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THE ARTIST AND HIS AUDIENCE GRAPHIC ART HARRY STERNBERG The social effectiveness of pictures may be said to be directly proportional to the size of the audience reached. For this reason the graphic arts have a special importance for the growing numbers of artists anxious to turn their talents to the service of the struggle against War and Fascism. No other medium has the adaptability of the print, which can be produced rapidly and inexpensively in large quantities, and can be widely distributed at low cost. The chief drag upon the development of the immense possibilities ready to hand in the print field today is the cult of rare prints. The fancy jargon of print connoisseurship is no more than a pretentious front for speculation with an artificially limited product. Artists are induced to destroy their plates after pulling a ridiculously small number of proofs in order to appeal to the vanity of "connoisseurs," interested only in having things that no one else has. The steady contraction of this market with the depression threw the absurdity of the whole situation into sharp relief. As for those who still cling to the practice of limited editions with high prices, the quality and character of their work plainly show the depth and seriousness of these artists. You all know their cute babies, cunning dogs, flying ducks and picturesque cathedrals. This is the print tradition in decadence. Among progressive print makers there is a healthy tendency to appraise the situation more realistically, and to enlarge even the hand-pulled editions to a point where the price may be drastically reduced and a new market built among those who still have some purchasing power. As progressive artists become more concerned with reaching people, and as their work gains in breadth from a realization of the wonderful possibilities latent in the masses of people, ready to be developed through those social forms that meet their needs, then these progressive artists will want to go a step further and project their vision as widely as possible. To do that they will adopt the mechanical methods of reproduction, printing etchings from the plate on power presses when the plates are steel-faced, printing lithographs from the stone on power presses, using zinc plate and photo-offset printing on power presses, metal line cuts that can replace the wood block, and even mechanical photo-engraving and printing of etchings. The graphic artist of today who is not willing to be stultified must break with the tradition of artifically restricted output, and must join with his fellow artists in finding ways of breaking the barrier that exists between the independent artists and the broad strata of the people. Possibilities we scarcely realize may be gained if the way is found. Through the Congress we must lay plans toward that end. [54] THE ART MUSEUMS* IMPOSING MONUMENTS TO OUR NATIONAL DIVORCE FROM THE ARTS RALPH M. PEARSON The art museum, as it exists today, is a concrete illustration of a national misappropriation of esthetic energy. This unfortunate situation is a natural result of the prevailing psychology of escape from first-hand creative experience and the fears, snobbery and ignorance responsible therefor. So deeply ingrained in current habits of thought are these negations o the normal creative life that they can be cured only by a major surgical operation--one that goes deep into the evils of an acquisitive, self-seeking society. A few preliminary curative steps are possible, not the least of which is a diagnosis of the malady and a plan for the rebuilding process. Let me touch on a few high spots of both. The art museum is assumed to be a community institution. Its public function is widely recognized by the appropriation of public money for maintainance expenses and the donation of public lands for building sites. But, since its inception, the investing capital of the museums has been mainly derived from private endowment--ie., from gifts and bequests by our barons of finance. In effect these gifts take on the character of votive offerings, of conscience-salving gestures of compensation for the sins of using private power to extract great wealth from the less aggressive citizens of the country. In other words, the private donations to art museums are not gifts to art for its direct, first-hand value, nor to the living creative minds which produce it, but to the Olympian goddess remote in time and space who can grant the magic favor--if only of respectability. The very act of worshipping the goddess confers distinction--is a kind of passport to that higher state which dollars alone and all their material pomp cannot achieve. Art is the measure of civilization. Let us, then, import great art from the past, house it in expensive copies of majestic Greek temples and, presto, we become certainly civilized. There can be no doubts about it as there might be if we financed contemporary art and possibly made a mistake in judgment. The old creations ----- *The subject assigned to Mr. Pearson was Art Museums, Dealers and Critics. Since there was not time to discuss all three Mr. Pearson centered his talk on the Museums, merely touched on the Dealers and referred the audience to his series of articles on The Failure of the Art Critics in Forum Magazine for November, December (1935) and January (1936). [55]
Transcription Notes:
The second "artificially" is misspelled in transcription, as it was on page 54
On page 55, "maintenance" is misspelled as on the page.
On page 55, "judgement" is misspelled as on the page.
