The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Giving Art The Air The old gray artist with the quaint German accent sat facing his line of paintings at the foot of Fifth Avenue across from the Washington...
...The little man smiled sadly as he talked: "You see, I am alone here in this side and my pictures are small...
...As I go through the long lines of pictures year after year, I am often oppressed by a feeling of sadness...
...You will note that the Mayor and City Council, the art associations, and a long list of community organizations have given the affair their blessing and practical support...
...I can stand shoe-making better, because I can see things which most people never see.' Perhaps this man was revealing the secret of the bad painter's reward...
...They have ambition, endless patience, perhaps even knowledge of theory, but they lack the one thing necessary: talent...
...A scurrying wind carried bursts of children's cries from far over the Square, and now and then it would detach a work of art from its support and carry it along the walk with the abandoned newspapers and bits of trash which are the inevitable accompaniment of a folk festival like this semi-annual Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit...
...You know what has happened...
...It takes work and training to produce an etching...
...Everybody can paint now not only people from Connecticut or New Jersey, but those from places like Iowa and Missouri...
...I suppose no one undertakes such a task without being taught...
...On the other side of the street was a long row of painters showing great, flaring canvases skies, seas and mountains in grotesque colors...
...His pictures were small and not bad...
...Down on Sullivan Street today, I saw a little man, the only exhibitor on the west side of that picturesque thoroughfare...
...It started in 1932, in the deepest trough of the Depression...
...Maybe Churchill and Eisenhower are not such a bad influence after all...
...The idea was to give the artists a break in those tough times...
...And yet you would be wrong if you were to condemn this project because so many of the works on view are grotesque, stupid or merely awkward and crude...
...All their striving must end in futility...
...I don't suppose they can pass a law, but something ought to be done...
...This enterprise, it is obvious, is designed to have and is having a continuing influence for good...
...As I wandered about looking at this year's exhibit, I had the impression that the severe judgment of my Fifth Avenue acquaintance was justified...
...Many of the prizes are in the form of scholarships to various art schools...
...Waiting there hopelessly for customers, he seemed glad to have someone to talk to...
...No," said my new friend, "art isn't what it used to be...
...It helped pass the time and relieved the tedium and embarrassment of the endless lack of occupation...
...This is the forty-ninth show, and I have had pictures in all of them...
...But never mind...
...Numerous awards have been made, and if you take pains to look at the prize pictures you will see that the award committees have managed to find in this wild array of bad painting a considerable number of really fine pieces...
...I have, of course, been seeing these shows from the earliest days...
...There they sit on their stools or boxes or folding-chairs, awaiting the customer who practically never comes...
...Thank God, I do not live by paint...
...But, without any sort of teaching or practice, any ambitious soul can splash color on canvas or cardboard...
...He never learns to paint, but he may learn how to see...
...First, Winston Churchill took up painting...
...This year, I did not see a single etching among the long stretches of exhibits...
...The show just went round the Square...
...He had almost sold one, but he had asked $85 for it and that had proved to be too much for the prospective customer...
...Why, they tell me that there are 500 exhibits in this show and I'll bet that 40 per cent of them are from out of town...
...I used to think that the etchings displayed on easels or tacked to walls or fences were superior to the oils or watercolors...
...And soon every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country was going around daubing landscapes or portraits or still lifes...
...As the shows have grown larger, the quality has deteriorated...
...You can imagine the heartache that must accompany such forever unrewarded effort...
...I suppose it was Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney who started it-though some give the credit to Vernon C. Porter, the Director of the National Academy...
...That long ago, there weren't so many people who thought they were artists...
...And then President Eisenhower thought he could do anything Churchill could...
...I look more at the artists than at the pictures...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Giving Art The Air The old gray artist with the quaint German accent sat facing his line of paintings at the foot of Fifth Avenue across from the Washington Arch...
...But look at it now...
...I work in a shoe factory over in Brooklyn...
...It practically runs all over this part of town...
...And the show suffered from their absence...
...Everyone goes over there, where there are more pictures and big ones...
...You look at the pictures and you are sure that the aspiring painters will never amount to anything no matter how hard they try...
Vol. 39 • June 1956 • No. 24
