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TIMES
[[stamp]] OCT 23 1938 [[/stamp]]

SCULPTURE
Contemporary Work by Americans

By EDWARD ALDEN JEWELL

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"Whitman: 'Salut au Monde'" (plaster), by Warren Wheelock.

The Sculptors Guild, which made so inspiriting a start last Spring in a vacant lot on Park Avenue, opened yesterday its second s how, this time indoors, at the Brooklyn Museum. More than a hundred pieces, along with some diverse and often excellent sculptors' drawings, have been assembled in the attractive exhibition galleries on the ground floor. The arrangement there is admirable; nor have pains and expenses been spared in the preparation of that useful adjunct, a copiously illustrated catalogue.

John I.H. Baur, the Brooklyn Museum's curator of contemporary art, mentions in his welcoming foreword that "the history of American sculpture has been a sad one"; first, "the persistent domination of pseudo-classical ideals, which informed our early sculpture from Horatio Greenough's 'Washington' in the guise of a Roman Senator down to  Hiram Power's Victorian 'Greek Slave'"; then, "scarcely more fortunate," those "twin currents of realism and romanticism made immensely popular by Rodin" (requisite, to raise such    emblems "above the photographic or the theatrical," was an ability not short of that possessed by Rodin himself, and "of the many wh o followed in his steps there were few in this country who succeeded").

It is in the present century alone, Mr. Baur contends, "that American sculpture has felt an independence justified by its achievements. In departing from outworn canons and joining the frankly experimental front of modernism, it deserves a hearing as one of the creative arts of this country."

And so it does indeed. The impetus behind this new sculpture movement in America is young and strong and vital. Seriousness of purpose, linked with an unwonted enthusiasm for the task, must, I think, impress itself upon all who follow the present development. And it is further to be remarked that the recently launched guild of sculptors has proved instrumental in coordinating this rejuvenated effort, just as it provides the organization machinery needed to bring the work of sculptors with real effectiveness before the public. The sculptor's road is a difficult one at best, and every practical project by means of which the effort of sincere and worth plastic bronze "Woman" (reproduced) is a splendid figure-probably her best single figure (she has done several excellent groups) to date. William Zorach's "Youth," in Borneo mahogany, has a fine head; but why had the figure to be cut off below the knees?

Jose Ruiz de Rivera, glowly remembered for his beautiful aluminum "Flight", shown last March at the Federal Art Gallery, seems to have expended a first-rate talent to meager account upon an abstract marble "Composition" (haven't sculptors been calling these things "human concretions" of late?). The vote of this department is "Yes" on Vincent Glinsky's portrait head, "Elizabeth"; "No" on his caryatid of the pumpkin.

One of the most original of the abstractions is a "Worker's Song" by Nat Werner: a kind of high relief in Belgian sandstone and bearing an odd resemblance to Aztec cliff dwellings. Louis Slobodkin, with his sailors (though "David Old" is a vague and dubious work); Herbert Ferber, whose "Defeated" is a marvel of compactness; Dorothea Greenbaum, represented by and exquisite tiny head, "Fascist," and a touching  "Shopper"; Chaim Gross, with another acrobatic act, in pala blanca wood; Minna Harkavy, who sends a vigorous "Negro Spiritual" and a portrait to Leo Stein (both in bronze); Mary Tarleton, Dina Mr. de Creeft, a sculptor of innate power, does not often leave a work inexpressive. And Mr. Vagis (as we recall his work of some years ago, and as we follow now the eloquent line of the back in his otherwise mute "Earth") appears not entirely happy in the present alliance with one of those "two natures" that, I incline to suspect, are struggling within him.