Artist Tristan Tzara (1896 – 1963) reported from Berlin for the editors at Vanity Fair on what’s new in German art. With tremendous enthusiasm he explained everything that was going on throughout all the German studios – he did not hold back – every name brand is included: Schwitters, Klee, Kandinsky, Lehmbruck, Gropius and the Bauhaus.
In this column, art critic Clive Bell (1881 – 1964) explained why neither Britain or America would have been capable of producing a writer like Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922).
Once upon a time there was a short-lived organization in New York City created to lampoon works of art hailed by the critics as worthy creations. They called themselves The Academy of Misapplied Art and they held their exhibits in the lobby of the Light House for the Blind. Attached herein is the N.Y. Times review of their 1913 exhibit intended to make light of the European Cubists.
As America was gearing up to fight another world war, the brass caps were reminded how incapable they were at identifying and isolating the mental incompetents during the last war, and they swore this war would be different. Numerous military and civilian psychiatrists were convened, and it was concluded that of the millions of men called, at least 15 percent would likely be off-their-rockers.
Writing Prohibition’s obituary during the Winter of 1933, Bertrand Russel (1872 – 1970) came away thinking that the best thing that could ever be said about Prohibition was that it served to put an end to that line of Victorian thinking that held up women as morally superior to men.
These are the observations of an American woman in fascist Japan; the writer was Joy Homer. In this article she tells of her travels to Tokyo in 1940 where she was asked to secretly address those small groups that silently wished for a republican form of government while silently opposing their country’s imperial conquest of China.
Numerous deep thoughts on the subject of Cubism by a prominent art critic of the time, Clive Bell (1881 – 1964):
“But, though in two or three years’ time Cubism may have disappeared, its influence should endure for a generation at least. The service it has rendered art is inestimable. Without it the liberating impulse given by Cezanne had been incomplete. Cezanne freed artistic sensibility from a hampering and outworn convention; Cubism imposed on it an intelligent and reasonable discipline. If a generation of free artists is now turning spontaneously towards the great tradition, it was through Cubism that it came at Ingres and Poussin.”
“The important question of the proper length of dress skirts is again racking the public press and putting a large part of our female population completely off their feed.”
“Philadelphia Coast Guardsmen yesterday observed the surrender of Germany by recalling that their branch of service fired the first American shot in the war against Germany, capturing the first enemy ship and taking the first Nazi prisoner… It was in September, 1941, that the Coast Guard cutter Northland captured the Norwegian freighter Busko, loaded with equipment for a German weather station to be established in Greenland.”
Here is an in-depth examination as to whether or not government-sponsored healthcare was suitable for post-war America. Written by a journalist who was decidedly for the proposal, you will not be surprised to read the same exact arguments were presented on both sides as they were during the Obama years.
“The bill’s friends argue that tax-supported medicine is no more un-American than tax-supported education.”
“Informed London sources said Saturday that the number of U-boats operating against Allied shipping is increasing despite the improved defense record of the last six months.”
“The President wanted medical, dental and hospital care for all. Doctor’s fees would be paid by a Government insurance fund, financed by a 3% payroll tax, paid 50-50 by employee and employer.”
(Strange that sexual reassignment surgery wasn’t included…)
The concept of a free college education paid for by the Federal Government was not the brain child of the Vermont Marxist Bernie Sanders, but an idea that was briefly pursued by the education advisers of U.S. President Harry S Truman:
“Today the average American of 20 – 24 years of age has completed 12.1 years of schooling, an all-time high…Last week the President’s Commission on Higher Education issued a report aimed at pushing the average still higher. It urged that free public education be extended through the first two years of college.”
Even as early as 1894 socialism was recognized as wishful thinking.
“The Japanese Cabinet decided yesterday a general election will be held January 20 to 31 [1946], and the Tokyo newspaper Yomuri Hochi urged ‘spontaneous and vigorous action’ toward forming a democratic government.”
Wanting the Japanese Cabinet to know who was in charge, General MacArthur moved the date up to December seventeenth [1945]. It was the first time Japanese women had ever voted.
“No one must be under any illusions about the severity of the terms to be imposed upon the German people by our enemies.”
“The new Japan is fermenting a mash of new ideas and old customs. It is mixing political democracy with feudal loyalties, free enterprise with giant monopolies, and several shades of Marxism with a hankering for the good old days. The nation that once meekly did what a handful of leaders told it to do is now outspokenly divided on every major issue… For seven Occupation years the Japanese had no choice of sides. We ran the country and fed them slabs of democracy sandwiched between $2,500,000,000 worth of relief and rehabilitation. Japan enjoyed our help and even digested a good deal of the democracy. But when the Occupation lid came off in 1952 it revealed a country weary of being told what to do, curious to taste the forbidden fruit behind the bamboo curtain and relishing its authority over the foreigners who had been giving it orders for so long.”
“American troops in Germany last week hit the Nazi death camp belt, an area that revealed such horrors – the bodies of thousands of Allied prisoners shot, starved, beaten and burned to death – that even the cynics of the civilized world now could not fail to be convinced of the truth of German atrocities.”
Established in 1913, The National Woman’s Party worked tirelessly to secure the vote for American women – which was attained in 1920 with the Nineteenth Amendment. Flush with this victory, the organization pushed for an additional Constitutional amendment, one that would guarantee the equality of the sexes in the eyes of the law:
“Having received the assurance of Senator Curtis of Kansas, Republican Whip, that he would present their amendment in the next Congress, a delegation of 200 women went to call on [President Coolidge].”
