THE AMERICAN-SC AN DIN AVIAN REVIEW 
27 
Mr. Kenneth MacGowan, in the same periodical, illustrates the 
way in which everyday surroundings also may express a psychological 
mood by a description of a design by Robert Edmond Jones. The 
play was The DeviVs Garden and the scene was a room in the British 
General Post Office where a postal clerk was hauled up for examina¬ 
tion on charges. There were three chairs, a desk, and a map: “But 
that simple room fairly breathed bureaucracy, the thing that was about 
to grip the clerk. Its walls were a dull gray, its door casings, map frame, 
narrow wainscoting and furniture were black, the same gray and black 
of the morning clothes of the officials. These tones and these people 
made a well composed harmonious picture, but it was a picture instinct 
with formality. The colors, the proportions, the map—all simple 
suggestions of the reality that ruled the whole great invisible building 
behind.” 
Robert Edmond Jones, Lee Simonson, John Wenger, Rollo 
Peters, Sam Hume, and Raymond Johnson are among the constantly 
increasing number of American artists who see clearly the possibilities 
of stage design and follow the path so recently broken by the modern 
school. 
In the painting of easel pictures, America to-day strikes a jubi¬ 
lant note. “Salient” and “gay” are the adjectives that do hardest 
service in the reviews of contemporary exhibitions. By contrast, the 
paintings of the nineteenth century, seen in memorial exhibitions, 
almost invariably are pitched in a much lower key. Almost invariably 
they confide more of human sentiment. With due reference to excep¬ 
tions, the current exhibition spreads over the walls of a gallery like 
a vast drapery of bright-patterned chintz, as pleasant and as imper¬ 
sonal. The business of being cheerful amounts to a preoccupation— 
it hardly can be called a passion. 
The general galleries give, however, only a superficial account of 
art. The movement that in Europe is traced to Renoir and Cezanne 
has reached America, and the more serious of the young artists are 
profoundly influenced by it. The organic character of a work of art 
and its abstract qualities are first considerations with them. The thrust 
and resistance of lines, the intersection of planes, the internal structure, 
occupy their minds to the exclusion of interest in representative char¬ 
acter. Theory rides their minds. But it is great theory and leads 
toward great art. Schopenhauer’s conception of music as “the quint¬ 
essence of life and events without any likeness to any of them” might 
apply to the art of the twentieth century as the more profound modern¬ 
ists regard it. 
The interrogation of laws underlying appearances results in a 
naturally harsh and powerful display of foundations. The Gothic 
builders, themselves occupied with solving new problems scientifically, 
left the ribs of their buildings visible. In all ages of art when funda- 
