Black-Outs

Since 1930 the director of London's illustrious Tate Gallery has been bright-eyed, snowy-haired James Bolivar Manson, a cherubic oldster whose talents as a mimic are highly prized among his friends. As director of the Tate, Mr. Manson built up its modern collection but has shown something less than a devouring interest in the minutiae of modern art. Last year the French painter. Maurice Utrillo, ten years a sober man, brought a libel suit against him and the gallery (TIME, Jan. 18. 1937) and last month won a public apology for having been listed in a Tate catalogue as dead of alcoholism. No sooner was that over than Director Manson became embroiled in another ruckus.

To protect home industry against cheap Italian tombstones. Parliament in 1932 placed a duty of 33 1/3% on imports of stone and wood carving. That this tariff effectually kept foreign sculpture out of England, even for exhibition purposes, was something it took Parliament six years to discover and, last January, to amend. First to take advantage of the amendment was small, smart, grey-haired Peggy Guggenheim, daughter of the late copper Tycoon Benjamin Guggenheim and founder of a new London gallery cutely called "Guggenheim Jeune." For Guggenheim Jeune Director Peggy this month planned a knock-out exhibition of sculpture by Abstractionists Brancusi, Arp, Duchamp-Villon, Calder, Laurens. Pevsner. But she had reckoned without J. B. Manson. By the terms of the amended act. Mr. Manson was made the arbiter of whether any given piece of carving was a work of art (duty free) or not. After inspecting two samples by Constantin Brancusi and Hans Arp, Mr. Manson conscientiously classified them with Italian tombstones as dutiable stuff.

The Brancusi piece, entitled Sculpture for the Blind (see cut), was simply a large egg smoothly carved in marble and resting on a rough marble base. A blind person might find pleasure in feeling it. Hans Arp's rounded wood carving was called Sculpture Conjugate because his wife worked on it too. In defense of both, long, indignant letters began to uncurl in London newspapers. Director Guggenheim swore that she would pay the duty if necessary but the show must go on. Liberal members rose in the House of Commons and spoke haughtily of J. B. Manson. It may have been pointed out to Mr. Manson that an identical case came up in the U. S. in 1926 when customs officials denied duty-free entry to Brancusi's famous Bird in Space--a case decided in favor of the Bird.

Upshot was that Mr. Manson reconsidered. Last week Brancusi's egg and Arp's shape rested, duty free, in the bright little gallery of Guggenheim Jeune. Meanwhile, sprightly J. B. Manson had regretfully announced his resignation, at 58, as director of the Tate Gallery. Said he: "My doctor has warned me that my nerves will not stand any further strain. ... I have begun to have blackouts, in which my actions become automatic. Sometimes these periods last several hours. . . . I had one of these blackouts at an official luncheon in Paris recently, and startled guests by suddenly crowing like a cock. . . ."

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