER 29

CINCINNATI.—The President and Board of Trustees of The Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts announce the opening of the Taft Museum on Tuesday, November 29. Because of the Institute's large membership, plans for the opening have been considered with the object of assuring a comfortable inspection of the museum. Tuesday evening, November 29, is reserved for the preview by Trustees of The Institute and affiliated Boards only.

Wednesday, November 30, and during the following week, the museum will be open from ten o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock in the evening for members of The Institute, and December 8 is reserved for members of The Museum Association.

On Friday, December 9, the museum will be open free to the public; week days from ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon, and Sundays from one o'clock until six o'clock in the afternoon.

The Board of Trustees of The Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts is comprised of the following officers: William Cooper Procter, President; George H. Warrington, Vice President; Louis T. More, Vice President; Maurice J. Freiberg, Treasurer, and Lucien Wulsin, Secretary.

# Whitney Museum Opens Its First Biennial Show

## Varying Trends in American Contemporary Art Finely Represented in Large Display Which Opened This Week.

By RALPH FLINT

The Whitney Museum of American Art, with its first biennial exhibition of contemporary painting in oil, serves notice of an increasingly forceful and helpful policy of patronage and showmanship. More than one hundred and fifty painters have been invited to attend this first biennial showing with canvases of their own selection, and the results of this new policy of self-determination are so satisfactory as to make such institutions as juries of selection practically obsolete. While the choice of painters selected is distinctly colored by the down-town affiliations of the Whitney group, it is all the same a pretty satisfactory foregathering of the men and women who represent the more virile and progressive side of contemporary painting. I can only think of one major exception to the list of invités, that of John Marin, which may be excused on the grounds that to the world at large he is still primarily a water colorist, although at

the present moment he is showing his second major group of oils to a somewhat astonished and jubilant public.

The entire museum has been re-hung, even to the sculpture room, and the general level of excellence found in the exhibition is something to be grateful for. Most of our younger artists are painting so well today that one wonders what will be the outcome of this very considerable advance in the fine arts in America. The most noticeable thing about the Whitney show is the fact that most every phase of pictorial expression is covered, from the neoprimitive to the surrealiste, and that in between there is only a trace or two of what today has come to be known as academic painting. Very few of the painters who will expose at the current Winter Academy are present; so that such canvases as Edward W. Redfield's large valley scene and Gari Melchers' "Nude" come as something of a surprise in this energetically-minded company. Literal representation of this type has practically passed out of the picture, except for those few who still cling to the old order. Even representation such as Luigi Lucioni's, literal as it is, has something of an up-to-date shine and sparkle to it. Surely we have come into a new heritage, but new no longer to those who have accepted it and are moving on with the new currents that keep the world of art in such healthy state of flux.

While one may easily rejoice at the general level of excellence displayed in this invigorating show, it is not quite so simple when it comes to picking out the winners, those few originals whose weight will carry them on down the years and whose work will always be hailed as epochal and beyond compare. Second and third string artists we have in abundance, perhaps more so than in any other country at present, but with world beaters we are not so

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copiously endowed as one might wish. With Marin not here, I have to report that I do not find any single work sufficiently outstanding to warrant placing by itself at the top of the list.

I feel that Georgia O'Keeffe's ultra simple composition "Farm House Window and Door" comes near being the most distinguished piece of design in the exhibition, and surely Florine Stettheimer's enchanting "Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue" is the most original canvas on hand. Karl Knaths' "Bar-room" abstraction is a fine piece of thoughtful painting that readily registers in mixed company, as well as Arthur Dove's handsome, and for him unusually realistic, "Red Barge." Close beside these I should place Charles Sheeler's strikingly laid-out pattern, "Americana"; Bernard Karfiol's "Nude"; Charles Demuth's meticulously lined "Buildings"; John Carroll's striking, macabre "Figure"; Harold Weston's "The Purple Hat"; Alexander Brook's distinguished landscape, "Stony Pastures" and Walt Kuhn's "Top Man" that aggressively meets you as you mount the outer stairs.

Close behind this initial group in the matter of effective design or treatment comes work by a number of other well established painters. These include Morris Kantor, Georgina Klitgaard, Louis Bouche, Edward Hopper, Gerritt Hondius, Charles Rosen, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Louis Eilsheimus, Jozef Bakos, Sidney Laufman, Ward Lockwood, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Leon Kroll, Marguerite Zorach, Max Weber, Ben Shahn, Stephen Etnier, Lucille Blanche and Henry McFee. Further to be mentioned in this honor roll are works by Varnum Poor (who seems to be painting better and better); a landscape of Emil Ganso; a canvas by Marjorie Phillips, still

charmingly reflecting the Bonnard tradition; a handsome abstract figuration of a tree by Willard Nash of Santa Fe, and a portrait by Charles Hopkinson, interesting, though not quite as successful as one might wish.

Those that come under the surrealiste heading make quite a display by themselves, with such painters as Peter Blume, Stuart Davis, Karl Free, John Graham, David Burrel, Saul Schary, Theodore Roszak, Herman Trunk, Nathaniel Dirk, Arnold Wiltz and Benjamin Kopman on hand. The Blume invention is worked out with his customary skill and clarity, and the Kopman commentary on "The Lion" is also a commanding performance of its kind. Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, seldom seen in New York, sends a curious canvas depicting a semi-nude figure apparently in the last stages of something or other, worked out with an interesting technique but presenting a pictorial problem that is surely going to have the crowds gaping at it in bewilderment and awe. But I suspect Miss Stettheimer's extravaganza of Fifth Avenue in nuptial mood will have the most enthusiastic gallery, for she has crowded her canvas with such a variety of incident, symbolic and otherwise, that it is something of a seven days' wonder. This chef d'oeuvre sits in the same pink niche where her cinematic ode to the late lamented Mayor Hung last spring, which so-tospeak, gives her two legs up on this select situation—to use a phrase from the sporting world. Should she make it again, Mrs. Force could deed it over to her as her own special corner in perpetuity. If no one else snaps up this delightful apotheosis of a wedding à la mode—she has included all the dressmakers, caterers, jewelers, and what-not that go to furbishing one of our major matrimonial spectacles—the canvas should be purchased by the Fifth Avenue Association as a permanent trophy for its club rooms. I am told by those who are supposed to be in the know that the various purchase awards are already drawn though not as yet delivered, owing to the new ruling in effect at these Whitney gatherings. The various visitors may thus have the fun of making out their own lists of winners. The twenty thousand dollars to be spent on acquiring a select group of entries for the permanent collection of the museum should keep Eighth Street in a fine frenzy right up to the end of the show.

Page Cooper lured us into reading a
murder yarn, "Before the Fact," by
removing the paper jacket and then
demanding gullefully: "Do you think
the author, Francis Iles, is a man or a
woman?" . . . We haven't a
notion; the authors of "Sex in the
Arts" say there is very little sex in
modern art; and certainly there is none
whatever in fiction "thrillers."
We are afraid to read thrillers because
Vincent Starrett says he began by
reading them and ended by writing
them; and he likes them; it would be
much worse for us, because we don't.

The ending of Marguerite Steen's
sincere and touching novel, "The Vise
and the Foolish Virgins," was taken as
factual by reviewers—including this
one—but now it is suggested that it
may have been meant quite otherwise,
as a vision. . . . Which on second
thought seems highly plausible, and
artistically right. . . .

Carl Sandburg's "Mary Lincoln" contains some quite new Lincoln material, chiefly from letters. . . . So does the "Richard Wagner" of Count Guy de Pourtales. . . . In his next novel, "Felix," R. W. Postgate says he intends to give proper attention to "the pleasures of eating and drinking." . . . Alice Beal Parsons's "A Lady Who Lost" has been postponed two weeks, and will be published on December 1. . . . Rosamond Lehmann, author of "Invitation to the Waltz," is an accomplished musician, and is related to Liza Lehmann. . . .

We are arranging these items by the
method used in "And Now All This,"
which is a secondary textbook to
"1066 and All That." . . . The
general procedure may be deduced
from the rules for spelling: "Through-
out this (geographical) section the
natural spelling has been adopted for
all place names, ignoring merely local
or native variations, such as Roma for
Rome." . . . So, to continue:
Robert McBride has been awarded the
Order of the White Lion by President
Masaryk for writing "Romantic Cze-
choslovakia." . . . Frank Simonds
is writing a book to inquire: "Can
America Stay at Home?" Why didn't
he ask us quietly; we'd have been glad
to tell him. . . . Now we haven't
ot any space left. . . . I. M. P.

The Six Best Sellers.

The following books are reported
by A. C. McClurg & Co. as being
most in demand during the last
week:

FICTION

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES,
by Lloyd C. Douglas (Houghton
Mifflin). A study of family inter-
actions.

FLOWERING WILDERNESS, by
John Galsworthy (Scribners). A
lady in love. . . .

THE FOUNTAIN, by Charles Morgan (Knopf). Love and mysticism above the battle among the interned in Holland.

SONS, by Pearl S. Buck (John
Day). Sequel to "The Good Earth."

INVITATION TO THE WALTZ, by
Rosamond Lehmann (Holt). A dell-
cate reflection of a young girl's
first encounter with the adult
world.

PETER ASHLEY, by DuBose Hey-
ward (Farrar & Rinehart). Roman-
tic view of Charleston on the eve
of the Civil War.

NON-FICTION

CULBERTSON'S SUMMARY OF
CONTRACT BRIDGE, by Ely Cul-
bertson (Bridge World). Rules and
principles set forth by an expert.

OUR TIMES: THE WAR BEGINS,
by Mark Sullivan (Scribners). From
"the turn of the century" to 1914.

VAN LOON'S GEOGRAPHY, by
Hendrik Van Loon (Simon &
Schuster). The actual world we
live in.

THE EPIC OF AMERICA, by
James Truslow Adams (Little,
Brown). A philosophical history of
the United States.

MORE MERRY-GO-ROUND (Liv-
eright). Further anonymous snap-
shots of the Washington scene.

FLYING CARPET, by Richard
Halliburton (Bobbs-Merrill). Cheer-
ful and youthful adventure around
the world. /