TOO MUCH WITH US

The American innocent abroad has long been the butt of foreign laughter and scorn. In fact foreigners, from Charles Dickens to Lady Asquith, have journeyed even to our own front stoop to voice all manner of criticisms, the burden of which has ever been that "getting and spending, we lay waste our powers". "Little", they tell us, "do we see in art which is ours".

At these words the "average American" is apt to launch into an encomium of the artists which his country has produced: French, St. Gaudens, Stuart, Sargent, and a host of others. And he will point out that there are schools of art all over our country, and even schools for Americans in foreign countries. One of these, not yet completed, is in the very center of Paris, where a group of Americans are negotiating the purchase of the old "Hotel de Lauzun". Here, on the He St. Louis, an "American Academy of Paris" may be developed, with its home in a beautiful old monument of Louis XIV architecture.

Nevertheless the constant criticism of foreigners is apt to rankle. It will call to mind the fact that Whistler was American by birth, but British by education and sympathies. It will make him painfully conscious of the faddism which "American artists", as such, have indulged in. And the recent exhibit of the "Society of American Artists" in New York will not comfort him. Its two stellar attractions would hold, in foreign eyes, the place of scorn that Mr. Studge, the Medium, held in Browning's. In one of these "masterpieces", Bryan, Anderson, and Volstead are seen protesting against the miracle of turning water into wine, with the illuminating title underneath: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And a neighboring exhibit represents a miracle in itself. For here are heads on John the Baptist and of Christ, sawed up from Mrs. Janet Singh's dining-room floor. There they were imprinted by the power emanating from that lady's eyes, while she fixed her mind on suitable scripture passages.

At this point the "true American spirit" is apt to be overwhelmed by the evidence that "the world"--be it this or the next--"is too much with us." He realizes that our greatest artists have almost always done a part of their student work in Europe, and that at present there are many Americans in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne. With this realization--if he is an American of understanding and a sense of humor--he sees that the background of art is largely "away from us", and that the student is benefited by an acquaintance with the atmosphere of the "old world". Then comes the recognition of the true value and meaning of the new "home of American artists" within the carved paneling and ancient gilding of the Hotel de Lauzun.