10. New Frontiers

"No Time for Sargents!"
From a Gimbel’s Advertisement
Selling the Hearst Collection

The following story is taken from a recent issue of The Ital­ian Scene published under the supervision of the Italian Em­bassy:

"An American roared into the village of Castelnuovo sul Volturno in the Molise mountains recently and bought a painted canvas from a peasant. Unasked, he paid a thousand dollars for it, leaving the village steeped in awe. The peasant had received the canvas years ago in payment for a cheese and a bag of beans he had presented to the hermit up on the mountain.

"The hermit was Charles Moulin, a noted but long-forgot­ten French impressionist who, for over 40 years, lived in a stone hut he had built on the Mainarde hills. Last March, aged 95, Hermit Moulin died in the Isernia hospital to which he had finally been persuaded to descend.

"Moulin was already a Prix de Rome student in the Italian capital in the early 'Nineties, and he never left Italy for long after that. For years he lived and worked at Anticoli Corrado, the little hill town south of Rome still famous for the pul­chritude of its girls, whence came all the famous models (and wives) of the 19th-century painters. But Moulin did not fall for the girls he painted. After World War I, he retired into the rocky fastnesses of the Abruzzo.

"The Abruzzo is a land of hermits. It was on the Morrone mountain that, in the year 1294, the cardinals of Rome climbed to announce to another hermit, Pietro, that they had elected him Pope of all Christendom. Pope Celestino V stood it for just one year and then returned to his mountain.

"Moulin did not dress in tunic and rope like most of the Abruzzo hermits. But his great beard took the place of the habit. He rarely came down to the village to pick up a few colors and some canvas. He painted for his joy, and gave his canvases to those who brought him food. Even at the hos­pital, though near death, Moulin began a picture of St. Lucia. It remained unfinished.

"Now, at the news of the price which only one Moulin canvas had fetched, the mountain folk are trying to figure how much wealth the old painter has left scattered in the huts and villages around Castelnuovo. They would do well to re­member that it was precisely to escape the bargaining of the marts of man that Moulin withdrew for half a century to depict the seasons, the mountains and the clouds for free. If they try to sell his canvases they will certainly see money. But if they keep them to gaze on, they may even—in Dante's words—see God through art. (UArte, a Dio quasi nipote.)"

I have mentioned several times that your chances of dis­covering an old master in some forlorn corner of an antique shop may not be too good, despite news reports showing that these things do happen. The facts about the hermit Moulin gives strength to the possibility that they can happen with sur­prising impact. Any peasant with a Moulin painting in his possession has the key to unexpected riches. There is no rea­son why you won't one day be the lucky person favored by the mathematical odds governing such windfalls. If you keep eyes alert and your "A.Q." perking, you may be the one to see a Watteau amid the dust and debris at the Flea Market . . . rivaling that recent treasure which appeared in a shop at Reading, England. Even more within the realm of happy possibility is your opportunity of finding the still-unheralded works of a painter who has virtuosity and genius but has somehow failed to catch the attention of dealer, museum, and public.

During the past five years, Polish-born Paul Kremegne has received a lot of attention. He is 70 years old . . . has a highly personal style and obvious quality in his canvases. His first one-man show in America was held at the Coleman Gallery, Philadelphia, in 1958. Since that time, his paintings have doubled in value. The abiding consideration to be drawn from these comments is that many avenues are still open to new frontiers—that there is still plenty of gold in those figura­tive, and literal, mountains.

It isn't too long since the now famous Mexican school first came to the attention of collectors. The curator of a Texas museum, whose comments on reproductions I have already conveyed to you, told me about a friend in Brookline, Massa­chusetts, who made a trip to Mexico about 30 years ago. There he saw the then unrecognized paintings of Orozco, Siquieros, and Tamayo. Struck by the directness, vivid color, and almost primitive quality of the works, he began to collect them at that early stage. In the intervening years, all three painters have become world renowned and the Brookline gentleman is in happy possession of a valuable collection.

You must remember that he was a man who had not only taste and foresight, but who owned the courage of his convic­tions. The painters were new; the work was different; and they might never have found acceptance. He liked them. They struck a spark on his "A.Q." He had the soundest of reasons for buying.

Dr. Albert Barnes, who was as well known for his formi­dable disposition as for the Barnes Foundation, had the same acumen and foresight when he visited Paris over a generation ago. For many years he found only an icy reception as he praised the Impressionist paintings he bought in fantastic quantities. Today his museum in Merion, Pa., houses hundreds of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist canvases and is valued in the many millions of dollars.

This is the great thrill of collecting—to ferret out the work that will one day achieve great recognition. You run a risk, of course, when you buy the work of an unknown; but, as I have tried so carefully to point out, if you like the work, if it sat­isfies your "A.Q.," then you should take the gamble. For, even if it never gains in the financial sense, it will always give you a highly satisfactory return in the pleasure and emotional in­terest it provides.

Since we are on a peripatetic "kick," let's follow up the idea of finding new "schools" or movements in various parts of the world. There's a large group of painters at Port-au-Prince in Haiti. They are a flourishing school. Do pay close attention to the artists of Haiti and the South American nations if you have the good fortune to travel below the bor­der. Their work is outstanding in many respects and has not yet found its richest market. I have always avoided primi­tives myself—with one notable exception. I have felt that paint­ers of the caliber of Grandma Moses are highly decorative, but lack the real drive and intensity of feeling that make me respond to a painting or sculpture. (I am not talking here about the primitive arts of Africa, early America, or the South Pacific.)

What usually happens with the home-grown primitives is that they soon become as sophisticated as the critics, gallery owners, and collectors with whom they inevitably associate. Their work then loses the essential ingenuousness which made it valuable in the first place.

Edward Hicks, one of the most important of the Ameri­can Primitive painters, was not tempted by such allurements; and he managed to hold his personal quality of simplicity and directness throughout his entire career.

About 1942 an uneducated, untrained Negro sprang into sudden prominence with some extremely effective paintings of great simplicity and depth. This was Horace Pippin. Robert Carlen, who was Pippin's proponent at the time, advised me to purchase one of these unself-conscious paintings. I de­murred. I must say that today I have no regrets aesthetically, but apparently I made a financial mistake. Pippin was col­lected by many of America's foremost owners of important paintings, including Dr. Barnes. I remember seeing a Pippin in the Santa Monica home of Albert Lewin, the motion-picture director. Although I could not claim ownership of a Pippin, we did share one of the delights of a collector's life —talking about a painter and our common experiences in rela­tion to him and his work.

Recently Mr. Carlen brought me a painting by a 67-year-old upstate New Yorker, Arthur Davies. Although Mr. Davies' painting lacked some of the highly wrought emotional feeling one found in Pippin, there was something so pleasant about its composition, its color, and its over-all—dangerous word!— charm, that I decided to buy one of these Primitives for my own collection. I hate to admit it, but perhaps I was also guided by the proven Carlen clairvoyance in the matter of the rise and fall of art values. Take a look at this painting of mine in the illustrative portion of this book. Davies is still to be had at a modest figure.

Of course, you know about the great French Primitive— Rousseau-Le Douanier. If you come upon another Primitive of this quality, then I ask that you toss all my above-men­tioned reservations overboard and buy him at once. For Rousseau, despite his lack of training, was certainly a natural born painter with a wonderful eye for color and a magnifi­cent sense of composition.

I have gone along many paths in order to find paintings that I like and could afford. Strangely enough, one of the richest sources for my discoveries has been quite a public one. I am speaking of such magazines as Time, Life, Look, and—fancy finding good art here—Interiors Magazine. Many years ago, while glancing through a copy of Interiors, I came upon a two-page story about a sculptor who was just coming into his own in Rome—Pericle Fazzini. Photographs of his work im­pressed me greatly, as did the comments on his background and his apprenticeship as a wood carver. I wrote to him and began a pleasant friendship via the mails. The following year, while I was on my way to Europe, I picked up a copy of Time magazine. Lo and behold 1 There was a lengthy story on Fazzini and his work (and other stories about him appeared about the same time in Life and Look).

On the afternoon of my first day in Rome, I walked over to see Pericle Fazzini at 51 A Via Margutta. After a difficult chat—he spoke only Italian, I spoke only English and French —Fazzini gave me a handsome drawing which he inscribed as follows:

A Solomon con affato
P. Fazzini
Roma, 1950

I took the drawing back to the hotel and fastened it to the wall with cellophane tape. I kept looking at it for three days and then went back to Fazzini's studio, where I bought a lovely figure of a dancer. Since that time Fazzini has won several prizes at the Venice Biennale and other important exhibitions. His work is in some of the world's leading collections, includ­ing that of the Vatican. I can thank Interiors and Time for this discovery.

So I have kept these two magazines firmly in mind as I continue in my collecting ways. Not too long after the Fazzini article, I read about a Polish painter who had escaped the Soviet army, settled in London, and whose first one-man show in London had caused quite a controversy. I wrote to a friend of mine, who was representing Variety in Europe at the time, and asked her to take a look at the work of this new painter, Stefan Knapp. She went over to his studio and was so impressed that she purchased a painting for me. She ex­plained in a letter that she realized how dangerous it was to ask me to buy a painting sight unseen, but, since I had ex­pressed interest and since the cost was so small, it seemed a wise move. I have yet to see that painting; it was hung up in customs and never reached me. But Stefan Knapp did. He wrote a long letter, apologized for the mishap, and told me he had given up painting. Enamel on bronze had become his new and exciting medium. He added that he was having an exhibit at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York and hoped I would be able to attend. I did more than that. I dispatched my sister-in-law, who was in London at the time, to Mr. Knapp's workshop, and she purchased a small, beautiful enamel, which is reproduced in the color section of this book.

Mr. Knapp later created a brilliant mural for Joseph Sea­gram. On a recent visit to see the collection of Louis Stern, I was delighted to find a Stefan Knapp, as well as a Fazzini, in his collection—one of the finest in America, if not in the world.

I did not forego the magazines. Early in 1957 I was read­ing through an art magazine published in Bombay, India, and there found a photograph of a lovely painting by a gen­tleman named H. M. Kulkurnis, working in New Delhi. Since I had had such good fortune with my collection through cor­respondence, I wrote to Mr. Kulkurnis and told him I would like him to send me the painting I saw in Marg magazine.

After the detailed business of drafts and customs and freight forwarders, the painting arrived. My wife and I unwrapped it with great expectations. We were grievously disappointed. Somehow the color and entire feeling I had seen in the maga­zine were not present in this original. I wrote to Kulkurnis at once and told him that I was returning the painting, and that he could make any disposition he wanted of the matter. I gave him the choice of sending me a few drawings or giving back the full purchase price.

I did not hear from him for about six months. Then I received a letter saying that there was a group of his paintings on display at the Krasner Gallery in New York, and that I could have my choice of them. I went to New York a week later and found an extremely lovely oil which now hangs in the center of my collection. In the recent International Art Show which was sent around the world, Mr. Kulkurnis was represented by a large, exciting painting which won wide acclaim. Because Mr. Kulkurnis spread the word in India about my interest in his work, I have had very pleasant visits from other Indian artists on their travels through America. It was naturally a delight to talk with these people about their own work and the general trends in painting that were taking place in India, as well as throughout the rest of the world.

Of course, one often comes a cropper in these adventures along new frontiers. In the spring of 1960, a friend and I were "gallery crawling" on the Rue de Seine in Paris. We hoped to come upon the work of some relatively unknown painter we could proudly carry back with us to America and thereby score something of a coup.

As we walked from gallery to gallery, the only thing we discovered was disappointment. Apparently the painters of Paris were in an unproductive state. But, just as I had finished dodging a Renault in the narrow bricked street, my eye caught a brilliant blaze of color through the open doorway of a gallery.

Dashing across the street, my coat flapping in the wind, I shouted, "Steve, I've found it! Follow me!" I crossed a diag­onal line to the gallery and ran in as breathless with ex­pectation, as from the exertions of my run across the Rue de Seine.

The paintings were indeed brilliant. The color blazed; the ideas bristled; the composition staggered.

And whose exposition was it, if you please? The Gallerie Europe had collected a magnificent display of—Picasso!

This was one time that I did not bring any pictures home with me from Paris. I didn't have the heart to go on after my brilliant "discovery." But of one thing I am completely convinced—there are, and always will be, new schools of paint­ers springing up all over the world. I had hoped that by now Israel would have given us a few men and women who had found enough to say about their feelings in their new world and who possessed the techniques to say them. But, so far, what I have seen of the work of the Israeli painters has been moderately disappointing. There is certainly some promise in a painter named Gross, despite derivation from Franz Kline, and in Shaar and Bezem.

A whole new school of painters has grown up in Spain, and was recently presented in a group show at the Museum of Mod­ern Art. The critical acclaim was quite high, but I did not find these paintings to my own particular tastes. They were a little too much on the violent side—resorting to such devices as the actual tearing of gaping holes in the canvases. I know that the Spanish people have encountered many difficulties in the past 20 years, and I can understand the overwrought feelings of Spain's artists. Perhaps the efforts of these painters will one day be very valuable. I discount them personally because in me they awaken no aesthetic response.

Several years ago my young friends, Marian and Donald Kahn found a painter in Taorinolivas who showed great prom­ise. They arranged an exhibit for him in their small commu­nity art center at Wallingford. He sold several paintings and is now represented by the Bertha Schaefer Gallery—his name: Manolo Barbadello. Moral: discoveries abound!

As you know, many new republics are being born on the vast continent of Africa. I have not seen any contemporary work from these countries; but, since this is the land that produced Benin sculpture and the rare carvings of masks and figures used in magic rites, one would naturally expect that some of the same skill and technique flows in the blood of the artists who live there now. I should certainly like to see what these men and women will do once they turn their interest from oil derricks and concrete mixers to the artistic side of life.

As you look for new frontiers it may be a good idea to think about collections in specialized areas. I have already men­tioned the Fraktur paintings of the Pennsylvania Germans, the early American weather vanes, the paintings on velvet, and the early Primitives which turn up at auction sales and in antique shops. These require a certain degree of knowledge, but they are not so difficult a study nor as hard to find as the paintings of the great masters from Giotto to George Braque. The motion-picture actor, John Wayne, has an outstanding collection of early American art dealing with the West, in­cluding art of American Indians of the Southwest. The sand paintings of the Hopi Indians are certainly one of the great achievements in art among relatively unsophisticated peoples.

It has been noted that the art magazines themselves are an excellent place for finding news about painters and develop­ments in the art world. I would suggest that you pay close attention to Art News. You will find constant reviews of ex­hibits throughout the United States, and often of those held in other parts of the world. There are also announcements about leading auction sales which point out the more im­portant items, critiques, reviews, exhibits, with prices often quoted. Art News also has listings of new painters, with both photographs and appraisals of their efforts. Let the mature tastes and judgment of such men as Tom Hess, who edits Art News, and the staffs of this and other leading magazines, such as The Arts, and Art in Focus, guide you at least as far as the places where you should look. Naturally, what you do after you get to the shows is a matter to be determined by your own "A.Q.," your own judgment, and your own pocketbook.

There are a few precautions that I would like you to keep in mind as you start putting a little bit of your money where your eyes are. Remember that very often an artist will get a big "push" by a dealer or a group of dealers. It will seem to you that wherever you go you see the work of this particular creator. This is the time to make sure that your "A.Q." is functioning on all cylinders. Many are the crazes, and large is the overpromotion that have brought certain painters to a high mention and corresponding prices. Then suddenly the "fad" is ended and those who bought for profit only, without regard to their inner response, find they hold only scraps of paper and canvas as far as any real value is concerned. Not too long ago there was a great flourish of excitement when decorators began the trend to the "Italian Feeling." A certain Italian, whose works had lain long forgotten, was suddenly once again in the buying whirl. When the pendulum swung away from the Italian influence, the value of such paintings diminished in direct relation to the popularity of the dec­orating mode. It is my opinion that Grandma Moses, whom I mentioned as a nonauthentic Primitive, is the direct result of such intensive sales activity and publicity on the part of an astute art dealer.

Berenice Fitzgibbons, who wrote the headline at the begin­ning of this chapter, was advertising director of Gimbel's at the time the store gave Grandma her first exhibit. She says that when the little old lady arrived with her work, she brought several dozen jars of preserves to sell at 79^ each; the paintings were set at $25. Miss Fitzgibbons regrets that she bought only the jam!

Simply remember that dealers can create a name. If you do buy one of the "Galateas," treat it as you would an invest­ment and not a work of art. Keep your eye on the "market" and sell at the proper moment.

Every year since 1952 Vogue has published in its Decem­ber issue an article titled "More Art Than Money." Each of these articles has listed bargains available in various New York galleries. The "bargains" in these pages have included a magnificent two-volume set of La Fontaine with a hundred etchings by Marc Chagall; a brick from the Han dynasty which was available for $350 and showed a symbolic bas-relief of a dragon; a lovely Ben Nicholson drawing for only $120; a pastel by Maillol for $150; Baroda African sculpture; Greek horses in terra cotta; washes, oils, and water colors by various distinguished artists. I tried in vain to buy any of the drawings that were illustrated and priced in the last two "More Art Than Money" Vogue issues. I went a-gunning for some good buys at the galleries mentioned, but I got there a bit too late. Everything I wanted was gone. This year I am going to camp on Vogue's steps—buy the first issue of Decem­ber Vogue off the press and hotfoot it around for the bargains!

Recently Holidaymagazine ran a similar feature: "Holiday's Notebook of Bargain Art Collecting." I hope Holiday's reader-hunters had better luck than I.

Before I wander away from the "New Frontiers," I might advise that you get hold of a book which is, as far as I know, not yet translated into English. The intent of this book is to instruct you on the pitfalls which a novice in the collecting field is apt to encounter. The authors warn that the prices quoted are apt to change as the world changes. While their quotations of prices are for the old masters only, it is worth your attention because the writers have only one thing in mind—the cash value of paintings. The title of this book is Pittori a Valori—Painters and Values—published by the Insti-tuto Editoriale Brera, Milan, Italy.

This book grades subjects, too. It places religious paintings at the low end of the value yardstick; portraits stand about midway, and, if it be a portrait of a pretty woman or child, the price rises. This is a very interesting point, for a leading critic recently pointed out that one reason for the high favor found by the Impressionist school is that the colors, the com­position, and usually the subject matter is of a gay and color­ful nature. Such paintings, say the critic, will always have the highest value. People, it appears, do not veer toward the grim in their aesthetic reactions.

Subject matter is a very dangerous yardstick for measuring the merit of a picture. If you choose a painting or a drawing because it has some aura of nostalgia, the usual ending to the story is ennui. That you spent a delectable week end with a young companion at Nantucket is hardly reason for buying a water color of the inlet in which you sailed. Judge not by such transient standards! And think twice about subjects with political or historical themes. Such work is often a fine indi­cation of intellectual perception, but reflects little about an artist's deeper emotions. That is why I see little hope for the future values of much of the work by Gropper, a Kolwitz, or even George Grosz. Their work is overinfluenced by tran­sient political consideration. They were angry at, or about, something at a split moment in history. As the world and our viewpoints alter, "intellectual" themes become banal or even antagonistic to our later opinions. So put the "A.Q." before the "I.Q." or you might become like the woman behind me at the huge Courbet show in Philadelphia as I was studying that master's painting of a huge stag at the edge of a stream . . . "Oh, that reminds me," said the woman in an agitated voice. "We have seventy-five pounds of venison in the freezer!"

The next words you read will be "The End." The libraries say "Welcome!" Museums await you. Films stand ready to in­form. Dealers beckon. New frontiers challenge. Your "A.Q." says "Ready." And I say "Good Luck!"

THE END