"Sterile Modernism"

(See front cover)

Art, like most other human enterprises, has its makers, sellers, buyers and commentators. Prominent living makers of art--Matisse, Picasso, Zuloaga, Augustus John, Rockwell Kent--are known at least by name to multitudes of laymen. And almost every literate person has heard of Sir Joseph Duveen. He is, however, neither an artist nor a critic, as laymen have been known to wager. He is, of course, the supersalesman and the most famed name in contemporary art. Extensive buyers of art--Andrew Mellon, Jules Semon Bache, John Ringling--are widely recognized as such.

Who can name an art critic? An art critic is a public commentator, supposedly invested by virtue of his learning and taste with the right to interpret the esthetic trend to the commonalty, to denounce that which he considers bad and proclaim that which he considers good. In any society pretending to cultivation and beauty, the position of art critic should obviously command renown and respect. Yet who can name an art critic?

Thoroughgoing readers of either Scribner's magazine or the New York Herald Tribune will immediately give the name of Royal Cortissoz (pronounced Kor-tee-zus). A small, chunky, lively gentleman with iron-grey hair, moustache and goatee, he has conducted Scribner's art department for six years and the Herald Tribune's for 38. No art critic in the U. S. exhibits a more dignified, fastidious, yet spirited approach to his subject. None writes with more alertness and lucidity. Through all his years of professional journalism, Royal Cortissoz has preserved the gusto of an amateur.

Because he is chief U. S. spokesman of the conservative attitude toward art, he is particularly interesting. For, while modernistic art may or may not be valuable, it is undeniably fashionable in the U. S., and this is due in no small measure to the increasing publicity and support given it by U. S. art critics. But you will not find Royal Cortissoz in the fervid com-pany which swirls in adulation around recent esthetic figures. Post-Impressionism and other modern cults and coteries are not sacred to him. In the March Scribner's, he regretfully says farewell to the magazine, which is hereafter to appear without illustrations and, hence, without Critic Cortissoz. But chiefly he devotes his paragraphs to a discussion of recent developments in the field of art, most significant of which is Manhattan's recently-opened Museum of Modern Art (TIME, Sept. 16). Clearly he states his opinions about several modernist idols:

". . . on the whole Matisse seems to remain one of the most stationary of them all. and Picasso, with his long sequence of 'blue periods' and the like, is as far from proving that modernism gets its practitioners anywhere. . . .

"Amadeo Modigliani . . . was a sensitive young draughtsman and had in him possibilities as a colorist which might have been interestingly fulfilled had he lived. But he was given to unfortunate distortions, providing the sitters for his portraits with absurdly elongated throats, slit-like eyes and swerving noses, and to make matters worse he kept repeating these malformations until his portraiture suggests the functioning of a thin stencil.

"Cezanne ... is a type of frustration, a man who never fully mastered his craft and in consequence couldn't fully express what was struggling within his cosmos, but at least he had a groping toward the root of the matter."

Forthright, easy to understand, is Critic Cortissoz's summary of modernism:

"The movement continues sterile . . . from a variety of causes. One ... is the want of really compelling leaders, of men of genius having the warrant of creative artists. The other causes embrace an only fitful instinct for truth, an almost fantastical indifference to beauty, and a deplorable neglect of the fundamentals of workmanship. . . . There have been arid epochs before this, such as the Victorian and its equivalent across the Channel in the Paris of Napoleon III. . . . Mediocrity in those days had a stupendous vogue. Modernism is but repeating history. It will someday prove a kind of Victorian 'dud,' with a difference, obviously, but a 'dud' just the same."

Critic Cortissoz coolly and continually insists that excellent technique, often branded by other critics as mere facility or the superficial finesse resulting from laborious routine, is an absolutely essential basis for all fine art worthy of the name. He finds in the late George Bellows, famed for his dramatic depiction of prizefighters, an example of a modern U. S. artist whose art is securely grounded in this respect. In his new book of essays, The Painter's Craft, published a month ago by Scribner's, Critic Cortissoz persuasively explains his emphasis on technique. Says he: ". . . who shall say where the 'manual dexterity' leaves off and the mysterious alchemy of that intensely personal thing, 'touch,' begins? . . . The ponderables and imponderables in this matter are inextricably fused. To grasp the former is to lay hold of an infallible key to the latter. In other words, the painter's craft, allied as it is to 'manual dexterity,' is first and last an index to the painter's artistic character."

To many these statements, and similar Cortissoz writings, reveal an esthetic clearheadedness, a critical sanity quite unusual in a day when loose-thinking esthetes customarily employ such meaningless terms as "realities" and "eternal," choose the most nebulous polysyllables to describe their obscure aims. Modernists, of course, vilify Royal Cortissoz as a fogey if not, indeed, a fool. From them he receives the same stigma of petrifaction which they apply to Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art (TIME, Feb. 4, 1929).

Thus it seemed particularly appropriate to find Critic Cortissoz beginning this week with a lecture on "Technique" at the Metropolitan. For although the Metropolitan courteously admits to its rostra lecturers who flay its conservative policies, including even vitriolic Critic Walter Pach (TIME. Dec. 17, 1928), it must happily welcome so able a champion as Critic Cortissoz.

It is frequently complained that the Metropolitan owns only one Cezanne and has recently kept it out of sight; naturally this can bring no great woe to Critic Cortissoz. Nor must he feel sad because the Metropolitan owns no paintings at all by Derain, Matisse, Picasso or Marie Laurencin. On the other hand, idling along its corridors, he may visit many collections greatly to his liking. There is an extensive U. S. group. The Italian collection is noteworthy, including a Tiepolo ceiling and a roomful of Primitives among which is an Aretino and a Segna di Bonaventura. There may also be seen a Fra Angelico. paintings by Carpaccio, Crivelli, Botticelli, Bellini, Tintoretto, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Titian, Correggio, and 22 ceiling panels by Pinturicchio.

The Spanish room contains Goyas, El Grecos and Zurbarans. Not startling are two Flemish rooms. The Dutch collection has numerous works by Hals and Vermeer and several Rembrandts. In the Altman collection are other Dutch, Italian and Spanish pictures.

The British exhibit is unsatisfactory. The modern French collection (Puvis de Chavannes, Corot, Manet, Monet) is also sparse. But six Metropolitan galleries will be opened on March 11 containing the famed Havemeyer collection (TIME, Feb. 4, 1929) which will greatly swell the museum's resources with fine specimens of Courbet, Corot, Manet, Monet, Renoir. Degas, El Greco, Millet, Puvis de Chavannes, Poussin, Ingres, Cezanne, Veronese, Filippo Lippi, Rembrandt, De Hoogh, Hals, Rubens, Goya. All in all. those who can content themselves with great artistry before Cezanne will find the Metropolitan a fascinating repository of paintings, not as great as the major European museums, but undeniably important.* Those who completely subscribe to Critic Cortissoz's beliefs will find little if any ground for complaint.

Royal Cortissoz, 61, was born in Manhattan. Early in life he went to work in the architectural offices of the late great McKim, Mead & White, where he stayed six years. For 20 years he was literary as well as art editor of the New York Tribune (now the Herald Tribune). He likes music (Wagner and Beethoven preferred), collects books, and is addicted to golf, about which he has humorously philosophized in a volume called Nine Holes of Golf. His wife Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz has written on musical subjects, is co-editor of the Library of American Literature. Critic Cortissoz has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Princeton. Columbia, Wesleyan, Union, Amherst, innumerable clubs. He has no official connection with the Metropolitan Museum, but is an honorary fellow of that institution, as well as of the American Institute of Architects. Other Cortissoz books: Augustus Saint Gaudens; John La Farge; Art and Common Sense; The Life of Whitelaw Reid; American Artists; Personalities in Art.

*In branches of art other than painting, the Metropolitan is admittedly a museum of the first rank. Its prints, casts, sculpture, bronzes, terracottas, glass, Classical, Egyptian, Far and Near Eastern art, armor, jewelry, musical instruments, European and U. S. decorative art, metalwork, costumes, textiles and laces, make it the necessary U. S. focal point of anyone seriously interested in worldwide craftsmanship. Last year's deficit of $883,384.35, due to administration expenses, reported recently by Metropolitan authorities (TIME, March 3), is an indication of the sums being spent to keep this esthetic treasury of increasing benefit to the nation.

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