Art: By Invitation Only

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Word spread through Los Angeles fortnight ago that the city's Art Association was soon to open an ultra-select exhibit of International Art, to whose vernissage none but California's double thick social cream would be invited. One day last week the invited cream, 2,000 strong, flowed fatly to the intimate opening. They came from parties given by such art-lovers as Norma Shearer and Mrs. Randolph Huntington Miner and jostled, perspired, stared at each other instead of at the pictures. After the first day, the milk of the citizenry to the number of 30,000 saw the show's first week. In the two months the International Art exhibit is to run, the Association, now letting department stores distribute bids, expects 350,000 to attend.

To overcome Angeleno Art-resistance, Art Association head William May Garland* has planned such inducements as garden parties, teas, a Motion Picture Day, International Day, Junior League Day, Friday Morning Club Day. Last week the Art Association, quietly admitting that social and even business advantages accrue to its members, was gathering them in by leaps & bounds.

It was not only the swankest art show Los Angeles had ever had, but the biggest. Some of the numerous masterpieces on view were lent by Connoisseurs Marion Davies, Sam Katz and Edward G. Robinson. Gilt-edged treasures included: two Titians, three Tintorettos, two Rembrandts, four Reynolds, such old favorites as Millet's Man With a Hoe, such modern equivalents of September Morn as Duchamp's Nude Descending the Stairs. So great a glut of masterpieces overtaxed the capacity of the Art Association's gallery (an annex to the Town House on Wilshire Boulevard, originally built for San Francisco's Gumps). The pictures have to be shown in two shifts: Old Masters the first month, Modern Masters the second.