THIS QUARTER
17
tradi~ions
been a trifle more profound, or at least sophisticated. In
Hofer's
The Wind,
any one can detect a cocktail whose ingredients
stem from Cezanne and Picasso's Blue Period ( 1905), linked back via
Derain with the Baroque; and an eye unopened to quaijty might
therefore conclude that the best of modern art can lurk within this
combination. The judges, at all events, were not aware that the cock–
tail was very ill-shaken; nor that aesthetic subtlety and concentration
have moved a long way since the halcyon days of les Fauves; nor that
the illustration in question seems at the moment hardly less dated than
Cot's more famous rendering of the same subject, recently removed
from the walls of the Metropolitan to a snug little corner in the cellar.
The results of competition and award in every branch of
art
must prove confusing to any public that bothers to question them. Al–
most invariably, during the long years preparatory to a full culture,
while the handful of genuinely gifted writers, painters, and musicians
are struggling without means of support, the awards continue their
flow toward hollow mediocrity. And there is little doubt that the
trend
will
continue. For wherever an art-jury congregates it seems that
the
best
works and the worst are likely to be the ripest for discarding.
It is the extremes that assert themselves most emphatically, hence can
least securely hold their own before the eye of the "responsible" ap–
praiser. Only the vast unspeaking field of mediocrity is left them, from
which the result must be whittled down through compromise, unless
some familiar signature can serve to win over the jury. This has hap–
pened twice on our list, for
twi~
has the Carnegie prize gone to an
important name in modern art; yet in each case the picture itself has
proved more revealing than the name that won it. The Picasso was an
Ingres-period portrait, which showed perhaps that Picasso was a
master; on the other hand it was a canvas devoid of the true Picasso
quality, and a long way from the new course that
all
painting seems
destined to follow because of
him.
And last year Braque showed in the
Yellow Cloth
that he has retained something of his taste, but hardly
a trace of the once formidable ability to concentrate tone and design.
Many great paintings by Braque and Picasso could doubtless be
obtained for the Carnegie Exhibitions; it would be unthinkable that
any of these should carry off the prize.
WANTED:
FREE TRADE
IN IDEAS
We had hoped to print in
this
issue, in addition
to William Phillips' comment, a reply to Mr.
Wilson's article from some orthodox defender of
the Marxist dialectic. (They are a fast vanishing
race!) So we wrote to Mr. D.
J.
Stroik, who teaches mathematics
