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Albert Eugene Gallatin wrote about, collected, exhibited, and created works of art. Called "one of the great figures in early 20th-century American culture,"〔 he was a leading proponent of nonobjective and later abstract and particularly Cubist art whose "visionary approach" in both collecting and painting left "an enduring impact on the world of modern art."〔 ==Early life and education== Gallatin was born in 1881 into a wealthy and socially prominent family. Showing a youthful interest in art and literature, he began to collect works by Max Beerbohm, Aubrey Beardsley, and James McNeill Whistler while still in his teens. The common element in these purchases was a preference for works that he saw as possessing a harmonious, refined, and decorative nature, rather than a naturalistic or literal one. He appreciated their aesthetic over their narrative content and their intrinsic over their didactic or utilitarian value.〔〔〔〔 As he collected art, he also began to write about it. For the two decades following the turn of the century, Gallatin produced a constant stream of articles, small monographs, and books of engraved plates.〔See, below, the list of Gallatin's writings in chronological order.〕 Between 1900 and 1910 most of these concerned Beardsley and Whistler. In examining their drawings and paintings he sought to find out what gave these works enduring value as opposed to superficial and temporary popularity. To him, their excellence showed in elegance of line and quality of design.〔 He also drew attention to what he called a "decorative feeling" in works by these two artists in contrast to what he considered to be the less aesthetic realism of Degas and Millet.〔〔 He maintained that modern art did not become popular because it was good, but because it scandalized. For example, in 1902 he wrote that Beardsley's drawings attracted notice by their shocking distortion of perspective and proportion and their escape from artistic conventions. Because their true value was not readily apparent, he believed that only connoisseurs along with Beardsley's fellow artists could fully appreciate them.〔〔"The really essential viewpoint for considering Beardsley's drawings is the purely technical one of the artist and the connoisseur. The Decorative qualities in his work have never been surpassed by any artist whose work has been in black and white. Beardsley is primarily an "artist's artist," and the qualities of his wonderful and beautiful line and perfect arrangement of his masses are the elements in his work which will make it immortal. The aesthetic qualities in his drawings are not those which mean mere popularity. It is true his drawing had a greater vogue than those of any other artist of his age, but just why they had seems difficult of explanation, unless, as one critic holds, his ignoring of perspective and proportion, and his freedom, to a certain extent, of convention, caused his works to meet with a succès de scandale." (''Aubrey Beardsley as a Designer of Book-plates''. Boston, C.E. Peabody, 1902, pp. 3-5)〕 In another article, he called Whistler an artist "whose work must remain more or less incomprehensible to the general public."〔 He also wrote that the best art was created solely for its own sake. He wrote of Whistler's "unflinching devotion to beauty" and freedom from "commercialism, vulgarity, and the spirit of gain."〔〔"Into commercialism, vulgarity, and the spirit of gain, in which realism and ugliness were two of her artist's gods, came Whistler with his unflinching devotion to beauty-beauty for its own sake. In all of Whistler's works—paintings, watercolors, pastels, etchings, drypoints, lithographs, drawings—we are instantly impressed by their distinction and elegance: always was Whistler an aristocrat. In the course of his famous lecture on art Whistler said that "We have then but to wait—until, with the mark of the gods upon him—there come among us again the chosen—who shall continue what has gone before." All supremely great works of art are great because of their intrinsic beauty; a masterpiece of Greek sculpture, a piece of old Chinese porcelain, an Italian bronze statuette of the Renaissance, a painting by Velasquez or one by Vermeer may be grouped together with the greatest harmony and unity of purpose; they speak the same language and have everything in common. And with them could be placed a Whistler, for he also "had the mark of the gods upon him." ... unhackneyed subjects treated in an entirely personal way and wonderfully beautiful and alluring; ... drawings are of the greatest artistic importance because more personal than paintings, and personality counts next to genius." ("Whistler's Pastels, and Modern Profiles," ''Art and Progress'', March 1912, p. 9)〕 Gallatin said Whistler's subjects were never ugly or lacking taste. In his view, Whistler was not a realist because he never descended to the obvious or commonplace.〔 When his father died in 1902, Gallatin became head of a family consisting of himself, two sisters, and their mother. As a member of New York's social elite he gave and attended high-profile dinners, dances, weddings, and benefits. His name appeared frequently in the press as a result these activities and also as a result of his pioneering affection for automobiles and motor sport.〔〔 His inheritance made it unnecessary for him to work for a living and he chose not to follow the lead of other members of his class by engaging in banking, stock brokerage, or other professional occupation. Instead, he continued to collect art and to enhance his reputation as an art connoisseur by his writings. During the years leading up to the First World War he became increasingly interested in American artists such as the illustrator, Otho Cushing, the ''pleinair'' painter, Frederick Frieseke, and the painter of interiors, Walter Gay.〔 He also acquired and wrote about artists associated with the Ashcan School—Everett Shinn, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, and John Sloan as well as other young American artists, including John Marin and Boardman Robinson.〔 While the drawings, paintings, and prints of these artists appear to have little in common with the work of Beardsley and Whistler, he saw in them a similar feeling for form, elegance of line, and "entire freedom from all taint of the academic."〔 Glackens, he wrote, was like Whistler in his originality, his great color sense, and his ability to bring subjects to life.〔 Shinn's paintings revealed to him a "personal expression of the artist's genius" and he also saw in them a "decorative instinct" that he admired in virtually all the art he collected.〔 He was pessimistic about the capacity of museums and government agencies to support young American artists and believed they would be best served by individual art lovers, collectors, and "enlightened" critics.〔〔"The painter of originality and talent who turns for support to the State, to the public museums or to organized art societies is doomed to disappointment. If it were not for the support and encouragement of enlightened critics and of amateurs and collectors, the genius of many painters would never reach maturity." (American Water-Colourists by Albert Eugene Gallatin, New York, E. P. Dutton & Company, 1922, pp. xi-x)〕〔 Gallatin served in World War I as a member of a naval reserve unit and directed two civilian groups: a federal government committee on exhibitions of art propaganda and a municipal committee that encouraged artists to make posters supporting the war effort.〔 This involvement led to a book, ''Art and the Great War'', (1919) in which Gallatin discussed war-related art in the allied nations, giving many examples of paintings, drawings, posters, caricatures, and prints that he admired.〔〔 In 1918, with Duncan Phillips and Augustus Vincent Tack, he organized an exhibition, the Allied War Salon of New York.〔〔〔 The works in this show were almost all traditionally representational. The exceptions were paintings by a British artist, C.R.W. Nevinson, whose work at this time could be described as a cubist version of futurism. Nevinson's ''French Troops Resting'' of 1916, was exhibited at the Keppel & Co. galleries in 1919 and was probably included in the 1918 show.〔 It and similar works of his are said to have been Gallatin's first introduction to this aspect of modernism.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Albert Eugene Gallatin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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