Boycotters & Bolters

Last week the latest effort to do something for artists who have won critical acclaim but sold few pictures caused one of the wildest nights that the Negro waiters in Manhattan's Coffee House Club could remember, and split the American Society of Painters, Sculptors & Gravers.

Since the War, provincial art museums have burgeoned weedily throughout the U. S. Most of them, waiting for their permanent collections to grow, keep their galleries filled with loan exhibitions of modern paintings for which they pay the artists nothing. The average artist of any reputation generally has six or eight pictures making the museum rounds, seldom sells any. At the end of the season he is put to considerable expense fixing broken frames, patching cracked varnish, and otherwise repairing minor damages to his work.

Last May excitable President Bernard Karfiol of the Painters, Sculptors & Gravers proposed that his society boycott all museums that would not pay a monthly rental of 1% of the appraised valuation of the pictures exhibited. Such payments would probably bring the average exhibiting artist more than $100 a year, just about enough to meet repair expenses.

First test of the boycott came fortnight ago with the opening of the Worcester Art Museum's second biennial show of U. S. paintings. Because Director Francis Henry Taylor could not and would not pay rentals, the following well-known U. S. artists refused to submit pictures: Alexander Brook, Bernard Karfiol, Ernest Fiene, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Morris Kantor, Reginald Marsh, Katherine Schmidt, Arnold Blanch, Paul Cadmus, Niles Spencer, Henry Schnakenberg. Director Taylor freely admitted that the boycott badly handicapped his exhibition.

Fourteen artists who have had good luck in selling pictures through loan exhibitions promptly resigned from the Painters, Sculptors & Gravers. As prominent as any of the boycotters, they included Guy Pene du Bois, Charles Burchfield, Eugene Speicher, William Glackens, Charles Hopkinson, John Carroll, Mahonri Young, Henry Mattson, John Sloan, Judson Smith.

Last week's meeting at the Coffee House was to try to entice the bolters back into the fold, to stiffen the backbone of the boycotters. None of those who resigned returned. There was a great buzz-buzz-buzz of angry oratory in which the museums were roundly denounced as rackets. About midnight, with the aid of words and whiskey, the Society members had worked themselves up to such a pitch that they were ready to cripple every art show in the land to win their rental crusade.

The museums' point of view was best expressed by Director Taylor in an open letter to President Karfiol. Excerpts: "If, for the sake of argument, the Worcester Museum were to consent to such a proposal as that of the American Society of Painters, Sculptors & Gravers, the rental fee ... would cost about $1,000. Add to this the purchase of prizes, insurance, shipping and catalog costs and it brings the total considerably in excess of our entire exhibition budget for the year. ... In order to bring the costs down within reason the list of painters exhibiting would be so constricted that there would be no opportunity for new and unexploited talent. Fat rental fees would be paid to the 'big shots' who don't, in many instances, need the money, and the struggling younger artists would be left high and dry. . . .

"What artists so often forget is that museums are incorporated to promote the arts rather than the artist. . . .

"During the years of the depression, except for government commissions and artist relief, American museums have proven themselves to be the artists' most consistent friend. ... If we may believe the handwriting on the wall, the artistic capital of this country may shift in an incredibly short time from New York to Washington. The greater part of your membership is composed of artists whose problems and points of view are colored by conditions on the island of Manhattan."

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