First National

With much ballyhoo, New York City's Municipal Art Committee last week opened its First National Exhibition of U. S. Art in Rockefeller Center's International Building. Arranged according to the artists' home States, some 700 paintings and 60 sculptures from 46 States, the District of Columbia and four territories hung on specially prepared walls of sea grass and plaster. For the preview dinner in Rockefeller Center's 65th story Rainbow Room, New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia rounded up a roomful of bigwigs, including New Jersey's Governor Harold Hoffman. Beefy Governor Hoffman promptly proceeded to put the show on the front pages by flooring with one blow a spindly Hearstling named Lou Wedemar who heckled him about his handling of the Hauptmann case. After this preliminary bout the bigwigs were taken to look at the show. Advertised as a "representative cross-section of American art," it was really a representative cross-section of American taste. Organized U. S. artists had boycotted it because the Municipal Art Committee refused to pay artists a rental fee of 1% per month of each painting's value. Selection of paintings had been left to Governors. So scant was official interest in New Hampshire and Louisiana that no pictures were chosen at all from these States. First National had only three abstractions, a few surrealisms, countless landscapes, mostly of each artist's native town, plain, mountain, sierra, river, lake or desert. Overwhelming majority of the artists were entirely unknown, uninspired, surprisingly competent. A bad start were the Hawaiian entries, except for John C. Young's painting of blue-white water foaming against rocks. Puerto Rico's N. Poy was even worse with a peon and green bananas. The Panama Canal Zone had a slightly superior cubic nude by Blanche Lupfer. The Virgin Islands scraped the show's low. Alaska was not represented.

The Pacific States were dull. Undistinguished were pictures of San Francisco Bay, cod fishermen, miners, deserts and the Rock Island Dam.

The Plateau States did better. Notable was Colorado's able Frank Mechau who showed a fine big canvas of seven running horses, four of them without ears (TIME, March 2).

The South Central States marked an-other slump. Probable worst was Devil's Swamp by Oklahoma's Edith Mahier. Kentucky's Frank W. Long painted Singer Jack Niles with his dulcinet. There were plenty of portraits of pretty white women and brave white gentlemen.

Ablest, most vigorous painting in the show was in the North Central States section. Best known was Sleeping by Michigan's John Carroll. The model for this picture was Georgia Finckel, 27, whom Artist Carroll married last week in Columbus, Ohio. He called his frail, slant-eyed second wife the "inspiration" as well as the model for the murals he had just finished at Detroit's Institute of Arts.

Illinois went in for barns, with a dazzling red one by Dale Nichols and another by J. William Kennedy. Superbly banal was Paul Trebilcock's slick portrait study of Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt in red velvet with her sister Thelma, Viscountess Furness. A rare French influence showed in Split Rock Lighthouse by Minnesota's Eleanor DeLaitre, a yellow lighthouse painted with the vivid shallowness of French Modernist Raoul Dufy. Missouri's John de Martelly offered two ably cartooned old crones in Economic Discussion over coffee & doughnuts.

From this high level the South Atlantic States fell off sharply again. Most reactionary of the show were two calendar works by Delaware's Stanley M. Arthurs and Frank E. Schoonover, showing the first voyage of the steamship Clermont and Sir Lancelot Leadeth Lady Belle Isoudt to the Castle at Joyous Card. Hanging between these two was a violent group of black bucks looking at two dice that add up to seven, by Florida's Christopher Clark. There were also a number of flower studies.

The New England States were the show's most conventional, except for the two samples of surrealism by Rhode Island's Waldo Kaufer.

The Middle Atlantic States' entries were hardest hit by the artists' boycott. Non-boycotters in New York were Gifford Beal, Charles Burchfield, Guy Pene DuBois with his well known Mr. & Mrs. Middle Class, Ernest Lawson, Jonas Lie, Luigi Lucioni, Henry Varnum Poor, John Sloan. Ablest was Eugene Speicher's Nude Back.

Absolute low of the show were New Jersey's entries, except for an able seascape by John Marin. Proudly grey-haired Painter Henry R. MacGinnis had his photograph taken in front of his commonplace Silver Kimono with his model, Jane Erwin, and Governor Hoffman. There were also four sentimental landscapes suitable for calendars, an unbelievably bad poster pumpkin, an indigestible moon in a green sky and some portraits. Bleated New Jersey Art Critic and Columbia University Art Instructor Raymond O'Neill: "This show will make New Jersey appear to be painting in a corner away from the march of art and time. To tell the truth, it's hard to get steamed up enough to attack these pictures. They are grand examples of artistic decadence. . . . Everyone will get the wrong idea about New Jersey art."

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