The Pittsburgh Press (February 16, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
Once in a lifetime! (or) I wanna be a painter!
By Florence Fisher Parry
I went to the Associated Artists’ Exhibition at Carnegie Museum Thursday night, and had a wonderful time! I don’t know Art and I DON’T know what I like, so I’m not the one to report this Exhibition; but Exhibition it was in the fullest sense of the word!
It must have been a Field Day for the Artists represented there! My O My what a Spree most of them went on! Color, color, and still MORE color; bold, violent, trumpet-y enough to shake down the walls of Jericho!
Whew, what a glorious uninhibited Binge! Really, you know, painters do know how to get their complexes out of their systems!
The First Prize winner is “Soho Portrait” by Harry Schench. I liked it; the slums of Pittsburgh gloried up in the lovliest drenching colors! I asked Mr. Schench if that’s what he actually SAW when he looked at rubbish and bill-boards and tumble-down houses, and he said yes, his color nerve-ends responded that way.
He had another painting of some hills with livid green lights emanating, it would seem, right from the hills themselves, as though they were incandescent. That’s what Remembered Hills look like to Mr. Schench.
Mr. Samuel Rosenberg’s “Covenantor” was fascinating when you got up close and could see what all he had managed to make stick onto the canvas, glass, brimstone, plastics, olive oil, green ink, tinfoil, plaster – someone told me he used egg-tempre, but it looked like they were scrambled to me.
Take Mr. Matthews
I wanna be a Painter. I wanna Let Myself Go. I want my Stream-of-Consciousness to Operate in my Waking Hours as well as in my sleep! I wanna dip down Underneath and See What Comes Up.
The psychologists keep telling us what Harm our inhibitions can do, so give me some Paint quick, and a square of linen, and let me be Cured, here and now!
Now take that man Mitchell J. Matthews you read about the other day. A nice guy, no doubt, a law-abiding citizen. A streetcar mechanic, a splendid trolley doctor. What he didn’t know about a street-car!
Only he was a mechanic; and deep down in his Subconscious he wanted to be a motorman.
So the other might when the Power Strike ended, what did he do? He got in a trolley and Let Go. When he got out of the carbarn, he stopped long enough to invite eight passengers. After he started on His Ride they asked to be Let Off. No, he couldn’t do that, they’d have to string along with him. The proffer of fare didn’t interest him. “This is on me,” he told them in wild glee.
The newspaper report of The Chase after Mr. Matthews and his stolen street-car saddens me. For after he had made a Grand Tour of the city with only one stop (when they closed in on him) what did they do with poor Mr. Matthews?
Did they give him a Cash Prize? Or a First Prize? Or an Honorable mention, even? Did they invite a select list of Guests to witness a Private Prevue of his Performance? No. They put him in jail and charged him with larceny.
Too bad Mr. Matthews hadn’t taken up Painting under Norwood MacGilvary at Carnegie Tech, long ago!
O for a Palette!
I feel sorry for us, we who are way outside beyond the veriest fringe of the Associated Artists and their Ilk. We have no safe outlet, we have no way at all to perpetrate our Stream of Consciousness upon Society at Large.
Dreaming, just dreaming, isn’t enough — besides, as anyone knows, all our really Worth-While dreams fade almost immediately upon waking; we can never know what weird dramatic labyrinths we have excursioned in our sleep!
But can we rnisk faring forth, as did the intrepid Mr. Matthews, and Realize our secret Inhibitions? Dare I tell Ann right to her face that I think I can make better calves’-liver gravy than she can? Dare I tell even in carefully chosen words how BORED I am with Certain Persons at the very moment I fix a polite if glassy smile upon them as they stand forever irresolute in my vestibule, not seeming to know how to get OUT THE DOOR?
Gosh, I’ve wanted to wear leg makeup every August, and drink my coffee from the saucer, and drive a chariot just like Ben Hur, and throw away my French Elastic, pre-War supporters and all. But do I do these things? NO.
But Artists? Look what THEY can do! Pink elephants, blue trees. Nekked Wimmen galore, all signed, framed and delivered to a lovely Art Gallery, and people ah-ing and oh-ing.
I wanna be a Painter. I wanna Tet Myself Go. I wanna pant my Dreams in bold wild abandon, and call them He Said and She Said and Heirloom Man and Flight Of A Stuffed Bird.