Renaissance by Telecast

Television hopes to do for art what radio has done for music: bring masterpieces to millions who could not otherwise enjoy them. Last week, with a rush of appropriate sentiments, the first U. S. art telecast took place in Manhattan. Haled before an NBC "ike" was Artist Charles Sheeler, whose retrospective show had just opened at the Museum of Modern Art. Said he: "It may even be that television has brought us to the threshold of another Renaissance in the visual arts." Spectators were more skeptical, thought the flickering, televised images of Artist Sheeler's paintings looked like magic lantern slides. But all agreed the incident was historic.

In black and white reproductions--and television cannot yet transmit color--Charles Sheeler's dryly accurate paintings can scarcely be told from his camera studies of similar scenes. Visitors to the Museum of Modern Art's show could more readily distinguish between his canvases and photographs, see also his drawings and industrial designs. Stoop-shouldered, scholarly Artist Sheeler, 56, likes to paint barns, skyscrapers, old furniture, factories. All these meet the Sheeler fondness for functionalism. Ignored in his paintings are men and women--inefficient machines capable of measuring the stars.

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