Art: Congress

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"The collector has had his eyes opened to a wealth of new talent. The museums also have responded . . . many purchases have been made of the work of young and hitherto unknown artists. The commercial gallery has benefited greatly by this newly developed public interest in art, and last but not least ordinary people are beginning to adorn their homes with original works of art instead of the old atrocities. . . . But the WPA artist who has served the public faithfully on this great Government art program has done so under the constant threat of dismissal. . . . The nation is desperately in need of legislation which will assure the permanency of this culture—legislation which will make American culture a permanent impulse in the nerve centre of its government. . . ."

Big event of the evening was to have been a message from Pablo Picasso by transatlantic telephone, amplified for the Carnegie Hall audience. But Picasso was ill in Switzerland, sent instead a cable proudly assuring them, "as director of the Prado Museum,* that the Democratic Government of the Spanish Republic has taken all the necessary measures to protect the artistic treasures of Spain during this cruel and unjust war."

If stirring anti-War sentiments were lacking in the Congress' open meeting, the exhibition of paintings by 138 Congress artists held concurrently on Fifth Avenue more than made up for it. Dedicated "to the peoples of Spain and China," this show was devoted almost exclusively to excoriations in paint of the contemporary conquerors and their technique. Most were better as expressions of hot feeling than as paintings. A few, by Max Weber, Nathanial Dirk, Arnold Blanch, Victor Candell, William Cropper, Mervin Jules, were excellent as both. None equaled a set of etchings by Picasso called Dreams and Lies of Franco, caricaturing El Caudillo as an inhuman, hairy nightmare. Favorite painting of a group of Amalgamated Clothing Workers who showed up at the opening was Two Generations, by Alexander Z. Kruse: the Kaiser as a kangaroo carrying a baby kangaroo earmarked with swastikas.