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WORK
FOR ARTISTS

What ? Where ? How ?

A SYMPOSIUM edited by ELIZABETH NlcCAUSLAND

/ WALTER BAERMANN S. L. M. BARLOW
THOMAS HART BENTON EARNEST ELMO CALKINS
CLARENCE H. CARTER * FRANK CASPERS * CHARLES
T. COINER JO GIBBS EGBERT JACOBSON
ROMANA JAVITZ . ROCKWELL KENT REEVES
LEWENTHAL * WALTER S. MACK, JR. . ELIZABETH
McCAUSLAND * HILA MEADOW BRUCE MITCHELL
E. H. POWELL LINCOLN ROTHSCHILD FRANKLIN
RYDER * MARGIT VARGA LYND WARD witk
SUMMARIES OF THREE QUESTIONNAIRES

AMERICAN ARTISTS GROUP, INC., NEW YORK

WORK FOR ARTISTS

COPYRIGHT, 1947, BY
AMERICAN ARTISTS GROUP, INC.

All rights reserved, including the
right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

WORK FOR ARTISTS

CONTENTS

THE USE OF ART IN AMERICA

THE USE OF ART IN AMERICA 3

Elizabeth McCausland

ARTIST INTO ADVERTISING MAN 14

Earnest Elmo Calkins

BUSINESS AND ART 21

Thomas Hart Benton

THE PUBLIC INTEREST 27

Romana Javitz

FULL EMPLOYMENT AND THE ARTIST 36

Charles T. Coiner

INDUSTRIAL ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE 42

Lincoln Rothschild

WHO GIVES A HOOT ABOUT THE ARTIST? 53

Franklin Ryder

ARTIST-ADVERTISER RELATIONS 60

Clarence H. Carter

CONTENTS

DICTATORS OF ART 65

Rockwell Kent

THE BOOK ARTIST 69

Lynd Ward

THE NON-COMMERCIAL ART MARKET 79

Hila Meadow

TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTIST 87

Walter Baermann

GOVERNMENT AND THE ARTS 07

S. L. M. Barlow

PIONEERING OF 1936-1946

L B. M.: 1936-1946 10

Jo Gibbs

LIFE'S ART PROGRAM
Margit Varga

THE ARTIST HAS NEVER BEEN So BUSY 123

Reeves Lewenthal

OIL: 1940-1945 12g

Frank Gaspers

CONTENTS

PEPSI-COLA'S COMPETITION-EXHIBITION 139

Walter S. Mack, Jr.

THE BRITANNICA COLLECTION 146

E. H. Powell

FREE AND UNHINDERED EXPRESSION 153

Egbert Jacobson

THE STORY OF THE "ARIZONA PLAN" 160

Bruce Mitchell

SURVEY OF OPINION
THE ARTIST AND THE ART DIRECTOR 171

A PROGRAM FOR SCULPTORS 178

CONTRIBUTORS 187

THE USE OF ART IN AMERICA

WORK FOR ARTISTS

preneurs, are notoriously adverse to disclosing income figures save
to authority. Ideas, however, also have their value; and to com-
plement those put forward by our contributors, we sent out
questionnaires to leading artists and art directors for a survey of
opinion. Much of this material has been incorporated in the book.
Neither editor nor publisher think all the answers have been
set down here. Advertising art, illustration, packaging, industrial-
artists-in-residence, memorial art collections for universities and
colleges, "institutional" patronage for art programs these cannot
underwrite all forms of creative art. Art must continue to embody
human experience and aspiration at the highest levels, as well
as at the widespread levels of utilitarian functions in daily life.
But the peak cannot be attained unless the base is broad: that is
axiomatic. Therefore, art must be assured of a respected and
functional place in American democratic society. Broadening the
base of art necessarily means broadening the audience and the
support for art. Thus may we hope to produce those rare master-
pieces which are the climax of art in any civilization.

The picture of art in America is a picture of the use of art in
America. For well over three centuries, the people of our country
have used painting, sculpture and applied arts for many purposes:
to ornament and embellish living; to commemorate men of
wealth, of power, affairs and intellectual achievements; to decorate
costume, furniture, and useful objects of daily life; to propagandize
for political ideas; to celebrate the American scene. If statistics
were available for the art commodity, they might well show that
in terms of per capita distribution art was more widely used at
the beginnings of American history than now. However that may
be, we know that today the use of art in America is not wide
enough, as the artist' s material position proves. How has this
come about? What is to be done?

THE USE OF ART IN AMERICA

Art in America today may be called an inverted pyramid,
standing precariously on its tip. It teeters and sways and vibrates
to every wind of change. Such an influence may be read in the
annual totals of auction sales. These are as reliable an index of
our country's economic state as stock market records. Let a world-
wide "crash" occur, and the totals drop to zero. In these post-
war days, rising auction sales totals suggest that the inflationary
process is already on us. Precisely this speculative character makes
the artist's lot uncertain. Support for art in our democracy should,
we say, be broad. It should come not only from individuals (those
vestigial survivors of earlier forms of the patron) but also, and
especially, from organized society, from industry, from publishing,
and from labor. How can this be brought about?

To canvass means of broadening the base for art in the United
States, we have brought together diverse opinions. Some contra-
dict others; and the variety of point of view and of interest here
represented is itself a measure of the contradictory cultural picture
of our time. Self-interest, argue some of the writers, is the deepest
motive for human actions. Others plead for a goal superior to
merchandising soap. On the whole the contributors are asking, in
effect, for a continuation of and a broadening of the democratic
tradition. Almost all urge wider use of art, whether by industry,
labor or government, though at times voices of dissent are heard.

Art patronage in colonial America was essentially aristocratic.
Land-owners, royal governors and merchants commissioned
painters to 'limn" their likenesses-and those of their wives. This
was a relation between patron and artist handed down to modern
times from the Renaissance. These works of art served to enhance
the prestige of their owners and to display their power to the
community. Sculpture and graphic art were rarely used, until the
approach of the Revolution created a demand for political cartoon
and effigy. However, side by side with the imported portraits and
those of native Copley and Blackburn, folk artists grew up-

5

WORK FOR ARTISTS

self-taught craftsmen, carvers of gravestones and Hadley chests,
painters of over-mantel scenes, masters like silversmiths Nathaniel
Hurd and Paul Revere.

By the time of the Revolution, graphic art was well established,
as may be read in MurrelFs History of American Graphic Humor.
Sculpture and painting had been pressed into service to commem-
orate our early heroes, Franklin, Washington and Jefferson. Prints
went out to the people in broadsides, just as the political pam-
phlets of Tom Paine created the first great American writing style
and laid intellectual foundations for the proponents of the demo-
cratic spirit. By the beginning of the nineteenth century folk art
was blooming, as is proved by the tremendous quantity of paint-
ings and sculptures of a "primitive" or "provincial" kind which
have come down to our time, now being highly prized and priced
collector's items. The rise of genre painting, symbolized in Mount
and Bingham, evidenced the age's burgeoning democratic move-
ment summed up in Jacksonian democracy. Territorial expansion
into the western lands gave impetus to landscape painting. Thus
though individual artists of the century experienced hardship and
privation, works of art went out in the world and were valued for
their expressive, decorative and utilitarian functions.

An artist like Audubon brought all the threads of life in
America together. Apparently of inexhaustible physical energy, he
explored the continent from Labrador to Florida, from the
eastern seaboard to the Rockies, traversing rivers and lakes and
woods and oceans, to find the object of his search. The wealth
of natural history lore he gathered, he turned into an imperishable
archive of science and art, in the elephant folio of The Birds of
America, laboriously engraved and printed in England from 1827
to 1838, and later in his smaller folio, Viviparous Quadrupeds of
America. Though these masterpieces did not have wide popular
distribution, in a sense they paved the way for popular graphic
art, for the prints of the American Art Union, of Goupil and

6

THE USE OF ART IN AMERICA

Knoedler, and of Currier & Ives. With this trend, came the rise
of mass reproduction methods, the arts of the "multiple original"
lithography, photography, and the wood-cut, the latter pushed
to perhaps its highest use in Harper's WeeJdy. Territorial expan-
sion and population growth, with exploitation of natural resources
and development of industrial-technological production, gave the
margin of wealth necessary for the popular arts to flourish, so that
by the middle of the nineteenth century we find illustrated books
and magazines growing in popularity. Finally, the invention of
the half-tone in 1880 and its subsequent perfection and application
created antecedent technical conditions for the widest use of art
in picture newspaper, magazine and book. Side by side developed
those other mass arts, comic strip, film and radio. History had
pulled a "squeeze play" on the traditional fine arts.

ii

At least, the conclusion seems inescapable from research I have
been doing for some years. Some of the facts garnered in the course
of my study have been presented in a paper, "Art Patronage in the
United States," read before the conference on full employment
held in June, 1945, by the Independent Citizens Committee of
the Arts, Sciences and Professions, and again in my article, "Why
Can't America Afford Art?/' in the January, 1946 Magazine of
Art. The latter tabulated results of a questionnaire sent to five
hundred leading American painters and sculptors. Though artists,
like the rest of the human race, are loath to reveal data about
their economic status, enough information was obtained to pro-
duce one startling statistic: The average income from sale of ait
work through old-line channels is less than $100 a month per
artist. For women, the average is less than $50 a month.

This problem is one of general concern, as we know from
much evidence, including this symposium. The question of public
support of art in America has been discussed by Holger Cahill on

WORK FOR ARTISTS

many occasions, and in his paper printed in the A.L.A. News,
No. i, 1946, under the tide, "Can Art Survive With Its Present
Patronage?/' Cahiil answers "No!" emphatically; and he should
know. As national director of the Federal Art Project, he saw the
possibilities for encouraging general public use of art. Through
demonstration galleries set up throughout the United States, he
gave people who had never seen an original work of art a chance
to see painting and sculpture for the first time. As "boss" of
thousands of painters, sculptors, graphic artists, photographers,
art teachers and related professional personnel, he had a superb
opportunity to learn first-hand about the artist and his problems.
What he has to say has experience and authority behind it.

Recently a further powerful voice has been raised in favor of
government support of the arts. At the Berkshire Music Center
this past summer, Dr. Sergei Koussevitzky called for a government
bureau of the fine arts. Speaking in part as follows, he said:

"Our world is hungry for spiritual food. But what has been
done by the government to satisfy this hunger? Is there a law
preventing democratic governments from supporting the fine arts?
None of the democratic governments are concerned with this vital
question the subsidy of the arts especially the musical arts. Is it
not time for this government, leading among democracies, to
give a permanent support to the fine arts?

"We, artists, are the living pulse of art; the state is the grounds
upon which art finds stability and security. It is imperative for
the state to realize and acknowledge the signal need of our time.
Art needs the support of the state, and demands a department
of the fine arts."

That this point of view is gaining wide support may be
deduced from the introduction into the New York State Legis-
lature last session of a bill to promote art purchases. A federal
fine arts bill, initiated by the Independent Citizens Committee
of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, has been taken up by many

8

THE USE, OF ART IN AMERICA

civic groups, including labor and education, and is now being
strongly pushed.

Contemporary patronage of art by industry have also been well
canvassed by Walter Abell in "Industry and Painting" in the
March, 1946 Magazine of Art and by Russell Lynes in "Suitable
for Framing" in the February, 1946 Harper's. Both should be read
by all those eager to inform themselves on the facts in regard to
support for art in America today.

What is the picture today?

Over a generation ago, Stieglitz wrote in Camera WorJc that
"Art is by the few and for the few." Though in principle the
sentiment may not be acceptable, it describes the situation. It has
been estimated that there are at least 50,000 professionally trained
artists in the United States, plus 18,000 sent out annually by art
schools in peacetime. This refers only to painters, sculptors and
graphic artists. Add commercial artists and photographers, archi-
tects, industrial designers, typographers and related professional
personnel, and the figure is much greater. What are the chances
of all these earning a living by the exercise of their professional
skills? Very little, it seems.

Historically, the channels through which economic support
flows are private patron (or collector) and then the phenomena of
the "art market" with dealer and museum as buyers. How have
these functioned to create a healthy base for and use of art in our
country?

What do museums offer? The United States has 32 major
art museums, as listed by the World Almanac. Yet the 1940 census
lists 141 American cities of 100,000 population or over. Since
some have two or more museums, the figure works out at one
museum to every five large cities. How mucJi do these institutions
spend for living American art? The facts are concealed in annual
reports, with expenditures lumped under one head. Therefore,
if a museum spends $25,000 for an Egyptian bronze cat and $250

WORK FOR ARTISTS

for a contemporary American painting, there is no way of isolating
the sum. The reports from the Magazine of Art questionnaire
show, however, that the average annual income per artist from
sales to museums was about $173. Obviously museums spend
more on the art of antiquity than on the art of today.

War cut into purchases by American museums; and with the
confusion now prevailing it is a question as to when American
life will be stabilized. Chracteristic for the war years is the case
of the Museum of Modern Art. In 1939-40 it had $82,000 in
purchase funds; in 1942-43, but $40,000. This museum, of course,
is far more likely to spend its funds on European work than on
American. Again, the Whitney Museum of American Art, by and
large the best institutional friend the, living American artist
has had, reported for the year 1943-44. "The Museum is pleased
to announce that the total sales made to institutions and private
collectors from this exhibition (its annual exhibition of con-
temporary American art Ed.) totaled $23,750." Since the Whit-
ney and the Metropolitan Museum of Art each set aside $10,000
for purchases, the balance of $3,750 does not spell vast "financial
support by private benefaction" to quote Webster's definition of
patronage. Yet, if every American city of 100,000 or over spent
$10,000 a year for fine art by living Americans, the resulting hypo-
thetical total of $10,000,000 would average an income of $2,000
a year of distributed to the 50,000.

Art auction sales have been referred to as an index of the art
market From ^g-^o's high, the total fell to 1934-35*3 low. In
1940-41, it climbed to $4,7 50,000, and the next year to $5,100,000.
Last year it "cracked" $6,000,000. But these sales mean nothing
for living American art; they represent only the prestige or snob
value placed on "dead" art. Along Fifty-Seventh Street, a different
story may be read. In 1944, Art News published a survey which
gives salient facts. Seventeen galleries reported sales of 3,711
items. Omitting 221 paintings which sold for over $2,000 each,

10

THE USE OF ART IN AMERICA

the other 3,490 brought in a total of $1,800,000. Deduct $650,000
reported by one dealer who "engages in extensive national pub-
licity 77 and deduct an average commission of forty per cent. There
remains $700,000. Divide this by the estimated 50,000 professional
artists in the U.SA The figure comes to $14 a year per artist-
less than a nickel a day!

This argument by reductfo ad absurdum is borne out by the
figures I obtained from tabulating the replies in the survey of
contemporary American painters and sculptors. After twenty years
spent in the practice of his profession, the average American artist
(pooling painters and sculptors) got $1,154 a year from the sale
of art work. Women made an average art income of $548. Of the
two hundred who answered the questionnaire, forty-four per cent
depended largely or wholly on other income. Yet these are not
the unsuccessful or unknown names in American art. Some
reported income as high as $16,000 from all sources, and one
reported art sales of $8,500. In 1944 sales to museums and private
collectors totaled $174,306 for 151 artists reporting. Of this sum,
but $26,884 came k m m useums. Teaching supplied $137,294 for
151 artists. Lumping "Industry" (direct sales to industrial patrons)
and "Advertising Art" (work for reproduction in advertisements,
etc.) we found a total income from private enterprise of $1 32,409.
Apparently artists will have to continue to teach to pay the rent,
unless business shells out greater amounts of cash.

As to support of art functions by government, whether at the
federal, state or municipal level, there is no such patronage today.
Likewise, our national free public school system, one of the hard-
won victories of the American democratic tradition, makes little
or no use of practicing artists in its teaching of the visual arts. The
experiment of "Artists in Residence," about which there is dif-
ference of opinion, achieved the positive result of taking painters
and sculptors of established artistic achievement into many Amer-
ican communities and of acquainting the people of these com-

11

WORK FOR ARTISTS

munities with the creative process. This project has not been
continued, unfortunately.

in

The recent phenomenon of the art scene has been the emerg-
ence of private industry as art patron. International Business Ma-
chines, Pepsi-Cola, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Standard Oil,
American Tobacco, Container Corporation of America, Abbott
Laboratories, Upjohn, de Beers Diamonds, La Tausca Pearls, and
the like have blossomed forth as the Medici of the 19405. Educa-
tional programs, World's Fair art displays, competitions, calendars,
travelling exhibitions, collections, recording and documentation
of industry, are but a few of the ways in which art has been made
use of by business. There have been flurries of dispute, as Abell
and Lynes point out in their articles. There has been junketing,
for juries and press and other interested parties. On the whole,
probably more money has been spent for overhead than for art.
Opinion has been pro and con, as always.

Can criticism be answered, without injury to the artist's interest
and his patron's? Can the artist function freely when he is glorify-
ing the activities of a corporation which may be underpaying
its workers? Is the essential spiritual purpose of the artist at odds
with the material goals of business? How free is the artist under
a system of patronage which expects advertising to show only a
rosy world?

These questions are basic in this symposium. Perhaps no one
patron can provide a broad enough base for art in American life
today, and many kinds of patronage are needed. We should be
happy, therefore, that industry will carry a share of the respon-
sibility which museums and collectors have discharged only
partially. Those who support this position and those who attack
it have contributed to our book. Successful advertising men, art
directors and artists argue for and against the case for direct use

12

THE USE OF ART IN AMERICA

of visual art in advertisements. The rise of new business patrons
and their programs, told mostly in the words of the men who
have conceived and put the programs into operation, is recorded.
Relatively undeveloped ground, where the motive of social gain
has been emphasized, is also reported. Finally, the data gained
by the questionnaires sent to painters, sculptors and art directors
is summarized in a concluding section. Here we have a broad
canvassing of new forms of patronage for art in America today.
Will increase along all these lines of support for American
art answer the question we have raised? The question cannot be
answered, unless it is first explored. And so to our symposium.

ARTIST INTO ADVERTISING MAN

Earnest Elmo Calkins

w

'HEN art is used for a purpose that is, when it has a
function other than merely existing to give aesthetic
pleasure it is called applied art. But it can still be art. A
mural painting, though it may be in one sense fine art and often is,
is also applied art; for it is a part of a decorative scheme, art applied
to architecture. The mural is evolved from specifications, the size and
shape of the space to be filled, appropriateness to the building and
its purpose. When design is applied to the beautification of an
object, a chair, a motor car, a piece of jewelry, the limitations are
greater. Advertising art shares with the mural the scope allowed the
imagination; but to the conditions imposed by space and shape and
subject, there is the further one of being reproducible by some of the
graphic processes. In truth, many murals are really glorified posters,
and often advertising designs when separated from their context
are seen to be works of art; and many uninhibited paintings done
with careless rapture, especially what are known as "story-telling
pictures/' are unconscious advertising designs.

We once called the man who made pictures for advertise-
ments a commercial artist, and the term was one of contempt.
Today he is simply an artist. No sharp line is drawn because the
work is to be used for a utilitarian purpose. The specifications
with which he approaches his work do not differ greatly from
those given Michelangelo when he painted the Last Judgment for

ARTIST INTO ADVERTISING MAN

the Sistine Chapel. The quality which makes art Art does not
depend on the fact that Michelangelo painted religion instead of
motor cars, but in the fact that Michelangelo was a great artist.
His work was applied art, and advertising art is in the same cate-
gory. Its quality depends on the artists who practice it, not on the
conditions under which they work. There is no practical difference
between, say, Pintaricchio's history of Pius II on the walls of the
Duomo in Siena and Ezra Winter's glorification of the age of sail
in the New York offices of the Cunard Line, and certainly none
between Perugino's frescoes in the Cambio at Perugia and the
murals of Boardman Robinson in the Kaufmann department store
at Pittsburgh, except the ability and attitude of the artists.

That advertising art has become an attractive as well as reward-
ing field of work for the sincere artist is the result of a slow
progress, retarded by the lack of wisdom on the part of manufac-
turers who paid for advertising. It has taken time for them to
learn that beauty pays dividends, that ugliness repels even those
who do not know it is ugliness, that good taste attracts even
those ignorant of art, that in short, sugar draws more flies than
vinegar. The rules of taste are not mere arbitrary laws adopted
by some executive committee. They are rudimentary in every soul.
Nature is their source. Everything nature does make a good
design, produces a harmonious color scheme. The white and blue
of the sky, the yellow and green of the earth, the range of color
on leaf, fruit, vegetable, are perfect in their association. Good taste
is always a safe technique.

Some manufacturers whose products appeal to an uncultivated
intelligence argue that good taste in design, layout and typog-
raphy is wasted effort, that their customers neither understand
nor appreciate it. For a while this opinion was accepted as final.
It was once believed that there were people immune to beauty;
but we have since learned better. Good art is more effective, other
things being equal, than bad art. Even the individual who does

15

WORK FOR ARTISTS

not recognize good work is nevertheless influenced by it. It is
sometimes difficult to bring such assertions as these to scientific
test because other elements than physical appearance the article
sold, the message, the wording, the offer, the story-must be taken
into consideration. All play a part in the success of the advertise-
ment, and it is conceivable that a good offer poorly presented may
attract more attention and sell more goods than a weak one taste-
fully dressed.

The fact remains nevertheless that every advertising message
gains by intelligent use of the graphic elements entering into it.
Advertising appeals to a diversified audience. Some may be blind
to any touch of beauty; but others are susceptible to tasteful typog-
raphy, intelligent art, appropriate paper and good presswork. It is
foolish to sacrifice these for the sake of the indifferent, especially
since it is unnecessary. For here is a consideration that has im-
proved much advertising: The low-brow message loses nothing
of its effect by being presented with all the possibilities of good
taste. If it does not especially attract those who are unmoved by
aesthetic appeals, neither does it repel them. Whatever the mes-
sage, it is always more legible, more easily seen, more forcible, if
it is informed with the skill and taste of a genuine creative artist.
When it comes to delivering a punch, the gifted artist can put it
all over the matter-of-fact brutal ignoramus.

Advertising art, being flexible and assimilative, was quick to
appreciate the possibilities of what is loosely called "modernism,"
that is, departure from more academic styles (in this'case, realism) ,
in the search for contrast, conspicuousness, difference. Realism lost
some of its effectiveness by repetition when it reached a high level
of excellence; it was no longer so easy to make an advertisement
stand out, attract, get over, by still life or groups, however com-
petently painted. Modernism affords the possibility of expressing
the inexpressible, of suggesting not so much a motor car as speed,

16

ARTIST INTO ADVERTISING MAN

not so much a gown as style, not so much a compact as beauty,
charm, sex appeal Commonplace articles could be shown in new
patterns, from new angles, and gain fresh interest thereby. When
new designing was applied to manufactured articles, as was the
inevitable result of better art applied to advertising, the modern
treatment was particularly logical; for most of the gadgets that
add so much comfort and convenience to our modem life, have
no predecessors, no roots in tradition. They are not only new
forms, but new things, A carriage, for instance, has a long line of
ancestors, an accumulated tradition of design. A motor car can
and shouldstart from scratch.

Thus advertising is able to supply its own correction and
produce a fresh difference amid too much similarity, in the con-
stant search for distinctiveness. As modern art acquired vogue in
the pages of the magazines, there was a return to realism, to
photography or to pictures painted with photographic realism. The
prevalence of line drawings in newspaper advertisements, an old
technique always effective, should be noted. All this gives diversity
and corrects the tendency towards imitation, which by its sameness
defeats its end of attracting attention.

It is a reassuring fact that almost the entire range of art is
available for advertising. Every kind of artist is welcome, provided
he is good. There is use for all techniques. No other application
of applied art has made possible so many opportunities to the
artist, and none has given him so large an audience. It is safe to
say that few artists, however competent or famous, are utterly
indifferent to advertising commissions. The late venerable Edwin
Blashfield, one of the great men of the old academic school, once
told me that were he a young man beginning his artistic career
he would certainly devote his attention to this stimulating field.
It is interesting to recall men of the past who would have found
such work congenialWhistler, a born advertiser if there ever

1 7

WORK FOR ARTISTS

was one; Leonardo da Vinci, an amazing combination of skillful
mechanic and dramatic painter; or some men of the Dutch school,
spiritual ancestors of Norman Rockwell.

The difficulties and problems which once confronted the able
artist in advertising work have been greatly ameliorated by the
education of the advertiser, and also, it should be said, of the
advertising agent, go-between of artist and client; and finally by
the creation of the art director, who speaks the artist's language
and understands that of the client. If any artist feels that these
three are tyrannical and exacting, let him read the history of art
and learn of the demands and stipulations imposed on the painters
of the Renaissance who today are known as old masters. I have
always liked that story about Giotto. A fussy old Pope sent an
emissary to him to find out if he was good enough for an under-
taking the Pope contemplated. Giotto stopped in his work, dipped
his brush into a pot of carmine, and with one firm sure sweep
drew a perfect circle on a sheet of paper. "Show that to your
master," he said.

The limitations which surround advertising work are no more
cramping than those which go with any definite assignment; in
fact, which prevail in all art work except those happy and ideal
moments when the artist paints what he likes as he likes, which
we call fine art, which has undoubtedly produced great pictures,
but which has never been a steady source of income except to a
fortunate few. Probably as much fine art has been produced by
artists working within a frame of specifications as by artists giving
play to unbridled fancy. Even the advertising artist can enjoy the
tonic of such diversions. He can let himself go in what is rightly
called "playtime work" and get all the fun out of it, yet at the
same time add fresh skill for his more gainful work. It is comfort-
ing to remember that while executing an order he can, if he will
bring to it all the enthusiasm and imagination and technical skill
he has, make something in which he can take justifiable pride.

18

ARTIST INTO ADVERTISING MAN

That is always possible, and the pictures on the walls of the
exhibitions of advertising art prove it.

The problems that face the advertising artist today are largely
aesthetic, professional, a matter of skill, ability, inventiveness. It
was far different in my time. Then they were almost insurmount-
able obstacles obtuse clients, no models, primitive reproduction
processes, lack of color standards, poor presswork, not to speak
of the screwy ideas of advertisers posing as art critics. Any account
of the heartbreaking sessions with some of those early patrons
of the arts over designs submitted for approval would verge on
the ludicrous. There was the advertiser who submitted all designs
to his niece who painted china; the man who brought in blue-
prints from his drafting room to check up on a perspective painting
of his car; the one who wouldn't have any "foreigner" in his
pictures, a foreigner being a girl with dark hair and eyes; the
"gentlemen prefer blondes" formula; and finally the chap who
attacked the engraver's proof with a big blue pencil as if it were
type and proceeded to delete a moustache and add a smile. Color
was confined to the back covers of magazines; and even when we
could find an artist who could and would paint an advertising
picture, there wasn't an engraver who could reproduce it, or a
pressman who could print it. I have seen the covers of eleven
magazines, printed from four-color plates of the same design, no
two of which resembled each other, and none with the colors of
the original, because each pressman had his own idea of what
was blue, red, and yellow. They agreed only on the shade of black.

None of these problems need worry the artist today. He can
rest assured that if he does his part, the technical execution will
be well taken care. The arts of printing and engraving have
reached the point where even the most delicate nuance of the
original can be faithfully reproduced. So remarkable are the repro-
duction processes that I have seen printed copies hung beside the
originals, and no beholder could tell which was which. The artist

WORK FOR ARTISTS

today starts where we left off. He has the advantage of our pioneer
work, and he can lay the flattering unction on his soul that his
work will be seen by millions while the easel art in museums and
galleries is seen by hundreds.

The artist has at last found a field of work in this modern
world worthy of his talent and full of promise. Industrial art is
as natural and logical an expression of this age as religious art
was of the fifteenth century. The artist depicts what a people
believe, reflects its major interests. In the Middle Ages church
and war were the only big business. Industry can be and may
be as stimulating a patron of the arts as cardinals, prelates and
princes. Art which grows from our daily life and fits in with
our daily needs is more important and more assured of a future
than the collected work of the past.

20

BUSINESS AND ART
Thomas Hart Benton

EVERYONE knows that in our American economy most of
the productive operations of business are accompanied by
extensive advertisement. Advertising departments, public-
ity departments, public relations directors, and the like, are attached
to every nationally known firm. Publicity schemes are constantly
being hatched to glorify goods and the companies which make them.
Lately, probably because of what are called leftward political
tendencies in the country, publicity campaigns are undertaken
to prove the social value of business, to prove that business not
only makes money for itself but in doing so also operates for the
betterment of society.

Among these new moves of business justifying its place in our
culture is one toward art. Big business is supporting fine art. This
is a new thing; for while individual businessmen of cultivated
tastes have often been interested in art, their institutions have
heretofore recognized only the most commercial manifestations
of art. As an artist who has often publicly deplored the separation
of art from the actualities of American culture, I find this new
move of business immensely interesting. Business is the prime
activity of our society. If it really finds use for art, the event is
likely to be culturally momentous.

Although it is yet too early to make any decisive analysis of
the entrance of business into fine art or to have positive opinions
about the outcome, it is possible to see the main directions fol-

21

WORK FOR ARTISTS

lowed and to discuss their probable value. Three main directions
reveal themselves.

One, works o art, through competitions or directly through
artist or dealer, are purchased and put on public exhibition. Busi-
ness acts here as an intermediary between the artist and the public,
and advertising in the customary sense is at a minimum. The
value of business goods is only indirectly proclaimed. Proof of
their value with the public lies in the success which permits the
buying and exhibiting of goods whose nature is not commercial
but cultural. The firm which can do this is patently "in good"
with the public and beyond the need of turning all its actions to
immediate financial advantage. By the purchase of art, it advertises
not so much its products as its institutional self. In effect it says
to society, "You have done much for me, you have approved of
and bought my stuff and made me successful and rich, and I want
to return some of this to you by supporting your cultural de-
velopment/'

With this direction the artist, the critic, the university man
can have no quarrel. Objections may be made to the aesthetic
judgments involved in such purchases; but criticisms of this sort
are so arbitrary and so much affected by thought patterns momen-
tarily in vogue that they cannot be considered by consequence.
The fact, for instance, that you like Handel or Mozart better than
Villa-Lobos or Aaron Copland, or boogie-woogie better than any
of them, has no bearing on the reality and propriety of the overall
cultural service performed by the United States Rubber Com-
pany's sponsorship of the Philharmonic programs. This cultural
service is beyond the vagaries of individual taste.

The second direction taken by business asks the artist to
represent the conditions and situations through which business
operates. He is asked to paint the "going concerns" of business.
Assignments of this sort are aesthetically legitimate. Except with
a few artists and critics who take the stand that all objective

22

BUSINESS AND ART

representation is outmoded and "uncreative," objections to the
legitimacy of picturing and dramatizing the chief operations of
our civilization are not likely to be held. Business plants and
operations are always interesting and frequently are beautiful if
you have eyes to see.

Here, however, as in the aesthetically legitimate art of por-
traiture, the business customer is likely to put on pressure, more
or less unconscious, for flattering representations. The artist is
often asked to paint not what is "actually there" in the business
plant or operation but what the businessman sees "there" ideally.
For instance, smoke escaping from factory chimneys is an indi-
cation of waste; and although it may pour out continuously and
in quantity from some particular plant to which an artist has been
assigned, there will be objection in business offices when it is
represented. The worst idealists in the world are our supposedly
realistic engineers and business men. They recoil from realism
in representation like society women.

What happens to the artist and art in this situation? The
answer is that he becomes less and less an artist as he yields to his
patron's demands. There comes a point where he is no longer a
fine artist. Then he has become simply a commercial artist who
expresses not his own but his business patron's conceptions. Here
he is, let it be said, not generally worth the money he is paid.

In spite, however, of the danger in this line of work and the
possibility of permanently corrupting the artist who can not often
sell his vision and style without losing them, it is hopeful and
proper. Any work which helps to bridge the present gap between
the artist and the practical forces of society is worth cultivation.
The artist suffers as artist from his present isolation. He works
so much for and within little warring aesthetic cults that he
develops highly distorted views of life and of his importance.

Without working contacts with his society he misses his
historic mission of representing it. He goes off on esoteric tan-

WORK FOR ARTISTS

gents which leaves him representing not his own culture, as great
artists have done in all history, but imitating the representation
of other cultures. That is, particularly in the United States today,
a common effect of isolated aesthetic cultism. These effects will
not be relieved until American society finds use for its artists and
pulls them out of their ivory towers where aesthetic idiosyncracies
are the only things cultivated.

It is, of course, entertaining to have rich women (or men)
who like to play the madam (or pimp) in houses of frustrated
genius build temples in honor of their superior aesthetic discern-
ments; but art will not thereby be put back into society as a
functioning element. It will still remain a cultist plaything. The
only thing which will put it back is for the really going forces
of society to find some use for it and buy it.

The desire of American business to have its operative aspects
represented through art is immensely hopeful. The fact that the
artist may sometimes have to argue and fight for his right to
perform as artist rather than as commercial functionary is no grave
drawback in this matter. It will not hurt the artist, it will, in fact,
make him a better human being, and maybe a better artist, to go
up against a world which is not interested in aesthetic cults and
fine divisions of aesthetic opinion. Michelangelo and the Popes
Clement and Paul III did a lot of arguing over what was proper
and meaningful without any loss to art. No doubt compromises
and adjustments of opinion were made there.

They will also have to be made in business assignments where
documentary subject matter permits the business patron to dream
that what "ought to be" exists in fact. The intelligent, socially
alert artist should be able to win most of his points here. All
that is needed is good sense, good behavior and realization that
a verbal compromise may often do away with the necessity of
compromise in actual work.

With assignments from those two businesses which have gone

24

BUSINESS AND ART

in largely for aesthetic documentation of plants and operations,
namely the Abbott Laboratories and the Standard Oil Company
of New Jersey, any artist who stood his ground could be as much
of an artist as it was in him to be. There are people, as above
indicated, who disapprove of all documentary art. This view is
narrow, historically insupportable, and confining. The arts of pure
pattern are perfectly valid; but they form only one segment of the
whole field of art. Artists who undertake illustrative and docu-
mentary representations may not be ruled out because of this.
It is only when they perform poorly as artists, when they fail to
live up to their visions and styles, when they compromise them-
selves out of their identities, that they may be ruled out of the
field of fine art. So documentary programs themselves are not at
fault when an artist fails to produce artistically.

The third direction business has taken with the fine arts, or
more properly with artists who have performed in that field,
involves product advertising. Artists known for their individual
styles and performances have been hired in the place of the usual
commercial artists to carry on advertising campaigns. The suppo-
sition behind these moves apparently was that such artists would
by performing distinctively lend distinction to the campaigns.
Here, however, insistence that certain aspects of subject matter
be over-emphasized and rigid limitations as to choice in what was
actually open to experience set a pattern of performance in which
the very distinctiveness for which the artists were selected was
lost. There being no room left for those individual perceptions
on which style is based, style evaporated and artists of utterly
different personalities performed alike. Only an expert could tell
them apart.

This aspect of the business in art relationship has already been
revealing enough to provide a base for judgment. It has proved
beyond a doubt that product advertising is not a field for fine
art. The actual situations and activities of product-making and

WORK FOR ARTISTS

the operations which produce goods are potentially as aesthetically
inspiring as any other aspects of life. They can produce genuine
aesthetic goods, however, only when the artist himself through
his own perceptions determines what is aesthetically significant.

The customary procedures of the advertising business involve
repetitive hammering at one idea from one angle. The theory
apparently is to wear prospective purchasers out, to beat sales
resistance into a coma by sheer repetition. Perhaps this is effective
in the actual mass market. It is, as I have said, ineffective for the
production of distinctive art and had better be given up. The com-
mercial artist who specializes in dressing up commercial ideas is
a better hand at this than the fine artist who must either represent
himself and his own ideas or blunder into ineptitude. It is a
mistake for business to attempt the prostitution of fine art when
there is a perfectly capable commercial technique for advertising
purposes. The artist who substitutes for his own perceptions the
fictions of advertising does not do either himself or advertising
much good. He may get a nice fat check; but he sells himself out
and thereby also sells out his art in public estimation which is
a pretty serious matter for the professional.

The artist lives in society only by the particular and personal
character of his output. This takes on its particularity and per-
sonality through close relationship to the artist's individual per-
ceptions. True art has many aspects, but every one must be
referred to the same source for validity. That source is the artist's
individual and personal responsiveness. Such responsiveness can-
not be overruled in the interests of anything else if you want art.

The first and second of the directions which business has taken
are good for art, artists, business and society; but the third is good
for nothing beyond the cash which comes to the artist. The latter
may not, of course, be wholly condemned because, sad to say,
there are situations in life where money is more important than art.

26

THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Romana Javitz

When nations grow old

The Arts grow cold

And Commerce settles on every tree;

And the poor and the old

Can live upon gold

For all are born poor.

SHOULD one judge the taste of the American people by the
caliber of the artwork in our national advertising and periodi-
cals? Is the public a great unshaped mass waiting for the
magic touch of the advertiser to give it form and dimension? Do the
art directors of agency and publication serve or dictate the taste of
the nation? Do they print what the public wants to see or is it what
the public is believed to want? Perhaps is it what the public
should want to like in order to abet the advertiser and manu-
facturer?

Certainly, no one accepts the sterility of commercial artwork
as a fair yardstick with which to measure the quality of public
taste. Nor can we accept the principle that luxury and price dictate
the degree of good taste one possesses or exercises. From diamond
advertising to the label on a can of expensive green peas, the
typography, design, drawing and color are better as the product
enters die higher cost brackets. Does that mean that if you have
more money, presto! your taste is immediately improved and you

2 7

WORK FOR ARTISTS

can now understand and respond to a higher quality of artwork?
Block out, momentarily, the price and name of a product and
anyone can guess its price range since the more photo-realistic
tlie rendering, the cheaper the price.

For the most part, illustrations in the commercial art field
are on an illiterate level. No advertiser would tolerate misspelling
in copy, the use of ungrammatical sentences, pidgin English or
vulgar language. Publishers, just as do film producers, seem to
estimate the average age of the public as that of a fourteen-old, yet
they agree that the public is somewhat literate. The story content,
the range of emotional experience, probability, sentiment, and
the facts of life may be kept retarded to the moron stratum, but
at least the use of language is at an adult level. Good writing
abounds and the press, radio and the film give more than lip
service to that responsibility. On the other hand, when it comes
to the use of the pictorial idiom (except in news photographs)
advertising and the periodical press maintain a sophomoric
standard.

True, typography is of a high order; printing methods excel-
lent, arrangement, layout, reproduction all excellent, but most of
the artwork photographs, drawings and paintings is poor. Incor-
rect drawing is a common sight on the printed page. I do not
mean planned distortion and considered emphasis, abstract form
and free drawing based on a sound knowledge of form, but draw-
ings made in technical ignorance and lack of draughtsmanship.
These painful drawings where realism is aimed at and never
achieved, where the characters could never breathe, move, walk
or rest, where slick polish and photo-finish highlight cannot dis-
guise careless construction and inadequate vision. Where faces
are so stereotyped, so artificial and superficial that they insult the
reader as much as if the text consisted of one-syllable, primer,
words. As if cut with the same sugar-dipped cooky cutter, the
people on the pages of our advertising and stories look spineless,

28

THE PUBLIC INTEREST

characterless, and completely without the anatomical framework
essential to life. Surely these are not the living people of the
American scene.

The wording of advertisements, the language of the texts in
our mass circulation periodicals, in our daily newspaper and the
radio broadcast progressed with the growth of literacy. The visual
counterpart, the use of artwork, remained stockstill.

People have developed a rich and varied pictorial knowledge,
a high visual I.Q. Through the magic of the camera the visage
of the world is a familiar experience to all. Now, for more than
a generation, through mass infiltration of the news photograph,
improved methods of picture printing and color printing, through
many reproductions of masterpieces of art in print, through tech-
nicolor, Disney cartoon films and universally savored film dramas,
people have had a continuous experience with the way things,
people and places LOOK. During the W.P.A. Arts Project, mil-
lions saw original paintings and sculpture, saw live actors, heard
great plays and music. The returning G.L comes from intensive
orientation and training based on the use of visual terms. He has
seen great museum collections, watched acting "in the round,"
absorbed brilliant documentary films. More than ever before the
image of the world is part of our accumulated experience and
knowledge.

From a study of the pictorial illustrations in our magazines,
one would never suspect that the camera, with its still and moving
pictures, with its ubiquitous appearance on the printed page, has
filled the world's eyes with a new vision, filled many lives with a
new literacy. They experience history and life through the per-
sonal graphic impact of newsreel and candid camera close-up.
Surely with this daily intake, the capacity of people to enjoy visual
experience has been enriched and immeasurably extended to a
real maturity.

Can we discount the enormous influence of this pictorial

WORK FOR ARTISTS

experience and its effect on public taste? Let us look at the public
without any motive of selling-a-product, and consider the low
state of commercial artwork against the background of the develop-
ment of public awareness of form and color. I believe that the
public taste is far higher than the mythical target of public prefer-
ence at which the art director aims and for which the artist is
forced to slick, polish, and devitalize his output. This public
appetite is alleged to insist on a monotonous diet, mostly formless
pap, alphabet soup or sticky dessert.

The resulting artwork is not indicative of the public taste,
but reflects the knowledge, taste and timidity of those who direct,
choose and mould the finished publication. The public has an
inherent desire for beauty, to see and enjoy harmony of arrange-
ment, form and color. I do not know why it should sound so
incredible. Yet, few believe that the public's taste is good, forth-
right and in a live state of enrichment; that people seek and want
contact with the best output of the great minds, the great creative
artists of our day and the past.

Many persons feel on the defensive in a museum, sensing that
the objects on view are there to guide appreciation and develop
a good sense of discrimination. Many museums still display what
the staff judges the public should learn to like, often selecting
the art the public is "ready" to take on. The pages of the maga-
zines we read blazon the type of things which the public should
like in order to look as much like their neighbors as possible. In
all this visual circus, the selection is always based on an assumed
prefabricated standardthe abused and miscalculated taste of the
average man and woman.

Daily I work with the public in a metropolis. These people
have not been snared to come by a net of advertising, but usually
come entirely of their own free will, looking for fact or fancy,
stimulation, ideas or things they cannot find in commercial
sources. This library of pictorial documents functions as a com-

3

THE PUBLIC INTEREST

prehensive coverage of pictures in print from a soap ad to a
Daumier print. Elimination is kept at a minimum; the public
who uses the library makes its own choice. In a library service,
none of the pictures is presented to the public in order to raise
taste or influence selection.

Over a long period of daily contact with this public, I have
never found any picture too good for the public to see, none
beyond its experience and capacity. True, some look and turn
away bored; others ask what it is about. Most frequently, people
come back repeatedly to see these pictures and ask for reading on
the subject From the best of art (that is from the viewpoint of
our tradition and modern appraisal) , as for example, pictures of
archaic Greek sculpture, the response always overwhelms our
modest facilities. Working with a public that comes from suburb,
tenement, studio and factory, we can report that the public can-
not see enough of good artwork, cannot see too much. It is foot-
weariness, rather than eye-exhaustion which brings on museum-
tiredness. All of us, in industry, business and education should
face the American public with the conviction that no art is too
good, none "good enough" for the people.

Recently, a curator of a Washington art collection complained
about some pictures we had on display: "They are just too good.
I do not believe in that sort of thing for the general public/'
These were color prints after a Chinese scroll painting, A young
mechanic came by that same day. He was unemployed and had
come to the library to borrow some books but had stopped to look
at these prints. He asked how one went about buying one to have
at home. He reported that he lived in cramped tenement quarters,
but that if he could only own one of those prints, he could find
wall space for it. Questioning him a bit, I learned he had no
formal background in art, had never read about art or visited
museums. The prints apparently appealed to his sense of beauty
and evoked an instant desire to prolong that experience. This,

3 1

WORK FOR ARTISTS

by the way, from oriental art, often spoken of as long-hair stuff,
esoteric and subtle.

For display purposes, we enlarged a small engraving by
William Blake, the subject two winged angels at the entrance of
a nameless tomb. The monumental quality of the design and the
imaginative concept gave the print great strength and a universal
emotional appeal By the addition of a few lines of the best litera-
ture we could find, we made a combination of image and words
of equally high artistic merit. The public response to this print
included fan mail from a newsstand owner, high school students
and a composer.

This same print was displayed without a caption on the morn-
ing after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death. Two porters came by,
passed and then returned to look at the picture. One said that
seeing that picture, he felt as if he were in church. The other
disagreed: "For me, in it is something from really sad/'

Two teen age boys leaned over a set of pictures so excited
and voluble in their enthusiasm, every one wondered what they
had found among these millions of pictures. Standing up straight,
one boy shouted, "This one is my favorite and is it a hon!" The
"hon" was a Rembrandt drawing. These boys had wandered to
Manhattan from the suburbs of the city, had first visited the
museum and finally were directed to this collection. It was a nice
spring day, but they were determined having discovered Rem-
brandt, to hold pictures in their hands and see all they could.

Let us leave this cloistered scene and turn to the street, or
better still, go into a five-and-dime store. At most counters, you
watch women selecting merchandise and note that the selection
is limited to color preference and that is all. For a good idea of
the desire for the opportunity of free choice, look at the scene
at the artificial flower counter where flowers are sold for home
decoration. Women, or frequently a man and his wife, stand at
these counters and select sprigs of flowers one by one. No one

3 2

THE PUBLIC INTEREST

buys a quantity of one variety or one color. Invariably, the women
make careful choice of separate flowers, hold them at arm's length,
put some back, take others and start again. Then the entire
bouquet is held up again against the background of a store's con-
fusion, and the woman stands there trying hard to visualize those
flowers at home, all this with an infinitude of patience until her
eye is satisfied.

In the subway, at rush hour, on the way to work, a casual
glance discovers what good taste the average working girl shows
in her selection of colors, in the combinations she makes, the way
she places accessories in her hair. The entire picture is of much
better quality than the advertisements which smile down on her.
The stereotyped, badly drawn beauties of the car cards fade before
the loveliness of the human faces below.

A young sculptor came from mountain folk in the South to
find a college education and then pursue an art career. When she
left home, she was ashamed of the primitive backwoods life of
her people. She felt that her urge for creative expression had no
soil in this cultural desert. After she finished college, she returned
home and was amazed for she could now recognize the richness
of her heritage in the telling of the folk tales, in the songs her
grandfather sang. She saw the sense of beauty inherent, she saw
those basic elements she had learned about in college studies of
aesthetics.

In the homes of share-croppers, poorest segment of our farm
population, the walls invariably show some bit of added orna-
mentationa small thing, a paper flower, a religious print, a picture
clipped from a magazine hung to be enjoyed. In hundreds of
photographs of such homes, made during the depression, no
matter what the extent of poverty and misery, the family scenes
show this urge to have something around which may be useless
for all else, but which pleases the eye.

In a Vermont kitchen I remember watching the farmer's wife

33

WORK FOR ARTISTS

listening to a soap opera come over the air. As she listened, her
hands and eyes were busy. She was selecting and arranging bits of
dried leaves and flowers and butterfly wings into intricate patterns,
to make a pleasant montage to hang on the wall. That evening
she sat and turned the pages of a mail order catalog, looking for
the things she needed. Not a drawing in that thick book really
matched her good taste, her innate artistry. The shoddiness and
ugliness of the illustrations did not escape her eyes, they looked
cheap and tawdry.

The people of the United States have a healthy art tradition.
Those who address them through the printed page should not
overlook their public responsibility in a nation founded on demo-
cratic principles. Those who enjoy the privileges of free enterprise
should accept, with the exercise of that privilege, the responsibility
of helping to nurture and not starve the cultural potential of the
nation. All their communications with the people can sell as much
soap and bananas and copies of magazines, while still presenting
the best talents of our artists.

We boast of our rich natural resources, of our land, our crops,
our mines, our ore. We should begin to boast of our human
resources and help activate the full use of the art potential of
the people. We are in a veritable dark ages in the non-use of our
cultural reserves. Our artists are unemployed, and the receptivity
of the people for art experiences is allowed to wither.

Now is the time to show ourselves and the world that all of
our effort is not materialistic alone, that we too have faith in those
things which transcend barter and sale. Industry, business and
government must recognize their responsibility not only to exploit
every material potential, but also to take part in the cultural
flowering of our civiliaztion. We must cultivate our democratic
ideals, lest the high artificial glare and ugly sound of commercial-
ism dim them out completely.

The late Justice of the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell

34

THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Holmes, never lost sight of this: ". . . the ideals which burn in
the center of our hearts . . . hold their own against hunger and
thirst; they scorn to be classed as mere indirect supports of our
bodily needs, which rather they defy; ... I mean to insist on the
importance of the uneconomic."

35

FULL EMPLOYMENT AND THE ARTIST

Charles T. Coiner

WE ARE apt to think of the artist as a queer fellow who
dwells in a studio, lives off his relatives and paints.
Well, what is an artist?

An artist is a retoucher, a cartoonist, an illustrator, a catalog
designer, a fashion designer, a color specialist, a package designer,
a poster artist, a magazine layout designer, an advertising art
director, a creator of lettering, a sculptor, a fabric designer, an
engraver, a designer of shoes, of fountain pens, of automobiles,
of children's toys and washing machines, a creator of labels, a
lithographer, a type designer, a lettering artist, and a painter.

All might be classified as commercial artists since fine art
paintings have been found valuable as an approach to the readers
of advertising and as editorial material for magazines. It is an
obscure artist indeed whose work is not valuable today.

The war found so many uses for art that artists' efforts were
at a premium. There weren't enough artists to go around. The
armed services applied art to hundreds of their problems. War
plants needed draftsmen, sculptors, etc. Advertising and publi-
cations, using more color than ever, needed illustrators and layout
designers. Everyone needed posters. In my profession, artists who
were considered "corny" a few years ago, were turning down
$1,500 commissions which could be dashed off in two or three
days,

36

FULL EMPLOYMENT AND THE ARTIST

The skills of the artist were important in winning the war
and in recording the war. Artists were busy on every fighting front
putting down what they saw on paper and canvas. For the first
time in our day, we had full employment of artists without the
benefit of private patrons or special legislation. This is the way
artists want it.

How can artists be fully employed in the postwar world?
How can America capitalize on the full potentiality of her talent?
How can the thousands of students who will once again be pour-
ing forth from our schools be absorbed in profitable work? (The
G.L Bill of Rights has given hundreds of young people an oppor-
tunity to study, unequalled before the war.)

Let's begin with the last question. Most of our art schools are
out-of-date. The student's ability to find himself in a fast-moving
industrial world should be considered while he is going to school
and not after he has graduated. A mediocre artist is usually an
artist who has specialized in the wrong kind of art or hasn't
specialized at all.

The important thing for the student to do is to get into a
good school. Professional advice on this is most important. Schools
hold the greatest possibilities for placing trained people in the
right atmosphere and giving them the training needed to cope
with the modern problems of art and industry. Most successful
artists today can trace their careers back to a good art school or
good instructors. Too few art schools or universities give adequate
advice on commercial advertising or industrial art and design.
The few good ones are responsible for the better work you see in
the magazines today and for the little outstanding package and
product design. Afl these students may not in the end produce
illustrations or paintings for advertising. They may, however, be
one day in a position to support such advertising.

The answer to the first question then begins with the answer
to the second: Bring our art schools up-to-date so that the students

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

will be better trained in all branches of the arts. (Example: Why
shouldn't every art school have a class in photography? Most of
our best photographers begin as art students.)

In discussing full employment for the artists, we begin and
end with the fact that if our country is busy, if business is good,
if everyone is employed, art prospers. So we, as good citizens,
should do everything possible to keep ALL of our people em-
ployed. We should be politically conscious. We should back all
full employment legislation.

It is unfortunate that art and industry have had no common
meeting ground. We have in this country a good share of the
world's finest art by the artists of every age. How about doing
something for the living artists of today? I doubt that we will ever
get an accumulation of money together for this purpose. What
is done will probably be done by artists, pulling up on their own
boot straps.

It is inevitable that industry become art's greatest patron. This
may be so today. Even so, industry hasn't begun to use full capa-
bilities of available artists. This is because industry doesn't know
enough about art.

What reason there is for the desire to create good taste on
the part of the industrialist is a "dollars and cents" reason. The
average manufacturer is not interested in pioneering in the use
of modern art. However, he has found that the way to create a
worth-while business is to build an atmosphere of good taste
around his product, to make it better looking than its competitors
and to advertise it in a sincere, honest technique.

I believe this has come about in some cases because the public
has become conscious of a lack of sincerity on the part of many
advertisers. This fakery is as evident in illustration as it is in text.
The public knows much more about the trick techniques of ad-
vertising than it is given credit for. Sales results and government

38

FULL EMPLOYMENT AND THE ARTIST

legislation are on the side of sincerity and honesty in advertising.

So, the industrialist is interested in the development of good
taste around his business but, with few exceptions, he knows little
about how to go about it. On the one hand, we have the artist
who is striving to fit himself into a fast-moving, scientific world
and on the other hand, we have the industrialist who realizes that
there is more to manufacturing than putting out a product at a
price. He needs the artist. We are in great need of a "device" to
get art and industry together.

The public is showing an increased interest in painting.
Attendance records of the art museums have never been better.
I am told that more people now go to art museums than go to
baseball games. The widespread use of color reproductions of
fine art by monthly and weekly publications has no doubt been
a contributing factor. (This is encouraging. Magazine circulations
are built by giving people what they want, and not by forcing
them to see and read what is good for them.)

Magazines are reproducing more and more fine art in their
editorial pages. They do this in order to increase circulation. This
is a development of recent years and is of great importance in
the full employment of artists. At the present time, a great many
new magazines are in the formative stage. Whether they are suc-
cessful or not will have something to do with their use of pictures.
This will mean more work for artists.

There should be within the government a well organized
division of art and design. This department should be equipped
to work on all government projects to see that everything pro-
duced by the different departments of the government for the
people be intelligently designed so that everything reaching the
people is impressive in its dignity and good taste.

Have you ever tried to read the Department of Agriculture
Bulletins for the farmer? They are printed in g-point condensed

39

WORK FOR ARTISTS

type. No wonder fanners are insisting on electric lights. Have you
ever noticed the design and color scheme of the U. S. mail box?
Sweden's is well designed from the standpoint of efficiency and
design. It is painted yellow for identity and visibility from a
distance and has a beautifully designed horn (the Post Office
insignia) in gold on the front. Have you seen any booklets put
out by G.P.O. lately? Ask any former O.W.I, layout designer
what happened to his work when it hit the Government Printing
Office. Take a look at the Treasury posters. If any country in the
world is designing worse postage stamps, I haven't seen them.
Such art work as that used on the latest Hyde Park stamp wouldn't
get by a fourth rate agency art director. Each department of the
government has an appropriation for disseminating information.
This very important work rarely gets the attention of artists or
art director.

Imagine the Saturday Evening Post or The Ladies Home
Journal being published without art or art direction. Yet these
publications are small and to my thinking unimportant compared
to the volume and importance of government printing.

Consider the many, useful art projects which were developed
under W.P.A. This was emergency relief work for artists. Imagine
what sound and useful projects could be executed in normal times
by artists especially picked for the work and paid accordingly.

We have a public conditioned and even interested in good art
and good design. The appearance of our government is shabby.
A department of art and design could do something about it. By
employing artists and by commissioning artists, much good talent
could profitably be put to work.

I am attempting to indicate vital points in business and gov-
ernment where artists can be more intelligently employed. I have
not touched on the endless, small opportunities. Artists have a
way of finding out about these themselves. Artists are resourceful

40

FULL EMPLOYMENT AND THE ARTIST

and ingenious in merchandising their talent However, they rarely
end up on a payroll or in anything of substance.

Full employment of the artist cannot start with the artist. It
is in the hands of business and government. They both have a
great need of good art.

4 1

INDUSTRIAL ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

Lincoln Rothschild

THERE is no record of the past which lives save art. The
civilizations which we remember today are known by
and because of their concrete celebration by artist or poet.
The work of art becomes part of our lives in its own immortal
strength, and radiates a sense of the social situation out of
which it arose.

The great periods of art in the past have arisen when a com-
munity became so soundly established that wealth and social pride
were available to endow and inspire artists. Whether or not their
work was conscious glorification, the stature of the age is estab-
lished for future generations by the character of its art-spokesmen.

What will be the future picture of our own age this age of
million-volt electrical charges, of hydraulic presses which stamp
an entire car top from one piece of sheet steel, of assembly lines
whose annual production of cars, refrigerators, washing machines
is in the millions? Today, in the most productive era the world has
known, there has been no expression of our society in painting
and sculpture which has meaning and interest for the great pro-
ducing population, nor for the skilled technical personnel, nor
even for the managers and owners. In the richest and industrially
most developed country in the world, the career of the fine artist*
is the most difficult among the professions.

*Fine artist - The use of the adjective "fine" in connection with art or
artists throughout this article is not a reference to quality but to the con-
ventional academic distinction from practical or "applied" art. L. R.

42

INDUSTRIAL ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

One aid to the artist today has been the practice of some edu-
cational institutions of supporting "artists-in-residence." These
artists work at a regular creative program with no educational
duties other than that of affording the community an opportunity
to witness the creative process in operation.

A tremendous step forward for American art, for the present
and the future, would be a comprehensive program of sponsorship
by large commercial corporations of INDUSTRIAL ARTISTS-IN-RESI-
DENCE. Already there have been instances where artists have been
employed on specific projects to enhance the prestige of a few big
firms. Why should not many artists be employed in manufacturing
plants throughout the nation?

Great corporations regularly employ cultural mediums at con-
siderable expense to express and enhance their corporate entities.
"House organs/' magazines for the trade or for the employed per-
sonnel, are today almost the invariable practice of large corpora-
tions, and some have had their histories written in books of popu-
lar narrative form. Many support expensive radio programs, often
being content to maximate the dignity of the organization by
financing outstanding musical or educational productions in which
there is a minimum of direct advertising, like the sponsorship of
the Philharmonic by U. S. Rubber, or of the Theatre Guild by
U. S. Steel. Many companies employ photographers on a regular
basis, and some have had outstanding motion picture artists pro-
duce documentary films of their productive activity.

With a few exceptions, the closest approach industry has made
to using fine art for public expression has been in advertising. I do
not mean direct promotion, packaging or design of the product
itself. There has been some superior illustration in "institutional" 1
advertising. Then there have been a few big projects like the
Pepsi-Cola calendar and the art collections made by International
Business Machines and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

In the New York World's Fairs of 1939 and 1940 an important

43

WORK FOR ARTISTS

trend toward a broad, educational emphasis appeared in the ex-
hibits of the large corporations rather than exposition of products
as had been the rule previously. Fine artists were involved in the
creation of many of the displays, as well as in the general environ-
ment of the Fair, resulting in enhancement of both.

The Industrial Artist-in-Residence program would carry this
trend to its logical fulfillment. In order to have significance for
the community as a whole, of course, the value of the work must
be permitted to arise solely from its vitality as art. The artist should
be as autonomous a creative agent under the economic "protec-
tion 77 of a corporation as if he were at the court of the Medici. But
he must in turn accept certain responsibilities to his employer by
developing an appropriate expression for the widest possible uses.

The artists employed in this work must, of course, have broad
social interest and awareness. They must study the needs and
interests of the community, not make the community see the
"beauty" of whatever they happen to offer. Instead of an artist
painting pictures in a vacuum, for an undefined audience and
with haphazard economic connections and clamoring that society
owes him support, he must find precise functions in society. As
schools of sculptor-masons expressed the religious fervor of the
medieval community, or as a court coterie of artist personalities
expressed the wealth and pride of a Renaissance prince, Industrial
Arfast-in-Residence can expound modern production.

Realism, sensitive, interpretative, intensified as in the great
tradition of painting in Germany and the Low Countries in the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, (excepting the
"Italianizers" and baroque Flanders) must be the keynote. People
must be able to understand this art as an exposition of the world
around them, not be baffled by the exploitation of a complex of
esoteric conventions and subtle aesthetic reactions.

In the long ran, the ideal of a creative, socially valuable and
widely comprehensible art will be achieved by experience. The

44

INDUSTRIAL ARTISTS-IN-RESEDENCE

interaction of public response with the creative insight of genuine
artists will determine eventually the form most appropriate for
interpreting the life of the present. But unfortunate beginnings
might discredit the program, unnecessarily delaying or postponing
it I should like to throw out a few suggestions for study and
discussion on as concrete a basis as possible.

An Industrial Artist-in-Residence would circulate through the
plant, making studies of production. This would include, of course,
the monumental structure which comprises a modern industrial
plant, and the host of intensely cooperating human agents who
make possible the thrilling accomplishments of modern industry.

The artist would be a regular employee of the corporation,
preferably putting in full time on the job. Ideally, studio accommo-
dations would be provided on the premises, not only that the
artist may feel thoroughly part of the environment he is to present,
but for the benefit to artist and workers that opportunity for
visiting would provide.

The artist should have a general knowledge of modern manu-
facturing, and his first task would be to familiarize himself with
the program of the plant in which he works, the uses and
structure of the product, processes and machines employed, classi-
fications of workers and particular skills of each. With this
knowledge under control he will be able to handle objective
material realistically without cramping the aesthetic and ex-
pressive aspects of his work. Obviously mechanical interests and
aptitudes are basic for an Industrial Artist-in-Residence.

After a period of study and then of sketching the material
that begins to emerge as most significant in the artist's mind, he
will consider the "uses" of his creations, the actual form in
which his work will be placed before the public. He will not
think in terms of a few "interesting" or even "representative"
items for copy in a series of "institutional" ads, but in terms
of creating, as it were, a full-length portrait of the industry. He

45

WORK FOR ARTISTS

will present the plant, people, operations, inside and out, in
as many stages as is necessary to give a balanced picture of pro-
duction. These can be publicly shown in ways, places, groupings,
determined as the occasion arises.

The "miracle" of modern production is real, and when seen
in portrayal by a sensitive and interested artist will be believed.
So imposing is this miracle that a richly detailed, unvarnished
human presentation would enhance the stature of any business.
It will impress the public and create a bond with its workers.
The value to the corporation will be greatest if a long range
view is taken instead of merely thinking of advertising glorification.
Then the work will be taken seriously as an expression on a
high artistic level, and that is the only way in which the work will
have value for the corporation.

How will this be superior to "mere" illustration, the flimsy,
bloodless sort of thing that often accompanies "institutional"
advertising in magazines at present? I would say that the aim
is no less than to revive the great tradition of American native
realism that ran through the nineteenth century, to produce work
in our century which can stand honorably beside that of Mount,
Bingham, Eakins, Homer and the rest.

More convincingly than by any oft-repeated slogan, an artist
is able to convey a realization of the dignity of modern manu-
facture, the amount of effort and number of operations that go
into a given product, the ingenuity and excellence of manufactur-
ing equipment, maintenance of standards in quality of material
used and precision observed, scope in respect to number of plants,
population served, and sources of raw materials.

Throughout, the artist should aim also to show the stature
of the men on the production line, the truly imposing amount of
knowledge, experience and skill possessed by modern industrial
craftsmen, and their rich humanity. All of these things together

INDUSTRIAL ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

are as much a picture of the age as of any one corporation, and
consequently in such a program the artist is actually fulfilling his
highest traditional function.

The forms of these works and the mediums employed may
cover the full available range, but the artist must consider the
specific uses to which they will be put. The most obvious use,
perhaps, is monumental work, such as murals and large sculpture
to "adorn and embellish" the premises of the corporation, creating
an imposing outward impression and a more pleasing inward
environment for personnel In general the subject matter for monu-
mental art, of course, can sum up or keynote the activity of the
outfit as a whole or the special functions performed at a particu-
lar location. With fully developed knowledge the artist can select
the most profoundly representative scenes, processes or people
and present them with a stirring realism that will carry rich
implications beyond the immediate material presented.

Intimate work easel paintings, prints and "table" sculpture
can show the intricate phases of the broad production scene in
rich and faithful detail. These highlighted subjects must not be
spotty or random selections, but should constitute balanced and
related series presenting a clear account of the evolution of a
product from beginning to end. Each series would carefully cover
a given range so that they might serve to illustrate a lecture in a
course on engineering or economics as well as to grace walls of
the meeting room of the Board of Directors.

Such series in group exhibitions could be circulated among
social, civic, and commercial organizations, schools, colleges and
science museums for their educational as well as artistic value, and
shown in large, public promotional exhibits like the World's
Fair, or the many smaller industrial expositions. Paintings would
serve best in the roomier spots, prints in the classroom or office.
A folio might simply lie on the table in an executive's anteroom

47

WORK FOR ARTISTS

for "browsing" purposes, or be reproduced in booklet form for
widespread distribution.

Needless to say, the artist would send his work to standard art
shows, and I think they'd win prizes right along with the "studio"
created picture. There could be developed special exhibitions and
special prizes for pictures sponsored by industry. Finally, the ma-
terial would be available for advertising copy, printed calendars,
and general publicity; but I put this last because it is incidental.

Reproductions of the monumental works and actual smaller
forms might go into the homes of the workers. Yes, they'll pay cash
money for them. The industrial worker does not have the same
desire to forget the way he earns his living, come quittin' time, that
so many "white collar" workers sadly do. He is quietly proud of
his own skills and immensely respectful of those of his fellows.
For all of militancy on the picket line or of beefing and deeply
antagonistic criticism of management, most workers in a large
corporation have mingled respect and affection for their own
outfit. An Industrial Artist-in-ResicIence can make a positive con-
tribution to the understanding and good-will of labor and man-
agement.

The regard of a worker for the plant where he works is made
up of such factors as the history of his own personal developments,
like a college graduate's feeling for his alma mater, long and
varied association with fellow workers, pride in sharing the re-
spect which outsiders have for the commercial reputation of the
firm and in the social value of its production. Machines and tools
are his power over the objective world, and I can see a vertical
boring mill or turret lathe operator hanging a picture of his work
if the picture to him is good enough on the walls of his living
room, much as a big game hunter hangs a heavy-bore rifle.

Pictures in the homes of workers would enhance morale, with-
out weakening loyalty to their own organizations or undermining
their self-interest. Proper presentation of the worker's contribution

INDUSTRIAL ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

to the rich, broad, human and important picture of modern in-
dustrial production could only enhance his stature as a human
being. It would create respect for his personality, and hence his
rights, both in himself and in the general public.

Ideally, the tenure of the Industrial Artist-in-Residence will
be continuous, and not for the accomplishment of a given project.
When he finishes one mural or series of prints, he starts another
for a lifetime, perhaps, of increasing familiarity and understanding.
He may "glorify" his outfit in enough art work to fill a museum,
and decorate the premises as the Treasury Department has done
for public buildings during the past ten years. In fact, as the
program unfolds, corporations may not only retain one permanent
staff artist, but a small department or studio, either with technical
assistants for the master artist, or with a good sized group special-
izing in various phases of a balanced program in several mediums.

I hope potential sponsors of this movement, which holds the
brilliant possibilities for American art in the future, will not be
discouraged by the fact that objection to the proposal will come
from the official art world, not unanimously perhaps, but from
many of the *T>est" (-selling) modern artists, their dealers, museum
officials of the precious type, most newspaper critics, and many
college art professors.

Today an artist may not be told what objectives you expect
him to fulfill and he doesn't even try to guess. A few, especially
mural painters and printmakers, feel obliged to convey recog-
nizable meaning appropriate to contemporary life, but even they
temper realism for aesthetic considerations and are confused by the
general scorn of realism. The recognized procedure for creating
a "pure" work of art involves a highly subjective contemplation of
an environment which interests the artist, or forms of no particu-
lar objective existence, until he "sees" a picture. The content of
the work is almost exclusively aesthetic and consequently little
subject to the influence of the audience because of the artists*

49

WORK FOR ARTISTS

superior professional understanding. I have nothing against this
procedure! But is it the only procedure for producing art, is it
indeed a procedure which will produce art of the widest im-
portance?

To survive and fill the high place history accords him, our
artists must find the expression which will speak to Americans with
sufficient force to make them mill around pictures as they do the
movie box offices, and know at a glance the one that has to go on
that wall behind the sofa.

Realistic presentation for concrete educational and promotional
use in no way means the elimination or neglect of aesthetic values,
nor the reduction of the artist to recording functions. Obviously
the artist will use light, color and rich materials. Moreover,
realism, the power of a Rembrandt to convey mass and space, of a
Van Eyck, a Holbein, or a Diirer to marshal detail, is on the
highest level. Conveying space and volume in the plastic arts re-
quires the creative power of a real artist. Many painters master a
series of formulas anatomy, perspective, light and shade values
but the difference between a formula and the depth and reality
of a full-fledged work of art is unmistakable.

Sensitive penetration of the meaning of his material, ingenuity
in presenting it convincingly through soundly felt gestures, sig-
nificant juxtapositions, apt selection of detail, also demand hu-
mane and intelligent stature in an artist's personality. The shipping
room of a large plant could be shown as a pattern of assorted
boxes and crates, or it could actually suggest the extent of contacts
of the corporation, which means the complex social cooperation
of modern production. Maybe the artist would have to get out-
side the "room" and show trucks at the front door, freight cars
at the back on tracks stretching away to suggest transcontinental
distances.

One time I saw a man in a jumper suit in the engine room of a

5

INDUSTRIAL ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

half-completed destroyer, who seemed to have had an accident.
He was hung over a plank like an empty sack. Going closer I saw
he was simply leaning over, intent on a small micro-measuring
device for testing the accuracy with which the newly set propeller
shaft had been lined up. Men stood beside him with sledge ham-
mers and large wooden wedges prepared to ease the bearings one
way or the other. All about him was the feverish activity and
complex equipment of half a dozen other operations.

Had I been working as an artist at that moment I could have
jockeyed around until I got the maximum of significant material
framed in design relationship, and Fd have had the beginnings of
a swell picture of the understanding, concentration and responsi-
bility required of a skilled worker on this particular job, as well
as an operational stage in a series on shipbuildings that might be
called Lining Up the Shaft. Can you think up such a theme syn-
thetically? No. Can you create it convincingly without going out-
side the studio? No.

Realism must be the expression of the age of complex and far-
flung industry, where clarity and precision and high human skill
solve all problems. Corporate funds are the greatest concentration
of wealth today. With imagination flexing our definitions of art,
culture, expression, we can break down the precious, isolating
concepts hamstringing art. There is no reason why a corporate
entity, a manufacturing process cannot be as worthy of monu-
mental recognition, as representative of our society, as the round-
est apple of Cezanne or the squarest one of the abstractionist.

We need to know what the broad outlines are of the great social
complex that brings us daily bread, covers our nakedness and puts
roofs over our heads. It is stupid and indecent to be as ignorant
as most of us are of the quantity and quality of human organiza-
tion and effort that lets us live. Our world is big, but you can see
it with no trouble at all when an artist brings it close. There is a

WORK FOR ARTISTS

big job that Industrial Artists-in-Residence can do for industry
and all of us.

It is the responsibility of industry to make this possible. Busi-
ness profits are a tax on the community. An appropriate return to
the American people for a small fraction of profits would be en-
dowments to produce adequate expression in the fine arts. The
magnificence of art has always been the crown of greatness, which
would thus accrue to the sponsors of Industrial Artists-in-
Residence.

WHO GIVES A HOOT ABOUT THE ARTIST?

Franklin Ryder

BECAUSE of the fact that here and there a piece of art-paint-
ing has been used to illustrate an advertisement, the idea
has gotten around that a new era of art patronage has begun
from which great things will conie. In this new era, the art-painter
and the business man, having settled their ancient feud, are at last in
bed with each other. Once the art-painter lived securely under the
patronage of the Church. Now that the art-painter's work is used
in advertising, the business man, his new-found bedmate, will
feed him and clothe him against the winter. The business man
will do it, furthermore, in his own best interests because, suddenly,
he has discovered that the art-painter is essential to his business.

I propose to show, first, that the nature of the true artist's
true interests are such that bedding down with the business man
bring him anything but peaceful slumber; second, that advertising
which indeed tolerates the art-painter on occasional institutional
and glamor advertising sprees, needs the art-painter like it needs
a hole in the head.

Some of my premises are artists' cliches, those whining state-
ments that both good and bad art-painters are in the habit of
making about a world which they believe is against them. (A
cliche, it says in the dictionary, is a trite phrase that has lost precise
meaning by iteration. The dictionary doesn't say, however, that a

53

WORK FOR ARTISTS

cliche is a falsehood. Likely as not, the idea imbedded in a cliche
is the most reliable truth) .

The most widely iterated cliche on this subject of art in busi-
ness is that the commercial spirit is inhospitable to the arts and
that the content of advertising does not inspire good work.

The commercial spirit, as expressed in advertising, in indeed
inhospitable to the arts. A great deal of advertising rather than
being fantasy the realm in which the true artist works is fantastic.
It puts forward the idea that merchandise, products, commodities,
are the only things under the sun that can set life to rights. It tells
you that the wrong choice of a product can lead to the kind of
frustration which is nothing short of disaster; yet there is little
in advertising that is sufficiently unbiased to help the consumer
make the right choice. The advertiser is selling goods. His selling
is special pleading. His claims are checked to some extent by the
Better Business Bureaus and the Federal Trade Commission; but
these agencies, apparently, have no objection to concepts such as
apple honey, milk of magnesia (magnesium is a metallic element,
you can't milk it) , or face cream that feeds vitamins to the skin
through the pores.

The commercial spirit, the spirit which results from concen-
tration on sales for profit, will go as far as the authorities permit.
When it has reached the phase of gibberish, it will graduate from
there to sub-gibberish. Furthermore, it will spread gibberish and
sub-gibberish so widely and keep pounding away at them so hard
that they will ultimately become normal and acceptable. Where
gibberish is the norm, the artist who talks straight will not be
understood.

A lot of good art is turned out for advertising; but it is good
in spite of its subject matter, not because of it. A true artist might
deal directly with the subject matter of advertising copy as satire;
but if he did he would soon be out on his ear. Because advertising
wanders so far afield, because it so frequently dodges its basic

54

WHO GIVES A HOOT ABOUT THE ARTIST?

responsibility of giving unbiased information; because the infor-
mation required about so many products amounts to so little that
the little there is to say has to be dressed up, the artist will occa-
sionally get a "free hand/ 7 as a result of which he will turn out
good work. Advertisers often need pictures to appear alongside
the name of a product. In many cases, almost any picture will do,
even a good one. The name de Beers has, in fact, been placed
alongside of drawings and paintings by Picasso and Matisse. The
problem here is that there's nothing to say about diamonds that
can't be said in a sentence or two. To avoid repetition, then, it's
a toss up between a new set of prose poems that nobody will read,
and a new set of pictures. You can have either or both or none.
The de Beers type of advertising is one part of the field that
leaves an opening for good pictures. Another is the kind of adver-
tising that has given up talking about the product altogether but
is now just talking about the company behind the product, and
this in the most abstract terms "institutional" advertising, in
other words. The idea here is to associate the name of the com-
pany with "fine things." Good pictures are often used in this kind
of advertising. The pictures need not have anything to do with
the theme since the advertiser himself is content to stay miles
away from it. The inspiration for these pictures is not advertising.
They are not really part of the fundamental pattern of the adver-
tising selling system. They merely fit into the cracks in the system.
When art was being purged in Nazi Germany, when the boob
were being burned and GleicLsclialtung was a headline word,
artists in America became aroused. The question of freedom in a
democracy versus slavery under fascism was one of special signifi-
cance to artists who hold, traditionally, that the best artist is the
free artist. Definitions of freedom were carefully weighed. Freedom
didn't mean freedom to pollute the water supply or to murder
people one doesn't happen to like. For artists, it meant freedom
to carry one's proper individual responsibilities, freedom to remain

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

responsible to art rather than to the fascist state.

It would be silly to fail to make a distinction between the
fascist state and the advertising system of free enterprise. After
all, haven't we just finished fighting a war against fascism and,
having fought that war, aren't we now just as strong as ever for
the advertising system of free enterprise? We believe we can afford
to be stubborn about the fact that our advertising system of free
enterprise differs from fascism. But no amount of stubbornness can
obscure the fact that fascism and the advertising system of free
enterprise have one thing in common: neither gives a hoot about
art or artists. The advertising system of free enterprise is interested
only in selling the goods at a profit.

We should discuss here, then the question of what kind of
advertising sells the goods and whether the art-artist can contribute
to this kind of advertising.

Many factors are involved in selling, aside from advertising
and the pictures in advertising. With the exception of mail order
advertising, it is difficult to gauge scientifically the sales results
of the various forms and types of advertising, although it is quite
possible to show in many cases some relationship between sales
and the number of advertising dollars spent. In any case, the artist
in advertising must make his art the vehicle of the advertising
theme or story as evolved and finally approved by advertising men.
The essence of an advertising theme or story can be anything from
innocuous and unimportant to just plain silly or even malicious.
This is not a help to the artist; it's a hindrance. Furthermore, the
artist is up against the fact that nobody anywhere in the adver-
tising environment is primarily interested in having him produce
a work of art. If and when it does happen that the artist produces
a work of art for advertising, it's in spite of the lack of freedom
for the artist in advertising, not because of it.

Actually, this art-painting in advertising that's supposed to
be a signal of a new era of patronage is in reality just a few crumbs

56

WHO GIVES A HOOT ABOUT THE ARTIST?

blown off the table by a stray gust of wind. At a time when busi-
ness can sell much more than it can produce and when taxes on
inevitable excess profits are such that it's a toss up whether to
"give it to the government" or spend it on advertising, it doesn't
make much difference what advertising money is spent on. Hence,
the kind of advertising that's bought with this kind of money
in a sellers' market sometimes has art-art in it. The kind of ad-
vertising that sells the goods in the more usual buyers 7 market
is something quite different, as any good advertising man will
tell you.

The truth of the matter is that graphic work in advertising,
whether in a crazy society or a sane one, is a craft and not an art.

The mail order catalog represents the normal technique of
advertising. It is indeed the only advertising technique that would
have any use in a sane society. Ideally, the mail order catalog pro-
vides a picture of the product with as much "photographic"
realism as is possible. The picture shows, in other words, what
the product looks like and, if possible, how it works. It is supple-
mented with copy which tells the prospective consumer what the
picture is unable to show. The picture, however, should show as
much as possible. Now, "art work" in the catalog field is highly
specialized and is turned out pretty much on the belt line system.
Even photo-retouchers are divided into categories and confined
to certain parts of the job. There are, for example, the original
retoucher and finisher, the hands-f eet-and-arms retoucher, and the
background retoucher. The same highly developed craft specializa-
tion prevails in the drawing department of catalog work, where
there are artists who work on heads only, others who work on
hands, feet, arms and legs, still others who work on detail such
as the pattern of a fabric, etc. Furthermore, an artist who works
with wash is strictly a "wash artist/ 7 and a still life artist is strictly
a "stffl life artist," etc.

Now, if this isn't calculated to give the horrors to the artist,

57

WORK FOR ARTISTS

I don't know what is. Yet, it is the best and most efficient way
to produce the best kind of advertising art, which is catalog art.
Catalog art is the best not only from a strictly advertising point
of view but also from the point of view of public service. From
this same point of view of service to the consumer, art-art is the
worst kind of advertising art. Art-art in advertising (or work with
art-art pretensions) is associated mainly with the most inflated,
intangible values perfumes and cosmetics, "institutional" double-
talk as in the advertising pages of Fortune, fashion ads in Vogue,
Harper's Bazaar, Town and Country, Glamour and Mademoiselle.
Even in this stuff, there is would-be art-painting or drawing a
hundred to one against real art-painting or drawing.

It's true, however, that there has been a certain flurry of art-
painting in advertising, sometimes in the advertisments them-
selves and elsewhere in remote institutional tieups the use of
paintings in connection with product display, or art patronage
jobs such as the annual long-shot Pepsi-Cola promotion. Some of
the pictures in Pepsi's traveling exhibition are used in its annual
calendar and the whole event adds up to a certain amount of
publicity for the company. But, even if a thousand United States
companies were to sponsor such exhibitions (God forbid) and
such calendars, the art-artist would still be without anything like
substantial patronage from business.

In view of the stubborn economic problem faced by the art-
painter it is understandable why this present false trend in adver-
tising should have stimulated some hope. The art-painter clings
to straws because, economically, he has little else to cling to.
Should the opportunity arise for him to get a fee out of advertising,
then by all means let him get it. But, let's not get the idea that
the art-painter has found a place in advertising. First of all, he is
up against the commercial spirit which won't let him remain an
art-painter for long; second, he must compete with specialized
advertising stylists such as layout men, letterers, designers and

58

WHO GIVES A HOOT ABOUT THE ARTIST?

commercial illustrators; also, graphic craftsmen who concentrate
on "photographic" realism, and, last but not least, he must com-
pete with photography itself.

The art-painter, then, still has his cross to bear and it's the
same old cross. Everybody talks about art, but nobody does any-
thing about it, or so it seems to the artist. The artist is the cus-
todian of Culture and the Good Life, but the patient is sick
almost to death and the vigil is long. If the patient lives, there's
a chance for improvement. But let's not mistake symptoms such
as poisoning-by-advertising for medicine, and above all, let's not
forget the disease itselfthe system of production for profit, the
advertising system of free enterprise with its milk from magnesium
and its forcible feeding through the pores.

59

ARTIST-ADVERTISER RELATIONS

Clarence Holbrook Carter

THERE are certainly many problems concerning the question
of the use of fine art in advertising. My mind is so open on
the subject that it is difficult for me to present a case and
stick to it. I am certain, however, that the fine artist has much to
contribute to advertising and that advertisers have much to offer the
artist; and it seems more evident all the time that a better adjust-
ment between the two is being made. True, the field is still limited
for the fine artist, and those who can depend upon a substantial
patronage from advertising are few. Yet fine art has made an
opening which cleaves deeper each day.

There are those who have an aesthetic fear of what adver-
tising may do to the fine artist; but if the artist retains his integrity
I see no reason for this fear. We all know that when the church
and the state were the patrons of the arts, certain limitations and
conventions had to be reckoned with. Earlier artists and artisans
were hired for their high artistic standards and the ability to adapt
themselves to a given problem. That is true in the advertising
field today. The artist is picked by the art director who often
has a keen knowledge of the artist's abilities and special gifts.
Popes and princes in previous periods had to know their artists
and their abilities in order to assign the right artist to a given job.
Probably one of the leading points of discussion today is

60

ARTIST-ADVERTISER RELATIONS

whether fine artists should in any way alter their style of expres-
sion in order to meet the needs of the patron who is advertising.
From my point of view, that is the worst thing an artist can do.
Presumably the specific artist has been chosen because of his style
of expression; and if he tries to alter that style, then the chances
are that a commercial artist could have done the same job better.
A facile commercial artist can alter his style to fit any problem
and usually pulls through with a good performance. He makes
no attempt at following the fine arts but in many cases brings
better skills to advertisements than the fine artist who attempts
something outside his sphere of expression. The commercial
eclectic can take the style of other artists and turn it into a capable
expression. In these cases a signature is necessary; otherwise the
artist remains unrecognized, whereas the creative artist whose style
is recognizable needs no signature.

One rightly may ask if a commercial artist "sells" the product,
then why bother about the fine artist and his limited style? The
answer is this: The true creative artist attacks each problem dif-
ferently although his style is always apparent. He brings to it a
fresh and original expression, a true distinction which sets it apart
from run-of-the-mill treatment. There is such an obvious difference
that his statement commands immediate attention. The com-
mercial artist with all his bag of tricks and technical knowledge
tends to repeat formulas for given occasions, and by this constant
repetition the public's eye becomes wearied. Obviously the theory
of advertising today is repetition, supposedly to make an impres-
sion on the unconscious mind. For my part, this repetition
becomes so monotonous and dulls the senses to such a point that
it is neither seen, heard nor believed.

At this point I quote in part from Florence Fisher Parry's
column in the Pittsburgh Press which echoes my sentiments. "Am
I alone in being awfully fed up on L.S./M.F.T. color photographs
from paintings of large leaves of tobacco, golden in the sun?

61

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Advertising, too, it would seem, can be a war of attrition between
manufacturer and consumer to see which one can wear out the
other sooner/'

It is likewise important for the artist not to repeat himself
but to bring a fresh approach and variety to each problem; to do
the best he can for advertising and not to use it merely for a
money-making crutch. There are certain cases where I have felt
that the fine artist has sold himself for a pot of gold in doing
paintings for advertising. There were sloppy, careless mistakes
which seemed to say, "This is for dough and I don't give a hang.
Til knock something out all they want is my name anyway/'
These glaring faults seldom appear in the artist's exhibition paint-
ings. Of course, this is not doing the art any good and does give
the relationship between the public, the artist and advertising
a substantial setback. Through the medium of advertising, the
artist is virtually on dress parade before a public he otherwise
never reaches.

Some of the most consistently good advertisements have been
done by commercial men who exhibit regularly and successfully
in important exhibitions. This link between fine and commercial
art tends to stimulate both. The creative competition revitalizes
his work, bringing a fresh point of view to his advertising, and
serves as a tonic against dry commercialism.

Another plea for using the fine artist wherever possible is the
ultimate effect on public taste. It lies in the hands of advertisers
more than any other group (including museum officials and art
dealers) to bring a higher standard of culture to the American
public. Business, instead of playing down to the lowest public
taste in its advertising, has the responsibility of using its tre-
mendous resources through both magazine and radio advertising
to raise the cultural standards of the nation. "Big business" should,
can and probably eventually will be the patron of contemporary
art. There is at present no other patron of like potentialities. From

62

ARTIST-ADVERTISER RELATION'S

an aesthetic point of view most advertising is abominably bad.
I have had arguments with advertisers on this point, and their
comeback is always that it sells the product and they have figures
to prove it. Their attitude is that figures don't lie; but I say they
do in the long run when the human equation is considered.
Mediocrity eventually reaps a barren harvest.

The intelligent set-up is where the artist, advertising agency
and client can talk freely and exchange opinions and ideas. In
most cases the artist deals exclusively with the agency and the
agency deals with the client, barring the artist from a complete
understanding of the problem, to the detriment of all three. There
is, for example, the layout of the page. The contributing artist
should be consulted and should insist on being heard when his
production is to be used on a page. Some good paintings have
been miserably displayed due to poor layout An artist is particular
to select the frame which will enhance his painting. Layout can
enhance his picture or ruin it completely. In the latter case nothing
is gained for the artist, advertiser or public.

There have been rigid ideas of what a creative artist could and
could not do to earn a living. He could teach and no one cast
aspersions at him as this was considered a legitimate way to keep
body and soul together; but to have traffic with commercial art
was to sell his soul to perdition. That notion, like other precon-
ceived notions, is being broken down. Speaking from experience
I can say that teaching took more time and energy from my
creative output than has painting for advertising. I do not say
that this is the perfect answer for the artist, but I do say that it is
the best answer I have found. It is always best for each individual
to work out his problems and decide what is most satisfactory
for furthering his creative life. To say that every artist should paint
for advertising would be as foolish as to say that every artist should
use the same palette, brushes and canvas.

At present art and industry are in the stage of feeling each

63

WORK FOR ARTISTS

other out. The present activity is what may be termed a prelim-
inary to the main bout. If nothing goes wrong, it should prove to
be an exciting and stimulating partnership.

DICTATORS OF ART

Rockwell Kent

A FAIR consideration of art in relation to advertising is
seriously hampered by the past debauchery of art by ad-
vertising, which gave the world that misbegotten hybrid
termed "commercial art." With that no artist will concern himself.
Yet in view of the changes in the character of advertising which
have already taken place and of the further changes in progress,
advertising as a source of commissions which may entirely respect
the artist's own integrity toward his work is not to be dismissed.
Nor will it be.

Despite the overwhelming mass of bastard art which still
adorns the advertising pages of periodicals, there is growing evi-
dence that art as art has won some advertising friends; so that
whereas the majority of agencies, or clients, still use the stuff that
they God knows, not artists! procreate, there are already some
among them who have come to realize that integrity and the
beauty which is its expression have inherent power to win friends.
And friends, they know, is what the advertiser, for his product,
wants.

Begotten of the agency and born of the poor devil who, out
of need, must lend himself to such unholy intercourse: such is
commercial art. With it, as I have said, no artist will have traffic.
But the employment of artists to paint such pictures as they have
shown they want to paint and can paint is another matter. When

65

WORK FOR ARTISTS

such commissions are offered, most artists will undoubtedly accept

them.

There is nothing to be gained in finding fault with the char-
acter of advertising art in general; for, to the charge that must
be made that it is bad, comes the answer "It pays/' That is the
advertisers' justification for the interminable succession of worth-
less or even vicious soap operas which crowd the air from early
morning until night. We are told they pay. But what the adver-
tisers must realize is that, when it dawns upon him that there is
latent intelligence and good taste in the American people which
it might profit him to cultivate, or, let us say, that there is good
will to be won and prestige to be gained through the sponsorship
of art in advertising, he must be prepared to renounce his accus-
tomed authority as dictator of art and leave the art and all the
thought and execution pertaining to it to the artist he has chosen.

Our advertising agencies are dominated by copy writers; and
through that domination advertising writers have assumed
authority even in the field of visual expression. Every agency is
equipped with an art department, and it is the main function of
that art department to give expression to the "ideas" of copy
writers.

Perhaps the greatest propaganda, or advertising, commission
ever executed was that of decorating the Sistine Chapel. Its pur-
pose was to employ the empty walls of that chapel to proclaim
the might, majesty, dominion and power of God, the dignity of
the Prophets and, incidentally, the divine authority of the Vatican.
Without irreverence, the worldly power of the Church of Rome
of that day may be likened to the power of a vast modern industrial
corporation. Its directorate wanted a job done and, after thought-
ful consideration of artists available, decided wisely on Michel-
angelo of Florence, They left the job to him.

Yet how at variance with modem advertising methods that

66

DICTATORS OF ART

procedure was! By modern methods, the board of directors, or
the college of cardinals, having voted the appropriation, would
have turned the matter over to an advertising agency. After
months of feverish refinement of ideas, the art department of the
agency would have prepared a series of sketches in full color
("comprehensives") . These would have been elaborately matted
and covered with stretched cellophane. Equipped with an approp-
riate, hand-set title page, they would have been assembled in a
costly portfolio and in due time submitted by well dressed spe-
cialists in salesmanship to the assembled cardinals.

Each of the cardinals, of course, w r ould have his little criti-
cisms: the expression of this face or that would need to be altered.
(Those alterations that were actually later made when the Michel-
angelo murals were at last unveiled would have been unnecessary;
the experts would have foreseen the need of jock-straps) . When
in due course the corrections had been made, the sketches resub-
mitted and OK'd, the agency would have sent for Michelangelo
and, spreading the sketches before his astounded eyes, have told
him what he was supposed to do. Michelangelo, like every self-
respecting artist before his time or since, would have declined.

The great corporations of today could be the sponsors of great
art not maybe of art to be enshrined in temples, but of art that,
through the wonders of modern color reproduction, could be in
every home. They could win friends and glory through that
sponsorship, and, through friends and glory, wealth. But the glory
and the friends they will never win until they, and their agents,
learn to have respect first, let us say, for the intelligence of people
and, secondly, in the people's interest and their own for art.

Art is a powerful means of expression. And art, as recent
prolonged discussions have reminded us, can be a weapon. It may
be that, in times of internecine strife like these when art is called
upon to serve democracy and labor, many of our best artists

67

WORK FOR ARTISTS

men with the deepest convictions and the greatest fervor of utter-
ancecannot be, and will not be, of service to corporate adver-
tising. Yet the fundamental truth remains: that advertising
through its facilities for mass distribution, can be a great factor
in the promotion of a people's culture.

68

THE BOOK ARTIST

Lynd Ward

ONLY a very small part of the vast quantities of paper used
in our civilization goes into books. Torrents of printed
material from other presses cover the land as newspapers,
magazines, leaflets, brochures, billboard posters, throw-aways, car-
tons, wrappings and billheads. The output of the country's book
presses is no more than a fraction of one per cent of the tonnage of
paper used annually in the United States. These figures are not,
however, an accurate index of the importance of books. The book
functions differently from other products of the press. Yesterday's
newspaper, last week's magazine, last month's billboard posters are
gone from sight and mind.

In sharp contrast to the transitory character of these, the
book has a tangible existence in time and space. It is physically
solid and, in an impermanent world, relatively permanent. Artists
have always had a special concern with these attributes in connec-
tion with their creative work The fact that the book has these
qualities may be responsible, in large part, for the long and
enduring relationship between artists and the book.

Starting with Diirer and Holbein and coming on down through
Blake and Delacroix, there has been a long line of artists who
have found in the book a place for action worthy of their best
powers. Today, after several decades of experimentation and evo-
lution, the book field stands firmly on its own feet, offering

69

WORK FOR ARTISTS

artists opportunities of a greater variety than did any earlier period
of publishing.

The artist who approaches book work from a background of
independent, self-directed easel painting or print-making is espe-
cially conscious of special requirements which seem, at best,
limitations to keep him from accomplishing the best of which he
is capable and, at worst, chainlike fetters on his creative instinct
which will cause the artist in him to sicken and die.

It is true there are special requirements for book work, and
they are of two kinds, ideological and technical. But it is also
probably true that the constrictive effect of these special conditions
has been highly exaggerated, that their debilitating effect has been
deduced from the work in books of persons whose work in an-
other field where no such requirements prevail would be just as
lacking in vital qualities. Every art form has limitations of one
sort or another, and the richness of our heritage from the past is due
in large part to the ingenuity with which artists have turned a limi-
tation into an aesthetic asset. Certainly the book artist is not
alone in having to work within limitations imposed from outside.
The mural painter, for example, must accept many stipulations as
to content as well as to the techniques of execution; but he trades
whatever greater freedom the easel painter may have in these
matters for assets of another kind, namely, subject matter of
social import, communication with a large audience, and so on.
Similarly, the technical limitations imposed on the book artist
may well be outweighed by the great asset of the book's thousand-
fold duplication of contact with people.

Even the severest limitation of all, that of having to work
with another person's ideas rather than with his own, becomes
much less of a bugaboo than it first seems. This is not only because
of the increasingly frequent opportunity artists have to do books
on their own, either with a text of their own devising or a
sequence of pictures by themselves, but also because on closer

70

THE BOOK ARTIST

and more careful examination, the ideas in the manuscript which
comes to an artist for illustration are in a sense a group of references
to a body of material existing in fact and of itself. It is with this
body of material, standing in a sense behind and beyond the work
of the author, that the artist is actually dealing. He deals in
graphic terms with the same primary reality with which the writer
has dealt in literary terms.

This relation of author-artist-material is easily seen in a travel
book, for example, where the pictures must of necessity derive
directly from the visual and emotional characteristics of place and
the people of that place, rather than from the writing which also
derived from contact with the place and the people. But that same
relation exists, despite surface differences, even in a fantasy such as
Alice in Wonderland. TenmeFs drawings, though guided of course
by the specifications of Carroll's story, are yet basically representa-
tions of the people, animals and objects whose existence in the
real world provided the substance with which Carroll was con-
cerned in literary terms. In a book of historical fiction, the work
of the artist stands in a close relation to the period involved and
to be of real value to the book must, while following the fortunes
of the author's characters, still make a contribution in its own
right through graphic representations of the period's geography,
cultural details and human characteristics.

This is another way of saying that though working with an-
other person's ideas may seem at first glance to be a severe limita-
tion upon the artist's freedom, in reality it is not so. The artist
who works on a book is put in contact with a body of material
with the guidance of the author. Far from being constricting, such
a guided relationship is often enriched by the insight and under-
standing of the author, dead or alive.

From this it follows that the essential factor in the relation
of the artist to book art is really what the artist is interested in
himself. An artist who enjoys rendering landscapes and studies

7 1

WORK FOR ARTISTS

of people busy at their occupations in the countryside would
probably do a series of drawings for a book on, say, the topography,
people and customs of Iceland with no sense of restriction but
rather of opportunity. An artist whose dominant concern is with
the unclothed human body existing in space might well find a com-
mission of that nature oppressive, whereas a book of classical
sonnets on sacred and profane love would seem to him a particu-
larly pleasing prospect.

Because the world of books embraces, in its collective subject
matter, everything in heaven and earth and runs the gamut of
time from Creation to Judgment Day, a proposition might be
formulated which would demonstrate that an affinity exists be-
tween the work of every artist and some particular book or category
of books. This basic theory offers considerable encouragement to
artists who seek a working relationship with book publishers. Our
age is heir to a great range of classics of world literature. There is a
commendable trend towards making them available to each new
generation in editions illustrated by contemporary artists. Then we
have the less frequent but highly desirable issuance of the works of
living authors in illustrated state, and a constantly growing number
of books for children in which the presence of an artist's work has
become an absolute must. All this makes it reasonable to suggest
that almost any living art expression can be fitted into book work.

But it is equally reasonable to suggest that the artist who re-
sponds emotionally to subject matter limited, let us say, to nudes
and apples, will fit into fewer places than one whose interests are
wider and involve him in wider areas of human experience.

There are, of course, several ways in which an artist's work can
be related to the literary part of the book. These range from a use
of decorative units treated with conspicuous unemotion to a fever-
ish and intense concern with the impact of character and dramatic
effect of high moments in the narrative. Decisions in this realm
are to some extent the business of the publisher. But they are

7 2

THE BOOK ARTIST

more fundamentally the business of the artist. He must have a
concept of what is "right" for a given work, he must see the
finished work before it is started, and then he must build towards
that goal.

This is quite a different thing from the popular conception of
the book artist as a person who sits down to read something highly
entertaining and, as the words flow in, has images formed in his
mind painlessly and in profusion, to flow forth as finished draw-
ings almost automatically. It means that the book artist must have
objectivity and detachment in point of view, similar to the judg-
ment a mural painter exercises almost in deciding on the suitability
of subject matter and treatment in relation to a particular wall
and the use to which the space around it is to be put. It means
that the urge to make pictures stimulated by reading an author's
work is not enough. There must be a considered judgment as to the
effect on The Unknown Reader of the new thing created by the
union of text and pictures.

The case of Voltaire's Candicfe is to the point. Many artists
have made pictures for this subtly barbed story of the best of all
possible worlds. It remained for Rockwell Kent to work out a
combination of witty definition of character, accurate local detail,
and a sort of real-unreal background which matched perfectly the
keen wit and delicate mood of Voltaire's narrative. The Kent
Candida achieves a rare balance between text and pictures that
makes the other illustrated Candides seem heavy, wooden and
unsatisfactory. This happy result was not an accident; with great
sensitivity, it was planned that way. The type of vigorous brush
drawings with which Kent recorded his Alaskan adventures in
Voyaging would have been out of place in Candide, as would have
been color lithographs such as he did for The Bridge of San Luis
Key.

Thus the book artist must have a basic conception of what the
finished book is to be: its character, flavor, impact on the reader.

73

WORK FOR ARTISTS

The pictures themselves must then be worked out as parts of this
conception. With this first step, the artist can go on to decide
what kind of pictorial unit should mark the opening of chapters,
what larger drawings should emphasize moments of crisis or record
action against an informative background, how the physical and
psychological characteristics of the people in the book should be
interpreted.

Since the final product with which the artist is concerned is not
the drawing itself but whatever approximation of the original ap-
pears on the printed page, technical considerations are of prime im-
portance. When an artist works on a drawing or painting whose
ultimate use will be as an original on a wall or in a portfolio, it
matters little whether he uses one color or a dozen, mixes line and
tone indiscriminately, combines mediums, changes proportions or
alters sizes. Manipulation of materials finds its justification in the
success of the resulting image. But in books the artist's original is
only a half-way house to the printed picture. It will avail an artist
little if his mind creates a book loaded with rare color when the
paper is going to go through a press that prints it in black ink only.

It is true that today we have far greater technical possibilities
than were available to earlier generations of book artists. We can
work in pen or brush drawings and have our work reproduced by
line cut. We can work in water color or wash, and a halftone
screen will give us reasonable facsimiles. We can use wood blocks
or lithographic stones. We can work in full color and call on the
magic of photo-mechanical color separation to reproduce by micro-
scopic dots of solid colors a good percentage of the original's inter-
mediate hues and tonal gradations.

The artist's work can be printed by letterpress, offset lithogra-
phy, gravure or collotype, a battery of techniques which make
possible a great variety of effects on the printed page. This variety
is dazzling in comparison with the rigidly limited techniques of a

74

THE BOOK ARTIST

hundred years ago when every picture printed with type had to be
worked in wood and the only exception was in the use of metal
plate engraving or stone lithography for full page illustrations to
be printed separately.

However each book has its own specifications; and it is neces-
sary for the artist to understand the technical steps involved not
only in the reproduction of his originals but in the complete pro-
duction of the book. He must know what is technically feasible
when a page is printed by letterpress, for example, and what limi-
tations are imposed by the character of the paper, what is reason-
able in the way of additional colors in an edition of 5000 copies
of a book selling for two dollars, what costs can be saved through
making a series of drawings a uniform size in relation to the
reproduced size rather than twenty different sizes. Only through
having such factors in the back of his head during the planning
stage can an artist plan his book realistically. Occasionally a book
is produced which sets out to do whatever the artist requires in
technical procedure, cost what it may. But such volumes are con-
spicuous in their rarity. The normal economic pattern sets up a
barrier beyond which costs cannot go. It is the publisher, of course,
who does this fencing in, and he is guided by the dominant factors
in size of edition, which means the number of copies his best
guessers say he can distribute and that percentage of his selling
price his accountants say he can spend on manufacture.

Within the limits set as a result of such arithmetic, the artist
has considerable latitude in developing the book. He arrives at
conclusions as to printing processes, he exercises preferences in
regard to color or black and white, he works out a scheme for
binding, title page, and paper. All this involves a close working
relation with the publisher who must, of course, be the final
arbiter between technical possibilities on the one hand and re-
strictive costs on the other. But the artist who has as his goal the

75

WORK FOR ARTISTS

attainment of a book technically as rich as possible may be able to
suggest alternative ways of achieving the same end and thus out-
maneuver costs.

In the matter of color, for example, two factors are involved,
plates and press run. Additional colors mean that color plates must
be prepared and the sheet must go through the press an additional
time for each color used. If the artist does originals in full color and
says that's the end of it, the cost of color separations and plate-
making may be prohibitive, even if the additional times through
the press are possible. But if the artist is familiar with the ways we
now have of working out color separations through the use of
overlays, tracings or blueprints based on a black-and-white original,
the cost of color separations may be saved and the artist's original
intention in regard to color in the book be carried out.

Such compromises are limiting to a degree, but no more so than
compromises found all through the graphic arts. The etcher
struggles against the restrictions of line, the wood engraver has
no real middle tone except that which he can approximate through
the interplay of minute quantities of black and white, the color
lithographer has to accept a limited number of separate colors
with which to render the complex color relationships of his subject.
In books, as in the other graphic arts, these limitations can, if
frankly accepted and utilized, become a source of strength.

Book illustrations in America is now a more vigorous and sub-
stantial activity than it has ever been before. An average year's
publishing sees about ten thousand titles come out of the binderies.
Of these nearly a thousand are books for children, in which artists
have in the majority of instances an indispensable role. A smaller
number, perhaps a hundred, are illustrated versions of the classics,
in limited and trade editions; here too the work of the artist is
fundamental. There are numerous technical and educational books
which require the help of an artist, though in a different way from
that which applies in other fields. Then there are several thousand

THE BOOK ARTIST

titles each year in the field of new fiction, travel and biography;
and it is here that we can look for the greatest expansion in the use
of book artists.

In the two decades between World War I and World War II
there were numerous instances of distinguished collaboration
between author and artist in books about far places, distinguished
historical figures, narratives of a fictional nature. Thus a precedent
has been established which should stir the imaginations of pub-
lishers and authors and mean more and better illustrated books.

The book artist today thus has more opportunities than he had
twenty years ago and the prospect of an expanding field of opera-
tions. Besides that, the average distribution of individual titles
has stepped up considerably, particularly in children's books. This
wider audience has made possible a more equitable payment for
the artist's work. While there are still many instances in which the
amount of money the artist gets for doing a book is far lower than
a proper wage for work well done should be, it is nevertheless true
that payments are better than they were. Twenty years ago $200 or
$300 was paid for all the drawings in a book, with an occasional
commission going to $500, a rare one to $1000. Today the average
payment for a full illustration job ranges between $500 and $1000,
with occasional commissions that involve editions of 100,000
copies or more going to $1500 or beyond. There is a healthy tend-
ency, besides, to involve the artist, even microscopically, in royalty
percentages.

In comparison with magazine illustration or advertising, these
payments are not particularly lavish. They do, moreover, require a
real expenditure of time and energy on the part of the artist. The
artist's commission is always for the book as a whole. The person
who wants to figure things out on the basis of a certain number of
drawings at so much a drawing is really out of place here because
it is the entity between front and back covers which is being com-
missioned. It is no more reasonable to reduce this to a specific

77

WORK FOR ARTISTS

number of works in relation to the fee than it is for the mural
painter to try to figure out just how many faces and costumes he
will paint on a wall in relation to the amount of money being paid
him. It is the overall result which is involved, and the book artist
may well find that to reach his goal of the right job for the book he
is working on, he will have to do fifty units in one case, whereas in
another instance thirty will be right.

The future for books and for the book artist is bright. Pub-
lishers held back during the war by restrictions not only of paper
but of technicians and facilities, are embarking on really startling
programs of expansion. But the soundness of this expansion is
dependent in the final analysis on whether there are buyers for the
books made. The number of Americans who buy and read books
has grown immeasurably during the war years. If the years ahead
provide these millions with the kind of life and the kind of liveli-
hood which makes it possible for them to keep on buying and
reading books, book publishing will continue sound. Then oppor-
tunities for artists to work with books will continue to grow.

THE NON-COMMERCIAL ART MARKET
Hila Meadow

WHAT do most people see when they think of advertising
art? Slick visions of pretty girls, breakfast foods, babies,
and shiny new cars full color "ads" in the Saturday
Evening Post, Woman's Home Companion, and Life. That is logi-
cal, since advertising is a tremendous industry, and a great deal of
money, time and energy is put into it. But there is also a wealth of
advertising art which seldom appears in the popular magazines or
the newspapers. That is the graphic material produced by non-profit
organizations.

This field includes a variety of outfits. Within it are such
time-tested and responsible structures as the United States govern-
ment and all its agencies, the American Red Cross, the Democratic
and the Republican National Committees, the National War
Fund, religious organizations such as Hadassah and the National
Catholic Welfare Conference, propaganda setups such as World
Peaceways, and a host of welfare, fund-raising and political groups.
Every year these organizations spend millions of dollars to bring
their message to the public through printed word and picture.
In addition, the national press for self promotion uses quantities
of similar material.

Their production for the most part is in the form of poster or
billboard advertising or leaflets and brochures for distribution by
mail or from hand to hand. There are good reasons for this. Space

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

in national magazines is expensive and must have an all-year-
round continuity to produce results. Most organizations work on
a brief, intensive, campaign basis and haven't the funds for all-
year-round advertising. Also they have a human network for
distribution that General Foods might envy. If the organization
is a membership organization, it has its own members or good
mailing lists of past supporters, local leadership and local com-
mitttees. Most have loving volunteers who will address and stuff
envelopes all night if necessary. The campaign nature of the
work and the mediums used have in a great measure affected the
level of the graphic art produced.

Before going into the part the commercial artist has to play,
it is important to understand how the non-profit organization
works and what a limited staff is used for the production of
material. A large organization like Hadassah is a typical example.
Administrative expenses, personnel, publicity, advertising, rent,
all overhead must come out of membership dues. As a result one
capable, but busy young woman handles all publicity and literature.
She writes copy, does layouts, handles production and buys what-
ever original artwork is used. I say "whatever original artwork" ad-
visedly, because as a matter of fact very little is used. There are
two reasons for this. One is limitation of budget; the other is the
need of documentation and emotional appeal for the story she has
to tell. The authentic photograph (even just a snapshot) of an
underfed, underclothed child will tell its own story more poignantly
than a drawing, unless the drawing is done by a top-notch artist.
That is the crux of the whole matter. Every year when an organiza-
tion launches its campaign, the same wail goes up, "Let's do
something different." Every year the same well-laid-out photo-
graphs appear, because the organization will not indeed, can-
notspend the amount of money that has to be spent for art work
of comparable value.

The material put out by the Democratic National Committee

80

THE NON-COMMERCIAL ART MARKET

during the 1944 presidential election campaign is a good example
of the static quality of graphic work produced by organizations.
On the whole the copy was good. It told a story with facts and
figures. But there was such a sameness in format and design for
the widest variety of subjects, that a whole slick series of sixteen-
page brochures become a bore to anyone burdened with the task
of reading more than one or two. I am sure the people involved in
producing them must have found the work dull indeed. It is diffi-
cult to imagine why anyone should want to apply the same pattern
of design to such a variety of subjects as "The American Farmer/'
"The Wealth of Our Nation/ 7 "Justice for All/ 7 "The Ships and
Sailors that Licked Hitler/ 7 and "What Happens If You Lose
Your Job or Get Too Old to Work. 77 But that is what was done,
and those responsible can glibly say, "So what? Mr. Roosevelt got
elected, didn't he? 77 Yet that is not the answer. That wasn't the
point of the question. Mr. Roosevelt got elected. But the material
produced for his campaign could have made a deeper mark on the
American mind. If the design for each piece had flowed out of its
specific content, instead of from one rubber stamp form, the entire
level of the material would have been raised; and a higher level of
presentation for copy that touched on life-and-death questions
for practically every section of American life is not just a question
of aesthetics. It is a question of whether a piece is inspiring or
whether it leaves you cold, or whether you want to hold on to it,
or toss it into the waste basket. Looking back, it seems a tragic
waste that every one of those pieces was not so designed that copies
would have been kept by millions of American families. They
would make valuable reading right now.

An interesting exception to the usual type of campaign by a
non-profit organization was one conducted before the war by
World Peaceways. It was carried out entirely by professionals in the
advertising agencies and it was based on commercial mediums.
National advertisers contributed space, and full-page ads appeared

81

WORK FOR ARTISTS

in practically all the nationally distributed magazines. In one year
as much as $585,000 worth of space was donated and used. The
ads themselves were terrific. They used very little copy, but had
original artwork that was dramatic, pointed, arresting and dynamic.
I have never been able to forget the series on "Civilization or De-
struction/' and it would be good to see a similar job done today
around the atomic bomb.

This campaign illustrates an important point. Because national
magazines have prestige and therefore space in them is expensive,
an organization will take the trouble to get the best art available
and spend money for good engravings. Yet when an organization
prints a pamphlet in a large run and may well spend the same
$2,000 on printing that it would spend for space in a magazine, the
chances are it will be sloppy about the artwork it uses and often
downright careless about engravings. The organizations have to
begin to have more respect for their own medium, the trustworthy
pamphlet, and for the valuable methods of distribution they have
invented.

It is important to note to what a small degree artists were en-
listed by the United States government during the war. The only
graphic material that reached the public was in the form of posters.
These were issued mainly by the Treasury Department, the various
recruiting offices, OPA, and by such agencies as the Office of
Emergency Management. Only a small fraction of the posters were
not contributed by organizations like Abbott Laboratories, The
total probably came to no more than several dozen original posters.
The booklets and other publications of the Office of War Informa-
tion were, in fact, the best example of the artist's cooperation in
tie war effort* This attitude on the part of the government is a
further illustration of what stepchildren the graphic arts are and
of the general underestimation of their educational and cultural
power.

82

THE NON-COMMERCL\L ART MARKET

However, in the past few years a brighter horizon has been
opening up to the graphic artist. This has been a great movement
on the part of people and the organizations born out of the labor
movement, the professionals and intellectuals, and what Henry A.
Wallace calls "the common man." This movement has taken form
in organizations like trade unions, CIO-PAC, National Citizens'
PAC, Russian War Relief, Yugoslav Relief, Spanish Refugee
Committee, Independent Citizens' Committees formed around
local elections, organizations representing minority groups, those
fighting discriminatory practices, those defending civil liberties, and
more recently the new veterans 7 organizations. These groups are
popular organizations in that they sprang up out of the urgent
needs of the people who support them. As such they can breathe
a new vitality into the art life of our country. The graphic arts can
make an essential contribution to this work. In the last election
campaign CIO-PAC and NC-PAC issued as much material in
support of Roosevelt as the National Democratic Committee.
Large unions like the United Automobile Workers, CIO, the
United Electrical Workers, the National Maritime Union, have a
constant flow of material pouring out of their understaffed and
crowded offices. In the course of the war a national organization
like Russian War Relief spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a
year on campaigns and continues to spend at perhaps an even
higher rate now.

The democratic spirit of such organizations and the force they
wield in building a strong democratic movement in this country
provide a new stimulus for artists. Their work can open up new
creative freedoms and help break down existing barriers between
the artist and people. In these growing organizations the artist can
find an expression to take him out of his urban isolation and make
him a part of the struggle for democracy. This relationship will
have a double effect. The experience of working closely with repre-

83

WORK FOR ARTISTS

sentative organizations can be a great source of stimulation and
will have a healthy and vigorous effect upon the creative work of
the artist. On the other side full utilization of the culturally ma-
ture work of the artist can raise the general level of understanding
and of cultural expression.

Unfortunately the picture as it stands today is far from rosy.
Much of the leadership of the type of organizations mentioned
has fallen into the trap of expediency. A lot of pot-boiler art is
turned out, though it boils no pots. Graphic material is produced
feverishly, sloppily, without plan. A piece that will ultimately
reach millions of people is most often dreamed up at the last
minute, concocted overnight by well-meaning amateurs, produced
haphazardly. The result is a pamphlet or other graphic presentation
lacking in distinction both as propaganda and as literary and
artistic form. Everyone concerned feels badly that the piece didn't
turn out better. The next week another crisis comes along and the
same mistakes are repeated. The excuses are familiar. Lack of
funds, emergency situations, understating, lack of experienced per-
sonnel. I can sympathize with these excuses; but I cannot at all
accept them as necessary or final.

To my mind this is a problem that can and should be solved
jointly by the organizations and the artists. The artists have a
double stake in its solution. The rapidly growing new audience
opens up a new field of enterprise for them. The artist's own se-
curity is involved in the struggle for full employment. In depression
and unemployment, advertising appropriations are slashed; there
are hundreds of people anxious to do your job for considerably
less than you have been making; before you know it you are either
out of work, you have accepted a huge salary cut, or you are offered
hunger payments on commissions.

The organizations also have everything to gain by producing a
high level of graphic material. The printed word and picture to-
gether constitute a great instrument for mobilizing public opinion.

THE NON-COMMERCIAL ART MARKET

We know from the experience of picture-journalism how powerful
is the pull and impact of the visual image. Yet this factor is not
used sufficiently by our national organizations.

But the problem is not solely the level of work produced. Part
and parcel is the respect of the organizations for the material they
put out. Recognition of the professional stature of the graphic
artist is a necessity. I mean recognition in dollars and cents. In
other words the artist must be paid. This seems an obvious pro-
cedure. Like plumbers, carpenters, printers, and actors, artists
must eat. Yet advantage has constantly been taken of them. They
have been invited to work on a "cause" basis. This is not healthy.
With due respect to the many artists, very good and not so good,
who have worked hard for causes, this situation has been a major
factor in keeping the level of graphic material down.

The solution is not difficult. More and more organizations are
beginning to realize that they have to function on a professional
basis. One point must be clear. It is not wrong for an artist who
can afford to do it to volunteer to do a job for an organization
which he believes in and which cannot afford to pay him. I am
talking about what the custom has been and about changing the
emphasis from a haphazard non-paying market to a flourishing,
self-sustaining one. There will always be exceptions to the rule.

The first step is for national organizations to add to their staffs
an art director and if possible a production person. Many of them
now have editors, fund raisers, executives in charge of radio or
speakers* bureaus, educational directors, etc. Few can boast of a
publications department. Addition of this personnel to the staff
would do a lot toward taking art work out of the helter-skelter
category. Organizations would find it profitable in money saved
in printing, in eliminating mistakes, in planning effectively, and
in saving wear and tear generally.

The other job, and that's the job of the artists, is to organize the
advertising industry, including the free-lance artists. A strong union

85

WORK FOR ARTISTS

would not only do a lot toward removing present abuses and
stabilizing rates of pay. It would also raise the level of work and
set professional standards, with important gains in effectiveness.
A union including artists could also work jointly and in organized
fashion with mass organizations in taking responsibility for the
training and education of young art students and in developing
technicians skilled in the propaganda arts.

It must be recognized that a great many fine things have been
turned out by non-profit organizations. Posters worth keeping and
framing, beautiful greeting cards, handsome calendars, brochures
and periodicals, which are valuable additions to any library. Con-
tributions have been made. But the potential is far from having
been realized or approached.

The limitless forms possible of development within the graphic
arts have scarcely been reconnoitered. The dynamic use of photog-
raphy, the proper use of illustration, the creative possibilities of
type; color, form, abstraction, impression all the freedom of easel
painting is there, plus the magical tricks and scarcely explored possi-
bilities of modern reproduction processes. The new content must
inspire the graphic artist to new forms and new uses of forms.

While radio and film are dramatic, educational and extremely
valuable, the printed page is here to stay. As yet there is nothing
which takes the place of the piece of literature that goes into the
home and stays there. Here is another horizon for broadening the
use of art in American life.

86

TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTIST
Walter Baerrnann

THE purpose of this essay is to help clarify the position of
the graphic artist in our industrial community and to show
this professional group and its potential clients how each
may be helpful to the other.

Against the overwhelming happenings of our time such a
task is frighteningly difficult not, as may be thought, because of
its minute scope in relation to world happenings but on the
contrary because of the terrifying magnitude and importance which
the roots of this problem have in the great world turmoil. Art and
the artist's case in our economy and our community is the case of
humanity versus roboiism. The struggle of the artist for his place
in the social order is part of the fight for all deep human qualities,
for freedom of soul and mind. His struggle is therefore significant;
for in a world where mechanization and scientific rationalism
have penetrated every sphere of our lives, the artist stands on an
isolated island, working with tools far removed from the material
realities of our time, stripped to his inner seeing and his senses.

Prime Minister Attlee in his speech to Congress said: "Man's
material discoveries have outpaced his moral progress." This state-
ment was made in relation to foreign policy to war and peace
and atomic energy, it may however be interpreted as a great truth
for this discussion of the graphic artist's position in our industrial
economy. For the last century man has straggled to cope with his

87

WORK FOR ARTISTS

material discoveries. All spheres of human endeavor which in-
volved production and distribution of those objects with which we
surround ourselves for reasons of need or for reasons of satis-
faction or desire were and are affected by the Industrial Revolu-
tion. All these spheres of human endeavor had to undergo and are
continuously undergoing violent adjustments. That broad phases
of our community organization were affected by the growth of
mechanization and industrial power is obvious. Present-day
organized labor's increased desire to have a voice in dealing with
these problems and social issues is nothing but an inevitable and
ever-continuing demand for a rebalancing of the economic scale.

Other spheres of our social organization were physically less
affected or felt the effects of industrial growth and scientific
achievement only indirectly. These spheres were consequently much
slower to mobilize for adjustment to the impact of industrial revo-
lution. Many a philosopher dealt with these problems, many a
poet and writer analyzed and dramatized, and many a painter
visualized the drama of the invention of mechanized civilization
and its consequences; but no real adjustment was made or even
attempted in education, religion and art. It is said advisedly that
no real adjustment was found, for those attempts which were
made were superficial and more harmful than constructive. Art
has failed to bridge the transition from craft product to industrial
product. Neither art nor education has understood how to preserve
the traditional craft sense of quality and material honesty and
make it grow for the better and richer product of modern tech-
nology. Education instead has resorted to the breeding of narrow
specialists who must fit into a given pattern like inanimate gears
into a clockwork. Education has failed to make the great scien-
tific and technological achievements of our century, great human
achievements. Art has retreated from its communal position and
is at war with itself, confused and bewildered by the impact of the
achievement of the human brain, indulging in experiment for ex-

TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTIST

periment's sake and only rarely trying to break out of its fortified
retreat into the terrifying reality of our present-day world.

This fortified retreat of the artist is double walled. And if the
artist's position in our economy hopes to become healthy, both
walls must fall. One wall must be torn down from the outside. It
is the wall which our industrialized civilization has built around
art. It is that same wall which this civilization has built around
our souls, our deeper sense of values, our joy of life itself. This

wall must fall if human society is to survive and if art is to survive.

s

The tearing down of this wall is a cultural problem, the tools are
economic and educational. The other wall must be torn down from
the inside. Artists through a century have built it. Artists must
break it down. This job is a deep human problem. Its tools are
self criticism and positive and active citizenship. This wall, too,
must fall for art to survive; and it must fall as fast as possible, for
if the forces hemmed in behind it are regenerated, they can help
destroy that other outer wall.

All this is said, for we believe that really to solve the economic
problem of the artist in general, we as citizens of this country
and the world must help solve the cultural and economic prob-
lems which beset our human community. Every economy is based
on supply and demand. In an economy of use everybody has work.
In an economy of scarcity work is scarce, and artificial stimuli keep
production wheels turning. Today production in the United States
is retreating into an economy of scarcity. There cannot be employ-
ment for artists in a lasting sense unless there is a real and healthy
demand for art. There cannot be a real demand for art unless the
need and use for it is recognized, not as an embellishment of our
civilization, but as an important human tool for a richer life and
better living. There cannot be a real and sustained flow of art need
as long as art is used as something to brag about or to avoid taxes.

The artists of the world and the artists of this country cannot

WORK FOR ARTISTS

sit by and wait. They must take an active hand now in these
matters. They must direct their collective efforts for economic
betterment not only toward fulfillment of their specific interests
but also toward the great economic and cultural problems that
confront world citizenship day in and day out as large inter-
national issues and as local politics. Artists must get reacquainted
with their community, not as observers, not as critics, not as
dreamers. They must become again a consciously active part of
communal life, helping to carry community responsibility. They
must see to it that their community begins to know them not as
"those" artists but as the artists of the community. They must
come back from their lonely island onto which mechanized civiliza-
tion has pushed them as isolated specialists, to share the great
cultural obligations of the mainland. They must help to refertilize
and purify the cultural soil on which man's material inventions
have bred superficial mechanization and empty quantitative ma-
terialism. If artists follow these convictions, they cannot help
but succeed in establishing their place in the social-economic
order. As groups and individuals they will of necessity recognize
the need they must fill, the message they must give. They will
quickly learn to use the tools of our social and economic life for
their own sake and for the sake of larger issues.

Artists will have to accept some bitter facts and make these
facts a basic premise for action. Industrial civilization has created
mass production. Mass production has created mass distribution
and mass markets. Mass production and mass markets have bred
the highest skilled efficiency through specialization. Specialization
with its inherent efficiency is held at a premium in our industrial
civilization. Skill and efficiency dominate our so-called civilized
life. In art, judgment of technic and skill have replaced judgment
of meaning and content. Superficial tricks and novel stunts in art
as well as in other spheres are more successful than serious thought.

The artist also must face the fact that our civilization has

9

TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTIST

created what may be called a different type of art. He must look
at the so-called commercial art field. He must not shrug his
shoulders and disregard it. The commercial art technicians, illus-
trators, poster designers, exhibit experts, etc., etc., have mastered
skills to the highest degree. Their craftsmanship often reaches
perfection. They have all the physical tools. They stand in the
middle of our mechanized struggle. They know and must know
the pattern of the patronage they serve. Their skill and everyday
experience in business may combine with their inevitable partici-
pation in the large issues of our time and we may see born out of
this group real artists not artists who have survived behind a
protecting and stifling wall but artists who have conquered the
tools of their civilization and use them in revolt against super-
ficiality. There is not a shade of a doubt that artists have to be
conscious of the position which graphic specialists occupy in our
industrial world if they too want to meet the needs of this world.

And there is need for them. They must not attempt to substi-
tute for the specialists, for they have not acquired the same
knowledge. They don't know printing processes, they don't know
production methods and the technology of various materials. Their
talent to acquire these facilities easily is not enough to compete
with specialized schooling and experience. Artists will surely fail
if they attempt this kind of competition. They will not be able to
sustain any initial success which they may have unless they bluff
their way through,

The question then arises "Can the artist be expected to fill any
need for the industrial economy of our time or can he expect
support from this industrialized economy only as a token of recog-
nition for his 'cultural 7 contribution?" The question arises: "Is
industry purely a patron who enriches his prestige with works of
art, a good Samaritan who lends support to art or is industry a
client in need of something that he cannot find at any other
source?" As matters stand today, industry could at least develop

9 1

WORK FOR ARTISTS

into a good patron, contributing to the support of the artist. But
only in rare cases where industrial sponsors reach into the environ-
ment of so-called cultural institutions or where "cultural" enjoy-
ment can be marketable will the artist be asked spontaneously to
fill a need.

Well organized and skillful efforts by the artist must help
tap and develop these rich sources of support. It is up to the
artist to help those who have already begun to patronize their work
in considerable scale, to develop their efforts and give these efforts
direction and meaning. Artists must realize that industrial institu-
tions justify their large-scale art purchases as public relations or
public service expenditures. They must realize that their works
find their way to a very large number of people and that therein
lies a great and deep obligation and responsibility. The obligation
and responsibility lies in the fact that latent in those large-scale
purchases is the germ of rebirth of the need for art. Latent in it
lies the germ for a new familiarity with art and its deeper meaning.
Many industries today are in a position to support art in this
manner and, we are sure, would be willing to support reasonable
programs if they are presented clear and factual plans through
effective channels*

Advertising agencies representing industry may be helpful;
but they too need the help and encouragement of effective artist
representation. Recently a leading advertising agency complained
to the writer that they had difficulty contacting artists for the
program of one of their clients. Industry does visual education
work in institutions like museums and schools. Large sums of
money are spent for such work, and the artist working closely with
design and commercial art specialists can make a real contribution
to such potential clients and to the general public. Industry is
building sales places and showrooms in which the consumer is told
in word and picture the value of the merchandise offered. One
large industry has calculated that they spent twenty cents a head to

92

TECHNOIiOGY AND THE ARTIST

get people into a World's Fair exhibit, one dollar a bead to bring
them into their showrooms,, and three to four cents a head to
bring them into their museum exhibits* In the museum alone some
eight million people have seen the exhibit in five years. This is
the equivalent of an expenditure af $320^000 over a period of five
years or $64,000 a year for one industry in one museum. If only
ten industries would undertake a similar program in three museums
each, they would spend altogether $2,920,000 a year. Art let us
say, could participate in such a plan with 1 5 per cent of $288,000
a year,

Let us now talk about what was called above "marketable
cultural enjoyment 77 Artists must realize that the distribution
system of our industrial economy is the most comprehensive and
effective ever developed, They also must realize that they are
outside this distribution system, Art galleries certainly have their
place and make a great contribution to the artist" s economy. But
these galleries are not what might be called distribution agencies
in the industrial sense. However, with the help of artists and with
cooperation amoijg each other they may develop into such a
distribution system, Both artist and dealer have to Jearn that
"art" cannot be harmed by utilizing those principles whict under-
lie efficient industrial distribution.

Every fair-sized retail outlet in this country marketing home
furnishings also selk "pictures"* On the average these pictures
are mass reproductions of very mediocre art But they sell and sell
for good prices, Manyastonishingly many stores,, large and
small, also sell "originals" for amazing prices and again in the
majority of cases works of insuff erable quality. The writer recently
visited a small ftraiture store in a town of 12,000 people in
cental QHo. The small attractiye store sells an average of $10,000
to $12,000 worth of merchandise every week, and according to
ihe owner (wEo Is his own chief salesman) an average of 5 per
cent of this amount is for picture sales, The pictures ware not too

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bad and were mostly "original" oils selling for $250 to $300 or
prints from $25 to $75. If this fact is transferred to the material
picture, the following can be arrived at.

Let us assume that only a thousand of the larger homefurnish-
ing stores in the United States agree to invest 30 per cent of their
budget for prints, in good water colors, to sell for not less than
$125 each. It is safe to assume that each one of these stores would
sell at least two water colors a week. This would amount to no
water colors yearly to a store or 1 10,000 water colors for the group
of ten stores. In dollars this would mean gross sales of $13,750,000.
This is far from being impossible. It is not really a matter of
creating a new outlet for artists, it is a matter of harnessing an
outlet.

There is no doubt that the artist should take part in the
various building programs conducted privately and through local,
state and federal agencies. What is more the artist's should be
really one of the important contributions to that phase of build-
ing, not only institutional but also domestic building which
makes building "architecture/' The employment of the artist in
this field is much discussed by existing artists' groups, and legisla-
tion is being promoted to set aside a percentage of building cost
for art. Means are being discussed to persuade private building
enterprise to adopt the same standard as that proposed for public
building. This is not the place to discuss the merits of these efforts.
But it may be said that legislation concerning public building ex-
penditures in relation to art and private agreements for similar
purposes does not by itself awaken an awareness of the need for
such art use. And that awareness must be awakened if art is to
survive as part of our daily cultural life rather than a costly decora-
tion of our civilization. This truth cannot be brought home to
the potential users of art by enthusiastic lecturers and critics and
liberal politicians alone. They can only help. The bulk of the effort
to transform apathy toward art into active recognition of the

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TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTIST

need for art must come from the artists themselves. The artist must
consciously and continuously implement his demands by con-
scientious efforts to demonstrate the need for art. He must be
ever conscious of the fact that his tools are the most direct chan-
nels to active and sensual perception. He must feel his deep re-
sponsibility as an interpreter of experience through visual sensory
impact. That is a great obligation. And what is said here does not
only apply to that art which concerns itself with content of our
time, but also to that art which is concerned with statements of
perception of phenomena like color, space, texture, form, time, etc.
The artist must become the messenger of quality for these experi-
ences. He is responsible to a great degree through his work for
the direct and clear understanding of material quality. He can help
through his work to fight distorted evaluations created through
the misuse of the visual impact. There is indeed a great need
for the artist as an educator in our industrial civilization; and if
he is a mature citizen and a mature artist, he has the tools to
become an important teacher.

Many people will ask "How can the artist do this fob even
if he fulfills all the necessary qualifications? He will always speak
as the converted to the converted/'

The artist cannot do it alone of course, society has to help
him. But the artist must take his place in society. In order to par-
take constructively and successfully in our life artists must get
together as a professional group or two or three groups. Such
groups must stop being solely economic interest groups. They
must stop begging for art support only. They must become groups
of professionals with established professional standards and with
professional aims guided by those of themselves whom they select
for efficiency, effectiveness and businesslike manner. Such groups
can become effective in our economy as weH as in our social life.
Such professional groups can back up and actively help bring
back real art education into our schools and colleges, can repre-

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sent artists effectively and with recognized standing in industry
can develop and promote on an equal plane with other organiza-
tions new plans and programs. Through organizations of such
type artists must demonstrate that they understand their place in
this age of ours, that they are professional workers in our in-
dustrial era, that they belong to our society and are as much needed
in our society as lawyers and physicians, that they are not "just"
artists, a strange lot, living outside this world.

Is it not of the greatest importance that the artists of our day
think in these terms? Is it not at least one means to help to make
their voices heard in these troubled times? Will not such partici-
pation help bring us to that vantage point from where we can
synchronize moral progress with material discoveries?

GOVERNMENT AND THE ARTS
S. L. M. Barlow

THOSE monuments of antiquity, by whose evidence we judge
civilizations of the past and their achievements, were essen-
tially state projects. They were the results of government
sponsorship, ownership or ? as it is now called, "interference/'

The palace at Nineveh, the Parthenon, the Pyramids, as well
as Versailles or the Roman aqueduct over the Card, were national
undertakings. So, too, were the Whitestone Bridge (W.P A) ,
the Delphic Charioteer (probably paid for out of the treasury of
Syracuse) , and Brahms' Academic Overture. Each in its way was
a public monument; for, though all except the bridge were de-
signed to exalt a government, a caste, or an event, we must
remember that the works were financed by national funds, directly
or through an agency; and national funds are not less national
because they are royal, "1/etat c'est moi"

A strictly business society, practical and up-to-date, could
function today without the arts and with all requisite sanitation,
train schedules, heat and light, industry and leisure. Art, religion,
like the refinements of plumbing or women's clothes, these are
not more essential to physical well-being than curry powder. They
are expensive and show no immediate returns. Yet it may be said
that the civilization of a people is measured by the importance it
attaches to the non-utilitarian. Since these imponderables are not

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strictly speaking self-supporting, obviously to exist they must be
supported. The purveyor of support is a Patron. If we are to move
forward into a compatible future, we must examine the patronage
of the past. There we find that the private patron is a drop in
the bucket.

In Egypt, the Orient, Persia and Greece, some private patrons
have left evidence of their existence, almost always in the form
of a decorated tomb. A rich Greek was often forced to be the
patron (choregus) of dramatic spectacles, defraying the expenses
of a production by hiring playwrights and cast. Rome furnishes,
in Maecenas, the most classic figure of a connoisseur; and there
are others, drawn doubtless from the two thousand taxable fami-
lies Rome possessed at the time of Strabo. Even so, in antiquity,
it is the general rule that the wealthy were state officials, their
incomes conditioned by royal favor and their coffers filled by a
pro-consular golden opportunity to dip into public monies. With
the arrival of Christianity, the system remained the same; where
Diocletian might have built a Bath, Justinian built Santa Sophia.

By the mid-Renaissance, the pattern of patronage had become
more complex, yet it can hardly be said that a real "buying public"
for art existed. Church and Crown, prelate and prince, maintained
the arts. Michelangelo was paid from funds of the sovereign papal
states. Even religious paintings in the main were commissioned
by state or corporate bodies. The Tintorettos in San Rocco were
ordered by the hospital authorities, a public service corporation;
those in the Doge's Palace were paid for out of city funds. If
Isabella d'Este desired a painting by Mantegna, that price came
from the Mantuan state coffers. The resulting works, like crown
jewels, became permanent assets of the state, church, or corpo-
ration. Galileo depended upon the favor of the Medici to escape
the Inquisition. Shakespeare was required to have his theatrical
being "under the hand and seal of such important personage"
and to avoid the rigors of the Test Act.

GOVERNMENT AND THE AKTS

By Rembrandt's time, the rich burgher had entered the field.
From that time, too, the list of artists who died in penury begins
to assume alarming proportions. Mozart and Schubert died young
of disappointment and malnutrition. As late as 1860, one of the
great composers of our time was hawking his operas with little
success in his native land; and only the surprising munificence
of Ludwig II, after 1864, enabled Wagner to proceed with his
grandiose plans for a modern stage. To this day, no composer
except three or four who have achieved popularity with their
operas supports himself by his compositions alone. Today, almost
all composers add to their slender incomes by teaching. If, as is
usual, the composer teaches in a foundation, then this patron is
an exigent as was any prince-bishop. His patron is the probated
will of the founder and a living board.

In the same way, the writers, philosophers and teachers who
since the French Revolution are supposed to have slipped from
under the need of patronage earn their livelihood in schools and
colleges which in themselves are the recipients of government
(state or federal) grants or are under private endowment as well
as tax exemption.

To share in the responsibility for that condition of culture
to which it has pleased God to lead us is surely as vital an interest
in a community as sharing in the responsibility for the laws which
purport to govern us. Today, the tide turns for stark individualism.
But the facts are against it The arts have never flourished when
they were divorced from the general enhancement of the life of
the group. Though it is fashionable now to pretend that govern-
ment "interference" is the end of enterprise, it is easy to demon-
state that enterprises are the more noble and the more successful
when undertaken in behalf of the general welfare than in behalf
of the specific pocket Whether we like it or no, our major insti-
tutions are and must be subsidized. That applies to the Metro-
politan Opera, Harvard University, cancer research or crop control.

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II

The Temple of Solomon was raised to the glory of God for
the pious use of a whole people. We have clear and full records
of the quantity of materials used, the name of the contractor,
Hiram, and the length and conditions of his labor. We know of
the pre-Guggenheim fellowships set up by Nebuchadnezzar pro-
visions for teaching, lodging and food because a lad named
Daniel won one of them. We have also the letter of Rashid Ud
Din (written about 800 A.D.) by which he set up twenty-four
hotels and thirty thousand houses for a University City.

These are the ancestors.

Today, the problems are so great, national incomes so enorm-
ous, that the line between public and private patronage hardly
exists; or if it exists it is cross hatched with divided responsibility.

In so far as anything is tax-free, just as far is it government-
subsidized. Church property is the ancient example. The majority
of hospitals (where doctors are trained as well as the sick attended)
are supported by the city or the state as well as by private citizens.
The same is true of schools, colleges, universities, libraries, research
centers, laboratories (astronomical, chemical, etc.) . The percent-
age of such institutions still supported solely by the private patron
is infinitesimal. I think we may say that today a mixed subvention
a part from tax-exemption, a part from direct state aid, a part
from private donation supports almost all our non-profit-making
enterprises. The exceptions would be the research laboratories of
the larger commercial corporations; yet, with these, the effort is
industrial and competitive rather than cultural. Much gain results,
but it is apt to be patented.

Of the tax-free institutions, the most potent are the founda-
tions. They have taken over the patronage of the earlier prince-
bishop. Their protection and help is cast not only over present-day
Galileos, Newtons, da Vincis, Ambroise Pares or Harveys, but also

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GOVERNMENT AND THE ARTS

over the whole realm of science, sociology, medicine, art, geodetics,
and in fact anything you can think of.

In the course of its life, the Carnegie Foundation has dis-
tributed about $300,000,000. It has built over two thousand free
public libraries, increased teachers' stipends in countless institu-
tions, built the Palace of Peace at the Hague and the Pan-American
Union, and, with a hundred similar activities, helped Mme. Curie
pursue her investigation of radium and Dr. Koch in his attack
upon tuberculosis.

Rockefeller funds, apart from digressions into reroofing Ver-
sailles, have been devoted mainly to long-range research and
learning, the concentration and diffusion of knowledge. They have
been solicitous of the ills of China, or of sufferers from tropical "
diseases, or of sufferers from all scourges, such as cancer, the
world over. Their scope and personnel are international. In a
war-torn world, their divisions of medical science, social science,
natural science, and the humanities, through universities, labora-
tories, publications and far-flung field work, have pursued their
labors, here achieving in terms of human welfare, there saving
some shattered vestige of learning, and elsewhere with tenacity
and continuous financial support advancing man's control if not
over his neighbors at least over a less recalcitrant nature.

Another contemporary example of a public institution relying
upon mixed support from local tax and private gift is the public
library. Here we are at the heart of culture. We accept the pro-
priety of building the Erie Canal (a government project) because
it yielded obvious dividends in gold. We accept the fact that
our water system, our city lights, our schools and hospitals, our
sewage, some of our subways, our parks, and some of our fisheries
and forests, should be withdrawn from private control. For these
render palpable services, The inestimable services rendered by a
public library with exhibitions, concerts, lectures, as well as read-

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ing rooms-cannot be computed. No one should consider them
"interferences."

In 1930, in the United States, there was no vision and few
apples and the people perished. Between 15,000,000 and 20,-
000,000 were unemployed. The government was faced with the
alternative of dispensing a dole or of inventing "made-work/ 7
Wisely, it laid emphasis upon made-work (the theory and pro-
cedure of WPA) to create the employment needed to keep people
in those employments where they could best use their special skills
and aptitudes and to secure works which would be of permanent
benefit to the country at large.

Through the four Art Projects the country really came of age.
We learned to know ourselves, our neighbors and our history.
To the projects we owe the first admirable series of handbooks
on our own land, its rivers and forests, people and lore. In the
Index of American Design, we were given a record, inestimably
precious, of the pattern of our ways and a colossal document
which, for the first time, we may offer for comparison with the
great records of older countries. From the art workshops poured
nearly two thousand mural paintings to enliven the drabness
of our public buildings. (While some were poor and many were
criticized, the majority were excellent; and die mere arousing of
criticism, the stimulation of concern for unaccustomed things, was
valuable.) Four thousand pieces of sculpture were called into
existence; and, during one period, 4,000,000 people a month
(people who before then had never been able to hear such music
at all) attended symphony concerts.

There was a revival of small local theatres, which the movies
had gone a long way toward extinguishing and, in so doing, had
nearly extinguished the springs of dramatic writing and the pro-
fession of acting. After twenty years of the most brilliant theatre
in the world, the New York stage had declined with startling
rapidity. Thtts the notable productions of the Theatre Project

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GOVERNMENT AND THE ARTS

not only enlivened the metropolis but brought to the country far
and wide the excitement and provocation to thought which only
the serious drama can arouse. For the first time, In the United
States, the pent-up artistic energies of the Negro people, relegated
before then largely to minstrel shows, assumed a merited eminence.

Above all, the Arts Project made possible, logical and agree-
able the assemblage of neighbors together, in many community
centers, wherein they met, learning to learn and to create, side
by side, in tolerance and understanding. The whole moral atmos-
phere of the country was raised and expanded. In mutual discovery
and recreation, ancient separations of ignorance and prejudice
began to crumble. For ignorance and prejudice and rancor are
but moral, amoral rather, and emotional currents; like half-gods,
they can be replaced, and only so, by stronger, more wholesome
ones. Money alone will not do it.

All Latin America watched this experiment: an experiment in
that nationalism which is a cooperation and not a snobbery, in
the discovery and evaluation of talent, if only the talent of being
a responsive neighbor. England also watched and adapted many
of the practices of WPA to her war needs. In fact, in England
the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts
(CEMA) gives every indication of surviving the war. Happily,
the advisability of taking "the best to the most/' of planting wide-
spread civic centers, of formulating a national art policy, of taking
Shakespeare to the provinces all parts of CEMA's program is
not limited to a reign of terror.

The British experience in sorrow solved many problems which
may now lead to joy. Rather than allow itself to collapse, the
London Philharmonic reformed itself as a cooperative body,
admitting as shareholders only the players themselves. The Theater
Royal at Bristol was acquired by CEMA and is now an active
center for all the arts and crafts. In this program is there anything
unbecoming to days of peace, to the freedom of the individual?

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In the United States there is a growing awareness of the fact
that in Germany there were close to a hundred subsidized theaters
(and, if I remember correctly, Germany's use of "cultural influ-
ence" was impressive to weaker neighbors) , that in Mexico there
is a ministry of fine arts and subsidized schools, that the Austrian
government out of its poverty gave over a million a year for music
and drama, that Russia and France have underwritten their activi-
ties in the arts as systematically as they underwrite their military
establishments.

Business Machines Corporation, Pepsi-Cola, Mammoth Mag-
azines, and Encyclopaedia Britannica have offered prizes and con-
ducted annual exhibitions of contemporary paintings. Pending in
Washington are several bills among them the "G.L Arts Bill/ 7
conceived by men at the front who knew what they hoped to find
back home for a national Beaux Arts, for federal acknowledgment
of our supra-tangible assets.

Patronage should be a wise solicitude. It was a form of that
solicitude which the church exercised in its most glorious moment,
the cherishing and fostering of all the impulses that are lovely in
man, in the days before die church relinquished her rights to
oversee the "just price" and before she tolerated two moralities,
the private and the business morality. That time is gone. The
state, really, if only to adorn and house itself, has not lost the
tradition, however great may be the ignorance of any congressman,
however much he may cry "interference.'' As a state should see
to it that no man starves, so it should see to the imponderables,
"that men may pursue their studies in peace of mind/' as Rashid
Ud Din wrote to his son, "without the dust of poverty on their
foreheads, nor in the lap of their virtue/'

104

PIONEERING OF 1936-1946

I. B. M.: 1936-1946
Jo Gibbs

THIRTY thousand art items have been purchased by the
International Business Machines Corporation during the
past decade a figure which, doubtless, no museum or cul-
tural institution in this or any other country has approached. Nor
is art itself, acquired for practical use rather than personal ostenta-
tion, more than a part of an educational project which has grown
and continues to grow more complex each year.

This first and fabulous sponsorship of art by industry was born
as an idea when IBM President Thomas J. Watson attended
a machine tool exhibition in Cleveland in 1935. As he stepped
across the threshold of the showroom, he exclaimed to his asso-
ciates: "This isn't a tool exhibition, it's an art exhibition!" Artist-
designers had been so successful in improving the appearance of
these sinews of manufacture that it set him to thinking. Art, he
suddenly realized, had done a great deal for industry, but what
had industry done for art? It occurred to him that, in spite of
his contribution, the artist had remained at the bottom of the
financial heap. But if the artist's contribution could be dramatized,
other businessmen might follow a lead to improve the artist's
compensation.

Immediate result of the Cleveland revelation: IBM products
were re-designed with color added. The corporation collection
of art for employees of the Endicott, New York, home factory

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which followed soon thereafter was in line with a human relations
policy which even then included libraries, clubs, recreational
programs, TJiini magazine and musical organizations for IBM
workers. This "home" collection now numbers between seven and
eight thousand pictures, sculptures, prints and ceramics distributed
throughout the factory's laboratories and public buildings, and
it is still growing. Reacting to stimulus, workers, engineers and
executives formed art classes and week-end painting groups, and
a number have become modest collectors. This year employees
held the first exhibition of their own work. Association with art
produced not only appreciation but participation.

Mr. Watson's own collection started modestly. As a 21-year-
old fledgling businessman, he stopped in at a Boston art gallery
on his way back to work from a vacation in Maine. There he saw
a Maine landscape which would be an extension of his holiday
if he could take it with him. But $40 was more than he could
afford. The dealer countered that he couldn't afford not to have
it, that a businessman must have something in his life other than
business. Watson bought the picture, on the installment plan,
and still has it in his private collection, which is largely composed
of Barbizon and nineteenth century American paintings with
emphasis on his favorites, George Inness and Winslow Homer.
The thought that a business man needs art's leavening effect has
remained a factor in his life ever since. Years later he was to say:
"Art breaks the monotony of life, which is one thing the human
mind cannot endure. Monotony would drive the world insane; art
is the antidote/'

The IBM record of the past ten years is an extraordinary one,
expanding in geometric rather than arithmetic progression, with
a quantity which would stagger the lords of the Renaissance.

In 1936, Mr. Watson began to think of art as a good will
ambassador and under-wrote expenses for one hundred fifty
American paintings in the Biennial International Exposition at

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I. B. M.: 1936-1946

Venice. In 1937, President Roosevelt appointed him U. S. Com-
missioner-General to the Paris International Exposition of 1937.
It was there that the plan for Art in 79 Countries came into
being. He cabled Erwin S. Barrie, director of the Grand Central
Art Galleries of which he had been one of the founders, to join
him, and they worked out the procedure for collecting a con-
temporary painting from each of the countries in which IBM
competes in the world market.

The policy established at that time still stands, with amplifi-
cations here and modifications there. All works were to be selected
by a jury of local art authorities, and all contemporary examples,
backbone of the numerous collections, were to be bought out-
right at the artist's asking price, with no stipulation other than
that they be representative of the talent, country, and people
from which they came. None were ever to be used to sell a com-
pany product or ever resold rules still rigidly observed.

In 1939, short months before fascist war overran the world,
two American cities decided to hold world fairs New York and
San Francisco. This provided the first concrete opportunity for
public exhibition of a project which had grown from a small audi-
ence to a nation-wide. It was decided to formulate twin collections
on the theme of Contemporary Art of 79 Countries and install
one each, along with business machines, in the two IBM galleries
of science and art. The stated aim of the exhibitions was to break
down barriers and promote better understanding between business
and art as well as between nations then on the brink of war. It
was a little late for the latter, but the former got off to a gratifying
start. Thousands upon thousands came to look at machines and
stayed to look at picturesand vice versa. Though startled by the
response, IBM nevertheless rose to the occasion and collected
two new shows under the same rules for the 1940 two fairs this
time paintings from each of the forty-eight states and the United
States possessions.

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The strengths and weaknesses of these collections were much
the same. Overall quality suffered from the pictures having been
chosen from geographical rather than population units. There are,
obviously, more talented artists in New York than in Idaho, and
more in France than in Uruguay. The usual "local authorities"
favored friends first and merit second, and the stipulation that
the canvas illustrate the region from which it came tended to
bring forth work of a representational nature not always too
inspired. Critics generally agreed that the shows were remarkably
good considering the conditions, under which education and good
will took precedence over aesthetic experience. It was estimated
that 5,000,000 people saw the exhibitions in New York and San
Francisco. Many more, both schools and individuals, wrote for
and received, free of charge, catalogs in which each painting was
reproduced, along with a brief, compact, and readable art history
of the country or state from which it came, plus a photograph
and biography of the artist. Mr. Watson raised the ante by dis-
tributing $11,550 in additional prizes designated by distinguished
juries.

Aside from the obvious benefits to accrue to the artists, what
was IBM's recompense from wedding art and industry? In an-
nouncing the prize winners, Mr. Watson reported that the 1939
New York show alone drew 3,000,000 visitors, or 16.5 per cent
of the Fair's total attendance. The following year, according to
Art Digest, the exhibition continued its mass appeal, attracting
10.3 per cent of the Fair's visitors. In spite of stated, and undoubt-
edly genuine, reticence on the score of publicity, there was thirty-
eight feature articles from June, 1939, to January, 1941, in three
art magazines alone. In sixteen of these stories, the initials "IBM"
appeared in the headlines. If the printed word is all-powerful,
as some believe, the venture had been a success for artists, busi-
ness and the public.

no

I. B. M.: 1936-1946

By 1940, IBM was committed to art. Requests poured in from
museums and other institutions for loans of these exhibitions. Two
by two, the World Fair's shows, East Coast and West Coast
editions, went on tour at the company's expenses first stop being
the IBM factory in Endicott. A group of contemporary Canadian
paintings, selected from each province and Newfoundland, opened
at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto in August, and
then started on its way.

Said Mr. Watson: "By endeavoring to bring business and art
closer together and creating interest in the work of those who
contribute to development of art, we assist in a practical way in
our country's progress/'

The year 1940 also saw the start of a huge print collection.
The first group of the one hundred and one prints, tracing three
hundred years of American printmaking (the first time IBM
stepped out of the strictly contemporary field) , was assembled
by the American National Committee of Engraving under the
direction of John Taylor Arms, and was bought by IBM, according
to the press, for a reported $10,000. It opened at the Corcoran
Gallery in November, moved to Endicott for a showing, proceeded
to Carnegie and other United States museums, and thence to
South America. More graphic collections followed: seventy-three
British Prints, seventy-five Latin-American Prints, fifty Latin-Amer-
ican Prints, fifty Mexican Prints and thirty-nine Brazilian Prints.

The next big step, undertaken in 1941, was a revolutionary
one, designed to do something about that step-child of the arts,
sculpture. Ninety-seven contemporary works (in bronze, wood,
stone, plaster, cement, tin, terra cotta, cast stone and alabaster)
were gathered in the now traditional IBM manner from every
country, state, and dominion in the Western hemisphere. For
some strange reason this assemblage was more vital and progressive
than any of the early groups of paintings, and a number of the

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sculptures represented, such as Maria Martins, Maria Nunez del
Prado, and Charles Umlauf, have since advanced into Fifty-
seventh Street's limelight.

The sculptures ranged from a genuine, decorative Thunder
Bird Totem, carved from cedar by Klooshka, a member of the
seafaring Tlingit tribe of Indians in southern Alaska, to a bronze
head of Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum, with much imaginative
experimentation scattered between the primitive and the academic.
The show opened at the Corcoran prior to assuming the distinc-
tion of being the first large exhibition of sculpture ever to go on
tour in America. Unfortunately, wartime shipping restrictions
interrupted its travels, but it may soon be on its way again.

Just a listing of other projects begun or completed in 1941
give an indication of a fan-wise broadening of activities that would
stagger any but a mind long accustomed to the intricacies of busi-
ness on an international scale. Two large exhibitions of Con-
temporary Art of the Western Hemisphere were assembled from
the World's Fair and Canadian collections, with numerous addi-
tions and substitutions to improve quality. One went on tour in
the United States and Canada, and the other, still touring Latin
America, is at the present writing in Venezuek.

As chairman of National Art Week, Thomas J. Watson, in
collaboration with his corporation and state appointed committees,
acquired sculpture and water colors from the one hundred and
thirty United States cities in which IBM has branches. The water
colors still hang in these regional offices.

The entire annual exhibition of ceramics at the Syracuse
Museum (eight hundred and fifty pieces) was bought as the
nucleus of Contemporary Ceramics, Western Hemisphere. After
showings at the Chicago Art Institute, the Philadelphia Museum,
and Corcoran, this group was retired to Endicott, because of heavy
breakage, to await the building of the projected museum. IBM
bought one of the two sets of the famous Thome period rooms

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I. B. M.: 1936-1946

in miniature (Chicago acquired and is touring the other). British
Art, actually three collections (paintings, sculpture and prints) , is
at this time touring Canadian museums.

Three gigantic collections, whose completion is not yet in
sight, were also begun in 1941, Mr. Watson feels that in the
Popular Arts and Crafts of the Latin American Peoples, the
products of the anonymous, unschooled hands of other lands
should speak directly to his equally anonymous factory workers
who also use their hands. Realization of this craft affinity provoked
the following statement: "The arts and crafts have not only
become an important part of our social and cultural activity, but
also of our industrial life. Its language is international."

The Ait of Costuming, which takes in four centuries and
includes Europe as well as the Western Hemisphere, is only com-
plete for Latin America and certain periods in American and
Canadian history, but there are already one hundred and fifty full
costumes with accessories from the Western Hemisphere and
fifteen hundred individual items from Europe. Prospecting a rich
lode almost unknown outside its place of origin in the Colonial
Art of Our Good Neighborsthe first collection of its kind in
the world.

The collection of colonial Latin American art on a representa-
tive basis presented unusual problems. Most of the rich baroque
painting^ and sculptures, executed primarily for churches between
1680 and 1815, came from old cultural centers in Ecuador, Peru,
Bolivia and Columbia, and were exported to the less artistic or
highly developed sections of the southern continent

Some of the countries literally had no "colonial period." Blank
spots are being filled in with genre pieces and works from the
brashes of artists who travelled to Europe for study and brought
back the influences of the Renaissance. But by far the most
interesting works are the symbolic, gold-leaf-incrusted religious
paintings, akin to early European primitives. These are much

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appreciated by Latin Americans, who are understandably loath
to part with them, however good the cause, at any price.

Some miscellaneous IBM acquisitions of the past few years
include an 1680 colonial house in Poughkeepsie, soon to be
furnished and decorated with pieces and pictures of the period;
a collection of colonial silver and furniture from Ecuador, Peru,
Bolivia and Chile; new paintings for a United Nations Collection,
part of which was already at hand from previous groups; a large
group of Mexican paintings bought in the 1945-46 season when
the art of that country held the Fifty-seventh Street spotlight for
a major period.

None of the more inclusive projects are static. Now that the
chapter on Mexican arts and crafts is almost complete (2,250
items) , the story will go on through the hemisphere, not over-
looking the important contribution of the North American
Indians. Recent acquisitions include canvases by Negroes, a policy
which may develop into a definitive collection of contemporary
Negro art. The United Nations Collection, nearing completion,
will include costumes and crafts as well as the fine arts of all the
countries whose representatives are now working for better inter-
national understanding at Flushing Meadows.

In view of our efforts to prolong life in the atomic era, Mr.
Watson's statement about the universal appeal of artistic expres-
sion linking men of all nations may be quoted: "Three great
patrons have fostered art throughout the long history of civiliza-
tion . . . priests, rulers and private individuals/' from the Medici
to the Morgans. "If business men, why not business itself? . . .
Painting is one of the truest records of a people. When we see
what painters reveal, it increases our hope for better understanding
among peoples of the earth. Through many different forms of
expression come trails common to all men which bind humanity
together in universal kinship."

Tbe IBM touring collections have now been displayed in more

"4

I. B. M,: 1936-1946

than four hundred museums, galleries, schools and institutions
throughout the Western Hemisphere and have been seen by an
estimated 15,000,000 people. These figures become more impres-
sive in the light of the fact that preference is always given small
communities. More than a half-million elaborately illustrated and
documented catalogues in English, Spanish and Portuguese have
been distributed by request from Canada to Chile. Eleven separate
exhibitions will be on tour by September, 1946.

Few people are aware of the extent of the corollary educa-
tional material which is freely given to any serious study group.
As an instance, technicolor movies and kodachrome slides were
made at the opening of the Arts Fiesta of the Americas at the
Grand Central Galleries in 1945. Natives of each country were
filmed doing native dances in authentic costumes to their own
music, against a background of their own arts and crafts. The
slides, films, and sound tracks dramatized by a running com-
mentary by Lowell Thomas may be had for the asking, but ask
you must. That is another of the ironclad rules of the company,
which, taken in conjunction with another rule which forbids
IBM to publicize its own activities in this field, has sometimes
left the general public a little vague as to the why and wherefor
of all this material for its use.

Until recently, very little beyond the blueprint stage has been
known about a permanent IBM museum. Now Mr. Watson
announces that plans are being drawn up for a modern, air-
conditioned Museum of Science and Art in Endicott, New York.
It will be situated near the main highway for the benefit of motor-
ists; and Keith Martin, formerly head of the Kansas City Art
Institute, has been appointed director.

The buying of paintings and sculpture for this museum, started
ten years ago and stepped up after the success of the World's Fair
ventures, has adhered only in a general way to the IBM formula.
Contemporary work is as usual, heavily featured and art authorities

WORK FOR ARTISTS

are consulted on purchases; but the emphasis is on quality and
creative expression rather than on geography and ethnology. Erwin
S. Barrie, who is supervising the fine arts collection, feels that
the three to four hundred paintings and some one hundred and
fifty pieces of sculpture acquired recently have not completed
the collection.

People familiar with other IBM art are likely to be surprised
at the quality and quantity of the representation accorded the
modernists. Here is Marsden Hartley's dynamic Nova Scotia
Fishermen, an excellent Marin water color, Max Weber's Guitar
Player, Julio de Diego's Guilty Cats, paintings by Stuart Davis,
Joseph De Martini, Byron Browne, Romaire Bearden, Marc
Chagall, Segonzac, Siqueiros, Orozco, Tamayo, Pascin, fantasies
by Margaret Stark and Karl Priebe, and sculptures by de Creeft,
Zorach, Robus and Wheelock, among others. There are excellent
examples of die work of Corbino, Mattson, Mangravite, Hopper,
Marsh, Gwathmey, DuBois, Henry Varnum, Poor, Bosa, Breinin
and Pittman. Benton, Curry and Wood are present in force, as
are "The Eight/' Bellows is represented by a characteristic Portrait
of a Lady as well as the snowy Easter Sunday landscape with
figures.

Not unexpected, in view of the patron's taste, is the inclusion
of almost all of the famous and some of the fading names of
the middle and late nineteenth century in America. There are no
less than eight late poetic landscapes by Inness; Homer's The
Shepherdess and Waverly OaJcs; Eakins' portrait of William
Woolley Johnson; works by Ryder, Twachtman, Wyant, Weir,
Sargent, Hassam, and most of the stalwarts of the Hudson River
School.

Of interest, certainly as a study collection are the competent
kit now almost forgotten canvases of Elliot Daingerfield. J. Francis
Murphy, William Keith and William Gedney Bunce. Nineteenth
century France is also fairly well represented with the Barbizon

1 16

I. B. M.: 1936-1946

School, a misty Corot landscape and Millet's Water Carrier for
which IBM paid $30,000 at the 1945 Vanderbilt auction. Earlier
periods both here and abroad are still sparsely represented, but
they are being filled in.

Director Keith Martin's plans for museum activities are as
yet in the formative phase, but an overall picture has emerged.
The art and science collections will be shown together, presenting
art and science for its own sake, in a lively interchange of displays.
Since there will be exhibition space for only a small part of the
collection at one time, Mr. Martin expects to keep the majority
of it "out doing something somewhere/ 7

IBM loves the alphabet dearly, and in all probability the
museum will be known as its ABC division: Art plus Business
equals Civilization.

117

LIFE'S ART PROGRAM

Margit Varga

TO DATE LIFE has spent about $325,000 commissioning
artists to paint on assignment. This figure does not include
printing and reproduction costs. It covers only salaries and
traveling expenses for the artists.

LIFE'S first program to commission easel painters was put into
effect in 1939. Artists were asked to paint characteristic American
themes in sports, theater, politics, crime. Subjects commissioned
included the 1929 Stock Market "crash" showing Richard
Whitney in the Stock Exchange, the shooting of Dillinger, the
death of Huey Long, etc. This program was ended almost as soon
as it began.

Though the paintings turned in were good enough from a
journalistic standpoint, they certainly were not up to the standards
of the artists who painted them. The results were fairly good
illustration, but not as good as could have been produced by
expert commercial illustrators. The magazine did not want illus-
tration. It wanted good easel painting. Because the paintings were
recreating scenes and events which took place in the past, the
artists had to work from research and from photographs. Wherever
possible artists did go to the scenes where the events had taken
place; but the paintings were still re-produced from second-hand
experience and the resulting pictures showed it The experience
proved one point: Artists do not do their best when they are forced

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LIFE S ART PROGRAM

to recreate something which they themselves have not experienced.

History in the making swept aside history of the past as war
abroad crowded the news. The United States with its great
national defense program of 1941 opened a vast new field of
themes for American easel painters, who for more than twenty
years had been discovering America in their paintings of Main
Street, "dust bowl/' etc. In recognition of this fact LIFE commis-
sioned seven easel painters, assigned each a definite subject, and
sent him to the spot where he could paint it first hand. They were
Paul Sample, Henry Billings, Aaron Bohrod, Barse Miller, Fletcher
Martin, Tom Lea and Peter Hurd. Each artist was deeply stirred
by what he saw; and because he was painting direct experience,
he turned out good pictures. Paul Sample, who went to a shell
factory, said it was a "madhouse at first with the din, fumes and
smoke. But later I grew used to it and felt very much at home . . .
very exciting job/' Barse Miller, doing a mess line at Ford Ord,
California, reported: "The trip was a wonderful experience for
me/' Henry Billings painted die U.S.S. North Carolina just as
it was completed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Peter Hurd painted
the Marine Training Base at San Diego. Bohrod did an amuse-
ment park for soldiers near Fort Benning, Georgia, Fletcher
Martin painted a service club at Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and
Tom Lea did a portrait of Top Sergeant Brace Bieber of the gth
Infantry at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

In each case the artist was assigned the subject he was to do
and given no other direction. He was told to do his picture in
any medium he wished and in any size that suited him. It was
entirely up to him how he solved the particular problem he
wanted to paint. LIFE did not see any of the works, not even
sketches, until the finished canvas was brought in. Every picture
was the artist's own expression, worked out as if he would have
any subject had he been doing it entirely for himself, and for
that reason the project was a success. Thus the editorial staff of

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

LIFE learned a vital lesson: Leave the artist alone. Let him work
out the problem in his own way. Do not assign him anything
which is not a direct experience for himself.

LIFE'S first war artist correspondent was Tom Lea of El Paso,
Texas. He was already at sea in the North Atlantic on a destroyer
with a convoy carrying lend-lease material to Great Britain when
war came to the United States. He happened to be on the
destroyer because censorship permitted a painter to be aboard but
not a photographer. Here for once the painter had an important
advantage over the photographer. The artist could omit censor-
able material from his canvas and still produce an effective picture
which a photographer could not do. Thus it happened that a
painter turned out one of the first great picture "scoops" of the
war. This was just the beginning. Many times during the war
artists came through with stories which regular reporters and
photographers could not get. Outstanding among these were
Bernard Berlin's paintings of a British commando raid on the main
coast of Greece and the islands around it being held by the
Germans. On his own initiative and with no help from the home
office, Perlin managed to have himself taken along by the British
raiding party. He was the first American to set foot on Greek
soil after it had fallen to the Germans.

David Fredenthal was the first to depict the Russian army in
Yugoslavia, at a time when no allied reporters and no photog-
raphers were allowed access to the Russian front Tom Craig was
probably the first American correspondent to cross the Arno in
Florence. There he contacted the Italian partisans, besieged at a
railroad station, and bore a message from them to the Canadians
asking for reinforcements. Later he took part in the airborne
invasion of southern France. Byron Thomas and Aaron Bohrod
landed on the Normandy invasion beachheads on D-Day plus six.
Because they could not get official permission to join the invasion,

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LIFE S ART PROGRAM

they literally hitch-hiked their way and brought back one of the
most exciting picture reports of the invasion.

Within the first year after the United States entered the war,
LIFE had artists in every important battle area and LIFE'S pro-
gram of sending artists out as war correspondents was launched
full-scale. LIFE'S war-art program had been in full swing for over a
year when the War Department initiated its own program of as-
signing civilian artists to cover the war. About six months after the
War Department program went into operation, Congress refused
to appropriate funds to carry it through. Of the nineteen civilian
artists the War Department had hired some were already overseas,
others were waiting to go abroad. LIFE offered to take over the
War Department's program and to carry it through just as the
War Department had planned it The offer was accepted. Some
of the War Department's contracts with these artists ran only
three to six months. LIFE in many cases extended the contracts
so that the work begun by the artists might be completed. Thus,
during the war, LIFE at one period had twenty-seven artists on
assignment as reporters. These included LIFE'S own artists and
those taken over from the War Department All the works turned
in by these artists (four hundred oil paintings, one thousand water
colors, gouaches and drawings) will be given to the government
for a national war art collection. It is hoped that eventually a war
museum will be built to house the work done by artists in the
World War II. In all cases LIFE artists had a free hand in work-
ing out their assignments. Some turned in as few as five or six
canvases on an assignment. Others returned with as many as
forty pictures. From an editorial point of view the artists did a
magnificent job. LIFE sent the works of these artists on a coast-to-
coast tour of exhibitions to United States museums.

Because of the public response to the works of these artists,
LIFE is continuing to use easel painters in peacetime. After long

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

months overseas most of the artists are glad to be back home in
Texas, California, the Middle West, New England. Each is eager
to work out the individual problem closest to him. In many cases
LIFE has put them on the payroll simply to paint what they want
most to paint, certain that good work will result, which can be
of editorial value to the magazine. In some cases where artists
have told the magazine that they would like to travel to gather
material LIFE is paying their expenses at the rates of $300 a
month and guarantees to pay them $300 a page for paintings
reproduced. In all these peacetime projects the paintings remain
the property of the artists, to be disposed by them in any way they
choose. Thus, with an eye on exhibitions and future sales, the
artists will turn out the best that is in them.

122

THE ARTIST HAS NEVER BEEN SO BUSY
Reeves Lewenthal

THERE exists today in the United States a vibrancy in the
field of art that compares favorably with any period of his-
tory. It stems from all forces in the United States. It surges
from the quiet of the rural scene, from crowded cities, from the pul-
sating energy of immense factories. It is to be seen in private gal-
leries and in great public collections. It is in posters, in magazines,
and in ever-increasing volume of advertising. The artist has never
been so busy.

The artist is not only busy. He is reaping satisfaction.

An artist can only exist when he has an audience. It stimu-
lates him". It helps him grow. Never has the audience been as
large as it is today. And the artist's breadth of view has become
all-inclusive. He is no longer restricted to old-time subjects and
methods of exposure. Today the artist knows that art always has
been supported by dominant economic and social interests. He
knows, too, that industry is the prime mover in adopting new
techniques in selling and distributing goods. And he knows that
he is a social oddity when he fails to function in the society in
which he lives.

It is this realization that makes him willing to meet industry
more than half-way and participate more fully in the opportunities
afforded him by business in the modern methods used to introduce
its products.

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Many artists whose reputations have been confined to the
creative achievements of their studios have been quick to partici-
pate in the economic and display opportunities opened by large
advertisers. There are, of course, many snobs among the painters
who hold themselves aloof from "commercial taint/' Essentially
this shyness is the result of not understanding, or refusing to
understand, that they can create art for advertising, rather than
advertising art.

The stigma attached to commercially used art is wholly a state
of mind. Once the uninitiated takes the hurdle he discovers that
the people he works with and for are usually aware of his capa-
bilities as well as his limitations and that he has been selected
for the assignment because his particular technique and his style
is what the advertiser needs to fulfill most effectively his concept
of the promotional piece. Once the artist enjoys the satisfying
experience of working with an intelligent art director, once he
experiences the thrill of seeing his creation exposed to millions
of people at one time, he begins to realize that the benefits
achieved far outweigh the minor dissatisfactions of working against
deadlines and tailored concepts.

In many cases he enjoys travel His direct experiences stimulate
ideas. This, coupled with economic gain, often enables him to
devote a free mind to his normal studio production. He realizes
too, that his work constitutes a force in molding public taste; for
only by placing quality before the eyes of the public can the
populace come to the point of being able to distinguish between
minor and major talents. He naively discovers that love of art
is not confined to any group or place, that art, no less than music
or literature, belongs to the people, and that it finds its greatest
expression when it is fed by the appreciation of those to whom
it is directed. The artists of America are learning that their greatest
achievement wfll come out of reflecting America's individuality,

124

THE ARTIST HAS NEVER BEEN SO BUSY

and by exposing their original contributions to the millions of
readers of our magazines.

Since there have always been pioneers, it is natural that many
of the initial collaborations between the "fine art" artists and the
"commercial" art director should have been attended by stumbling
and unhappy experiences, Pioneers paved the way during the
past ten years; and as experience is gained, the prospect of a clearer
understanding of methods of procedure in advertising and a happy
union between the fine artist and the advertising field is greater
than ever before.

The wild, lying advertising of a short decade ago, with its
exaggerated promises, its honeyed illustrations, has given way to
a technique of realism which makes it possible for the artist of
integrity to cooperate in public sales efforts.

The Lucky Strike campaign, which George Washington Hill
of the American Tobacco Company sponsored in 1941, is pointed
at time and again as an example of failure of the artist and the
sponsoring advertiser to get together. One cannot deny that for
the artist the effort was a failure; but with all of its short-comings
there was a significant departure from "corny" advertising art
involved. As a pioneer effort it served as an important stepping
stone.

Just a few short years ago mink-coated, bejeweled beauties
were shown in the tobacco-land with dandified fanners in highly
manicured surroundings. At that time every picture which accom-
panied a plea for the use of a popular product lured the reader
with as much exposure of the female figure as the censors allowed.
Cigarette manufacturers were certainly the big offenders. When
the team of artists proceeded to the tobacco country, they painted
what they saw; and the American Tobacco Company reproduced
a number of those pictures. In these picturizations there was no
sign of the trim female form. In her place there was the typical

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Southern farmwife and kids, there were scarred barns, and the
sediment that normally collects around an old farm. And lo-the
farmer wore faded overalls. His hair was neither cut nor combed.
His shoes were patched. He wasn't a glowing specimen of beau-
tiful manhood.

It is generally recognized that these truthful portrayals
psychologically transmitted to the reader a comfortable feeling
of 'honesty and brought respect for the advertiser and the product.
It is recognized also that the sudden cleavage held the eye. The
average person had become so accustomed to the trite formula
of cigarette advertising that it was no longer effective. The sudden
change of pace carried with it great stoppage value.

It is a pity that the campaign was a failure from the artist's
standpoint only because the sponsor became so enamored with
the idea of showing a big, yellow leaf that he insisted that this
feature be incorporated into every painting.

However, the campaign did change the thinking of other
advertisers.

A striking example of this influence is to be seen in the elimi-
nation by the Coca Cola people of its pretty girl advertising and
the use in its place of realistic characters and recognizable Ameri-
can scenes. There are many other large advertisers that have been
directly influenced by the Lucky Strike campaign.

The ideal collaboration by art and industry is shown in the
projects sponsored by Abbott Laboratories.

Charles S. Downs, director of this firm's advertising, realized
that to gain maximum benefits from his association with easel
painters he would have to employ a different kind of dealing
technique than is ordinarily used in relationships with commercial
artists or studios. Mr. Downs realized that good artists are inven-
tors and if allowed range would produce highly imaginative
pictures.

Thus, an artist is never given a layout or a predetermined

126

THE ARTIST HAS NEVER BEEN SO BUSY

rendering to follow. On the contrary, he is given personally and
in few words the essence of the plot to be pictured and is allowed
to exercise his imaginative capacities. He is not required to submit
"roughs/' Thus, through complete freedom of action, he paints
direct; and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the results are
fresh and spontaneous.

Mr. Downs has used fine art in ever-widening scope because
he realizes that original interpretations create an aura of tone and
progressiveness. He is fully aware that proper use of art can
automatically stamp the associated sponsor as one of sensitive taste
and discernment. Thus, through association with quality, he begets
a psychological impression of the qualitative stature of his firm
and its products.

Then, too, Abbott Laboratories gained immeasurable benefit
in preempting the pharmaceutical field by breaking spectacularly
with a traditional pattern of pictorial conservatism. Through its
innovation of an envelope with an all-over color design related to
the pictorial content of the promotional piece it carries, the
attention of the receiver of Abbott literature is arrested immedi-
ately, and through continued usage, Abbott pieces have become
readily identifiable in the mails.

In order to advance die impression of quality, Abbott backs
up its use of original art with fine paper and excellent repro-
ductions.

Mr. Downs further uses the art as a peg upon which he hangs
many other institutional and promotional ideas. The paintings
are circulated in traveling exhibitions and readers are offered
reproductions suitable for framing. A unified program of fine art
usage even carries through to the packages which carry sample
products to the doctors.

Intelligent direction and an understanding of the artist's view-
point have enabled Abbott Laboratories to gain maximum benefits
through its patronage of American artists. It is hoped that other

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

American firms will discover the Abbott formula. Only then will
suspicion and lack of enthusiasm by contemporary artists dis-
appear, and a fruitful collaboration between art and industry
effectively come into being.

128

OIL: 1940-1945
Frank Gaspers

DURING the past two decades, American artists suffered
dislocation at the hands of the mechanical, mass-produc-
tion structure of contemporary civilization. They simply
were not among the metallic jigsaw pieces that meshed tightly to
form the dominating pattern of that civilization.

The artists were largely dependent upon private patrons for
support. But for many reasons, private patronage shrank at a tre-
mendous pace during those years. Private art buyers were moving
from palatial homes into compact apartments, and their incomes
were being curtailed by taxes which absorbed funds that formerly
went toward the formation of private collections. Museum pur-
chases continued; but these were small compared to the number
of works produced.

At this point, however, the gap between the artist and his
industrial environment began to be bridged, American industries,
one after another, moved in as sponsors. Corporations began form-
ing collections, sponsoring art competitions and employing fine
artists to dramatize their advertising or to interpret their business
to the public. Fine art took its place alongside other channels of
communications between industry and the public. A trend in
this direction developed, to bring forward a powerful new sponsor
for artists.

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

In the past, the existence of a body of similarly potent sponsors
has been the cornerstone of the so-called golden ages of art.
Wealth created by colonial expansion helped finance the artists
of seventeenth century Spain, and the Netherlands, and of
eighteenth century England. Before that, the church and the
wealthy ruling families of Renaissance Italy had much to do with
the flowering of art in that period.

The ultimate evolution of American art, sponsored by the
world's most powerful industrial system, cannot be foretold. But
the potentialities are great. A substantial start has already been
made; and this start has demonstrated that artists today can per-
form a function capable of earning the continued support of
industry.

This new sponsor is no more altruistic than were those patrons
of past centuries. Industry employs artists to perform a service.
This is the important point; for it means that the contemporary
painter fits into today's economic life by performing a service
profitable to himself and his sponsor.

That is what makes the relationship a sound one. That is the
basis for its continuation.

That is why Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) joined the
community of industrial sponsors of contemporary art.

Jersey Standard's move grew out of a specific objective: the
documentation of the role played by oil from 1940 to 1945. The
company wanted a meaningful, educational and enduring record
of the oil industry during those crucial years.

In the creation of this record, and the telling of the vital
story of oil, many means of communication were used: photog-
raphy, the printed word, radio, paintings. Painters joined company
with photographers and reporters to picture the drama of oil at
war, fueling the home front as well as the mighty Allied armies,
navies and air forces.

Artiste (it was felt) could tell much of the story with impact

130

OIL: 19401945

and immediacy, qualities natural to a medium as subjective and
personal as painting. In their work of bringing the story of oil to
the public, they were to create a lasting record in a medium itself
of inherent durability and intrinsic value. As highly trained and
sensitive observers, they could record sweep of prairies where oil
is pumped to the earth's surface, vast reach of land over which
pipelines carry oil from wells to refineries to dockside terminals.
They could catch the brackish note of swamp and jungle into
which petroleum products followed our fighting men, as well as
the bomb-shattered desolation of European towns through which
our tanks and supply trucks rumbled.

Jersey Standard's objective, however, was not the creation of
art. It was, rather, the creation of a documentary record. The
painters' function was that of highly trained pictorial reporters.
Whether or not their record produced aesthetically sound art
was beside the point. If it did, fine. If not, the pictures would
nevertheless serve the purpose for which they were commissioned.

Many considerations were involved besides the one of select-
ing specific artists to carry out the project's various phases. Among
them were the problems of getting artists accredited to the various
theaters of military operation, clearing papers through proper
channels in Washington, arranging transportation, billeting, and
the many other details that are unavoidable complications in war-
time travel, especially in militarily active areas.

These factors led to the conclusion that the most logical solu-
tion would be to turn the operational details over to an organi-
zation already set up to handle them. The Associated American
Artists, Inc. was selected. It had a large backlog of experience
in managing projects of this kind, and many of the group's artists
were already accredited and working in battle areas.

The choice having been made, contracts were drawn up, and
the company put at the disposal of the Associated American
Artists a fund to underwrite the project. The company imposed

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

no limitations on the contracting organization, either in the choice
of artists for particular assignments or in the treatment the artists
were to give their particular subjects. The number of pictures was
not specified. The client, in turn, was under no obligation or
restrictions concerning the ultimate use or disposition of the

pictures.

Next came planning. In sketching in the general outlines of
the project, it was decided to begin by depicting the drilling and
producing of crude oil in varied and contrasting parts of the world.
Refineries and research laboratories were to be recorded, and then
the pipelines and convoys which carried petroleum products to
the battle areas of the globe, where allied forces fought in war-
ships, tanks, airplanes and the vast array of petroleum-fed machines
that are the backbone of modern armed forces.

Artists already at the war fronts were instructed to picture the
uses to which ofl was put in their areas. Other artists were dis-
patched to the home front fields and refineries, to the Standard
Oil research laboratories, and to foreign producing fields. In all,
sixteen artists were given assignments. They were: Howard Baer,
Robert Benney, Thomas Benton, FranHin Boggs, Howard Cook,
Francis Criss, Adolf Dehn, Kerr Eby, Ernest Fiene, Joe Jones,
Carlos Lopez, Frank Mechau, Bruce Mitchell, Georges Schreiber,
Lawrence Beall Smith and Frederic Taubes.

Georges Schreiber, assigned to winter operations at Norman
Wells, traveled to within a hundred miles of the Arctic Circle to
record the development of oil lands where temperatures drop to
forty degrees below zero and where the sun, in December, shines
only two hours a day, Schreiber pictured derrickmen drilling wells
iyOoo and 2,000 feet deep, into frozen, rock-hard ground. He
painted an arctic refinery and the pipelines which carry oil and
petroleum products over snow-buried wastes. His record is more
talari one of work in a given locale; it is a record of the ingenuity
with which American industry overcomes tremendous natural

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OIL: 19401945

obstacles. How these obstacles are overcome is evident from
Schreiber's painting, Seismograpiic Crew, depicting a team of
technicians who carry out oil reconnaissance. They set off charges
in holes fifty feet deep, and the explosions create artificial earth-
quakes, which cause earth tremors and "echoes" for thousands of
feet below the surface. From the seismographic records of these
tremors, geologists plot the hidden depths and folds of subter-
ranean rock layers.

Another of Schreiber's pictures shows how radio linked these
isolated workmen to civilization even, in case of illness, bringing
in first-aid instructions pending the arrival of medical aid. Kicking
off the Well, records under a dull pokr sky the spectacular com-
bination of fire and frost as oil, acid and gas blaze up when a
well comes in.

In complete contrast are the producing fields which Adolf
Dehn painted in Venezuela. His setting was tropical, and his
water colors document modern techniques of pumping and mov-
ing oil in jungle settings, oil which is sometimes brought to the
surface from below the bottom of lakes. In Catatumbo Lights,
Dehn records a theatrically brilliant sky over Lake Maracaibo, the
surface of which is marked by oO derricks which drill wells into
the earth through one hundred feet of water.

Frank Mechau, known for his paintings of the West, and Joe
Jones covered the North American producing fields. Jones worked
in the Elk Basin, a field lying across the border of Montana and
Wyoming, not far from Yellowstone National Park. He depicted
drillers and oil workers bringing up oil from as far down as 10,000
feet in a region of desolate and austere topography. Jones was
impressed by this part of the country, and his paintings vividly
document what he described as "the violence of the terrain." He
documented other producing operations in the empty loneliness
of the oil-rich prairies of Oklahoma, with its fiat open country
broken only by towering oil derricks.

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Although Thomas Benton has spent years pictorially interpret-
ing American life all the way from Hollywood to New York, his
major production has dealt with the American scene typified by
the Middle West and the South. He was a natural choice to
portray Jersey Standard's installations in Louisiana and the oil
barges and tow boats which during the war comprised the heaviest
freight traffic on the Mississippi River.

Benton's approach to industrial installations, such as the
mighty Fluid Catalytic Craclcers at Baton Rouge is based on the
concept that such installations are as much a part of American
culture in the larger sense, as feudal castles, temples and arenas
were of the civilizations of other ages. In his powerful painting
of "cat crackers/' he has dramatically visualized this concept,
integrating landscape and great metal towers. Plants such as the
one Benton painted here boosted America's production of 100-
octane gasoline from 49,000 barrels a day at the time of Pearl
Harbor to 525,000 barrels a day by the end of the war, Benton
also pictured oil distribution centers in Louisiana and painted
bayou oil wells which operate in the swamps twenty miles south-
west of Baton Rouge.

Ernest Fiene also worked in the same area. He painted sets
of spherical butadiene storage tanks, one in the glow of twilight,
another at night, lit up by a battery of flood lights. In the former
he silhouetted great spherical tanks against intricate tracery of
butadiene purification equipment, reflecting the clean, functional
air of modern architecture; and in the latter he pictured the
spheres gleaming like burnished silver, creating a weird and un-
earthly scene. Fiene also traveled west to Texas, where he painted
a toluene pknt shining in the sun at Baytown. Note here the sheer
functional perfection of the machinery which, after Pearl Harbor,
produced one-half of all the synthetic toluene used by the United
Nations in making TNT.

Research, an important phase of the industry which fueled the

154

OIL: 1940-1945

the allied armed forces, was documented by Francis Criss, who
applied his precise draftsmanship and sharp eye for detail to the
Standard Oil Development Company laboratories at Bayway,
N. J. ? and Baton Rouge. His pictures portray the intricacies and
the range of the modern industrial laboratory.

Transportation of oil is the factor which binds producing fields
to refineries and to ultimate users of petroleum products. Almost
every means of transportation is employed, among the most im-
portant being the pipelines which fan out over this country and
thread their way across Europe and Asia,

The monumental design of the American pipeline network
was the special assignment of Frederic Taubes. In his paintings
of this subject he caught the varied sweep of American landscape
and the brute strength of the tractors and booms which lower
the giant pipes into the earth. In his Lowermg-in a New Pipeline,
the sinuous metal of the pipe travels into the far distance and the
sky above is alove with dramatic interest as it usually is during
this particular operation, for, because of the expansion factor
pipelines can be kid only under overcast skies, or in the cool dark-
ness before dawn. In his Through the Big Gate Valves, Taubes
pictures a terminus where oil products, gathered from branch
lines and fed into a main or trunk line, are pumped into waiting
tankers.

The dangerous wartime job of the tankers, another integral
part of oil transport, was documented by Carlos Lopez. His taut
and dramatic Convoy is a telling recreation of the tenseness which
descends on convoys under attack.

Another phase of the huge task of carrying oil to the battle-
fronts was covered by Bruce Mitchell, who painted tankers un-
loading at the torrid Persian Gulf ports of Khorramshahr, Chey-
bassi and Bandur-Shahpur. Mitchell painted the work of the men
who, during the war, unloaded a record 4,500,000 tons of supplies,
often in temperatures reaching one hundred and fifty degrees. He

WORK FOR ARTISTS

showed, too, the truck convoys which groaned over parched,
tortuous mountains for seven hundred and fifty miles to the ter-
minus at Kazvin, where supplies were turned over to the Russian
Army.

Around the globe, Howard Baer carried the documentation
project across India, the Burma Road and into the interior of
China. His works picture oil pipelines being laid through India
and oil drums being carried through remote areas of China by
coolies and trundled along paths on primitive oriental carts.

The liquid web of oil reached out to the very ends of the
allied lines to the amphibious landings which Robert Benney
depicted in such works as Saipan Landing. In addition to showing
oil drums being rolled out of the open rnaws of LTSs onto hostile,
fire-swept beachheads, he pictured the refueling of airplane am-
bulances and the use of petroleum-base sprays which, on Saipan,
cut dengue fever cases from an average of seven hundred and fifty
a day to only ten or twelve.

Howard Cook and Franklin Boggs followed the petroleum-
fueled machines of war into the almost impenetrable jungles of
the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Kerr Eby lived with the
Marines in Bougainville foxholes and landed with them on the
Tarawa beachhead. Their paintings, imbued with a vibrant im-
mediacy, pictured oil at its end wartime use. They also docu-
mented the men of the allied forces, as well as the disease-ridden
and hostile environments in which these men fought.

In the European theater, oil was even more important, because
the fighting there was on an even vaster mechanical scale. Its
thirst for oil was enough to consume the average 14,100,000 gal-
lons of petroleum products which convoys, from Pearl Harbor to
V-E Day, landed in the United Kingdom and northwest Europe
every day. Lawrence Beall Smith pictured the heavy cross-Channel
teffic needed to supply the European fighting. He painted LSTs
disgorging roaring cargoes of armored tanks onto the Normandy

OIL: 1940-1945

beaches and truck convoys rolling through the smashed and
deserted villages of the European battle areas.

Thus did the pictorial documentation of "Oil: 19401945"
come into being. What started out to be the documentation of
one industry, actually developed into a record of America during
the most critical years of its history. Standard Oil's collection of
approximately two hundred oils and water colors is an enduring
record of how American industry mobilized to support the might-
iest armed forces in history plus a record of the fighting of those
forces. So tightly did oil its production, refining and useknit the
home and the war fronts, that the final document covered, in its
various branches, the main pattern of the years 1940 to 1945. It
also reported the tremendous advances made by the oil industry,
in research, production and distribution, and also reflected the
changes in refining which transformed the industry from one of
physics to one predominantly of chemistry.

The story has been assembled. What remains is the distribu-
tion of the story, communicating it to as large a segment of the
public as possible. One means of earning out its educational
objective is exhibitions not of the pictures alone, but of the
pictures accompanied by texts which enhance and enlarge their
documentary value, by supplying background information.

One exhibition group consists of about one hundred oils and
water colors, edited to tell an integrated story. This group was
shown in New York in January, 1946, and is now traveling to
museums and educational institutions in all parts of the country.
Smaller exhibition groups are also being circulated to similar insti-
tutions. Toured till January of this year, the collection is now
broken into four smaller exhibits which are scheduled for col-
leges, universities and museums for the next two or three years.

In addition, many of the pictures are being reproduced in
booklets with explanatory text. Distribution of these booklets,
because of their historical and educational value, will be wide.

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

They also serve as catalogs for the exhibitions, providing visitors
with a compact record of their content. Pictures also are made
available to art publications, magazines, newspapers and school
publications throughout the country. Documentary slide films are
being compiled from the paintings and made available to schools
and colleges, and educational institutions and libraries are being
offered free of charge, copies of the illustrated booklet. An addi-
tional use of the paintings and watercolors is in the company's
magazine, The Lamp.

The ultimate disposition of the collection has not yet been
determined; but this is a decision that does not demand early
action, as the exhibition of the work covers several years. Mean-
while Jersey Standard is continuing to commission art work for
The Lamp and adding these originals to its permanent collection.
Whether it will institute another project like its wartime docu-
mentation of the story of oil depends on future developments.
It seems reasonable to assume that, given a subject of wide scope,
fine art will be used again with other means of communication.

PEPSI-COLA'S COMPETITION-EXHIBITION
Walter S. Mack, Jr.

IN 1941 Pepsi-Cola decided to produce a calendar" for the
public; and after reviewing those which other large industrial
companies had issued, it seemed to me that though the public
was receiving some calendars which were costly and well made,
all were aesthetically inadequate and lacking in enduring quality
and artistic merit. Most were either pictures of pretty girls or of
the fad of the moment and used reproductions either of color
photographs or of the work of commercial artists.

I felt, therefore, that Pepsi-Cola Company had an opportunity
to do a real public service by producing a calendar of good works
of art, which would bring to the public some of the best in Amer-
ican art and which would be of service to the artist as well. Such
a calendar would wear well through the years, and the substantial
sum of money spent on the reproductions in it would not be
wasted.

With this in mind we planned our first calendar in 1941,
choosing from among the best paintings by American artists, those
which had been accepted and recognized as such by the Metro-
politan Museum in New York City. The Metropolitan gave us
permission to reproduce these in color; and our first calendar,
consisting of thirteen pages, produced in 1941 for the year 1942,

*The Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1939 published the first
calendar in which appeared color reproductions of the work of contemporary American
artists.

WORK FOR ARTISTS

contained such well-known paintings as Delaware Water Gap,
George Inness; Maine Coast, Winslow Homer; Still Life, James
Peale; End of the Hunt, Dale Nichols; Silent Dawn, Walter Lunt
Palmer; Winter in the Suburbs, Molly Luce; Metropolitan Tower,
Guy C. Wiggins; Lancaster Valley, Texas, Florence Elliott
AlcClung; Spring, Hugh Bolton Jones; Washington and Lafayette
at Mount Vernon; The Roclcy Mountains, Albert Bierstadt; The
Peace Pipe, E. Irving Couse, and Vermont Hills, Aldro T.
Hibbard.

This calendar was enthusiastically received, not only by the
general public, but also by informed art circles, and was in great
demand long after it had gone out of print.

Therefore in 1942 we brought out a similar thirteen-page cal-
endar, again consisting of works of art by notable American painters,
the paintings this time being selected from the Corcoran Gallery
in Washington. This calendar was comprised of the following:
PaddocJc No. i, Randall Davey; Old House at East Hampton,
Childe Hassam; After Lunch, Maurice Sterne; George Wash-
ington, Gilbert Stuart; Adirondack, Rockwell Kent; The Hudson
River Logging, Winslow Homer; Where Long Shadows Lie,
George Gardner Symons; Provincetown Wharf, Ross Moffett;
Mother and Child, George de Forest Brush; No Man's Land,
Arizona, Albert L. Groll; Cutting Corn, Vermont, Walter Shirlaw;
Niagara Falls, Frederick E. Church, and The Mill in Winter,
KW.Redfidd.

This second calendar was also in great demand, and over
500,000 copies were distributed to the public.

These first two calendars were built around well-recognized
paintings by American artists, and this basic idea became the
backbone of our later calendar's development.

In the following year, 1943, we reappraised our program and
cbcicied that we probably could make a more worth-while con-
tribution, both to the general public and to the artists, if we

PEPSI-COLA S COMPETmON-EXHIBITIOX

confined our efforts to contemporary artists. Therefore in addition
to using reproductions of already existing works by six notable
contemporary American painters Thomas Hart Benton, Ernest
Fiene 7 John Steuart Curry, Peter Hurd, Grant Wood and Paul
Sample we also commissioned another half-dozen ranking Ameri-
can painters to create new canvases directly for the calendar, all
the artists to be well compensated for our right to reproduce their
paintings. Associated American Artists was enlisted to help select
the artists, and in 1943 painters Francis Criss, Adolf Dehn,
Gordon Grant, James Perrin, John Costigan and Edna Reindel
were commissioned to paint to order six canvases for our calendar.
These, in conjunction with the six existing paintings to which we
had reproduction rights, became our 1944 calendar. However, this
calendar did not turn out to be as satisfactory as we hoped, because
we were committed to reproduce the paintings the artists had
created for it, irrespective of the fact that, as it turned out, some
of the canvases either were not characteristic of their paintings
or else fell short of their best work. We felt therefore that in the
future it would be better to make our selections from finished
paintings and that a competition for American artists would be
the best means for creating a better calendar and serving artist
and public. Thus we evolved the idea for the Pepsi-Cola com-
petition.

In 1944, with this in view, we had a conference to plan out
this important program, and at that time set down as our objective
the following:

1 To give the general public a valuable and worth-while calendar
which would help people to know and appreciate the work
of contemporary artists.

2 To help the artists in their work with the substantial prize
money,

3 To afford the artists, whether unknown or well established,

141

WORK FOR ARTISTS

an opportunity to submit what they considered their best work
of art for judging by a well-recognized and impartial jury.

4 To give the artists an annual exhibition where their paintings
could be seen and bought by the public, without expense to
public or painter.

5 To make this exhibition available in some of the larger cities
in the country so that the public in these cities would get to
know living American art and so that the artists would have
additional opportunity for the sale of their pictures in places
they had not heretofore reached.

With these objectives, the first "Portrait of America" exhibi-
tion was launched in 1944 under the auspices of Artists For
Victory.

In this first competition it was agreed that the prize money
would be awarded by a jury selected by Artists For Victory and
that Pepsi-Cola Company would have no voice in either the
selection of the jury or the jury's selection of paintings. The latter's
choice was to be made purely on the basis of artistic merit and
without regard to the purpose for which they were to be used.
The twelve outstanding paintings were to be awarded suitable
prizes, with $2,500 as first prize; $2,000, $1,500 and $1,000 as
second, third and fourth prizes, respectively, and with the remain-
ing eight canvases each receiving $500. In addition the one hun-
dred and fifty best paintings were to be exhibited at outstanding
museums throughout the country, and 500,000 reproductions of
each of the twelve winning pictures were to be used by Pepsi-Cola
Company on its calendars.

In this first competition almost 5,000 paintings were submitted
by artists from every state in the Union (with the exception of
Wyoming) and from Alaska, the Canal Zone, the District of
Columbia, and Puerto Rico. From all submissions, the best one
hundred and fifty paintings were selected by a jury of artists; from

142

PEPSI-COLA S COMPETITION-EXHIBITION

among these one hundred and fifty, the twelve winning canvases
were chosen by a second separate jury of awards comprised of
art critics and museum directors.

The initial exhibition opened at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York City where it remained for two months and
where it was visited by over 180,000 people. About $40,000 worth
of paintings were sold out of the exhibition in New York and
subsequent showings in seven other museums throughout the
country.

There was much discussion of the Pepsi-Cola competition. It
was praised for its freedom from commercial influence, since Pepsi-
Cola Company had agreed to reproduce on its calendar whatever
prize-winning pictures were picked by the independent jury of
art experts. It was praised for its democratic approach, since an
artists 7 society had chosen the all-artist jury. It was generally
praised for the size of its prize money, for the interest it aroused
among the public, and for the free exhibitions available to the
general public in those cities in which the paintings were shown.

It was criticized by some for the fact that most of the one
hundred and fifty pictures selected by the jury were by artists living
in and around New York. Some of the critics felt that the mod-
ern school was disproportionately represented. Still others pointed
out that many well-recognized artists had not submitted to the
competition and that therefore the potentialities of the plan were
not being realized as effectively as they could be. However, the
competition and exhibition were generally considered to have been
a step forward, and it was felt that in all probability we could
overcome many of the shortcomings which had led to these criti-
cisms by increasing the number of prizes and the amount of
prize money.

Thus the 1945 competition was worked out under the same
direction that of Artiste For Victory but the prizes were in-
creased from twelve to twenty, and the amount of prize money to

WORK FOR ARTISTS

be awarded was increased to $15,250. At this point Artists For
Victory decided to try the innovation of a dual jury system and
set their rules and regulations for this competition so that the
artists when submitting their paintings could elect to have their
pictures judged by (a) a modern jury, (b) a traditional jury, or
(c) both. I felt very strongly that this was a mistake. A painting
was good or not good, depending upon a great many things, but
not depending on whether it was modern or traditional or con-
servative in its approach. I informed Artists For Victory that
Pepsi-Cola felt that the dual jury system was a mistake and
requested them to reconsider their rules and regulations. They
called a special meeting, but those attending again voted to
continue the dual jury system, and Pepsi-Cola Company under
its agreement had no other recourse but to go ahead with the
program as Artists For Victory stipulated.

The competition resulted in die submission of about 4,000
canvases. Through the dual jury system one hundred and fifty
paintings were selected, and from these a special jury chose the
twenty prize-winning pictures. From these twenty, Pepsi-Cola
selected twelve for its calendar, and over 700,000 calendars were
produced and distributed to the public.

It was my feeling that the competition had not improved, that
it was still not doing the best job that it could do for both the
artists and the public. It was time, therefore, for Pepsi-Cola again
to appraise its program and see if it could not improve the com-
petition and exhibition so as to make it a truly significant art
event. It was with this in mind that the competition plans for
1947 were arrived at.

Our first step was to select an art director for the project,
Roland McKinney, director of the Los Angeles County Museum,
who had assembled the art exhibition for the San Francisco Fair.
Mr. McKinney was induced to leave his museum post and to
"become director of our project.

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PEPSI-COLA S COMPETITIOX-EXHIBITIOX

The title of the competition was changed because we felt
that the name "Portrait of America" had a limiting influence; the
new name selected was "Paintings of the Year/' Under Mr.
McKinne/s direction, a regional jury system was established,
whereby the United States was divided into seven regions, in each
of which a local jury of recognized authorities screened the pic-
tures submitted to them from the states in that region. Each jury
then sent the best of these submissions to a final jury in New
York, comprised of representatives from each of the seven regional
juries. This composite national jury of selection chose, from these
screenings, the best canvases for exhibition. A jury of awards
then selected the twenty winning canvases for prizes. We set no
limits on the number of pictures to be selected for exhibition-
267 were actually selected-kit we did put into effect a new rule
that all paintings submitted must have been painted within the
past two years.

In addition, each of the seven regional juries were given the
authority to select from its own respective region an artist who
would be granted a $1,500 fellowship award for the further de-
velopment of his talent through travel or study. Seven fellowship
awards were accordingly granted in October, 1946.

I feel we have taken a step forward and that the resulting
exhibition and calendar for 1947 are & e best we have yet
achieved. We probably will find still other ways of improving the
competition and exhibition. We certainly hope so, because we
do not want to feel that they are not constantly open to improve-
ment and growth.

THE BR1TANNICA COLLECTION
E. H. Powell

THE story of how we started our collection of contemporary
American painting and what has happened to it since seems
to me to be a simple one. It all began in 1942.
Britannica has always been interested in fine illustrations for
its publications. We have spent a lot of time and money repro-
ducing paintings, sculpture, pottery, porclains and other art objects
and, in addition, have commissioned well known artists and
photographers to do illustrations for the many articles that appear
in Encyclopaedia Britannica and Britannica Junior. Walter Yust,
our editor, and I were planning new printings for Britannica
Junior. Both of us had been watching the growth of American
painting and out of our interest in art we felt that Britannica
Junior would be a far more valuable publication if, instead of line
drawings and photographs only, we used our top artists to illus-
trate certain subjects for Junior. Just as simply as that we began.
We bought Thomas Hart Benton's Boom Town to illustrate
an article on petroleum; Curry's John Brown was perfect, of
course, for the article on John Brown. Suppose you were a young-
ster and were studying about wind erosion, wouldn't Alexandre
Rogue's Avalanche by Wind describe it eloquently? An article
on the theater visualized through Robert Philipp's sensuous use
of pigment would catch the spirit subtly. Fourth of July, America's
own holiday, is presented through the interpretation of Peter

146

THE BRITANNICA COLLECTION

Hard. Other paintings used to illustrate articles were Night Haul,
Maine by Georges Schreiber, Company for Supper by Dale
Nichols, The Embrace by Fletcher Martin, Batter Up by James
Chapin. A number of artists agreed to paint special subjects for
us. David Stone Martin did Lumbering; Doris Lee, Arbor Day;
Paul Sample, Maple Sugaring in Vermont; Rockwell Kent, Polar
Expedition; and Adolf Dehn, Threshing in Minnesota. All of
these things we felt would be far more evocative to the young
readers of Britannica Junior and the young readers of Junior would
also be encouraged, quite painlessly, to appreciate American
painting.

Eventually these paintings arrived in Chicago. Color plates
were made and the pictures were returned to us and stood perched
atop the wainscoting of the editorial offices. Our employees, all
the way from executives to shipping room gang, began to show
enthusiastic interest. We found the shipping room boys deep in
arguments to interpret an abstraction, Everyone had different
favorites and fought for their favorites. If among our own em-
ployees there was so much enthusiasm, why not go one step
further and start a collection of our own? Why not include all
phases of contemporary American painting, send the collection
around the country and let the American people see what kind
of painting is being done in America today? William B. Benton
(at that time chairman of the board of Britannica, now assistant
secretary of state) and other members of our board were enthusi-
astic about this project. We started out energetically to make
further selections. I have always been interested in painting, do
some painting myself as an amateur, and art has been a source of
interest and entertainment to me all my life. Through the years,
I have known a great many artists and I can't tell you how many
exhibitions and art shows I have attended during my lifetime. The
job of making this collection was going to be very interesting and
great fun.

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Walter Yust, our editor, Grace Pagano, our director of fine
arts, and myself made up the committee that started out to get
this job done. We immediately called on our friends in the art
world for help and advice and I want to say that we were fortunate
in receiving the help and enthusiastic support of museum directors,
gallery heads, and art critics all over the United States, We felt
that one of the first things we had to choose was the list of artists
to be included. We started out with the idea of trying to decide
who were the one hundred artists in the country whose paintings
should be selected before we could show the collection to the
public. Selecting the fifty or sixty best artists in the United States
was easy they would be on anyone's list. After this the task be-
came more difficult. We asked our friends in the art world, includ-
ing artists, to give us the names of artists they thought should
be represented. When these names were listed, we had about two
hundred in all.

We then made up a questionnaire with the artists' names and
parallel columns to designate whether the artist was considered
important, good, or fair. Space was left for remarks. This ques-
tionnaire was sent out to about fifty well known museum directors
and art gallery owners, and also to well known art critics and
artists. When the questionnaires were returned, the answers were
transferred to a master sheet and we had a good cross-section of
opinion. We also determined that, by contemporary American
painting, we meant paintings by artists who had achieved their
fame in the twentieth century and that the artists should be
American citizens. We felt that American art has come of age
and that due to the war in Europe some of Europe's top painters,
finding life impossible in Nazi and Fascist dominated countries,
came to America to add their talents to the stream of American
art. This is the way America has always grown; foreign born have
come here and have added their contributions to American
development.

THE BRITANNICA COLLECTION

After about two years of work we had collected one hundred
and sixteen paintings and felt that the collection was ready to be
launched. Grace Pagano wrote and edited our catalog. Each artist
is represented by a reproduction of his painting, a short biography
written from a personal interview wherever possible, and a short
statement from each artist regarding his or her painting. We have
found the personal statement of the artist of great value in
acquainting the layman with his artistic intent, and we think that
it is an excellent thing to do in a catalog of our kind where our
main purpose is to win sympathetic understanding and support
for American art and artists.

The collection was first shown at the Art Institute in Chicago
in April 1945, and it has since been shown at Rockefeller Center
in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Corcoran
Gallery in Washington, the Dayton Art Institute, Carnegie Insti-
tute in Pittsburgh, Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, Cincinnati Art
Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, Milwaukee Art Institute,
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the John Herron Art Institute in
Indianapolis, the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in
Kansas City, Mo., and the City Art Museum of St. Louis.

It will probably travel in this country for four or five years and
we hope to send it to South America and Europe. In the showings
listed, literally millions of persons have viewed the collection.

It is our intention, from time to time, to buy new paintings,
to substitute more characteristic examples of artists' work already
in the collection, and occasionally to eliminate some paintings.
As the collection now stands, it contains one hundred and thirty-
seven painting?, which means that we have acquired twenty-one
additional pictures and made eight substitutions. In each case this
was done with the artist's approval, Rockwell Kent felt that the
commissioned painting we had did not represent him at his best
as an easel painter. Kent submitted The Burial and we agreed
that he was one hundred par cent right. In Boston, when we talked

149

WORK FOR ARTISTS

with Georges Schreiber, he ruefully admitted he felt that his
painting Night Haul, Maine was not representative of how he was
painting today, so we have since acquired his Brass and Strings.
More or less the same thing happened with Fletcher Martin,
Clarence Hinkle, Dale Nichols, Anton Refregier, Morris Kantor,
and John Corbino. When we walked through the show after these
changes were made, we felt that the collection had taken on a
more substantial quality 7 . We feel that twenty-one additional pic-
tures and eight substitutions prove that Britannica was serious
when we said that ours was to be a living, growing, and changing
collection. We believe that it represents every school of aesthetic
practice, in short, that it represents what is going on in painting

in the United States todav.

j

We hope that in some measure we have also helped American
artists. Within the first year, we estimate that half a million
American people had the opportunity to see their work. We at
Britannica feel great satisfaction when we realize that because
of our exhibition hundreds of reproductions of paintings have
been published in national magazines and newspapers. Thousands
of people have had a chance to look at these published pictures
and get acquainted with artists they would not have been likely
to know. The Britannica catalog and the Duell, Sloan and Pearce
book have circulated reproductions of their work to great numbers
of people. This is particularly important because Americans have
had the idea that American art was subsidiary to the art of Europe.
Now they can see that first rate work is produced by American
artists. We continue to look for new paintings and new painters
which we believe is an added stimulus to artists as yet not
recognized.

We have been asked many times why Britannica was interested
in making this collection and sending it around the country. It
seems to us that it is a natural thing for us to do. Britannica has
always been interested in educational and broad cultural move-

150

THE BRITANNICA COLLECTION

ments, and showing American painting to the American people
fits into this picture very well. We have always spent large sums
of money on advertising and publicity. This collection does not,
by any wild stretch of the imagination, come under the heading
of publicity; but there is no question that we reap indirect benefits
from our association with this project. Making this collection has
been an interesting experience for all of us and it is our ambition
eventually to make it the finest collection of contemporary Amer-
ican painting in America.

We are trying out a further experiment through the Ency-
clopaedia Britannica Films, Incorporated. We are packaging a
complete set of slides from the Britannica collection, plus a brief
slide talk and a series of lectures, that we hope may help art
teachers throughout the United States.

The effect on the Britannica family has been gratifying. When
these pictures were first hung in our offices, Britannica employees
had little comment to make and they seemed afraid to express
opinions on the paintings. Gradually their interest grew and the
first thing we knew they were holding monthly polls and voting
on their favorite pictures. We found that as the months went by,
the voting changed. They began to show more appreciation for
the modern type of art which at first had frightened them away.
Also we found that a number of employees had started to paint
themselves and were attending shows at the Chicago Art Institute
and local galleries. As a result of this, we held our first "Employees'
Art Show" in October 1945. Nearly one hundred drawings, water
colors and oil paintings were submitted. This exhibition created
a tremendous amount of interest within our organization and we
are proud of the quality of the paintings shown. We expect to
make it an annual affair.

A recent development of Britannica's art program is its "Ro-
tating Annual Collection/ 7 an adjunct to the main collection,
which was exhibited in New York in October, 1946, and then

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

in Chicago, subsequently touring the country. Where facilities
permit, the "Rotating Annual" will be shown in conjunction with
the main collection.

In Britannica's estimation, and in that of the majority of
critics, our large collection admirably represents much of the best
American painting of recent years. However, \ve believe that other
pictures, many of them equally meritorious, should be given the
advantage of frequent exhibition and widespread publicity. Our
"Rotating Annual" plan should be an effective device for these
purposes, which will be further served by bringing together at
the end of each twelve-month period other groups of twelve or
more painting to comprise succeeding "annuals."

This brings our story up to date, and it should be easy to
realize why Britannica is more than ever sold on contemporary
American painting.

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FREE AND UNHINDERED EXPRESSION

Egbert Jacobson

FOR a long time it has been the custom of magazine and
book publishers, as well as of advertisers, to exhibit their
original drawings and paintings. These usually have been
assembled by illustrators or agency art directors under the auspices
of their professional clubs for their own members. Such exhibitions
have appealed more and more to the general public which has
seemed to be as much interested in the originals as in their com-
mercial use. As better work has been produced, it has attracted
attention from professional art critics not only after it was collected
for public exhibition, but even while it was appearing in the maga-
zines. The critics themselves discovered that advertising art is
w r orthy of more than passing attention.

It was Daniel Catton Rich, director of fine arts, and Carl O.
Schmewind, curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of
Chicago, who first invited Container Corporation of America to
exhibit the original drawings and paintings it had been using for
advertisements. These were presented in the gallery for prints and
drawings of the museum in April, 1945- Since then they have
been shown in many museums and art institutes including Day-
ton, Milwaukee, Detroit (Cranbrook) , Cincinnati, Philadelphia,
Cambridge and Providence, and are scheduled for a dozen or
more other cities East and West. This recognition of their artistic
worth has led some to refer to the company as patrons of art, a

WORK FOR ARTISTS

distinction which we have not claimed and to which we do not
aspire.

From the beginning our advertisements were intended to be
no more than advertisements. The early campaigns were frankly
intended to draw attention to the company, its raw materials,
products, resources and management, its leadership in research
and its position in industry. The fact that very skillful and some-
times famous artists were asked to illustrate the ideas is due
entirely to our conviction that they could create more effective
pictures than less talented or experienced workers in the field of
imagery and symbolism. If we were fortunate in obtaining their
devoted interest, it was largely because we selected them according
to their sympathy with the problems at hand and then encouraged
their free and unhindered expression. We were content to call
attention to one thing at a time in the fewest possible words, never
more than fifteen, occasionally none at all. This policy required
artists of extraordinary abilities. For if, as we believe, a good
picture is worth more than many columns of type, then it was
necessary to engage artists who knew best how to express the often
intangible aspects of our themes as well as the tangible. Already
in 1937 there were several poster artists of international fame to
call upon. Cassandre, Bayer, Carlu and Zepf were among the best
known living in Europe. Kepes, Matter, Lionni and Schawinsky
were already in this country. Cassandre made the first series and
set the pace. Bayer, Carlu and the others carried on with ever new
and exciting solutions.

In 1942, like every other manufacturer, the company became
involved in production for war. It began making special packages
and shipping containers for food, ammunition, optical, automotive
and aviation instruments, clothing, hospital supplies, and thou-
sands of other items. This led to readjustments in production
and in our contacts with the public, Helion designed a page to
call attention to our saving of metal and wood. Bayer made a

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FREE AND UNHINDERED EXPRESSION

couple of designs on the conservation of waste paper, a primary
material of our manufacture. Carlu made a classic conservation
poster showing the planting of pine seedlings which grow into
pulp, another essential of paperboard manufacture. In brief, the
advertising continued to reflect our views and the changing times,
which month by month affected the company's production. By
this time we had discovered some young American advertising
artists, notably Leibowitz, Nonnast and Campbell, who work in
a similar idiom.

By 1944 our packaging was being used to distribute material
all over the world. A page by Covarrubias, showing several Easter
Island monoliths, famous for their remoteness, was the first to
illustrate the idea. The president of the company, Walter P.
Paepcke, then suggested that we base a special series on the great
shipments of supplies to our allies. He conceived such a campaign
as being a kind of salute to their gallant efforts in the common
cause and thought it could be carried out most fittingly by artists
native to the countries represented. Thus began what has since
been called the "United Nations" series. Because many of the
artists selected were painters unaccustomed to the black-and-white
medium, it was decided to use pages in full color. We were well
aware, also, of the greater attention value of four-color repro-
duction.

To discover some of the artists from the allied countries and
to win their co-operation was a large order for N, W. Ayer & Son
and its art staff. A catalog of the work delivered, however, is ample
evidence of their success. When the campaign ended in the spring
of 1946, there were all told twenty-eight countries represented
by twenty-eight painters as follows: Australia, Philip Evergood;
Canada, Alfred Pellan; Central America, Miguel Covarrubias;
Chile, Reginald O. Massie; China, Mai-mai Sze; Colombia, Juan
Renau; Cuba, Mario Carreno; Denmark, Peter Sekaer; England,

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Henry Moore; France, Fernand Leger; Greece, Jean Varda; Guate-
mala," Carlos Menda; Holland, William de Kooning; Iceland,
Kjartan Guojonsson; India, Yudhisthira Jean Pique; Indo-China,
Yun Gee; Iran, Persia Abbas; Mexico, Rufino Tamayo; Nether-
lands East Indies, Leonard Lionni; North Africa, Ben Shahn;
Norway, Sigurd Sodergaard; Philippine Islands, Venancio Igarta;
Poland, Zdbislaw J. Czermanski; Russia, George Korff; Union of
South Africa, David Hill; United States, Paul Rand; Uruguay,
Adolfo Halty-Dube; Yugoslavia, Tibor Gergely.

The last of the series, one on the "United Nations 7 ' by
Cassandre, has already appeared, and a new campaign by native
American artists is now on. In June, 1946, it was interrupted with
a handsome page by Kjartan Guojonsson, a native of our wartime
ally, Iceland. The design was ordered for the United Nations
schedule but was temporarily lost in transit and did not reach the
engraver in time. When it finally arrived, we were so pleased with
it that we made a place for it.

Advertising men as well as artists have wondered how these
campaigns were received by the public. It should be understood
that the pages appeared only in Fortune, Time and Business Week
because in these magazines we expect to End readers who are
interested in our story. The earlier advertisements brought enthu-
siastic applause, although occasionally letters and even telephone
calls registered disapproval. Some of the more abstract designs
provoked criticism from those not familiar with modern sym-
bolism. The later pages also moved readers to protest as well as
to praise.

One correspondent, on seeing the Henry Moore painting,
demanded an explanation of the "kangaroo-like creatures huddled
in a catacomb/' When it was explained that artist Moore lived
in London during the war and daily saw his countrymen packed
like sub-humgns in underground shelters, our correspondent ad-

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FREE AXD UNHINDERED EXPRESSION

mitted that the painting succeeded in presenting the bitter truth
precisely because of its departure from realism. But even when
people disliked or did not at once understand the occasional
strange and unexpected interpretations, interest and discussion
were aroused. When the designs were liked, as they were most
of the time, they were very well liked indeed. In either case,
readers became aware of the company as a live and vigorous
institution.

The distinction between fine and advertising art should be
sought in the personalities of the artists. The talented and experi-
enced man who will not sell his time and abilities to an advertising
studio because he refuses to be diverted from his search for truth
has made a choice which every advertising art director respects.
But many artists who feel a different compulsion are nonetheless
sincere and true in their own standards. If, in the final analysis,
the work of these is less vital, it may be because they are more
interested in how they work than in what they work at. Not all
men of talent are equally endowed. The greatest artists, like the
greatest philosophers and scientists, have chosen the hard and
often endless road. In any event, it seems to be true that the man
who places the development of his inner compulsion above every-
thing else eventually has more to express than one who does not.
Assuming that a fine artist is one of these, then the more devoted
he is to his purpose, the better his work should be; and it follows
that he should be able to create a more vital image for the com-
munication of an idea than one less devoted.

Our experience with artists who have persevered in the culti-
vation of their own perceptive faculties has been a very fruitful
one. They taught us to understand new graphic forms; they jolted
and pleased us; they helped us to see thin^ we might have missed;
they moved us by putting into their pictures what we probably
could not have put into words. We found among them men of
more than usual culture, widely traveled and well read in poetry

WORK FOR ARTISTS

and philosophy. Some of them have many talents; all are dis-
ciplined; most are socially conscious and ready to accept respon-
sibilities as citizens. In short, they are almost the exact opposite
of the type we have learned to expect from the romantic rubbish
about artists which has been fed the American public.

Top-notch artists should be employed by industry because they
have something peculiarly their own to contribute; and they will
be so employed when industry understands that art can do some-
thing for it. Most executives in business organizations must justify
their expenditures to yet other men who have the right to ask
questions, and it is important that all of them understand how
well fine art can serve them in order that it be bought and put
to work properly. Then perhaps many advertising illustrations will
be sought as museum exhibitions. This is not to say that the
museum should be the final resting place of all art; but only that
at the moment most artists regard acceptance by museums as a
sign of success. Certainly it is in museums that the public and
art students can learn about fine art, old as well as new.

What advertising requires is forceful communication. When
more people in industry realize that this demands deeps under-
standing and rigorous application rather than superficial facility,
then the fine artist will be called upon more frequently and left
alone to do the work he is qualified to do. Art should not, nay,
cannot, be advanced through patronage for its own sake; for
patronage is the last thing in the world desired by artists of real
caliber. Container Corporation does not think of itself as a patron
of art. We engaged those artists we thought would do our work
best, gave each a general idea, and left him to develop a suitable
and personal statement of it. Some of the designs were so good
that museum directors, who ought to be good judges of art, wanted
them in their permanent collections. Other works were not of such
a standard. But it was primarily good advertising we sought, not
fine art That we always got good advertising, and often very good

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art into the bargain, is proof to us that the accomplished artist
communicates with the observer in a forceful and memorable
manner because he has more to say than a lesser artist and knows
better how to say it.

THE STORY OF THE "ARIZONA PLAN'
Bruce Mitchell

THE "Arizona Plan" is one of the stimulating new ideas to
further the cause of American art. It shows a way collectors
can contribute to progress by giving contemporary works of
art to universities, colleges and other places where they can be seen
and enjoyed by large numbers of people.

The "Arizona Plan" is spearheaded by the recent gift by
Charles Leonard Pfeiffer of one hundred important contemporary
paintings to the University of Arizona, in Tucson. This collection,
which a recent article in LIFE called "one of the best representa-
tive collections of contemporary American paintings in the coun-
try" is now being enjoyed and studied by hundreds of students and
visitors to the temporary gallery. A recent letter from the university
states that interest in the paintings and increase in the art class
enrollment is so great, there now being seven hundred students
taking art courses, the university is planning to build a permanent
gallery to house the collections.

This is indeed a step forward from individual collecting where
works of art are assembled and housed inaccessible to the public.
Although many collectors have willed fine works to museums,
in general they left their treasures to established museums in a
few large cities. The American people as a whole have not bene-
fitted widely.

It is agreed I think that the broader the participation our

160

THE STORY OF THE "ARIZONA PLAN ??

people as a whole can have in art, the greater will be the possi-
bility of a vital native expression by our artists. This has been
true in all historic periods of great creative art and holds true now*
During the period of the Federal Arts Projects, significant ground
was broken by the establishment of some ninety art centers
throughout the country. Here, in many cases for the first time
people were able to see art and their children given an opportunity
to study and practice it.

This was too much for diehards in Congress who started a
campaign to kill the small appropriation allotted for this purpose.
Like the legendary 7 remark of the king making love to his queen,
"Can the common people do this? . . . They can? . . . Then have
a law passed against it! ... It's entirely too good for them!" For-
tunately, a growing number of public-spirited citizens disagree
with the point of view. Among them is Charles Leonard Pfeiffer,
donor of the University of Arizona Collection of Modern Amer-
ican Paintings and, with my assistance, founder of the "Arizona
Plan."

Several years ago Mr. Pfeiffer told me he would like to do
something for "art and the artists." Not a man of great wealth,
he had a great desire to contribute to the cause of living art. In
negotiable assets, he owned a sizeable stamp collection. For more
than thirty years he had been collecting stamps, and the volumes
had grown so numerous and valuable that they had to be kept in a
vault. He decided that this was selfish and gave no pleasure to
anyone but himself. After several meetings, we formed a rough
idea of the plan with these conditions: (i) To buy only the
work of living artists; (2) to stimulate art appreciation; (3) to
bring art to a community which does not have access to great
galleries; (4) to help fill the need of American universities for
original paintings; and (5) to stimulate study and practice by
university students. It was also agreed that a wide range of con-
temporary expression should be included and that works by

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

unknown or relatively little known artists, as well as by established
artists, should be included in the collection. I was to select the
paintings.

Mr. Pfeiffer insisted he remain anonymous as he did not desire
personal glorification. He felt that "the cause was above the
individual" He wishes now to thank the few people who knew
of his identity and who adhered to this request, sometimes in the
face of considerable curiosity, especially on the part of the press.
Because the collection is firmly established and its worth appre-
ciated, he has revealed his identity in the hope that other indi-
viduals may be stimulated to make art gifts to American colleges
and universities which are hungry for and need them.

Pfeiffer, who at one time had studied at the University of
Arizona, suggested that the collection be given to this institution.
In my travels in the Southwest I had seen the lack of any repre-
sentative contemporary collection there and agreed to his choice.

Mr. Pfeiffer decided to sell his stamp collection over a period
of years and as the resultant funds became available to purchase
ten or fifteen paintings a year. In the fall of 1042 we started.

The first group purchased was divided pretty evenly between
such artists as Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Charles Burch-
field, Adolf Dehn, James Lechay, Julian E. Levi, Donald Forbes,
Leslie Powell, Kenneth Evett and Herbert Barnett

It had been the original plan to acquire fifteen to twenty works
a year over a period of five years. Several factors changed our plans.
Mr. Pfeiffer, who had served overseas during World War I, was
anxious again to enter the armed forces, as he did. Recently
discharged as lieutenant-colonel, he served as liaison officer with
the French army in France and Germany. I was interested in the
war art correspondents' project being organized at the time under
the auspices of the U. S. Engineers Corps, which I joined in the
spring of 1943. This project was later taken over by LIFE, and I
painted for that publication in the Middle East and the Persian

162

THE STORY OF THE ARIZONA PLAN*'

Gulf Command. Another important factor was the interest
shown in our aims by Mrs. Juliana Force, director of the Whitney
Museum of American Art, and by Francis Henry Taylor, director
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the fall of 1942 we had issued a small illustrated catalog
of our first acquisitions, which included the following letter from
Mr. Taylor to President Alfred A. Atkinson of the University of
Arizona: "It has come to my attention that a collection of Ameri-
can paintings, by living artists, is being formed for your institution.
I am greatly interested in the quality and intelligence with which
these pictures have been selected and I congratulate you particu-
larly on the acqusition of these paintings for your university.
I look forward to the time when galleries of this kind will be the
common practice of the colleges and universities of this country,
not only for the encouragement which this will give to native
American painting, but for the general cultural value which such
a movement will exercise over the students of this country/'

During the winter of 1942-43 we made further acquisitions
and Mrs. Force heard of our plan. The Whitney Museum was
then in process of combining forces with the Metropolitan. Mrs.
Force liked our idea and the works that we had thus far accumu-
lated and mentioned the possibility of an exhibition at the
museum. We decided to put all our time into completing the
collection of one hundred paintings. Mr. Pfeiffer was able to
arrange a large sale of the remainder of his stamp collection, and
by March we had assembled the complete group.

In April, 1943, the exhibition was held at the Metropolitan
under the joint auspices of the Whitney and Metropolitan. In a
foreword to the catalog for this exhibit, Mrs. Force wrote, in part:
"The donor of this collection has wisely limited the scope of his
acquisitions to work by living American artists and has thereby
greatly increased the effectiveness of the collection in relation
to the purpose for which it was formed. In recent years there has

WORK FOR ARTISTS

been a growing recognition of contemporary art in the educational
scheme of our colleges and universities. Collections such as this
can be of the greatest service in the field of education and the
students of the University of Arizona are fortunate in having an
opportunity not only to learn about pictures but to know them
by actual experience/ 7

After the Metropolitan exhibition, which aroused a great deal
of critical interest, the collection was shown in San Francisco at
the M. H. de Young Museum before traveling to its permanent
home in Tucson.

The completed collection to a large extent fulfils our original
ideas, containing as it does fine examples of the work of con-
temporary artists of varying schools of expression and giving
within the range of one hundred examples as inclusive display of
trends in our art, ranging from abstraction to genre. The abstract
group includes Stuart Davis's Industry, Man's Boudoir, by Han-
aniah Harari, and L Rice Pereira's Rectangles. Painters who have
combined abstractionist with realistic elements are De Hirsch
Margules in Lower Fifth Avenue, Jacob Lawrence in Cafe Scene,
Joseph de Martini in Caravan Theater Minstrels, and David
Herron in St. Louis Cemetery. Lawrence Lebduska's California
Farm, Samuel Koch's Orchard Street, N. Y., and Patsy Santo's
Ray of Hope represent the primitives.

Examples of the romantic school are Doris Lee's The Run-
away, Julian Levi's Tarring Nets, Jean Liberte's Coming Into
Port, Martin Friedman's The Quarry, Landscape with Bird's Nest
by Donald Forbes, Remembrance of Things Past by Beatrice
Ullrich, and Supplication by Frederico Castellon.

Contemporary portraiture is represented by the traditional
Susan of Andreas Andersen, Portrait of a Young Artist by Frederic
Knight, and Alexander Kruze's Mayor La Guardia as Conductor;
"by the expressionist Halldis Prince of Waldo Peirce, Carl Sand-
burg by Don Freeman, Manuelito of Costa Rico by Pachita

164

THE STORY OF THE ARIZONA PLAN*'

Crespi, and Behold by Leon Smith; by the romantic Yasuo Kuni-
yoshi's Cowgirl, James Donald Prendergast's Young American
Artist, Joseph Delaney's Innocence, and Gladys Davis' Study; by
the historical Daumier In His Studio of David Burliuk and
Hannah Armstrong by Boardrnan Robinson; and by the self-
portraits of John Sloan and Raphael Soyer.

Still life paintings are by Lucille Blanch (Study in Whites),
Zoltan Sepeshy (End of Day) , Edward Quincy (View from my
Window) , Stuart Edie (Still Life) and Briggs Dyer (Tabktop).

Aspects of the American scene are represented in landscapes
by Charles Burchfield (The Quiet Pond), Maurice Sievan
(Astoria Boulevard) , Margit Varga (Connecticut Farm) , James
Lechay (Hudson River) , John Lonergan f Gaspe Fisherman)
Adolf Dehn (Sentinels of the West) , Dean Fausett (Cuernavaca) ,
Bruce Mitchell (Mauch Chunk, Pa.) , Leslie Powell (The Mill
Wheel) , and Edward Hopper (The City) .

There are genre paintings by Herbert Barnett (County Fair) ,
John Steuart Curry (Hogs Killing a Snake) , David Fredenthal
(The People) , Marion Greenwood (Simple Confession) , Joe
Jones (Harvest) , Jack Levine (Dramatis Personae) , Louis Ribak
(At the Beach), Doris Rosenthal (Mexican Church), Aaron
Bohrod (Paper Storm) , Bennett Buck (Circus Scene) , Elizabeth
Terrell (Fisherman) , Frank Di Gioia (Fish Market) , Lawrence
Beall Smith (Trio at the Bar), Arnold Blanch (Rodeo in the
Rockies), Manual Tolegian (Afternoon at Tony's), Reginald
Wilson (Pet Rooster) , and Peggy Bacon (Wanderlust).

Paintings with social content are by Harry Gottlieb (Their
Only Roof, 1930), Joseph Hirsch (Editorial), Mervin Jules
(Desire), William Cropper (The Speaker), Reginald Marsh
(Monday Night at the Metropolitan) , Martyl (Sun Valley) ,
Anton Refregier (Broken Life) , Katherine Schmidt (Waiting for
His Turn) , James Turnbull (Son of a Sharecropper) , and George
Grosz (Waiting for a Job) .

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Benjamin Kopnian in Invasion and George Picken in Lieuten-
ant BuIHey's PT Boats at Bataan painted facets of the war, and
Philip Evergood in Leave It To The Experts satirizes the "brass
hats" of the ages.

Since the period of government sponsorship of murals in
public buildings there has been growing activity by our artists in
this field. Included in the collection is Order Number Eleven by
Mitchell Siporin, a cartoon for one of a series of large frescoes
in the St. Louis (Missouri) Post Office, Rodeo, a painting by
Kenneth Evert, young Colorado mural artist. Two drawings by
Walt Kuhn complete the collection.

This is the "Arizona Plan" - a practical way in which you,
alone or with friends, can aid the growth of American art. The
government has provided that gifts of this kind are largely tax-
deductible, so that one does not have to be wealthy to launch a
program. A person of moderate means can give a group of fine
works to his or her university or college or library or school. The
many letters I have received from colleges and universities
throughout the country tell of their great desire for contempo-
rary art.

The need in small communities is even greater. In them
Washington Crossing the Delaware, The Doctor, Little Abner,
and Dick Tracy are the only criteria of art. Yet, in my travels in
farmland, backwoods, and mining communities, I have seen
great general eagerness to have experience with art. The desire
is there. The "Arizona Plan" opens the way to fulfilling it.

Recently I asked Mr. Pfeiffer how he felt about his project.
He said, "I can't tell you how glad I am about it. As I look back
on it now, my stamp collecting was a manifestation of hoarding.
I think that the twentieth century plan should be altruistic, shar-
ing, and putting into practice the thought that it is more blessed to
give than receive. I've proved this to myself."

"Through the years, I've rebelled against America's inferiority

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FREE AND UNHINDERED EXPRESSION

complex In art. We'd got into the habit of thinking that nothing
was good unless it came from Europe. Our American artists should
have recognition by purchases. Scattered, isolated communities
need art and the nation will be richer for an increase in the
number of small galleries. We should not hoard our paintings in
a few galleries where millions cannot see them."

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SURVEY OF OPINION

THE ARTIST AND THE ART DIRECTOR

HOW can artist and art director get together?
Having gotten together, how may they adjust different
points of view and different interests?
Do advertising commissions put the artist in uniform?
What are the benefits to art and advertising from a liaison
between artist and art director?

For answers to these questions, which arise whenever practical
use of art is discussed, we sent out questionnaires to leading
painters and sculptors and to art directors of advertising agencies.
Their opinions, summarized here, give a picture of trends in the
contemporary use of art in America.

Generally, artists and art directors were very much interested in
our survey and answered the questionnaires most cooperatively and
friendly. Some were critical of the questions, but more were not.

Here are some of the answers. E - McC -

The first three questions can be tabulated simply, as follows.

PAINTERS ART DIRECTORS

i Do you think the fine artist Do you think the fine artist

should do advertising art? can create art satisfactory

for advertising purposes?

YES 42 per cent YES 67 per cent

No 14 per cent No 3 per cent

? 44 per cent ? 30 per cent

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WORK FOR ARTISTS

2 If so, are there any problems If so, does he need to adapt
of adaptation he must solve? himself to the new func-
tion?

YES 44 per cent YES 46 per cent

No 5 per cent No 4 per cent

? 51 per cent ? 50 per cent

3 Have advertising commis- Need advertising use inter-
sions interfered with your fere with the artist's free-
freedom of esthetic expres- dom of artistic expression?
sion?

YES 24 per cent YES 17 per cent

No 25 per cent No 32 per cent

? 51 per cent ? 51 per cent

Painters and art directors show surprising unanimity in this
tabulation. Yet an even more impressive vote in favor of getting
advertising and socalled fine art together is obtained if we drop
out the "Yes-and-No" answers which were due to the fact that the
writer had no especial information or was of a mixed opinion.

To Question i, 75 per cent of the painters and 95 per cent
of the art directors answer "Yes" when the figures are adjusted.
For Question 2, percentages rise to 90 and 92. Obviously, the
easel painter does have to change his style to produce satisfactory
advertising art. Whether such change is a serious check on Creative
expression is another matter, as Question 3 indicates. In this case,
painters take a gloomier view than art directors, 49 per cent of the
painters feeling that their freedom is curtailed, with 65 per cent of
the art directors replying that advertising use of art need not
interfere with the artist' s expression.

From this point on, the answers are informative but less
adaptable to tabulation. Several kinds of data were sought in this
investigation, some statistical, some psychological. On the whole,

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SURVEY OF OPINION

the latter aspects are better documented than the former. Thus
questions aimed at learning how much income advertising pro-
duces for painters brought forth vague replies. For example, take
some replies to Questions 6, 7 and 8 on the art directors' form,
which read respectively, as follows:

6 What material rewards may artists expect from industry?

7 Can you estimate or tabulate the number of artists now em-
ployed by the industry and or agency you represent?

8 Can you estimate or tabulate the amount of money expended
annually by advertising and industry for commercial art, so
called? For fine art, so called?

To Question 6, the majority replied that the artist might ex-
pect to receive much more income from advertising than from fine
art, some saying it would be an "excellent livelihood" with "un-
limited" expectations. To one answer which stated that a fine
artist might expect to make $15,000 or $20,000 or even $30,000 a
year in advertising work, another opposed the more idealistic state-
ment that such work gave the artist the sense of belonging to a
vital world.

The difficulty of obtaining exact figures in this field is clearly
underlined in regard to Question 7. Agencies employ one, two,
three, five, six, seven, eight, nine, twelve, thirteen, twenty, thirty,
twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, fifty, sixty, seventy, one hundred,
two hundred artists. Here is surely the picture of a variable labor
market. Then agencies employ a small number of artists but "use
hundreds." One agency, for example, uses fifty-five studios, which
in turn employ from six to thirty artists each. Another agency em-
ploys from three to four hundred artists.

From such figures, what can we say of the quantity of employ-
ment available for artists? Little, except that it exists, and appar-
ently can be developed.

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Question 8 was even more of a poser. How much is spent each
year by advertising for "commercial" art? How much for "fine"
art? Seventy per cent of the art directors replying find themselves
unable to give even an estimate. Apparently the bureaus of labor
statistics and manufacturing and industry have not yet searched
out into this stratum of the national economic structure.

One reply says, for instance, that the sum is $5,000,000 for
commercial art, and $1,000,000 for fine art. Another reply raises
the ante for commercial art to $50,000,000 and estimates but
$200,000 for fine art. When the estimates are put in percentage
form, the picture grows even cloudier, as, commercial art 99 per
cent, fine art i per cent; commercial art 75 per cent, fine art 25;
commercial art 80 per cent, fine art 20; commercial art, 90 per
cent, fine art 10. Yet large sums of money are spent, as other
answers show, if common sense did not already prove it. For ex-
ample, one agency spends annually $20,000; another $45,000; a
third, $75,000; and a fourth, $250,000. Whether these sums are
spent for "commercial" art or "fine" art is not so important as the
fact that money is being allocated for artwork.

Vagueness is found also in the painters' answers, to Questions
4 and 7 of their form, which read:

4 Have you found material rewards from advertising art greater
than from museums and collectors? If so, in what proportion, as
double, quadruple, etc.?

7 Of your income as an artist, what percentage comes from
advertising sources?

To their Question 4, 49 per cent of the painters replied "Yes,"
a high proportion considering that the group questioned do not
come from the rants of advertising artists, but from exhibiting

SURVEY OF OPINION

fine artists. Voting "No" were 45 per cent, while 6 per cent were
undecided.

Of those who answered in the affirmative, two-thirds gave
proportional figures. Eleven made twice as much from advertising
artwork as other kinds; seven made four times as much; three, nine
times; while others said one hundred times, or "astronomical/ 7

In reply to Question 7, for the painters who receive income
from advertising sources, the average percentage of total income
from art is 11.4 3 fairly high proportion, when the reservation
stated above is remembered.

More significant for the objectives which brought this book
into being are the answers to the questions which deal with the
expanding use of art by industry. The painters were asked, in Ques-
tions 5 and 6, the following:

5 Do you think advertising or industry can provide income se-
curity for the artist? If so, how?

6 How would you suggest promoting better relations between
industry and fine artists?

To cover the same ground, the art directors were asked, in
their Questions 4 and 5, the following:

4 How can better relations between industry and art be created?

5 How can more use of art by industry 5e encouraged?

Here the real meeting between the two groups may be seen,

Of the painters replying to their Question 5, 83 per cent felt

that business could provide income security. How this might be

brought about produced a variety of suggestions. The leading

answers were:

Industry should buy more art.
Industry should commission more artists.

Industry should create "partial security" by providing "well-paid
part-time employment."

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Corporations should put artists on their payrolls.

Art should be encouraged, not with prizes, but used in adver-
tisements, to decorate industrial buildings, etc.

Industry should set up foundations, give scholarships, and create
new channels for the use of art.

Industry should give artists contracts.

Likewise, advertisers should be educated, and better agents are
needed.

In reply to Question 6 on the painters' form, replies were also
varied, in some cases overlapping those made to Question 5.
Highlights are:

Forty-one painters called for the education of industry and of
artists so that they can work together.

Eight wanted more exhibitions and competitions.

Seven called for a conference between industry and artists.

Another seven asked for an "Art Exchange" where artists might
receive better handling of their work, or suggested that industry
set up a cooperative agent.

Finally, one urged that a protective organization of artists be
formed to deal with the problems created by this new art market.

The art directors showed a similar capacity to criticize existing
Institutions and relations between artists and industry and a
similar desire to go ahead.

To their Question 4, answers were made as follows:

Ten called for education of agencies, industry and artists.

A second ten urged mutual exchange between advertisers and
artists.

Four suggested that artists should know more about industry
and to that end should visit great industrial plants, etc.

176

SURVEY OF OPINION

Three wanted artists' prices stabilized, with minimums.
Two observed that art directors should see more exhibitions.

One pled for better training in art schools, another for more ex-
hibitions, and a third stated that artists should have only one agent.

In reply to their Question 5, the art directors came out with
more good suggestions, as follows:

Artists must prove to industry that good art pays. (The score
for this was eleven.)

Artists must educate the art directors. (Eight votes.)
Eight more called for better publicity on the part of artists.

Three would like to work with artists' organizations, preferably
artists* cooperatives.

Two stated that industry must use more art, while a second two
called for federal subsidies for art.

One each wanted to raise the standards of art produced and to
improve art education.

Finally, one optimist proclaimed: "Art is at an all-time high."

From such evidence it is clear that the old prejudices have
been well broken down in the past quarter of a century. What
remains now is for artists and art directors simply to get together.
How they do so they must decide. At least, the will is there.

177

A PROGRAM FOR SCULPTORS

HOW can business and advertising make use of sculpture
and thereby give sculptors systematic and regular income?
This question stands alone; for sculptors have not
been involved in the major plans for patronage of art by industry,
with the exceptions noted in the case of IBM.

Why is this so? And, indeed, why is sculpture today the
Cinderella of the arts? E. McC.

A century ago that old stalwart of the Hudson River School,
Thomas Cole, bemoaned the emergence of a native sculpture,
pontificating that anybody could do sculpture but that painting
required greater natural abilities in the artist, inasmuch as the
painter must be possessed of a sense of color.

This was a far cry from the early days of the republic when
no native sculptors could be found for the memorial functions of
the medium. Thus a Houdon commemorated Washington, and
Italian trained stone cutters were imported to adorn the Capitol.

Today probably we do not ascribe greater or lesser virtue or
value to one medium or the other. We do know that sculptors
have a harder row to plow, economically, than painters. If we
are really to develop means by which all artists can be assured of
reasonable prospects of earning a living by the practice of their
crafts, then we must study the problems of sculptors in especial.

The questionnaire sent the sculptors is, as far as we know, the

A PROGRAM FOR SCULPTORS

first attempt to obtain an objective sampling of their opinion.
In my study printed in the Magazine of Art in January, 1946, on
artist's income, it developed that the average annual income for
painters in 1944 was $4443, from all sources, while for sculptors
it was but $3038. This, despite the fact that the professional
expenses of the sculptor are higher than those of the painter,
strength of floor, ease of access for transportation of large pieces,
relative soundproof qualities, and the like all being part of the
working space he needs.

Because the sculptor has a special problem, the questions
sent sculptors were somewhat different than those sent painters
and art directors. To simplify tabulation of the replies, the
questions are reprinted here in full:

1 How can industry make use of sculpture for advertising as it
does of painting?

2 As a leading sculptor would you be willing to accept commis-
sions for advertising use of sculpture?

3 To adapt sculpture to advertising functions, are there any
especial craft problems you liave experienced?

4 Do you think that patronage of sculpture by industry would
interfere with freedom of expression? If so, why?

5 If industry is not to help the sculptor solve liis economic
problem, what source is to be looked to?

6 What suggestions have you for promoting use of sculpture by
industry and advertising?

Replies to Question 2 found half the sculptors willing to do
advertising work Only 13 per cent answered "No," while 37
per cent were willing to accept such jobs with provisos.

To Question 3, the number of replies was smaller, due no
doubt to the wording of the question, the fact being that most
sculptors have had no opportunity to experience these problems.

179

WORK FOR ARTISTS

Thus 43 per cent did not answer this question, with the result
that the other figures seem small. Thus, 23 per cent of those
replying felt that the sculptor would have to make adaptations,
while 25 per cent did not, with a final 2 per cent undecided.
Adjusting these figures, we get 40 per cent answering "Yes/' 44
per cent answering "No/' and 6 per cent on the fence.

As to whether advertising or industrial use would interfere
with freedom of expression for the sculptor, the percentage
answering "Yes" was 17, considerably lower than for the painters,
24 per cent of whom felt such work did curtail their creative
liberty. The percentage for those who felt it would not was 37,
again differing from the painters' score, the percentage of painters
answering "No" to a similar question being but 25. The propor-
tion of those who gave 'Tes-No" answers was about the same,
however, the sculptors' percentage being 46 and the painters' 51.

Since much of this opinion was in the realm of hypothesis,
sculptors not yet being embraced in the benevolent schemes of our
contemporary merchant Medici, the more interesting and signifi-
cant part of these data is to be found in the suggestions for ways
in which sculptors and sculpture can be used by industry.

In answering Question i, as to how industry can make use of
sculpture, fourteen of those replying suggested that sculpture and
photography be combined and stressed the need for "excellent"
photographs of sculpture to make the best possible showing. With
this suggestion was coupled a call for more use of sculpture in
display and diorama.

More concretely, different sculptors wrote as follows: "I be-
lieve sculpture (with the addition of model-making) can be used
as props in still photography, or as three-dimensional illustration,
abstract, comic, etc/'

Again: "Using reproductions of photographs of bas-reliefs and
sculpture in the round to illustrate the ideas advertised. Colored
ceramic sculpture could be reproduced in color for magazines.

180

A PROGRAM FOR SCULPTORS

Abstract and semi-abstract sculpture would be very effective in
advertising modern industry, such as aviation. Bas-reliefs in water-
proof papier-mache, or plastics, could be used effectively as (or on)
billboards, along with the flat printed word. Even sculpture in
the round, in the above materials, very cleverly coordinated with
the message would not occupy more space than billboards/'

Nine more sculptors suggested reproduction by casting and
use in printed matter. Seven asked industry to sponsor exhibitions
and to purchase sculpture as gifts for museums. Three suggested
monuments to industry on industrial themes, and another three
suggested that business entrepreneurs decorate the buildings of
their industries. A lone suggestion was for medals and models, to
be used as distinguishing insignia.

In this group an answer may be quoted: "Industry might collect
sculpture, to be exhibited throughout the country, as in the
Thomas }. Watson, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Pepsi-Cola
collections, with the same amount of accompanying publicity.
(Italics mine E. McC.) Also it might institute competitions for
industrial awards, such as an 'Oscar/ that is, a prize figurine/'

In passing, one may add that these concrete proposals came on
the whole from the younger sculptors. Typical of one point of
view is the remark of an older, established sculptor: "Sculpture is
not a thing of the moment. Its use in advertising is highly in-
appropriate, if not stupid/' On the other hand, another sculptor
of the older generation wrote: "Sculpture is a graphic medium
through which these times must find expression. As such it should
have an equal opportunity with all other mediums as regards use
in advertising/'

If industry is not to provide income for sculptors, then who is?

"God knows! I don't/'

"You tefl me/'

"I find it hard to imagine any sculptor living off of his artistic
efforts/'

181

WORK FOR ARTISTS

"Industry had better help the artist solve his economic prob-
lem. It is just one of many that industry will have to solve if it is
to continue to exist/'

"Government subsidy, Heaven forbid!"

Such replies to Question 5 indicate the condition of sculptors.
Either they have found a few sources of income, on which a
favored few can count, or they are confronted by the current
hopelessness of their situation.

Nevertheless they make proposals which make sense. Fourteen
call for government patronage and subsidy. Five ask for more
support from museums, and four, from architecture. Three call on
church, government, private enterprise, individuals, museums,
community projects, architecture, to make use of sculpture. A
lone wolf suggests that civic sponsorship and educational institu-
tions be looked to.

The solution of private patronage is suggested in the follow-
ing reply: Wider exhibition facilities, more art appreciation
in education, more publicity of art events, encouragement through
cultural programs for the public to own original works of art,
increased use of sculpture in architecture and interior decoration/ 7

Forgetting their generally gloomy plight, sculptors come forth
with suggestions for promoting better relations between industry
and sculpture. Repeating some of the proposals made in reply to
Question i, they call for collaboration of sculptors and photogra-
phers; for "excellent photographic reproductions;" for direct com-
missions and competitions; for use of sculpture as trademarks; for
better publicity for scultpure; for use in department store in-
teriors; for war memorials; for fellowships; for a sculptors' organi-
zation to deal with craft and trade problems.

One sculptor wrote: "Problem should be submitted to business
heads for their opinion and see if any reasonable and useful sug-
gestions are advanced."

This proposal comes the closest to that advanced by painters

i8z

A PROGRAM FOR SCULPTORS

for calling a conference of artists and industry. How about it?

Another writes: "By educating industry and advertising to
sculpture. The main hesitation I find in companies wanting to use
sculpture is their fear of costs involved and their lack of knowledge
about reproducing the sculptor's work/'

Nothing succeeds like success suggests a third: "If good and
successful use is made by one or two well known firms, the custom
will spread."

For: "Industry wants first to be shown. I think a sculptor and
photographer should collaborate if something good comes out,
one could then approach the industrialists with definite samples."

Thus, despite those who vote "No!" as the sculptor who
writes: "Art is not for business use" sculptors today want to
relate themselves to the period as much as do painters.

Will the new patron, Industry, give them" a chance?

CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS

WALTER BAERMANN. Architect and designer. Born, Germany, 1903.
Educated Technische Hochschule, Munich, and University of Munich.
Diploma, architect, engineer, philosophy. 1926-28, assistant in city planning
to Prof. Theodor Fischer, Technische Hochschule 1927-28, architect and
designer for war veterans' housing, Munich. 1927-28, private lighting and
furniture industry commissions. In 1929 to United States, at invitation of
Joseph Urban; naturalized 1935. Designer in New York 1929-1933, for
Urban, Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, and Howe & Lescaze, with
latter in charge of design of Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building
and Hessian Hills School 1931, exhibited with independent architects.
1933-36, private practice in New England and educational work at Spring-
field (Mass.) Museum of Fine Arts, Worcester Art Museum, Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, etc. 1937-1941, director of the faculty and professor
of industrial design, California Graduate School of Design, Pasadena;
also, private practice on West Coast. 1941, head, department of design,
Cranbrook Academy, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. 1941-43, chief of graphics,
Office of Civilian Defense. 1943-45, director of planning unit, H. G. Knoll

Associates. 1945 , design director, Norman Bel Geddes and Company,

Inc.

S. L. M. BARLOW. Composer. Only American to have an opera in the
repertory of the Opera Comique, Paris. Formerly chairman, National
Committee for the Arts. Chairman, music division, Independent Citizens
Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. Carnegie fellow for
study of Latin America, 1943. Secretary, Iranian Institute and School of
Asiatic Studies; trustee, Near East Colleges; chairman and moderator,
Forum for Democracy; dramatic critic, Modern Music. Lectures; author
of many articles and books; Art and Politics in the press.

187

THOMAS HART BENTON. Painter, illustrator and author. Born,
Neosho, Mo., 1889. Work includes: mural decorations, New School for
Social Research and Whitney Museum of American Art; easel paintings
in Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn
Museum, Wanamaker Gallery Collection, New York. Mural decoration,
"History of Indiana," Indiana exhibit at Century of Progress exhibition,
Chicago, 1933, permanently placed in Indiana University; murals for
state of Missouri, Jefferson City, Mo. Also represented in Palace of the
Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts;
Encyclopaedia Britannica collection. Did lithographs for Steinbeck's
Grapes of Wrath and for autobiography, An Artist in America, as well
as illustrations for special edition of The Oregon Trail, etc. During the
war years gave all his time to a series of paintings called "The Year of
Peril," which was widely shown by Abbott Laboratories, reproduced by
the United States government for overseas use, and has now been given
to the Missouri State Historical Society.

EARNEST ELMO CALKINS. Printer, advertising man and writer. Born,
Geneseo, Illinois, 1868. Educated Galesburg (111.) public schools and
Knox College. Reporter, Galesburg Republican-Register; Evening Mail;
advertising manager, Schipper & Bloch, Peoria, HI.; copy chief, Charles
Austin Bates; founder, Calkins & Holden Advertising Agency, 1902, presi-
dent until 1931; introduced methods now established in agencies. His
chief contribution to advertising might be summed up as improvement in
physical appearance and better use of art and typography. A pioneer in
bettor design in packages as well as in products, the first record of this
being in his "Beauty the New Business Toll" in the Atlantic Monthly
in 1927. Organized the first exhibition of advertising art, now held annually
by the Art Directors Club. In 1925 was awarded the Bok Medal "for dis-
tinguished services to advertising," being the first individual to receive it.
Lecturer on printing, advertising, art, recreation, town planning. Member,
American Institute of Graphic Art, Society of Calligraphers (hon.) 7 Phi
Beta Kappa, Beta Gamma Sigma (honorary society colleges of commerce);
trastee > Mitchie School of Lip Reading. Author: Modem Advertising
(with Ralph Holden), 1905; The Business of Advertising, 1915; The Ad-
vertising Man, 1922; Printing for Commerce, 1926; Business the Civilizer,
1929; And Hearing Not (Autobiography), 1946, with other titles.

CLARENCE HOLBROOK CARTER. Painter. Bom, Portsmouth, Ohio,
1904. Educated Portsmouth High School and Cleveland School of Art.
Sold paintings in exhibition of Cleveland artists and craftsmen and set off
for Italy. Traveled and studied abroad for over a year, supporting himself
by the sale of work sent to United States. Returned in 1928 and showed
in Brooklyn Museum International water color exhibition. Represented in
collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of Ameri-
can Art, Museum of Modern Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Brooklyn
Museum, Fogg Art Museum, and all important exhibitions. His canvas,
Jane Reed and Dora Hunt, invited for Tate Gallery 1946 exhibition, 'Two
Hundred years of American Painting." Taught seven years at the Cleveland
Museum; became director of Federal Art Project for Cleveland area in
1937. In 1938 went to Carnegie Institute of Technology. Resigned in 1944
to move to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to devote his time to painting.
That summer Alcoa Steamship Company commissioned him to do a
series of advertising paintings and sent him to their ports of call in the
Caribbean and South America for material.

FRANK GASPERS. Art critic and advertising writer. Bom, La Crosse,
Wisconsin. Graduated, University of Minnesota, 1932. Spent following
two years traveling in Europe, near East, North Africa, and at the Uni-
versity of Madrid. Graduate work, Columbia and New York Universities.
With Feragil Gallery two years. To Art Digest for four years, as associate
editor and managing editor. In 1942 went into advertising, as copy writer
for N. W. Ayer & Son of Philadelphia, where he wrote Capehart and Boeing
Airplane advertising. Left Ayer to join overseas branch of Office of War
Information. Went to London, working first with British Broadcasting
Company as liaison, and then with the American Broadcasting Station in
Europe (ABSIE) as deputy chief of the English broadcasting section, writ-
ing and editing radio propaganda scripts. Has rejoined N. W. Ayer & Son.

CHARLES T. COINER. Art director and painter. Born in California and
educated at Chicago Academy of Fine Arts; studied abroad. In 1924
joined N. W. Ayer & Son, Inc., Philadelphia, as layout man; has served
as associate art director, art director, and since 1936 as vice president in
charge of art. Has been lent to Washington many times to assist govern-
ment agencies. Besides posters, created NRA blue eagle and civilian defense
designs. Is responsible for the Red Feather and the design of the War

Fund insignia. His canvases are in the Whitney Museum of American Art
and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Was member of advisory
committee, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

JO GIBBS. Writer and editor. Born in Indiana and educated In Texas,
Virginia, Colorado and New York City. Her first writing appeared in a
'Tittle magazine/' The Overlook, which she and her husband, Jerome,
published in Woodstock in 1931-32. So far as she knows, it is still going
strong. In 1933 the Gibbses went to Puerto Rico, returning to the United
States in 1936. In 1939, Jo Gibbs joined Cue Magazine and in 1943 Art
Digest, of which she is associate editor. Her art-world detective work has
extended to the columns of the New Yorker.

EGBERT JACOBSON. Art director. Born in New York City, studied at
Art Students League. Variously, art director for N. W. Ayer & Son, Phila-
delphia; J. Walter Thompson, New York; and Lord and Thomas, Chicago.
Later opened own studio in Chicago for advertising art and industrial
design. Became art director of Container Corporation of America in 1935.
Since 1927, the study of color has been one of his extra-curricular interests.

ROMANA JAVTTZ. Special librarian. Educated as artist in United States
and Europe, she reorganized and developed pioneer Picture Collection of
New York Public Library. As its chief, assembled and codified documentary
picture archives of several million visual images for use of artists, historians,
publishers, editors, students and lay public, as well as institutions, organiza-
tions and government agencies. Had grant from Carnegie Corporation to
prepare manual on organization and classification of pictorial archives.
Projected a pictorial Index of American Design, later carried out by the
WJPA Federal Art Project. Designs numerous non-commercial educa-
tional and institutional exhibitions, integrating visual image and text.
Gives course in word-picture display methods.

ROCKWELL KENT. Painter, illustrator, wood engraver, lithographer,
lecturer, author. Born Tarrytown Heights, N. Y., 1882. Educated Cheshire
School, Horace Mann, and Columbia. At 15 began to study painting under
William M. Chase and continued with Henri, K, H. Miller, Abbott
Thayer, Has traveled widely, including three trips to Greenland. At various

190

times earned living at common labor, lobster fishing, carpentry, architec-
ture. Author of: Wilderness, 1920; Voyaging, 1924; N BY E, 1930; Rock-
wellkentiana, 1933; Salamina, 1935; This is My Own, 1940. One time
member United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America
(AFL), Mural Painters Guild (AFL), United American Artists (CIO).
Member: United Office and Professional Workers of America (CIO),
National Fanners Union. Honorary member, International Longshore-
men's & Warehousemen's Union (CIO). President: Artists League of
America, International Workers Order. State Committeeman, American
Labor Party. "At present," he states, "is trying to make a dairy farm pay."

REEVES LEWENTHAL. Art dealer. Born, Rockford, 111. Practiced
journalism in Middle West, and at 22 entered public relations work.
While establishing public relations offices in Europe in 1929, he became
interested in art and spent two years on the continent studying. Returned
to United States in 1931 and was appointed public relations counsel to
many outstanding art groups, including National Academy of Design,
Society of American Etchers, and Municipal Art Society. In 1933 was ap-
pointed to New York City Committee for Adult Education and to National
Commission to Advance American Art. In World War II was named ex-
pert consultant on art to the War Department. Organized first group of
artist war correspondents for foreign service and supervised documentary
projects on naval aviation, army and navy medicine, submarine warfare
and amphibious operations. Has done much to stimulate popular interest
in living American artists and to enlist industry as a patron of fine art, as
president of the Associated American Artists, Inc.

ELIZABETH McCAUSLAND. Art critic and writer. Born, Wichita,
Kansas. Educated, Smith College. Staff member, 1923-35, Springfield
(Mass.) Republican. Since 1935 has lived in New York, contributes
weekly column to The Republican. Writes for leading art publications,
including Parnassus, Magazine of Art, Art News, Art Digest, Prints, and
many others, especially serious critical discussions of photography. Author:
"Stieglitz and the American Tradition," in America and Alfred Stieglitz,
1934; text for Changing New York, a book of 97 photographs by Berenice
Abbott, 1939; Kathe Koflwitz, 1941; Picasso: 1934-1944; George Inness:
An American Landscape Painter, 1946; The Life and Work of Edward
Lamson Henry, NA, 1841-1919, published by the New York State Mu*
seum. Taught at Sarah Lawrence College and New School for Social Re-

191

search. Organized following exhibitions: "The World of Today/' Berk-
shire Museum, 1939; first group silk screen color print exhibition, Spring-
field (Mass.) Museum of Fine Arts, March, 1940; silk screen color prints,
New York State Museum, summer, 1940; Hine retrospective exhibition,
Riverside Museum, 1940; "Photography Today," A. C. A. Gallery, New
York, 1944; "Art by Merchant Seamen of the N. M. If.," A. C. A. Gallery,
1945; George Inness retrospective, George Walter Vincent Smith Art
Museum, Springfield, Mass., Brooklyn Museum and Montclair Art Mu-
seum, 1946. Photo-edited Poems of the Midwest, Carl Sandburg, 1946.
Guggenheim fellow, 1943-44- At work on a social history, The Artist in
America; 1641-1941.

WALTER S. MACK, Jr. Business executive. Bom in New York, 1895.
Educated public schools, graduating De Witt Clinton High School, 1913.
Graduated from Harvard, 1917. Served as ensign in World War I, doing
destroyer and convoy work out of Queenstown, Ireland and Brest, France.
His varied business career began with Bedford Mills, Inc. Since 1939 has
been president and a director of Pepsi-Cola Company, a leading industrial
supporter of contemporary American painting. Served on many wartime
committees, including Red Cross, U.S.O., and National War Fund Drive.
Was member of Advisory Committee, New York World's Fair, as well as
many other civic and philanthropic affiliations. Incorporator of former
Mayor LaGuardia's New York City Center of Music and Drama. As
president of Pepsi-Cola has promoted participation in community life, in-
cluding annual art competitions, jobs awards for young people, clubs for
teen-agers, college scholarships for high school graduates, service centers
for service men and women, voice records for service men, etc.

HILA MEADOW. Editor and organizer. Born in New York; educated
P. S. 169 and Radcliffe College. Intensive work with various non-com-
mercial groups, beginning in 1939 with Theatre Arts Committee (TAG).
Edited National Lawyers Guild Legislative Bulletin. With Russian War
Relief, 1942-45, in charge of publications. To Reynal & Hitchcock's Labor
Bool Club UAW-CIO in spring of 1945. With Independent Citizens
Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions as national membership
director tfll summer, 1946.

192

BRUCE MITCHELL Painter. Born, Scotland, 1908, son of Charles
Lewis Mitchell, well known Scottish artist. Came to United States in 1916,
where father exhibited widely till his death in 1918. Educated Pittsburgh
schools and Montclair High School. Studied at Art Students 7 League, with
Bridgman, Wickey, Benton, Lahey, Grosz and Davis. First exhibited in
New York in 1932, Whitney biennial. Has exhibited also at Art Institute
of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, New York and San Francisco World's
Fairs, Artists for Victory, and other leading exhibitions. Represented in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art,
Phillips Memorial Gallery, University of Arizona, and important private
collections. Held following fellowships and grants: Tiffany, 1930, 1933;
Yaddo, 1935, 1940; Guggenheim, 1941-42. In 1942-43, helped inaugurate
the "Arizona Plan" and served as artist adviser in selection of works for
this collection. Was wartime artist correspondent for Life in Persia; also,
illustrated Persian Gulf Command by Joel Sayre. On return to United
States in spring of 1945, worked on visual records of "The movement of
oil and material through the Persian Gulf' for Standard Oil of New
Jersey's painting project.

E. H. POWELL. Executive. Born, Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Educated
Northwestern University. Studied at Art Institute of Chicago and Chicago
Academy of Fine Arts. His first job was in the shipping room of Sears,
Roebuck, where twelve years later he became advertising manager. Re-
designed mail order art, seeking clean uncluttered layouts, direct and
dignified copy, fine presswork, for Sears catalog. From mail order catalog
to Encyclopaedia Britannica was, according to PoweFs intimates, but one
short step. Owned by Sears, Roebuck, this ancient and standard work of
reference was in the red. In 1933 Powell took over, and within three years
had Britannica on its feet financially. Two years later, Britannica Junior
(for children) came into existence. Today Junior outsells Encyclopaedia
Britannica. In 1937 he founded Britannica Book of the Year, and 1942,
directed publication of Britannica's World Atlas, prepared by Britannica's
editor, Walter Yust, working in collaboration with Dr. G. Donald Hudson,
professor of geography, Northwestern University. The story of Britannica's
art collection Powell himself has told here. He finds time, also, to paint,
design houses, experiment with photography, and run a ranch in Colorado.

LINCOLN ROTHSCHILD. Art historian and sculptor, assistant pro-
fessor of art, Adelphi College, 1946 . Born, New York City. Educated,

Columbia University. Studied painting at Art Students' League, princi-
pally under Kenneth Hayes Miller; sculpture self-taught. Instructor, history
of art, Columbia, 1925-1935. Director, New York unit, Index of American
Design; treasurer, American Artists Congress, 1935-1940. Employed in war
industry four years as skilled manual worker. Columnist for Shipyard
Worker, IUMSWA-CIO, 1943-44. Author: Sculpture Through The Ages,
1942.

FRANKLIN RYDER. A well known art director "shoots the works." For
obvious reasons, he prefers to remain anonymous.

MARGIT VARGA. Painter and editor. Born New York City. Educated
Art Students League and National Academy of Design, studying painting
with Boardman Robinson and sculpture with Robert Laurent. Art director
in charge of fine art for Life, with which she has been connected since it
started over ten years ago, she divides her time between the magazine and
painting. Has shown in leading American exhibitions. Is represented in col-
lections of Springfield (Mass.) Museum of Fine Arts, University of
Arizona, International Business Machines Corporation, Philadelphia
Academy, and private collections. Author: Waldo Pierce, 1941; Carol
Brant, Picture Magazine Reporter, 1945; The Christmas Story, 1946; also,
biographies in Modern American Painting, 1939.

LYND WARD. Graphic artist and illustrator. Born, Chicago, 1905. Grew
up in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Educated as fine arts major
at Teacher's College, Columbia University, graduating 1926. Married same
year to May McNeer. Traveled in Europe and studied graphic arts in
Leipsig, Germany, 1926-27. Since 1927 has lived in New Jersey, devoting
most of time to book illustration. Has done about one hundred books for
various publishers, ranging from inexpensive paper-bound books for
children to limited editions. In 1929, published God's Man, a novel in
woodcuts, and since then five other "stories without words/' Uses a variety
of mediums, including brush drawings, water color, lithographs, mezzotints,
and wood engravings. Prints exhibited in all leading exhibitions and repre-
sented in major museums and private collections. Lives in Leonia, N. J.,
with wife and two young daughters.

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