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[[stamp]] LIBRARY THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Received [[/stamp]]

IN THE MAIL: ART VI[[page torn]]

[[note]] NYt 2-13-5[[page torn]] [[note]]

Writers Take Exception To Some Statements On the Problem

To the Art Editor:

This is to take some exception to your review entitled "The Camera versus the Artist" which discusses the magnificent photographic exhibition arranged by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art and called "The family of Man."

One would not ordinarily feel it necessary to express his disagreement with such a discussion. However, in this case, I feel that the assumptions made actually do a great disservice to both art and photography, and that perhaps one should make some sort of comment about them.

Your reviewer, Aline Saarinen, was greatly affected by the exhibition even though it stands in exultant contradiction to every precious principle which she and the majority of other art writers have laboriously hung about the neck of art across a decade of literary effort. 

In order to reconcile the contradiction between, on the one hand, the precious principles, and on the other, the undeniable impact of Steichen's great assemblage, it became necessary for the reviewer to do some fine scalpel-work upon those Siamese twins -- art and photography. With the separation accomplished we are presented with two curious anomalies-photography emerges as "folk-art," but "responsible," while art remains art, but is warned that if its meanings become too "easily assimilable" it may fall into the category of folk-art, God forfend!

Easily Recognizable

A few days ago The Times reproduced a painting by El Greco showing the body of Christ received in the arms of Mary. The meaning of the work is so easily assimilable that not even a single line of art comment is required for full comprehension. Is El Greco, then, a folk-artist?

The reviewer, it seems to me presses upon the artist a responsibility more onerous than any he has ever yet had to bear -- namely the warning that responsibility may not be for him. Has it ever occurred to Mrs. Saarinen that perhaps the artist wants to be responsible? Is he not human? Does he not share the great common experiences of man? Has he not witnessed death and tragedy and birth? And is he, by some grievous miracle, exempt from the ordinary human reactions to such experience?

A further responsibility which your reviewer presses upon the artist is the injunction not to depict the outward appearance of the world. Must one then cease to admire David because one loves Klee? Must one reject Praxitiles in order to appreciate Noguchi?

A third responsibility upon the artist in this review is the prohibition against "trespassing: upon that area which is the proper preserve of photography. To this, one can only answer that there is no area anywhere that does not rightly belong to both painting and photography, provided the able painter or photographer sees in that area the making of a great symbol.

Obviously such efforts to exempt the artist from responsibility are only an attempt to make him feel free. That is not necessary. The artist who has great powers will feel free whether anyone "frees" him or not. But art, quite like small children must have some structure of discipline to be able to grow. Without discipline, both atrophy.

Defense of Photography

On behalf of the photographer I would take issue with the term "folk-art." Photography is a very highly developed art and keenly sophisticated. Both qualities are just the opposite of the earnest awkwardness and simplicity of folk-art.

I feel that the status of painting as an art is a higher one than that of photography not because the one is responsible, the other irresponsible, but simply because painting is able to call much more out of the artist himself, and is able to contain a fuller expression of the artist's own capacities than is photography.

But let us also note that it is not at all surprising that the public turns to the Steichen show with such undivided enthusiasm. The reason is, I am sure, that the public is impatient for some exercise of its faculties; it is hungry for thinking, for feeling, for real experience; it is eager for some new philosophical outlook, for new kinds of truth; it wants contact with live minds; it wants to feel compassion; it wants to grow emotionally and intellectually; it wants to live. In past times all this has been largely the function of art. If art today repudiates this role, can we wonder that the public turns to photography; and  particularly to this vivid show of photographs that have, it seems, trespassed into almost every area of experience.

BEN SHAHN.

Roosevelt, N. J.