Congress Show

In the U. S. today an artist of even moderate reputation has half the product of his studio almost continuously on tour at loan exhibitions of dealers and provincial museums. For this he gets nothing except the vague possibility of making a sale, must stand damage and insurance on his own pictures. To force galleries to pay rental fees no matter how small on exhibited pictures became an important issue with a group of artists known as the American Artists' Congress.

Even before the Congress had held its first meeting last year, members had talked themselves into a vastly more imposing program. Other objects of the Artists' Congress are nothing less than a crusade against war and fascism, agitation for more and better Government art projects, opposition to lynching, commercialized art colonies, the Liberty League and William Randolph Hearst.

Last week the American Artists' Congress with over 600 painters and sculptors on its lists opened simultaneous exhibitions in New York. Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., New Orleans. Largest, most important was that in Manhattan's Rockefeller Center where 300 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, statues were on view.

Every critic's first impression was the same. Despite the Congress' slightly incoherent Utopianism, works on view were of a remarkably high character, presented the highest artistic average of any group show of the past season. Artists exhibiting were far from unknown. They ranged from ultra-conservatives like Paul Manship through progressives like Leon Kroll, Rockwell Kent, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, George Biddle, to complete abstractionists like Stuart Davis. A few scenes of the Spanish War were on the walls but for the most part propaganda was left to the Congress' various pamphlets.

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