It was not as a protest against bad art, local or foreign, that the International Exhibition of 1913 was organized, and it is very solidly to the credit of our public that it did not regard the event in that negative fashion—but as a positive thing, a revelation of the later schools of European painting of which it had been kept in ignorance by the will of the academies here and abroad. The “Armory Show,” as it was called, drew forth a storm of ridicule, but it also attracted such hundreds of thousands of visitors as no current exhibition had ever gathered in this country before. The first contact of our public with the arts that have succeeded Impressionism—with the painting of Cézanne, Redon, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse, the Cubists, and others—was made at this epoch-marking show. With the jeers that it received there were not a few hosannas, and even the vast majority of visitors—doubtful as to the exact value of the various exhibits, knew that qualities existed in the new schools that had never been seen here and that were needed. Some three hundred works went from the walls of the Armory to form a vanguard for the far more important purchases of modern art that have since been building up our collections; so that at the moment of this writing an exhibition can be opened at the Metropolitan Museum which, while representing a mere fraction of the wealth of such pictures in American possession, gives a superb idea of the great schools of the later 19th century and the 20th century in France. It is worthy of note that in its response to the great show of 1913 and to the smaller ones that followed, America was only giving, in a stronger form, the measure of a power of appreciation it had shown before. Earlier examples of this are to be found in the great collections of Barbizon and Impressionist pictures here. A thing that should weigh against many a discouraging feature of our art-conditions is the fact that an American museum was the first in the world, and the only one during the lifetime of Manet, to hang works by that master.
Returning now to our own painting, one man in this country resisted with complete success the test of an exhibition with the greatest of recent painters from abroad. It was Mr. Maurice B. Prendergast, who for thirty years had been joyously labouring at an art which showed its derivation from the best French painting of his day, its admirable acceptances of the teaching of Cézanne (scarcely a name even in Europe when Mr. Prendergast first studied him), and its humorous and affectionate appreciation of the American scenes that the artist had known from his youth. In original and logical design, in brilliant colour that yet had the mellowness of a splendid wine, he expresses the modern faith in the world we see and makes it lovable. At last we welcome an art in accord with the finest of the ancient-modern tradition, as European critics have since declared; yet it remains American in provenance and in the air of unconscious honesty that has always been a characteristic of the good work of this country.
The latest wave of influence to come over American art has almost been the most far-reaching and invigorating. To go further than this assertion, at least in the matter of individuals, would be to forego the support of too large a part of that body of opinion that I know to be behind my statements throughout this essay. Art-matters must, in the final analysis, be stated dogmatically, but I am unwilling to speak of the schools now developing save in a general way, especially as the most interesting men in them have still to reach a definitive point in their evolution. They are abreast or nearly abreast of the ideas of Europe, and there is an admirable vigour in the work that some individuals are producing with those ideas. But the changes brought about by the International are still too recent for us to expect the most important results from them for a number of years. The general condition here has probably never been as good before.
I have, till now, spoken only of the more traditional aspects of art—the kind one finds in museums—and that last word calls for at least a mention of the great wealth of art-objects that are heaping up in our public collections, and in the private galleries which so often come to the aid of the museums.
There is, however, another phase of our subject that demands comment, if only as a point of departure for the study that will one day be given to the American art that is not yet recognized by its public or its makers as one of our main expressions. The steel bridges, the steel buildings, the newly designed machines, and utensils of all kinds we are bringing forth show an adaptation to function that is recognized as one of the great elements of art. Perhaps the process has not yet gone far enough for us to look on these things as fully developed works of art, perhaps we shall still need some influence from Europe to make us see the possibilities we have here, or again, it may be in America that the impetus to creation along such lines will be the stronger. At all events we may feel sure that the study of the classics, ancient and modern, which is spreading throughout the country has, in some men, reached a point of saturation which permits the going on to new discovery, and we may be confident of the ability of our artists to make good use of their advantage.
Walter Pach
THE THEATRE
Of the perceptible gradual improvement in the American popular taste so far as the arts are concerned, the theatre as we currently engage it offers, comparatively, the least evidence. The best-selling E. Phillips Oppenheims, Robert W. Chamberses, and Eleanor H. Porters of yesterday have given considerable ground to Wharton and Bennett, to Hergesheimer and Wells. The audiences in support of Stokowski, the Flonzaley Quartette, the Philharmonic, the great piano and violin virtuosos, and the recognized singers, are yearly augmented. Fine painting and fine sculpture find an increasing sober appreciation. The circulation of Munsey’s Magazine falls, and that of the Atlantic Monthly rises. But the best play of an American theatrical season, say a “Beyond the Horizon,” has still to struggle for full breath, while across the street the receipts of some “Ladies’ Night,” “Gold Diggers,” or “Bat,” running on without end, mount to the half-million mark.
If one speaks of the New York theatre as the American theatre, one speaks with an exaggerated degree of critical charity, for the New York theatre—so far as there is any taste in the American theatre—is the native theatre at its fullest flower. Persons insufficiently acquainted with the theatre have a fondness for controverting this, but the bookkeeping departments offer concrete testimony that, if good drama is supported at all, it is supported in the metropolitan theatre, not in the so-called “road” theatre. The New York theatre supports an American playwright like Booth Tarkington when he does his best in “Clarence,” where the road theatre supports him only when he does his worst, as in “Mister Antonio.” The New York theatre, these same financial records prove, supports Shaw, O’Neill, Galsworthy, Bahr, and others of their kind, at least in sufficient degree to permit them to pay their way, where the theatre of Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh spells failure for them. Save it be played by an actor or actress of great popular favour, a first-rate piece of dramatic writing has to-day hardly a chance for success outside of New York. These other cities of America, though they are gradually reading better books and patronizing better music and finer musicians, are almost drama-deaf. “There is, in New York,” the experienced Mr. William A. Brady has said to me, “an audience of at least fifteen thousand for any really good play. That isn’t a large audience; it won’t turn the play into a profitable theatrical venture; but it is a damned sight larger audience than you’ll be able to find in any other American city.” Let the native sons of the cities thus cruelly maligned, before they emit their habitual bellows of protest, consider, once they fared forth from New York, the fate of nine-tenths of the first-rate plays produced in the American theatre without the hocus-pocus of fancy box-office “stars” during the last ten years.
The theatrical taste of America at the present time, outside of the metropolis, is demonstrated by the box-office returns to be one that venerates the wall-motto opera of Mr. William Hodge and the spectacular imbecilities of Mr. Richard Walton Tully above the finest work of the best of its native dramatists like O’Neill, and above the finest work of the best of the modern Europeans. In the metropolis, an O’Neill’s “Beyond the Horizon,” a Galsworthy’s “Justice,” a Shaw’s “Androcles,” at least can live; sometimes, indeed, live and prosper. But for one respectable piece of dramatic writing that succeeds outside of New York, there are twenty that fail miserably. The theatrical culture of the American countryside is in the main of a piece with that of the French countryside, and to the nature of the latter the statistics of the French provincial theatres offer a brilliant and dismaying attestation. Save a good play first obtain the endorsement of New York, it is to-day impossible to get a paying audience for it in any American city of size after the first curiosity-provoking performance. These audiences buy, not good drama, but notoriety. Were all communication with the city of New York suddenly to be cut off for six months, the only theatrical ventures that could earn their way outside would be the Ziegfeld “Follies,” the Winter Garden shows, “Ben Hur,” and the hack dramatizations of the trashier best-sellers like “Pollyanna” and “Daddy Longlegs.” This is not postured for sensational effect. It is literally true. So true, in fact, that there is to-day not a single producer in the American theatre who can afford to, or who will, risk the loss of a mere four weeks’ preliminary “road” trial of a first-class play. If he cannot get a New York theatre for his production, he places it in the storehouse temporarily until he can obtain a metropolitan booking rather than hazard the financial loss that, nine times in ten, is certain to come to him.