Criticism of Art and Music
Esther Williams, Art and Music
The letters from Williams to her mother contain frequent reports on exhibitions and artists, and she was quite probing and critical. She admired the subtle simplification in a work by Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), and commented favorably on Édouard Manet (1832-1883) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). She faulted animal drawings by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) that she saw at the Museum of Modern Art as “sloppy and dull” and “undistinguished,” recalling to her mother their favorable impression of the drawings when they had seen them reproduced in a magazine, and concluding that the images must have gained by being reduced. Williams generally tended to prefer earlier artists to modern, or to be more accurate, to modernist artists. She decried the work of sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986), grudgingly admitting him to be a good craftsman but finding his repetitious form—which she likened to “a dull sausage”—to be vulgar, and noting that she was “tired of artists who invent a new form to shout about,” concluding, “I won’t waste energy going on about Moore! But for me, the King had no clothes on!”
Williams’ letters to her mother demonstrate a similarly perceptive and engaged attitude towards music, and there are perhaps even more frequent comments on composers, concerts and performers than there are about art. In an undated letter from around the mid 1930s, she termed Mozart (1756-1791) “grand,” and a decade and a half later, she continued to demonstrate particular devotion to the composer. In a letter of January 1949, in one of many reports on concerts attended, Williams discussed a Mozart trio for piano, viola and clarinet. She faulted the pianist of the trio for being overbalanced, and then cited a Mozart quartet as the nicest piece in the program, noting that although this might have been because there was no overblown piano, Mozart’s music was “enchanting.” Later in the same letter, Williams reported on a concert by the well-known British pianist Myra Hess (1890-1965). Following two pages of detailed criticism, Williams concluded that, while Hess was a “true musician,” her concert “badly needed Mozart.” Williams also provided an account of a performance of one of Mozart’s vocal works, in a letter from December 1948 telling of a concert by famed African-American singer Marian Anderson (1897-1993). Here, Williams commented not only on the quality of Anderson’s voice, which she found very beautiful and full of emotion in a piece by Franz Liszt (1811-1886) but disappointing in its lack of easy flow in a Mozart selection, but she also noted the singer’s “handsome” and “lovely” appearance.
In other letters, the artist described to her mother how playing the piano was like a tonic to her. In December 1948, Williams wrote that she had been “playing piano like mad,” and explained that the playing went hand in hand with being able to paint well: “I’ve felt very pleasantly, creatively relaxed and my painting mind is opening up and my piano playing sounded quite well to me! Nothing good comes from the tense mind and body.” She noted further that “Piano is a guide for me—if I can pour it out—I’m O.K.!”