September 12, 2011

In late summer of 1948, a strange gathering took place on the top floor of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Distinguished men (all men) from the fields of arts, letters, academia and the publishing world were invited by LIFE Magazine to discuss and debate the then-current state of the “modern painting” movement. The Round Table—part of a magazine-sponsored series on the post-war American lifestyle—consisted of such notables as Brave New World author, Aldous Huxley; Clement Greenberg, avant-garde critic; Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Met; Sir Leigh Ashton, director of London’s Victoria & Albert; Meyer Shapiro, professor of fine arts at Columbia University; Alfred Frankfurter, editor and publisher of Art News; Charles Sawyer, of Yale’s art department and James Thrall Soby, chairman MOMA’s painting and sculpture department, among others.

LIFE’s objective was to allow free reign for this group of critics and connoisseurs to examine what the editors of the magazine called, “the strange art of today.” And, perhaps too, to begin to arbitrate on behalf of public taste and understanding, as the world’s attention shifted from war-torn Europe and the dominant cultural high-ground that Paris had occupied for decades, to the United States (and New York, in particular)with its loose-knit, and as yet, ill-defined, movement of experimental painters, sculptor and writers.

The magazine’s moderator, Russell Davenport, an avowed conservative, set the agenda:

“For about 40 years the art of painting has exhibited a variety of manifestations loosely identified in the public mind with the phrase ‘modern art.’ Originating in the works by such acknowledged masters as Cezanne, van Gogh, Seurat and Gauguin, these manifestations made their appearance in the studios of Paris in the first decade of this century, multiplied into a kaleidoscope of new artistic styles, found a kinship with a wide variety of intellectual currents and spread throughout the world wherever artist paint. Today they confront the visitor to almost any gallery as strange distortions of reality, private nightmares, depictions of ‘ugly’ things, human figures and objects that ‘look wrong,’ cubes and geometrical patterns that accord with nothing recognizable in nature. These ‘modern’ works do not, of course, constitute the whole of 20th century art. Many artists have remained quite unaffected by them, others have been influenced only during certain periods of their careers. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the ‘modern’ movement has constituted the dominant trend in the art of our time. It has been encouraged by important institutions. It has been promoted by art dealers. And it has left behind it so much controversy and confusion that a great part of the public has become antagonistic to contemporary painting.”

Reflecting on the ‘public mood’ Davenport goes on to say, “When the layman uses the phrase [modern art] he has in mind two particular characteristics which, for him, set this art off from more conventional painting. First of all, he finds it difficult to understand; secondly, he often finds that it does not concern itself with the ‘beautiful’ but with the ‘ugly or the strange.’ The layman is reassured to find that this kind of painting has drawn the fire of distinguished thinker. Arnold Toynbee, for example, has declared that modern art is symptomatic of a decay in moral values of our age; and in a well-know essay, Art and the Obvious, Aldous Huxley deplored the failure of much modern art to come to grips with what he called the ‘great obvious truths’ of human life.”

The complete story of Life’s Round Table discussion can be found on line, in the October 11, 1948 issue of the magazine. See: http://books.google.com/books?id=dEoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA56&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=true

While the debate is inconclusive, the struggle to come to terms with changing times—and America’s nascent role as an arbiter in the rapidly-shifting world of art—is fascinating to track in the varied opinions expressed by participants. It is truly a case of 19th century aesthetic values confronting mid-20th century sensibilities. Classical views meet modern values, with long-held traditional perspectives the most apparent victim.

As fascinating as the debate by the experts was, a check on the October, 1948, ‘Letters to the Editor” section of LIFE, weeks later, yields more in the way of a window on public attitude and the great divide that characterized the debate then (and perhaps, still does today). I have excluded the more banal supportive letters from readers and chose instead to include three critical correspondences, including that of a well-known, surprisingly vociferous and cantankerous voice from the Midwest:

Letters to the Editor

MODERN ART

Sirs:

As a psychiatrist of more than 40 years experience, I cannot refrain from commenting upon these examples of modern art and the discussion of such in the Life Round Table on Modern Art.

One of the most prevalent and malignant types of mental illness with which we, as psychiatrists, have been trying to cope with for years is the insidious disorder of the mind in which the main feature is a departure from the world of reality to one of fantasy.

Frequently patients who have withdrawn from the world of reality express their fantasies in drawings or paintings which are quite without meaning to a normal individual but which help diagnosis of the underlying conflict…

The so-called modernist representations illustrated in LIFE would seem to me to be in the same category and cannot be felt by anyone except the individual producing them, unless the person viewing them has the same subconscious, which is almost an impossibility.

It is generally conceded that no two individuals have the same store of subconscious memories. Consequently the individual fantasy of one particular artist means very little to another person. Reality is common to all, or at least can be appreciated by everyone, but fantasy is essentially individualistic.

It is quite normal for a young child to live in a world of make-believe. But to carry such fantasy into adult life is most assuredly not conducive to good mental health…

Chester Waterman, M.D.

Middletown, Conn.

_____________________________

Sirs:

…Mr. Sawyer [a member of the Round Table] has looked at Picasso’s, Girl before a Mirror for 15 years and he likes it. I am forcibly reminded of the picture which you published some time ago showing a boy walking past stacks of corpses near a concentration camp. He is so used to corruption that he didn’t even notice it…

Many of us accept the right of the artist to purge his emotions, but reserve the right to turn the other way when passing the pathological excrement. We can pass corpses and retain our sanity but we are confident that the Creator of the mind and soul of man did not intend, and will not allow, us to pass them unseeing. If the determination that nothing will make us enjoy either the sight or the odor constitutes intellectual stagnation and Victorianism—make the most of it.

Mary T. Abny

Upper Montclair, N.J.

______________________________

Sirs:

LIFE’s Round Table certainly bolsters the Russian view that our contemporary Western art is illusory, decadent and given to an empty formulism utterly incapable of coming to grips with solid cultural meaning…

If that is the case no small part of the cause must be referred to the peculiar language habits of the esthetes who interpret art and who make our intelligent people so sick of it that they will give any opportunity to become culturally consequential. All of your participants seem to feel that the meaning or art should be as far from good sense as possible.

I find onl one sentence in the Round Table report which stands close scrutiny. My Taylor’s “fifty thousand people is a lot of people,” while it has a relative character, is a sentence which men and women who are not esthetes can take seriously…

Thomas Hart Benton

Kansas City, Mo.