Page 46 - Studio International - February 1966

Commentary from Washington and New York

by Dore Ashton

Washington are right. But the struggle to strike deep into American
'There never has been more art-talk and seeming art consciousness still besets the American artist. Here, art
interest in this country than there is today.' Although may be long, but memories are exceedingly short.
Alfred Stieglitz wrote of the 'seeming' art interest in The proof lies in an unusually pointed exhibition,
America in 1916, he could well have been writing Roots of Abstract Art In America, appropriately offered
today. Even his wry observations concerning the quality by the newly-active National Collection of Fine Arts
of that interest still hold. (Art is considered the 'equiva- in Washington. Known better as the Smithsonian
lent in society to what the appendix is to the human Institution—where the collection is housed—the NCFA
body'.) There are those who will say that the situation was until recently a classic instance of American in-
is vastly improved, of course, and in some ways they souciance and forgetfulness. The very artists exhibited
in this show were hardly noticed by those responsible
The illustrations on these two for the patchwork Government collection which by now
pages are from the exhibition
Roots of Abstract Art could have been the U.S. equivalent to the Tate Collec-
in America, 1910-1930 tion. All that, however, is about to change, as the quality
at the National Collection of
Fine Arts (Smithsonian Institution) and importance of this major exhibition indicates.
Washington Although the exhibition documents abstract painting
Right and sculpture from 1910 to 1930, and refers to the
John Covert 'roots' of abstract painting, it might better refer to the
Brass Band 1919
Oil and string on composition board first round in a recurrent battle. The fact is that many
26 x 24 in.
of the artists represented eventually lost heart and either
Lent by the Yale University
Art Gallery turned from abstraction or disappeared entirely as
artists. Mrs Adelyn Breeskin, writing in the catalogue
foreword, points out that lack of support might well
have contributed to the suicides of Alfred Maurer,
Oscar Bluemner, and Morton Schamberg. It certainly
contributed to the sparsity of exhibitions and recogni-
tion, and to the long hiatus in imaginative activity
Below between 1930 and 1945.
Gerald Murphy The small band of adventurers who took themselves
Razor 1922
Oil to Paris in the early years of the century freely entered
32 x 36 in. into the 'new spirit'. Most of them left their provincial
Lent by the Dallas Museum of
Fine Arts academic viewpoints without regrets and embarked

Above
Marsden Hartley
Movement No. 9 1916
Oil 33 1/2 x 33 1/2 in.
Lent by the University Gallery, University of Minnesota