Old Bolsheviks

The oldest almost-free-for-all of U.S. art was held last week in Manhattan. To the 25th exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, 535 artists from all over the U.S., some professionals, others doctors, lawyers, tinsmiths, truck drivers, laundry salesmen, coal miners, janitors, had sent 857 paintings, sculptures and ceramics. Most of the stuff was terrible. But all of it was displayed. For the Society of Independent Artists has no jury, believes that any U.S. artist who can fork up $5 to pay for expenses ought to have a chance to show his work.

When it was founded in 1917 the Society of Independent Artists did more than any other U.S. organization to break the stodgy, stale tobacco-juice-landscape and frock-coat-portrait traditions that had clung to U.S. art since the late 19th Century. In those Academy-ridden days, the Independents' free-for-all (patterned after Paris' famed Salon des Independents) offered artists with new ideas their one big chance. Many exhibitors at the early Independents shows later became famed figures in the U.S. art world. As the years went by, as modernism changed from a struggling revolutionary movement to a popular fad, the Society of Independents grew feebler. Last week's show, like many before it, caused hardly a critical ripple.

But the oldsters who fought the Independents' first battles still slay long-dead dragons with all their old zest. As a prelude to this year's Silver Jubilee, a group of oldtimers, with some 300 friends and admirers, crowded the Independents' old hangout: Petitpas, a venerable Bohemian French restaurant on Manhattan's lower West Side. Their guest of honor was a small, garrulous, bespectacled oldster who had risen from a sickbed to be there. For 24 of its 25 years he had been the Society's president. His name was a famous one in U.S. art: John Sloan.

Most embattled of all the Independents' veterans, 69-year-old John Sloan, a scrappy, Pennsylvania-born Scotch-Irishman, has long been one of the most engaging personalities of the U.S. art world. One New Year's Eve, with Artist Marcel Duchamp (famed for his Nude ,Descending the Staircase), John Sloan climbed to the top of Washington Square's Arch, there built a bonfire and read a solemn declaration proclaiming Greenwich Village an independent republic. Less violent than his speeches and ideas were John Sloan's trenchant, Daumier-like paintings and etchings of Manhattan street and rooftop scenes which got him a name as one of the best U.S. realists.

Old Independent Sloan has lately taken to painting rather conventional, Matisse-like nudes, with a peculiar crosshatch finish that leaves them looking like partially-grated carrots. But his quizzical impetuosity still bubbles as effervescently as ever. At the Petitpas dinner, while fellow oldsters and admiring youngsters roared applause and dishes clattered, John Sloan stoutly upheld the cause of the Independents, rambled wittily on everything from his recent operation to his theory that Hitler is a frustrated artist.

As usual, Oldster Sloan came up with an original idea. To publicize this year's Independents show, he suggested an exhibition of used chewing gum. Said he: "After all, chewing gum is a form of sculpture. It's casual. It's unpremeditated. Collect chewing gum before it's been stepped on, put each bit in a glass case, with chromium on it, and you'd find individuality, as good as autographs if the chewers were known."

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