Art: Private Patrons

“It is true that no Jap is going to be killed by an artist’s brush. . . .” So cracked Art Digest’s Peyton Boswell at Congress’ refusal to appropriate $125,000 for war orders: contracts with 19 artists to record the gory glory of World War II (TIME, July 19). But the country need not worry. U.S. artists will not be denied the best subjects in the history of man-made destruction.

When the Army canceled the contracts ($3,800 a year, plus 25% for overseas service), a half dozen magazines saw an opportunity. Collier’s signed up Howard Cook. LIFE took over contracts with Bruce Mitchell, Millard Sheets, Aaron Bohrod, Reginald Marsh and eight others. It still is dickering with five more.* Said Editor Boswell: “. . . It will be another example of private enterprise having better judgment of relative values than Government.”

The work the artists do while serving out their contracts for their new patrons will eventually go to the Government.

The paintings may some day hang in a Museum of War Art — alongside 200 can vases already earmarked for the Government by LIFE. (An exhibition of the best of these 200 — done by the nine artists whom LIFE has sent to cover the battlefronts in the past two years — opens at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art this week.)

* The other Alexander Brook, magazines lost decided that interest, the and war one was art not his subject and returned to a home-front easel.