Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1909 (Heft 28))

THE ART “PUFFER”

IN art criticism, this is the age of the “puffer,” the petty puffer, the
authoritative puffer, the smiling puffer, the knavish puffer, the gen-
tleman puffer.
If this is not believed read most of the stuff that passes for art
criticism in New York. Great is the god Vogue! Mightier is the
god Dollar.
Today, art criticism is the art of the stool-pigeon, the go-between between
the advertising staff of many of the great metropolitan dailies and the art deal-
ers, who pay, pay, pay.
Is the Art Critic honest ? Bless you, yes! as honest as your average hire-
ling, as loyal as a parasite on the body of a three-hundred pound newspaper
proprietor, as honorable as a puppet—this truepenny of the Avenue, this
counting-room hanger-on. For the age of the Hold-up man has gone forever,
and it is a pity. There was something elemental and barbaric about the great,
burly, unmasked fellow to whom you “forked over” for a column notice in a
paper when you gave an exhibition.
But today we have to deal with his eviscerated and castrated descendant,
Sir Puff, who kills by his silence and immortalizes the Vogue and fattens the
dugs of the cow that he milks.
You have got to be in the ring to get a notice, and, for God’s sake, adver-
tise!

The Puffer is not on the level with the professional blackmailer because the
blackmailer follows his profession with the penitentiary staring him in the
face if he fails. The Puffer ignores on orders; and, being a skilled serving-man,
his ignorance of certain places where originality struggles for breathing
place rises to genius.
No. The ferret-eyed Art Puffer (which even the counter-boy in the
business office of the Great Newspaper calls Art Critic with an ironic gulp and
a green twinkle) takes no chances. Bribed ? Not he! He knows a trick worth
two of that. He slips by certain places on the other side of the street. He is
Old Golightly. His nose can smell a penny under a mattress. His vision is
oiled. He knows the art of where not to be seen. His sense of direction
away from certain places is as unerring as a felon’s. His brain is the organ
with which his pocket thinks.
Nearly everybody nowadays aspires to be a Puffer. It is the latest black-
mailers’ Utopia. It yields both swag and reputation.
The Puffer is a hawk—he knows where to pounce.
The Puffer is carnivorous—but he knows what not to touch.
The Puffer is a fox—he has the sly air of never seeming to be going any-
wheres in particular.
The Puffer is a mouse—he never moves while you are looking.
His cosmos is the Public Eye.
How chagrined he looks when a penny rolls into the cesspool! This paid

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