Art: Independents

The 15th Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists (“No Jury, No Prizes”) opened in Manhattan last week. Phalanxes of newspaper humorists and a smattering of the general public moved upon Grand Central Palace. All that is necessary to exhibit at the Independents is $6 and an opus. All that is necessary to see the exhibition is 25¢ and the time to spare.

Fifteen years ago the Independent society was founded by a group of serious younger artists, among them: John Sloan, George Bellows, Robert Henri, Samuel Halpert. Since then New York has sprouted out all over with modernist galleries. The discovery of artistic talent has become a business as highly organized as philanthropy, with museums, trust funds, press agents of its own. Left to exhibit at the Independents’ show are a few loyal veterans of its early days, and the hopelessly mediocre, the would-be humorists, the self-advertisers. Some 700 of them paid their $6 each last week to show 1,200 works of art.

Because the Independents will accept anything except the obviously obscene, the show is always a carnival for propagandists with a message. Chief of these exhibits last week was a huge cartoon, painted on muslin by twelve members of the John Reed Club, an organization of communistically inclined writers & artists. Entitled Washington Market it showed a pudgy Herbert Hoover knee-deep in a junk wagon labelled U. S. A. Prominent was a large dead fish, labelled FISH (meaning Red-hunting Congressman Hamilton Fish of New York). Temporarily tacked to Mr. Hoover’s left hand was a loose piece of paper marked BONUS VETO. Explained a grey-bearded John Reed clubfellow:

“We really ought to have a safety pin. I am arranging to borrow a safety pin. We are asking $580,000 for that picture, do you want to know why? It’s because we don’t want any American millionaire to buy it. We’re going to sell it to the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow.”

Not to be outdone, Chicago had its “independent” exhibit last week. The No-Jury Society of Artists showed 400 canvases. Reporters shook their heads over two pictures, Quaking Aspens and Desert Plains by Robert C. Zuppke, football coach of the University of Illinois.