Art: Carnegie Show

(See front cover)

Artists, art critics and ordinary people were going over the hills to Pittsburgh this week to the 29th Carnegie Institute International Exhibition of Modern Painting. There was plenty to see. The Pittsburgh show has become the most important annual exhibition of modern art in the U. S. Stretching on through gallery after gallery are 439 paintings representing the work of most of the well known modern painters in the world today. Over 1,000 U. S. paintings were submitted, 152 were hung. In all, 137 European and 99 U. S. artists were represented. The two heroes of the Pittsburgh show were French. Neither was present at the Founders Day opening: Henri Matisse and Pablo Ruiz Picasso.

In 1927 the Carnegie International jury awarded first prize ($1,500) to Henri Matisse. This year it was Matisse’s turn to award the prize. He gave it to Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s calm masterly portrait of Mme Picasso. The other judges: Glyn Philpot of Britain; Karl Sterrer, Austria; Bernard Karfiol, Horatio Walker, Ross Moffett, U. S., made no objection. Most critics’ lists of the ten greatest living painters contain both Picasso and Ma-tisse.*

Until last March grizzle-chinned, wrin-kle-browed Henri Matisse had never felt it necessary to visit the U. S. Even then he did not stay long but rushed abruptly across the country on his way to Tahiti. He returned three weeks ago to perform his duties in Pittsburgh and have fun in a Manhattan round of dinners, receptions, studio teas. Reporters, hostesses found him silent behind his whiskers, only occasionally willing to act the oracle. “I do not like Tahiti,” said he. “I am not a Gauguin,* I could never paint there. New York—that is different, I should like to paint in New York. American artists should not be ashamed of their country, it is magnificent. Why do so many American painters continually go abroad when they have at home scenes of such varied beauty?”

Of course he liked U. S. skyscrapers? news gatherers asked. Henri Matisse did. “But I do not want to see them in Paris,” he added abruptly, “Absolutely! Here they have developed from necessity. There is no necessity for them in Paris. Paris would have to be built all over again to make such tall buildings suitable.”

This was more like an interview, reporters fired questions. Who in his opinion were the greatest U. S. artists? M. Matisse didn’t know. What were his views on U. S. art? M. Matisse had none. Were there any signs of a return to classicism in France? M. Matisse declined to comment. Friends but not reporters know that in art Henri Matisse is a complete egocentric, that he has no interest in U. S. art, or Swiss art or British art, that he paints what he sees to the best of his ability and lets it go at that. As soon as possible he escaped from human society, spent hours in front of the black panther’s cage in the Bronx Zoo. Last week before the Pittsburgh Show opened he was aboard ship, on his way back to Paris. Reporters might have fared better with First Prizeman Picasso. Friend of Matisse, but never a member of his early group of insurgents, Les Fauves (The Wild Beasts), Pablo Ruiz Picasso has theories on art and believes in them. With remarkable technical ability, he might easily have become an adept forger. From his early days as one of the founders of Cubism he has been ceaselessly experimenting, changing his style of drawing, his palette. His studio in the Rue de la Boétie is precise as a laboratory, he is meticulously exact in keeping appointments. He is not only one of the highest priced* but one of the most scientific modern painters.

Apart from First Prizeman Picasso, the jury could not be accused of playing Names in their awards. Exhibiting at Pittsburgh are such newsworthy names as Georges Braque, André Derain, Marie Laurencin, Kees Van Dongen, Rockwell Kent, Eugene Speicher, Horse-Painter A. J. Munnings, Dame Laura Knight, Dod Proctor, Art Theorist Roger Elliot Fry. Yet second prize went to one Alexander Brook of New York, third prize ($500) to Charles Dufresne of Paris. Since Picasso’s portrait of his wife is not for sale, Artist Brook’s still-life of a cat, three peaches, a begonia and a door brought him $2,000—the Albert C. Lehmann prize for the best purchasable painting. One artist who won no prizes but many a press notice was tousle-haired John Kane of Pittsburgh. Artist John Kane is a house painter and kalsominer by profession, has attended no art classes, had no technical training whatever. In 1927 a picture of his was shown at the Carnegie International to the chagrin of other Pittsburgh artists. This year Kalsominer Kane was the only local artist to win a showing with a landscape of Pittsburgh’s grimy “Strip” district.

“My wife wanted that the children should be proud of me, so I am content,” said he last week. “My neighbors tell me the critics are troubled whether I be impressionist, modernist or classicist, but these things I do not understand.”

*Murdock Pemberton, Kansas-born art critic of The New Yorker, woman’s club lecturer, is even more definite, lists the four greatest living painters thus: Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Derain. All except Matisse, who as a judge cannot show, are exhibiting in Pittsburgh. *Paul Gauguin, morose Post-Impressionist painter of the 1890’s, grew disgusted with modern civilization, sold all his European paintings for 9,860 francs ($1,972) deserted his wife and children and went to spend the rest of his life in Tahiti, the “Terrestrial Paradise.” There, still subject to acute melancholia, he went completely native, painted serene pictures of statuesque Maoris on canvas salvaged from flour bags, wrote Noa Noa, an autobiographical account; died in poverty on the island of Dominica in the Marquesas, May 9, 1903.

*Last summer Picasso refused 750,000 francs ($30,000) from the Copenhagen Museum for a painting. He asked and expects to get one million francs.