58 
THE “ART SEASON” 
journals. 
ITLE lifted from line on cover of The Arts—“appearing monthly 
during the art season.” Gunning, cloaks and suits and art. . . . 
This is a review, not a criticism. 
Criticism in New York is one of the allied fashion-designing 
trades. The art talk of the lay-intellectual is a radio of the fashion-art 
F.vprv smart iournal has its Well-Dressed Man and its well-dressed 
artist feature. The Dial has Paul Rosenfeld. 
The commercialization of music has made an oppression for the artist and a 
confusion for the public. Half-baked home talents and merely good performers 
who insist on being artists are belched before the public by advertising. But Art 
cleans up after itself, as nature does. Spurious reputations fade or meet violent 
deaths. 
Elly Ney was the queen of the season’s advertisement-made artists. Elly 
Ney at her sewing-machine, expressing the domestic emotions: or Mrs. Golem. 
The Ballet Intime at the Town Hall and the Varese concerts were direct- 
to-the-consumer stunts. The Ballet was as much fun as a children’s party. The 
audience: artists, friends of artists, and those who knowingly risked the 
“modern.” The program tested no one’s courage. Szymanowski, not modern at 
all in the modern sense, disturbed and irritated “lovers of music.” Dean Paul’s 
efforts are more related to feminine ectoplasm than to creation; Carpenter’s 
slightly still-born. The Krazy Kat part of Krazy Kat was fascinating: a 
contribution to the literature of clowns. I should like to see it with Jerry Kern 
music and a negro Kat. 
Varese and his Composers’ Guild could have taken a pattern from the Ballet 
and lifted his concerts from the lugubrious. To present work that can not get a 
hearing elsewhere, to give the composer a chance, is his plan. There is no 
dynamic in the organization or presentation: it is only half a plan: the programs 
cautious, the general atmosphere that of being given under the auspices of 
poverty or of a penal institution. 
Dynamics bring me to the Chicago Opera! Dynamics in this case ancf no 
plan. Mary Garden as Director drew in as much publicity as the War. The 
Chicago financiers failed her. Like true farmers they kept her doing chores 
about the endowment. They did nothing with the publicity. One new 
production (“The Three Oranges”) and for the rest scenery that the vaudeville 
would reject. Progressive men with a vision who spend their money intelligently! 
Regard the placing of Jeritza by well-handled publicity. But as I said Art 
cleans up after itself. This blond wife and lady will last with the critics and 
the public about three years. With the artists she didn’t appear at all. 
Too many people enjoyed Chaliapine. 
The great Orchestras are steadily playing themselves into oblivion. 
There is a growth of seedling composers coming up in this country. Watch 
George Antheil. 
Our so-called better theatres and our should-do better writers produced