Art and Artists

Since “The Human Touch” of last Sunday contained a review of the Municipal Art Exhibition, commenting upon the work of the participating artists, it seems to me that it would not be inappropriate if I should devote some space to the handful of artists who refused to exhibit although invited, thus completing the story of the great exhibition, advertised as “A Mile of American Art.”

Last Spring the Rockefeller Center authorities commissioned Diego Rivera, the great Mexican artist, to paint a mural on one of the walls of the R.C.A. Building. The sketches and plans he submitted being enthusiastically approved, Rivera set to work with his characteristic gusto. Everything went well for a time. The trouble came when Rivera, the Communist, introduced into his composition the figure of Lenin as the great modern leader of humanity. This proved too much for the art-loving Rockefellers. Rivera was paid in full and dismissed, and the uncompleted mural was covered with burlap. Rivera painted his magnificent “Portrait of America” on the walls of the New Worker’s School, magnificently transforming the dingy building on 14th street into an artistic shrine, and left for Mexico. Little by little everything was forgotten.

Suddenly another bomb exploded in the world of art. Almost simultaneously with the press announcement that the First Municipal Show, originated by Edith Gregor Halpart, sponsored by Mayor LaGuardia and directed by Holger Cahill was to be held at the R.C.A. Building, another announcement, a brief one, was published to the effect that the Rivera mural had been destroyed. This news filled artists and art lovers with anger and resentment. The old question was raised; “Has the owner of a work of art a right to destroy it?” The almost instinctive response seems to be “No.” Yet there was, strange to relate, a decided clash of opinion even among the artists, to say nothing of the press. “It was premeditated Art Murder,” said John Sloan, one of our most important and respected painters. “Poppycock,” exclaimed Harry Watrous, the venerable president of the National Academy of Design–“Mr. Rockefeller, feeling insulted by the political propaganda in the Rivera mural, destroyed it, as he had a perfect right to do.”

At the outset, a great number of artists refused to exhibit, some protesting the act of vandalism in the press, but most of them, having slept off their resentment, woke up sadder and wiser men in the morning and returned to the Rockefeller fold.

Only a handful of die-hards who felt that a work of art belongs to all, that it is the heritage of the age and that the owner is merely its custodian, stood by their principles and did not participate in the exhibition.

Their-names follow; John Sloan, Walter Pach, Abraham Walkowitz, Baylinson, Niles Spencer, Ben Shahn, Tamotzu, Goodelman, Cikovsky, Gropper, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, Lozowick, Stavenitz, Sternberg, Saul Berman, Laning, Lonergan, Lachaise Ribak and others whose names escape me at the moment.

NOTES

Abraham Harriton is holding his one-man show at “The Contemporary Arts” Gallery, 41 West 54th street. An exhibition of recent etchings by Elias M. Grossman is being held at the Jewish Club, 23 West 73rd street.

A group of four Jewish artists–Arthur E. Wolfson, Yetta Davidson, Morris Gluckman and Lipa Sharker–are exhibiting paintings, drawing and watercolors at Jewish Cultural Center.