International studio (82.1925)

inceRHAUonAL

THE EDITOR'S FORECAST

rhe National Academy of Design celebrates its
centennial this year with a traveling exhibition.
John Walker Harrington has written of the Exhibi-
tion and the Academy's often turbulent history for the
next issue. He says, in part:

"Out of the fullness of time comes our National
Academy of Design to show her treasures in retrospect as
a Centennial Exposition and to account to all the world
for her century of artistic stewardship. The oldest asso-
ciation of artists in the United States—who dares to call
her venerable? Year in and year out she has renewed her
strength like the eagle, listened to the fledglings who have
cried out against her, smiled tolerantly, and taken many
an insurgent brood back to her spreading wings.

"Her own youth was a hot and rebellious one given to
flouting Dame Tradition and shouting cries of new freedom
from high mountain tops, and still the old spirit stirs
within her. By publicly celebrating her centennial, first
in the national capital and later in New York City, she
challenges us to look at her yesterdays of revolt against
the established order, and to recall an eventful and fruitful
past. . . .

"Futurists have raged and cubists imagined square
things but the ancient and honorable Academy has been
a bureau of standards all these years. She has been adding
bright color here and a touch of fancy there, and has all
the time insisted on the laws of composition, and held it to
be her inalienable right to teach young persons to draw
and to know symmetry and anatomy before they went
seeking after strange gods."

Both by geography and temperament Paris is the
ideal exposition city. In no other great city is to be found
the combination of long vistas and beautiful sites, historic
association and record of achievement. The Parisians
enter into the spirit of a great show and leave nothing
undone to make it a success. The present Exposition of
Decorative Art, to which every country in the world was
invited to send its most original productions, rivals the
triumph of 1900 in interest. The interest, however, is
primarily French. One of the conditions of the Exposition
was that all exhibits should be absolutely original; each
must show no trace of tradition. Naturally, therefore, the
greater part of the display is French.

Twenty-six countries are, however, represented. Italy,
England and Austria seem, according to Helen Appleton
Read who has written of the Exposition for International
Studio, to have suffered at the hands of their committees
of selection. France, on the other hand, is represented by
the nation's output, good, bad and indifferent. "The
Exposition," writes Mrs. Read, "marks the coming of age
of a new decor. It differs from any exposition of the past,
which have come about with clockwork regularity to
celebrate a nation's progress in art and industry—a
Wembley, a Pan-American or a San Franciscan—in that
it is a setting up of new standards, not a perfecting or
adapting of the old. It is a definite break with the past."

The modern tendencies indicated by the various
exhibits form the theme of Mrs. Read's article, which will
appear in the next issue.

"Sport," writes Richard Elmore for the November
issue, "is the common denominator of American life. It

links in its great equation scholar and stoker; millionaires
and human millions; bootblacks and bibliophiles. Its
steel-thewed heroes and its rangy-framed heroines are
worshipped alike in office and elevator car; in parlor and
in kitchen. All the arts are bidden to glorify its favorites
of diamond, ring and gridiron and to exalt its triumphs of
muscle over matter. . . .

"Modern sculpture in responding to the call has a
problem of presentation far more difficult than that with
which classic antiquity had to cope."

How this problem has been worked out and the many
notably successful solutions form the subjects of the
article and illustrations. In addition to many reproduc-
tions of photographs of sculptures pertaining to sport, the
cover of the November issue will be a color reproduction
of "The Tackle," a bronze of two football players by
John Frew.

Few men write with the sympathy and understanding
of artists which characterize the biographical sketches by
F. Newlin Price. Perhaps the reason is that few men know
them so well. Mr. Price adds to a rare appreciation of a
painter's work, of the thing he is trying to do, a wide
acquaintance among American artists. Readers of Inter-
national Studio will remember with pleasure the articles
by him which we have been privileged to print from time
to time, and will welcome the announcement that another
of his intimate portraits is to appear in the next number.
The subject this time is Jonas Lie, a figure whose life and
work, associations and background offer an unusual oppor-
tunity for the biographer. Mr. Price's article will be illus-
trated by two reproductions in color of paintings by Jonas
Lie as well as by several half-tones.

It seems hardly credible that any field of American art
should have been neglected by magazine and newspaper
writers, yet the paintings in our churches and other pictures
devoted to religious subjects have been given little men-
tion. Although in the early years of American art there
was but little painting of this kind and most of that done
in a more or less classic manner, of late years there has
been an increasing interest in religious themes among our
artists. International Studio will publish, in the next
number, an article by Joan Anderson in which this field
of artistic endeavor, its history and contemporary tenden-
cies, will be discussed.

Of the less than forty accepted Vermeers (paintings
by Jan van der Meer of Delft) twelve or thirteen, about
one-third of the total, are to be found in America today.
This is but one of the many instances of the migration of
the old masters to these shores, but it is a singularly
important one. Both from a purely, esthetic standpoint
and from a more commercial appraisal of the value of
Vermeer's paintings, he has become one of the great in art.
For the next number David Lloyd has written an account
of Vermeer as both the painter of Delft and the prized old
master of the collector.

"Golden Hour" by Willard L. Metcalf is reproduced
on the cover of this number by courtesy of the Milch
Galleries.

eighty-four

October 1925