Lollipop Venders
LUPO DE BRAILA
“Misfitclothing”—I saw these words this morning on a small shop sign and they kept dancing before my eyes. Misfit clothing. In vain all my attempts to concentrate on the object of my visit to the Art Institute.
I sat down to search my brain for the cause of this phenomenon, and I soon recalled another such visit I once made under similar difficulties.
It was at the San Francisco Exposition. I discovered by chance the so-called Annex of the Fine Arts Building, a stable-like structure in comparison to the main building. It housed the Norwegian, Hungarian, and Spanish exhibits—by the way, almost the only ones worth seeing. At that time another vision kept me from seeing the exhibit for some moments. It seemed as if some short bald men danced along green velvet walls, each one plucking his heart beats with gusto and, after arranging them in a queer design on a crystal glass plate, offering them to the stars and children.
This recollection cleared the air and I realized that surroundings have a strong effect on me. I have come to enjoy the result of the finest faculty we possess, our imagination. I have come to admire the result of a year’s work of our Chicago Artists.
Three hundred and twenty-one paintings, says my catalog; and in order to simplify matters I decide to look at some of the most popular names first—names usually found on the juries.
Artists, according to Rodin, are different from other mortals because they love their work. Let us see: Adam Emory Albright, Alfred Juergens, Lucie Hartrath, John F. Stacey, and Dahlgreen. Each one of themhas between three and seven paintings. With all that canvas they must have sailed on the most enchanting seas, and surely have brought back a holiday for our eyes and hearts.
The first one I encounter isAn October Afternoonby Mr. Alfred Juergens; visions of little coral trees with hanging heads against a faint green dream sky, embroidered brown leaves in the foreground and cool blue hills like thoughtless sighs in the background, appear on the catalog page. But see what Mr. Juergens has done with this subject. I can scarcely believe my eyes. A mushroom dog in front of some formless and lifeless trees; amateur composition, thoughtless technique, and dirty color. And Mr. Juergens has a steady job on the jury. I wonder what is his reason for painting: he certainly does not love his work. Something suddenly interferes with my thoughts on this subject: it is the jingling of coin in a visitor’s pocket. I look around and find number 174 by the same gentleman, and it reminds me of a cat walking on the keyboard of a stringless piano.
They say this is the best exhibition of the Chicago Artists. If it is, Mr. Juergens has done nothing to make it good. He has six such things on the walls.
Mr. Albright, a painter of children playing in the open, has seven pictures in the exhibit, five of them on one wall. One is calledThe Barn Yard. The name reminds me of the reproduction of a painting by Malchevski I saw in a Polish library a few days ago. It was calledArt in the Back Yardand showed a little satyr playing a flute for a little girl and a few turkeys. There was romance in the fence boards, and marvelously clean colors; it shouted life and joy. Mr. Albright’s old-maid’s conception of childhood made me feel sad. His shapeless hens, his flattened children on the wall, weak composition, dirty colors, and no sign of life in the whole thing, or feeling of out-of-door air. Almost disgusted, I look further:—A Summer Dream. I look for the dream and find it in the fact that the biggest of the boys has borrowed his older brother’s head, and the painting is full of some dirty yellow color. A horrible dream. I wish Mr. Albright as well as Mr. Juergens would at least clean their pallets if they can not change their conception of things.
Next I visitSunshine Alley, by Lucie Hartrath. It is the alley of poverty of ideas and bad color. Miss Hartrath evidently wants to paint what she sees, but she does not happen to see anything startling. She, too, has six such things on the walls.
The mediocre work of John F. Stacey and Anna L. Stacey really deserves no attention. Especially bad is the portrait of John by Anna (there is little love expressed in it) andThe Beach Road, Belvedere, California, by John, takes the prize for being the poorest painting in the exhibition. John F. has only one painting that looks as if it were made by a man who loves his work—The Golden Hills of California.
Next comes a man I dislike to place among the lollipop venders—he being a very nice quiet and honest man; but why does Mr. Dahlgreen paint?
Now, when I come to Messrs. Griffith and Irvine, I find their anaemic work quite good in comparison to the work I have seen until now. Of course, I did not expect paintings with as wide a scope as the work of the Zubiaure Brothers, Zuologa, Edward Munch, Hodler, Welti, Malchevski, Franz, Stuck, Fritz Erler, Putz, Elie Reppin, etc., to say nothing of the latest developments of modern art and ideals—I mean the disciples of Cezane, Matisse, Van Gogh, Gauguin, etc.—because Chicago is still a frontier town. All the latest improvements plus the Art Institute cannot change its real character: a frontier town with frontier town ideals. In this case, all criticism being comparative, I did not look for the highest standard. Had I done so, three words might have been my comprehensive criticism. As it is, all I expected was clear feeling, clean color, good design, and a certain amount of delicacy in handling. This has been fulfilled only in a measure by Mr. Bartlett, whose strength and individuality places him at the head of the landscape painters exhibiting. He reminds me very much of Trubner, especially hisAutumn Afternoon. I also like his daring composition inUnder Chinese Tower, Munich. Pauline Palmer’s work is full of broadly-painted sunshine, though the foliage in some of her trees seems too heavy and shapeless.
Next in merit I think comes Marie Lokke, whose yellow sail inThe Old Piertakes the wind out of many a neighbor. Hermann More’sA Summer Afternoon, is a good example of clear feeling and clean color. I also like Mr. Kraft’s delicateSilver MistandAn Autumn Afternoon, and Mr. Ingerles’s,The Fascinating Ozarks.
There is also a class of painters who can best be described as able and honest. At the head of these artists stands Mr. Peyraud and Edward B. Butler. There are also Frank V. Dudley, H. Leon Roecker, Edgar S. Cameron, J. H. Carlsen, Lawton Parker, Charles Francis Brown, A. H. Schmidt, William Wendt, Alfred Jansson, Alson Clark, Karl A. Buehr, Grace Ravlin, Edgar Payne and the following portrait painters: our own Franz Hals, Mr. Christian Abrahamsen, Oscar Gross, Gordon Stevensen, Cecil Clark Davis and Arvid Nieholm.
Mr. Werner’s mannerism is too monotonous.
Mr. Ufers and Mr. Higgins have taken yellow ochre into the open and made good use of it. I have taken these two men separately because both have done good work and I expect much improvement in the near future. Their work at present looks too much like illustrations. Miss Dorothy Loeb is the only one who has a real sense of rhythm in line.
The Chicago Society of Artists, which runs this exhibition every year, seems to be controlled at present by a number of men who have inherited a long-discarded weak imitation of a technique once used by Segantini.They have excluded almost everything that showed some originality and feeling, but have accepted and hung a few very poor and meaningless things, so that they may shine by contrast. However, it seems to me they are at the end of the rope. The public refuses to buy the dope and their best men have sent in nothing to this show. I refer to Clarkson, Reynolds, Betts, Oliver Dennet Grover, Henderson, Rittman; and Lawton Parker has only one little canvas.