Summer Shows

Art flourishes among the baby carriages and second-run movie houses of The Bronx (see above), as well as among the stone villas of Newport, R. I., the studios of Old Lyme, Conn. But in summer colonies, exhibitions are likely to be as much social as artistic events, with tea served on the terrace, concerts played in an adjoining room, and summer visitors exchanging greetings in the gallery. Last week summer shows, in full swing from Southhampton, L. I. to Ogunquit, Me., surprised critics with their variety, the number of first-rate artists exhibiting, the high level of the work exhibited.

P: At Newport, Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's exhibition of 15 pieces of sculpture, ranging from small bronzes to a huge plaster Rock Group turned out to be more popular than a show by 20 contemporary painters which opened at the same time. Aside from a group of abstract studies that local critics defended somewhat uneasily, paintings at the Newport Art Association exhibit included the veteran Edward Hopper's oil Sun on Prospect Street, Charles Burchfield's water color Black Iron, the work of John Marin, Thomas Benton, Reginald Marsh, Henry Yarnum Poor, others as eminent.

P: At Mystic, Conn., the 14th annual exhibition of the Mystic Art Association opened this week at Association galleries on the banks of the Mystic River. Cut more closely to the traditional pattern of summer shows than any other, with tea served on Thursday and young villagers holding square dances in the gallery, the Mystic exhibition was nevertheless far from stuffy, included an excellent oil by Kenneth Bates, a cocktail-hour scene At Five (see cut) by Robert Philipp, whose Dust to Dust won first honorable mention at last year's Carnegie International.

P: At Norwalk, Conn., the annual exhibition is put on by the Silvermine Guild of Artists, a 16-year-old organization whose 310 members include Columnist Westbrook Pegler as well as John Steuart Curry, Novelist Ursula Parrott as well as Artist John Vassos. Most important exhibition this year at the Silvermine Gallery were 21 murals of a social statement show, which is now on tour, most of them explosive, crowded canvases of somewhat labored satire, like James Daugherty's It's Fun to Be Neutral, or solemn, like Howard Hildebrandt's Construction of the Merritt Parkway. Happier and more decorative were John Vassos' God Bless Our Home (see cut, p. 41), and John Atherton's Chirico-like Americana, in which pale patriotic statuary is poised against bleak winter scenery.

P:At Old Lyme, Conn., the 37th annual summer exhibition of the Lyme Art Association opened with 270 pieces in the big, grey-shingled gallery that fronts the Boston Post Road. Predominately conservative, it included water colors and prints, skilful oils by Ogden Pleissner and Abram Poole, at prices that ranged from $5 for etchings to $2,500 for Ivan G. Olinsky's strong oil, John and Marie.

P: At Rockport, Mass., where most artists have studios on Bearskin Neck--and the local art association has been embroiled year after year with city fathers over the annual artists ball -- the 18th annual show was lively, colorful, included work by Jon Corbino, Leon Kroll, Harrison Cady, better known for his illustrations for Peter Rabbit stories.

P: At Gloucester, Mass., where for 60 years artists have been painting in remodeled fish houses on Rock Neck Avenue, two rival groups sponsored exhibitions, the Society of Artists holding a spirited, uneven, no-jury show on the second floor of a store building, featuring cheerful pieces by young, rebellious Lawrence Beall Smith and Umberto Romano; the North Shore Art Association, twice as big, and more than twice as dignified, giving its 16th annual show in which Gloucester scenes, fishermen and sailing craft predominated.

P: At Provincetown, Mass., where some 50 professional artists and hundreds of students regularly spend their summers, two juries, from the same association, one conservative and one modernist, selected no pieces from the work of members. But last week 35 artists decided that was not enough, planned to hold open house all summer, turned their homes into galleries for summer visitors and possible buyers.

P: On Long Island, arb colonies are few and far between. At crowded, middle-class Long Beach, the work of the late, great Glenn O. Coleman, most famed Long Beach native, was exhibited by the Long Beach Dads' Club, which hoped to raise enough money by public subscription to buy a Coleman for the public library. At the other end of the Island at socialite East Hampton, in the handsome Guild Hall and the landscaped gardens around it, young, prolific Wheeler Williams exhibited 85 pieces of sculpture, smooth executions of conventional subjects that ranged from a pipe-playing Pan to a bust of Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow.

P: At Woodstock, N. Y., the second of seven successive shows featured the Alaskan paintings, rich in reds and greens and snow whites, of Marianne Appel.

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