The Art Collection of FDR (Art Digest, 1936)
A printable paragraph from the 1936 pages of Art Digest explaining the aesthetic tastes of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his art collection.
The Art Digest
Articles from The Art Digest
Color Television: Hand Maiden to Art… (Art Digest, 1945)
Attached you will read a 1945 editorial written by the art critic Clayton Boswell, who articulately expressed the great hope that the art world had emotionally invested in color television:
This is what the art world has been waiting for – in the meantime struggling with the futility of attempting to describe verbally visual objects over the air. Now art on the television will be on par footing with music. And what radio has done in spreading the appreciation of good music will be duplicated with fine art…Then indeed will Andrew Carnegie’s dream of progress through education come true.
Andrew Mellon’s Gift (Art Digest, 1937)
A 1937 news column announced the very generous gift to Washington, D.C. and the nation made by billionaire philanthropist Andrew W. Mellon (1855 — 1937): The National Gallery of Art:
A long, low, classic structure, tailored in lines that harmonize with the neighboring white Beaux-Arts buildings, will house the new National Gallery made possible for the nation’s capital by Andrew W. Mellon. The plans, designed by John Russell Pope
(The cost was actually $10,000,000)
Click here to read additional articles from the Twenties and Thirties about art.
MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939)
The art that Hitler has exiled as ‘degenerate’ is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe’s twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.
The article lists the purchased works.
MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939)
The art that Hitler has exiled as ‘degenerate’ is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe’s twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.
The article lists the purchased works.
MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939)
The art that Hitler has exiled as ‘degenerate’ is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe’s twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.
The article lists the purchased works.
New York Exhibit for Le Corbusier (Art Digest, 1946)
A brief art review from 1946 announcing an exhibition of paintings, drawings, photographs, architectural plans and models by the modern architect Le Corbusier (né Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887 – 1965) at the Mezzanine Gallery in Rockefeller Center.
Along with Ozenfant, Le Corbusier invented Purism. The earliest painting in the collection, and the only one of that period (1920), which is familiar to art audiences as part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Grant Wood: Iowa as Muse (Art Digest, 1936)
An art review of the American painter, Grant Wood (1891 – 1942), and his efforts to illustrate a 1935 children’s book titled Farm on the Hill
Wood, a reigning member of the Regionalism School in American art, had come into the public eye some six years earlier with the creation of his painting, American Gothic, is quoted in this article concerning his creative process and the importance his vision of Iowa plays while painting:
…Mr Wood seceded from the neo-meditationists of Paris because when he began to meditate he realized that ‘all the really good ideas I’d ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.’
Click here to read a 1942 article by Rockwell Kent on the proper roll of American artists during wartime.
Nazi Art Criticism (Art Digest, 1936)
A few vile words concerning modernism and Jewish artists by a forgotten Nazi art critic named L.A. Schutze:
The only one who has created an art entirely born out of the Talmudistic spirit is Picasso, heir of Arabian decorative artists or the Jewish cabalists of Spain.
Click here to read about the contempt that the Nazis had for Modern Art.
The First N.Y. Exhibit of Paris Art Made During the Occupation (Art Digest, 1946)
Recent paintings from Paris have been brought to New York by Pierre Matisse (1900 – 1989) and are now on view at his 57th Street Gallery [at the Fuller Building]. Represented are the Pierre Bonnard, Jean Dubuffet, Andre Marchand, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault.