Art: Fifth Anniversary

When the New Deal took over Washington, the great limestone & marble building which now houses the Post Office Department was nearing completion. Its architects wanted its walls decorated with the usual classical allegory. A special adviser to the State and Treasury Departments named Edward Bruce objected. A capable Manhattan lawyer who retired in 1922 to become a capable artist, he stormed: “I don’t want any pictures of ladies in cheesecloth clutching letters and postcards to go into that building!”

Before long Edward Bruce’s good friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had him heading a newly created Section of Fine Arts, charged with supervising such decoration. Very few ladies in cheesecloth have found their way into Federal buildings since. The sort of art which has replaced them was amply demonstrated last week by a 456-item show in Washington’s Corcoran Gallery, celebrating the Section of Fine Arts’ fifth anniversary.

One of the SFA’s problems is persuading people that it is not a relief project. Allotted 1% of the appropriation for each new Federal building, it has adorned 553 of them with painting and sculpture at a cost of $841,000, is now decorating some 400 others. No longer is art restricted to the biggest buildings. Thanks to Government murals, many a small-town post office and courthouse is gay as Joseph’s coat.

Centre of attraction at the Corcoran show were 48 prizewinners of the latest SFA competition, picked from 1,470 color sketches submitted anonymously to a jury of artists. Each of these will be painted as a post-office mural in a different State. Outstanding are Paul Sample’s angular New England landscape (Westerly, R. I.), Charles W. Thwaites’ wheat harvesters (Chilton, Wis.), William Calfee’s fishermen drawing up their nets at dawn (Phoebus, Va.). Common denominator of the 48 is an attempt to say something definite about the U. S., past or present. Most interesting of the historical designs is Avery Johnson’s spirited winter scene for Bordentown, N. J., which shows Joseph Bonaparte, ex-King of Spain, who settled on the Delaware River after his brother Napoleon’s downfall, watching his footman distribute largess to skaters on his private pond.

Exulted Edward Bruce at the show’s opening: “It is a panorama of America triumphant, clear-eyed and unafraid. It smells as sweet as a new-mown field of clover.” Less partial critics still found much to praise, noted a steady improvement from 1934, agreed that even if the SFA has yet to uncover a genius, it has uncovered plenty of talent.