THE NEWEST WORK OF SIX PAINTERS

Arthur B. Davies in a Group that Produces an Harmonious Exhibition

FREDERICK JAMES GREGG

THE exhibition of works in oil, water color and pastel, by Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn, Jules Pascin, Charles Sheeler, and Max Weber, selected by Mr. Montross, and shown at his gallery, will be remembered—if it is safe to make predictions—as one of the remarkable shows of a very remarkable winter. The abiding impression, carried away by those with seeing eyes and understanding minds, will be that it hung together perfectly, and that it was a proof of the theory that the only way to give an exhibition, or to form a collection of works of art, is to make one man responsible, and make him take the consequences.

IT does not seem a long time since Charles Fitz Gerald, one of the ablest art critics New York has known, was fighting the battle of Arthur Davies. The dunces, then so hard to convince, have taken to decent silence, apparently reconciled to the fact that the painter, like the poet, must be left to his own devices. If he wants to find out many inventions, let him go ahead. If he puzzles his public, so much the better, for it shows that he recognizes no such idea as finality, in method or manner. In his case the things that have been are not the things that shall be, and there is something new under the sun.

Davies has reached the point where people, or at least some people, want to classify and place him: The card indexing of genius we have learned from the Germans. But, in spite of any linking of his name with the names of Botticelli and Blake, the fact remains that his feet are planted firmly, in time and space, in the present—our present. He is as much a part of "now", as Shelley was of his "now". Mr. Davies is the youngest of our mature artists. His is the energy of youth. You can never tell what he will do next.

Walt Kuhn enjoys the proud and enviable distinction of being, among the younger set, the most unpopular artist in America. But it has not spoiled his beautiful disposition. He has a perfectly awful appetite for abuse. The one thing that he seems afraid of is praise from critical young ladies of both sexes. He would rather get up an exhibition for a new man than show his own work. He likes to throw a pot of paint in the face of the public. Not once, since he organized the first Independent Exhibition in New York, and found himself, has he stooped to conciliate either the cultured or the vulgar.

Kuhn is one of our few virile painters. That, in itself, is an offence to many. He does not appeal to the orthodox, with their accepted definitions of "beauty". There are those, who buy his work, who would shrink in horror from having him paint their portraits. His motto is "without compromise" Whatever subject he tackles. Yet it is impossible to imagine a man with a greater joy in life. His "Tragic Comedians" would have caught George Meredith. It would have made a good illustration for the essay on "Comedy", for it contains, incidentally of course, a summary suggestion of the everlasting warfare of the sexes that not even the pacifists can hope to end.

THE Bulgarian, Jules Pascin, brought first to the attention of New York and America by the man who organized the now consecrated International Exhibition of 1913, is one of the greatest of living draughtsmen. He makes the wits of our exhibitions look like the tellers of stale stories. Rabelasian, Hogarthian, what you will, his water colors, in addition to their charm, are sharp characterizations of the life of Paris, New York, or the West Indies, and are always a storm center around which whirl nice people protesting yet interested.

The five pictures by Charles Sheeler are all typical. One of them, an austere drawing of a house, has a mystery to it that is baffling and disquieting. You remember it vividly you know not why.

Max Weber is, what every man of high talent must be, an egoist. Yet he is without limit as an experimentalist. His "Woman on Rocks", in the Montross Exhibition would, in itself, be sufficient to make a high reputation, there is such beauty of color in it. But, in the opinion of some, it is in his still life paintings with their exquisite quality that this artist is at his best. At least these are what many most wish to own.