Art in the subway Harold Ambellan

SUBWAY ART AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

An Exhibition of Subway Art opens to the public today, Tuesday, February 8, at The Museum of Modern Art, 14 West 49 Street. The exhibition consists of sketches, details and models of murals and sculpture designed for subway stations by members of the United American Artists under the auspices of the Public Use of Art Committee. It also includes a large model of a New York subway station showing murals and sculpture in place. The model and the murals and sculpture shown in it were designed and executed by artists on the New York Federal Art Project which two years ago started working on a plan for subway art.

Use of the fine arts in subway decoration has been made nowhere in the world, so far as is known, except in Moscow. Even in the Moscow subway, however, no new technique particularly suited to subway murals and sculpture has been worked out.`

Experimental work in this country has been carried on for a year by members of the United American Artists (formerly the Artists Union) under the direction and encouragement of the Public Use of Art Committee. All research into new material was accomplished under the direction of Ralph Mayer, consulting paint chemist, and with the aid and cooperation of Porcelain Metals, Inc. and the Matawan Tile Company.

The problems of this project are both technical and esthetic. The medium for subway art must be resistant to the vibration, temperature and dirt of subways. It should also be impervious to mutilation and to the Surrealist scrawlings of those self-appointed subway artists who add moustaches to or delete teeth from the beautiful ladies on subway advertising posters. The esthetic problems of subway art are equally complicated. The artist is challenged by the difficulties inherent in a new and untradltional environment for art.

The artists represented in the Exhibition of Subway Art are as follows: Ida Abelman, Harold Ambellan, Francis Avery, Otto Botto, Gustav Bethke, Ruth Chaney, Francis Costa, Robert Cronbach, Jacob Paul Daniels, Albert Friscia, Balcomb Greene, Jose Gutierrez, Hyman Haag, H. Harari, Abraham, Harriton, Milton Hebald, Ben Karp, Florence Kent, Joseph Konzal, Claire Mahl, Isabella Meisels, Bruce Mitchell, Eugene Morley, Elizabeth Olds, Max Ratzker, Joseph Ringola, Arthur Schneider, Angelo Sottosanti. and Paul Weller.