Non-Objects

While open-mouthed crowds still jammed the corridors of the surrealist exhibition at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art last week (TIME, Feb. 8), another imposing exhibition of paintings that seemed equally cockeyed to the vulgar mind opened several blocks away at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, described by the Alliance's President Yarnall Abbott as "the most complete collection of nonobjective painting in the world," went up on the walls for a three-week showing. What the public had to see were 138 fairly large canvases and water colors by twelve artists in which there appeared, in brilliant color, circles, triangles, prisms, ruled lines, odd squiggles and amorphous blobs of paint. There were in addition 60 paintings by near abstractionists such as Modigliani, Picasso, Marc Chagall and the Impressionist Seurat, in which could be discovered such recognizable objects as cats, boats, bowls of fruit, doorways and French peasant women.

True abstractionists have for the fur teacups, disembodied heads and limp watches of surrealism all the disdain of the conservative National Academy of Design. The basis of their philosophy is that a picture should not attempt to represent anything or suggest anything, should be an exercise in pure form, sufficient unto itself. In the introduction to the elaborate catalog of last week's show the Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen, moderately well-known as an abstractionist in her own right, wrote:

"Surrealism came in only recently, through such painters who invented this senseless title to stupefy the public. . . . In love with intellect and sensation, which has nothing to do with art, they stirred the public with ridiculous ideas, but did not produce any valuable revelations. ... No wonder the public distrusts the confusion brought about by all this in artistic 'kitch.' "*

Other thoughts of the Baroness:

". . . Non-objectivity will be the religion of the future. Very soon the nations on earth will turn to it in thought and feeling and develop such intuitive powers which lead them to harmony." Owner of most of these non-objects, Solomon Guggenheim, celebrated his 76th birthday last week. Fourth of the seven sons of old Meyer Guggenheim, Colorado mining tycoon, he was one of the most active members in developing the Guggenheim copper empire. He is still a director in half-a-dozen mining companies besides holding a partnership in Guggenheim Bros. He has served as board chairman of American Smelting & Refining Co. Many years ago he began to collect pictures, built up a valuable collection of such objective paintings as Dutch old masters, German and Italian primitives.

Nine years ago, when Collector Guggenheim was 67, he had his portrait painted by the ardent Baroness Hilla Rebay. Born in Alsace, the daughter of a German general, the Baroness has studied painting all her life, was won to non-objectivity in 1914, some time after the Battle of the Marne. After working with other abstractionists in Switzerland, the Baroness came to the U. S. in 1926. Here she still paints objective portraits, for money, but scrupulously tells her clients, "I will paint a picture that looks like you, but it will not be art."

Elderly Mr. Guggenheim found the Baroness charming, her collection of non- objective paintings stimulating. Quickly he was brought to see the error of his previous collecting, began to assemble red triangles, green circles, pink and lavender blobs by such non-objectivists as Vasily Kandinsky, Rudolf Bauer, Ladislaus Moholy-Nagy. As his collection grew he filled the bedroom of his handsome old colonial house in Charleston, S.C. with them, then redecorated his entire apartment in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel in robin's-egg blue, cork walls and homespun tapestries to hang the rest. Over his marble fireplace hangs old Mr. Guggenheim's favorite of the moment, one of a series of four arrangements of circles and lines by Rudolf Bauer entitled Tetraptychon (see p. 36), but he is also extremely fond of two pictures by a young artist known simply as Shwab. Shwab's exact birthplace, first name, parents and background have so far eluded research. According to the Baroness, he "lives in isolation in Switzerland."

Passing through the Guggenheim collection last week, critics noted that even such ardent non-representationalists as Rudolf Bauer occasionally slip. Painting No. 57, Blue Balls, showed obvious and unmistakable balls, in blue.

*German for froufrou.

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