DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 204, 17 November 1927, Page 5

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE CAREER OF JERDANO WITCH (Copyright, 1927) ■ rpHE career of Pavel Jerdanowitch is instructive. His paintings have been favourably commented upon by many of the art journals of America and France. The French journal, the “Review of the True and the Beautiful,” asked for the artists interpretation of his pictures and also for his autobiography. It published a reproduction of one of his paintings, saying, among other things: “This artist has a distinctly individual manner in representing people and objects, and uses the brush to symbolise the sentiments. Pavel Jerdanowitch is not satisfied to follow ordinary raths. His spirit delights in intoxication, and he is a prey to the aesthetic agonies which are not experienced without suffering. The artist in question grew a beard, wrinkled up his forehead and, looking very Russian, supplied his photograph, also his autobiography. He said he was born in Moscow and came to America ten years ago. He claimed his picture represented the breaking of shackles of womanhood. Women were prohibited from eating bananas on their native island. The woman in the picture had just taken a luscious bite and was waving the banana skin in triumphant new freedom! \s a matter of fact it was all a hoax. Pavel Jerdanowitch is none other than Paul Jordan Smith, an author, who doesn’t know anything about paintings and doesn’t claim to. His wife is an artist, Sarah Bixby Smith. Just for fun he painted a oicture of a woman eating a banana an'd her mouth filled with the luscious fruit Triumphantly she waved the skin in her hand. A skull lurked in the vigiting him took Paul Jordan Smith's picture for a Gauguin. Smith suggested that he couldn’t see much in it himself but a crude daub. “Oh but you can’t see into the artist's soul,” replied the other. “There is nrobably a great thought behind it.” 1 Paul Jordan Smith sent his picture to the Waldorf Astoria for au vhibition in the spring of 1925 and ascribed it to Pavel Jerdanowitch, a he lia d made up. He called his masterpiece, “Exultation.” The critics fell over themselves to praise his work and art reviews spoke highly of it. ! Ie of w hicb goes to show that some high-brow talk is purely bunk.