’Way Down in Greenwich Village

THE fad of false Bohemia in Greenwich Village has passed. The purple and orange brand of tearooms and of so-called gift shops where art lovers and artistic people from the Bronx and Flatbush assembled, have gone out of existence. The designers and manufacturers of astounding atrocities who called themselves “modern artists” have disappeared. True there are a few short-haired women left, who parade the streets in their unusual clothes, but they, too, will soon move to other parts of the city with the return of the soldiers, and will reassume their real calling in life.

Workers and ambitious strivers have taken possession, once more, of the sacred grounds, where memories and hopes are holy possessions, where so many have worked and toiled and spread an evangel, now accepted universally.

New places have sprung up where idlers find themselves isolated, where enthusiasm and sincerity is written on walls and faces. And people are doing things once more in Greenwich Village. Commercialism seems to have disappeared, and men are willing to help men.

The Paint Box

Mrs. Williams has opened an art gallery, the Paint Box, where anybody may exhibit, anybody who wishes to hang his or her pictures. Everybody is welcome to view the exhibits; who is willing to pay an obolus of ten cents. But it is worth it. And Mrs. Williams has to pay rent and light. Her idea is not new by any means. Five years ago I came to Washington Square and opened what was later called Bruno’s Garret. “Here are my walls,” I said. “Come and hang your pictures, if you are an artist. Here is my magazine, voice in it your opinion of any subject you may choose, if you are a writer. Here is an auditorium with comfortable chairs; come and recite your poems, face your critics, if you are a poet....”

I charged nothing for all of this, no admission fees, no wall space rates. I did not sell or try to sell anything. But I believe that Mrs. Williams’ plan is better. The small admission fee will not interfere with the number of visitors, and the altruistic motive therefore less evident, and more ready acceptance by the people. Her galleries are spacious, light, airy rooms in No. 44 Washington Square. The walls are hung with pictures. Pictures everywhere. Small and large. In oil and water. Miniatures and life-sized paintings; cubist and conventionals; foreign and familiar; so many pictures on each wall that there is not enough space for the proverbial pin to glide through and fall to the floor.

We met old acquaintances on the walls. There was Glen Coleman, in our estimation the best of the younger artists in America. He is painting in oil now. My readers will remember my frequent references to Coleman’s pen and ink sketches, to his street scenes, especially his sketches of Greenwich Village. There is so much peace and life in his work. His houses tell stories. His old lantern lighting the corner of a narrow street somewhere on the East Side becomes familiar and we grow really attached to it.

Coleman has a genius for depicting the eternal in the fleeting moments of life. He seems far above men and things. His brush is dipped in love. He is the only American artist who gives grandeur to the poverty of every day life on city streets.

Stuard Davis has some of his latest works there. A cemetery. I have forgotten where it is situated, very appealing with its crosses and stones, on a sloping hill bathed in sunrays. This cemetery is perhaps unique in the world. No remains of weary travelers repose beneath the crosses. They were erected by loving hands, while the loved one perished in some strange land or on the sea. And nothing but the sad news of their death has come as a last message to friends and relatives.

He has a musician there whose nose is bleeding. We sympathize with the stricken musician.

Bobby Edwards, the singer of the village, hung a few ukeleles and some very eye-fetching pictures.

Have you ever heard of that master of the lost art of wood engraving, Gustave Baumann, and his incomparable scenes of cities from all over the Union. “Gloomy Gus” he was called in the West, this untiring artist who wanders from city to city cutting his own wood blocks, printing them on his old hand press, always independent, always free, an eternal traveler. He struck New York and the Village and left his card in the shape of a few leaves that attract attention the very minute we enter the room.

Howard Heath’s pictures, which remind so very much of the work of Acton Davies during the cubist craze, are right near Ezra Winter’s “The Philosopher.” The Philosopher is a gentleman commonly called a bum. He is seated near a beach, taking a foot-bath in the splashing waves, and staring meditatively at a tiny daisy in his grisly, awkward hand.

And fifty other artists of whom the world will hear some day (or never) have accepted the invitation of Elvin Williams and have joined her happy family in the Paint Box. And she, herself? No, she has not short hair. She is not an old maid, not eccentric. Nothing wrong with her. A charming young woman, even dressed as any other one above Fourteenth Street. She had an idea, she said. The idea seems to work out all right.

1919