PROFESSOR POPE WRITES ON MODERN FRENCH ART IN BOSTON EXHIBITION

The following article was written for the Crimson by Professor Arthur Pope '01, professor of Fine Arts in the University.

It is well worth a trip to the ninth floor of the Annex Building at Jordan Marsh's to see the collection of some two hundred modern French paintings which forms part of the general exposition of Art in Trade now in progress throughout the store. The paintings are shown under the official auspices of the Association Francaise d'Expansion et d'Echanges Artistiques and are a selection of works shown in Paris in the Salon d'Automne. They are all by contemporary French artists. With possible exceptions like Andre, Denis, d'Espagnat, Vlaminck, there are few names that approach being famous; in fact unless one has followed modern French exhibitions rather closely, the names are almost wholly unfamiliar to persons in this country. This is rather a good thing for it gives us a chance to exercise our powers of discrimination entirely untrammeled by prejudice associated with worldly reputations.

There are probably no pictures in the exposition which can ever be thought of as great masterpieces and there are some that are utterly commonplace; but there are very many which are decidedly pleasing in color and design and handling, and as a whole it is an unusually gay and cheerful show, one of the most entertaining that has been seen in Boston for some time. Fortunately too, a setting has been provided which has permitted hanging the pictures with little undue crowding, and they are well lighted.

Whoever selected the examples shown apparently deliberately omitted the most extreme phases of modern French art; there is little suggestion of cubism or expressionism or dadaism. For this reason the pictures represent rather a general undercurrent of taste that has remained definitely French, persisting through various vicissitudes, absorbing much of the point of view of the extreme experimenters and revolutionists, but still maintaining its characteristic lightness and deftness of touch. Thus the influence of the great innovators is obvious in much of the painting, now Renoir, now Cezanne, now Matisse or Rousseau or some other modernist; but beneath it all one seems to feel a rather definite and uniform assumption and attitude toward painting that most of the artists have adopted consciously or unconsciously. It seems to be recognized that at the present day the independent picture does not lend itself, as it once did, to the expression of our more serious and fundamental ideas; in this respect it cannot rival the drama or the written word. At the same time it is felt that mere naturalism--the exact description of objects--may well be left to the photographer or the inferior painter who is entirely concerned with making things "like"--anyone can do it by studying the laws of perspective and by a little practice.

On the other hand, if one is sufficiently sensitive in vision and feeling, it seems as if there would always be all sorts of things in the aspect of objects about us worth recording--color, form, pattern, and that these can be treated in such a way as to give us pretty paint surfaces, harmonious and sparkling color and agreeable design, things which, hung on the walls of our houses or apartments, may add much to the pleasure of our life. The painter therefor treats his subjects as so much material or motive to be made into a pleasant arrangement, a pretty commentary on the beauty of things. Shadows, for example, are no longer a mere means for the expression of the likeness of form or even of light effects, but are motives for design in paint. The emphasis is placed on harmony of brush stroke, on play of color over the surface, on decoration. Who can say that when this is done well it is not worth while? Isn't it the proper and genuine attitude for the painter to take?

Many of the paintings are noticeably of the present generation in their use of subtly-varied grays, with occasional accents of stronger color, in reaction to the intense broken color used by the impressionists to express a naturalistic effect of light. As compared with most American and British painting done in the same vein, there is a pleasant lightness of touch in most of these pictures. After our over-seriousness, even the obvious "fooling" in examples like the "Europa" and the "View of the Seine" are a delightful relief.

The exhibition will remain open through the rest of this month