Art of Today Chicago 1933  by J. Z. Jacobson

J. Z. Jacobson published the following essay as a preface to his book Art of Today Chicago, 1933. It was written in 1932, as an introduction to the art exhibits that would follow at the Century of Progress World's Fair in Chicago, 1933. Below is quoted from his essay. 

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There is altogether too much judging of art on a basis which puts it into a class with horseracing, football, bridge and chess. Art is not a form of mental gymnastics by means of which individuals show off the tricks they are able to perform. Art is, as should be needless to say, a conveyor of the secrets of life, the world, the all-in-all: secrets which have been discovered thousands of times and which yet have never been quite revealed.

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There is some value in being able to discern that Cezanne is a better painter than Manet or that so and so is a better painter than anyone else on the Near Northside of Chicago-some value, yes, but not much; mainly its value is often negative in that shallow persons find it a justification for feeling cocky and superior. What really matters, however, in a deep sense, is whether Cezanne's paintings or Manet's or Mr. So and So's on the Near Northside of Chicago say something, whether they transmit a revelation of the secret which has so many times been revealed and which yet must ever continue to be discovered. Has the mind of Cezanne, of Manet, of So and So been ravished by the never-dimming strangeness of this secret; and can you and I in looking at their work catch the reverberation of this sensation, this experience, and take it in and make it part of ourself? That is of supreme importance. Other factors which may need to be considered in connection with all this are incidental, relative and comparatively trivial.

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The fallacy of using art as an element in the competition which prevails between cities and countries and nationalities and racial and religious groups is of the same nature as the fallacy of considering it a means of demonstrating the skill of individuals. From the sociologist's or historian's viewpoint it is certainly legitimate to make avail of art for this purpose. That is, it is sensible and admirable to say that a city, or a country, or a people which has produced great art has thereby earned a title to greatness. If, however, our starting point is, as is the case in the present volume, the intrinsic value of art as art then locality, nationality, race and cultural and religious background may be considered incidental contributing factors but as no more than that. I believe that no one represented in the book ever said to himself as he set forth upon the ta o f producing a painting or a piece of sculpture, "Now this will show New York and Paris what can be accomplished in Chicago." At any rate if anyone has done that he has been to an extent motivated by non-esthetic purposes and thereby handicapped himself in that which should always be, if not the exclusive, certainly the primary aim of an artist: the creation of art as art.

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Another weakness on the part of artists and art critics which, in one of its aspects, is related to the two fallacies that I have touched upon is the laying of too much stress upon what is known as modernism. This matter is complex. Considered from one angle there cannot be too great an emphasis placed upon modernism. The critic finding himself in an environment where outworn and lifeless tendencies in art are dominant and where new and living tendencies are struggling to gain a foothold is duty-bound to concentrate his energies upon clearing the way for these new and living tendencies. Indeed, in such places and at such times, even the artist himself is justified in taking up the cudgels for the cause and becoming a propagandist aside from his creative activity as an artist. The danger in this connection arises when critics and artists attempt to hide the deficiencies in their capacity for their main functions by continuing to harp on primary and external aspects of art after the urgent need for doing that is over. Pioneers clear forests, break new soil, build new houses. That is well. But if after the land has been made cultivable and the houses have been made habitable they continue to busy themselves with clearing land and constructing houses instead of occupying the houses already built and planting crops on the land already cleared then they will never succeed in establishing communities and carrying on life. Likewise, pioneers in the field of modern art will not succeed in producing art of first rate value if they continue forever dallying with the a b c of modernism.

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In its ultimate implications, as I have already intimated indirectly, modern art means simply living art, art which is in the spirit of the age in which it is produced ..... Any artist, therefore, who is genuinely alive, sincere and competent will of inner necessity produce modern art whether he theorizes about it or not. This does not mean that the newly enunciated dogmas about pure form, the abstract and the various "isms" from impressionism to dadism and surrealism are valueless. They have been tools in the hands of the pioneers of the art world, tools with which to break new soil-a process that seems to be necessary from time to time even though the seeds which are planted and the plants which are raised are very similar to the seeds which were planted and the plants which were raised in the old soil. The essential nature of the spiritual and esthetic elements in the art of Giotto and El Greco and Rembrandt is after all pretty closely akin to the essential nature of the spiritual and esthetic elements in the art of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Modigliani, even though the former wrought without benefit of new theories which were available to and made use of by the latter.

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Considering all this, one, may ask why, then, bring out a book like the present one; why, indeed, since the aim does not seem to be to prove that the participating artists are better than other artists, nor to demonstrate what Chicago can do in the way of painting and sculpture, nor, specifically, to win adherents to modernism. The answer is that the artists selected are representatives of living art and as such they have something pertinent to say to all of us who are up with the times intellectually and spiritually. Whether any or all of them are as great or greater than artists of New York or Paris or Timbuktu can never be proven conclusively. Those to whom art is merely sustenance with which to keep active a propensity for comparisons are, however, free to make any such use as they can of this double symposium.

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The artists included in this printed collection are of the first generation of painters and sculptors in Chicago that has expressed the spirit of its own time and place. They and a few others with them are the first workers in the field of visual art in Chicago who have had the desire and the courage to be creative rather than merely imitative, to be voices rather than mere echoes, to be free men and women rather than mere slaves. It happens that their works and they are in the stream of the fecund fermentation known as modern art, a fermentation that has drawn its strength from many sources-intellectual and emotional, European and American, primitive and ultra-sophisticated, savage and highly civilized, ancient and contemporary. It happens, moreover, that the artists under consideration have not only derived much from and are of the mainstream of the general fermentation but have also derived much from separate sources of this fermentation-independently and individually. They are of Chicago and of our time. They are sincere. They are creative. They cannot help therefore but reflect their time and their place-their environment, our environment. They are part of the voice of Chicago; they are part of the spirit of Chicago. That they hail from all ends of the earth, that they carry within themselves diverse racial, national, religious and cultural heritages makes them only more authentic and more significant as spokesmen of our city, for our city is a composite of the same ethnic and ideological elements. The work of these artists is in many ways still crude; the spirit which informs it is not clearly and completely crystalized. Our city is young, our city is crude; the spirit of it is not clearly and completely crystalized.

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But where in these paintings and pieces of sculpture is the spirit of Chicago? Where are the skyscrapers? Where are the gang imbroglios-where the stock yards and slaughter houses, the thundering "L" trains, the roaring surface traffic, the endless chains of stores, the swarming crowds of the loop, the steel mills, the factories, the bread lines, the picaresque politics, the churches, the unemployed under the bridges, the gold coast, the soap box orators, the speakeasies, the swimmers disporting on the beaches, the glare of the theatre entrances, the hues and movements of the many racial strains, the push carts, the prostitutes, the children, the schools, the strolling fashion plates on Michigan Avenue, the dance halls, the orphan and old folks homes, the whirling amusement parks, the river barges, the lake steamers, the universities, the foot-ball games, the baseball games, hockey, prize fighting, the gam-bling dens, the burlesque shows, the workingmen and working-women, the pale clerks and corpulent .magnates?

Much might be made of the fact that in this book of Chicago art there is so little which is Chicago subject matter. This might be brought forward challengingly by way of answer to the claim that there is in the reproductions in the volume something of the breath and tempo and rhythm and mystery of our city. In principle, generally, I favor the use of local subject matter by local artists. It seems the most natural thing to do. But danger lurks in that procedure. The very strongest artist may make use of any subject matter for his purposes of creation: it will never overpower him. Those of lesser caliber, however, may, if they do not use the utmost restraint and discipline find themselves depending too much on subject matter, or, in other words, on the obvious. This is blatantly true of almost all the literature, the novels and short stories I mean, which have Chicago as their locale.

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By dissection into parts and comparative analysis it has been proven that the work of old masters is the same in general essentials as the work of modern masters, though the old masters used religious scenes, chiefly, as subject matter while the new masters employed for that purpose groups of peasants, or circus performers, or still life, or landscapes, or the nude figure, or abstract design. That does not mean that the spirit of the age and the life-beat of the place in which they were brought into being is not implicit in these works. It is decidedly, but very subtly, and so indissolubly fused with that essential something which is timeless and placeless that it is impossible to disentangle or break apart one from the other without deadening it.

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Even in literature where subject matter is generally believed to be of such paramount importance that when in a painting subject matter is played up at the expense of form that paintinging is characterized as literary-even in literature subject matter is depended upon for the main and central effect only by minor talents. From a sentimental viewpoint subject matter may be or may appear to be of the very highest significance. And when art is made subservient to deliberate propaganda it is, of course, a decisive element. But when the search for esthetic value is the motivating force then subject matter is at best either a starting point or an outer garment. Rhythm, movement, nuance, style, idiom, color, tone-these are the attributes and qualities {subtly understood) which really count in painting and sculpture and literature and in all art. The distinctiveness of these qualities even more than the distinctiveness of their respective philosophies, in each of the great national literatures, is what sets each of them unmistakably apart from the others. As a matter of fact, it is by means of these attributes and qualities much more effectively than by mere matter-of-fact words and wording that the ways of life and views of life of peoples and races and nationalities are made manifest in literature.

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To move along the same line of thought in further consideration of our immediate problem, or rather to depart to a slightly different phase of it, why, I ask, should an artist expressing the spirit or soul or inner movement of Chicago be expected to paint skyscrapers, or stockyards, or steel mills, or river barges, or elevated trains, or masses of people, or pushcart markets, or the lake front, or the impoverished lodgers under the bridges, or any other familiar objects or groups of objects?

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Truly enough the skyscrapers are an expression of Chicago, as are the elevated trains, and the Board of Trade, and the overflowing stream of humanity on State Street. But esthetically, and metaphysically, and spiritually considered these are merely phases of the outer form of the inner principle. They are not the thing in itself; they are manifestations of the thing in itself. They are, therefore, in a sense phenomena to be considered alongside of painting, literature, music and so on as embodiments of the essence of the life which is ours here rather than as material out of which to create painting, sculpture, literature and music. An artist, true to himself, and therefore true to the time and place in which he lives may or may not make use of these phenomena as his language or symbolism. He may be just as true to himself-that is expressive of his environment-by adapting mythology, history, scenes remembered from childhood, the human form, still life and pure abstraction as his symbolism or mode of communication. He may in this wise very forcefully, very profoundly, very subtly, convey to others something of the special quality of mystery amidst the mystery everywhere abounding which is what we call Chicago.

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I have been considering the artists who have made this book possible in relation to Chicago mainly, in relation to what the city has meant to them and in relation to what they have meant and may mean to the city. That can be overdone; too much can be made of the fact that all of these artists happen to be living and working in the same city. They are individuals distinctive in many respects. They have, as I have indicated and as is borne out by the biographical notes in this volume, widely varied national, cultural and racial heritages. They have, moreover-though all of it is within the spacious province of modern art-diverse working principles which are the products of differences in practical experience, in personal philosophy, in formal and informal schooling. Save in a very elastic way they do not belong to the same "school" nor to any "school" for that matter.

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And yet, to view the situation conversely, they are not merely a group of unrelated individuals. Nor are they merely a group of unrelated artists marshaled together for the purpose in hand. Deeply considered their living and working in Chicago is something more than just accidental. A city is what it is and what it becomes because of the type of persons who are attracted to the opportunities which it offers, beginning with geographical characteristics and primary natural resources and culminating with its cultural possibilities. Some of the artists under consideration may feel that they just happen to find themselves in Chicago; but that is not so. Their being here tells us something about the kind of persons they are and the kind of artists they are.

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In a much more overt sense than that, however, are they more than a mere concourse of isolated individuals. There is not a single participant in this symposium in words and pictures who is not in a direct or remote way an artistic descendant of El Greco, of Giotto, of Courbet, of Daumier, of Cezanne and of Van Gogh. Many of them have had the same teachers. A large group of them, in particular, has come under the influence of George Bellows, Randall Davey and John Sloan who, in turn, through Robert Henri, imbibed something of the spirit of Walt Whitman, something which is peculiar to the soil and air and blood of America.

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I like to think of the fifty-two artists who have come together to make this book as a vanguard. In the very act of doing that they are, in a sense, a vanguard; for modern art is still a comparatively new phenomenon in this the youngest of world metropolises. But in addition, they-or many of them, anyway -have been trail blazers for close on to two decades now. Some of them heard the first beats of a new rhythm within themselves when the famous Armory Show of international art was in 1913 exposed to the startled eyes of Chicago's cognoscenti. Some of them heard the ideas which are implicit in modern art enunciated for the first time by George Bellows, Randall Davey, Herman Sachs, John Sloan, Robert Henri, Thomas Eakins and John Warner Norton. Others caught the transforming reverberations of this world-wide spirit in France, in Russia, in Germany, in Sweden, in Spain, in Palestine, by direct or indirect contact with Lhote, Chagall, Leger, Kandinsky et al.

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A vanguard within this vanguard, together with a few other artists who for various reasons are not represented in the present volume, were the first to rebel against the dead hand of academicism once regnant at the Art Institute. They organized an independent class while yet students at the Institute. And after graduation they established themselves into a group under the name "lntrospectives." They had a direct and indirect bearing on the formulation of a progressive policy by the Arts Club of Chicago. They set new thought-currents vibrating in the air under the banner of "Cor-Ardens." They participated in the formation of the local Salon de Refusés which was the forerunner of another art organization of which these same artists are the directing force-the Chicago No-Jury Society of Artists. They established the present Chicago Society of Artists and IO Artists (Chicago). They have helped make possible the opening of new galleries and other exhibition places devoted entirely or in part to the showing of modern art-local, American and universal.

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They have been in a broad sense a moral force. The quintessence of the teaching which they received was the admonition to be honest; the rest was mere commentary. Consequently, they have infused into their work a profoundly moral attitude, in their work as creators, as artists, and in their work as agitators. And they have been agitators, fighters, iconoclasts, destroyers and builders. They have insisted upon the burial of the dead, and they have made way for the freer movement of the living.

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All this bears out my thesis that this symposium is not the work of isolated individuals willfully selected. There is an organic unity of spirit and outlook in it. This unity was present and operative at the outset in the like-mindedness which drew the artists under consideration to Chicago, in the like-mindedness which caused them to choose the same or similar teachers, in the like-minded-ness which caused them to react favorably to the same works of art. And this like-mindedness waxed stronger and developed as these artists, after being instinctively drawn together, continued working in groups-the organizations which I have enumerated and others. They have not only helped change the aspect of all art activity in our city: they have also had influence upon one another's painting and sculpture. And the impact of their presence has been of a decidedly different nature from what it would have been were they merely so many unrelated individuals, each going unconcernedly his own way.

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Yet I am opposed to regarding these artists and their art as merely or chiefly a sort of sociological phenomenon. If I had to choose between the two, I should feel it was nearer the truth to think of them as lyric poets in paint, wood, stone and metal -some aspiring toward the epical and the dramatic1 some fully content to say all their say within the less spacious reach of the lyric-the intensely personal. By their work they are finding release for themselves and easing for others the inner ache of loneliness which is man's lot in this unknowable universe.

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But what of the future? Up until the economic crash it was a simple matter to prognosticate the future of living art in Chicago-that is, at any rate, so far as outward manifestations are concerned. New galleries were being organized, new schools were being established, new channels of criticism were being opened, new patrons were coming to the front. The artists of the left wing, esthetically speaking, were gaining a deeper foothold in every nook and cranny in Chicago where art had ceased to be regarded as something strange in the vulgar sense, something, that is, like a two-headed calf or a flower which opens only at night. Then came the panic. And though the panic as in itself precipitated the springing up of numerous little galleries and other external embodiments of art activity it has, I feel certain, slowed up the general forward movement of modern art in Chicago. For the present, therefore, predictions as to the more or less immediate future of art should be left, I sup-pose, to such men as Stuart Chase, Roger Babson, Scott Nearing and Walter Lippman.

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But in a larger sense there is of course a great future for art in the world, and hence in Chicago. Of late theorists have taken to pronouncing the impending doom of art. It will be swallowed up by science, they say. And people with short memories, historically speaking, think they are hearing something new. But it is not new, and it is not true.

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Art, science, religion and philosophy are different facets of the same mystery. Also, they include one another and are included within one another. All of them are means whereby mankind feeds the incessant hunger for self-knowledge - especially art which is more spacious than the other of these channels of human expression and which takes them all in. Forms may change, do change, will change. Revolutions may take place. Old media may be discarded. New media may spring into being. But art, the essential in art, will live on. As long as man is man and life is life art will live. The horizon leads forward. Art lives, moves and perpetuates its being. A million mornings sing a salutation to its future.

J. Z. JACOBSON. Chicago, November 24, 1932