The 1960 Boston Arts Festival, which recently concluded its annual run in the Public Gardens, was the center of more than the usual controversy. As in previous years, the main subject of contention was the exhibit of paintings. Last year, the Festival's painting exhibition was wholly invitational; in rebellion, a group of painters banded together to set up nearby a vying exhibit of their own. This year, the Festival reverted to a policy of holding an open competition; and it instructed the all-artist selection juries "to seek out artistic essence in whatever form or garb it may appear."

For this ninth annual Festival, the painting jury made its choices, and the battle was on. The jury stated that it recognized certain common denominators in all art: "competence, craftsmanship, honesty, and individual vision." It went on: "Skillful manipulation of pigment has taken precedence over the expression of deep human involvement. The Festival entries underline this generalization. . . . In particular we missed the more disciplined constructive aspect of image making, and, at the other extreme, the painter's pure joy of uncovering the visible world. We observed with regret that some of the most vigorous painters of our regional community did not participate in the exhibition."

The jury was in effect saying: (1) most of the painting submitted was not good; (2) the prevailing style today is "abstract" or "non-representational"; (3) too many of the best local artists are still harboring grudges from previous years and refusing to submit.

There is no denying that a large percentage of the 148 painters exhibited (from the body of 1500 paintings submitted) were practitioners of non-representational art. There is also no denying that the general public prefers representational art (it was no accident that, in the balloting for the Popular Prize, 40 percent of the votes went for one representational work, Robert Bliss' "Balanced Figure," a skillful if too slick view in shades of gray of a kneeling man on a tight-rope as seen from above).

But a jury should not try to choose what it thinks the public will like best. Looking at William Georgenes' "Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician," a lady next to me summed up her basis for aesthetic evaluation by exclaiming admiringly, "Imagine all the work that had to go into that!" Then there are people who believe: those who can, do; and those who can't, become critics or members of juries. To answer these, the Festival included an ancillary exhibit of two paintings each by members of the selection jury: Loring Coleman, Fannie Hillsmith, Gyorgy Kepes, Walter Meigs, and Richard Ziemann. These were all excellent of their kind, though only Miss Hillsmith, with her (to me uncongenial) neo-Grandma Moses manner, could be said to be committed to a wholly representational style.

Two Juries?

Edgar Driscoll, art critic of the Boston Globe, suggested as a solution for next year that there be two juries, one for representational and one for abstract art, each in charge of picking half the paintings. One trouble with this idea is that a true artistic climate is not necessarily reflected by such an arbitrary 50-50 division. But a more serious objection arises from the fact that it is not always possible to relegate a painting to one or the other of the two categories. The work of many artists is semi-abstract or semi-representational; some of the best entries this year were just such items, like W. T. Cummings' "Beach" and Robert Harnilton's "Crucifixion." The war betwen traditionalists and modernists is useless; the only valid war is between the good and the bad, both of which can be achieved in any style. Ernst Halberstadt's representational (and Oriental-influenced) "Landscape" was fine, as was John Gregoropoulos' abstract "Olympian Landscape"; Yukata Ohashi's "Equilibrium No. 4" was abstractionism at its worst, while William Hardy's representational "Bridge at Portsmouth" couldn't even get the bridge towers in proportion.

The 'Herald' Attacks

The staid Boston Herald stirred up the biggest tempest with an editorial, "Arts Festival Bludgeon," followed by an avalanche (poorly reasoned, for the most part) of letters to the editor, and another editorial. The first editorial accused the Festival of intentionally "propagandizing" abstractionism, and quoted in support of its stand some remarks by its art critic, Robert Taylor. Internecine strife resulted when Taylor, in hearty disagreement with the editorial, had to have recourse to the letters column in order to disassociate himself from his paper's policy.

The final paragraph of Taylor's reply was the most sensible and sane statement on the whole controversy: "My objection to the art, like the jury comment, is based on the fact that it reflects a declining aesthetic climate. The early 1950's saw the break-through of our native abstract pioneers into fresh realms of feeling; today that movement seems in a cul-de-sac in which imitation and repetition have momentarily taken the place of creative statement. If the art in the Festival has little to say, why blame the Festival because we're in the tag-end of a stylistic period from which new forms arise? The cure for the atonal music of Schoenberg is not more and more Victor Herbert. The cure for the Boston Arts Festival is not to kill it off because it does its job."

The graphic arts were very little in evidence in this year's exhibit. Twenty-nine sculptors had works shown, but these were of lower quality than usual. One especially intriguing item, though, was Richard Boyce's "Fall of Icarus," made of steel, polymer, and ivory. And the Festival's over-all Grand Prize went to Marianna Pineda's "Prelude," a life-size representational bronze of a supine woman about to go into labor; the presence of a bit of covering drapery left the viewer with the impression that the sculptress (and perhaps the subject) wanted to eat her cake and have it too.

Design and Dome

The New England architecture exhibit was, qualitatively, one of the best in the Festival's history. One could not cavil with the award in any of the five categories. In the Educational Group, the award went to Harvard's newly-opened Quincy House. The jury commented: "A courageous and successful attempt to prove that a building well designed in a modern idiom can take its place in a Georgian style environment with dignity, assurance, and grace. The structure has been thoughtfully organized in plan and elevation. It is fresh and a real contribution to the Harvard campus, thoughtfully and beautifully detailed and executed in excellent and appropriate materials."

Commercial: the Dorr-Oliver Building in Stamford, Connecticut, with handsome floating sculpture over the main facade. Religious: Temple Reyim in Newton, Massachusetts. Residential: the Beach House of L. W. Spear in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with a quasi-Japanese overhanging roof. Public Use: the Wellesley Free Library in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

The whole architectural exhibition was housed in a specially designed "geodesic dome," an invention rated as "one of the 100 best industrial designs of the 20th century." The dome is part of the dymaxion theory created by Buckminster Fuller, who visited Leverett House a couple of months ago and lectured on his structural ideas. The aluminum skeleton of the Festival's dome is handsome enough; but since the dome is to be used in succeding years, a more aesthetically satisfactory covering ought to be procured.