Argyrol into Art

If there is anything to denote the stretch of suburbia called Merion as an important adjunct of Philadelphia, it is a 12-acre park, full of rare trees, graveled drives and smooth lawns, surrounding an edifice of buff French limestone where hangs the most notable U. S. collection of modern art.

Last week, the elders of Merion having decided to allow a row of cheap houses to be built near this park, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, president of the foundation that owns park, art and building, threatened to move the pictures to the Metropolitan Museum, Manhattan, or wherever else they might be properly appreciated, and to fill the limestone edifice with Negroes in the process of being cultivated. The elders of Merion reconsidered their longing for a row of cheap houses.

Said Dr. Barnes: "I shall be a humble and unworthy follower of great people like Stokowski, Mary Cassatt, Abbey, Sloan, Glackens and many others--who leave Philadelphia to get a breath of fresh air and never come back."

Whether or not a museum as conservative as the Metropolitan would accept the Barnes collection, is a question. It contains some 700 pieces by the very modernest of the modernists. It has the bevy of nude ladies which Artist Renoir painted in his pensive way and called "Les Baigneuses," and which the Louvre failed to accept as a gift from Artist Renoir's sons. It contains tortured Goyas, and stark El Grecos; bold, eye-shaking Manets, Monets, Picassos, Soutines, Matisses, Van Goghs. It has many a tired ballet dancer by Degas, many an illuminating piece of fruit by Dr. Barnes's favorite of all painters, Paul Cezanne. Also, because of their influence upon French art and the presence of three of their race among Dr. Barnes's associates, primitive African sculptors are plentifully represented, by dark little wooden shapes which purists find obscene, but the adventurous adore.

Not less remarkable than the Barnes Collection of modern art are Albert C. Barnes himself, the Barnes foundation and the A. C. Barnes Co., Philadelphia chemists, out of which the Barnes Collection grew. Albert C. Barnes is the sort of person who gets himself called, variously, "crazy nut," "queer fish," "genius." His personality has exasperated staid Philadelphians quite as often as his paintings have upset academicians of the school of fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania, whose senior member called them "rot" in 1923, after Mr. Barnes had endowed a chair in the school. Dr. Barnes, in short, is a person who couples action with his unconventional convictions.

The A. C. Barnes Co. started business in 1902 with enough capital to run for three months if luck were untoward. It was a group of nine persons--five white women, three colored men, and Dr. Barnes --banded together to manufacture chemicals originated by themselves. Dr. Barnes had been to Heidelberg. Three of the women had been graduated by small-town high schools. Two of the women and two of the Negroes had been through grade school. The other Negro cannot read or write to this day. The object of these people was to develop a community plan for individual self-development in the sense expounded for that word by Philosopher William James, apostle of being practical. They employed no traveling salesmen to sell their products, did no display advertising. Instead they applied the principles of Jamesian psychology to keep costs down and income up. They were cooperative, without a "boss." Each participant undertook that part of the work for which he was best fitted. They found that, working thus philosophically, they needed to work only six hours per day to make good profits. To fill out an eight-hour day they instituted seminars--readings by one of the women from the authors "in whose writings we were genuinely interested and whose ideas had been good moneymakers." They devoted two full years to their patron saint, James; then took up his disciple, John Dewey (whom they later made educational director of their foundation); then Bertrand Russell, then George Santayana. It was through Philosopher Santayana, esthetician, that their interest in paintings grew great. They began, individually, to buy pictures, each to his own taste, depending on no "experts" or dealers for advice. They bought advantageously from adventurous painters. Today the Barnes Collection is worth $7,000,000.

During 13 years of business-hour seminars, one member of the A. C. Barnes Co. has usually enrolled in a graduate course at the University of Pennsylvania or Columbia University. What the member learned abroad, he or she lectured on in the office, for private adaptation. Thus the chemist-philosophers covered MacDougall (psychology), Ibsen (drama), Tolstoi (novels), Nietzsche and many another.

"We claim no originality for the methods employed," Dr. Barnes has written, "because they are all described almost in detail" in the works above mentioned. "What we believe our experiment indicates is that great things of creation, in art, literature and thinking, can be resolved to fundamentals of human nature and in simple form be so presented that they may be grasped by plain men, even illiterate people. . . . We offer no formula and least of all are we interested in reform or edification. . . .

"One of our colored men was a popular professional boxer who never took even a day off to train during all the years, yet he received more in one night for six rounds of boxing than we gave for six days of working. We put William James and John Dewey into his boxing ..." and he nearly won the title for his weight.

"One of our mature women employees had so much energy that she was a disturbing factor in the placid job of labeling and wrapping bottles. We removed the contention by placing her in charge of the stock and shipping where a new motor coordination is necessary nearly every minute. She uses her leisure in mothering the younger girls in general and in telling them in her way what we tried to tell her in our way about the subjects of the seminars."

The Barnes Foundation is five years old, endowed in perpetuity by proceeds from the chemical business, one of whose big money-makers is Argyrol (silver preparation for infected mucous membranes). From Argyrol to Art seems a long way to many a Philadelphian, but in the dictionary of Dr. Albert C. Barnes the two words are almost adjacent.

By coincidence ,the same day that Dr. Barnes threatened to move his collection to Manhattan, the Philadelphia city council offered to give Joseph E. Widener a plot of ground on which to build a museum to house his art collection as a gift to the nation. The Widener collection is extensive, valuable, orthodox.