National Show

A particular pet of peppery little May Fiorello LaGuardia of New York has been the National Exhibition of American Art, to which, year ago, the governors of all the 48 U. S. States, plus the territories and possessions, were invited to send group of pictures representative of the localities. The first show, held in Rockefeller Center last year (TIME, June 1, 1936), produced a welter of well-meaning mediocrity, was generally damned by the critics and was totally ignored by two States. Last week the second National art show opened to a very different reception in the rooms generally reserved for the National Academy of Design. Even the Virgin Islands and American Samoa were represented among some 526 pictures and statues. Most States held local exhibition and preliminary contests to choose the pictures to be sent. All critics were respectful, and the World-Telegram's Emil Genauer was able to write:

"It makes clear . . . that art in America is now a sturdy growth, like an elm tree which spreads its roots slowly but far, and eventually reaches great lasting solidity and height."

As in Congressional representation, the number of pictures a State could send to the show was made proportional to its population, hence arid New Mexico, which has as thriving an art community as exists in the U. S., was limited to five canvases, one sculpture, while Florida, as arid artistically as it is fruitful agriculturally was allowed eight paintings, one sculpture. Beyond that the most startling fact to Manhattanites was that neither John Steuart Curry of Kansas, Thomas Benton of Missouri or Grant Wood of Iowa wa represented.

Because most artists of ability live close to the Manhattan art marts and consider New York their State no matter whence they came, New York's contribution was the largest, easily the best. Reginald Marsh had one of his riotous confusions at Coney Island, this time entitled George T. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park. Sculptor Mahonri Young offered a bronze boxer. There were able nudes by Isabel Bishop and Alexander Brook and a study of a black parasol by Morris Kantor that was possibly the best still life in the show.

If New York had the highest general excellence, Illinois' 18 exhibits showed the greatest heterogeneity. For the first time Easterners had a chance to see Carl Hallsthammar's fine Venus in Red Cherry, winner of the Logan prize at the Chicago Art Institute, and widely hailed by liberal critics as the finest work ever to win that prize. There were able landscapes by Dale Nichols and Frederick Tellander, but there was also Contemplation by Julius Moessel, a study of a chimpanzee squatting in a rhododendron bush and gazing sentimentally at a butterfly, and there was Sophie by Macena Barton, most disdainful nude in the show, sneering at the gallery goers who gawped at her large white flanks. The Illinois group was completed by a surrealist portrait of Charlie Chaplin, the man and the character by Anita Venier Alexander.

One of the most arresting exhibits in the show was Burden by 30-year-old Hillis Arnold of Minnesota, the stone deaf son of a North Dakota wheat farmer who did a 250-ft. mural on building materials for the University of Minnesota while he was a student there. Burden shows two nude males, in close communion, who might possibly be waving at somebody. The earthy, nationalist school was well represented by the fried chicken, chocolate layer cake and folksey picnickers of William C. Estler's Home Coming, Bethesda Church (West Virginia). Among the ablest pictures technically is Jury for Trial of a Sheepherder for Murder by Ernest Leonard Blumenschein of New Mexico. Artist Blumenschein, longtime member of the art colony at Taos, has lived in New Mexico since the days of D. H. Lawrence, shrewdly observed his Spanish-Indian neighbors, perfecting a slick highly varnished technique somewhat reminiscent of Spain's no longer fashionable Ignacio Zuloaga.

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