Snapshots in Art Galleries on Fifth Avenue

Daniel’s Gallery

MR. HARTPENCE seems to be the moving spirit of Daniel’s Gallery. He is a poet and close associate of Alfred (Mushroom) Kreymborg. He is tenacious, he has convictions of his own and he is silent. “What’s the use of convincing others? It is sufficient labor to keep one’s own self convinced.”

It is a red letter day in the Daniel gallery. Hartpence is behaving nicely to Mr. and Mrs. Davies. The great master is trying to give every man a show. He is studying attentively the electric bells, wires, flags, etc., etc., picturesquely stocked on the canvases. Hartpence points timidly to a canvas apparently depicting five extensions of a town pump done in many colors.

“This is his wife,” whispers Hartpence, pointing to a prune-colored pump.... “This is his friend,” pointing to an olive green one.

“There is considerable realism, I see,” sighs Davies, quite unconscious of being funny. Mrs. Davies is murmuring something behind her catalogue and trying to live up to her husband’s reputation.

Daniel’s Gallery is never complete without a primal man walking around. This man is invariably an artist with long hair and a primitive neck. The charming shepherd of the hills is his ambition. Every modern gallery must have long-haired men with big Adam’s apples and short-haired women with long necks and pale faces standing around in interesting groups or gazing at a picture in a remote corner in solitary confinement.

At Coady’s Gallery

The Coady family is usually found sitting alone at home with their pictures. The only sound heard is the grinding of mechanical devices hanging in their frames. No’isms and no’ismisms are Coady’s specialties. Confusion outside harmony inside are his themes. He is an excellent talker. He does it kindly and patiently and seldom will he be interrupted by his listeners.

Stieglitz’ 291

Stieglitz is trying in vain to make a carping friend believe that the pictures on exhibition are a step up from Cezanne or Matisse. If he doesn’t like this one, well, here is one not so modern. Why shouldn’t he like that. And here is one not so modern even as that one.

Walkowitz is always there agreeing—if he didn’t agree he wouldn’t be there.

Stieglitz had had a hair cut last week. Stieglitz always has a hair cut when the cold winter winds start to blow.

It is a historical moment each year when Alfred Stieglitz, “specialist of work of all kinds,” feels the approach of the cold winter breezes and knows that the time has come to have his hair cut again. Ha! how it will grow until next year, until it has to be cut again. But the Fifth Buddha isn’t born yet and Stieglitz’s soul still walks three steps ahead of its body.

The Sunwise Turn Bookshop

There they are simply quiet and awfully Batik. Another art shop for art’s sake where the returns more than justify us in being artistic. “See this Batik dress, isn’t it expressive, why won’t people dress like that all the time?” Nobody but a Bahaist or a Rosicrucionist or a Greenacre disciple would be seen dead in it. Then there are books, lots of nice books by nice people and bought by nice people.

The room is decorated in the scheme of a musical chord. A rope would be more appropriate for those who are responsible for its decoration.

At Ehrich’s Gallery

It is like stepping from Churchill’s on Broadway into the Fifth Avenue Cathedral, if one has spent the forenoon in the modern art galleries on the Avenue and then walks into Ehrich’s. Here is a good healthy commercial atmosphere dealing in the Renaissance. Whether the lights are turned out out of respect for the Annunciation which holds the stage with footlights before it or whether Mr. Ehrich recognizes that where people speak with more than bated breath and hushed voices as they do in museums, the lights ought to be lowered, is the question? Here you not only lower your voice, but you study the art of tiptoeing. Madonnas, saints’ pictures, and other pictures which will be sainted by virtue of their purchase prices are on the walls.

Please pass the incense pot.

1916