Medicine: Spiritual Humus

Max Weber, 60, a roundheaded, bird-like little man, is the dean of U. S. modernists. Last week he held a one-man show in Manhattan. Powerfully drawn, with Cezanne-like colors and a heavily outlined, stained-glass effect recalling the work of Frenchman Georges Rouault (TIME, Nov. 25, 1940), his 58 paintings revealed sweating workmen struggling with structural steel, bearded rabbis wailing in bare-floored synagogues, blimpy Picasso-like nudes.

Max Weber, in spite of the fact that he was the first U. S. modernist, and is still going strong, is bearish on the whole issue. Says he: “Modern art is a barren field whose soil needs spiritual humus to turn it over for the planting of new seeds.”