ON GOING TO ART EXHIBITIONS

How to Be Artistic Without Being Arty

ROBERT C. HOLLIDAY

THERE are two opposing views as to art exhibitions. There is one very vigorous attitude which holds that the pictures are the thing. This, indeed, is a perfectly ponderable theory. But it may be questioned whether in its ardor it does not go a little too far. For it affirms that mere people are a nuisance at art exhibitions, and distract one's attention from the peaceful contemplation of the works of art.

On the other hand there are those who contend that the people who attend our art exhibitions are immeasurably more interesting than the pictures.

Whatever school you may chance to belong to, there is nothing quite like an art exhibition. You feel a charged atmosphere at once on entering one. You walk softly, you speak in a low voice, and you endeavor to become as intelligent as possible.

IN considering the types that one meets at our art shows, one must begin with the very patrician sort of young man who is usually an escort to groups of handsome and expensive-looking young ladies. These fragrant, rustling groups, with the waxen, patrician young man in tow, stroll slowly about, catalogues unnoticed in hand, without pause skirting the picture-hung walls. They are very still, and they gaze upon the art that they pass with the look of a doe contemplating the meaning of the appearance of a man. Now our young escort gracefully, though as if careful not to make any noise, bends to one of the ladies; and, indicating by a solemn look one of the paintings, he whispers to her something concerning it. She silently nods; it is, evidently, quite as he says. (When an art exhibition is so undertakery a sort of thing you wouldn't think the public would come.)

At any rate, there is quite a turn-out today, moving beneath the ghostly glow of the shrouded skylight ceiling. Half the Avenue seems to be here. What a play it is, this highly urban throng! Let us sit here on this divan in the middle of the room. What a stately picture the canvases make in their golden frames along the symphonious, burlap walls! There in the corner is that wonderful thing, Manet's "Music Lesson," . . .

But see! What has come over our earnest group? Those who compose it are all quite changed. They look as happy as can be, all beaming with smiles, their backs to the neighboring walls. Friends, it seems, have greeted them. How they bubble on—all about the outside world! But goodness! What is now the matter? One of the newcomers has been struck by one of the pictures. In an arrested voice she says: "Oh, isn't that perfectly lovely!" At once the happy light fades from the faces of all. An awed hush falls upon them las they turn their heads in the direction of her view. "Charming!" one of the young men breathes, staring intently at the painting which has come upon them. That it is an awkward moment for everybody is quite obvious. But, happily, there is much rebound to youth. One of the young ladies shakes herself free from the pall upon her spirits; the mesmeric spell is broken; and presently all are chatting again, gaily oblivious to Art.

AND there is the proprietor of the gallery, just before the three Renoir pastels. Is there anything about art exhibitions that more enlists the imagination than the study of the "dealers" themselves? The gentlemen, who preside at art exhibitions fall, rather violently, into three, perhaps four, classes. You have, I dare say,. been repeatedly struck by the quaintly inappropriate character in the appearance of those of one of these classes. I mean, of course, those very horsey-looking men, with decidedly "hard" faces, loudly dressed, and dowered with hoarse - voices. They would seem to be bookmakers, exceedingly prosperous publicans, bunco-brokers, militant politicians—anything save of the Kingdom of Art. Are their polished Bill Sykes' exteriors but bizarre domiciles for lofty souls? I cannot tell. HERE and there, it is true, you find the aesthete in effect among dealers: the wired moustache, the spindle-legged voice, and the ardent spirit in discussing his wares with lady visitors. Our horsey type seems rather ponderous and phlegmatic in this matter. Then there is, too, a kind of art exhibition which is very close indeed to Art, a kind of spirited propaganda, in fact, which is presided over by those of hierarchical character, beings as to hair and cravat, swarthy complexion and mystic gesticulation, holy from the world and mocked by the profane.

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BUT, to my mind, the most satisfying sort of a host at an art exhibition is the dealer before us. Benign, frockcoated, hands clasped behind him, he stands, symbol of gentlemanly, merchantly dignity. Occasionally he rises upon his toes, and then sinks again to his heels obviously with satisfaction. But that which proclaims the perfect equity of his mind is this: his nice recognition of the nuances in human kind. You perceive that his bow to each of his guests that he recognizes at all is graduated according to the precise degree of that person's value to Art, that to some few, royal patrons presumably, being at an angle of forty-five degrees, while a common amateur of art is acknowledged by one of five. Where—to continue the paraphrase of a pleasant observation upon Mr. George Brummell—it is a mere question of recognizing the fact that a certain person dwells on the same planet with art "a slight relaxation of the features" is made to suffice.

So! This profound bow is plainly meant for a particular tribute to one who wears the richest purple. Lo! He advances with unclasped hands. Pleasure beams from his countenance. Without such as she Art, and dealers, and galleries, and the recorded beauty of the world wrould perforce pass away. This entertaining personage, who is the great flurry at art exhibitions, is of the novelist's dowager Duchess type. A short, obese, and jovial figure, or dried and withered but imperious distinction, as the case may be. There is much crackling of fine garments, a brilliant display of lorgnette, and this penetrating and comprehensive royal critical dictum: "Very interesting! So full of feeling, if you know what I mean."

THERE is no place on earth which is so well adapted to the exhibition of handsome, fashionable, or eccentric eye-glasses as an art exhibition. You observe there all that is newest and "classy" in glasses, and you are insistently invited to admiring study of the art of wearing queer glasses effectively, and of taking them off, letting them bound on their leash, doubling them up, opening them, and putting them on with a gesture.

The complementary type to the storied Duchess at art exhibitions is represented by yonder portly blood, in this case a replica of the late King Edward. The fruitful spectacle of art exhibitions, I think, presents nothing which gives one a more gratifying sense of their dignity and of the imperial character of Art than the presence there of these patently highly solvent, ruddy-jowled, admirablytailored, and impressively worldly-looking connoisseurs of painting to be seen scrutinizing the pictures at close range, in a near-sighted way, and rather grimly, as though somewhat skeptically appraising possibly dubious merchandise. These are the Patrons of Art, with a capital P.

HELLO, there's Mr. Chase! And that's a fortunate thing, too, as no sympathetic picture of a representative American art exhibition should omit William M. Chase. Whether or not we think of him as our premier painter, we should be inordinately proud of him. Undoubtedly he is a great artist. He has wrought himself in the grand manner. In person he delights the eye, and satisfies the imagination. With his inevitable top-hat, his heavy eye-glass cord, his military moustache and upward pointing beard, his pouter-pigeon carriage, his glowing spats and his gay .boutonniere,his aroma of distinction, and his ruddy consciousness of his prestige, he is our great tour-deforce as a figure in the artistic scene. He is here, naturally, now the target of popular interest, what the poets call "the cynosure of every eye."

THE practice of having artists shown at their own exhibitions is one too little cultivated. The Napoleonic brow and the Napoleonic forelock (famous in their circle) of George Luks, the torrential Luksean mirth; how would not their actual presence open the spiritual eyes of visiting schoolchildren to the humane qualities of the works of the Luksean genius! And why should we, who procure for our better perception of their works illuminating biographies of the Old Masters, not be permitted the intellectual stimulation of beholding the Ten American Painters seated—all of them— on a bench at their annual show? The subject of the artists themselves, however, brings us around to the line .between the two kinds of people having to do with art exhibitions: fine-looking people and funny-looking people.

Come; let us trot along. Artists themselves are, in a most pronounced degree, of both kinds. And a very singular thing is this: the funnier an artist's pictures are, the funnier-looking is the artist that made them. We'll stop in here, at The Advanced Gallery: Steichen, Stieglita, Max Webber, Walter Pach—you know the sort of thing.

At once it is apparent that there is nothing of the perfunctory here. Art is vital, Art is earnest. The atmosphere is tense. The young women are clad in a manner giving much freedom to the movement of their bodies. They walk with a stride. Their clothes are not of the mode of the Avenue, but they have—how shall I say? —Character.

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A COUPLE of anarchic-looking young men are viewing a painting in the manner that a painting, or perhaps this particular painting, is intended to be viewed; that is by squinting at it first over the tops of their hands and then through their fingers. They discuss it darkly, in low, passionate tones. They advance upon it; and, a few inches before it, one, as though holding a brush in his hand, sweeps eloquently with his arm, following the contour of the painted figure. Legerdemain kind of thing, painting. Sort of a black art, when you see into the science of it.

Well, I declare! Here's a friend of mine; there, talking with the Titian-haired lady in the exotic gown. Now, he is coming over to us.

He says he wants us to know Max Webber who is here, "one of the new crowd,'' he says. My friend is very keen on the new crowd: everything else he declares is "passe." Anyhow, it is a very valuable experience to talk with an exhibitor at an art exhibition.

There! I knew he would say something! "Nothing is shiney in Nature," says an exhibitor as though rather depressed, surveying a canvas in this respect unhappily divorced from the truth. "Nature," he adds with Brahminic finality, "is always dull."

A GREAT point about the study of art exhibitions (from the point of view of the humanist) is the affinity between pictures and people. On Madison Square, for instance, amid the art heritage of times past, what is it that at once strikes you? Why, that old paintings evidently are quite passe to the new crowd. At those exhibitions preliminary to the big auction sales of venerable masters, and of middle-aged masters, and of venerable and middle-aged not-quite-masters, there is a very attractive class of people, a class of funnylooking, fine-looking people; a class, that is, of rather shabby-looking people who look as if they might be very rich, of dull-looking people who look as if they might be very bright. They buy huge catalogues at a dollar or so apiece, which they consult continually. They arrive early and remain a long time.

The women of this audience frequently are rather dowdy, and shapen in very individual fashions. The men are elderly beings, now and then reminiscent of the period of Horace Greeley. They are very bald, or with untrimmed white (not gray) hair, and, sometimes, whiskers. They are usually very wrinkled as to trousers and overcoats.

AUGMENTING the throng are authentic .representatives of the world of fashion; some who appear to be students; ffie everpresent foreigners, including the frequently present Jap; a number of those enigmatic beings who continually take notes at art exhibitions; and a respectable quota of those ladies we always have with us at art exhibitions who in the presence of pictures find it necessary to say: "What tone quality!"

We have covered, in an elementary way, the most important audiences to be met with at our art shows—except one, the most human perhaps of all, that attending the semiannual Academies, on Fifty-seventh Street. There are several reasons why this exhibition is the most human of all. In the first place, the visitors are more like ordinary people. This may be because the pictures are more ordinary pictures. And a very human touch indeed is this: when you see the card "Sola," on a painting, it is fairly certain to be one of the most ordinary and hopelessly banal pictures of the lot.

I hope, in our stroll, that I have been able to give you a new insight into the fascination of the great world of Art.

That reminds one of museums. People who are called in the world to the curious pursuit of copying pictures in museums, for some reason or other which I have been unable as yet to work out, apparently always copy the most bourgeois pictures there. But museums, with their throngs of subdued holiday makers and their crowds of weary gaping aliens of the submerged order, comprise a separate study.