Demonstration

(See color page following')

A country has to be lived in and died in for a long time before evidences of its culture accumulate, gain currency and become distinguished. The arts are among those evidences, and for 150 years U. S. citizens have been asking themselves if and when the arts of the U. S., as such, would add another noble tradition to the world's stock. This week in Paris, at the long, two-story Jeu de Paume Museum in the Tuileries Gardens, some earnest people from Manhattan are putting the finishing touches on the most elaborate demonstration ever made in Europe that that tradition is now available.

Meditated for six years by the directors of Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, this exhibition differs significantly from the great exhibition of British art now on view at the Louvre (TIME, March 14). It is neither blessed nor ornamented by any authority of the U. S. Government beyond the routine sponsorship of Ambassador William C. Bullitt. It is not confined to paintings. Besides 200 canvases, 40 sculptures and 80 prints, the exhibition includes probably the biggest historical show of native and derivative U. S. architecture ever displayed, an important collection of photographs, and an exhibition of stills and reels illustrating the development of the cinema, a U. S. art if there ever was one. Frenchmen, who first discovered esthetic importance in U. S. films, will find the Keystone Cops the most familiar part of the show.

For French followers of painting, the exhibition of U. S. oils and watercolors is designed to be an enlightenment. It may well prove to be one in several respects. From the body of U. S. folk art, which nobody even in the U. S. paid much attention to until a generation ago, there are 17 paintings. Also largely unfamiliar or forgotten in Europe are many of the choice 18th and 19th Century paintings. It is in the 20th Century section of the show, however, that Parisians will find an interest which the British Exhibition at the Louvre conspicuously lacks.

Man and Sealyham. Last November the Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition called "Paintings for Paris." The eminent artists invited had been allowed to send their own choices. The show as a whole was a dud, unrepresentative, swank and dull. Nothing better indicates the quality of the Paris exhibition than the fact that of 46 paintings shown last autumn only five are among the 120 contemporary pictures now in Paris. And nothing shows better the character of the man chiefly responsible for the exhibition.

A. (for Anson) Conger Goodyear, 60, looks like a healthy yeoman with whitening stubble hair and frosty blue eyes. He grew up in Buffalo, N. Y., where he had the luck to know a little girl named Mabel Dodge (later Luhan). who has recorded that his nickname was "Grouch" Goodyear. A Yaleman, class of '99. a Wartime colonel and commander of the 81st Field Artillery, "Grouch" Goodyear is president of Great Southern Lumber Co. and board chairman of Gulf, Mobile & Northern Railroad Co. He is also president of the Museum of Modern Art.

What restorations such as that of Williamsburg, Va., or The Cloisters (see p. 16), are to John D. Rockefeller Jr., the Museum of Modern Art is to Mrs. Rockefeller. Her gifts of modern art to the museum have been surpassed only by that of her friend, the late Lillie P. Bliss. Her greatest interest is in U. S. art, traditional and contemporary, and in this A. Conger Goodyear is a fellow soul. Ever since he first broached the idea to the Louvre authorities in 1932, dynamic President Goodyear, a lover of Winslow Homer and Charles Burchfield, has yearned to show France the artistic goods of the U. S.

During the past year this big man and his small Sealyham, Deacon, have become familiar visitors to art dealers, art galleries, museums and artists throughout the U. S. In preparing the Paris show, the Museum's scholarly, sensitive Director Alfred H. Barr Jr. merely advised; Mr. Goodyear did the picking. After last autumn's fiasco, he did a businesslike job. The 80 living artists represented include most of the well-known names in U. S. art. But they also include a discreet number of young or obscure artists whose merit is known to few.

If the paintings chosen reflect the taste of A. Conger Goodyear, they also reflect the extent and distribution of art patronage in the U. S. Of 120 contemporary paintings, 36 were borrowed from museums, 32 from private collectors. Of 88 older paintings, 45 were borrowed from museums, 28 from private collectors. Nearly one-third of the contemporary paintings remained in the possession of dealers or artists: i.e., unsold.

Among the private collections drawn upon, notable were those of : Mrs. Rockefeller, whose U. S. primitives supplied such beauties as Edward Hicks's Residence of David Twining; Sportsman John Hay Whitney, who lent Whistler's Wapping on Thames; Financier Stephen C. Clark, who lent Homer's Croquet; Mrs. Cornelius N. Bliss; Financier Sam A. Lewisohn; Marshall Field; Edsel B. Ford; Manhattan Architect Philip L. Goodwin; Mrs. Stanley Resor of Manhattan and Robert Hudson Tannahill of Detroit. All except Mrs. Bliss and Mr. Tannahill are trustees of the Museum of Modern Art; but Mr. Bliss is a trustee and Mr. Tannahill is a cousin of Mrs. Edsel Ford. Outside this wealthy constellation, the large and scattered group of private collections includes those of gash-mouthed Edward G. Robinson of Hollywood, who owns Grant Wood's famed Daughters of Revolution, and Beautician Helena Rubinstein of Manhattan.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.