Art in the Sunday Herald Tribune

Art critic Carlyle Burrows reviewed “Pioneers in Modern Art in America” at the Whitney in Sunday's paper. The show was devoted to the first two decades of the Twentieth Century, when American artists were absorbing the trends that had developed in Paris and had made a sensation at the Armory Show of 1913. “It promises to be a first-rate success, full of fresh disclosures for those whose experience with American art is relatively recent,” Burrows wrote. He reported that Whitney curator Herman More pointed out that this was the second retrospective show devoted to the recent past that the museum had given, the first being “New York Realists” (aka “The Eight”) several seasons earlier.

In comparison to the mature work of some of the better known artists on display, these early pieces appeared somewhat “tepid” in Burrows opinion, “showing the sometimes meager theory and stereotyped formulae available at the time.” One artist whose work stood out in the critic's view was Maurice Prendergast, “one of the earliest of the group to mature” (but Prendergast was well into middle age and near the end of his life in this period). Another was Max Weber, whose famed "Chinese Restaurant" was part of the exhibit. Several of the artists represented had since died or “fallen by the wayside.” Alfred Stieglitz's celebrities occupied a room by themselves, a tribute to the important role played by this “ pioneer impresario.” Those represented included John Marin, who had a room of his own, Arthur G. Dove and Georgia O'Keeffe, “who is represented by several lyrical color notes, quite apart from her usual work.” Other artists included in the show whom Burrows singled out for approval were Charles Demuth, Preston Dickinson, Man Ray, Gaston Lachaise, Robert Laurent, Maurice Sterne, Abraham Walkowitz and Joseph Stella.

Note: Stieglitz died in July. A recent bio pic on Georgia O'Keeffe in its end crawl claimed that Stieglitz died in relative obscurity. This is nonsense. I have run across his name several times in publications of the day in my research. He may no longer have had the singular position he had earlier in the century but he was far from forgotten. Dove and Stella also died in 1946.

Burrows also reviewed the Chagall show at the Museum of Modern Art. Marc Chagall had been living in New York since 1941 and “has been almost as vividly before the public here for several years as formerly he was in Paris.” The show was “one of those shows" that the Museum "does so well for all the artists it is keenly interested in—a really comprehensive one-man show” consisting of 62 oils as well as graphic works including some of his ballet designs. The exhibition was chronological revealing the early influences on the artist's work. It was the final sequence that revealed the Chagall “more frequently known to us.”

Several gallery shows were reviewed in the "Art Notes" column in Sunday's Herald Tribune. These included: