11,000 Tons, No Art

Within the past six months in France a great equestrian statue of Marshal Foch was unveiled at Cassel, a monumental figure of Marshal Joffre at Chantilly. On both occasions, art critics and a large section of the French press howled in derision, said that the monuments were blots on the landscape. The French Ministry of Beaux Arts suddenly sided with the critics last week, announced that no contract would be awarded, all designs and models would be returned, in the contest for a monument to perpetuate the memory of the Battle of the Marne. Reason: there is no living sculptor, in the opinion of the Beaux Arts Ministry, capable of doing justice to such a monument. Acidly added the art ministers:

"Ten million kilos [11,023.1 tons] of granite and bronze have been used up in war memorials throughout France, and not a single outstanding work of art has been produced."

Wanted: Americana

The American Institute of Architects, through the Library of Congress, sent out an appeal last week for amateur photographers' snapshots of examples of Early American architecture, to complete a record of American architecture already being assembled in the Congressional Library. Memorable houses, barns, fences, doorways, well heads, water spouts, window frames, corn cribs, water troughs, ice houses, smoke houses and the like are wanted, photographs of remnants of the architectural past not easily available in standard reference books. Promised Leicester B. Holland, chief of the Division of Fine Arts of the Library of Congress:

"All negatives given to us will be carefully indexed with the name of the photographer and donor permanently recorded, and prints may be had from them as readily as if they were in the original owner's files."

Largest

Yachtsmen, debutantes, landscape painters and batik dyers who summer on Cape Cod motored over to Dennis, Mass, last week for the opening of "The Cinema." Cape Cod's latest, most up to date playhouse, designed by Alfred Easton Poor, Manhattan architect. All eyes sought the ceiling which displayed the first mural painting ever undertaken by bald, busy, noteworthy Artist Rockwell Kent. Not only is "The Cinema's" ceiling the first Kent mural, but the theatre's proprietors declare that it is the largest single canvas in the world--6,400 sq. ft. in area, almost three times the size of Tintoretto's "Paradise" walls in the Palace of the Doges.* Pale monumental figures float upon it among brilliant clouds and stars. while a vivid comet's tail streaks across from projection box to screen. Artist Kent, assisted by Jo Mielziner and ten others, worked five months on the canvas.

*Decorator & Architect James Monroe Hewlett's astronomical ceiling for the Grand Central Terminal is not on canvas but painted (upside down by mistake) directly on the plastered vault.

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