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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 9, 1941)
Uregon Emerald The Oregon Daily Emerald, published daily during the college year except Sundays, Mondays, holidays, and final examination periods by the Associated Students, University of Oregon. Subscription rates: $1.25 per term and $3.00 per year. Entered as second class matter at the postoffice, Eugene, Oregon. Represented tor national advertising by NATIONAL ADVERTISING SERVICE, INC., college publishers’ representative, 420 Madison Ave., New York—Chicago— Bos ton—Los Angeles—San Francisco—Portland and Seattle. Editorial and Business Offices located on ground floor of Journalism building. Phones 1300 Extension: 382 Editor; 353 News Office; 359 Sports Office; and 354 Business Offices. UPPER BUSINESS STAFF Anita Backberg, Classified Advertising Bill Peterson, Circulation Manager Manager Mary Ellen Smith, Promotiion Director Ron Alpaugh, Layout Production Man •ffer Eileen Millard. Office Manager LYLE M. NELSON, Editor JAMES W. FROST, Business Manager ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Hal Olney, Helen Angell Immle Leonard, Managing Editor Fred May, Advertising Manager .ent Stitzer, News Editor Bob Rogers, National Advertising Mgr. Editorial Board: Roy Vernstrom, Pat Erickson, Helen Angell, Harold Olney, Kent Btitzer, Timmie Leonard, and Professor George Turnbull, adviser. UPPER NEWS STAFF Pat Erickson, Women’s Ray Schrick, Ass’t Manag- Corrine Wignes, Executive Editor ing Editor Secretary Bob Flavelle, Co-Sports Betty Jane Biggs, Ass’t Mildred Wilson, Exchange Editor _ News Editor Editor Ken Christianson, Co-Sports Wes Sullivan, Ass’t News Editor Editor The Sun Came Out 'JpHE sun came out yesterday. Weary float-designers shook the raindrops from their slickers and began to build again their Arabian water-skimmers in preparation for Saturday’s canoe fete. Chairman Jim Carney of the fete drew his first breath in a fortnight as he blinked at the rising sun. Queen AnnabelIe and her court took their “ will-o-wisp” dresses from tissue paper in readiness for their biggest day. Three thousand sons and daughters fretted over what to do with mother. In McArthur court, prom chairmen draped hilarious Oriental colors from ceiling to floor in a gay festival of color, as a set ting for tonight’s annual ball. Eugene florists set an “orchid” boom record as undergraduates groomed themselves for the biggest social event of the year. Freshman girls with a yen for activities sliced sandwich bread for the campus luncheon into the wee small hours . . . and pretended they enjoyed it. The sorority across the street left its blinds up and neighbors watched while sophisticated glamour girls scrubbed floors in preparation for scrutinizing mothers’ eyes. # # # g^OMEBODY in the music school played a whining measure again and again, fearfully counting the hours until Satur day’s Sunlight Serenade. Typical American youth searched frantically for hotel rooms which should have been reserved in January. Oregon took on a carefree air as coeds donned peasant skirts and bell-sleeved blouses to suggest the Arabian scene. Political disgust was the only cloud that marred a sunless sky, but even that gave way momentarily to another gay weekend in May. The sun came out yesterday ... to hail Oregon’s traditional Junior Weekend of 1941. International Side Show By RIDGELY CUMMINGS Saturday morning there is a special edition of the Emerald Cummings for which Ray Schrick is to conduct this column. The next Saturday the final edi tion of the Emerald will be put out by the freshmen and some Frosh will do the honors. That loaves me four more columns beside this one and there is so much that needs to be said for the cause of keep ing America out of the war that I hesitate to use up the space by giving the more or less objective summary of in ternational developments that was this department's original function. At the beginning of the school year I never hoped that spring would still see these columns coming out. I was afraid that the war hysteria would mount more quickly than it has, that the opposition to Roosevelt's foreign policy would be throt tled and that we would be in war by April. Non-belligerent April has come and gone and the United States is still a non belligerent, although the nation can scarcely be called neutral. In the past few weeks inter ventionist pressure has been tremendously increased and the American people are, as Senator Nye declares, being blitzkrieged into convoys and thus into war. Highly significant of the way public opinion is swinging is the result of a brief survey of reac tions to Stimson’s speech, con ducted by a local paper, in which six University professors and administrative officials ex pressed themselves in favor of convoys. I don’t know whether this is a fair indication of fac ulty sentiment, but there is an easy way to find out. Poll Proposed What I wish the Emerald edi torial board would do is to print two ballots in Tuesday’s edition —one ballot for the faculty and one for the student body—on which would be a simply word ed question: “Do you favor con voys? Vote yes or no.” Tues day is suggested because many of the campus population are busy elsewhere Saturdays, and separate balots for faculty and students are urged because it would be highly interesting to study the breakdown between the potters and the pots, the in structors and the instructed. To get back to my propagan da. Oregon’s senator, Rufus C. Holman, made a startling sug gestion when he was inter (Continued on page fizv) Counterpoint... By GENE EDWARDS Probably one of the most interesting fea tures of free America is its free art. Here, within these United States, if one has what he considers to be an artistic formulation to offer to the public he is perfectly entitled to do so no matter how completely mad his idea may seem to those who do not “under stand.” The only obvious limitations lie within the bounds of his own ingenuity, a general respect for the unwritten laws of good taste and a wary eye upon the Legion of Decency who may make him put panties on his statuary if he lives in Newark. But aside from these localized moralized compulsions he is usually free to do pretty much as he pleases. There is no mandatory dictum which determines which art shall demonstrate itself and which shall be sup pressed. The general evolution of things is allowed to pursue its logical conclusion and that art which is not securely founded is left to collapse under its own weight and thereby contribute its chapter to obscurity. First Hand The latest “revolutionary” art is exempli fied for first-hand observation in the display shown this week at the Little Art gallery. This group of paintings falls under the cate gory of “non-objective art” and is part of the New York collection of Solomon R. Gug genheim. And it is certainly something to see. Half of my fun in attending the exhibit has been in garnering comments from other ob servers, for after all you just can’t come sud denly face to face with 8 square feet of blue and orange “spaghetti” and not say some thing! But perhaps I’d better relay a part of what Hilla Rebay has to say about this “Art of Tomorrow” in her official commentary from within this amazing cult: Official Commentary “Non-objective pictures contain no intellectual subject nor any similarity to any known object. Colors, forms, and themes are combined by measurement of line and interval to create a unit of rhythm and beauty. It does not repre sent anything, and no form is supposed to look like anything known in nature. It is like music ; it means nothing. It must be felt to be liked. With time given to their influence a sudden initiation and appre ciation happens even to those Avho at first could not respond to them at all. It is their spiritual life which gets hold of all - who live with them.” So it would seem that all of the effective little grappling-irons with which Ave are ac customed to wrestle understanding out of our art are taken aAvay from us and Ave must eat our spaghetti Avliile sitting on our hands! No Pretension No pretensions of intellectuality to hide be hind, no grateful recognition of something that Ave once saAV or perhaps Avould like to see . . . nothing but an amazing limbo of pic turized nothingness Avliich mystically evolves into an unidentified something when and if that “sudden initiation” transpires! One boy asked me, “What are you supposed to think when you look at this stuff?” and all around us the adjectival indications of what some people were thinking ranged all the way from “billious” to “gorgeous.” Many were tolerantly amused and what seemed to be a graceful evasion. A Serious Observer Another serious observer noted the infinite labor that must go into one of these creations and characterized it as “glorified busy-work” which a normal sense of social proportion would prevent from being taken too seriously. Further comment wondered what was the matter with the world of reality that artists should lack interest in it to the extent of seeking entirely to escape from it. When he brought his art appreciation classes in to view the collection, Nowland Zane skillfully engineered a balanced attitude and characterized the exhibit as “dealing, in pattern-inventiveness wherein the sky’s the limit!” Wandered Away And so I wandered in quiet confusion from Dwinnell Grant’s ganglionic, greens and yel lows to Kandinsky’s mignon triangulations in “Light Unity.” Balcomb Greene’s thoughtful geometrieisms in cool shades of greenish greys and accenting reds occupied me for a time. Rudolf Bauer, arcli-priest of abstrac tionism and non-objectivity, revealed extremes of mood and execution ranging from his clean cut, finely drafted spatial concept in “White Caro” to the dark, brooding orgasm of color which dominated one end of the room in a large canvas named abstractedly enough ‘ ‘ Composition. ’ ’ -fuiu i graieiuuy reassured myseu mai tliere was no pressure outside of my own inexplicable likes or aversions to dictate which picture I chose to linger over or to ignore with a mental smirk. Good Feeling It was a good feeling. Where but here could such a bold departure manifest itself? Where but America could a free artist express him self as he chose and a free public accept or reject without any Gestapo-hidden equiva lences? Within the Axis dominations there are but two kinds of art . . . the “approved” and the “verboten” and, as in the Munich art show, the private taste of one man dictates what the entire nation shall see. No, that is not the Anglo-Saxon way . . . that is not the American way. Americans need offer no apologies for their art which ever direction it chooses to take and need feel no fear whenever they wish to strike out in a new direction. And for once I agree with Wendell Willkie: “The capital of the world of tomorrow will be Berlin or Washington. I want it to be Washington.” | Selali. ' From All Sides Exchanges by Mildred Wilson Last week Stanford celebrated its second annual “Back to the Farm Day,” with bicycles, rigs and horse-drawn buggies being substituted for cars on campus. Stanford coeds appeared in class garbed in everything from old fashioned bathing suits, complete with long black stockings, to trailing skirts, shirtwaists, and hair ribbons. The men stalked about in peg topped trousers, straw hats, and sported handle-bar mustaches and center-part hair styles. Designed to “regain the atmosphere of Stanford 50 years ago” the day was climaxed by a barbecue sup per at the “pit.” —Daily Trojan. * * * Oh, Stars above, How old— This tale I told. I was in love and she— But not with me. —Daily Californian. * * * Eighteen junior women at th< University of Illinois last weel were invited to membership ij Mortar Board when they weri awakened in the wee small hour! by 20 black-robed figures sur rounding their beds. Pledging was at dawn in th< University rock garden. The 194: Mortar Board plaque, bearing the names of the pledges was placed on the senior bench and remained there during the day. —Indiana Daily Student. Campus Calendar All members of Phi Theta Up silon are to wear their sweaters to the all-campus luncheon this noon. Westminster House will hold ^ open house Friday at 8 p.m. k Guests are asked to bring either ' two cups of sugar or 5 cents. PE major class representatives ! should turn money in to Vernon Ward or Helen Smedley by 6 p.m. ; today.