J. B. Neumann, who gave up his lively New Art Circle some years ago to lecture on the Esthetics and History of Art, has returned to the gallery field as co-director of the Contempora New Art Circle at 509 Madison avenue. The “Contempora” stands, I suppose, for the architectural and interior decorating part of the gallery while the “New Art Circle” stands for Mr. Neumann.
The first exhibition opened with a display of recent paintings by Kuniyoshi, Max Weber and Arthur Dove.
The Kuniyoshis are amusing, as his paintings always are apt to be. They are the works of a talented, highly inventive and sophisticated personality who strives to be quaintly original. His little portrait is a lovely bit of painting. The intellectual abstractions of Arthur Dove on the other hand leave me, at least, entirely cold.
As for Max Weber, I remember seeing several of his paintings while I was a student at the National Academy of Design. They held me spellbound although I understood but little. They were strangely fascinating both attracting and repelling me. Since then I have always been on the lookout for his work and the more I saw the more I grew to like them.
Weber’s art opened my eyes to the shallowness and falseness of the Academy and imbued in me a desire for self-expression and independent experimentation.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
