Art: Point, Lies, Insult

Worthy of record in Europe last week were: 1) an exhibition that proved a point; 2) a burst of indignation; 3) an extraordinary stroke of intolerance.

> At Paris’ tiny* Galerie Henriette on the fashionable Avenue Matigon, a set of drawings and water colors by Paul Cézanne was exhibited to clinch an argument: that Cézanne, contrary to deep-rooted popular suspicion, knew how to draw. The exhibitor: Adrien Chappuis, owner of one of the best, least-seen collections of Cézanne drawings. Taken largely from notebooks, many of the great painter’s slight, spontaneous pencilings were evidence enough that he had regarded drawing as note-taking, not as an art in itself. Exceptional, however, was an early, penciled male nude, so accurate and superbly finished as to settle the artist’s drawing ability once for all.

> Too much for the tempers of hardworking Paris artists, tired of tales of their amorality, was publication in Paris-Soir of a lurid Life & Love of Maurice Utrillo. Sad-eyed, lanky Artist Utrillo got a tosspot reputation in his youth, produced, nevertheless, many serious and hauntingly gifted paintings, and for at least ten years has been sober as a church. The Life & Love was accordingly branded “A tissue of lies, calumnies and erroneous or tendentious information” in a manifesto issued by 54 furious artists and critics, including such noted names as Derain, Picasso, Kisling.

> President Goebbels of the Reichskultur-kammer, apparently interpreting the Carnegie International jury’s award of first prize to German Artist Karl Hofer as a deliberate insult* to the Third Reich, vented his bile on Artist Hofer by forbidding him to paint at all. Heretofore merely prevented from exhibiting in Germany, Artist Hofer may now be packed away to a concentration camp if some household spy catches him laying brush to canvas in his own studio.

*Two rooms, each about ten feet square, one above the other. * Artist Hofer is on the German black list (TIME, Oct. 24).