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The ART DIGEST
THE NEWS MAGAZINE OF ART 
Vol. XIII New York, N.Y., 15th December, 1938

Sculptured Humor

FINE ARTISTS, sometimes referred to as serious artists, usuallt are so aware of the second classification that an exhibition like the Clay Club's "Humor in Sculpture" show strikes a bright note that relives the seriousness that ordinarily prevails with deadly persistance. The aim of the exhibition, to quote from the catalogue foreword, "is to show that even sculptors (as intense and serious as they are) possess that property if character which somehow eludes satisfactory definition-- a sense of humor."
"Undoubtedly the most useful service this show can render," the catalogue continues "is to bring the uninitiated in art appreciation into more sympathetic contact with the artist. These pieces are easily understood and reveal that that peculiar being, the sculptor, is after all, quite human."
Humor in sculpture is fine, "but what about those pieces that have appeared before in exhibitions and seemed not humorous at all?" asks Edward Alen Jewell of the New York Times. "What about John Flanagan's Strange and hithero vaguely depressing Jonah and the Whale? At last a meaning attaches: this is humor!"
Continuing, Jewell found several grin-provking exhibits: "Franc Epping's Ping Pong Player is funny because she is a nude playing ping pong: Charles Rudy's Dancer because she is too fat to dance. Satires such as Yvonne Forrest's The Master and the Sailor's Hula by Louis Slobodkin, make their point with clear, spontaneous directness... Among the pieces that, whether they seem exactly to belong in this house of mirth or not, merit applause for the performance are Jose de Creeft's Little Devils; Vanity, and excellent heroic head by Sahn Stoller; Wheeler Williams' Young Pan, the tiny Europa Etcetera by Sascha Bastoff, and Dorothea Greenbaum's The Shopper"
Other pieces commented on by the Times critic were Sally Grosz Bodkin's Baragain Counter; Hugo Robus' puckish Spirit of Youth in which the subject is trying, unsuccessfully, to hide a broad grin behind his hand; Daniel Miller's Landlady, a tough, buxom woman who stands, legs apart with hand on her hip, a grim reminder to some hapless tenant that the 1st of the month is long since past; Hy Freilicher's Man With Accorfion and Nura's Sunday School.
Lu Duble's Dance Congo shows two African Natives in a lively dance that somehow has humorous implications, and in Arline Wingates Excersize, her model has touched the floor with her hands and turns to brag "There, I did it." Cornelia Van A. Chapin is represented with Young Pig, whose quizzical, mildly interested expression puts him right at home in this exhibition.

From Chill to Warmth
"The stone in which I carve is icy cold. Yet the reality of art is to transform into warmth the image carved direct from life," writes Cornelia Chapin, who chisels direct from the block.
Dec. 15 '38