The Painting Contests

Shown on the opposite page are the works of two potentates of modern art which within the last fortnight won two of modern art's richest prizes. Neither award surprised the art world, since both artists are well known and transcendently deserving. But if no eyebrows were raised over the choices, a good many doubts have been raised this year over the theory and practice of art competitions.

Who Picks What? The $10,000 Guggenheim International Award, won by Swiss Sculptor-Painter Alberto Giacometti, is supposed to go, explains Curator Lawrence Alloway, to "the great wherever seen. When Harry Guggenheim started the whole thing in 1956, he saw the prizes as a kind of equivalent of the Nobel Prize, something that was awarded regardless of national boundaries." Alloway spent a year and a half traveling in 30 countries to choose entries for the 1964 Guggenheim International, and the jury that then picked the winners included Painter Hans Hofmann, Arnold Ruedlinger, director of the Kunsthalle in Basel, and Werner Haftmann, German art historian. The jury also gave prizes of $2,500 each to Wifredo Lam, a Cuban who works in Italy; Robert Motherwell of the U.S.; Spain's Antoni Tapies and Victor de Vasarely, a Hungarian who lives in France.

The Pennsylvania Academy awards, by contrast, are given to established artists invited by the Academy's jury to enter, and to "over the transom" entries from unknowns as well. The Temple Gold Medal, won this year by Stuart Davis and in earlier decades by such luminaries as Whistler, Eakins and Homer, carries no cash but a mintful of prestige. The aim of the show, according to Director Joseph Fraser, is to "give Philadelphia art lovers a chance to see a cross section of what's going on in the art world--a look at all the trends." Juries are composed of artists.

The Temple Medal and the George D. Widener Memorial Gold Medal for sculpture rarely go to artists without a lengthy list of works and other awards behind them. But the Widener award this year went to an unknown Negro sculptor, Geraldine McCullough of Maywood, III., who had not been invited by the jury, and six lesser awards went to uninvited works.

Who Says It's Best? These are both sincere attempts to give art some bests and firsts, but all art competitions are open to criticism for both methods and effects. Because of the sheer size of the task, it is virtually impossible for a jury or a single individual to be comprehensive in selecting entries, and the job is always complicated by the very rules intended to simplify it. Alloway of the Guggenheim was limited to choosing five artists per nation--equating the U.S. with Israel, for example--and also tried to make his choice from among artists born between 1900 and 1920, a restriction that bars both Patriarch Pa blo Picasso and the pushy princelings of Pop. Finding an unbiased jury is hard enough, and so is the job of the jury--whether to judge an artist on the merit of one submitted picture, or on his prestige, or on the whole body of his work, or on such other considerations as his nationality and the number of other prizes he has or has not won.

Beyond the mechanical problems of selection comes the intent of the prize. Should it be to crown a style and seem to urge young artists to march to the easel and start painting like Davis or Giacometti? Or does it encourage new talent to be different--for the sake of being different?

And, most important, what is gained by saying one painting is "the best"? Asger Jorn, Denmark's painter of livid, vivid abstraction, caused a bit of a tempest this year by refusing to accept a proffered Guggenheim award. "I get my money by selling paintings," he said, "and I think it is more healthy than by getting prizes. If you establish that one artist is better than another one, it is a question of convention--and you have to have a common measure, whereas the whole value of art is exactly that common measure doesn't exist."

Stuart Davis says he doesn't see why a jury, when it likes a picture very much, shouldn't say so. "Quarrel with the jury itself if you disagree with their choice," he adds, "but don't quarrel with the institution of expressing ideas." Alberto Giacometti gladly took his Guggenheim Grand Prize. But even he had some reservations on being first: "Nothing is absolute in art. You cannot say this painting is worth 100 points, this painting 80, this one 50. It's not a pistol-shooting contest, fortunately."

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