AUTOMOBILES AND ART
Within the last few years there has come to Detroit a new life. The vast
growth of the city, owing to the development of the automobile industry,
has brought in many new, active, able business men and their families,
whom the old Detroiters have dubbed the "Gasoline Aristocracy." Thus
there are in Detroit two fairly distinct social groups--the Grosse
Pointe group, of which the old families form the nucleus, and the North
Woodward group, largely made up of newcomers.
The automobile has not only changed Detroit from a quiet old town into a
rich, active city, but upon the drowsy romance of the old days it has
superimposed a new kind of romance--the romance of modern business.
Fiction in its wildest flights hardly rivals the true stories of certain
motor moguls of Detroit. Every one can tell you these stories. If you
are a novelist all you have to do is go and get them. But, aside from
stories which are true, there have developed, in connection with the
automobile business, certain fictions more or less picturesque in
character. One of these, which has been widely circulated, is that "90
per cent. of the automobile business of Detroit is done in the bar of
the Pontchartrain Hotel." The big men of the business resent that yarn.
And, of course, it is preposterously false. Neither 90 per cent. nor 10
per cent. nor any appreciable per cent. of the automobile business is
done there. Indeed, you hardly ever see a really important
representative of the business in that place. Such men are not given to
hanging around bars.
I do not wish the reader to infer that I hung around the bar myself in
order to ascertain this fact. Not at all. I had heard the story and was
apprised of its untruth by the president of one of the large motor car
companies who was generously showing me about. As we bowled along one of
the wide streets which passes through that open place at the center of
the city called the Campus Martius, I was struck, as any visitor must
be, by the spectacle of hundreds upon hundreds of automobiles parked,
nose to the curb, tail to the street, in solid rows.
"You could tell that this was an automobile city," I remarked.
"Do you know why you see so many of them?" he asked with a smile.
I said I supposed it was because there were so many automobiles owned in
Detroit.
"No," he explained. "In other cities with as many and more cars you will
not see this kind of thing. They don't permit it. But our wide streets
lend themselves to it, and our Chief of Police, who believes in the
automobile business as much as any of the rest of us, also lends
himself to it. He lets us leave our cars about the streets because he
thinks it a good advertisement for the town."
As he spoke he was forced to draw up at a crossing to let a funeral
pass. It was an automobile funeral. The hearse, black and terrible
as only a hearse can be, was going at a modest pace for a motor,
but an exceedingly rapid pace for a hearse. If I am any judge of
speed, the departed was being wafted to his final resting place at
the somewhat sprightly clip of twelve or fifteen miles an hour.
Behind the hearse trailed limousines and touring cars. Two humble
taxicabs brought up the rear. There was a grim ridiculousness
about the procession's progress--pleasure cars throttled down,
trying to look solemn--chauffeurs continually throwing out their
clutches in a commendable effort to keep a respectful rate of speed.
Is there any other thing in the world which epitomizes our times as does
an automobile funeral? Yesterday such a thing would have been deemed
indecorous; to-day it is not only decorous, but rather chic, provided
that the pace be slow; to-morrow--what will it be then? Will hearses go
shooting through the streets at forty miles an hour? Will mourners
scorch behind, their horns shrieking signals to the driver of the hearse
to get out of the road and let the swiftest pass ahead, where there
isn't all that dust? I am afraid a time is close at hand when, if
hearses are to maintain that position in the funeral cortege to which
convention has in the past assigned them, they will have to hold it by
sheer force of superior horsepower!
* * * * *
Detroit is a young man's town. I do not think the stand-pat, sit-tight,
go-easy kind of business man exists there. The wheel of commerce has
wire spokes and rubber tires, and there is no drag upon the brake band.
Youth is at the steering wheel--both figuratively and literally. The
heads of great Detroit industries drive their own cars; and if the fact
seems unimportant, consider: do the leading men of your city drive
theirs? Or are they driven by chauffeurs? Have they, in other words,
reached a time of life and a frame of mind which prohibit their taking
the wheel because it is not safe for them to do so, or worse yet,
because it is not dignified? Have they that energy which replaces
worn-out tires--and methods--and ideas?
I have said that the president of a large automobile company showed me
about Detroit. I don't know what his age is, but he is under
thirty-five. I don't know what his fortune is, but he is suspected of a
million, and whatever he may have, he has made himself. I hope he is a
millionaire, for there is in the entire world only one other man who, I
feel absolutely certain, deserves a million dollars more than he
does--and a native modesty prevents my mentioning this other's name.
Looking at my friend, the president, I am always struck with fresh
amazement. I want to say to him: "You can't be the president of that
great big company! I know you sit in the president's office, but--look
at your hair; it isn't even turning gray! I refuse to believe that you
are president until you show me your ticket, or your diploma, or
whatever it is that a president has!"
Becoming curious about his exact age, I took up my "Who's Who in
America" one evening ("Who's Who" is another valued volume on my
one-foot shelf) with a view to finding out. But all I did find out was
that his name is not contained therein. That struck me as surprising. I
looked up the heads of half a dozen other enormous automobile
companies--men of importance, interest, reputation. Of these I
discovered the name of but one, and that one was not (as I should have
rather expected it to be) Henry Ford. (There is a Henry Ford in my
"Who's Who," but he is a professor at Princeton and writes for the
_Atlantic Monthly_!)[1]
Now whether this is so because of the newness of the automobile
business, or because "Who's Who" turns up its nose at "trade," in
contradistinction to the professions and the arts, I cannot say.
Obviously, the compilation of such a work involves tremendous
difficulties, and I have always respected the volume for the ability
with which it overcomes them; but when a Detroit dentist (who invented,
as I recollect, some new kind of filling) is included in "Who's Who,"
and when almost every minor poet who squeaks is in it, and almost every
illustrator who makes candy-looking girls for magazine covers, and
almost every writer--then it seems to me time to include, as well, the
names of men who are in charge of that industry which is not only the
greatest in Detroit, but which, more than any industry since the
inception of the telephone, has transformed our life.
The fact of the matter is, of course, that writers, in particular, are
taken too seriously, not merely by "Who's Who" but by all kinds of
publications--especially newspapers. Only opera singers and actors can
vie with writers in the amount of undeserved publicity which they
receive. If I omit professional baseball players it is by intention;
for, as a fan might say, they have to "deliver the goods."
[Footnote 1: "Who's Who" for 1913-1914. The more recent volume, which
has come out since, contains a biographical sketch of Mr. Henry Ford of
Detroit.]
* * * * *
Baedeker's United States, a third volume in the condensed library I
carried in my trunk, sets forth (in small type!) the following: "The
finest private art gallery in Detroit is that of Mr. Charles L. Freer.
The gallery contains the largest group of works by Whistler in existence
and good examples of Tryon, Dewing, and Abbott Thayer as well as many
Oriental paintings and potteries."
But in the case of the Detroit Museum of Art, Baedeker bursts into
black-faced type, and even adds an asterisk, his mark of special
commendation. Also a considerable reference is made to various
collections contained by the museum: the Scripps collection of old
masters, the Stearns collection of Oriental curiosities, a painting by
Rubens, drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo, and a great many works
attributed to ancient Italian and Dutch masters. "The museum also
contains," says Baedeker, "modern paintings by Gari Melchers, Munkacsy,
Tryon, F. D. Millet, and others."
I have quoted Baedeker as above, because it reveals the bald fact with
regard to art in Detroit; also because it reveals the even balder fact
that our blessed old friend Baedeker, who has helped us all so much,
can, when he cuts loose on art, make himself exquisitely ridiculous.
The truth is, of course, that Mr. Freer's gallery is not merely the
"finest private gallery in Detroit"; not merely the finest gallery of
any kind in Detroit; but that it is one of the exceedingly important
collections of the world, just as Mr. Freer is one of the world's
exceedingly important authorities on art. Indeed, any town which
contains Mr. Freer--even if he is only stopping overnight in a
hotel--becomes by grace of his presence an important art center for the
time being. His mere presence is sufficient. For in Mr. Freer's head
there is more art than is contained in many a museum. He was the man
whom, above all others in Detroit, we wished to see. (And that is no
disparagement of Henry Ford.)
Once in a long, long time it is given to the average human being to make
contact for a brief space with some other human being far above the
average--a man who knows one thing supremely well. I have met six such
men: a surgeon, a musician, an author, an actor, a painter, and Mr.
Charles L. Freer.
I do not know much of Mr. Freer's history. He was not born in Detroit,
though it was there that he made the fortune which enabled him to retire
from business. It is surprising enough to hear of an American business
man willing to retire in the prime of life. You expect that in Europe,
not here. And it is still more surprising when that American business
man begins to devote to art the same energy which made him a success
financially. Few would want to do that; fewer could. By the time the
average successful man has wrung from the world a few hundred thousand
dollars, he is fit for nothing else. He has become a wringer and must
remain one always.
Of course rich men collect pictures. I'm not denying that. But they do
it, generally, for the same reason they collect butlers and
footmen--because tradition says it is the proper thing to do. And I have
observed in the course of my meanderings that they are almost invariably
better judges of butlers than of paintings. That is because their
butlers are really and truly more important to them--excepting as their
paintings have financial value. Still, if the world is full of so-called
art collectors who don't know what they're doing, let us not think of
them too harshly, for there are also painters who do not know what they
are doing, and it is necessary that some one should support them.
Otherwise they would starve, and a bad painter should not have to do
that--starvation being an honor reserved by tradition for the truly
great.
Very keenly I feel the futility of an attempt to tell of Mr. Freer in a
few paragraphs. He should be dealt with as Mark Twain was dealt with by
that prince of biographers, Albert Bigelow Paine; some one should live
with him through the remainder of his life--always sympathetic and
appreciative, always ready to draw him out, always with a notebook. It
should be some one just like Paine, and as there isn't some one just
like Paine, it should be Paine himself.
Probably as a development of his original interest in Whistler, Mr.
Freer has, of late years, devoted himself almost entirely to ancient
Oriental art--sculptures, paintings, ceramics, bronzes, textiles,
lacquers and jades. The very rumor that in some little town in the
interior of China was an old vase finer than any other known vase of the
kind, has been enough to set him traveling. Many of his greatest
treasures he has unearthed, bargained for and acquired at first hand, in
remote parts of the globe. He bearded Whistler in his den--that is a
story by itself. He purchased Whistler's famous Peacock Room, brought
it to this country and set it up in his own house. He traveled on
elephant-back through the jungles of India and Java in search of buried
temples; to Egypt for Biblical manuscripts and potteries, and to the
nearer East, years ago, in quest of the now famous "lustered glazes." He
made many trips to Japan, in early days, to study, in ancient temples
and private collections, the fine arts of China, Corea and Japan, and
was the first American student to visit the rock-hewn caves of central
China, with their thousands of specimens of early sculpture--sculpture
ranking, Mr. Freer says, with the best sculpture of the world.
The photographs and rubbings of these objects made under Mr. Freer's
personal supervision have greatly aided students, all over the globe.
Every important public library in this country and abroad has been
presented by Mr. Freer with fac-similes of the Biblical manuscripts
discovered by him in Egypt about seven years ago, so far as these have
been published. The original manuscripts will ultimately go to the
National Gallery, at Washington.
Mr. Freer's later life has been one long treasure hunt. Now he will be
pursuing a pair of mysterious porcelains around the earth, catching up
with them in China, losing them, finding them again in Japan, or in New
York, or Paris; now discovering in some unheard-of Chinese town a
venerable masterpiece, painted on silk, which has been rolled into a
ball for a child's plaything. The placid pleasures of conventional
collecting, through the dealers, is not the thing that Mr. Freer loves.
He loves the chase.
You should see him handle his ceramics. You should hear him talk of
them! He _knows_. And though you do not know, you know he knows. More,
he is willing to explain. For, though his intolerance is great, it is
not directed so much at honest ignorance as against meretricious art.
The names of ancient Chinese painters, of emperors who practised art
centuries ago, of dynasties covering thousands of years, of Biblical
periods, flow kindly from his lips:
"This dish is Grecian. It was made five hundred years before the
birth of Christ. This is a Chinese marble, but you see it has a
Persian scroll in high relief. And this bronze urn: it is perhaps
the oldest piece I have--about four thousand years--it is Chinese.
But do you see this border on it? Perfect Greek! Where did the
Chinese get that? Art is universal. We may call an object Greek, or
Roman, or Assyrian, or Chinese, or Japanese, but as we begin to
understand, we find that other races had the same thing--identical
forms and designs. Take, for example, this painting of Whistler's,
'The Gold Screen.' You see he uses the Tosa design. The Tosa was
used in Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and down to
about twenty years ago. But there wasn't a single example of it in
Europe in 1864, when Whistler painted 'The Gold Screen'; and
Whistler had not been to the Orient. Then, where did he get the
Tosa design? He invented
it. It came to him because he was a great artist, and art is
universal."
It was like that--the spirit of it. And you must imagine the words
spoken with measured distinctness in a deep, resonant voice, by a man
with whom art is a religion and the pursuit of it a passion. He has a
nature full of fire. At the mention of the name of the late J. P.
Morgan, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or of certain Chinese
collectors and painters of the distant past, a sort of holy flame of
admiration rose and kindled in him. His contempt is also fire. A minor
eruption occurred when the automobile industry was spoken of; a Vesuvian
flare which reddened the sky and left the commercialism of the city in
smoking ruins. But it was not until I chanced to mention the Detroit
Museum of Art--an institution of which Mr. Freer strongly
disapproves--that the great outburst came. His wrath was like an
overpowering revolt of nature. A whirlwind of tempestuous fire mounted
to the heavens and the museum emerged a clinker.
He went to our heads. We four, who saw and heard him, left Mr. Freer's
house drunk with the esthetic. Even the flooding knowledge of our own
barbarian ignorance was not enough to sober us. Some of the flame had
gotten into us. It was like old brandy. We waved our arms and cried out
about art. For there is in a truly big human being--especially in one
old enough to have seemed to gain perspective on the universe--some
quality which touches something in us that nothing else can ever reach.
It is something which is not admiration only, nor vague longing to
emulate, nor a quickened comprehension of the immensity of things;
something emotional and spiritual and strange and indescribable which
seems to set our souls to singing.
The Freer collection will go, ultimately, to the Smithsonian Institution
(the National Gallery) in Washington, a fact which is the cause of deep
regret to many persons in Detroit, more especially since the City Plan
and Improvement Commission has completed arrangements for a Center of
Arts and Letters--a fine group plan which will assemble and give
suitable setting to a new Museum of Art, Public Library, and other
buildings of like nature, including a School of Design and an Orchestra
Hall. The site for the new gallery of art was purchased with funds
supplied by public-spirited citizens, and the city has given a million
dollars toward the erection of the building. Plans for the library have
been drawn by Cass Gilbert.
It seems possible that, had the new art museum been started sooner, and
with some guarantee of competent management, Mr. Freer might have
considered it as an ultimate repository for his treasures. But now it is
too late. That the present art museum--the old one--was not to be
considered by him, is perfectly obvious. Inside and out it is unworthy.
It looks as much like an old waterworks as the new waterworks out on
Jefferson Avenue looks like a museum. Its foyer contains some
sculptured busts, forming the most amazing group I have ever seen. The
group represents, I take it, prominent citizens of Detroit--among them,
according to my recollection, the following: Hermes, Augustus Caesar, Mr.
Bela Hubbard, Septimus Severus, the Hon. T. W. Palmer, Mr. Frederick
Stearns, Apollo, Demosthenes, and the Hon. H. P. Lillibridge.
I do not want to put things into people's heads, but--the old museum is
not fire-proof. God speed the new one!