CHAPTER SEVEN

_QUIET IN NEW YORK_

The first thing Gutzon Borglum did in New York was to join--or, perhaps, originate--a movement whose object was to make American art distinctive and national. This was a bit out of the ordinary. Gutzon, so far as he had expressed himself, hadn’t much concern about American art. What he had seen of it annoyed him, and he didn’t intend to give much time to its promotion. He was presently to return to England ... but somehow he could never find time to book a passage.

In the early days of the twentieth century his journal mentions, and many of us unfortunately remember, European and classic influences were dominant in art. Our public buildings were often Greek or Roman temples adorned with sculpture right out of Homer’s mythology. In New York the extreme example of this tendency was a building erected by some art society on Lexington Avenue which was decorated across the front with a frieze from the Parthenon in Athens. The New York version of the frieze was so exact as to include all the mutilations that the march of hundreds of years had inflicted on the original.

Artists--painters, sculptors, musicians alike--had to have studied abroad before they could get a hearing in America. But, unfortunately, most of the people who patronized art learned about the subject from a few simple home rules. They were breaking out of the awesome, gewgaw-enveloped homes of the eighties and nineties and moving into chateaus imported by the boatload from France. But there is no record that any art dealer ever succeeded in selling an American house to some customer in Paris.

It often happens that a convert to a religious sect is more fanatical in his beliefs than one born into the fold. Gutzon’s father had come to the United States from Denmark to escape the ancient fetters of thought, and Gutzon himself had become thoroughly disillusioned by his years abroad. He considered America to be the last stronghold of freedom for the spirit. And he believed that the time had come for the country to express itself culturally. He had a theory that many people are born Americans though their physical birthplace might have been Denmark or Poland or Timbuktu. He insisted that although America was comparatively a young nation, the significance of her discovery, colonization and development offered rich sources for the painter or sculptor seeking decorative themes. He wanted architects to stop copying classic models.

He was a great admirer of Louis Sullivan’s individual art, and he understood it. Once, driving through a small town in Ohio that he had never seen before, he suddenly stopped the car and went back to look at a red-brick building. “Built by Sullivan,” he said. And so it was.

The subject of the Prix de Rome scholarships, in his opinion, was debatable. He thought it a mistake to send talented young artists to Rome during their most formative period and expose them to the overpowering influence of the great masters. He lived his theory, for he did not see Italy until late in life, rather than lose his individuality in the presence of those giants, Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Donatello, whom he deeply revered.

Borglum came to America a sculptor. He painted very little after 1901. Among his first direct contacts with American art methods on the Atlantic coast was a competition for an equestrian monument to General Grant to be placed in Washington. He devoted a great deal of time and thought to the making of a model and worked it out in fine detail. Grant and two other officers on horseback were mounted on a high pedestal, Grant a little higher than the other two. Around the base of the pedestal and extending out on both sides was a rich frieze of figures more than life-size, showing events leading to the Civil War, the struggle itself and the period of reconstruction.

Gutzon was told afterward that Augustus Saint-Gaudens, all-powerful in the selection, had thrown out the model because he felt that no sculptor in America could carve so elaborate a frieze and that he suspected foreign help.

Subsequent steps in the contest are interesting as an indication of how memorials were sometimes produced in those days. The jury could not decide which of the two remaining models was best, so each sculptor was asked to submit a second model. It happened that Solon Borglum had made the horse on which the principal figure was riding in both models. The two sculptors called for help and Solon said that he would do what he could for whichever one got to his studio first.

The disappointed contestant went to Gutzon and asked him to provide a horse, but Gutzon refused to compete with his brother. As it turned out, the one who received Solon’s help a second time was given the commission.

Neither of the brothers thought that Gutzon’s unwillingness to enter a contest was anything but routine. Solon and he were devoted to each other. Gutzon had called him away from ranch life to develop an art sense that became remarkable. Gutzon had instructed him personally and had helped to finance his career in Cincinnati. He believed himself personally responsible for giving Solon a chance at a sculptor’s career; he could never consider himself free to accept any commission in which he thought that his brother might have an interest.

Only once again, in Cuba, did Gutzon Borglum enter a competition. He steadfastly refused to accept attractive offers on the ground that the principle was wrong. A sculptor, he said, should be selected for his known ability to do what was asked of him and should be allowed to offer a variety of designs, if necessary, until he produced one that was satisfactory to the committee. He declared flatly that it was unjust to ask an artist to risk his best effort on a gamble, to ask him to spend his time, energy and money on something that might only be thrown away. It is interesting to note that his ultimate declaration on this subject was made after his Cuban experience. That was something that he failed to talk about.

The question of talented artists losing their identity in work for other artists, sometimes of less or even mediocre ability, was a grievous one to him and caused many heartaches with which he frankly sympathized. Often talented artists could not even _get_ a job in another studio, no matter what their ability. Such a one was Paul Nocquet.

Paul Nocquet was a Belgian of real ability who had known Gutzon in Paris and had come over to be near him. Eventually he lost his life in a balloon ascension which he had undertaken in sheer despair. In an open letter to the _Evening Sun_ he called attention to the humiliating role played by unrecognized artists in this country, all of which gave Gutzon Borglum new voice. Borglum wrote:

I have read with astonishment and pleasure the letter by Paul Nocquet pleading for the sculptor’s art in America. It is no exaggeration to say that a large part of the sculpture in this country is produced under false pretenses. Much of it is from the studios of celebrities, the labor, the thought and even the basic ideas of poor devils who are paid so much a day.

That the abuses Mr. Nocquet speaks of exist, there is abundance of proof. A glamor has been thrown about sculpture here that is not deserved. For a century the bulk of us have ambled along timidly, following a single lead, sniffing the trail, only to assure our questioning souls that we were on the beaten path. We fear a new lead. We placard our homes with safe, old sentiments. We permit no passion, no action, nothing to disturb the even tenor of a puritanism that has hardly warmth enough or blood enough to produce great sculpture and that rarely ventures beyond the meaningless nudes that disgrace our museums.

If this were not so, Mr. Nocquet would have no complaint. If character and individuality were even tolerated in American sculpture, our production by proxy would cease in a fortnight. Let the people have what they feel the need of. There is something deep in the souls of all of us which seeks the real thing. Then our ideals, our lives and our passions will be expressed in our art. When that is done each man will express himself, and a new value will be placed on every work of art.

Such outspoken criticism inevitably brought from the caves all the winds of controversy. They merged in a tempest in 1908 when the sculptor wrote in _The Craftsman_:

With the passing of Saint-Gaudens the standard of good work was taken from us.... Not _great_ work, for he was not a great artist like Rimmer, Rodin, or Meunier, nor was he a great poet. Nor was he a great technician like Falguière or a dozen other Frenchmen. But he had a quality that persisted to the end and wrought, with few exceptions, something beautiful, often noble, something that left the whole world better because it was made. He gave us Farragut (in Madison Square) and one or two other great statues. Then he dropped to the architect’s standard, the lay figure, and there he remained. Curiously his Farragut contains figures in the base that appear to have been made years after the figure of the Admiral, so quickly does he seem to have lost his youthful spontaneity.

Saint-Gaudens’ sense of refinement led to conventions, and his lack of imagination to a repetition of these conventions. Another thing--I do not recall in all his work one single group of creation that may be called a “pipe dream.” In other words, I do not know of one work of Saint-Gaudens that was not commissioned, that was not suggested to him and produced for another.

I speak thus because I believe few people realize how little sculptural art is shown in this country that is purely the output of the sculptor’s imagination, produced creatively because the sculptor has something he must say. Saint-Gaudens, master that he was, was a great workman; he was not a creator. It is but natural that his following should, in their effort to catch his spirit, acquire only his style. His reserve becomes in their hands more reserved, his architectural and impersonal manner more mannered, and we have a pseudoclassic school which for dull mediocrity is without a rival in the whole field of art.

This analysis of another man’s work did incalculable harm to Gutzon’s position in New York art circles. The controversy became nationwide when the newspaper headlines announced, “Borglum Attacks Saint-Gaudens.” Partisans joined the argument with more zeal than discretion, and the wrangling went on without end.

Another controversy that swirled about George Gray Barnard and his undraped figures on the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg caught up Gutzon in its progress. Borglum had a wholehearted respect for Barnard and took up cudgels in his defense, thus further antagonizing the “sourdoughs,” as he called the Academicians.

Long afterward when Barnard was excluded from his studio on the Billings estate, which had been bought for a public park, Gutzon offered him his Stamford studio to work in and, at Barnard’s request, appeared before the New York City Board of Aldermen in an effort to iron out his troubles with the city.

Barnard’s “Two Natures” and Gutzon’s “Mares of Diomedes” were the first pieces of American art purchased for the Metropolitan Museum. Of the former, the sculptor wrote:

“The ‘sourdoughs’ took ‘Two Natures,’ perhaps the finest marble in its dimensions by an American in our country, and as quickly and quietly as possible relegated it to the basement. Not long after my ‘Mares of Diomedes’ followed the same descent.”

His antipathy to the National Academy was based on his observation that there was too little fraternity about it and always a lack of _esprit de corps_. It followed too much the general tendency of all academic organizations against anything new, he said. It was probably his undiplomatic manner of expressing his convictions that aroused the enmity of the older set, who successfully kept him out of any monumental work in New York City.

One grievance the younger artists did have. There was no place where they could exhibit their work. In harmony with Gutzon’s desire to establish a fairly representative American art was his crusade to obtain a fair deal for young American artists. In 1912 he helped organize a new Association of American Painters and Sculptors which would provide exhibition space for new and unknown youngsters.

A novel feature of the constitution of the new society was that it declared against juries. Every member was entitled to exhibit; only the amount was to be decided by a committee. A certain amount of space was reserved to invited work and no work not invited might be shown. Should any member wish to invite the work of a nonmember and fail to get the approval of the committee, he was permitted to give up some of his own space to the stranger.

Gutzon was delegated to publish this statement of the principles of the organization:

We have joined together for the purpose of holding exhibitions of our own work and the best procurable examples of contemporary art, without relation to school, size, medium or nationality.

We shall make our exhibitions as interesting as they will be representative of American and European Art activities.

We have no canons but honesty and ability to express one’s self. We do not believe that any artist has ever discovered or will discover the only way to create beauty.

Unfortunately, at its first exhibit the association was split on the very rock that was to have been its bulwark--the representative quality of the work. This was the exhibition, at the Armory, made famous by the “Nude Descending a Staircase,” in which neither the nude nor the staircase made much difference. The painting was an orgy of color and distortion.

Gutzon had no quarrel with that. He lived by Voltaire’s principle: “Sir, I absolutely deny the truth of your statement, but I shall defend to the death your right to make it.” What hurt and angered him was that, by election, he was responsible for the exhibit, and that the committee had rejected work which he had approved and had accepted work that he had not even seen. Their excuse was, “We don’t care about the constitution. We are trying to get up an exhibition.” Sadly the sculptor resigned saying that no other course remained to him.

He came home to Stamford profoundly dejected. After a silent dinner he remarked: “I wish I had a million dollars in cash.”

“What in the world for?” Mrs. Borglum inquired.

“I’d shut all those struggling young painters in a room and throw it at them,” he replied. “It would keep them while they were hunting up something to do besides art.”

He told of some of the studios he had visited while organizing the new association and of the hard time some of the students were having. Nearly all successful artists have been through such trials but not many of them remember.

The National Sculpture Society had elected Gutzon to membership in 1903 shortly after his return from Europe. Here, too, he found among the younger set a feeling of revolt against the older members. He suggested changes in the constitution that enlisted strong support from some of the members. However, President J. Q. A. Ward took exception to this threat to his power and refused to let the report of the committee favoring changes come to a hearing. Promptly the sculptor denounced such tactics as “unfair and discourteous,” which did not add to their friendship. Most of the reforms were later adopted.

With the National Arts Club his relations were more pleasant. When the club had to move to other quarters he helped make the selection of the Gramercy Park site and was given full charge of the food department which had fallen deeply into debt. Under his personal management the dining room soon showed a profit--a most difficult thing to achieve in any art club.

Borglum belonged to the Salmagundi Club, to the Fencers, (where he used to take lessons from a Cuban fencing master in the studio) and to numerous flying clubs. His lifelong memberships in the Players of New York and the Metropolitan of Washington gave him constant pleasure and satisfaction.

He taught one year at the Art Students’ League in New York and returned the fees he received for teaching as prizes to his pupils, several of whom are now outstanding sculptors. At the time of the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, he joined with other New York artists in donating works to a public auction for the relief of artists caught in the disaster.

Through his old friend Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, he got the fund through to California in record time. Another of his old friends, Arthur Matthews, San Francisco painter, was the custodian of the money. He did so good a job of spending it that a considerable sum was left over. The balance lay in a bank for forty years until it was turned over to a new committee by the State Banking Commission in 1946. The chairman of the committee was William B. Faville, the architect, another good friend. But by that time both Arthur and Gutzon were gone.

* * * * *

The sculptor became involved in so many outside matters that one wonders how he could have found time for them. His answer was that life and art are inseparable.

He wrote for a magazine in 1908 that the three elements absolutely joined for the production of great art are sincerity, individuality and reverence. He said:

Of reverence, I doubt if there is enough in all the United States to build one great temple. I doubt if there are men enough in all this land with unselfishness enough and love enough to build one great and beautiful shrine for commerce or industry, for liberty or art, for religion--from the bottom up, perfectly good, like an altar upon which the most sacred thing in our lives shall be offered to all the rest who follow.

Gutzon was a poet, but he seems also to have been an observing realist. He continued:

Art applied to utilitarian purpose is, proportionately, a larger interest in our lives than what have come to be termed “Fine Arts.” I see no difference between them myself. I find in my study of art that the real artist is nine tenths of the time a craftsman. It is only in that small one tenth of his time that he rises to the elevated position of prophet and master.

The question of art education in general involves what I call “betrayal by democracy,” though perhaps I speak with the prejudice of personal experience, being one of nine children who had no college degree. When democracy came into the American world the great mass of the people felt that the only advantage aristocracy had was “higher education.” The world has taken that up in as blind a way as it takes up so many other things. While higher education goes on apace, machinery has to step in to supply the instant need of many things that before were made by hand, and all kinds of work that we used in the building of our homes has deteriorated.

In man’s essential world the water color has changed to the lithograph, the drawing to the Kodak, and so on down through life. Man no longer sees. His eyes no longer search the form, line and color of any piece of work. His fingers no longer test the art and finish found on old master crafts.

I never look at a spoon or a knife or a fork, a table or a chair, but I wish to correct and improve it. I think our spoons are badly made. The prongs of our forks are too long and the blades of our knives are too long and badly shaped. It amazes me that such utilitarian articles are not designed for the purposes that they are intended to serve.

Some years ago I was sketching in California. A man wandered by and watched me a little while. “Why do you do that?” he asked. And when I wanted to know what he meant he told me. “I mean painting,” he said. “Why do you do it at all?”

With reference to art, that is the most astute question I have ever heard asked. _Why do we do it at all?_ I hope that those of you who care anything about art will never forget it. That question ought to be put to you in all you do in art, and it ought to guide you in your work.... _Why do you do it?_

On the subject of art schools he wrote bitterly:

I have said, that the higher education we were promised has failed, for it has taken away from the great body of the people their only opportunity to express themselves. That is why I am hammering on the value of craftsmanship for the real leaders in fine arts. We have taken from the race that great body of workmen from whom artists should come, and in order to supply a place for the man of an artistic temperament we have built art schools--institutions which, so far as I have been able to find any record, had no existence at all in the time of Phidias or during the great period of the Renaissance. We are teaching art as a fine art--a subject that cannot ever be taught at all.

He urged reforms in art education--reforms that have since come about. On this subject he wrote:

The art schools of this country turn out young men and women by the thousands every year, and mostly they aren’t worth fifty cents a day to any artist or sculptor. It is a very sad fact.

The economic independence of every human being who feels that he or she wants to study art is something that we should not lose a moment to assure. I think the sweetness of life is not so much affected by any other dozen causes as by the present inability of the race to express its emotions in a creative way. If sociologists and humanitarians could help this great body of youths to put their little heartaches into some beautiful, individual expression by creating some article in daily use, this pent-up tension, everywhere at the breaking point, would be used up at its source, as are springs of living water. And their work, their contentment and their power would be felt in every home.

The message seems important because so patently the truth. Gutzon Borglum was certainly a master craftsman, from the design of tools to the art that was his profession. It is significant that while he always preached a doctrine of change and modernity and was soundly berated by the academicians, he never produced anything cabalistic. Down deep in him was the understanding of what people were thinking about and what they could understand.

They understood him best, perhaps, when he was denouncing something. He had a keen eye, a vibrant voice, and, undoubtedly, a fine vocabulary with which to do the denouncing.