1942: Painting And Sculpture

Art and the War.

The unprecedented importance which the Western Hemisphere has assumed in the cultural field as a result of the war was maintained with increasing determination in spite of the encroachments of the war. In the United States, as well as in other American republics, there has been a lively consciousness of the fact that if the art and culture of the Western world are to survive total war they must be kept alive in the Americas. This consciousness has carried with it an implied recognition that art stands high among the ideals of freedom for which the United Nations are fighting. Europe continues to provide examples to illustrate this thesis, both in the occupied countries and in those fighting the Axis.

In the occupied countries there has been physical destruction of the monuments of the past, looting of art treasures, persecution of living artists, and the suppression of all free art expression except in France where the reported continued functioning of a handful of top-flight French modernists, whose art is decidedly unsympathetic to the Hitler regime, suggests an interest on the part of the conquerors in the market prices of such art. (Otto Henkell, Ribbentrop's father-in-law, is said to have paid 40,000 francs for a painting by Picasso.) Reports of the condition of art under the Nazis, however, have been conflicting. From the Low Countries have come many rumors, some indicating early in the year that Dutch and Belgian museums were open and their collections comparatively intact, others that masterpieces from public and private collections were finding their way inevitably into Germany. Nazi authorities in the Netherlands are reported to have set up a state fund for the purpose of assisting artists willing to collaborate with the 'New Order.' Only 'approved' artists are able to obtain canvas and paint. In France, Belgium and the Netherlands Jewish-owned collections have been confiscated and many commercial art galleries are supposedly doing business in the charge of German commissars. Leading Nazis are said to be heavy investors in art. Certain sections of the Louvre in Paris are said to be open to the public but its most valued possessions in painting and sculpture have been in storage far from Paris since the beginning of the war. A report from Moscow late in the year stated that Germany had organized special military units to plunder objects of historical and cultural value in occupied territories.

Artist refugees from Europe continued to arrive in the United States during 1942, most notable among them being Marcel Duchamp, a leading figure of the avant-garde since 1913 when his Nude Descending the Staircase was shown in New York; and Jean Hélion, well-known French painter of the younger generation, who escaped from a prison in Germany and made his way to America. Upon his arrival in June, Duchamp reported that Arp, Brancusi, Braque, Derain, Kandinsky and Picasso were working unmolested in Paris when he left. Rouault is living at Antibes and Matisse at Cimiez, near Nice.

England and Russia have continued to use the talents of artists for propaganda purposes, for morale-building, and for recording the events of the war, Splendid war posters have been produced in these two countries. In England, particularly, the importance of art has been underscored by the continued exhibition and purchase of art by government institutions, by official sponsorship of living artists and by the care with which the art of the past has been protected. Testifying to the power of art in maintaining morale, the National Gallery in London, undamaged by bombing, has been exhibiting one masterpiece at a time, bringing a different one from storage every three weeks. The Minister of Food commissioned mural decorations for restaurants where thousands of workers eat daily. An exhibition of Greek art of fifty centuries, lent by private owners in Great Britain, was opened by the King of Greece at the Royal Academy in London.

In the United States England's example in the uses of the arts in wartime has been closely paralleled, and even extended in some ways. The United States Government art programs (WPA) have employed artists and craftsmen in making the thousands of visual training aids such as charts, diagrams, maps and models which are so urgently needed in the greatly accelerated training of large numbers of men for the armed services — probably the biggest educational program ever undertaken. The armed forces themselves have been interested in using artists, both for recording the war and for technical work. The Navy has appointed six artists to supplement Navy photographers in making visual records of the war. The Marines have appointed one artist for this purpose, and the Army expects to appoint 12 artists from within the service but has not yet done so. The specialized work which artists are performing in the armed forces includes camouflage, the making of medical drawings, and technical tasks in Military Intelligence. The Army Air Force has set up the Historical Unit which plans to employ artists. Before Pearl Harbor the Army instituted the Soldier Art Program, the name of which has recently been changed to the Interior Design Group. This functions in about 60 army camps and air bases and is administered by the office of the Chief of Special Service in Washington, D. C. It employs only artists who are already in the service and are rated as 1B; their function is to decorate mess and recreation halls, to provide a record of the war, and to indoctrinate the soldiers with pride in American military history. There are also a number of independent art projects within the Army, started on the initiative of local commanders and Special Service officers.

In August, shortly after the formation of the government's Office of War Information (OWI), its director, Elmer Davis, announced the organization of the OWI Bureau of Publications and Graphics. Francis E. Brennan, chief of the Graphics Division of the Bureau, issued a statement on the Division's aim 'to intensify and broaden the Government's wartime graphic efforts' and to 'develop plans for practical working relationships with individual artists and art groups.' The Graphics Division was established to coordinate all other government agencies previously producing graphic work. The Division has a two-part program: one, to act as a service agency for 13 or more other government agencies, and two, to carry out by graphic means the OWI campaigns of information. In the first capacity the Division has produced posters and other material for the War Production Board, the Office of Price Administration, the Army, Navy and Marines, the War Manpower Commission, the Departments of Agriculture and of Public Health, etc. Posters for these agencies and also for the OWI campaigns are produced under four main subject-headings: Our Enemies, Our Friends, What We Are Fighting For, and How We Can Get What We Are Fighting For. Among prominent artists whose poster designs are being produced by the OWI are John Atherton, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Edward Millman and Ben Shahn. The Division is also organizing a community graphics program to utilize the voluntary services of graphic specialists of all kinds through local groups all over the country. Plans are under way for expansion of the Division's activities in various other directions.

American artists, like American citizens in general, have shown admirable courage in facing the necessities of war conditions. Naturally, a large number of artists are serving with the armed forces. Many others have entered war industries, where interesting developments have been made in adapting the artist to jobs for which his gifts especially fit him. One such job, in which the artist is uniquely useful, is the making of 'production breakdown illustrations,' perfect perspective drawings devised by the Douglas Aircraft Company, which save thousands of man-hours by entirely eliminating the use of blueprints on the final assembly line. Sculptors are being useful in making the plaster patterns for the dies to form plane parts.

Artists ineligible for active service have shown their eagerness to help fight the war with their own best weapons. They have made countless designs for posters and other illustrative material published by the government; they have contributed their art to benefit exhibitions and sales for all sorts of war-fund raising; they have accepted the task of keeping the stern imperatives of the war vividly before the public; and they have kept up the quality of their work against the odds of futility and despair. In December 1941 11 New York artists' societies united as Artists Societies for National Defense, determined to make their skills available to the government as rapidly as possible. Early in 1942 this developed into Artists for Victory, Inc., a national organization uniting 25 societies, with headquarters in New York. Artists for Victory has sponsored poster competitions and exhibitions and is working to facilitate the use of artists by the government — Federal, state and local.

Inter-American Cultural Relations and Latin-American Art.

Since 1939 the U. S. Government has done much to bring about a cultural interchange between North, Central and South America, with the arts playing an important role. This interchange in the field of art has been accomplished chiefly through the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Nelson A. Rockefeller, and its Committee on Art with the cooperation of a number of United States museums and other organizations. Many Latin-American artists, museum officials and teachers have visited the United States, which in turn has sent artists, lecturers and representatives of major museums to Latin America. Several noteworthy exhibitions of art were exchanged.

The three-sectioned exhibition of contemporary American painting, which was sent on a tour of Latin America in 1941 by the Museum of Modern Art with the cooperation of the other New York museums, returned early in 1942 after 50,000 miles of travel. The exhibition was seen by 218,089 people in 10 cities; the Latin-American press gave it an unprecedented amount of space.

Mexico's three world-famous mural painters, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, were all at work on mural jobs in 1942. The Siqueiros murals in the Escuela República de Mexico in the city of Chillán, Chile, completed in 1942, are among the most important murals in the Western Hemisphere. Rivera and Orozco are both painting walls in Mexico City, Rivera in the National Palace and Orozco in the Temple of Jesus.

American Museums and the War.

If American artists have shown themselves eager to serve, the museums have been equally so. Most of them are seriously short-staffed since directors and curators throughout the country have joined the armed forces. Even before Pearl Harbor many museums had orientated themselves toward assisting our war effort when it was still 'national defense,' and they have since developed programs for specific wartime services to public and government. All major museums report a marked increase in attendance during 1942 (including large numbers of men in uniform), proving what England has already learned — that the public seeks this refuge from the strain of war.

New York's Museum of Modern Art in particular has worked directly for the war government, both officially and unofficially, by preparing, showing and circulating exhibitions and films; the museum staff also acts in an administrative and advisory capacity for many government agencies. Outstanding war exhibition of the year was Road to Victory at the Museum of Modern Art, a collection of dramatically installed enlarged photographs culled from various U. S. Government departments by Lt. Comdr. Edward Steichen, U.S.N.R., with a running text by the poet, Carl Sandburg. Following the New York showing, several editions of this exhibition, which constitutes a heroic portrait of our nation at war, were prepared. One edition has been sent to England under the auspices of the Office of War Information; another edition will go to Honolulu under the same auspices, and a third will tour five United States museums. Two more will go to South American republics, Uruguay and Colombia, which requested the exhibition through the State Department. The Museum of Modern Art also conducted two poster competitions. The United Hemisphere Poster Competition brought in 855 entries, 473 of them from Latin America; about 60 were exhibited and $2,500 was awarded to 17 Latin American and 17 United States and Canadian winners. The National War Poster Competition was sponsored by the Museum, Artists for Victory, Inc. and the Council for Democracy; from 2,224 entries 9 prize winners were selected and 200 posters were exhibited.

Following the lead of a statement signed by prominent museum directors in December 1941, United States museums in general have considered it imperative to keep open, to continue to present the best possible exhibitions and to broaden the scope of their services, which are doubly important to the community in wartime. Several new museums and art collections were established. The Swope Art Gallery, Terre Haute, Ind. opened with an exhibition of contemporary American works of which 23 were purchased; at the University of Arizona an anonymous donor to the Fine Arts Department has started a collection of contemporary American painting which in four years will total 60 works, 12 of which were purchased in 1942. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, established a gallery of contemporary American art for facilitating purchases in that field, 23 of which were announced. The Art Institute of Chicago is devoting a gallery to continuous monthly one-man shows by Chicago artists. The New Britain (Conn.) Institute opened with the announcement of 25 purchases in American art; and the Philadelphia Museum made known its plan to devote 20 new galleries to American art, mainly contemporary. The collection of abstract and surrealist art, chiefly European, made by Miss Peggy Guggenheim was opened to public view in New York under the name, Art of This Century. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, established the American Art Research Council to serve as a central agency for research in the field of American art, in particular relation to problems of authenticity.

One of the great tasks confronting museums in 1942 was safely accomplished — the protection of their collections against possible bombardment. This involved the removal of thousands of works of art from the eastern and western seaboards, chiefly from the National Gallery in Washington, the Metropolitan and Brooklyn Museums in New York and the museums of Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco and San Diego. Most of the old masters went to secret storage places, but many museums inland, such as those at Denver, Colorado Springs, Chicago, Kansas City and Milwaukee, gained a harvest of important loans 'for the duration,' from private collectors as well as museums. Protection of the art remaining in seaboard museums was another problem, met by structural changes in buildings, increased fire precautions, etc.

Museum Exhibitions.

Outstanding exhibitions of the art of the past were not numerous. Chief among them was the Metropolitan Museum's Rembrandt show, consisting of 16 great paintings and a large number of drawings and etchings, all from the Museum's collection. The graphic works especially, gave insight into the great master's art. The Detroit Institution of Arts arranged a fine showing of Buddhist art; and the Philadelphia Museum culled from its own collections a History of Chinese Art, shown there comprehensively for the first time. Marine paintings from the time of Columbus to the present as seen in European and American examples was the subject of another show at Detroit. The Baltimore Museum assembled The Golden Age of the Russian Icon, as well as an exhibition of Venetian painting under the title Giorgione and His Circle. The John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, offered a chronological survey of the work of our early master, Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). The Brooklyn Museum presented a contrast between American realism and romanticism in the work of two 19th century painters, William S. Mount (1807-1868) and John Quidor (1801-1881). The Whitney Museum, New York, surveyed the history of American water-color painting, bringing together for the first time much interesting 19th century work. Early American folk or provincial painting was shown in the Whitney's presentation of a large private collection; and in Springfield, Mass., in Somebody's Ancestors, a show featuring several forgotten artists of that region.

The museums' annual salons of contemporary American art were held as usual throughout the country, notable among them being those at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum in New York, the Pennsylvania Academy, and the museums of Cleveland, Denver, Portland (Ore.) and Richmond. One of the few war casualties was Carnegie Institute's famous International, held annually from 1896 to 1939, replaced admirably in 1940 and 1941 by all-American shows, but omitted entirely in 1942. Apart from the annuals, museums showed a tendency to favor the one-man exhibition rather than the group exhibition. Americans 1942 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, inaugurating a series of annuals, combined the two techniques by presenting 18 small one-man shows within the frame of one large exhibition. The Worcester Museum's American show surveyed the eventful decade of 1930-40 in 50 outstanding pictures. The City Art Museum of St. Louis presented Trends in American Painting of Today, and the Dallas Museum, Figure Painting in America. The largest contemporary American exhibition of the year, and probably of all time, opened on Dec. 7 at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, sponsored by Artists for Victory, Inc.

The growing maturity of abstract art in the United States was demonstrated at the Museum of Non-Objective Art (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation) in New York in its fifth anniversary show; and at the Museum of Modern Art, which, with the manufacturer, V'Soske, commissioned Stuart Davis, John Ferren, A. E. Gallatin, Arshile Gorky, Charles Howard, E. McKnight Kauffer, Loren MacIver, George Morris, I. Rice Pereira and Marguerite Zorach to design the 12 handsome rugs shown. The exhibition, Twentieth Century Portraits, also assembled by the Museum of Modern Art, brought together nearly 300 works in various media surveying all phases of modern art in terms of portraiture.

Sculpture.

Sculpture exhibitions were fewer in number than usual because of the increasing difficulty of shipping. The Whitney Museum's annual sculpture show was held, majoring in the work of New York artists. Baltimore showed 26 modern French sculptures which have been marooned in this country since the New York World's Fair in 1939; and gave a one-man show to sculpture and water colors by the dean of American sculptors, William Zorach. The Addison Gallery, Andover, put on an exhibition of modern New England sculpture. John B. Flannagan's one-man show was probably the outstanding one-man sculpture exhibition of the year, and the Museum of Modern Art sent it on a tour of other museums starting in December 1942. Pre-Columbian art of Central America was the subject of a large exhibition, chiefly of sculpture, at the Santa Barbara Museum, which collaborated with the Middle-American Research Institute of Tulane University.

Graphic Arts.

In the graphic arts field the Whitney Museum showed Between Two Wars, an exhibition of prints done from 1914 to 1941. The Metropolitan Museum selected and showed Civil War subjects from the many woodcuts which Winslow Homer did for Harper's Weekly, for which he was a special correspondent at the front. The Boston Museum showed the drypoint etchings of Mary Cassatt (1845-1926), American expatriate who exhibited with the French Impressionists. The U. S. National Museum gave a showing to prints by Pop Hart, globe-trotting American artist who died in 1933.

Dealers' and Other Exhibitions of Interest.

Two remarkable exhibitions of the art of the Low Countries were organized at dealers' galleries, both benefit performances, as were many of the important shows of the year. One was the Dutch show of some 70 paintings, including 15 Rembrandts, 15 Hals, examples by Vermeer, etc. This was the largest Dutch show in America since 1908 and was of fine quality. The other outstanding exhibition was of Flemish painting of the 15th and early 16th centuries. A large show of paintings by Corot and a small but well-selected group of paintings by Cézanne were also presented.

United States Government Art Programs.

The WPA Art Program, which was established in August 1935 as the Federal Art Project, and which since September 1939 has been composed of a series of state-wide art projects under the Work Projects Administrations in 41 states, the District of Columbia, New York City and Southern California, will be liquidated before the close of the government's fiscal year, June 30, 1943. Projects in 20 states will close officially as of Feb. 1, 1943; all others will close during February and March. All works of art produced by the projects will be allocated to Federal, state and municipal tax-supported institutions.

The Index of American Design, the vast compendium of documented, handmade color plates which constitutes the greatest pictorial repository of American decorative, domestic, popular and folk arts, has been one of the most valuable contributions of the WPA Art Program. This unique collection of 22,414 plates, exclusive of several thousand photographic records, was deposited in the summer of 1942 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which will act as custodian.

During 1942 two important mural projects begun several years ago by the WPA Art Program were completed: James Brooks' Flight at LaGuardia Airport, New York, and Edward Laning's Story of the Recorded Word at the New York Public Library.

The Section of Fine Arts of the Public Buildings Administration, under the direction of Edward Bruce and Edward B. Rowan, continued its program of commissioning artists, largely through competitions, to decorate Federal buildings with mural paintings and sculpture. The largest commission ever given by the Section was completed in 1942 after two years' work. This was the History of Missouri in the St. Louis Post Office, a series of large fresco panels by Mitchell Siporin and Edward Millman. The second largest commission given by the Section, 27 mural panels for the Rincon Annex of the San Francisco Post Office is being painted by Anton Refregier.

Museum Acquisitions.

When the National Gallery in Washington, D. C., opened in 1941, it contained the Andrew W. Mellon and the Samuel H. Kress collections of old masters, as well as several smaller gifts of works of art. In 1940 announcement was made of the gift of the famous Widener collection to the National Gallery. This collection would have taken its place in Washington when the Gallery opened, but the gift-tax law of Pennsylvania required the payment of $195,000, for which there were no funds available. In 1942 President Roosevelt recommended to Congress the payment of the tax and the $50,000,000 Widener collection thus became the property of the nation. The Widener collection was one of the first great collections in the United States. It was begun many years ago by Peter A. B. Widener; Joseph E. Widener, the donor, continued to build up the collection after his father's death in 1915. Superlative examples of the art of Italian, Dutch, Flemish and English masters make up the painting and sculpture sections of the collection, which also contains tapestries, furniture, ceramics, jewels and other objects of Medieval and Renaissance art. Among the most celebrated paintings in the collection are The Mill by Rembrandt, Raphael's Small Cowper Madonna and Giovanni Bellini's Feast of the Gods. The new galleries containing the Widener collection were officially opened on Dec. 20.

Chester Dale, noted New York collector, again enriched the National Gallery with an impressive 'indefinite loan' of 41 19th century French paintings, rounding out the group of 25 lent the previous year. Artists represented are Cézanne (5 paintings), Corot, Courbet, Daumier, Delacroix, Gauguin (3), van Gogh (3), Manet, Renoir, Rousseau, Toulouse-Lautrec and others. The Gallery also received a Goya portrait from the Havemeyer collection, a painting by Chardin, and two paintings of his English period by Copley.

In March on the first anniversary of its opening to the public, slightly over 2,000,000 people had visited the National Gallery. On Sunday the attendance has sometimes been as high as 23,000.

The Joslyn Memorial in Omaha, Neb., has started to form a promising collection of old masters. Its most important acquisition was a famous painting by Titian, Man with a Falcon, which has passed through several princely collections in Europe. Omaha also acquired paintings by Veronese, Lorenzo de Credi, Rembrandt and Van Dyck. New York's Metropolitan Museum acquired an important Velasquez portrait, Cardinal Don Gaspar Borja y Velasco, painted about 1643. This was the first example of the mature style of Velasquez to enter the Metropolitan. The San Diego Fine Arts Gallery acquired a Titian portrait, and a painting known as the Terris portrait by the rare Giorgione. Princeton University's museum acquired a small but fine Tintoretto; the Detroit Institute, a portrait by Bronzino; the Minneapolis Institute, a 17th century Dutch landscape by Hobbema. Two Gilbert Stuart portraits went to the Rochester (N. Y.) Art Gallery; a Copley portrait of 1771 to the Addison Gallery, Andover; and two Copleys and a Mary Cassatt to the Boston Museum. Vassar College received 167 old-master prints from the Felix M. Warburg collection.

In the field of modern art the Art Institute of Chicago received important works from the McCormick collection, including nine paintings by Cézanne and examples by Degas, Derain, Duty, Modigliani, Picasso and Utrillo. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired Departure, an important large work by Max Beckmann, distinguished German modernist; Hide and Seek, the major work by Pavel Tchelitchew; three important cubist works by Picasso and Braque; and a large number of other European and American paintings, sculptures and prints. Paintings from the Havemeyer collection went to the Brooklyn Museum, including works by Cézanne, Corot, Courbet and Monet. The late Christian Brinton, noted art collector and writer, bequeathed his unique collection of Slavic art to the Philadelphia Museum. Dr. Brinton began buying the contemporary arts of Scandinavia, Central Europe and Russia in 1920; Russian art greatly predominates in the collection.

Notable museum acquisitions in the field of sculpture during the year were a 16th century bronze fountain by German Pilon which went to the Boston Museum; the Rape of Europa by Jacques Lipchitz, contemporary French sculptor, and the Head of Christ by William Zorach, living American, which went to the Museum of Modern Art; and a recent heroic female figure by Zorach which was purchased by the new Swope Art Gallery, Terre Haute, Ind.

Sales.

Dr. Albert C. Barnes, owner of one of the greatest collections of modern art housed at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pa., purchased Renoir's Mussel Fishers at Berneval (1879) for $175,000, the second highest price ever paid for a Renoir. The Barnes collection already contains over 135 paintings by Renoir. One of the most extraordinary art sales ever made was negotiated by Gimbel Bros.; an anonymous purchaser paid $19,000 for a Spanish monastery in the William Randolph Hearst collection. This monastery of the Cistercian Order, built in the late 12th century by Alfonso VII of Castile, was bought by Hearst in Spain in 1923, taken to pieces, packed in 10,500 cases and shipped to the United States at a cost of half a million.