The Human Toch

I HAVE BEEN gently rallied for devoting two Human Tuches to myself and only one to albert Einstein. They who twit me imply that I consider myself twice as important as Einstein. The fact is, simply, that I know much more than twice as much about myself than I know about the worthy author of the relativity theory and, besides, my knowledge about myself is authentic and exclusive. I was there when I was born and have been next to myself ever since, and what I don’t know about myself is nobody’s business. What I do know about myself is, likewise, nobody’s nusiness-unless I choose to make the material interesting enugh to make at your business. After all, what do I know ahout Einstein? I saw him once at a lunchcon, during which he didn’t say a blessed word, but sat quietly puffing at a pipe when he wasn’t taking a little nourisment, and then I saw him again, playing dindle at a chamber concert. Why, Professor Einstein and I don’t even speak the same language, so that it would be almost impossible for me to learn about him-except what already had been published in the papers and was therefore no longer exclusive data. We might perhaps study the sign lauguage together-excetp that each of us has otlier lings to worryh about. I don’t think here # appreciation around town of the exclusive data about myself which I gave away. The fact that I wrote two columps about myself and only one about Einstein means simply, not that I am more important than the professor, but an interesting speactacle for me to look over the trifle with. Take a walk over to the Whitney Museum some afternoon and see how many importnat persons have portraits of themselves hanging on its walls. And I can’t paint, I can only write.

THE SOYER TWINS

Several months ago when the Metropolitan Museum of Art puchased a portrait in oil by Raphael Soyer, I took occasion to write a piece about the artist, for it isn’t every day that the Metropolitan buys work by living American artists, and such young ones, and a purchase by the Metro-politan sets a painter up in food and drinks for weeks to come. During my interview with Mr. Soyer i learned that he had at one time earned something like a living by teaching Hebrew, in which occupation he was following in his father’s footsteps. Mr. Schoar, as the father spells his name, was not only a teacher of, but a writer in, Hebrew as well as Yiddish, and is still engaged in these occupaitons. Mose Soyer is twin to Raphael in a double sense, for he is also a painter to being. The Bulletin’s art reviewer.

Both brothers have some into the news again. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has just awarded to Raphael, for his portrait Gitel-the very same. I believe, purchased by the Metroploitan-the Beck Gold Medal, give annually for the best portant in oil. To another American Jewish artist, Harry Gottlieb, well known in art circles in the purlieus of New York and Woodstock, went the Jennie Sensan gold Medal for the best landscape at the exhiblition, Winter Snow. At the current Whitney Museum exhibition of self portraits of artists you will find one of Gotlieb looking most inoffensively and almost apologetcally Jewish in a skating cap-which is, of course, not the only item of clothing in the self-portrait. And you will find at the Whitney, in the exhibition of recent acquisitionhs to the permanent collection, a very fine work, painted intempera, by Moses Soyer. It is a self-portrait of the artist working from a plaster cast, and apparently as absorbed in his task as a good artist should be.

One is pleased to record the triumphs, minor as well as major, of the Soyer twins, because they are curiously unassertive nad absorbed in their work. Each has so little of the self-promoter in him that one would like to give each of them a push-one at a time. They go about their mild way, painting as best they can, trying to solve their problems, not knowing how nor caring to shout their wares, taking good fortune as well as bad fortune, with an indifferent shrug.

ODDS AND ENDS

With a rahter thick German accent our elevator man, after having read baout the Welfare Island raid, said to us: “Und yet they criticize Chermany!” . . . One of ur correspondents inadvertently referred to one of the important citizens of his town as a notorious philanthr opist,” One of the most important and genuinedfy philanthropic of philanthropists in the United States has the look and the bearing of a ratrired pirate. . . . I sa and heard the other night Wagner’s melodious and stirring music drama, “Die Meisteringer von Nurnberg,” and although i relished the music and the spectacle up to the hilt, I had the umpleasant feeling that this Germany of the Middle Ages which Wagner which hated and fervor. Perhaps one should not allow these thoughts to becloud one’s enjoyment of so maturcly melodious a percormance as that the Metropolitan gave Friday evening. Ludwig Lewisohn, for example, deinies, for himself anyway, any beauty or value in Gothic art, and he cannot look at a Crucifixion or a Nativity with any the periods in which the Cathedrals were built and teh Primitives painted were the periods also of perccution and mass murder. . . . But the recduction to the absurd of this attitude was expressed to me once upon a time by a very ardent radical who couldn’t stomach the plays of Shakespeare because, said he, the plays were bougcois, therefore could not be great art. This man, incidenttally, was so un-bouggeois that he gambled on Wall Street with the funds of the radical orgaziation of which he was custodian and lost them. Shakespears might have saved him from this step had he pondered a few of that playwright’s stanzas apt to the situation, such as Polonius’ advice to Laertes. But here we are becoming sentertious without being necessafily Jewish.

The Human Toch appears every Tuesday, Tursday and sunday.