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THE FINE ARTS

A GOING IN THE MULBERRY TREES

IT TAKES a miracle or a plague to inspire concerted action among the innumerable factions that comprise the American art world. We who live in that world have not yet seen a miracle; we probably never will. But most of us by now are aware that the arts in this country are in a fight for their life against a deadly virus - politico-esthetic censorship.

Once confined to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the germ has spread like wildfire in America since the recent war. Like all germs, this one has its own peculiarities of growth and behavior. It tends to incubate in the minds of disgruntled artists whom the inexorable sweep of public taste has left behind, neglected, bitter, vindictive, but still ambitious, and often highly placed. We know, for example, that in the USSR and in Hitler's Germany, certain academicians were the first to denounce the advanced art which had begun to flourish so impressively in those countries. But the opposition of reactionary artists was not in itself a dangerous matter. Rather, it was one of the hazards of the trade, and probably on the whole a beneficial one, provoking the moderns to greater effort, defining for them the things art could no longer say with integrity and pride. The danger came when the academic painters and sculptors, knowing that they were being trounced, called for help to those whose political power was real and growing. It was not an artist but a government functionary who bolted shut the doors of Moscow's remarkable vanguard art school, Vchutemas, in the early 1920's. The famous Munich exhibition of "degenerate" (i.e. "modern") art was finally ordered by Hitler or one of this underlings and not by one of the mediocre painters he preferred. The entire history of repression in the arts of our time has followed the same melancholy pattern: those who cannot create poison the minds of those who cannot understand; and art becomes merely something which the former can achieve, the latter accept.
The epidemic of reactionary censorship in America is, of course, nowhere nearly as grave as it has been in Germany and Russia. But it is getting worse every day. One of its most distressing manifestations has been the series of attacks on modern artists by Representative George A. Dondero, of Michigan, as reported in the Congressional Record.
The issue of March 11 of the Record carries a transcription of Representative Dondero's blast against a group of modern American painters who had generously lent their pictures to a privately-organized exhibition at the United States Naval hospital at St. Albans, New York. To begin with, Representative Dondero recalled that in 1947 the State Department had spent some $55,000 of the tax-payers' money for seventy-nine paintings "of so-called contemporary and modern art." He then reported that the paintings later had been withdrawn from tour due to unfavorable publicity and sold for a total sum of $5,5__.25 "about 10 cents on the dollar for ... the taxpayers' money." What Representative Dondero did not mention, however, is that the cancellation of the tour was vigorously protested abroad. Nor did he mention the special circumstances of the sale. Bids on the pictures were solicited by the War Assets Administration. The winning bids totaled $79,658.50 - a profit of almost $25,000 on the State Department's original investment. But under WAA regulations for the disposal of all surplus materials, a ninety-five per cent discount was given to tax-supported schools and museums. Furthermore, all bids had to be reasonable, that is, could not anticipate the ninety-five per cent discount, and priority was granted to those from veterans and from totally tax-supported institutions. Higher bids in many cases were rejected.
I mention the details of the sale at such length because Representative Dondero by leaving them out draws a completely unwarranted conclusion. "The Members of Congress should accept this basic truth," he said, "that radical, left-wing art cannot survive of itself. It does not have merit, and its creators do not have the real talent to cause sufficient demand for their product from the public...[They] are constantly scheming to get their hands on public funds, and even private philanthropies, in order to grow." The charge is patently absurd. As long ago as 1922 modern art came through the Kelekian sale with flying colors. Since that date the market for good examples of this sort of art has increased enormously, and today is stronger-and higher- than ever before.
Having tried to establish modern artists as poor financial risk and as sychophants eager to bilk the Government, Representative Dondero proceeds to attack the St. Albans show on political grounds, describing its artists as left-wing propagandists hired to spread their message in a Federal institution. He goes on to cite their past activities and connections in an attempt to prove them Communists. I will not argue the artists' political records; I do not know enough about them; I do not consider it my responsibility as an art critic to know more. But I find it hard to believe that any of the painters accompanied their pictures to St. Albans "to spread their propaganda" or "to engage in espionage, if they were inclined to do so." If one were a spy, would a peacetime military hospital be a likely hunting ground? I should think not, especially considering that during the war great numbers of artists and craftsmen were used as therapists in Army and Navy hospitals all over the country. Representative Dondero's charge, at least by inference, is treasonable sympathy for Communism. I cannot help wondering what were the feelings of one of the St. Albans artists. Born in Russia, his family was ruined and persecuted by the Soviets during the Revolution, and he himself barely escaped alive.
On March 25, Representative Dondero returned to the attack, this time blasting the Artists Equity Association as a Communist-led organization. Again without attempting to examine the political beliefs of the painters cited, I should like to point out various absurdities in Representative Dondero's tirade. His statement that the great Armory Show of 1913 was "the first big blow directed at American art" is utter nonsense. It was this exhibition, more than any other, which made our painters and sculptors aware of the most advanced developments in European art; it acted as a tremendously effective catalytic here, and its inspirational benefits even now are by no means spent. What is far more serious, however, is Representative Donder's erroneous assumption that "modern" art is synonymous with Communist art. "The veritable wave of would-be painters, sculptors with which America is drenched is directly traceable to the need of the Red culture group to create a numerically strong Communist art movement." But the fact is that
30  July 2, 1949           The Saturday Review