Art: Vexed Venable

Stone Mountain, Georgia, is an awesome tidal wave of granite which rises above Atlanta. For more than twelve years various persons have schemed to carve upon its surface an overwhelming memorial to the South of the Civil War. General Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis were to ride in mighty panoply across the stony bluff, surrounded by acres of sculpture representing the Southern armies. From the plain below, children of unimagined generations would stare upward at these heroically chiseled warriors of ancient days. But the men who were to shape these titanic figures have been only human, vexatious, quibbling.

First came famed Sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum, who threw the image of his design upon the cliff with a gigantic stereopticon and marked the outlines accordingly. Feverishly vexed was Mr. Borglum when his contracts were cancelled. He smashed his models (TIME, March 2, 1924 et seq.). Said he: “Am l a plumber to be hired by a committee? I am not. They say that I have loafed on the job, don’t they? There isn’t a corpuscle of my blood that loafs.” The Stone Mountain Association appointed Virginian Sculptor Henry Augustus Lukeman to succeed Mr. Borglum. “Delighted,” said Mr. Borglum, with heavy irony.

Sculptor Lukeman’s work was not cut out for him. For three years he has been cutting it. With scaffolds and staccato electric drills his pygmy assistants have swarmed over the face of Stone Mountain, moulding the gigantic nose, beard, shoulders of General Lee. Often on the plains below has walked Samuel H. Venable of Atlanta. He is the spokesman of the Venable heirs who donated the memorial site.

He too, last fortnight, was vexed. Said he: “Mr. Borglum’s head of General Lee everyone recognized. Mr. Lukeman’s head of General Lee few people recognize. The nose is crooked, the left arm looks withered and paralyzed, the hilt of the sword is gone and the stirrup of his saddle is broken off. The money is all gone, and the Lukeman carving of General Lee is a mutilated imperfection that cannot be rectified.”*

He accompanied this portrait of sorry sculpture with sorrier statistics. The Association, he said, had collected and spent more than a million, was in debt more than half a million. Twelve years had been allowed for the carving of an adamantine, timeless legend. They had elapsed. The result was only a hugely chipped General Lee, almost insulting in its immense ineptitude. “In 17 months,” he declared, “Mr. Borglum produced the first model, all working models necessary to that date, removed 25,000 tons of granite, erected the hoisting engine, built the studio, installed the projecting lens, built the stairway, completed the head of General Jackson, roughing out the head of President Davis … at a cost of $118,822.61. Mr. Lukeman in 40 months has completed his model and cut the bust of General Lee at a cost of $1,421,665.” Mr. Venable referred doubters to the audits.

Sculptor Lukeman felt inclined to sue Mr. Venable. He said he had completed one third of the central group of three horses and riders for $180,000, that he could complete the rest within six months for $75,000. With the frantic ire of the artist whos work is criticized before it is finished, he called attention to the fact that most of General Lee was still in rough outline. Replying to Mr. Venable’s threatening assertion that he had turned the rights over to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Sculptor Lukeman continued: “The Daughters … are now shoulder to shoulder with us. … The Association will resume work within the next fortnight.”

Dispassionate observers were bewildered. They saw a series of feuds and fritterings which threatened to vitiate perhaps the noblest conception of U. S. artistic history.

Dollars & Scents

In Manhattan prominent artists cudgelled their imaginations for the perfect perfume bottle. Art, business and chemistry had effected a triangular combine which was expected to benefit all three. The Art Alliance of America had sponsored an invitation competition for perfume bottle designs in the modern manner. This was held at the instigation of Mr. & Mrs. Carlton Palmer of Brooklyn, who donated prizes of $500 and $200. Mr. Palmer is president of E. R. Squibb & Sons, manufacturing chemists, famed for toothpaste, milk of magnesia. More relevantly, he is vice president of Lentheric, ultra-modern Fifth Avenue perfume shop, where simplicity, angularity, silver sheen exemplify I’art moderne, where expensive, fragrant distillations jet publicly before the eyes of purchasers, many of whom are fascinating, many merely ambitious. Mrs. Palmer has presided over the largest body of sensibly perfumed young women in the land; she was, last year, national president of the Junior League.

Invitations to compete were extended to several men engaged in different sorts of artistry. These included Gustave Jen sen (silversmith), William Zorach (sculptor), Robert Locher (interior decorator), Edward Steichen (photographer), Walter Teague (commercial artist) ; Buk Ulreich (designer).

The first prize was won by Claggett Wilson of Manhattan, ‘The second by Mr. Jensen. Artist Wilson, called “Clag” by his cronies, is darkly massive, fastidious, redolent of success. He suggests no garret-dweller, speaks in a deep voice of suave enthusiasms. He is not easy to classify, being proud of the scope of his work. He has done fanciful murals for the home of Mrs. James Cox Brady, widow of the financier, at Bernardsville, N. J., for Capitalist Harry F. Guggenheim’s Long Island estate. Elsie de Wolfe, famed mistress of decor, paid a professional compliment when she engaged Artist Wilson to bedizen her shop. He has designed silver, rugs, furniture, including a modernistic multi-colored bar for Dr. Fenton Taylor of Manhattan. He has painted portraits of Actor Alfred Lunt, sturdy Basque sailors, a Greek priest.

Most startling of all are his battle paintings, which were published last week amid explosive praise.* During the World War he was a Lieutenant of Marines. He did not forget horrible beauties compounded of corpses spitted on barbed wire, the atrocious shine of bayonets, the bright agony of lacerated flesh.

When it came to perfume bottles, Artist Wilson produced a starkly simple cylindrical form with silver cone stopper, developed in blue and crystal. Modernistic perfume bottles are legion.

Sales

From Dublin to Manhattan’s Ferargil Galleries came a famed horse canvas. It is Friends by John F. Herring, in which four Dobbins are shown placidly chomping foliage in the company of pigeons. Reproductions of Friends hang in half a million U. S. homes where horse-appeal means more than esthetics. Artist Herring was a British coachman, painted inn signboards, countless glossy thoroughbreds. Unlike Rosa Bonheur, he was not primarily concerned with equine rhythms, taut muscles. But he waxed sentimental over horses’ heads, manes.

Sir Joshua Reynolds flattered 18th century women with his graceful, glimmering brushwork. But when he painted self-portraits, which he did at least 45 times, he exercised all the artistic honesty that Rus-kin could have wished. One of the last of his self-portraits has been acquired by the Ferargil Galleries. The stately, long-nosed Sir Joshua wears the rickety spectacles that were harbingers of his pitifully failing eyesight. For him, shining satins would not much longer shine. Shortly after completing this prophetic portrait he made a stoically doleful remark. “All things have an end,” he said, “and I have come to mine.”

English tycoons bought, last week, expensive paintings. Lord Melchett paid $200,000 for a Rembrandt portrait of Rembrandt’s servant Hindrickje Stofiels, who stood stolidly by the artist in penurious years. Sir Philip Sassoon, Under Secretary of State for Air, bought a Gainsborough portrait of the artist at 21, his wife & daughter.

*Sculptor Borglum referred, last fortnight, to Sculptor Lukeman’s work as “the hole blown in the mountain since my absence.”

*War Paintings by Claggett Wilson—J.H. Sears and Co. ($10).