The great Barnes Collection is about to move from Merion, PA, where it's been since its founder, Albert Barners, inventor of something called "argyrol", built it. Mr. Barnes didn't really like people to visit him
- except certain artists - so he fashioned a wall of byzantine procedure and limited opportunity around his collection. Once it was "finished", he mandated that no more paintings could be purchased. And, of course, all his odd hours and arbitrary schedules had to be observed as well. He was rich enough to be able to have his rather capricious rulings enforced. It's always been hard to get into the Barnes Collection.
And when it moves to Philadelphia, it won't be much easier.
His choice in art was formed partly by his old high school chum, William Glackens, whom Barnes dispatched to Europe for some high-toned looking-around.
Glackens returned with the nucleus of Barnes'
collection - with its essential design and direction, in fact. A frustrated impressionist, Glackens leaned toward Renoir and bought Barnes' first little ladies.
(Taking the reins himself, Barnes ended up purchasing a hundred and seventeen others.)
What's wrong with this picture? Nothing and everything. First of all, Barnes was an American citizen and, as such, was more or less obliged to love French modernist painting first while ignoring the art of his countrymen. Glackens, as his advisor, did him a great disservice in steering him toward France. He could have easily introduced him to a cadre of artists who were far more revolutionary than Renoir and lived right in New York City; they were, in fact, Glackens'
own friends and colleagues. I always wonder why in hell Glackens did that, when he was already privy to the revolutionary cell that might have drawn an eccentric millionaire like Albert Barnes. But, no, not only did Barnes relinquish that opportunity, he jumped over the pond as a sort of critical occupation and kept purchasing Van Goghs (no Frenchmen, he, but close enough), Gaugins, Soutines (not a garden-variety Parisian either), and other modernists - most notably, Henri Matisse, who would eventually do a mural for the big house and install it there.
It is sobering to realize that Barnes had a hand in changing history. If he and other similarly motivated collectors had lost their money somehow, the face of American museums would be at least somehwat different.
Instead of intoning the names of Monet, Manet, and Gauguin, you'd likely be talking about John Sloan, Robert Henri, and perhaps even Glackens, (William) himself. Big blockbuster exhibits might well feature the shenanigans of Sloans' alcoholic wife, Dolly, of whom he made an "honest woman" (at least most of the time); Robert Henri's passionate parochialism, by which every moment and every thing could be transformed into art; Ernest Lawson's famously bejewelled coloration (and not Pissarro's, say.) We'd have different artist stereotypes: the artist uberman or artist worker; the artist/ballplayer, artist/politician. Artists would be celebrated for confronting modern realities and not going off into the country - or dodging out on a major war - and tracking the nuances of light on the facades of country cathedrals or popular trees. It would be honorable to talk politics - perhaps even to vote in minor elections. It would be a good thing to acknowledge poverty and not merely glorify the pleasant and predictable. And while some of Barnes'
major purhases are not necessarily soft-core, they are generally focused on either the gestural or decorative. By the early Nineteen hundreds, the best American art had begun to eschew that and had finally come into its own. Yet after having made a decent beginning, its potential champions and collectors abandoned it and turned to the more rarefied regions of pure design, pure tonality - pure formalism.
It's interesting to note that this turnabout was not necessarily foreordained. The artists who had been Glackens' illustrator colleagues and students were the enfants terribles of the early Twentieth Century and were in an excellent position to steal the thunder of their more genteel betters at our nation's bastions of polite culture. But the Armory Show changed all that and essentially made a purely American statement irrelevant - even embarrassing - to the sophisticated collector. Rather than haunt the dankish studios of George Luks - or find themselves holding a filthy glass full of lousy red wine at an Independents'
exhibit Downtown - the new collector went to Alfred Steiglitz and let him talk on and on about the hot properties of Paris, like Picasso and Matisse and their American counterparts, particularly John Marin.
Steiglitz passionately believed that representational art (except anything the camera could produce) was passe and he promoted artists who had found their own personal and artistic salvation at the Armory Show, with its startling European innovators. Collectors like John Quinn walked away from the Ashcan School and into Steiglitz' gallery - and they stayed. Barnes was rich enough to leave the country early and often. As he scoured Paris, New York City and other American places were ignored, setting the stage for the backlash of the Nineteen Thirties, when regionalism had its brief, but triumphant, reign in the art world of the Depression. Of course, few people collected it. That's not necessarily what it was for.
I suppose what riles me about Barnes and his ilk is their tremendous influence. On a recent NPR program, for which the presenter, Susan Stamberg, had travelled to Merion, Pennsylvania to pay homage to The Collection, she, Ms. Stamberg, could hardly contain her astonishment at seeing so much great work in one setting. It is arguable whether Barnes collection is a great one, but it certainly is big. I'm wondering what she would think if she had an opportunity to study the basements of American museums and see what a wealth of early and mid-Twentieth century painting that was stuck there. A lot of it isn't that good either, but because of the disproportionate influence of Barnes and his ilk, that's the stuff that gets buried. Even a lousy Renoir is seen more often than Sloan or Henri. Mediocre Matisses and Vuillards get more exposure than the best artists America has to offer. Even Andrew Wyeth, our only living Superstar, doesn't have quite the clout as the above-average French modernist. (Close, though.) Few other American painters, however, have quite the gravitas of dozens of European artists. Nor is the average American citizen even aware that they exist at all.
We now live in a time of almost supernatural productivity in the arts. Painting - a sort of esoteric pastime - is being produced at a rate that would astonish atelier artists of the late Nineteenth-century. However, the best representational painting in this country is still a well-kept secret. It is collected avidly by the very few who seem to lack the egotism of most collectors and therefore keep a low profile. The "name"
collectors outnumber these souls almost exponentially.
Take a gander at any Top One Hundred collections and they are copycats for the most part. And the names you often hear are the same ones that had once charmed the ears of Albert Barnes - who did not start the virus, but was eager to spread it.
My point is not that one's own country should necessarily be first in our minds as we think about which art, or artists, should matter. No art collection is good because it's "patriotic." (The opposite is more likely.) However, it would seem to make relatively good sense for anybody who's been bit with the collecting bug to try to look around a little before succumbing to the exotic-itis Barnes and his colleagues did. They essentially searched for expensive novelties - and got them! So you could call them successful according to their lights. But not to mine. A collector has a public responsibility, in my view, and should be held to a higher standard than that of some others. His or her collections - if they're expensive enough - will be bequeathed to institutions or become institutions themselves. They will be regarded as the gold standard. They will set the pace for other collections, the ever-increasing bouts of acquisitiveness-to-come. Their legacy very much outlives them - and I'm sure they'd all be very happy to know it.
In Barnes' case, I'm not happy in the least. His search was essentially for the novel and eccentric. A minor passion, but not worthy of being on the world's
stage.
