1922 – Page 7 – Old Magazine Articles

C.R.W. Nevinson Rants About the American Art World
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Sounding a good deal like Simon Cowell (b. 1960), British painter C.R.W. Nevinson (1889 – 1946) had some nasty words for the American people and the art market they created.

Here emphatically they have lost their courage. They are afraid to buy what they like; they rely entirely on the auction-room value. To read the American art news is like reading our Financial Times. The American art critic has no use for a picture which does not tell a story…

Pegged as a Futurist, Nevinson is best remembered for his W.W. I paintings of the Western Front, which can be read about here.

Reviewed: The Waste Land
(The Nation, 1922)

Attached is one of the first American reviews of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, it was penned by literary critic Gilbert Seldes (1893 – 1970):

In essence The Waste Land says something which is not new: that life has become barren and sterile, that man is withering, impotent, and without assurance that the waters which made the land fruitful will ever rise again.

Why Dada?
(The Century Magazine, 1922)

Why Dada? is a thoughtful essay by Sheldon Cheney (1886 – 1980), a Dada enthusiast and founder of the American monthly THEATRE ARTS MAGAZINE. This is a fine article which attempted to explain Dada to the American public and identified several American artists who subscribed to Dada principles.

…at last years exhibitions the Futurists and Cubists joined the academicians in denouncing the Dadaists as fakers, charlatans, and ignoramuses who know nothing of the laws of art and only wish to shock the public into considering them a sensation! And the Dadaists get unlimited joy out of the situation, but hold to the center of the stage…

The Evolution of Golf Clothes
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

Oddly, this essay has more to do with the evolution of golf from a shepherd’s pastime to the sport of kings, however there are some references made to the evolution of golf clothing:

Royalty did, however, dress up the game. It gave us the brilliant garments that golf captains wear in Britain. When I first went abroad I thought that I had never seen more splendid creatures. And the modern golf costume is a thing of mode and cut…

Ladies’ Golf Attire by Burberrys
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

A Burberry’s tweed, self-belted golf suit for the fashionable woman of 1922.

The Versatile Mrs Jessup
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1922)

Marion Hall Zinderstein Jessup has one of the most versatile games on the courts. Overhead and off the ground, she possesses virtually all the strokes in tennis, forehand, backhand, lob, smash, volley and block volley, yet she has a weakness, one that has cost her many an important match, and when she met Mrs Mallory in 1920, probably the national championship.

A Look at Oscar Wilde
(The Nineteenth Century, 1922)

The author of this article, Gilbert Coleridge, has written an honest character study of Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) in hopes to better understand the man in the context of his time. One of the interesting hypothetical questions he poses asks how would Oscar Wilde (a man who lived only for pleasure) have got on during the highly rationed home front of 1914-1918 war?

He was an arresting figure in person, of commanding height, with a clean-shaved oval face. The latter was marred by a weak mouth, from which poured, with fascinating languor sometimes, torrents of paradox, quaint wit, perverse and startling epigrams, all spoken in a tone which left the listener wondering whether the speaker was really in earnest, or only talking for effect.

Another article about Oscar Wilde can be read here.

Dinner with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford
(Literary Digest, 1922)

This article is a simply wonderful read for many reasons and the chief among them is that the journalist hated Los Angeles. The New York writer Karl K. Kitchen was dispatched to Beverly Hills to interview the recently divorced Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and he seemed to have had a nice enough time with the estranged couple, so much so that the Hollywood Royals invited him to dine at their house. The whole article is written in a very chatty way and there is one small, but distinct, slanderous aside referring to Jewish power in the nascent film industry.

Just Another Airborne Wedding Ceremony
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Another article on this site marks 1912 as being the year that saw the first airborne wedding ceremony; but this article reported on the first wedding to be performed in a Fokker Monoplane with the added benefit of a wireless radio transmitter that broadcast the event to numerous well-wishers down below. The wedding was officiated by non-other than the Flying Parson himself, Belvin W. Maynard. Maynard was a legend in early aviation and he died in a crash some four months later.

The number of in-flight nuptials that have been performed since the first in 1912 are too numerous to count; however the last high-profile event took place in the Fall of 2007, when Sir Richard Branson (b. 1950) of Virgin Airlines presided over an in-flight wedding ceremony at 35,000 feet en route from San Francisco to Las Vegas.

Aviation Without Law
(The Outlook, 1922)

An outraged opinion writer argued that the time had arrived for government to issue flying licenses to responsible pilots, while keeping the others grounded:

…President Harding and thousands of spectators at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial are placed in jeopardy by an irresponsible, low flying aviator; and the lives of countless thousands of innocent spectators at the Yale Bowl and other stadiums are risked unnecessarily because the House of Representatives has so far failed to provide, as forty other nations have provided, for Government regulation of civil aviation

The First Car Radio
(Literary Digest, 1922)

An article that your gadget-loving, audiophile pals will probably not enjoy from the days before woofers and tweeters. Will wonders never cease? A radio IN THE CAR and an antenna that looks like a luggage rack, for heavens sake…

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer
(Literary Digest, 1922)

Excerpts from the diary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902) on the matter of the 1850s Women’s Suffrage Movement, Bloomers and the public reaction to that queer attire…

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a member of the Unitarian religion…

Tristann Tzara on Dada
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

An essay by one of the founders of Dada, Tristan Tzara (Sami Rosenstock a.k.a. Samuel Rosenstock; 1896 – 1963), who eloquently explains the origins of the movement:

Dadaism is a characteristic symptom of the disordered modern world…

A Review of Shoulder Arms
(Life Magazine, 1922)

Attached you will be able to print the film review for Charlie Chaplin‘s movie, Shoulder Arms (1918). Printed in a popular humor magazine from the time, the flick (which had been re-released) was hailed by this one critic as the greatest comedy in movie history.

The Klan as a National Problem
(The Literary Digest, 1922)

A two page article reporting on the growth of the KKK throughout the United States in the early Twenties, it’s general rise in popularity and the resolve of elected officials at both the state and Federal levels to contain the Invisible Empire.

Interesting comments can be read by a reformed Klansman named H.P. Fry, who authored a cautionary memoir titled, The Modern Ku Klux Klan.

The Costliness of Mesopotamia
(Literary Digest, 1922)

The attached article from LITERARY DIGEST will give you a clear understanding of all that Britain went through in order to govern Iraq in the early Twenties; Britain’s treaties with the Turkish and Angoran Governments in regards to the oil-rich region of Mosul, the selection of an Arab King and the suppression of various Iraqi revolts.

The Mesopotamian Adventure required a tremendous amount of treasure and yielded very little excitement for either party:

At the end of the war we found Iraq upon our hands, and our Government agreed to accept a mandate for the administration for this inhospitable territory.

Click here to see a Punch Magazine cartoon about the British adventure in Iraq.

NY Public Library Exhibits Dime Novels
(The New Republic, 1922)

Time is the satirist in its recompense as in its revenge. Who of that youthful generation who read Dime Novels stealthily and by night, with expense of spirit and waste of shame, imagined that he would one day review his sins by broad daylight in the exhibition room of the New York Public Library? The thin volumes which were wont to lie so flat under pillows or slip so readily into pockets are now enshrined in glass case, and the yellow covers and inky pages which suffered such persistent search and seizure and were burnt so freely as literary garbage are now gathered and appraised as prizes of the bibliophile.

Charming White Russians in Exhile
(Vogue Magazine, 1922)

Princess Luciene Murat (1876 – 1951?), a distinguished member of the French nobility and a devotee to Paul Poiret, wrote this VOGUE article shortly after her return from Turkey in 1922. It is the sort of piece that could only be written by an over-indulged member of the post-war European high-society, which makes it all the more enjoyable to read. Her reminiscences of her visit to the city of Pera are especially interesting for the observations made regarding the White Russians of her acquaintance who reluctantly resided there in some discomfort.