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THE ART NEWS OCTOBER 22, 1938 GUILDED SCULPTORS SHOW Brooklyn View of an Important New Organization BY ROSAMUND FROST THE rebirth of American sculpture in the past few years, like the sudden emergence of our schools of native mural painters and architectural decorators, marks a definite turning point in the artistic development of the country. Just why sculpture should have lagged so far behind the other arts is difficult to say, for one is loath to believe that the diluted Classicism of the nineteenth century (happily for the most part now relegated to museum back corridors) could really have cast so long and paralyzing a shadow on our day that it permitted painting to steal a twenty-year march on three dimensional art. Though American painters presented their first manifesto as long ago as 1913, up till last year there had been no consolidation of the aims of American sculptors, and the burden and evolution of any native style was carried on by a few isolated individuals. It became increasingly necessary to "guild" the sculptor. He had no organization to further his interests, no perceptible function, no show place and above all, no public recognition. That these objectives could be accomplished efficiently and in remarkably short order was proved last spring at the very first showing of the Sculptor's Guild, a spectacular outdoor display which was warmly acclaimed in these columns at the time. On this occasion any theory that Americans are not interested in plastic art was speedily dispelled by the nearly fifty thousand visitors who were lured within the Park Avenue enclosure by a program organized with an excellent sense for showmanship and by the genuine quality of the works on view. [[inset image]] [[image footnote]] EXHIBITED BY THE SCULPTORS' GUILD, BROOKLYN MUSEUM DE CREEFTS COMPELLING "SEMITIC HEAD," CAST IN LEAD [[/image footnote]] [[inset image]] [[image footnote]] EXIHIBITED BY THE SCULPTORS' GUILD, BROOKLYN MUSEUM MALDARELLI: "BARBARA," IN LIMESTONE [[/image footnote]] The second exhibition of the Sculptors' Guild, which has just opened at the Brooklyn Museum, shows its admittedly talented members setting out to prove just what the organization has accomplished in the year and a quarter of its existence. Though necessarily lacking the informal and spontaneous atmosphere of the previous celebration, the quarters are more than adequate and every work benefits by a plain background and plenty of surrounding space. But the most striking departure is that American sculpture now presents a united front. The visitor immediately senses a community approach, a concerted effort which in this short time has promoted the Guild from a society to the status of a "movement." So much derivative claptrap has been done away with by this new school that the remaining essentials, with notable exceptions, make a somewhat sparse and austere showing. One cannot help feeling that, in a desire to encourage younger members, the society has perhaps accepted too many unfinished small studies whose quality resides mainly in the fact that they are a step in the right direction. The voluntary return to primitivism which has been the salvation and purge of most of modern art cannot be considered an end in itself, and an exhibition of pieces which, without being sophisticated abstractions, are in the formative stage of reducing the human figure to its essential geometrical elements unwittingly constitutes a kind of academicism which can only be justified by the youth of the organization. It must also be remembered that the six months which have elapsed since the Park Avenue show is a short time indeed for the production of important stone carvings. This accounts for the experimental character of many pieces and a general lack of technical finish that makes one wonder if the Guild's semi-annual exhibition program is not, for the time being at least, too ambitious an undertaking. In a sometimes unprofessional array the work of such leaders and veteran artists as Zorach, Ben-Shmuel, Cornelia Chapin and de Creeft stands out with even more than usual éclat. Zorach's new figure, Youth (reproduced on the frontispiece of this issue), is indeed among his finest creations. With no trace of sentimentality it conveys the half heroic, half timid, farouche qualities that its title implies and at the same time, technically, it is the ideal embodiment of all those theories which have become the credo of the modern sculptor. The poetic grace of Ben-Shmuel's Torso of a Young Man is eloquent of a Classicism stripped bare of preconceived traditional 7
