Albert Eugene Gallatin

Albert Eugene Gallatin (July 23, 1881 – June 15, 1952) was an American artist. He 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. 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. 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." Gallatin said Whistler's subjects were never ugly or lacking taste.