Art: War In the Corn

One fertile undulating corner of Nebraska last week produced a bumper crop of artistic excitement. David City and Shelby —18 miles apart—were each sporting a one-man painting exhibition by a native son. Both shows, first ever staged in these Nebraska towns, were smash hits. They were also too coincidental for comfort. Almost before the ink was dry on the invitations, Shelbyans and David Cityans were hopping mad at each other. There was even talk of letting the artists settle their differences with pitchforks.

Lampooner & Landscaper. Shelby’s painter was Terence Duren, frail, 40, ferocious lampooner of womanhood, an ex-Chicago Art Institute instructor, ex-Greenwich Village freelancer. For the occasion, he dolled up his studio, a former mortuary off Shelby’s Main Street, with bouquets of gladioli in milk pails. He also painted his potbellied stove azure and white.

To see his 32 paintings, 700 persons—more than the population of Shelby (627) —paid 50^ each, stood two-and three-abreast in line, in their Sunday best. Among them was a blind woman with a seeing-eye dog, who had two friends describe the pictures to her.

The opposition (but not planned that way, insisted David Cityans) was a showing of 28 oils by 41-year-old Dale Nichols, art editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a nationally known painter of Christmas-cardish Midwestern landscapes and Greyhound bus ads. Nichols’ specialties are heart-warming red barns, picturesque blue snowhills, tree branches reaching to cobalt skies.

Thinking & Thunder. Both artists set out to show Nebraskans what their State looks like. Ranged on the walls of a David City municipal basketball court, Dale Nichols’ pictures said it was a slick, sweet place. In Shelby’s old mortuary, Terence Duren posted a tougher pictorial message. In his canvases, picnic wrappings were left on the ground, fat rolls and wrinkles decorated ladies’ faces.

It was too much for Artist Nichols. Said he: “Some of these paintings disturb me. In Art Heritage I suspect that Mr. Duren is looking with a critical eye upon my Nebraska friends and neighbors. If [he] is ashamed or bored or scornful [of Nebraska life], may I clarify his erroneous thinking?”

Nichols further ventured that Duren should paint in a spirit which regards manure not as horrible filth but as a farmer’s God-given instrument. Countered Duren: “I refer to [manure] but seldom. … I regard it as neither horrific nor as beautiful but merely as unimportant detail. Obviously Mr. Nichols finds it appealing.”

Fellow-townsmen took sides. Little Shelby accused bigger David City (pop. 2,272) of stealing Duren’s thunder with the Nichols show. The artists themselves took up prepared positions behind cornstalks, and blazed away. Nichols: “I shall never be guilty of painting in the style or viewpoint of Terence Duren. Never! Never!” Duren: “It is easy to recognize that Mr. Nichols cannot draw people . . . save at the safe distance at which he conceals all lack of knowledge of anatomical detail. I concur heartily: Mr. Nichols will never draw or paint like I do. Never!”