Art: Giotto to Grant Wood

Wars may come & go, but the cannonading over the question whether there is or is not a U. S. school in art goes on forever. Meanwhile, art appreciation in the U. S. has come of age with a bang. In 1939 a barrage of art books has been aimed at the public taste. Biggest is Thomas Craven’s A Treasury of Art Masterpieces,* a portable gallery of 144 color reproductions ranging from Giotto to Grant Wood. Most aggressive is Peyton Boswell Jr.’s Modern American Painting,†which is as nationalistic as the Spirit of ’76.

Editors Craven and Boswell, both grassrooters for the current U. S. school, preach an esthetic doctrine of flag-waving. Writes Critic Craven, himself a Kansan: “These vigorous Americans . . . have achieved a body of painting . . . which has announced the beginning of a distinctly American style.” Editor Boswell makes the eagle scream louder, says contemporary U. S. painting is “bred of politico-economic nationalism and the concurrent resentment against the high-pressure dumping of inferior foreign art on the home market.” His small-town merchant advice: “Patronize your local art exhibitions.”

More eloquent for the cause of U. S. art than these polemics are the 85 color reproductions of U. S. canvases in Modern American Painting, the 16 in A Treasury of Art Masterpieces, which show that for art popularization nothing can take the place of color except better color. Grant

Wood’s Woman With Plants (see cut, p. 57) was picked by both Craven and Boswell. Because it confines itself by its title, Modern American Painting, in its color reproductions, gives a vivid and telescopic view of the changing U. S. from 1738 to 1939. Biographies of the 68 artists whose work is reproduced help make this book the most complete and authoritative record of the American School.

*Simon & Schuster ($10). Of some 40 art titles published in the past month, outstanding have been: A TREASURY or AMERICAN PRINTS—Thomas Craven—Simon & Schuster ($3.95): †HAVE WE AN AMERICAN ART—Edward Alden Jewell—Longmans ($2.75); GIST OF ART—John Sloan—American Artists Group ($3.75); AN AMERICAN ARTIST’S STORY—George Biddle —Little, Brown ($4); RUBENS—Phaidon Edition—Oxford University Press ($2.50).

†Dodd, Mead ($5).