Art: Sideshow

Winston Churchill is not the only statesman who gets away from it all by painting pictures. Many a hoarse U.S. Senator and Representative has spent his weekends in ear-ringing silence, imposing, with the mere motion of a paintbrush, his will upon unresisting canvas. Last week some 80 such paintings and sculptures (plus a few by wives, secretaries and friends) were unveiled in Washington’s Congressional Club.

Audience favorites:

¶ An unabashedly simian Self-Portrait by Tennessee’s Representative James Percy Priest. It was, explained Priest, “a joke.”

¶Uncle Zebulon, portrait of a Negro, by Arkansas’ Brooks Hays. Said he: “I forget the OPA, the CPA and everything else when I’m painting.”

¶ Clare Boothe Luce’s Distinguished Gentleman Smelling Flowers, apparently based on an A.P. photograph of Harry Truman deep in a White House flower bush.

¶A bas-relief Nude carved in wood by New York’s balding Andrew Lawrence Somers (who claims he only carves when bored, “and I’m bored most of the time”).

¶ Mrs. Chester Nimitz’ charcoal & pastel of a whiskered old Chinese. Title: The Dignity of Old Age.

¶ Upper Park Avenue, a bright-colored, schoolboyish splash by New York’s Representative Joseph Clark Baldwin. Said Socialite Joe Baldwin: “[Painting] takes a very short time actually.”

The Congressmen seemed to be in esthetic agreement with Harry Truman. They had done their best to represent what they saw. None of it could be called “Ham & Egg Art.”