Cranbrook Show

In the past five years art has boomed in the U. S. For sheer quantity of paint, canvas and public interest, the period has probably been unequaled even by the peak years of the Italian Renaissance. Some symptoms: 1) WPA Art Project's estimated 2,000,000 square feet of surface painted to date; 2) 790 exhibitions sponsored throughout the U. S. since 1932 by Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art; 3) a bull market in art books (262 were published in 1939). During the past three years the No. 1 U. S. source of popular knowledge of U. S. art has been LIFE, which has reproduced for the man-in-the-street's weekly dime some 452 paintings (usually in full color) by U. S. artists.

Last fortnight LIFE and the famed Cranbrook art centre at Bloomfield Hills, Mich. put on an art show. LIFE and Cranbrook invited a gilt-edged jury of U. S. critics to choose 60 leading contemporary U. S. artists, then to pick one picture by each of the 60. Some of these canvases had been previously shown in public; all (like Speicher's Alicia, see cut) were typical of the artist's best work, thus represented the fresh cream of U. S. painting.

Night the exhibition opened, 1,000 Detroit socialites braved wintry winds to attend. By week's end 2,500 gallerygoers from as far away as San Francisco and Baltimore had followed them. To add to the U. S. atmosphere, Cranbrook provided U. S. tomato plants in window boxes, U. S. music, Rhine wine flavored to taste like U. S. new-mown hay.

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