3. But Is It Art?

"Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justifica­tion in every line."
Joseph Conrad

The Many Aspects of Collecting

When you finally decide on a course of action, all the usual psychological blocks are bound to occur. Where shall I begin? Have I a right to make a choice, based on any sensible guides? Is a piece of ceramics a work of art? Is a piece of Tiffany glass? Is a rug designed by Matisse? Should I buy a painting ... a print ... a drawing?

There is no crystal-clear answer. As I have tried to indicate in foregoing chapters, you are dealing with your own personal reactions, as well as with certain rules and laws which are vague, at best.

One of the first muddles that needs clarifying is the sharp line often drawn to set off arts from crafts. I cannot see why these two should be so summarily opposed to each other. How can anybody decide at first blush that a man who has a sense of form, an eye for color, and a definite quest for the beautiful is producing only a vessel—if he spins a lovely pot on his wheel, applies glowing glazes, and fires his work to produce a handsome jar glowing with a jewel-like finish? Yet there are critics and collectors who would dismiss the man's work with a snobbish shrug that it is a fine example of the potter's craft . . . But as a work of art there is no room for it.

Why, I ask, this strange, if fine, distinction? Is it because the jar is intended for functional use and the higherbrows be­lieve such a pragmatic approach precludes it from joining the upper world of "fine arts"?

Let us go back almost 3,000 years to a Greek potter in his workshop as he formed a vessel for oil or wine. The term "vase" is now applied to most of the early Greek ceramic pieces; but their original purpose was functional . . . for everyday use. On such vases we see indications of an entirely new way of looking at things by the artist. He was no longer hidebound by the old style he had inherited from earlier Egyptian forms. Yet there was still the same regard for a sharp outline and exact symmetry. So vases from this period are not only valuable for their beauty of color, dimension, and proportion; they are esteemed for their obvious role in shaping a new course for the artist to follow as he broke the shackles of a hardened past. Yet it is clear that the objects as originally created had a humble purpose indeed. Such intent has not lessened their artistic validity or value.

Let us go even farther back into history. Museums which own objects from the Sumerian period display them proudly. In the University of Pennsylvania Museum there is a gold cup used by Queen Shu-Bad of Mesopotamia. It has a graceful form, a delicate gold color, and intricate decorative fluting. Obviously it was designed to provide the queen with a drink­ing vessel. Is it therefore less beautiful than it would have been had it lacked practical purpose? And the lovely amulets of lapis lazuli . . . the carved reliefs on the magnificent tombs . . . the alabaster tomb figures ... or those of shell and shale . . . should we not measure their particular aesthetic virtues by the response they evoke in us, rather than by the use for which they were originally intended?

The same will naturally apply to the pottery tomb figures of the Ming dynasty in China ... to T'ang glazed pottery ... to the heroic bronze cats and baboons of the Egyptians ... to the basketry fibers of the Belgian Congo with their stylized antelopes and warriors. Recently I saw a cover design for the bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, show­ing a drawing of an Incan Empire Poncho, made about 1500. It was an almost pure design . . . with cubes of black and white. At the top was a reverse triangle of deep brown. I have seen many paintings of the abstract school which could have hung side by side with this poncho reproduction. And many the painted cloth I have admired from the ancient Mayans which was sharply reminiscent of Paul Klee—or vice versa.

So I say: judge by the results and forget the notion that one can always erect a false fence to separate the beautiful from the functional. If the object is beautiful to you, then it is worthy of your collector's eye and instincts. This attitude can open up many new fields to you—for example, the folk arts. Take just two of these as examples: Fraktur painting and early American weather vanes.

In Fraktur paintings we are dealing with a lineal offspring of illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages in Germany— an art almost extinct by the time the Germans began their emigration to Pennsylvania. For a hundred years following the exodus, the illumination of manuscripts found a place in religious and social life among the German settlers. They were used as birth, baptismal, and marriage certificates; and many contain religious thoughts, commonly in verse form. The record, or factual data, is usually inscribed in the center, thus allowing generous room for decorations, which range far in design and color. Flowers, birds, animals are popular, as are such illustrations as a mermaid or a serpent. Colors are usually bright; occasionally gaudy. Birth and baptismal Frakturs are often found, but marriage certificates are quite a rarity.

The Pennsylvania Germans also continued the early German practice of producing bookplates for their hymnals, Bibles, catechisms, and schoolbooks. These are by no means scarce, for all their perfect calligraphy and brilliant colors.

Should you take a liking to Fraktur paintings the only true guide is, as with any other art form, quality. As you look for good examples you will undoubtedly also run across another early American folk art, this one carried here from England: paintings on velvet, which often are very attractive and dearly held by certain collectors. Samplers, however, are definitely on a craft level.

Early weather vanes, unless produced in a mold, are another item sought by collectors. They are, literally, examples of very early American sculpture, carved in wood or hammered out in metal. They have beautiful form and texture, when the intrinsic quality is present. An outstanding collection was assembled by Robert Carlen of Philadelphia for his client, I. Vogel. Although Mr. Vogel commissioned the assembling of these weather vanes as an advertisement for his Hand-macher-Vogel "Weathervane" suits, they were an important attraction in a large exhibition of folk art at the Philadelphia Museum.

You might want to start your collection by purchasing il­lustrated books. One of America's finest collections of paint­ings including a roomful of Chagalls, is owned by former attorney Louis Stern. Mr. Stern began his collecting avoca­tion with books . . . illustrated books and books on art. Today he is credited with the finest such collection in Amer­ica. Certainly you can get as great pleasure from looking at fine etchings in a book as on a wall. You might even do what so many collectors do who feel they must have their prints or paintings before them—look for books with prints and original illustrations which can be removed and framed. While this diminishes the value of the book itself, the important thing is to have the pleasure that means most to you.

A prominent book collector, who has been at the pursuit for almost 30 years, has seen his interest proliferate from an interest in illustrated books to a deep regard for many other objets d'art. He began his valuable collection through a regard for certain poets whose work was illustrated by Lovat Fraser. These "embellished" volumes of the verses of Robert Graves, Walter de la Mare, and James Stephens started him on the road to amassing one of America's foremost collections. For he soon developed a deeper interest in illustrated books, and purchased many volumes in the "English School," including work by Eric Gill, John Buckland Wright, Mark Severin, and John Piper. These acquisitions led to his securing the hand­some Brighton Aquatints by Piper. And so it went. Yet, even today, surrounded by treasures from many worlds and many places, he warns against the curse of snobbism.

"You know," he said to me, during the period when I was writing this book, "even objects that seem most ephemeral are worth collecting. As you know, I have quite a number of the embellished books by Lovat Fraser. Then one day I saw a poster he had done for a production of The Beggefs Opera in London. It was such an effective poster that I bought it. Today it is a very important item. Lovat was at one time a commercial designer, and one of his early jobs was a label for a small tobacconist. A very handsome label it was, and I saved one. Today it has a substantial value, in addition to being a striking example of Lovat's design sense.

"So, tell your readers to avoid the snob's attitude. I person­ally think that Peter Arno has a great style and definite in­dividuality. Someday his work will be considered prime ma­terial for the collector. Don't think this is far-fetched. You know, Daumier was for many, many years an unknown car­toonist for Chari-vari.

"Few people thought enough of his work to buy it. Today a Daumier painting, drawing, or sculpture draws a fancy price, indeed.

"Arthur Rackham is another instance. Many are the col­lectors looking for his efforts. I happen to have an advertise­ment he did about thirty years ago. For a soap! The drawing in the advertisement is genuine Rackham, so its humble be­ginning doesn't harm its current worth. My point in all this rambling is simply that you can start anywhere with collecting. It was many years before I found my most prized item ... a drawing by Thomas Eakins, done as a preliminary sketch for his famous The Gross Clinic. If I hadn't been in a curio shop tracking down some minor gem, I would never have come across the Eakins there. I've wandered a good distance from book collecting. I don't know what solid advice I could possibly pass on to the readers of your book. Except the names of a couple of books ... on books! They might be valuable if anybody should want to pursue the art of book collecting. I'd recommend any of the works by the Englishmen, Holbrook Jackson and John Carter ... with Amenities of Book Col­lecting by A. Edward Newton tossed in for good measure. By the way, your readers might also like suggestions as to the best places to find books worth collecting. I've come across them at auction sales, secondhand bookstores, rummage sales, and even junk shops. So tell them I said—'Happy Hunting!'"

These remarks contain some very sound thinking. You might take a specific hint from the comments on the poster by Lovat. For here is definitely an easy and inexpensive way to mesh your collecting gears.

Look for posters by well-known artists. You may have to buy some of these if the artist has already gained a measure of recognition. But very often you will be able to turn up posters which cost you nothing, or, at most, a few dollars.

In Paris about eight years ago, I was taken by this notion and had quite a bit of success. I went from art gallery to art gallery and looked for artists' posters, extolling shows of their own works. Since most artists cannot afford expensive printing and publicity for their exhibits, I found a large number of posters available. There was a handsome lithograph by Fernand Leger which I obtained. There was a linoleum block, two-color an­nouncement by Paul Elsas, which I liked so much that later I went back to the gallery and bought an oil painting by this artist. There was a beautiful abstract lithograph by Fahv il Nisa Zeid, and many others. I think that I got them all with­out paying a penny.

Since I had a good start on posters, I later bought a handsome Picasso poster which advertised a display of perfumes, flowers, and pottery at Vallauris. These posters are done every year by Picasso, and I have seen quite a number of them in collections, particularly print collections. This is natural, since Picasso posters are lithographed. Many of them, incidentally, are signed, but even those lacking the artist's signature have a value that tends to increase each year. My other poster is a beautiful lithographed Matisse, which was produced to ad­vertise the Mourlot Centenary at The Galerie K16ber, in Paris. I still have a keen interest in posters for my own collection. The beauty and intrinsic worth of these posters by out­standing artists reinforces, I believe, my point of view that art for art's sake is not necessarily a bar to art for more obvious motives. If Picasso does an original lithograph to extol a sale at Vallauris, is it necessarily of secondary importance to a lithograph done because a purely creative mood urged him on? I doubt this. As you begin putting together your own collec­tion, look at objects for the pleasure and the emotion they summon up in you. You will be more apt to turn up a treasure this way than if you impugn mean motives to articles of beauty because of their original purpose. Do not forget that Fragonard once painted fans, that Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard were foremost poster artists; and that, in our own day, many easel painters and printmakers once helped meet the rent of atelier and apartment with work in this field—notably Dong Kingman, Hans Erni, and McKnight Kauffer, who are now con­sidered definitely worthy of a collector's fullest consideration.

Reproductions (Some Pros and Cons)

There has been a sharp division of opinion among the knowledgeable about reproductions. The schism results from possible snobbishness toward items which are merely duplicates of original pieces of art. Reproductions are very common, to be sure, and extremely inexpensive. They are made the same way your magazines are printed ... on printing presses, using copper engravings ... or via the offset method, a direct descendant of lithography.

It seems to me that for the first experimenting with hanging pictures in your home, reproductions can be quite helpful. The important thing to remember is that they cannot possibly grow in worth. But they provide a fine starting point, accus­toming you to pictures on your walls or to sculpture in your rooms. If you get your reproductions from art magazines and similar sources, make large portfolios for them and keep them at hand ... to study and think about after a trip to a museum or gallery. Smaller reproductions you might buy in a framing shop or bookstore need not be framed if you have portfolios for storing them.

Perhaps you cannot quite make up your mind about abstract painting. It may seem to present distortion rather than beauty —a reaction common to many who see it the first time. Would it not be wise, then, to get yourself some reproductions of Kandinsky, Miro, and other non-objective painters, and live with them as you read about the artists who did them . . . what they try to express in these pictures . . . and the rela­tion of such a school of painting to the development of art? Perhaps you will grow to be quite a partisan of the non-repre­sentational school!

Drawings, prints, water colors lose far less of the original meaning and quality in reproduction than do oil paintings. The camera—first stage in producing a reproduction—can pho­tograph only what it sees on the surface. The power of a splendid oil painting is dependent to a large degree on what is known as underpainting—the pigments applied as initial steps in building a final image. This dimension is overlooked entirely by the lens.

A museum director from Texas is quite an exponent of reproductions. But he says one must be careful in buying them to look for color changes. Splendid advice for those who have an unlimited travel budget—and time—for making necessary comparisons in the world's museums! In fact, it reminds me of an amusing suggestion I once found in a leading art journal on advice to the new collector: "Start," said the article, "with a small Renoir or two"! So, while it might indeed sound like preposterous advice on first hearing it, you can very easily buy reproductions only of the paintings you have seen. Your visits to museums should very soon be frequent enough to give you a wide choice of reproductions.

But this gentleman has found reproductions of great benefit to the novitiate, as shown in his story about a large framed copy of El Greco's View of Toledo. A substantial businessman came to visit him one night and was deeply affected by the exciting painting, albeit it was but a duplicate. He asked if he might take it home for a few days. The owner assented.

Several weeks later the man called and invited his benefactor to dinner. What a surprise greeted the museum man. The bor­rower had hung the Toledoin the center of his living room and had changed everything else to harmonize with the pic­ture. Rug. Walls. Furniture. This was the outset of a career in collecting that resulted in an admirable group of paintings and prints, with obvious future advantages for the museum whose director had started it all. Notice an important situation here, one that I will discuss more fully later on. The business­man did not pick a painting to match his decor. He revised the room to suit the picture.

In sculpture I find even less reason for looking down one's nose at reproductions. In a certain sense, despite the wholesale ratio at which they may be turned out, reproductions in sculp­ture are not too far removed from castings done for the sculp­tor in a foundry, particularly if cast stone is used. Since me­chanical stages are always used in producing the original work, with other hands and minds than the sculptor's, reproductions, too, can give us much of the feeling of the initial effort. This is obviously true about the form and texture of the piece. In many cases, such as plaster casts, the patina is added by chem­ical means, exactly as is done in making reproductions. I am opposed, and totally, to scaled-down reproductions in sculp­ture. These defeat the original intention of the artist and lose their character completely, taking on a toylike air. But when you find reproductions of the exact size, much pleasure and knowledge can be taken from them.

When you have gone from reproductions to your next stage, you can be very helpful to a local school or organization by turning over your reproductions to them. As I have said before, this is the one category of art purchase which will not take on added value.

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