Eyewitness: Reports From An Art World In Crisis

E Y E W I T N E S S A L S O BY J E D P E R 1 Paris "Iriritbc3trtIt~nJ Gallery Cioing E Y E W T N E S S R E P O ...

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E Y E W I T N E S S

A L S O BY J E D P E R 1

Paris "Iriritbc3trtIt~nJ

Gallery Cioing

E Y E W

T N E S S

R E P O R T S

A N

A R T

WORLD

J E D

F R O M

I N

C R I S I S

P E R L

BASIC B O O K S A N i - W IZt PLJHL I C B O O K

Cop>right G7 2OlfOb! Jed f'erl f%trbfr\hedby Rksxc ffocrkr, Pi Member t j t the 13erwu\t3ook\ (;rc)uy> Mo,t of the rnaterral tn thi\ book oripirrally appeared, in somewhat ilifferent form, 1x1 Thc~?ir\v Ki.ytrrhl~c ""A Ikgeant" wa,s firc,t pul>hrhcd1x1 .$$t?drvn Parnfrn. .it11 r~ghtsreserved, Printiscl in the IIz1ztc.d Statcc, of fuznerisd. So part tjf this I>ijcjli may be reproduc-ed In xllnnner u hat\tirver n lrhou t n rirren pernllsrxc~nexcept in the cacle ot' brief qutrrations r~~~bcbdiecl in critical article\ and re.cre.i\S. Idor inlijrmatron, addrest Rasis X3ocllis, 10 East 53rCi Street, Ne\\ York, ?\;Y10022- 5299.

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C O N T E N T S

ARTISTS A N D AUDIENCES

C O N T E M P O R A W DEVELOPMENTS

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A R O U N D THE M U S E U M S

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T H E A R T OF S E E I N G

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Index

33.3

E Y E W I T N E S S

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A R T I S T S

A N D

AUDIENCES


About a ciecacie ago, \\-hen Cindy Sherman started she\\-ing her big rrnedin the artists' private art world. The &ime that dc Kooning and Follock achieved in those years \\;is an outgrowth of their downto%-nreputaticrns. 1do not mean ttr suggest that there \\-as ever a time \vhm everything \vent right. Far from it. The gonrr, careerism that \\-e think of as characteri,tic of the '80s had its origins in the '501, ancl there were all\-ays reputations that were largely shapeii by the public art \\-orid. Rut the fact is that, e,pecially in the '50s and '601, a great deal of the art that made its \\-a\-uptonn had its origins 40%-ntonn,in a culture in lvhich public reno%-n, although desirable, \\-as not a formative value, not the litrntlh test it n-ould he once iontextualism was king. lPhtls in the '51)s, and to a lebser extent all the \\-a\-into the '70s, the public art \\-orlci could he said to be an imperfect but still pretty reliable mirror of the artists' art world. \\-here \\-hat really mattered u-as tlie freestanding value of a \\-ark of art. hforc tha.n that, there \\-as a sense among artists, and among those v\-tlo fc,ilo\\-eciart clo,ely, that a public reputation was of value only to the extent that it \\-as seconded by artists. Many of the painters and sculptors \\-h0 crowdeci into the Cedar Ta-ern, the Cireenwkh Village hangout that the Abstract 1:xpressionists made famous in the 19Sf)s,took it for granted that even those \\-h0 had succcedeii upto%-n\\-ould ultimately be jucigeci dolvntown. Some of this was lip service, but rnt~shof it was not. There n-as a story that circulated about how cieliphtell Tackson Follork \\as \\hen Earl Kerkam, a marvelouh painter of figures and still lifes who had an archetypal artists' art world reputation, let him tinon- that some recent \\-ork n-as "'not

t3itci." The point of the anecdote is that Follock. cie\pite his public ktrne. hungereci for a kincl of appmval that only the arti\tsSart \vorlci could provide. In the criticism that the pitinter Fairfield Porter \\;is \\-riting in the early

'hOs, the ktrnous ancl the not-$0-kmous and the barely knolvn are discussed next to one another, and they are judged bitsicallt- not in term, of their success in the big public m-csrltf but in terms of the value thrtt their n-ork has for their peers. No matter how \\-ell-kno\vn an artist became, the jucignlents of fellow arti\ts continued to be extremelt- important, Mark Rothko's depression in the 1060s cannot he separated from his alvareness that many artists and m-riters believed--and

this belief %-asreflected in e5sa)-s in little maga-

zines such as Scrup and E\.ergmi.rr Rerrart.

that he hrtd fallen into a formula,

\\-hich his spectacular success, including a retrospective at the Museum of hfodern Art, son~ehovconly uncierscored. Rothko conlmitted suicide in 1970, dying in a pool of blood in his stuciio. and there is probably more than n kernel of truth to the luridly elaborate hngiograph\- that has gro\\-n up around that terrible event. There \\ere surely many kctors that fueled his nlassive depression. But \\-h0 can deny that Rothko \\-as at lea\t in part unclone t3j- a ktme thttt, ho\ve\-er much he haci hungered for it, dissolveci the very values that had once sustained him? In Rothko's later years, the public art \vorlci and the private art \\-orld \\ere less and less able to i'unctii~neffectively as two sides of a single, relatively \\-ell-integrated organism. n d if this tkx-o-part organism has continucci to operate at all since the '701, it is only heciiuse it's no\\- operating in reverse, \\-ith the public art \\-orld ciictating the term, of the private one. The growing prestige of .%meriran art gave the freestanding value of art a new context. Artists of Rothko's generation t3enefiteci. Then the c o n t n t devoured the art, If 1%-econsider I3uchamp's gnomic observation. made in 1957, to the effect that the spectator "a~iiishis contribution to the rreathe act." \ve may

begin t o sce that this reversal has a kind of I3adaist logic. Certainly, the Dariaists have done their ciamnecie\t to undermine the stand-alone integwty of art. Rut their authority probably originateh in their hilving been the first people to see the m-riting on the \\-all and to how to m-hat they \\-ere not sorry to believe \\as an inevitability. Ry now, in any event. \\-e are all, Datfaists and anti-Dadaists alike, at the mercy of developments that we are at hest ill-equipped to control. And although l\-e can dexribe these develc,pment =with a gciod deal of accuracy, we may never come up l\-ith a theory that explain5 them entirely to our satiskiction. \%%at m-e do knoll- is that in the nineteenth century the collapse of the old system of Salons and academies set the stage for an increasingly improvi3;ltional interaction between artist and atxdience-and

h r the incandescent excitement of the avant-

garde. Rut apparently a creatWe relationship het\\-een the artist ancl the audience coulci also turn into a collusive relationship t3etiveen avant-gardism and populism. liltimately, t h i increasingly compromised alliance endangercci the arti\t's hard-\\-on modern st;ltuh a\ the person \\-h0 makes private expe"ienr-es public. The t3eginning of the end came \\-ith the explosion of Pop r t in the early 1060s. Rut if I am rorrcc t in t3elieving that the hostilitv to art's standalone poll-er has a long history, then Pop Art \\-as less a catiilyzing force than a neat conclusion. Pop Art's subject lnatter dramatized the shift from a private to a public avant-garde because so many of those Fop image$ and motifs \\ere drawn from material that had no private nleaning for the artists. hndy W~rhol.who came out of the \vorld of adverti\ing, defi~leda nem- kind of art world career-the e .t

career that \\-as conciucteci entirely in the public

that point the public art \\-orld became self-perpetuittinp; or at least

it \\-as then tha.t want-garde art came to be tied to market values rather than to arti\tic valtre\.

A whole culture has g r o ~ - nup in Karhol" 11-ake,a L-nlturethat h!- now include\ its c,\;\-neducational institutions, such ar the nortium.Writh lirens, the public art \vorlci twcornes the multinational art \\-orld. Dennis Hopper. \vho \\-as motorcycle crazy long before he directeci

Rz~itar,ot,serveci in the exhibition catalog that \\-hat had first attracted him to bikers \\;is their not being "corporate tie-\\-ielciing execs from R l l Street." Rut of course a great many of the hikes at the (;uggenheim m-ere nlway, rich men's toys, and there is no way this show ever m-ould have played the (Guggenheim if n lot of the "corporate tie-11-ielding execr" \\-h0 support Krens had not likcci the 13ike-as-art equittion. Krens is telling the new museum tvcoons that they don't have to like pitintings and sculptures much in ilrder to get into this erctusive club. ".Zn art museum's special est~ibitions programming should fit into n strategic plan." Krens expliiined of "The .4rt of the Motorcycle." And \\-hat better strategic plan could Krens have offered his pittrons than one that began by gi\ing them the opportunity to trade in their rep ties for black leather jackets! Perhaps the deepest irony of Krens's tenure at the (Guggenheim is th;tt he has raised this mega-public institution on the foundations of a museum that \\-as originally iiedicated to some of the least popular of all modern art. In its first incarnation, as the Museum of Non-Objective Fainting, the (Guggenheim opened on East 54th Street in 19.19 and fcatureci abstract paintings by Kandinsky and others that \\-ere still less than beloveci at the Museunl of Modern Art, \\here the audience haci only recently made its peace \vith the Fc)\timpressionists. The Museum of Non-Objective Fainting \\;is meant to bring the put,lic up to speed \vith what the mo\t aloofly experimental artists \\-ere doing; non-objective pitinting still remain\ a reach for many museum-

goers. Yet the very idea of cultural aspiration, lvhich once fueleci the public's strtlgple tii grasp an artiilt's nmcist private expressions, is nom- regaded as fuddv-iiuddy stuff, at least by Thorn%\Krens. Krens has become the cheerfully clark prophet of museological pragmatism. Small-as

the Guggenheiru once m-as-is

not o d y no longer consid-

ercci beautiful; it's seen a\ stupid. Krens claims to face hard facts that other museum directors avoid. m-hen he argue* that he need, glnmc~rousinternational partnerships to pa\- the bills and that he must turn the nluseum into an art lnultiplex in order to bring in the crokvds. Rut \\hat some call h o ~ - ing to the inevitable mai- in fact be a tragic lark of imagination that turn5 our \\-orst-ca\e sc-cnariointo our o d y option.

In the '805. criticism5 of the art lvorld status quo had a certain cachet. Rut in their 0%-n\\-a\-the brilliant critiques--7hich

reached a peak of comic mis-

chevotlsness in "The Sohoiad,'Yffobert Hughes's "Satire in Heroic uplets Drawn from Life," published in the ~YPW York Rniint t j f B i l i l k ~in 1984----co~lclhe a* destructive as the hype. li'hen n m-itty 11-ritcr turns the art 11-orld into n grotesque carnival, we have another, cleverer form of contextualiration. and the result may he that people give up on contemporary art entirely. And \\-hen that happens, brilliant. dedicated artists arc in clanger of being ignorcci along \\-ith the hype artists. In the '80s. it was all too easy to mock the big money and the glamour; anti-hjpe could become another kind of hype. In the '90s, though. a nlilder tone of bemused acceptance has come into kivor, mai-he because critics are &\\;ire that nothing the\- say makes much of a difference. When the 1995 li'hitnev Biennial opened, three major critics \\-horn one \\-ould not have expecteci to agree about much of an)thing came out m-ith the phrases "I like thi, one" or "I like it." This was said 11-ithn cer-

tain archness, with a sort of sigh. "Like" is s t ~ c ha bland word, and it \I-as used for its blandne,~.I think that critics \\-ere struggling to find a \\-ay to re\pond to the Age of the Deal Makers. They knew that if they tried to argue with the art. or with the curator's underlying assumptions, they \\-ould get no\\-here. The deal had been cut. The case m-as clo\ed, But of course the case is not closed. The artists are still working, and there is an eciurated auciience that \\-ants to understand why things have gone so \\-rang. The only experience I find more depressing than \\-alking thmugh the \XrhitneyBiennials is reading the critics \\-h0 say. "Yes, it's had. but this is \\hat there is." Khen I go thmugh those Biennials, m!- reaction is different. "Yes, this is bad," I ttt~ink,"and it's bad bemuse it excludes everything vital and exciting in m t e r n p o r a r v art." I'm wondering \\-h? Rafbara (Goodstein and Strtnle~Le\;\-isand tlozens of other artists haven't E-teen included--and

among the artists m-e haven't seen in these she\\-s in recent

years are pitinters as \\ell-kno\vn a, Rill lensen and loitn Snvder. Ti.,iia)- the mo\t radical thing an artist can do is paint a tightly structured and internally coherent painting, yet e v m if there is a single major curator in this c o r n a y who ha.s the brains to recisgnize such \\-ork, there is not a single one

\\-h0 has the guts to give that \vork institutional support. The real artists are still \\-orking. The tragedy is that they have no \\;I!-

of making contact with

the audience that really cares. K h a t is to E-te done? The only solution is for people to E-tegin to put E-titck together the structures that have histt~ricallysuppc~rtedthe artists' art 'i\-orld in the ITnited State\. lye need dealers, c-ollectors, critics, and curators

\\-h0 \\-ill stand up for the freestanding value of art-day

by dav. case by raw.

(Given h m - far matters have gone. I am not sure this renekved support is any longer fea,ihle, but there is nothing to do hut give it n try. I can understand

\\-h\ the big museum, are unable to respond to all the cliss;ttisfidction out therc: they're basically in thrall to the money interests. to the deal makers.

Rut I do \\-oncler 11-hywe aren't seeing more innovative programming in the smaller museums. where there may still be some independent curators and trustees left. And \\-h3t about the college\ and t~niversities,u-hich have their own net\%-orkof galleries and small collections? People \\-h0 still t,elie\-e in a private art \vorld must pool their resources. The effort has txgun. One example is the small retrospective of work by Louisa Matthiasdottir. the grandest still life painter of recent cleca~le\.\\-hich tourcc1 roughly a dozen colleges and unkersities in the mid-'90s. \Ye need n ~ o r cshon-s like this, I am also looking for a new gemration of art ~lealers \\-ho, beginning slo\vl\- and building on that tremendous stock of gifted artists no\\ in their 30s and 40s and 505, create galleries m-here, as Clement C;reenberp once m-rote of the Retty Pi~rsonsGallery. "art gee, on and is not just s h i i ~ - n and sold." To he sure, it's harder to operate such a gallery tha.n it \\;is for Retty Farsons or j'ulien I.ev\-: it costs so n ~ u c hmore to run a dignified operation th;tn it did forty or fifty years ago. But our hest hope may still rest \\-ith the rise of a n e n gmeration of gallery 0%-ners\\-h0 are independent and committed--\\-h0

carry on in the great tradition of early-

twentieth-century Paris and mid-century S e w York, n-hen dealers knell\\-hat it nleant to cast their lot with a community of artists. The greate" danger is the sense of hopelessness among the artists. They desprately need a ne\\ \\aye of dedicated cle;tlrrs; more eager, infcjrmed collectors: n determination on the part of smaller museums to exhibit. document. and preserve uncompromisingly independent contemporary art: an upsurge of serious critical kvritinp; ad~iitionalforums m-here nrti\t\ can get together and talk. The public art world has t~ecomesuch an over%-helmingl\- oppressive force in arti\ts9lives that many painters and sculptors have already given up hope that the reveliitions that sustain them in the studio \\-ill ever again have a public presence. Once upon a time a major arti\t \\;is a person like \Yillem de Kooning, who came up through the ranks and

never forgot that he \\;is a part of a community of artists. Ti.,iia\- a major artist is a person like Jeff Koons, who has oversized knickknacks manuhctured by hired hands and doesn't knoll- that there is a cornmunit\- of artists and is proud of his ignorance. So kir as Knons is concerned, the deal nxiliers are the only artists left standing. Koons is one of them. K h a t y ) u see \\hen

you compare de Kclnning and Koons is not a difference in quality or degree. It's a difference in kind. The art \\-orld has become the most glamomus \vilderness imaginable, be\\-itdling and nurnl-ting at the samr time. it ma?. he overstating the case to say that the future of art is in the t3;tlanrc. But most of the artists to \\horn I talk believe that \ve are Lising in \er>-ciark time,. If arti\ts and audiences can confront the full extent of their alienation, ma\-be then people can hegin to shake off that smse of hopelessness and things can start to turn around. If this is going to happen, it \\-ill involve a lot of small arts of courage, all of them animatecl t3j- a \\-illingness to reject r o n v e h o n a l taste and ronventional 11-isdom all along the Line. The artists \I-ho are most deeply cc~mmitteci to \\hat they're cioing in the studio have to reestablish contact with the audience that hates the hype.


CONTEMPORARY

DEVELOPMENTS


TWOMBLV TIME

The idea that art began \\hen somehodv impulsively scratched something on a \\-all \\-ill do just fine as a creation myth for painters, Why that first artiit made thrtt first mark, however, is subject to as many different interpretatic~nsa* there are time* \\hen artists have thought about the origins of art. In the late 1700s. \\hen European painters were on the verge of a century of realist revolutions, some artists were attracted to a Greek legend that stated that the inventor of painting \I-asa woman, a (:orinthian maiden \I-ho decided to trace the profile of her soon-to-be-departed lover on a \I-all, This storv, U-fiiclicombined a clrt\siial setting, a romantic sentiment, and a realist impulse, suited an age that occasionally could \velci such apparently divergent sensibilities into bold historical drama. But in more recent t i m e , \\-hen abstraction rather than imitation has been the artiit's ciefini~lgexperience, the origin m!-ths that have interesteci people have had a less clearcat narrative. Henri Focillon, the French writer \\-hose 1936 e,say "In Praise of Hands" came out of the Expressionist impulses of early-tm-entieth-century European art. pudied the beginning hack from Corinth to the Age of the Titans. He suggesteel that \\-hat was essential \\-as not han~i-eyecoordination, hut the tiand's inherent capacities-its

delicate yet forceful musculauitv and its

tactile sensitivity. Focillon imagined a centaur in a forest, ancl how, while moving along on his four hooves. the mythological heaht would be "inhaling the \\-orld thmugh his hands, stretching his fingers into a web to catch the imponderable." "The hand's trial,. experiments and divinations." I'orilIon believed. were still going on in artists' studio\ in the twentieth century. And \\-hen I'orillon's essay appeareci in Nen York in 1948, under the imprint

of the art book pt~hlistterKittenborn, there \\-as a

Korld atldience that

\\-asprimed to receive the melsitge thzt the magic is in the making. It has been just at-tout fift!- years since Focillon's essay appeared here. That is both a very long time and a very short time so far as art is concerned. And even though the idea of the artist as a magician has been attacked fi-om every imaginable angle in the past severat years, this remains the only- m\-th t-tj- =which anybody who gee, into a studio and gets clown to work on a regu-

lar basis can seem tts live. Artists stiII bef~evethat the inlplrlse t o make marks predates the impulse to represent, nncl the\- have made painterliness the hfanhattan version of naturalness-a naturalness that can E-te turned to contradictory ends and that often seems, even \\-hen it iignorecl or attacked, to be honored in the breach. In the pit\t fen- years we have seen a number of museum retrospecthes in lvhich contemporary artists are illtent on demonstrating that in the beginning and in the end there is nothing hut the mark. The5e shc3\vs-devotecl and, no%-,

Tkl-omhly-have

to Rohert Ryman. Killem d r Kooning.

underlined both the potency of a great ori-

gin myth and the clangers in store for any artist \vho expects a limited definition of painting t o he relevant t~ the Fir-from-limited number of situittions that present themselves over a lifetime of v.-ork.

Cy Tm~ornhly,\\-hose retrospective is at the Museum of Modern Art this fall, likes a classical a\sociation, ancl he probably \voulLln't mind our imagining that in nlore than a few- of his canva\es a centaur has clone some ti11ger painting. That Tuomhly has often made his painterly marks m-ith pencil or crayon doesn't s ~ g g e \at rejection of the painterly gesture so much as the relevance of that mark to a range of unconventional situittions. T\\-omhly is saying that he's painting even \\-hen he's not pitinting. There are classical titles and inscriptions clerived from Greek and Roman lvriters scattered through the \\-ork of this artist \\-h0 has made his home in Italy since the late 1950s (he's 65). These antique allusions give his late modern improvisa-

tional manner, \\-ith its big expanses of emptv lvhite canvas. a feeling of heing groundeci in the lvhite marble lan~lscapeof classical legend. T\%-o~-r,mbl\gives the impression that he's a contemporary artist with fi11e premodem credentials. The T\\-omhly sho\v. \\-hich \\-as organized bj- I-presmts a careful, chronological vie&-of the career. the show sugge\t"that

the \\-a\- to understan~iTm~omhlyis in terms

of a cyclical, rather than a linear, development.

rZ small repertoire of

themes and motih, almost all of them in place very near the t3eginning. have been reappearing for more than forty years. T\~ombly'smost ardent fans may leave the retrospective feeling that they \vould like to see more. \\-hich is not the \\-orst feeling to have at the end of a big sho\v. Those \vho don? care fcjr the jq-ork \\-ill find that thei-ke reactled the end cif the show t3efore they've reached the end of their mpe. T~x~ornbly knm-s hen- to maximize his gift for deft, elegant effects, or at lea\t he used to know hm-, in the first piirt of his career. up until the mid1960s. Looking at these sand- and $no%--and ivory- ancl slate-colored paintings, a mtlsetlmgoer takes in one incident and then another incident, and there's plea\urc to he derived from the smsiti\itv with lvhich T\\-omhly engraves a pencil line into thick pitint or tkx-irls together little puffs of pigment. His work can he interpreted as n textbook e x m p l e of late modern Expressionism; the living painters v\-hoend up \\-it11 rctrclspectives at the hfuse~rrn of Modern Art are often the ones whose work appears to have an educational purpose. T\~omblypresmts self-conscious a\vku;irdne,s as virtuosity. He uses substructures a\ surfaces. He asks the part to stand in for the m-hole.

All of thew arc familiar, and in some cases do\.\-nright venerable, modern

techniques. Especially in the paintings of the mid-1950s. T\%-omblymakes good use of an image that is cleriveci from de Kooning: the stroke that turns abruptly at a ninety-degree angle. and in the act of "bending over" creates n hairpin t u r n in space. In space-malijng terms, this is the m i s t that T\t~omblyever manage\ to do. The pitintings are full of small, t3eguiling effccts. T\\-omhly sees a canvas a\ an idic~s)-ncraticalkornamented surface. This sort of surEace. somewhere t,etv,-een a notel3ook page and a graffiti-scarreci \\-all, \\-as already in clanger of becoming overlv self-conscious \\-hen Miri, \\-as doing h i emptied-out picture poem\ in the 1920s. T\vomhly's rectangle of canvah, with the m-eave of the fabric either she\\-ing or covered over by n thick layer of kihite or gray paint, in bulletin hoard on =which the artist posts lots of messages. (The gray paintings with white lines from the 1960s have been referred to as chalkhoards or blackboards, for ohvic~usreasons.) Although T~\~ombl\may insl-ribe more \\-ords in his hrd-to-past;" klancfkx7riting tha.n most people are going to \\-ant to take the time to reacl, these bits of poetry and verbid graffiti do add another dimension to his \crawled and siratshed abstract images.

Among the cryptic and not-so-cryptic messages that T\vombly includes are clnsicitl place names ancl pornogriiphic squiggles. A11 announcements, he seems to suggest, are equal. There's taste and intelligence and wit to these canva\es, but there is no heedlessness. T\\-ombl\-knows h o ~to- scatter bits across a big surkize, he understands ho\\ to rnxvd things for an effect. and he knm-s how to adjust the rhythms. Yet the experience of the pitintings remains additive-that's

the

t3ipgeg ppml?lem \vith the \\-ork. The pitinters \vho give us an experience of magical amplitude find \\-a=,-, to make their effccts expiincl almost geometricall\-; they convince us that the world they've created is some\\-hat beyond their rontn,l, that two plus t\\-o equals a lot more than fi~ur.T\\-ombly never manages to make that happen. His painting are designed, not composed.

It doesn't help that T\\-omhly is no colorist. There is some varietv to his palette. and he's certiiinly attuned to the individualitv of the patches of pigment that he arrange* on n canva*, hut he doem't knoll- how to orchestrate colors. For most of the show, he makes a virtue of this liability; only in the last few room, doe, he attempt some color coml-tinatic~nsthat are really beyond him. In the recent Four

Suilsi~ricycle.

T\%-omblyseem, to be trying to

learn n thing or two from the late Toan Mitchell, hut his juxtapositions of yello\v and blue and purple and green have no impact. The work doe\n3t take off. The key to T\\-omhly's small poetic originality rests in the \\-a\-that he isolates each element. 13-en\\hen he overlaps things---a crahl-t~scra\vl, a doodle of paint-eac

h l-tit retains its cool. stand-alone personality. The self-

consciousness of this m-csrk rnakes a museumgoer feel self-conscious. rZ day or two after y s u see the Tm~omhlyshci&-,\\-hat you mai- recall is all the careful looking that you clid, rather than an)thing that you artu:tlly saw.

l r i s i t ~ r sto the Tw/-t>n~hlv ehihititrn at the Modern-and been reaJifig al-tout Tlrc-ornbly in the press-\\-ill

anyhoJ!. v\-ho's

quite n a t u r a v \\-oncler

\I%\- it ib that so much attention is focused on a partiiulau arti\t at a partii-

ular time. The retrospective provide, an occasion, but of course some retrocase, the aviditv spective~garner more attentian t h n others. In T\"r-omb1~'s \\-ith \\-hich he ancl his \\-ork are being examineif suggests something about the m!-sterious movements of artistic sensil-tility.Transformations in taste may appear to be shaf-ted by the peiipie in the museilrns and the auction houses and the t3lue-chip galleries. Rut as often as not, taste percolates up\\-ard, \vith ideas and apprehensions that first take hold in the stuciios of a considerable nulnber of artists someho\v finding their way into the wider \\-orld. Although hshion can be a crucir but useful barometer of evolutionary trends and gecilogicitl shifts in the thinking of arti\ts, there are transfr~rmaticjns that occur over periods of years and even decades jq-ith

3

sIo%--movingforce that the audience, if it's overly concerned with \\hat's happening this m o n t t ~or this season, \\-ill be ha.rd put to compreknd.

In T\x7omhly, Kirk Iiarnedoe ha4 surely found a big-name artist kvhose ability to he both unabashedly lyricid and dryly ironic about his 0%-nlyrici\m defines, thmugh its very paradox. haute taste in 19%; you might say that T\~ombly'scharm rests in his not resolving a paradc~xso much as he enshrines it. Historically speaking. T\vombly's brand of painterline\* comes a g e n ~ a t i o nor two after de Kooning's (\vhose retrospective icurrently plzii-ing opposite T\\-ombl~'sat the Metropolitan Museum of .4rt) and perhaps half

3

generation before Rolxrt Ryman's (whose retmspective \\;is at

the Mc>derna year ago). T\vombly certainly offers a muheurngoer a lot more than that painterlv M i n i m a l i ~Robert Ryman. whose lvhite brushstrokes are so evenly inflected that every mark is canceled out by every other oneand a viewer is left feeling hi-almed. An artist who marshals his slim painterly resources as rigidly as R\-man must have some inkling of the numbing effect that his j\-ork is going to have on many museumgoers. Rut the off-p~lttingregularity of some of the later galleries in the de Kooning retmspective suggests that even an arti\t of infinitely greater gifts than Rynlan. when his essential subject is the individualism of the hushstroke j\-ithin the pluralism of the painang. cannot expect the most t3eautiful pasxsof the brush to sustain our interest over the course of a long career.

De Kooning, \vho at 90 is no longer painting. used to handle a paint-saturated hruhh with more wit and elegance than anybody else in .4mericit. No lifeu7ork based on the cult cif the brushstroke rivals the l->rilIianceand fkscination of iie Kooning's. Still. by the late '50s, the preoccupation lvith passagework over bro;.tJ cor7tlpositionai movelnents led to a diminishment in de Kooning's work, and at that point T~x~ornbly kicked in \I-ith his 0%-ntake on de Kooningecyue diminishment. T\\-ombly didn't study 11-ith de Kooning, hut cie Kc~nninghad taught at Black Mc>untainCollege in North Car-

olina before Tkx7ombly got there, a d the 1)utchman's \\-ark m-as,cif ccsurse, a nlajisr inflt~enceat the school. T\x-omblv join\ a studied severity that is not unlike Ryman's to a giddy painterliness that is not unlike de Kooning's, and brings o u t a strain of coolly nihilisac painterliness that runs straight thmugh hit\- years of the Sihool of Ne\v York. Kc cfidn't neeci a T\\-omhly retrospective or a dc Kclnning retmspective to demonstrate that these veteran artists arc on a lot of \-cjunger artists' minds. liven kvithout the shm-S,it's abundantly apparent that '50s--style painterliness is resurgent. often \vith an ironic edge. In part this is a generational thing. Arti\ts in their 40s arc kiscinated by the mid-century years; they feel an almo\t lnagnetic pull hack to the world as it \\-as\\hen they \\-ere young. There have been rncinths in New York \"Y-hen-between the shcikvs at the Fainting Center. Andre Zarre. 55 Mercer. and a number of other LION-ntokvn gallrries-it's

been clear that the impact of de Kooning's bravura brush-

\\-ork on Twomhlv and countless artists \vho were exhibiting along 10th Street in the 1950s has reappeared, phoenixlfke, in the SoHo of the ttr)c)l)s. Solne of this may he cop\-cat stuff; a lot of it is much more than that. Fainthanclling has t3ecorne such an issue among the artists that for the first time in anybody's memory Ne\\- York has a hometo%-nbrand of pigments that rivals the hest produced in Fun~pe.And make no mistake about it: \\-hen artists arc going bark to t3;tsics in the stuciio. the repercussions are going to be felt \\ay t3eyond the studio. Materials matter. and even nonartists knov\-it. itt the de Kclcining retrospective at tbc X/letropcilitan, museurngoers arc tiiking a long, hard look at a color phcitogrilph of dr Kncining's paint tiible that has been installed in the galleries: they m-ant to see ho\\ it's done. Today a lot of artists are cioing it \vith \XrilliamsburgFaint. the brand that's h o r c c i l>\-Bill rensen and Rrice Marden ancl that is no\\- solci from a street-level store on Eliral3eth just t>elo\vHouston. This is the kind of spare, unprepossessing retail shop-1%-ith artists' exhibition announcements

pmted all nrouncl on the m-alls-that

people don't believe can make a go of

it anvnlore. The entreprenrur behind Wif liarnsburg Pi~intis a painter n a m d Carl Plansky, n-hose first show at 55 Mercer in 1992 contained some tttiskly \\-orked landscape-t33sed abstractions of

2

\I-ho'd seen Plansky's debut shokv-together

fairly high ralibcr.

gallerygoer

with a number of other distin-

guisheci exhil?itions, most recently Temma Bell's at the Ro&-er\-Gallery and Faul ReGka's at Salander-( I'Reilly-could

\\-ell ask \\-h\- anybody imagines

that virtuoso painthandling is not alive and \\-ell. Fainthandling has al\v;i!-s defined the Ne\v York School. much a\ rolor \\-as the defining experience for Venice and composition was for Paris. Rut for artists the que\tion isn't how pitinterly pitinting looks in the gallery; it's \\-hat they can do with it in the stuciio. T\~ombl\.'s\\-a\-of treating the ran\-a., as

a page in an aesthete's journal is something that artists can pi":

up

on. His version of ilatne*s gain* unexpected implicatic~nsin the l\-ork of loan Sn\-der, jq-fio gives diaristic pzinting a rncire exyloiive, heart-on-the-sleeve character. .4ncl Carroll L3unham.s paintings-in

which comic-hook-bright

color and psychedelic imagery achieve some elegance and 11-eight-are rather like TR-omhl\-'s Delphic pronouncements translated into NeuYt~rkese.Terrific painthandling is a l i ~ eand \\-ell. But there is reason for concem. For every painter \\-h0 handles a brush eloquently there is no\\- another painter \\-h0 is glad to make a joke of that kincl of virtuosity. There is a new kincl of painterlv painting that's sci arch and jejune that it de\erves to he taken no more seriously than the beatnik stvles thzt are st~rfacingin the tfo\vnton-n c-lubs. In some cases ttte mishievousness is right out in the open. a\ is the case \vith the cartoonish stvles of Karen Kilirt~nikor Sue lVitlian~\,In other cares-hfarv Kinters come to mincl-the

Heiln~annand Terrv

po\e is subtler, so that you may not even be

sure if the artists themselves understand that they're slyly clistanring themselves from the past. I suspect that some of today's T\\-omhl\--\\-atcherr~l?ly-kviitcliers

aren't all that different from today's archeologists of the Beat mtivement: some mai- even regard T\\-omhly as the Paul Bo&-lesof the visual arts. Today's painters have one fundanlental choice: their brush\\-ork can be hiinrlt or their brusliwork Gin be ironic. Yct \\-hen Tc\-mbly,m-ho is being granted old modern master status, creates paintings that seem to sweep aGde the concept of choice in kivor of the possihilitv of being all things to all people, he's hailed for giving do\vntom-n plurali,m an aristocratic sheen. The hip auiiience regards painting \vith such aml3ivalent skepticism that it can hardly tell the difference between the ambiguities and in~niesthat are built into a painting and the one, that they project onto a painting. Gatlerygoers mav read the ebullient passage5 in the canvases of Toan Mitchell as ironic high spirits. and perhaps there is something to this interpretation of the \\-ork of the Abstract Expressionist \\-h0 died in 1092 \\-ith her reputation soaring. It's also possible to discern an elenlent of ironv in middle-perioii de Kooning, where he occasionally appears to be gently satirizing the heaviness of his own earlier m-ork. Rut \\hen 11-e talk about Mitchell and de Kncining \\-e're talking about the gambles of arti\ts kvho. whatever their limitation\. can construct a p i n t i n g in \\-hich iron\. is cine element in an emotjonal equation. T\vombly, unlike many of the Young Turk, \vho take him for their old master. knom-s how to expresh di\passic>n with a little painterlv pahion. Khen he evokes Mitchell in some of his p;t\sages of f~lllcolor. he ma!- not make the allusion work fcjr him, hut he is ackno&-ledgingthat a painter has some options, iis an accompaniment to tlie Modern shorn-, the (Gagoian G d e r y , in its elegmt made-over garage csn 1Yooster Street, is presenting an enormous three-part painting by TR-c~mhly.He lvorkeri on this untitlrii fifty-tkx-o-foot-\&

painting for fifteen years and finished la\t spring. It's an

mgaging composition-a

sort of guide to T\vombl\.'s predilection\. Moving

from left to right \ve pas5 through a landscape of choice$. There's the land of

no color: there's a broad plain crossed by thickets of lines and in\cribed lvith the \voriis "The Anatomy of Melancholy": and there's a grand burst of fire\\-orks in orange and \iolet and vello\v. This painting embrace$ several different moods, yet it's so large and spare a \\-ork that each mood is \\-rapped in its o\vn aureole of skepticism. T\vombly's triptych reminds us that the use of a painterly mark to shatter the illusions kvithout =which painting cannot live isn't something that \\-as cireamed up by toclay's juht-out-of-artschool skeptics. There are olci skeptics. too.

Much of =what is best and worst in this old skegtic-'Smature aihievement can he traced hack to Tu-omhlv's Black Mountain College experience. I shoulci say that \\hen I speak of Black Mountain, I am not necessitrily thinking of the experimental North Carolina college as it flourished in the '40s and 300s and is descril-ted t-ty historians, but as it lives on in the after all, \\-as there for not more than a imaginations of artists. T\%-c~-ombly, year. Black Mountain, no matter ho\\- long ago it rloseci its doors. endures as a tradition-a

myth, if you will-h\-

=which artists live. .4t Black Moun-

tain, painting had less to d o \\-ith an immersion in the stuciio than with a painter's effcrts to synthesize all kinds of avant-garde activity and in general open up the studio to the world: some people still t-telieve that's \\-hat a painter eioes. There's another, alternative tradition that also contint~ei, to have a kind of ~nt-thicstatus; it's the one that held S&-ayin the 20s and '50s at the Hofmann School in Nen- York m d Pro\-incetokvn. Klhen you stuiiied lvith Hans Hofmann. you were on a completely ciifferent \\-ave length than you \\-ere at Black Mountain. Hofmann shcikved young artists h o n to go into the studio and express anything and everything that they knell- about the 11-orld through the dynamism of the composition, the \\-eight of the rolor, the livelinei,~of the hruhh. Some people still believe in that, too.

T\vombly3sattitucie to\v;ird the rla\sical past----his creation rn\th. if you \I-ill-has

everything to do n-ith Black Mountain relativism. Me is st~relyca-

pable of uncierstanciing antiquity as n hirly solid arrangement of literarj- and artistic monunlents, but wh;tt attracts him about those montrments is the extent to lvhich time has \\-reakeci change\ on them rather than the extent to 'iq-hich they have rernained the same. There are no absoltrtes in this view of history. The mo\t beautiful line of poetry can he a f r a g m e n t q r p h a n e d \\-ords. The most beautifully painted passage on the \\;ills of Pompeii is hscinnting because it has been ravaged bj- time. 'lh he interested in the patness of the pa\t is a perfectly natural attitude fcjr an artist. hut it is by no means the oniv viable m-?- to apprtjach the pa\t, and it is certainly a view that's irreconcilable \\-ith Mofinann's belief in the immediac\- of painterly expresis alive for other kinds of arti\ts as u-ell, Six sitrn. Pompeii, alive for T\x-ombl~, months ago, a fen- steps from \\-here T ~ ~ - o m hi l yno\\- shokving his mural painting at rnlism and an art-forart's-sake feverishness about BaIthus and Kitaj that pauadouically links them all the \\a\- hack to the nc~nconformirtt3epinnings of the modern movement against 11-hichthey're often said to be in revolt. The painters and \I-riters n-ho revere Aalthus as a (:lassicist in spite of his sometimes incendiary erotic subject matter may ncit cotlntemnce Kitaj, who is an idicrsyrtcratic Expressionht in spite of his obvious reverence for the modern canon. Rut for those \vhci keep close tabs on \\-hat both painters are up to, Balthus and Ritaj can look like the true inheritors of earlv-twentiettt-century revo-

lution. The tm-o artists paint paintings that pokr holes in the modern pieties. and m-herever and m-henever the\- exhibit, polemics fly. These artists are not easy to place: that9\kej- to their appeal. They paint appitrendy p c ~ ~ dsubject ar matter-a

hiond girl in Itattht~s'sI & f Cat mrlr ,Mrrri?r

LII, a street scene in Kitnj's Cued C~urt(198.%84), the dazzling melange of figures that \\-as platered all over Lon~lon'sUndergnjun~llast summer on the posters ~ Ralthus ancl Kitnj have such insistently personal advertising the Tate s h o Yet ought to be put together that the\- transform the ideas about how a pai~~ting

' t~r bare realist hcts into enveloping formal puzzle\, so that realit!. itself L K" ~Fins seem son~ehowal->strac t. Their l;\-orkleaves the cild debates alxru t abstraction versus representation where they ought to he, m-kch is in tatters. With the trit evolution of Krstem art to\\-ard ever umph of abstraction, =which h n ~ u g hthe greitter verisimilitude to such a startling conclusion. the possil?ilit>-opmeii up of beginning all over again, with realism as just n choice among choices. Looking at the \\-orl, of Balthus and Ktaj, \vho have made that choice, you

mq be-

gin ttr have tbr impression that the eilsentid polarity in twentieth-L-entuqat-t isn? between realism and abatractian, but bet=-een the public and the private-I>et\\-ecn the extent to l;\-hichan artist makes use of farms and struttures that are already \\-idely understood and the extent to \\-hich an artist invents a language th;tt is entirely his own.

Kitaj, \\-h0 \\-rote much of the text for the catalog of his retrospective, has been extremely forthcoming about how it feels to live at a time when, a\ far a\ art is concerned, a ~ t h i n goer. g He has a conversational prose style that's slangv. erudite, and hold, and that sometime\ recalls the lvriting of an earlier idiosyncratic .4merican mvthmakrr. Ed\\-ard L3ahlherg. Kitaj \\-rites of "the cram drama of painting," and of being "a painter \\-h0 snips offa length of picture from the flaw-ed scroll l\-hich is ever depicting the train of his interest." Although Kitaj's insistmce on explaining himself to his audience is

rather unusuai fcir an artist, 1 don? think that he" smistaken in believing that an artist \\-h0 goes his ojq-n \v;$)- \\ill cio \\ell to t3lon- his own horn. "Some people." he observes, "live out their lives in places they don't come from, assigning themselves to a strange race and an alien sense of land and city. K h o is to $a)-\\-h\- they do what they do with their lives, or for that matter. \\-h? painters do m-hat they do 11-ith their painting lives?" Rv no\\tjq-entieth-century art is such a maze of iiepersonalized "isms" that an artist has to insist on esac tlt. how he does or doer not fit in. Could it he that even Balthus, \\-h0 h a for most of his sixty-odd-year career taken the position that the work should speak for itself, is t3eginning to suspect that those \vho remain silent are condemned to being misunderstood! In recent years Balthus has exouraged his literary friends, u-ho u-ere once instructett not even to n~entionthe date of his birth, to examine the ills and out, of his hiopaphy. And he has himself been doing something he never diii-granting

interview-S.The most extensive of these. put>lishetiin the lin-

glish quarterlv .Mi~di.rnP d t j l t r n this past fall, is a conversation that Balthus had over the course of an afternoon with the rcsck strtt. David Bowie (1%-hois a serious collector of contemporary English art and has lately hegun to s h o ~his C N - ~

pai~lti~lgs), This interview is an essential addition to the Balthus archives,

a great old pitinter's most sustzuned effort to tell us \\-hat he helin-es. Kben Baftlius and lCitaj speak out, they present contemporary .;aria.ticln on a theme that got.\ aiI the way hack to Rat~deiaire.'They I-relieve that in order to k n m - himrelf, the artist must know his public. And they t3elieve th;tt if the artist's imagination is powerful mough it can goad, skekver. refute. ignore. correct. and in rare instances even transform public perception. Balthus a d Kitrtj take this cisrnplex relationship n-ith the pul-rlii in .;er)- different tiirections. In the , L I d ~ r ePd1t11e1.sinterview; Balthus observes that "pmbably . . . \.;hiit people hate so much in m!- \\-ark is harmony. Everything is so contrary to harmony today." If you examine this statement for n moment,

you realize that here \ve have our preenlinent figure painter asserting that the reality he presents in his paintings is a reality that rontrariicts the Edits of Life. Ktrtj, on the other hand, can sound like an eccentric populist when he sets out his ideas. He has kvwttrn that his paintings are "picture\ of an imperileci \\-0rlc1 YOU may knoll- only as imperfectly as I iio, if at all." In Kitaj's lvriting, the line bet\\-ren \\hat's within the studio and \\-h;tt's heyon~1the studio is never clraj\-n very clearly. He argues against the ivtjry t m - r r by suggesting that public experience is a magnification of private experience. Yet in his o\vn rounditbout \\-ay he arrives at an attituiie that is, a\ much as Balthus's magi\terial isolaticln, a version of the Bat~defrtireanstance-the

artist is tiirever ru-

minating on his troubled relationship =with the public. The tvpical Balthus pitinting is of a person alone-the

solitary girl in the

t3;trcly furnished room. The t y i c a l Kitaj is a crowd scene. But Ktaj has also painted retreats: there are some canvases of deserted interiors, especiallv bedrooms, that he has described as his recollections of time spent with friends and lovers. And Balthus ha\ paintrci street scene, full of strangers

\\-ho, unbekno\vnst to trne another, are taking their places in what amount to surreal urh;tn pantomime,. In fact one of the grande\t images of modern public life comes from Balthus, 11-ho completed his final salute t o the

f arisian streets, T ~ Pilssagii P dtl Colntrt~ri~ Sar~t-~4lz(lrP, in f 994, just before he moved his studio from the city that fcxrned him a* an artist. Kitaj saw the Pd\sirge----in =which Balthus appears as the figure carrying n baguette-at

the

Baithus retrospectke in 1983 in Paris, and it inspired \\-hat is certainly Kitaj's best painting so h r . the phantasmagoria on the subject of i*,n~lonstreet life.

~ Lc'tl~lilti B7C2 jlkv Rtyigp~s) \\-ith the meandering title: C P ICt~tlri, Cecil Court is a real place-a c,ffkstyle. He certainly gives nem- panache to a collage-soaked smsihilitv that runs through classic modern art and literature ancl is exemplified by Err;%Pound's Cusii~s

and Max Beckmann's tripychs. I salute Kitaj's intellectual nen-iness. Who else kvould even imagine that it \\as possible to paint \Valter Benjamin's idea\, the experiences of Khlter Lippmann. Tixlmudic concepts. a scene from the details of one's earliest sexu;ti encounters? Kitaj the life of Henry &%dams, has ciarcci to go where no one with his sophistication has gone before. Yet there are just too many paintings in =which Kitaj is letting the pieces fall as the\- may and then plugging up the compositional cracks =with blocks of t3rigl't. flat color. He tolerate\ far too many grating. stop-and-start effects. Disjuncture. \\-hich is kej- to Kitaj's work. is a method he has aditpted from the copybook of abstraction. 1)isjuncture once t3rought fresh drama into art l>\-rhallmging the idea that a painting represents a single slice of time and space. But tociav abstraction is all too often a virtually acadenlic mterpri,e. dedicated to preserving some small trove of painting's possilalities, and Kitaj's \er!- crarine\s has a strong ~10seof the formulaic. Still. it is Kitaj's \\ay of ilsi~lg the (:uhist-derived idea of disjuncture to rehabilitate older form\ of storytelli~lgthat has en~learedhim to many of today's unconventional reitlists, \vho say that they \\-ant to bring narrative hitck into art. If you like Kitaj-\-pai~~ting." \Xrh;ttBalthus t3rlie~esis missing in much rnociern pAnting is "tension . . . a sort of no repose." .%S far as his own practice is concernr~i.he finds the needed tension not in his subject matter but in the \cry pnlcess of Iooking-"looking

at a ch;tir.

looking at a cup of tea, or any object at all." The looking out is also n looking in, for the truth is that much of the apparently naturalistic- material in Ralthus's paintings has been dreamed up in the studio. There's an almost metaphj-sical dimension to perception. As Ralthus explains it, even "whm I paint ,[)mething after nature. I'm al\\-a\-srecognizing something in mvself." Ralthus's rejection of the questic~nof suhjec t matter-althc3ugh

proha-

bly to some degree strategic, a jibe at the people \%-h0imagine themselves to be his disciples and \%-h0t3elieve that subject matter is the engine ciriving p a i n t i n ~ c u n t r a ' t s dramatically 11-ith Kitaj's manic cultivation of a dozen subjects at once. And \-et even Ritaj ciinnot exape the elsentiai fact of modern art, =which is that the \%-aythat a painting is made. once a matter of hehind-the-scenes magic. is no\\- the key t~ a viewer's heart and mind. It doesn't matter m-hether the painting is more or less abstract, mtrre trr less

realistic. Since reality is no longer a given. everything is a gamble. If Kitaj is an extrclne case of the tendency of modern art to mirror a l\-orld that many people believe has gone all to pieces. Ralthus is our most triumphant current e x m p l e of an artist \\-ho knows how to put it all back together. In the

Madpm Parnrvrr intervie&-he says that he is "nl\\-ay\ tapping on the same nail. I think \\hat I have kept in a certain \\-ay, is rnv vision a\ a child. That sort of surprise in front of things." Kith this parable of a child banging a first nail into a first piece of \\-ood \vho turns into an old man \vho's doing exactly the same thing. Balthus take\ his rightful place among the great simplificrs.

"I'm considering myself n a craftsman." he says. "I don't m-ant t o be an artist. I have a horror of the \\-orCf,'' Since completin g the melancholy P~sslrguiitr Cnnini~n-uSirlni-~ltrdri;in 1954, Balthus has become an increaiingly inn-ad-turning painter, He has put ncr more than two figures in a painting in the past twenty-eight years; mostlv he paints one figure at a time. The raw materials that go into his paintings don't vary that much. There are the juxtaposed plane, of floor and \\a11 and furniture, the curves of the model's body, the angle of the light. But thmugh subtle shifts in the \\-ay that he carpenters together these e\sential elements, he no%-seems to be able tci make just ahtrut anytfiing ha.ppen. He's a ma\ter craftsman m-ho l\-arks unhurriedly, deliberately: the authenticity of the pmiluct is guaranteeci by the austerity of the process. Balthus has l->ec-omeas lnuch cif a E-tack-to-basics artist as Mondrian. I think it is Ralthus's in*istence on simplicit\- that frequently dismai-s those who look to his work for \\-hat Mondrian cioe, not give them. n d those \\-h0 find something \\-anting in the figu rc paintings of Bal thus may \\ell end up being happier l\-ith the work of Kitaj. \\-h0 keeps knocking together memorably crazy 'iq-hatnotsout cif all kinds ofhtrnd n~aterials. In London I heard it said that Ralthus's n e n canvas \\-as perfect hut sornehow not satisfying. Balthus has anslvereci this complaint in the ,Wod~re

Pdiniris interview, in =which he observes that if people look to his paintings

for the disharmony that they knoll- in life they will he disappointeci. He saFs that people are "shrinking tuck from t3ea~tv.. . . I i v o ~ speak of beautv, you are at cince suspected o f . . . kitsch.'" Khen I);ivid liolvie asks Ralthus \\-hich of his pitintings he like\ the best, he am%-ers,as many artists do, by tafking ahtrut his recent work. I agree \\-ith Ralthus \\-hen he saFs that the nem- CA ivrih ,Llrm?r is one of the finest things he has ever done. It's a painting that t~nitesthe Biedermeier soliditv

of the iompo\itions that first made Balthus h m o u s in the 1931)s m-ith the overripe color that was enchanting him in the 1950s: that is it\ particular k n d of harmon!. Here the old lialthusian erotic charge has cooled to an androgynous tingle. The young girl, ciresseci in a contemporary tunic-and-leggings combination th;tt looks a lot like a meciieval costume. might e a d v be mitaken for an extremely han~isomeyoung prince. The painting offers a distant. philosophical view of beau t\-.The key to everything is the \\-ork's extraordinary scale. ?be Ckr wtth ,Llzr~?rI I I is at cince intiltlate and rnonun~ental, and that union of oppo\ites leaves us 11-itha feeling of alrno\t preternatural calm. There is a story to he read in this densely worked yet utterly spontaneous canvas. and it is a very simple one. Balthus began to pitint a hiry-tale princess: he 11-orkeci for five long years; and m-hen he \\-as finished the princehs had been granted eternal life.

WAR STORIES

Deep into the second decade of the culture \\-ars. \vith the assaults and countera*saults unfolding 11-ith undiminhhed ferocity, the contemporary art that generally receives the most attention is jingoistic, one-dimensiona1. a placard raised in a dehate. This sloganeering that masquerades n art come* from all side* and is seen every\\-here. (In an average day in SoHo. n gallerygoer \\-ill be unable to avt~idthe canned chaos of retro-'60s assemcartoon styles. and a prefkb tradiblage, the if-you-ran't-lick-'e1n-jc)inn'en~ tionalism that range* from i.o\ n g e l e s Minimal to Mediterranean Classic. Some artists cornl?iinre classics ancl cartoons. They

mq,at least temporar-

ily. be hailed as sax*\-\-politicians. As for the best pAnters and sculptors, they have h;tsically derided not to take positions. Excellent artists are \\-orking and nhil,iting, hut \vhm the\- dc-~exhilit \\-hat mq first strike a galler>-goeris the i~~warifne\s of the u-ork, a self-ahsorpticin that can bt. mistaken frtr irrelevance, This quality is not necessarily linked to the size of an artist's reputatk'n: a resolute self-containment is as essential a factor in the enigmatic ahstracti~insof Rill Jensen,m-ho is the moht original painter to have nchin-ed a top-flight reputiition in recent years, as it is in the \\-ark of many less \veil-knoll-n artists. The strongest \\-ork that9\k i n g clone today suggests no dominant shle, tx..~t it all hiis scimething of the fierce clarity and complicate~iinn-ardne\s that one expects from private journal entries made in kvartime. to the SoL-Io vileries 1.rcdd This is niit a moment when casml ex-llrsic~ns much appeal, and I ciinnot blame the sophisticated public that has ,v,-orn c,ffcontemporarv art, preferring to return to the ( )ld Ma*ters in the Metropolitan and the Frick. Even the critics are in denial. The muffled, npologeticall\. evenhancled reviews of the \i'hitne\- Biennial that have appeared since

the she\\- openeci in March suggest that the very people who make contemporary art their business don't expect much and are in a make-~ioframe of mind. Klaus Kertess. kvhci organized this year', Biennial, is passing the peace pipe around m-hen he \\-rites in the catalog that he supports "not a return to formalism hut an art in which meaning is embedded in formal value." Like so many late-t3reaking devclopmmts in the culture lviirs, the 199.5 Biennial is horn of reaction, in this case a reaction to the li'hitney's la*t Bimnial. The theme of the 1093 she\\- \\-as announced in a catalog preface in \I-hich the museum's director, I)a.i.iJ lioss, praised the artists for their rejection of "cynical formalism" in &\or of "the geopolitical, the psychosocial," and \\-hat he c a l l e d i n an attempt at hyperliteracv that sc~undedmore like illiterat-\--"the

hodv's politic." This \\-as a s h m - in which an artist with de-

grees from Brown and Stanforil reflected on man's inhumanity to man Jressinp up in kitsch ethnic garb a d spending several hours a d~ locked in a metal cage m-atching old \vesterns on TV .4 m-hole museum full of that kind of poststructurillist radical chic turned out to be too much even for the people \\-h0 live for politicill art, and Ross and his curator. Elisabeth S ~ ~ s s m afound n, themselves \\-ith what became regarded as The Bienaial That Had (;one Too Far. Ross haci plaj-eci the art-and-politics card and lost, and t~avinghit bottilm he h e m - that there was niwhere to go but up. Since then the K'hitney hasn't e,che.;i-ed politicd gestures, it's just become better at packaging them and distributing them. This seaon's political she\\-. "Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in (:ontemporar\- .4merican Art." got the generally \\-hite male critics into exactly the \\\-eat of guilt and remorse and arcommo~lationthat the li'hitney had hoped to trigger in

1093. And no\\-, just a n ~ o n t hafter ""Back Male" m-cnt tlown, we have the payhat-k, a Biennial that the \\-hite hews can say is nice to look at. Klaus Rerte\s has mounted the ultimate nonthreatming Biennial. Krht~. after going thmugh this show that fills every floor and nook and cranny of

the Brhitney, believes that Kertess stands for anything at all! Kertess has been spoken about as a man \vho cares ahout painting, but these clays caring about painting is often nothing but a debating point, ancl the Biennial that Kertess has come up with is little more than a truce among rival kctions. There are no high points: the loll- points are kimiliar one,: the me\sage is that \;\-hatis is \;\-hatis.. The scariest thing ahout the mid-'90&mood is that people are so \\-ithdra%-nthat they're missing the point of, or even missing entirely, a lot of the new work that has a c-oncentrated fcjrce. Trcvor \Virtkfielct\ first shciw cif paintings in six years, which \\-as at E, M. Donahrre, presented a complicatecily allegorical view of po\tmodern chaos that if taken to heart could prohahlv cure a case of the Biennial hlahs. But given that nohod); any longer believes that miracles can happen in art galleries. I \l-on't he surprised if even the people \\-h0 \a;\\-\Vinhfield's \\ark have difficult\- disting~lishingit fro111 the overfull eccentric abstractions of Lari Pittman. =which are pitrt of the Biennial blahs. Kinkfield's u-as one of the two stlows in recent n-eeks that have given a gallerygoer something to take out of the gillery and play ar0~1nc1 with in the n~inJ'seve. The other n-as S t a n l e ~Lewis's first completelv coherent show in eight years. \\-hich \\-as at the Bo\\-ery Gallery. I.e\\-is's jitgged yet delicate painterly realism is in every obvious \;\-ayunlike Brinkfield's zany Surrealist c,nslaught--they're

pn~hahl\-totidly unaware of each other's l;\-ork-hut

this

time around both artists \\-ere cleali~lgwith the same suhject. The best \\ark in \Vinkfield3ssho&-\\-as a painting called 17iu Strrdtij, and the stnjngeht group of \\-orks in Lem-is's \\-as a series of dra;\\ings of his stuciio. The studio is alkvays \\-here the action is, and Kinkfield and I.e\vis. by putti~lgthe action in italics. are telling us that they're hanging in there fcjr the duration. Kba.t happens when an artist gets do&-nto jq-ork is aln-vs essentiatly the same. It has to clo \vith p~lshingfor1115 as kir as they will go. \vith allokving

the logic of the forms to unfold as you g-le and then into n e n st>-le.( If the t m paintings in the Donahue show, five or six are of an Art t3eco intricacy that's almost too clever, three or four are first rate. ancl 11ru Stfrihil,an audacious treatise on the art of piunting, is pnjhablv the best thing that Kinkfield has ever done,

In I%P S I I I J E ~\*Y;rinkfic.ld ?, presents both the creator and the sueation-to the right is t h e I3adaist marionette of an artist. t o the left is \\-hat he's \I-rot~pht-and Vi'inkfiel~ishows them to be both distinct and intertm-ined.

The artist is a harum-sciirum comic hero \\-h0 aclvertises his lofty aspirations with a sort of medieval headgeau and a bit of sihoolbov" scornanhero drag, but basically he's so busy trying to hold the line in the studio that he can't give us the time of day. His easel, composed of Suprematist angled lines and a couple of pipes that recall Magritte's Cut-i a'est piis unr prpu, is in a state of near-collapse. n d the paihng-within-a-painting-22

harcl-

to-parse creation that includes, maybe, a hit of Grand (:anyon kitsch-is dangerousk aske\\-. lllr Stfrdzir. \\-ith its inspiriting orchestrations of deep recls and blues. is the self-portrait of an artist \\-h0 km\\-s the world is going crazy and \vho just presses on. The mess;tge is altogether upbeat. If you

have your feet firmly planted on the ground-as shou-n frijrn aho-\-e,clearly are-then

this artist's sandled ones.

everything else can float and flv m d

spin, K h a t I love atmut this painting is the carefully kveiphted details that Kinkfield gives to his \vilde*t kncies. A treatise on painting must have its color theory, and Kinkfield presents his in the form of a shelf with glass beakers full of paint that appears in t3oth a six-color and a seven-color version; it's reminiscent of the

I O ~ Sof

l a h ~ r a t ~ r y - p r e c ijars e of pigments in

p h o t o g ~ i p l xof Kandinsky's Paris studio. On the right side of

nlu Stuiilo the

cache of colors is in good order, as neat as in Kandinsky's atelier. On the other side of the painting, h\\-ever, something is amiss. The shelf is slipping, and the beaker of purple paint is no\\-here to he found. I m-ondered \\-hat haci twcome of that royal purple. and then I found it clu tcheci in the marionette-like artist's ha.nd. With the brush in his r,ther hand, he's bt~sy giving his painting a fen- purple pit\sage\. ( If course the shelf is at an angle: inspiration has struck. n d thmugh a process of transfc~rmation.\\-hereby the pitint within the pitinting is picked up l,\- the painter in order to create the painting, Kinkfield, for perhaps the first time in his career, pushes beyond ~iazrlingdesign to the freeciom of composition. Kinkfirlci's eclecticism can be called postmodern. But postmodern implies reaction, a\ in the new ttate for the old reacting against the old ta\te for the new, and Brinkfield is too much the unronflicted antipurist to he an ideologue of any stripe. The best artists of lyinkfield's generation-he's 51-are

all committed to an idealistic eclecticism. Such an open-ended aes-

thetic could never gain wide acceptance amid the perpetually r e d r a ~ - nbattle lines of the art scene, and h\- no?%-its origins are lost forever in the pwhistory of the culture \\-ars. but artists are dreamers ancl they just keep on dreaming. ,%pparentlvthei-krcnot the only ones. 1)amneci if KLauss Kerte\s, 11-ho's34, doesn? tbelieve in that openness, too. And he's pone right out

and sold the ifream to the devil by turning ideatistic eclecticism into a Khitney Museum product. K h e n it i.on1es tir contemporary art, ntjbody can make a difference at the 1i'hitne)-: the place is too far gone for that. Rut doesn't it ever occur to itqbody ttr just sq. no?

Leon Ki?ssoff paints a gritty, untouristy London, and he does it \\-ith such \\-onderful miling pitint surEaccs ancl pearly opitlescent gm!-s that even people \vho k n m - the citv fairly m-ell may feel some regret at the things they have rnisseci. Kossoff is representing lingland at the ITeniceBiennale this summer, and in the couple of dozen paintings that hang in the beautiful galleries of the British Pavilion-they

include portraits, nudes, and land-

scape" as \\-ell as city vie\\-*--he gives this shambl\-, rumpled, h u m ~ l r u m London of his an exhilarating. ilolving grace. Kossc~ffis a city cineller to his fingertips. He knolvs that ordinary sights can have n tillismanic PO\\-er preciselv because m-e're seeing them all the time. In some recent paintings of people rushing to and fro in front of a ilolver stall at the limbankmmt Station of the [Tnderground, he uncovers a

grayeci-tio\vn-yet-cc3ruscated 1990s version of the poetry of the everyday. Another series of paintings, which he's been \\orking on for ciecades. features the boldly piled-high facade of one of the monuments of English Baroque awhitecturc: Nicholas E-lawksmoor's o\v-richgraj-s. Kc?ssoffwon't bear comparison \\-ith that ultimate Iienetian master, but I think it says a gciod deal about this Englishman" sn-ork that it does not look ridiculous in the Iienetirtn context-. SEPTEMBER 4,1995

BORN UNDER SATURN

The j\-ork that Bill Iensen has heen doing in the pitst several years is as exciting as any painting that has ever heen done by an .4mrricitn. This 49-yearold arti,t is a master of inchoate, muffled-yet-fierce emotions, and ncs other arti\t alive has given us sc, many haunting impressions of the loll-ering, saturnine side of the artist's spirit. Bv contemporarj- standards rensen's abstract cam-ases are small-enerally

tkx-o or three feet high----and this fc~cuhesuh

on the autographic force of the surEace. 11-hichhe builds up and rubs down and then builds up again m-ith a concentrated lyricism that's so intense that it can be a little scary. lensen has an alchemist's gift for turning piled-high brushstrokes and flotsam-like bits of pigment into the st~bstanceof a mvt hical natural \vorlci. It's an ugly-beau tiful unkerse, where the vistas are eerie, the color is febrile. and every landmark has a scintillating allegorical po&-er. i of meanderThe poetry of imsen's work is n matter of hints n n ~flashes, unfurlings. There's a marvelous slo\vness to these painti n g ~ unfoldings. , ings: you feel rensm's contemplative pitce. ( h e \\-ay to explain \\-hat rensen doe, is l,\- explaining \\hat he does not do. He never employ\ an end-to-md structure that takes its essential logic from the rectangular shape of the cam-as. Thatk the French n-a>--compcssition as a discipline that leads to a revelation---ancl it has nothing to do with lensen's piece-l3y-piece. questing approach. Although there are many Iensen painting, that contain a singular, looming image. he arrives at that all-in-one impact indirectly, incrementally. Ys~uget the feeling that he's begun each painting by fs~cusingon some tin\ element-the

color of a brushstroke. the weight of a line. the

thrust of a curve---and that for him the process of making a painting is the px~cess""fvatching that first mark or gesture gn~m-.In Iensen's m-ork.

grim-th is gradual, uneven. surprising-like

bits of moss and lichen appear-

ing on drc;i\-ing branches and then spreading unpreciictahly, creating romantically irregular patterns. There are six piiintings in the Bill Iensen show at the Marv Boone Gallery in Nrv. York. ancl in order evm to bepin to look at them a gallerygorr has to t - n o t h i q mood. Tk-o tune in to the artis t's quietert, slo\vest, dc~ing-almo\ paintings. Gbssas ancl Pirijirn, are \er!- impressive. Both are vertical, a hit over three feet high, with a horizon line ciividing the surface into nearly equal parts and summoning up, m-ith almost diagrammatic abruptness. n view of sky , cold blue hrushstn~kesspread above and earth or ocean below. f i b s ~ a r m-ith out before the orange-yello~-haze of the sun, is the primordial. Hclmeric sea. In Pdgira, clouds of that same cool blue scutter armss a greenish sky, a s h that's as unins-iltiw as the n ~ u g hred-ad-black , terrain belt~v. These s~rnhnliclandscapes contain no trace of a human presence; no path cuts through the gloom of

Pagirtr,

no boat could navigilte the danger-

ous \\-ater, of Ct?iirssus. In the lower portions of the painting. rensen curves his elements to give just a suggestion of perspectival depth. hut he's not invoking a particular place so much as summoning a harshly sublime mood. He', an ultra-sophisticated artist creating barbaric scran-ls. And the painthanclling. 11-ithits complete lack of charm. underline the peremptorv spirit of these works. When I look at the pitintings close up, I feel the chill of the palette knife rather than the softne5s of the brush. The roughed-up paint has some of the quality of Eastern calligriiphj-, of those complicated. iconic gestures that seem to emerge almost involuntarily out of an artist's reserves of calm. These landscapes, n-hich feel both 11-orn-out m J tlntouched. are ahnut mapping unmappable experiences, about being in a place that has no beginning and no end. ~ a third painting, ralleci Wlf:turL~fiht,that does a In the Roone s h o there's remarkable job of evoking frozen desolation by means of a fe\v t > r n ~ -marks n

set on a beautifully distressed surfiice. But after Cnlnsus, Pirgerr, a d B7fflbpr

Light, the quality of the 11-orkdrops precipitouslv; the three other paintings are so understated that in each case I can c-onclude cinly that lensen has left some essential part of the story inside his head. 4 s I moved around the gallery. every other painting clre\\- a blank. n d since f e n s e f i dominant theme here is the fascination of near emptiness, the outright enlptiness of one half of the selections can't but t~ndercctteven his subdest efforts. The shc)n-is sunk 1zv all this weak work. It's an out-otrfc~cusexhilzition, cine that conveys no sense of the v a r i e ~ of Jensen's recent pAnting, and I can't see how people leaving Boone \\ill understand \\-hat kind of an artist lensen redly is. This show is a verv disturl3ing event. In the 1940s. Clement (;reenlzerg often complainecl in print that the best American painting \\-as to be seen in the artists' studios rather than in the galleries. This fall Bill fensen confcluncfs us \\-ith the rase of a remarkable artist \\-h0 is showing at \\-hat is generally regiiriieii as one of the most prestigiclous galleries anjunc1. but has left the majori y of his strongest \\ark a few mile\ a%-ay.in his studio in Bmoklyn.

I realize that by compat.inp the shi)w at hfary Boom m-ith the much larger group of paintings I ,a\\- in lensen's studio some six months ago, I'm making a value judgment that's based on in\ider informatic~n.I'm loath to take advantape of such information, but the mismatch betm-een \I-hat fensen has been cioing in his stuclio ancl \\-hat's on display at Boone does such a disservice to the gallerygoer that a critic cannot hut offer a behind-the-scenes view. This is o d y fensen's second ,bm-at Boone, and the gap between his authenticity and her st\-Iishness is wider than it \\-as two \-ears ago, \\-hen he first exhibited on \Vest Bm;td\va\-. There is no excuse for his not shokving at lea\t a half-dozen more paintings, including some of his recent underx-ater universes and fiery nightscapes. There's certainly enough room at Boone to demonstrate that lensen is ntw.- able to present cimplicated embiematic subject nlatter with intuitive ease.

At the t3eginning of the '80s Mary Roone pioneereci, almost single-handedly, an overbearingly austere. Zen-Fascist style in gallery ciesign, and I,\now it ciominates the upscale scene. Boone's space at 417 \Vest Broadnay gave the slob-job work of Julian Schnahel and L);ivid Salle the VIP send-off that it so desperately needed, but this gallery flzttens out paintings that are discreetly emotional. The Mar\ Boone Gallery turns Jensen's pitintings into postage "amp"

even his strongest cam-ases look underpo\vered. The real

stars are Boone's perfectly smooth, nearlv empty gallery \\;ills. This is a hell of a spackle-ancl-paint job, but it doesn't make for an artist-friendly environment, At the very least, Roone coulci have let gallerygoers in on \\-hat Jensen is up to by presenting, in one of the other room\ in her capacious building, the suite of intaglio prints that he completecl in the spring of 1994 for an artist's h ~ o ktitled Pt~stcilnisFlrn Truhl. This collah~rationn-ith the poet John Yan is an homage to the Awtrian poet Geclrg Tt-akl, \\-h-to help us see the masters in a c ~ n t e n ~ p o r a r v

\\-ay. and it's no surprise that a generation of artists trained to think in t e r n s of context and environment has looked at the \\-ay that Rrancusi set streamlined volumes on rouph-and-ready \vood bases and has frequently been more interested in the bases than in \\-hat they support. These bases do raise

kscinating questions that lend themselves to traditional art-historical treittment. Brancuhi tried different sculptures on difkrent bases and documented his thinking in the t3rautiful photographs th;tt he took of his studio and its contents. He also frequently sold sculptures m-ithout bases. At the Philiidelphi3 Museum of .4rt even the most peculiar in*tallation decisic~ns,such a\ the v\-oojen

that is mounted atop a Glrtnrn, i;rn be supported by Bran-

cusi's 0%-nphotographic record. But which f-tt~citcigraphis one to believe, \%-henBranrusi often arranged the sanle work\ differently at different times?

If you think about Brancusi's t3ases long and hard mough. you may find yourself getting into all sorts of subversive thoughts. \Vas Rrancusi hiphlighting the pedestal because he was afraid that sculpture was losing its pedestals: Are the bases the kev to a more ci>ntemporaf\-)Ilrancusi, a man

\%-h0is tmuhled. in\erure, maybe even t3;tffled about ho%-to position sc~llpturei It \\;is Scott Burton, the artist who made a reputation for himself in the '80s \%-ithfurniture that \%-asnleant to double as sculpture and became a staple in public spares, \vho t3mught thew questions into the open. In IOXO, the year of his t~ntimelvdeath, Brirton organized a S ~ O M at - the Museum of hfodern ,"lt called " h r t o n on Brancusi." Given that Brancusi had done twnches ancl tables and stool$---many of them for a site in his native Romania-Rurton

\\;is certainly justified in pointing to him as an ancehtor. Yet

apparently Burton could not accept the possihilitv that for Brancuhi, making a table or an arch \\;is no stranger than it had twen for Bernini to make a fountain or a stair\%-a\-three centt~riesearlier. In the brochure for the Modern shm; Burton in\isteci on renaming the bases of Rranrusi's sculptures "pecie\t;ll-tabler." The "pecie\t;ll-table." he said, is "an object simultaneously prrfcjrming a function and acting as its own sign. It is a

irrirhlip

meditation on utilitarian form." Burton's thinking is fairly deft. if you like the \\hen-is-a-table-not-ii-tiiE>Ie?kind of que5tion. But does this really tell us anything alx~uttables or about art?

Modern art \\-as born amid a lot of W-oollymetaphv\irs. and it seems to be dying surrounded l>\-more of the same. The ciifference is that whereas the early moderns tended to phiIo\opfiize about the transcendent and the ideal, contemporary artists tend to philosophize ahout the kvorking process. about \\-hat you'd think are the most bitsic facts of what they do. Therc is a kind of contemporar\- sculpture-I'm Kichard Ileacon-that

thinking of W-orksby Martin Puryear and

in its all-in-one sense of form and its emphasis on

the abstract value of natural materials might be thought to be Brancusian. but artists such as Puryear and Deacon bring to craft itself the same kind of \\-illful complication that Scott Burton brought to the t3itse. These artists are so intent on demonstrating their fascination with materiajs that they highLight every detail of joining and construction, sci that the work Lmes whatever formal wtierence it migfit have h3d. Mel Kendrick, some%-hatless \\ell-knokvn than Puryear or Ileacon. is caught in the same confusions, nnci I mentic~nhi, 11-ork because Kenclrick has from time to time demonstrated a strong sculptural feeling that makes his chaotic s h m - at the John Kkber (;allpry this fall all the more ciisturl3ing. In his last exhil3ition at Kctxx, Kendrirk sent a roll- of jagged wooden constructions that \\-ere raiseci off the floor on pieces of pipe straight clown the center of the gallery, nnci the\- added up to n zany, engilgingly rough-hewn futuristic Flntasy. There's one lvork in the current shon-a raiseci aloft on more metal poles-that

tree trunk

does have something of that gangly,

gravim-defying feel, but the rest of the show is just theorizing ahout sculpture. with tree trunks doublecl by rubber castings of tree trunks, and castings turneci inside out to shall- us how it's done. Me1 Kendrick has taken m o ~ l e msculpture apart, and I see no \v;iy on earth that he" going to be able to put it I-tack together. The Kranc.usia.n themes that are Lo+ed someu-tiere in the depths of his mind have a lot to do \\-ith his occasional t3ursts of energy, but mostly he seems to \\-ant to de-

construct Rrancusi. Apparentlv Rrancusi is of no help to anybody right no\%-;he's thorouphlv n~isunderstood.In 1989, Sccitt Brlrttrn m-rote that "Rrancusi's enlargelnent of the nature of the art object is as original as Duihamp's n e n kind of object. the Read\-macle." This is the kind of ludjcrous ctsmplin~entthat is now being paid to a supremely intuitive artist. Rurton is telling uh that \\-hat Rrancuhi did 11-ith a piece of oak hears comp;"iam \\-it11 a store-bought sniw shi,\-d. Rurtrrn i n ' t pr;lising Brmcusihe's giving him the third degree. MO\\-long is it going to take people to get over the idea that every three-clirnensirsnrtt cibjeit that's set in a galler)- has to have a tl~eoreticalsubtext? Lecinardo cia Vinci, perhaps the mo\t inte1lectu;tl artist \\-hckcfcllci iunii I'hotogiaph The hf~isetirr)o f Mudeiri A r t , Net\ 5'01 k

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A N U N K N O W N MASTERPIECE

Iean Helion's Lilsi fud~tlivrtt ihings, a t\x-ent\--seven-foot-lt>ngtriptych that is one of the fen sure ma\terpieces painteci an\-\\-herein the pa\t tjq-enty years, is being seen in New York for the first time this spring, at the SalanderO'Reilly Galleries. (:ompleted in 1970, \\-hen the arti\t \\;is 75, 17iu Lilsi f u 4 oimt is an allegory of endings and renejq-als that takes the jq-oncierfully uncomplicated form of

2

ramsharkle flea market-the

an element in jq-relcly markets all over I'rnnw-m-here

sort of sight that's young r ~ ~ and en

\\-omen are poking around amidst the merchan~iise,trying on n thing or t\x-o, carrying a\%-aya hulk-\-purchase. This is a jq-ork of magisterial informalitv, in m-hick1the n ~ o s acute t naturalistic oE>servationsare recorded in clncet~ver-lightlylayers of gidtiil\- bright acrylic color. Beginning jq-ith an end-to-end orchestration of graved-do\\-n oranges and saturated greens, Helion has unfurled an ordinary jq-orld that's also an extraordinarv explosion of telegraphic abstract signs. Helion, u-ho died in 1987, has received a number of major European retrospective~in the past couple of decade* and has been included in such key exhibitions as "A New Spirit in Painting," at the Royal .%cadem\-in London in 1981, and "Identity and .4lterit\-." at la*t summer's Venice Biennale. He's by no means an unknown artist; in fkct, he ma!- be the most grievously underestimated \\-ell-knoll-nartist of our time. Thirty-five years ago, kvriting in the international edition of the Ifi~raidIkbtttru. the poet Iohn Ashhery remarked that "Helion is not just one of the great figurative painters; he is one of the gmatest painters of any kind today." Five years ago, in an interview that u-as published in the Oxfirii . l r t \orinlul. the late Mever Schapirc), who {m-necia rityscape by Hklion, spoke of his having been a "good friend" and

gave a svmpitthetic account of the work. Yet the complexity of H6lir)n's career, \\-t.rich includes pure absrradon and nnturatistic poaraiture and a lot in twtkx-een. often leaves even interesteci viewers feeling m~stified.The internal logic and overarching originality of this \\-onderfully unpreciictable achievement ialmost invariably misread n n serie, of reactions to other people's ideas. Through most of his career. Helion \\-asso much at odds l\-ith mainstream thinking that there's probably little chance that even an event a\ impcirtant a\ the arrival of ihr Ldsi-\uiiqmunt

$l7lmi(s

in New York City u-ill

have much resonance beyon~la fen rontemporarv artists and writers \\-h0 are a\ clued in as Ashher\- \\-as in the '60%ancl Schapin, \\-as in the '40s. Yet the pitinting has finally arrived here, and for those \\-ith eyes to see, it may be it

experience.

In almost every generation there's at least one painter who brings a novelist's thematic intriclicy to the \isual description of the modern \vorlii. Renoir and Seurat did this in the late nineteenth century with their paintings of Parisians at play: Ltger's Cl(\) defined the situation after \Xrorld\Xhr I: and Helion has done something along the same line, for our own time. Standing in front of

nlu Ldsi fuii~ninrt. I'm enveloped by its stirring nrchitec-

tural dimensions, and there's so much to look at that the experience hecomes supremely active. The story unf6,lds ns it might on an enormous (Iriental screen. Helion include* a baker's dozen of figures ancl a va\t array of buyahles that are strewn across n table. n bench, and the ground. In the left panel, clothes shopping is the main event. ( Ine man has gone into a tent to try on a pair of pants, another holds up a suit jacket. while a \\-Oman looks for just the right pair of shin): black high heels. There's so much going on that it may takr y ~ au minute to notice the pair of lovers embracing in the shacio\v\- depths of the t m t . (Iutside, a \\-oman is examining some ranvares and a man carries ciff a tal3le.

Htlion \\-rests n ca*ually iconic impact from acts a* ordinary a* shopping for shoes, ancl then \\-ithout missing a beat he shifts to an interlude of cheerful Surrealist enigma in the center panel. \\-here two dressmaker's mannequin\ arc making love. % rather unusual aspect of nip L i l t

\u~i$ni~tiris

the

sire of the panels. Khercas most triptychs contain pitnels of equal size or a larger central panel, Htlion has joined tm-obroad hcirirontal side ciim-ases to a much narro\\-er central canvas. This may he his way of expressing a nonhierarchical view, of ruggeating that the flea market experience is one of instability-that

the rcnter doesn't hold. The abl3revi;ited central panel is a

mysteriotls intulude-like evening ballet-after

the drcam sequence in the middle cif a full-

=which. in the right panel, Helion once again pursues

\\-hat at first may appear to be more mundane matters. There's a big table holding a tuba ancl a record plaj-er, and lots of other stuff is arranged \\ill\nilly on the ground. A man is examining some candesticks, a \\-()man looks into a t~ook,\\-hile all the \v;$!- to the right we see a mv\terious circular staircase. Scattered near the base of the stairciise are a kvoman's high-heel shoe and n man's hat ancl p a n t : obviouhly. m-e're meant to understand that nnother pair of lovers has juht disappeared upstairs.

The Salander-( I'Reilly show inclucie\, in a~liiitionto 17iu Ldsi

[u~i$ni~tir. some

tjq-o dozen m-arks r a v i n g aiross the artist's career. People who haven't seen the scattered gallery shows cievoted to H6lion in Ne\\ York over the pitst t\\-enty years \\-ill get a glimpse of his early Purist abstraction but hardly any sense of the almost lt:len~ishrealism of the nlid-'50s. Khile the density and variety of M6lion's career does not lend itself to a brief overview, the Salander-t )'Reill\- s h m - may enable gallerygoers to see ho&-17iu Lils(fei!qwi.nr pulls together themes from all through the lvork. I think it's immediate!\- apparent that a picture of people rummaging around in a flea market is about see-

ing neu- life in old formr, and the more you knon- ahout Helion the more you'll understand ho&-this process \vorks. H6lic)n al\vavs \\-rote ahout m-hat he \\-a\ doing, and a tm-o-volumeselection from his notebooks, titleiifillrnrirld'irrr pplntp. \\-as published h- Maeght in Piiris in 1992. (;oing t h n ~ u g hthe sections that cover the years \\-hen Tlr Lu~r\ir{qm~rri

\\-ason Hklion's mind. it's evident that he's reflecting on events that go all the \I-al; bask to the '20s. The Jo~mbtlincludes some references to '7~1npsrtpfrt)uvi. "

\\-hich \\as at one time \vh;tt H6lion \\-a\ planning to call the painting. The French title, Lr Jugorrt~rrril~rntrrJtyr

C ~ ( ? S P S ,also

suggests more than m t e r i a l

thing" Mnion pn,h;thly means us to understand

ihdrspr

as having some of the

same implications that it has in the title of the third volume of Sirnone cir Beauvoir's autobic3graphy. Lu fire tk, ilii~ro.u-hich n-a\ publishell in 1963. Ihr

Lust fui%(munr if i%rn(qsisn't just ahout seeing things, it's a l o about thinking ahout things. Another title might have been Ihu Fled Murkrts tfl\fy

Mdyv

&lion \\-as horn in Yommandy in 1 904. He arrived in Paris in 1921 t i ~ apprentice to he an architect, hut bj- the late 220s he was already an accomplished painter. The IJruguayan artist roitquin Tc~rres-Ciarcia.m-horn Htlion met in 1927, had a great and in some rerpec ts lasting ilnpac t on the young painter: there are echoes of Tc~rres-(;arcia3scanvases, 11-ith their mysteriously effective fusion of tenderly fcjlkloric and purely nhtract elements, all thmugh Htlion's career. It \\-as also Ti3rres-Garcia \\-h0 introducecl Melion to a Parisian zivant-garde that by the '30s included such expatriates n Mondrian and Kandinskj-. M4llon. \\-h0 always had a gift for friendship. soon joined forces \vith van Doerburg to form the hstraction-(:rkation group, \\-hich providecl a rallying point for nonol,jective artists at a time \\-hen mo\t sophistic-ated Parisian painters accepteci semial3rtraraon t3ut not total abstraction. Melion acquired an excellent grasp of English, and in trips to England and n l e r i c a in the '30s he rnacie the case for his o\vn severely cool compo"tions even as he talked and \\-rote about the full range of recent

nonol,jective work. In Nem- York he helpeci Albert Gallatin put together a significant group of paintings. \%-hich\%-asexhibited in the '30%at Nen York ti~~iversity-it was the first pi_ll,fSicollection in which Nen- York artists could see a Mondrim on permanent displiiy. B\- the time \Krorld\Khr I1 was approitching, H6lion \\-as living in .4merica \%-ithan American \vife. He was already juxtaposing impersonal. silvery-coloreJ fc)rr?i~s to create figure-like configurations, and after a while he \%-as painting men in hats, a sort of mid-century Everyman. (In the eve of the \%-are Hklirsn returned to France to fight. He was taken prisoner by the (;ermans, spent many months \\-orking on a prison farm on the Polish border, ultilnately e5caped ancl made his \\-a\-hack to Paris and then to the IJllited State$. Before returning to his easel, he m-rote an excellent hook in English about his 11-arexperiences, 171yy Silirll h i l t ilmr .Mu. which hecime a hest-seller. The E-took contains a nun~l-terofaccotrnts of the frenzied l-tlack-market activit\- in the prison camps, ancl thew fc~reshado\\the series of market paintings of thirty years later, 11-hichinclude studies of vegetable and lobster vendors a* \\-ell as the flea market triptych.

In 1943, M4lion exhibited at Pegpv . . Guggenheim's Art of This jectthat vendors in the markets use to \\-riph potatoes or carrots. It's one of the fe\v items in the sketch thttt doesn't s h o ~up - in the pai~mting,ancl I imagine that's because Melion concluded thttt the presence of a set of scales in this secular Lilstfei!ijmuat would push the metaphor too Etr. There's nt~thingdiscomfiting about HClicin's mo~iemization of the (:hristian end of days. He ohserj-esthat 11-e'reall making judgmmts all the time, but he cioesn't c i r a one grand conclusion. (:ert;linly he's tuned into a piuiiate~i.let-the-chips-EtIl-its-they-1nayside of (Ihristian iconopaphy that you sometkmes encounter in French Romanesque pai~mtingancl sculpture. He has an affiniy for the kind of Romanesque siulklture in =which the \\-orld is

represented as a complicated pageant lvith each person plaving- a small, apt *

role. And he ol>viouslyadmires the ralligraphic, exuberantlv imaginative spirit of some hvelfth-centur>-m-all piiinting5, in m-hich people seem to m-hirl along on the currents of life, exuberance. In a way, it's st~rprising Htlion's Last fuliijrnent has a ycsuthf~~ll to realize that this frieze full of young adults is the work of a 75-year-old man. hut of course part of the expliination is that Helion is recalling his own earlier davs. The \\-hite soup tureen in the left pitnel \\ill be hmiliar to admirers of HOlicsn's earliest still Liks. Writing in the Jcrtrrt~rrlat the time that he Helion recalled that he bought that tureen \\-as \\-orking on the Ldsi [u~iijni~tir, in the Saint-Ouen flea market in the ' 2 0 . So in a sense lbv LlnsiJuiiigme~atis a recollection of Hi.lic~n'sfirst decade as an artist. Helion goes on to explain that in 1929 he smaheci the tureen. and looking bark on that smash-up he csherves that it seemed to S\-mholizeboth the break-up of a marriage and the t3reak-up of his first realist style into his early abstracaons. In lliv

Lilst

[uiiijrnenl the tureen is hack in one piece, m-hich is surely n demonstration of tr~npswtri7rn.i; Yet there's even mtrre gtrinp trn tiere, because the unbroken ceramic is non- broken up formally.

lines that run all the \\-a!- from top to

txsttorn and turn its flo\\-ing curvilinear volume into a series of elegantly s y n ~ m e t r i dery remarking, in a 1960 e5say for Artnpivs, that Hi.lion's ing to fi~d stvllistic shift \~j-ouldhrtve occasioned fewer shock 11-avesin S e w York than it

did after the \v;ir in Paris. because in Nem-York you coulci count on a "peareful coexistence l-tetkx-eenal-tstraction ancl realism." Of course, even ar Ashl-tery made that remark. the olii '50s-style Neu- York heterogeneity \\as collapsing in the face of an academic abstraction thrtt jects.she just opens up their possil->ilities. and the decisiveness of her painthandling, m-hich m-eaves together simplification and complicittion, makes the multiplicity of meanings seem naturill. inevitable. Kith a tablecloth she ran do anything. Pulled tight, the cloth sets up a q ~ a c ea u x d ~ l yas a qunttrocento piazza; rumpled, it's the \l-orliI in confusicin. m-ith space colliipsing in on itself and objects teetering on the brink of ol->li.i-ion. ()\-er the t\\-entv-five years that I've heen seeing Mntthinsdottir's plctures. her work has movecl closer and closer to the center of ;tn imaginary map of contempor;lrv art that I carry around in my head. Mntthiasdottir has alliays heen a first-rate artist. and if \\-hat she's doing no\\- seems especially important. it's t3ecause her optimistic pragmatism is set in high relief \\-hen

so much of the strong ne\\- \\-ork that we're seeing in the galleries is producecl by arti\ts \\-h0 arc circumspect about their emoaons. She's a virtuoso \\-ith pitint \\-h0 can suggest the softness of a tablecloth or the cold gleam of a knife blade 11-ith n few passes of the brush, yet there's never anything shcm-v about her painter!!- effects. Matthiasiiottir depends on a dramatic juxtaparition of color shapes to build a spare, and then her giddy interluclrs of naturalistic extravagilnce saturate the space m-ith life. Strangely enough, it's often the more sophisticated gallerygoers who feel that Matthiasdclttir's realism is a little bland. Cclrrld it be that the seamlessness of a naturalistic image. especially if the illusion doesn't call attention to itself, appears naive to people m-ho are all\-a\-, looking for a subtext! If only they knrm-: Matthiadottir has suhteuts galore. When she's \\orking at the top of her powers. straightfomardnw is her wav of npressinp complicated feelings.

Khen she lets her brush pass quickly over an object in a still life or the particulars of her face, she's defining the limits of what we

~IIOR-.,%ndwhen

her

color is astonishing!\- vibrant, the heautif~~lly structured compositions can seem like a \\ay of bringing order to big. amorphous emotions.

R\- giving her hest pictures such an unfussy emotional impact, Matthiasdottir sets a standitrd against \vhich I 611d it useful to measure other people's \\-orli. It i",nteresting to j uxtapore Matt hiasclottir's mm-canvases v\-ithsome of the paintings in the A1e.i Katz retrospectiveial1ed "Mex Katz Under the Stars: American landscapes, 19Sl--1395'LtIi1at \\-as at the Baltimore Museum of Art over the sumfiler and is no\\- touring. And it's also \\-orth seeing h o ~some younger realists stack up against Matthiasiiottir, such as Philip Geiger. \\-h0 has had a string of sho\vs at %tistcheff and Ct?. in New Yt~rk.

For years. realism \\as a minorit\- taste in the hnlrrican art \\-orld, and sometimes even people in the know \\ere inclinecl to keep fairly quiet. They

didn't want to deflect attmtion from abstract art, =which \\-as recognizeci the \\-orld over as a ciefining achievement of postwar Ne\v York. n d no\\. \\-hen abstract painting is often said to have run itself into the ground, there is almost a g w a e r desire to cling to an ehtahlihment genealogy that begins \\-ith Pollock and goes all the \\-a\-to Robert Ryman and Brire Marden. Yet nothing could he farther from the truth than the idea that painting \\-hat

you see is not a New York thing. Hans E-iofmann, l;\-ith \;\-t~cin~ Matthiasciottir studied after she arrived from Iceland in the early 1940s. always structured his teaching aroun~ithe experience of working from a still life or a nude. He certainly encouraged Abstract Expressionists such as Toan Mitchell to bring a stmng perceptual element into their \\-ork, and the important painters of figures, landscapes. and still fifes \;\-h0studied 'iq-ith H o h a n n inctude not only hfatthiasdottir, but also Nell Blaine and Robert I)e Niro (the father of the astor). It's some-

times forgotten that C;i;icometti's mature representational style \\as first

hewn not in Paris but in NCWYork, at the Pierre Matisse Gaflery in N4X. And it's also significant. I think, that Balthus's first museum retrospective \\-as in 1956 at the Museum of Modern r t . \\-here it ran roncurrcntly with a Pollock she%-. Nem- Ycrrkers hilve alliays had their romantically speculative s hestreak, which led them to abstract art, hut they're also p r a ~ t h t \\-h0 liese that \\-hat ycsu see is what you get. After a decacie \\-hen everybody has been looking for alternatives to the less-is-more approitch of much Nr\v York Schciol abstraction. you'd expect that attention \vould focus on all the other painting that goes on in New York. There has been some revisionist thinking, hut it hasn't really amounted to much. People gm\;\-\\-earl. of the old mvths, hut they cling to them. too, and \\hen the time comes for a change, there's a tmdency just to pile nem- mvths on top of old ones. This helps to explain \\-h?, m-ith abstract painting losing its allure. Americitn museumgciers \\-hci want to get hack to

nature have heen inclinecl to embrace the School of London, lvhich is presented as a realist alternative to Ne%-York. In 1994, Lucian Frerrd" retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum became dinner party conversation all over hfanhattan. Frei~li'shigh bohemian London, with ariStocratic latfie~ and a drag queen all undressing in the artist's barren atelier, had a hard-hitt m ciorummtary impact. n d Nrm- York succumbed. I'reuii's figure pAntings are at the Acquavella (;aller>- in Nem-York this Edl. He renders each square inch of flesh-he \\-rird mounds and ridges-and

pile, on the paint until it creates

he \vows an auiiienre that sees this nitpicky

naturalism as painterly magic. He's transformeii a rather traditional studio exercise into a high-concept postmodern game, and although the programmatic thinking makes his paintings feel airless ancl inert, there's an audience that', \villing to accept such overdetermination as a kind of meaning. I'reuii is so ariiently realistic. so illtent on pro\ing that he will not be abstract. th;tt he satisfies people's arsumption that abstraction and representation are irreconcilable absolutes. Freud i, admired for being everything that the New York Sc-hoolis not: he has stories to tell, and he dots all the i's and crosses all the t". And he's not the onl\- London artist that Nem- York finds increitsingly mg;iging; there is also heiphteneii interest in R. B. Kitaj (an m e r i c a n \vho's lived in London for decades) and reneu-ed attention paid to Francis Bacon, and a g r o ~ - i ncuriosity g about les-known figures such as i.eon Kossoff, Frank . h e r txich. ancl Rodrigo MO\-nihan.The Brits suddenly seem relevant. precisely because they're o u tside the New York loop. The M;ltthiasiiottir retmspective ought to be recognized a\ a key event in contemporar\- art. It ought to he at the Metropolitan Museum, \\here Lucian Freucl h3~1his sho\v. BUt that kvon't happen, since this artist's majorleague emotic~nalimpact is so unlike m-hat people have heen led to expect from important n e n painting, e\pecially in N e n York. Matthiasdottir doesn't care to startle us \vith the very fact of her being a realist. She insists on

an old idea of visual credibility, but she gives that approach an uncategorirable contemporary freedom, and she does so 11-ith a feeling for color and ctsnstrtlction that comes straight o u t of abstract art, She's a Neu- York School painter \\-h0 \\-ants to celebrate the overx-helminp reality of the citv; her still lifes have a Ne\v York clarity. a N m - York piice. Her work is such a thoroughgoing S\-nthe,is that it may be misunderstood as cautiously conventional. Rut if you tune into \\-hat Matthiasiiottir is doing, you may end up thinking that if this isn't part of the main*tream, then the mainstream can gt-ttt""hell.

hlex Ratr started out at mughly the same post\\-ar moment a\ Matthiasiiotc h praise tir, and there's redly no m p t e r y as ttr whj- he garnrrs so 1 ~ ~ 1more than she cioes. (Going through Katr's landscape retro,pecave, you sce a smoothly intelligent man turning the \\-hole \\-orld into an abstract painting, \\-hich can make smse to people \vho are inclinecl to read abstract painti n g landscapes ~ ~ anylvav. Katz leaves the tension het\\-ern abstract strur ture and realist imagery right there on the surhce, for all to see. If you can overlook the yawning chasm in recognition that separates Ratr from Matthiasiiottir, it's clear that thei-"c %\-orkingsome of the same terrain. Katz also wants abstract and realist impulses to flo\\- together. The difference is that he insists on making the svnthe,is look svnthetic-and

therefore hip.

Ratz ha\ al\x-;ivs ignored all the annoying detail\ and clone one-colorp e r - A v e m-ork. His preferred brand of flattened-t~ut.everything-up-front space \\-as already in place in the lanclscapes he \\;is doing in the mid-'50s. \\-hich incluclecl small colored-pitper collages a\ \\-ell as bigger oil,. A tree become, an interesting ragged-edged fcjrrn. .4nd whatever details Katz does include are treated autonomtiuslv, as if they were visual stage directions .bft?reindicating the \\-eather or the sea\on or the time of day. In 17iri-k B7~i~ils.

(1992) the all-over dark green is given a dappling of whitish strokes---

those are the leaves flickering in the \\ind. only freere-framecl. (kii dad liiilck

#%(1993) is a big yellow Rarnett Neu-man. except that Newman's black vertical stripes have been angled slightly and hung jvith a few leaves so that they're transfi~rmedinto early spring trees. Katz's bare-bones enigmatic look, w k h turns dark iitv streets and briIliant Ne\n Engl;ind mornings into Minimalist icons. seem\ e\pecially suited to our t3een-there-clone-that moment. His pitintings have this t3uilt-in cii.j:l vu. He knows that we know that abstract art elnergecf a\ artists from Monet to MonLlrian rethought the landscape, and the \v;$!- he reverseh their march toward nonobjectivity gives the pitintings a sn-;ink pop allure. His nighttime canva\e\ are .%d Reinhardts, except that the silhouette of a tree or a hank of \\-indci\vs in a loft building has suddenly appearccl. These are simple. alrnmt arithmetic propositions: nhtract impact pluh naturalistic detiiil equals Alex Katr. n d Katx, \\-h0 kno\vs that an artist ought not force his effects. brings

off the visual fvissons with casual aplomb. These are effective pictures, but the ahstrart-intc)-rc13resentatic1nequittion is statecl so starkly that a viewer can't reall>-engilge. E ~ e nthe a\\--km-ardhits are meticulouhly preplanned. I admire Katz's panache. hut these paintings don't amount to much more than ingeniously personalized \\-all decor. The cievil's bitrgain that Katr has made \vith abstract art is ea\iest to grasp

\\-hen you take a look at the \\-ork he's done \\-ith his cutouts. a rariically different nlecliunl that he dreamed up in order to create some cleft studies in do\vnto&-ncharisma. The c u tou ts-R-hich

have foc uhed on several genera-

tions of art-ancl-literature notable\. from the poet and ciance critic lidwin Denby to the pitinter I'rancesco (:lemente-are

about the fun that people

have \\-hen cutting a figure in public, and became the cutouts arc literally cut out and stood up in a gallery, the comic implicatic~nsare absc~lutelydelicious. I'm glad t o see Katz letting loose m-ith his naturalitic gifts: the cutouts tend to he suavely executed. m-ith n good deal of eiegilntly meticu-

lous detail. Yet there is a paradox built into the cutouts, because it seems that Katr only takes seriouslv the \\hole que5tion of h o n to give painted form an imposing solidiy \\hen he's gotten away from the discipline of a rectangular c-anvas-when

he's not, in other u-ords, really painting paint-

ings. Katr is a tease. He \\-ants to undermine the very illusions he's creating. I'd like t o see a Katz cutout set nest to one of the self-portraits that Matthiasdottir has done in recent years, say the Su!jlPi~rtruit~

l r k (irurn

Ailan.

Matthiasiiottir's self-portrait\ are ahou t going . -solo: she's a great-looking 130hemian lad\. \\-ho's reached old age. And \\hen she regards herself, she is every bit a\ amusing an observer of the inexpensive chic of dc~\\-nto\vnartistic circles a\ Katz \\-as n-hen he did his cutouts of the poet and dance critic l'dnrin Drnlx-, exi-ept t h t she's also painting

it

painting. f he kno~v\-\ how to

make the smallest details link up orgilnically with the bmnd compo\itional moves, and that's way , he\r)nd . Katr. This slim m-oman 11-ith the beautifully shaped head has the same kind of penetrating though guarded gaze that Katr saw- in Denby: it's the look of the ad hoc aristocrat. Kith her rammdstraight po\ture, boldly striped ,\\-eater. and bright green shoe,. she's almost an allegory of her 011-n severe hedonism. Her head. 11-ith every importiint plane in place, presides over a naturalistic essay on the proposition that less is more. And the scenes-from-everycdiiy-life props in certain other self-portraits-an

umbrella, or a pitcher on a table, or a big shaggy dc~g-suggest

the same t3;tck-to-basics spirit that \\-e knoll- from her still lifes. Matthiasdottir has a sense of humor and a smse of play. I presume that she paints her self-portraits looking in the mirror. hut interestingly she does not reprexnt herself in the act of painting. These self-portraits kvithout brush, palette, or easel are not about a painter at work but about a painter reimagined as an in~lividual\vho ran be in a painting. Fainting herself fulllength. unenculnbered by brush or easel, Matthiasdottir creates n fictic~nal 'i"~-orld that she finds livable. There's a 11-onderftllelement cif theater in these

paintings. She see, portraiture a, nssociiited m-ith the theatricality of personality. sc~mething\\-e ]\now from the Baroque ma5ters. Her affitinitv with the B a r q u e is intuirve; it comes ou t in the alrnoit sneakit? comic \\-ay that she has of presenting herself as ciirector. set ciesigner. and star all mlled into one. The self-portraits arc about Mattl~iasdottirrolnancing Matthiasdottir. And her straight-forn-ard, at3solutely unilambovant demeanor makes the egotism all the more elusive ancl interesting. Though M;ltthiasdottir's expression is invariably a little grave, these are \vonderfully happ!- paintings. She is \\-here ,be m-ants to be. She's in the painting, lookinp out at L I ~ . Solne paamitifis nmak rus believe that n person's deepest emotions are inscribecl on the &ice, if only we can rcad the signs. It's a view with \\-hich Matthiasdottir apparently does not concur, at least \\-here her own &ice is concerned. Still, she has a way of getting at pyck'logicitl truth. l\-hich has to do \\-ith she\\-ing us not \\hat she knows about herself t3ut \\-hat she e ~ a person can and ]\no%-Swe ]\no%-about her. The self-portraits s ~ g g \\-hat can't see of another person: the\: get at the fiin~iliiirfeeling of being nhsolutely in the \\-orld ancl yet not really ]\no%-nor unclerstood in the world. Matthiasdottir expresses this paradox fcjrmally. in terms of a tension het ~ - e e the n forthrightnes of her stance and the elusiveness of her face. In the paintings, it's n contra,t---a

disj unc ture-that

l\-e experience thmugh dif-

ferent kind$ of contours. different \vay5 of handling paint and color. In the tmdy everything is crisp edges. decisive plane, of color; in the &ice the contours arc often smuclged and the contrasts arc often reduced. In the hest self-portraits, the unclearness =within the clearness is true to something that ever\-body proI3ably experiences, namely the idea that a person's purely phj-sical pre\ence has a lot to tell us about the mvsteries of personality. Matthiasiiottir's bruhstmkes, broad and forthright and unsho\v\-, pull everything together. In America, m-herc \-irtnoso brush\vi>rk has been so overdone that it has become n cliche, many punctilious realists have a hard

time remembering that a painterly b r u h r t m k e isn't a cieail end but a means to an end. Scln~erealists no%-recoil from the freedom cif the brush. That is their loss: but there is also hell to pay if you get so caught up in the mystique of painterly painting that oil-on-canus turns into an artsy philosophic quagmire. Katz first came to prominence as an artist \\-h0 rejecteci pitinterly painting, hut in his big landscapes the brushstroke has returnrd---like n hanclprint of the 1950s, a jokey recollection of the davs \\-hen paint \\-as king. As for Matthiasdottir's view of the t3rushstrokc. it's poetic-ally matter-offkct. Go thmugh her retmspective and you'll see an artist who understands that the paint that reveal, can also veil, and who \v;ints to cio a bit of both. The problem is deciding \\hen to cio what, and \\-h\-.These aren't necehsarily conscious decisions. The character of an artist's b r u h n o r k ought to emerge out of the painting process itself, and there is al\v;i!-s one or another realist who is just making a name and kncnvs how to give a painterly style some tantalizing unpredictability. Philip Geiger. who is 4(F----hismost recent sl~o\%at Tatistcheff and Co. \;\-asin 1995 and another is slated h r next spring-constructs

contemporary interiors out of a \veave of jaggeci, ner-

vous strokes. Pictures that are filled with a distinctive contemporary in\tat3ilitv are the result. (;eiper$ smallish canvases are updates on the old idea of the conversation piece: a relaseci group of kimily members or close friends.

\\-h0 in these paintings are talking or having a coffee or dayiireaming. Geiger has an intelligently understateci \v;$!- of getting at some of the conlplexities of their relationships: he does it I3v keeping the painterly rhythm of his canvases open, uneven, a bit unpredictable. K h e n he leaves a Fice a little t3lurred. he's picking up an undercurrent of tension or uncertainty: he \\-on't let everything come into fcxus. and it's that not-quite-all-there aml3iguitv that holcis our attention. C;eigcr3s suburban .4merican interiors are pleasilntly hut rather sparely furnished: a couch. a table. a cie\k. a computer. nothing much on the \\-alls,

few- rugs, no curtains. These might be the homes of !-ounger middle-class people m-ho don't have the mclney for a Lot of fancy things ancl maybe don't \\-ant to be stifled l,\- possessions, any\\-ay.The expitnses of empty white wall ,upge\t that the people \\-his live here aren't dug in ti1o deeply; thev \\-ant some mol,ilitv. But those blank spaces also create a structural challenge, because (;eiger can't let them become holes in the compositions. These paintings are ahout a slightly cold domesticity, ancl in an odd \v;$!- the prairies of \\-allhoard relate to the gray walls that Matthiasdcittir leaves above her ohjects. although (;eiger has no\\-here near her gift for giving such intervals a positive fcjrce. If Geiger understands abstrac t structure-ancl to what extent he cloes-it's

I'm not sure

not in a start-ti-orn-scratc t~ surrkiitlo?a, And tm-o Pic-a\sos from 1936, BTrt~ilurrn LI

.Stlutv

I~Q and T Thp ,Mznoflrur .bft?~r~g 1115

IIi~rse,crop up more than once, as does a skeletal tigure from Picasso's 1958 F&

Oj-Icarfls.

lohnsh adn~iret-Skno\%-their art histor); and in klis recent work the!; imagine that they're seeing a repla~-of the mysterit~usprocess by lvhich a very great artist sometime\ becomes most him\elf m-hen he quotes almost line hv line from a 11-ork that he passionately admires. T h i extraordinary phenomenon cannot he m-illrii into being. yet some of our postmodern painters are so tired of the present that they 11-ouldjust as soon pretend that they're immolating themselves on the altar of the p3\t: it's the nouveau-traditional thing to do. Mean\\-hile the critics offer specific explanations for some of lohns's alleged arts of self-immol;ltion. \Ye are told, for example.

q1 Milasp f i r ~ appeared t as an that a fragmmt from Pira\so3s .\ilrm,filrir i k f i ~ ~ r11 elenlent in the Spirsarr of 1985--86 t3ecause k ~ h n s\\-as changing his acldress. That's perfectly logical, hut it saj-Snothing about the impart of the quotation in the \\-ark. K b e n Picasso salutes tngres,

he" reexperiendnp the magisterial acaile-

mician's sensuous arabesques in term\ of his 011-n feeling for line and color; each stmke is a sympathetic response. F h n s just copies elements: a few outlines here, a complete image there. He treats great paintings as an art director might. He crops and edits. cuts and pastes. His canvases are message

tx,ards, sometimes literally so. as in Rdctng Tiziragkfi (l983), in \\-hich a silk screen repmdurtion of the ,Llond

Llsil

is affiseci to a bathroom \\all by several

trornpe l'oeil bits of tape. He notes clo\vn things he likes and personalizes them \\-ith a little joke. as in a recent series of tracings clone on clear pla\tic after n reproduction of one of Ctz;mne3s Bilihurr. An): art student ought to k n m - that n tracing of

3

pitinting isn't

II

response or an interpretaticln; and

even the I3ariaist scs-change operaaon involvecl in turning one of (:4zanne9sm-omen into a man 11-ithan erection hardly registers alnid Iuhns's lackluster \\-ashes of ,epia-toned ink. ; of In the pitintings that arc gathercc1 in the final room of the s h o ~ bits Picas50 and Griineniild are combined with floor plans that are said to represent a house in \\-hich lohns lived as a child. Here he is suppo\ed to he in one of his meditative moods, a sort of fugue state in \\-hi& art history and p e r ~ m a history l begin to merge. This Inan kvhcise idea of an hcimage is to do tracings after (:i.zanne is trying to convince us that he is keeping the high art tradition alive. Ifohns's tamped-clown palette doesn't achieve the t\\-ilit poetry that he's probably after. but the gun-metal color scheme doe, put us on notice that this is sol->er11-ork.The nlort recent canvases are nleant to convey an impression of middle-aged maturitl-. lessons learned, challenges met. These high-priced grai- paintings are the art-11-orld equivalent of a very expensive gray suit. They are mgineered for importance. S o ~ n people e saj- that Ifasper Jcihns has been lnakinp an impression for so long that by no\\- he's beyond the reach of criticism. Michael Kimlnelman explaineci in his 1Vrw Yixk liwi)s review of the k ~ h n show s that he cloem't rare for a lot of the \\-ork. hut he also observed, "It's pointless to argue about Mr. Iohns's place in history: this issue \\-as settled decacles ago." By reasburing his reaclers that lohns really is an important artist. Kimmelman may intend to soften his 0%-ndiscomfort at finding himself on the \\-mng side of current taste. \Yhen Kimmelman concedes lohns his "place in history." hmvever.

he's jumping the gun. The idea than an arti\t \vho has been acclaimecl for thirty-five years is a permanent fixture reflects a shortsighted \ i e ~ of - history. lohns's long relationship \vith the Museum of Modern r t proves nothing except that he is the clowst thing to an official artist that \ve have. and that doem't prove much at all. kvhorn we count among the There are ofticial artists, such as Velrizq~~ez, irnmc)rtaLs. And their are official artists, suc h as I,el->run,'iq-ho don~inated I'rance in the second half of the seventeenth century, filling Versailles much as John!, n o n fills the Modern. m-ho hardl\- count with anybody today. Artists are htriled in one generation and hrgotten tu-o or three generations p Later. I wonder if lt3hns recalls an observation that his friend I ) ~ ~ c h a mmade in 1066: '5uCcess is just a brush fire, and one has to find n-ood to feecl it.'"

Kirk Varnedoe has thrown on lots of ivood, and the fire is burning furiously. This huge retrospective is the ultimate accolade that F h n s will receive from his contemporaries. What remains after the flame\ die down is another matter entirely. 2, 1996 I)~.E;E~~\/IRER

THE ACE OF R E C O V E R Y

The art 11-orld is in recover). The economic climate is soberly optimistic, 'iq-ith an improvecl auction situittion and a smattering of n e n galleries. But recovery means different things to ciiffcrent people. r t i s t s and dealers \vho built big reputations and fat bank accounts in the 1080s may still be trying to get over their disappointment that the boom sr-reelhed to a ha.lt \\-hen the art rnarkrt plunged in 1900. Then ngilin. if they \\-ere into the dom-nto\vn

mix of art. sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, they've probahlv considerecl the losses to heroin and AIDS and are just glad to tse alive. As for the countless artists \\-h0 felt swamped h\- the glamourmongering of the '80s and t3reathed a sigh of relief =-hen it \\;is over, they're finding that. so far as the gallery scene that they once expecteci \\-ould support them over the long term is ronrcrneci, recovery is nowhere in sight. Nan Goldin, the photographer \\-hose this-is-our-life slide sho\vs made her an East Village celel3ritv in 1981, kept her camera focused on her friends thmugh all the \\-eircleci-out aclventures and terrifyingly bad time,. and this \I-inter found herself m-ith a big Krhitne]i rctrc~spective.In the shou-k f,t_left)r catalog, each do\\-nto\\-n memory has a darkly shimmering allure. L3arr)-l Finiknev revisits the old neiphl3orhooil ancl come\ upon the entrance to the t3uildlng \\-here N;in lived. \\-hich "hegin, to resemble the entrance to a tomb." I.uc Sante observes that "\ve \\-ere living in a movie of youth in t3laik-and-11-hite that in order to he grand neeiied to be stark." Goldin uses Nen York as the setting for a portrait of the arti\t as a young hipster, ancl she c,hvic~uslvknows something about the unfocused, mood-S\\-ingingintensity of youth. That feverishnesh reintroduces a m-onderful old theme-the heartaching fervor of

iir tvt.

btjhirriu-hut

after a \\-hile you may \\-ondrr if

these kids \\-h0 are supposecil~so heacl-over-heels about art and visit museums and pin lots of art postcards to their m-alls knoll- that there's more to creativitv than letting it rip. .4lthough some artists m-ho never really cared for the Old Masters are no\\- glad to regard the museums as the places \\-here they go for their retrospectives, most painters \vho spent a lot of time in the museums in the '80s are finding that the '91)s is a decade much like an): other. The signs are not all bad, hut ho\\- you read them depends on \I-here you're cclming from. An interesting art season in a great city requires some fc3rmidahle museum shows, some rontemporar\- \\-ork \vith a magically personal aura, and

an audience that's im-olved. In Ne\n Ycxk the element are all in place, hut I \\-onder ho\\ many of the gallerygoers \vho are lvilling to take the time to see u-hat there is to see, are either open-minded enougll or tlard-nosed mough to make the mo\t of =-hat come\ their way. Ho\\ many people are reaciy for a marvelous surprise. like the small, perfectly paced retmspective csf Edt\-in Dickin\c~n(1891--1978), that mc~stpoetically m!-sterious of mc~dern American realists. at Tihor de Nagy's new space on Fifth k e n u e ! Byell,it's good to know that there's a gallery th;tt believes that some people arc ready to revisit Ilickinson. utof them, the shon- has turned into a hishiiinahle, one-world orgv. (Goldin bonds =with her subjec ts and produces some terrific photogritphs. but her attitucie to%-ardthose photographs is pious. \Vhen she gathers her \\-ork together into slide sho\v\ and hooks and exhibitions, she glorifies the imagery. she turns her friends into ~lo\vnto\vnposter kids. And \\hen the photog~tplxdeal with death. 11-r'reforced into an emc~tionalhind, heciiuse the real-life tragedy becomes the trump card that's suppored to ignite the art, and if \%-ehave rerervations jq-e can be at-cctsedcif callotrsners. seem to have gone on to other things, like expressing then~\elves." The clinical look of feff \Viill's photographic light t3oxes may tell us that he's clissatisfied lvith the high-art trarlitions of the past, yet lve ran see that he \I-ants to keep company \I-ith the Old Ma,ters, too. 'The most orthodox \I-al; of thinking ahout culture now," he relnincfs Clark and (iuilbaut,

'"S

to

talk at\%-aysabout disc-ontinuities, breaks, ruptures, leaps." He goes on to say that "discontinuitv cloe, not exist in isolation from \\-hat seems to be its polar opposite, scs I think it is just as valid to talk about reinventions and rediscoseries, not to mention preser\-ations." After h i own fashion, Kall is n traditionalist. He is far too intelligent to entirely dismiss the old artisanal methods. hnci yet I'm not really sure how much he knolvs ahout those traditions. Alluding to the deep spare in his n e n lvork. and the way that the tigures are "nhsi~rbedin the environment." \X511 suggests that "it's n move from Caravaggio to \Ternmeer or Rruegel." That is rather glib, even for a remark in n tapeci inter\ie~-.\Viill is moving amund compositional elements, but that's not \\hat painting is ahout. He salutes the past, but he also gives a cleanedup, romanticized vie\\- {of a tradition that is gn~undedin hancis-on lnhor, in creating a universe painted inch by painteci inch. In a couple of photographs from the earl\- '90s. \VaU takes pre-photographic pir ture-making a\ his theme, and his attitude seems equivocal and sentimmtal, as if he regarded drawing anci painting as quaint, retm activities. I'm thinking of I l i l n d t t w~ikrr. a photograph of a young m m working on an anatomicill dra\\-ing, and

Rtpstilr~titatr,in

m-hich several people are im-olved

in the meticuloulr cave of an enormous circular panorama by the nine-

teenth-century pitinter lidouard (:;tstrcs. These images are about \Viill's &iscination m-ith the intelligent attentiveness involved in an older artisanal tradition. The atmosphere is quiet, cloistered, silver\-.Wall is suggesting that an artist \\-h0 makes s i n e t h i n g by hand inhabits an autumnal miverse. I: don't kno\\- if he's ever photographed n person at an easel painting a modern painting, hut here are self-consciousl~old-fashioned images of an nnatomical illustrator and restorers m-orking on a period piece. He is at once saluting and saj-inggood-bye to the dense-textured oil paints and lead-primed canvases, to the ronti- rravons and l00 percent rag papers. \Vall seems to see \\-orking l,\- hand as a custodial activity. as a \v;$!- of shoring up older traditions. There is an aura of gentle industry and slightly out-of-it, never-giveup concentration to thew images of a BieJermker tiream \\-orid. R l l \vould prol,;tt,ly saj- that that's just the \\ay it is, that representational painting is hasically an outmoded activity, and there is nothing \ve can do about it. Rut I don't think that his wistful reveries are quite as disinterested as he kvants them to appear. \Vhen he presents one of his hip valentines to a vanishing (or vanished) craft, he

L I I U S ~do SO

\\-it17 a sigh of relief,

t3ecause if painting is dead, then there ran he no cioubt that the painter of modern life has become a phc3tographer with some digital kno&--h()\\: \Ye are living in n period \\hen there is an ingrilined nssumptic~nthat new media \\-ill over%-helmold one,. ancl despite his carefully reasoned argummts. R l l is too quick to overlook some of the underlying dvnamics that shape a museumgoer's experience. When phc3togrnphs get too big, they lose the fine-tuneci quitlities of a graphic art. They become something else. Rut what! I'd saj- photograph\- becomes a 11-annabeform: painting for people \vho can't paint. Khll's backlit images are an impmvement over the gloss\- opacitv of other artists' huge photographic surfaces, hut I: question \\-hether he can ever compete \vith the dynamism of a magnificentlv painted surface. His oversized phc3tographic transparencies, despite their nl-

luring detail&and overall plon; push a nttlseilrngiier a\?-?-. fn one interview Kail announces t h t no%-is the time to transgress "against the imtitutions of transgressicin." He's hilying that the avant-garde has become an institution, and that artists can liberate themretves by adopting d d e r storytelling conventions. f heartily agree, but f think that there's stiil nothing like painting on canvas ar a way to transgress transgression. R l l speaks of wanting to 611d coherence in a complicated kvorld, but his of Lean street scenes don't have a fraction of the dissimilarity-in-sin~iliirity Rossc~ff'spaintings of a ramshackle nlulticultural contemporary Lonclon. As for modern allegory. I don't like \Xrall's(:iharhromes an\-\\-here near as much as Gabriel Laderman's Hoirw &lfOrirrhirrlii L$ (1984--85), a noirish thriller staged in a series of cubicle-like rooms: or R. B. Ritaj's Cci-rl C:t?trl? (198-+84), that comic ode to disloc;ltion and t3c,okishness: or Ralthus's nightmare vision, Lrlrg Clif~nl~osttfot~ ttirtlr Crow (1983-8hj, in ~ h i i t the l artist makes a mvsterio u s a p p e a r m e as a miniature figure carrying - .an enormous cage. These

painters know at least ar much ar \X511 about the strangeness of modern life. and the\- complicate the equation m-ith all the risk-taking that's involved in hanclling paint. There are painterly precedents. of course, for the chilliness of \X;1ll's \\-ork. Manet, that ciarling of the postmodrrns. cultivated a cion't-give-adamn mix of old and new styles, and Kall, never missing a beat, haci already created his 011-n hcimage to the Parisian's cool demeanor in 1979,\\-ith Ptcten.

/br B70nrm. This response to -1Bilr ur tilv Fi?lr~s-Brrfi;ru might he said to he Kall's signature piece, since it cioubles ar a portrait of the late-twentieth-century artist in his studio. In Manet's fdmous essi~yon seeing and being seen, n bored t3;trmaid is center stage. At first she appears to be focused on nothing perspective) at ail, hut then \\-e notice in tbc mirrtsr 13ehind her (at a sfcc~--rd the man ?vho must be standing u-here u-e are, ordering a drink. In Kall's version, the Parisian nightspot has become the artist's studio, but the

\\-()man, no\\- standing to the left, ciressed in a simple blouse ancl jeans, is still lo\t in a dream. All the \\-a\-to the right is a slim boyish figure in tdack T-shirt and black pants. That's jeff'iF'all, Me has an abstracted look, too, but \\-e knoll- that he's hard at lvork, because in his left hand he is holcling the shutter releaw meshanism of the big camera on a tripod in the c-enter of the room. Artist. camera, and model arc lined up in front of ;t mirror. and \\-hat \\-e're seeing is the studio reflecteci in that mirnjr. The fascination of Ptcreru

fiii

a"71mun is in the shimmering details that are

like amusing punctuation marks. There are roll-s of glistening hare lightbulbs on the ceiling, lots of shiny metal pipes, some old-fashioned office furniture that looks great in the big loft spare. This phottjgraph is full of appealingly ancinymouh stuff. Plitrirrjiir

BTjtnpn,

in n-hich the camera's eve ex-

amines us while a man a d a n - o m n suhtlv avert tbcir eyes, is about the poetry of impersonalitv. Both artist ancl model step aside. t~ t in cioing so they solidify their rontml. \Ye look at them, hut they lvon't look at us-that's their poner play. j'eff Byallis taking this picture l,\- remote control. lirnotionally speaking, he takes all his pictures that \\-a\-. He's an anti-hands-on artist. At his best, he offers depersonalized enchantment. and as n museumgoer I find rnv\elf responding in kind. At the Mir5hhorn I felt as if1 \\ere being affected t,\- remote contml. I registered many interesting emotions and left t~ntoucbed.

A P K 28, ~ ~1997

EARTH

If you want to see the bedrock of contemporarv painting, you might begin

l,\- looking at the work that landscape painters do. Although the strongest recent painting is by no means all landsciipe. landscape painters grapple \\-ith an e5sential paradox of the creative act. t3ecause they make something

of their c,\;\-n out cif a worltl that they have not made. Their

materials

are the surrountiings that everybody knows, but m-hat the painter needs to knovc- is how to find nature's l3asic structures anti hovc- to then anaton~ize them and recreate them on the canvas. In a kiscinating study published in 1947, the art historian Mau

1. Friedliinder wrote that n lnn~lscape"rises up

t,efc>rc us like something m!-sterious, a melody rather than a statement." Making sense of th;tt inefhhle spirit mai- pose an e5pecially interesting challenge for the current generation of painters. m-ho took the hack-to-nature ethos of the late 1960s as a starting point. (:ertainl\- landscape is the only kind of painting that enables artists to explore museum-art conventions even as thevke slil3pinp Thoreau and (Lry Snyder in their knapsacks and fo1lo\\-ing the nineteenth-century rapane5e poet-painters to the hills. The airterglow of that toss-off-the-cares-cif-tile-city attitt~decan still be felt in the consistently strong she\\-ings that landsciipe p a i h n g make\ in New York galleries, year after year. The hest new landscape painting that I ,a\%-this sea5c)n \\-as the six-foot\\-ideview of upstate Nen York farmland that was the centerpiece of Temma Bell's exhibition at the Roll-ery Gallery. I imagine that Bell means to suggest

~ rltiii a storvteller's poll-er \l-ith the nalne of her big painting. Orrr r h (idrdun T h r i ~ q hi i l the R~lmr;.Her ear mai- have failed her in that rather jejune title, but the hand of ;l master is evident in the unfurling rhj-thms of her t3rush. She

seems to pull her subject straight out of the day-to-day life that she's living far from the metropolis. The garden enclosure in the foreground. \%-ithits dogs and poultry and fence tv,-ined \vith grape vine,. is like the scene-setting c3pening descriptic~nin a novel. And from there, moving past n beautifully rendered treetop to a golcien-green field and deep blue hills. she holds us thmugh the ra\ual assurance of her dashe, and scratche, and scumhles of paint. \%%at sets this painting apart from Bell's smaller-sized lan~iscapesi the complexit\- that she is able to encompass here. and the aviditv for experience that such complexity implies. By the time my eyes reach the top of the canvas, a \\-hole \%-orIdhas I-teen revealed. Bell combines pinpoint accurilcy =with hee~ilessease to give the Ameria once-upon-a-time magic. She's one of can Northeast a funny ~1%-eetness, those rare landscape painterr \vho thinks tmth literally and lyricitlly, so much so that the tkx-0 impulses become echoes of one another. The smallest naturalisac incident conveys a shuddering emotional intensity, and the most sweeping movement feels taut and particular. This marselous d);namii has its origins in the early fifteenth century, when the Limbourg Brothers painted a cycle of miniatures depicting the occupations of the months for the L3uc de Berry. The same dynamic is there in Bruegel's em\-clopedic panoramas of Flemish life: in Ruhens's \\-ide-angle view, full of exactly renciered details; in Maryuet's pellucid harbor scenes; and in Balthus's p a ~ c i r a lreverie,, m-ith their grayed-over light and gently rolling terrain. Bell may not he on a par l\-ith all thew nrti\t\, hut m-hen I look at her painting I feel that their concerns arc alive. No landscape this complex vet easygoing has been exhibited in a Nen York gallery in many. many years. The taking-it-all-in spirit of Bell's big new painting is more than a matter of \%-hatthe eye can see. Bell, \\-h0 is 5l, has been \%-rittenabout in n ~ o s t of the major art magazines over the years; this April marked her sixteenth one-kvoman shorn-. Yet she is no%-herenear as n-ell-km\?-n a\ she ought to

be. and it's possible to feel that she's defying her underground reputation thmugh the hroadne\s of her gaze. In doing so, she suggest\ the general situatit~nof liindscape painters today. The\- see the natural \\-orld in terms of ccrmplicated interaction?, hetm-een nature and culture-rrnd,

meanwhile,

the curators and dealers and collectors who put the big money on contemporary art a s u m e that landscape begot earth\\-orks. after l\-hich Rohert Smithsonk ,$ptrol.jertv sank beneath the surhce of the Great Salt Lake and *

landscrtpe became an emblem, an ictsn, a special case. There is al\v;iv\ somebody \\-h0 want:, to paint the landscape to end all landscapes. In the nineteenth century it \\-as Frcderic I:d\.iin Church, the American maestro of gaudy sunrises in exotic locales. who \vo\ved them at the Salons. In the 1980s. it \\-as hnselrn Eefer, \\-hose scorched-earth images. those gray-(in-gray hymns to diminishing po\sibilities, \\-ere l,\- some perverse logic of the time\ celel3rateci a\ a rcsurrcction of possil?ilities. Church and Kiefer (the British painter Iohn Martin alho come, to mind) fawir an apocalyptic m t ~ o dthat generally involves treating n large surface in a pointecily singular \\-a\-.That may have a certain potency as a staement. but it is a statement that denies the very idea of difference-\\-ithin-\\-hcrlene\sthat is the essence of iitndscape painting. Mas 1. Friedlgnder \\rote that "land is the 'thing-in-itself,' lan~lscapethe 'phenomentrn."' Tb respond to such complex pfientrmena, a painter must be open-minded yet assured. Ternrna Bell threads thmugh all the varirtv \\-ith an easy-floll-ing, quicksilver virtuosity. Stuart Shils. a Philadelphia artist m-ho had his first Ye\\- York one-man show at Tihor de Nag? in Ianuar\-, suggests more abrasive reactions through his dramatically broken t,rush\vork; he has a feeling for sensuous verisimilitude. and in a few- compa\itit)ns in which all we see is the green of foliage and the gray-blur of the sky, his riled-up surhces make convincing poetic flashes. Lennart Anderson. a painter a generation older than Bell and Shils, had a lnn~iscaperetnlspec-

tive at the Salander-( )'lieill? (Galleries in Januauy and demonstrated an amaringjy poetic conversational tone in his luxuriiintl\- green \irkvs of America, Italy, and Greece. Anderson uses a combination of strictly construc teci volume and near-ahstrart surface design to make u\ feel as if -we're right there m-ith f i i f t ~as he muses on the scene. When &4ndersonpasses lightly over certain details, it in kind of dicretion. And \\-hen he turns from a passage of summary ciescriptic~nto a more naturaliracally structured area. I feel his randor, his desire to be absolutely clear. ()bviouslv these one-person s h o ~ -represent * only a small fracticin of the jq-oric ~lrtistsare doir-tg, and L-ert;dngalleries, au-afe that much 1nc3re is going on, mounted useful group exhihitions during the seascin. There \\-a\ "Landscape as Abstraction" at (;raharn, and "Landscape" at the hinting (:enter, and "C:ityscapeWat Marlborough. Of the ne\\ paintings I sal\- in the lan~isciipe gnmp sho\vs this season, among the most convincing \\-ere several by Carl Flansh at the Painting (:enter. Flansky carries his impressions of trees and t3r;lnches into such overall skvirling effects thttt it's not especially easy to knon\\-hat vou're seeing. The landscape becomes a pai~~terlv effusion. Yet the rhoppiness of the strokes conveys a brash immediacy, n Zen-like thuncierbolt of revelation. Plansky's canvases capture some of the roistering thrill of days \\-hen it's so sunny or \vindy or rainy that the weather feels hyperbolic.

The Romantics u-ere the first artists

regard the natural n-orld as a reflec-

tion of their moc~ds.&4ndonce Friedrich and Turner had painted landscapes that coulci be describcci only in term, of emoaonal state\---as. say, exalted or depressed---the matter-of-factne5s of nature began to give \\-ay to the c,ther\vorldliness of ahtraction.

Jean Mitchell, m-ho died five years ago. is n

touchstone for many mid-ciircer painters. Plansky among them, because h e built a whole career at the point \\-here landscape became abstradon. There's something opulrntlv inscrutable about Mitchell's work, since so

many of her shimmering naturalistic effccts appear to he pulled straight out of an intently nonobjective approach. K h a t Mitchell tiihes from nature is the idea that there are no strict t,c,undaries. no absolutely definite forms, and it son~etirtle\seen15 that this vie&-of nature has l->ecomesuch an article of Fdith in Ye&-Elrk that an artist such as Temrna Bell, \\-h0 cloer not care to equivocate, ran be rcgardrci a\ naive. Although Bell is a modernist in her c,ffiand painthandling and brilliantly concise renderings, her telegraphic \\-ay of creating an illusion does not lead her to question the legitimacy of that itlusion. As kir as quality is ronrcrneci, of course, the decisive factor is not where an artist ends up on the nature-into-abstraction continut~m,so much a\ the character cif the snlall, clisirete decisions that build the image. Byhatmatters ultilnatelv is how the painting rnakrs us feel, and the feeling has everything to do \\-ith the \v;$!- the pitint is laid on ancl the pitrts arc brought together.

Some revealing, almost technic4 observations on the way an artist construr ts a landscape ran be found in a brilliant e\sa>-."Ahstract Expressionism and Landscape," \\-ritren in the early '60s by Fairfield Porter, who was as gifted a critic- as he \\-as a painter. Porter liked the rapid-fire evoc;ition of liindrcape mood nncl light in his friend de Kooning's nhtractions, but he \\-as alliays also attracted to particularity and an exacting kind of reportage. In n sense, this essay is Porter's version of the age-old clynamic interaction hetween literalism and lyric-ism. only instead of beginning \vith the Renaissance. he bepins \\-ith Abstract Expreshionism. Porter recalls d r Rooning remarking "that liuropean abstractions clerive from still life, \vhile his referred to landscape." De Rooning, Porter teils us, had an idea about "the difference het\\-een European and American painting in general, that even liuropean landscape has an ohjective renter, as if the landscape \\ere a still life, of, say, a mountain. l\-hile .4merican painting does not have this sort of center, this elivi3ion into %subjectband'backgrtsund."'

Porter. who was fond of a certain kind of \vordplay. is leading his readers to the idea that t k r e is something ni3ntrbjecti.l-e-that jects-;ihou

is, not fiaving t h -

t American landscape. This is ot,viously a ,R-eeping generaliza-

tion. but it's also a useful one. hlex Katr's landscapes, Porter explain\, are nonol,jective. Porter saj-s that Katr "once said that in nature he preferred a field." And then Porter adds, pitrenthetically, that "a field is not an ot,ject." It oczurs to me that Ternrna. Bell paints lots of fields, but she fills them 11-ith animals. 11-hichis a \\-a\-of giving an objectivity to the nonohjectivity, n \\-ay of introducing a st~hjectthat turns the field into a background. As for what Porter does in his own landscapes, he is sometimes more objective and sometimes more nonohjec tive, and often he seems to seek a rapproi: hement twtkx-een the t\\-o. Porter \\-as the subject of a small retrospective in May at the Tihor cie Nagy Galler\-. In one of the largest paintings, I3ty

dr fiitp

13t~or

(1 970). he renders the side of a house in Maine \\-it11 the greatest fidelitv. hut then knits it into a pattern of grass. \\;iter. boats, distant shore, and sky, until the vieu- becomes nonobjective, which Porter defir~eras a landscape that is "'a iontinu urn of relatic.lnships." Porter had fifteen one-man she\\-s at Tihor de Nag\ betm-een 1952 and

1970. and he is no%-bring pre\ented by this gallery as n sort of fdther figure for a contemporary realism that the gallery strongly supports. This is an admirable effcrt t o shore up an embattled contemporary tradition, hut I sometimes fear thttt Porter's paradoxes are being turned into another gmeration's pietier. I don't k n m - if Stuart Shil,, the 43-year-old pitinter who exhibited at Tibor de Kagv four months before the Porter retrospective, is familiar n-ith Porter's essay on l a d s c a p e , but there are certainlv lots of fields in Shils's paintings, ancl sure enough they give the paintings a nonohjective look. That's perfectly all right, except that Shil, doesn't k n m - where the nonol,jective landscape ends and the objective landsciipe begins. He is attrxted to fields because they're as flat as the canvas, but he also wants to

use the volume of the paint to s u g g e ~ zn lush, light-fiiled atmosphere, and so the result is all too often an atmosphere in a void. R r k i n g in oil on paper mountecl on hoard. Shils practices a sort of Expwskonism-in-miniature that makes us acutely %\\areof the m-a!- the painting is put together. These paintings, generally on!\- a foot high, are a little in a hrtiku is scaled big in retation to the Like haikus: and, just as the 11-or~l poem, so in Shils's paintings the brush\\-ork is scaled big in reliltion to the c l one pass liindrcape. The side of a building or n tree or n hill is s ~ g g e ~ ewith of the brush. It's the brisk agitation of the surEaces that gives these vie&-Sof fields and stands cif trees and l->roaclskies and citv streets and red brick houses their appeal. But things are locked up too quickly. Shils reinforces an overall look by reining in the complexities. He pushes all the information into clipped, repetitive, rectilinear compositions. K h a t he has going for him is n charmer', \\-ay m-ith a painterly surface, hut the surfaces don't get your imagination g o i q . Judged as nature poetry, theyke vague. IudgeJ as painterly ahstractic~n,they're fr~rmuliiic. Shils's show stirred up a fair nmclunt of interest nmclng people who care about landscape painting. In part that \\-as because the Tibor de Nag? Gallery was giving to a less-than-kveii-kno\\n representational painter n kincl of major presentiition that is no%-rare in New York. Yet going through a room full of these small paintings. all haicitlly the same sire. I began to suspect thzt mo\t of the artist" critical decisions had been made before he ever put paint to paper. I t h o u g h this is no \\-a\-to do a landscape, the elegantly levelheaded ronsistenr\- that results may he miphtv appealing to an audience that is tired of overhyped art nncl is \l-illing to settle for something that looks sort of like a Porter or a Morandi or a Ryrler. IfTemma Bell faits to find a hllou-ing among the same audience, it could be because she h3s gone her own u-ay and cared not one n-hit what Fairfield Porter or anybody else thinks that a landscape ought t o look like in the

jq-ake of Abstract Expressionism. Such a skepticism about Abstract lispressionism also hiis a long histor\- in Nen York; and, although Bell is kvithout doubt an original, her particular brand of independence clor\ owe something to the impact of her parents, IdelandBell and Louisa Mattt~iasdottir, tjq-o of the most in~lependent-mindedpainters of the previous generation.

In a painting by IdelandBell or Matthiasdottir. a realist's experience is organized in a (:onstruitivizt's terms. n d those principles have an afterlife in

Ten~maBell" 11-ork,if only as an instinctive recoil ti-cim the tors-of-the-ttice chiincine,~that an immersion in painterly liindscape can, for better or for jq-orse, imply.

Ternma Bell cloe, not see instability and confuhion as part of the modern expe"ienr-c, but her rejection is personnt and idio\yncratic, and it has n i t h ing to do =with the imperious chill of a rearaonary gesture. She keeps so close to the immediacy of the act of painting that we experience things right along m-ith her. Her dogs, poultry, vine-covere~ifence, and arching tree seem casually described, hut the\- have a \\eight. a force. Bell's exhibition this spring, like most of her others, included iozy interior scene,. \vith children reading tx,oks and cats sitting on tables heaped jq-ith pumpkins and squash. The variety of her interests and the lightness of her touch could have led some people to miss the incisiveness of her thought. In the landscapes. certainly, the slighteht shift in tone or touch convey\ a topographical sensitivity that bears iolnparistsn to Iiuisdael and (:ourbet. Bell gives a contenlporarv exubermie to an older kind of tsbjectivitv. She reiIaim\ the s t t ~ r ~ t e l l i nrichness g of landscape for our generation. This is a major ac hievenlent.

A PAGEANT

Therc have always been arti\ts \vho dreameci of reviving the elaborate costumes and stylired affections of the Middle g e s , and Trevor li'inkfielii. \\-hose painangs are packed =with ahurdist heraldic devices. is one of the dreamers. li'inkfield, who \\-as tmrn in Leeds in 1944, brings tough-mindedness to his kvhirling arat,esques, and there's something ineffikbly linglish about the resulting combination of f a n t n y and precision. I find distant echoes of the delicate Lady Chapel in the fourteenth-century- El\. (:atheciral and the labyrinthine m-ork of the nineteenth-century painter Richard DIIC~LI. lising flat, crisply modern shapes, li'inkfield imagines scenes from some zany toy theater and fiils them with the elegilntly florid patterns of a chivalric age. He's lvrittm that he still has vivid memories of 1953, the year of Elizabeth E's cormatinn; C) at the time, he n-as struck

h!- atI the "ceremi>yand

religiousritual (particularly the handing over of regalia from archl3ishop to sovereign, and the hierarchiclil poses adopted by the sovereign \\-hen \\-eightrii ciown by this regalia)." The boy \a\\- a modern princess transformed into a C;otl~ic heroine, and he probably saw it all filtered thuot~gh the newsreel fcjotage and crude tabloid images that \\-ere available in a provincial English to\\-n. It must have seemed as if medieval manners \\-ere zooming straight into the pop present. and that's exactly \\-here Kinkfield takes up the story. \Xrinkfieliifills his paintings =with court je,ters, tournament props, and monkish hoods. yet this is also unmistakably the work of a modern man. \\-h0 see) abstraction as a fact of life-a

visual equivalent of a more general

cultural disarrai-. He's hasiciilly attracted to medieval pageantry because it's an idealized order. and if his own post-abstract sense of structure leave, lots

of room for upheaval nncl confusion. that's his way of measuring the distance that we've traveled from the time of ihr Rornulrip

of thu Riir. K h a t

Kinkfielil understands is that the pomp and circumstance that may have been a meclieval reality have become a modern f,lnta\\-, and because he has such an intuitive feeling for that never-never land, his paintings, although chock-n-block m-ith off-heat pedantry, aren't overly self-conscious. Hi\ exuberant rolor and get-the-job-done painthandling lend even the most liihj-rinthine imagining, a streamlined ease. \&'re able to glance easily over m!-steriously nntiyuarim encounters. In Brinhficld's paintings, bizarre juxtapo\itions are every~lavocctlrrenzes. He's telling us that modern life. is a crazy pageant. Like nlurh strong painting that's produced today \Vinkfield's \\ark sugge\ts an ambiguous universe where naturalistic forms are reshaped l,\- ahstract forces. In his c-anvases,the cliish of apparently irresoniilahle traditions has an i~ncferlyingbii~graphic-a.lmeaning, because the itrti\t, a l t h i j q h horn and educatecl in England, has pretty much hecome a New Yrrtrker since moving here at the end of the 19hOs, when he n-as still in his 20s. Thus \\-hereas the nautical doodads and general air of Ed\varilian nursery room humor say "Englishv-ancl

saj-it even to those m-hodon't know Brinkfield's story-the

. strident look of the paintings could be stamped "Macle hard-edged, jo\-full\#

in IJSA."In Kinkfield's ciinvases the old Ellglish eszentriiitv is reconsidered from the vantage point of mad Manhattan. and if his be\t pitintings summon up a feeling of cheerful panic, ho\\ could it be otherx-ise! Kinkfield is living in New York and contemplating some\\-heremor something---else, \\-hich is a fairly common situittion. This is an art of cool surkices ancl madcap subjects. I'requently, the rentral attraction is a figure, and there's something both touching and trout,ling about personages that are such odd amalgams of householcl objects and hardm-are and cild-fashioned costumes. Winkfield's jet-rv-buil t hu-

manoids call to mind eighteenth-century automata or avant-garde maric3nettes. Thev're ghsists l\-ho've ransacke~ithe flea market for an identity, and the loopiness of the outfits is obviously a burden, n freakishly jolly carapace that must he carried every\\-here. \Krinkfielci'sl\-eirdos, in spite of their up-for-anything smiles, are ambivalent about the roles they play: it's overjq-helming t i ~ he center stage or to bump into the stranpest props jq-hen you make the slightest move. Kinkfield has said that among the kev intluences on his \I-ork he counts "the pinball machine effect of Uuchamp's Lircq;~(;i~~ss-hsi\\- one object leads to itnotlter, and in so doing activates it." His paintings have their own assembly-line-like absurdism; they're Surrealist pink3311 nlachines. This painter loves sleek. machine-tooled forms, and he's creating n m-him\ical, cottageindustry version of mar5 pmiluition \\hen he fills one painting with half a dozen or so identical hrn~s-l3alls

cir \;\-heelsor matchstic-ks or c-trbes cir

mallets. &4ruanpedat various odd angles, tltese rising and hiling dooilads, create aui-s and trajectories that take us on a tjq-irling journey. The Littered objects give some painting n li'illiam Morris-like husyness, l\-hich Kinkfield is oftm inclined to oppose to a hackdmp of hjld planes of color. so that the little incident turn out to he neatly pinned do\\-n, like butterflies in n curio cal3inet. In several recent pitintings the strong-jq-illednut raw \vho's trying to call c-a.nvasis its the shiits is at-tualf?.an artist. it turns out that prr tting brush t i ~ ~ In 171~ P ~ I I I I Prim/ I. good a \\-ay as any to rope jq-ith the n ~ a e l s t r ~ofnen~hlems. flr5

?/lliw. the birdlike painter works on his small seaxape \I-hile the muse,

equally t3iriilike. holds up a schematic plan of a sailboat. There's so much going on here that it's difficult to know \\hether the painter is in control or just soldiering on. A sort of chessboard that doubles as a palette may refer to Duihamp, but I have no idea \\hat to make of a group of forms that surround the muse: they look a bit like medieval halberds and a bit like the

jacks that a b t r ~keeps in the hag with the marbles. 'l'he artist \\-h0 negotiates this t~npredictahlet~niverseis a cross between an anonvmtJlrs medieval craftsman and a character in a sjnpstick comedy. He's also a sort of harassed director-type. overseeing a production thttt's taken on a life of its own. dernfeel that realism is at long la\t getting dolvn to twsine,s. Sophisticates like to see faces frozen, blown-up, ciigitalired, cageci. If they must have realism. they prefer that it be dead. and Close's garpantuitn mugs cio the trick. Close gives realism a creep\- impart. This s h o is~ an update on the Magic Realism that the Modern h o r e d half a century ago. dernr t , realists are generally presenteci a\ being c,hsesseci 11-ith freaks, loners. and outsiders. There is Ralthus's portrait of hfirii. \\-h0 some people m-ill think is a little too ilow to his y o u q dai~ghter. There is Giarometti's portrait of his mother, a tin!- figure lost in an enormous room. And there iEd\\-ard Hopper's decrepit Victorian house, isolated apilinst the gray sky. At the Modern, realism tends to be regarded a\ n marginal endeavor. n kind of painting that is nl\vay* at odds m-ith the tm-entieth-century mainstream. In a sense, that" not far horn the truth; )-oil could argue that the very essence of the realist enterprise. \\-hi& is its empirical nature, means that t l ~isi an anti-pand-tradition traJition. Since realists are by definition artists who celebrate particularity, the\- are al\~-ays t3reaking cionn the generalizations. lvhich relates them to the essentially dissident spirit of tnentieth-century art. Yet the onlv kind of break-up that of Mc>dernArt is the break up of realism itseems to interest the MU~CUIII

self. \%%at is disheartening is how often in recent ciecades the monummts of realist painting have been seen, at the Modern and elsewhere, as foreshadc,\\-ing the death of realism. And L)uchamp3s follom-rrs are not the only guiltt: parties* In Clement (;reenherg's 1960 essay on "The liarly Flemish Masters." painters such a\ Gerard David are pressed into the service of an argulnent about the abstract value of color that seem\ to segue into Color Field painting. t

the t3eginning of this strange e\sa>-.(Greenherg observes: "As far a\ I

knm-, not a single important painter since the end of the sixteenth century has, in either \ v ~ r k sor jq-ords, betrayed any significant interest in an)thing in Flemish painting before Rosch." n d having declared that this work is disregarded by artists, (;reenherg feels free to rule that the cietailed naturalism of Flemish painting \\as a liat3ility. It had to be counterbalanced, in Mealling and in David, by the "sheerlv pictorial po\ver color-translucent. vitreous color-is

capable of even u-hen it cioecrn? '"bold the plane."' l'rorn

there it's only a hop and a skip to Morris Louis's f1o;tting veil, of color. In the early '60%.ho\vever. no less a figure than Giarometti \\;is copying b n van Eyck's ;2/ftllz rrr Q lurblrtt and observing tha.t " b e e a tree like Mantegna and van Eyck rather than tlte Impressionists." S.i~chconcerns would not have registered on (Greenherg's radar screen. since they \\ere the concerns of a realibt, and fcjr (Greenherg n realist was alrnocrt hy definition not an important contemporary artist. I \vould say that (Gerard L);ivid and Morris Louis is a marriage made in art-theory hell. Rut once you've \\rapped your brain around that equation, you have seen ho\\ realibrn can he used to holster just about any argulnent ngaincrt realist painting, and you are ready for the cornments that the video artist RillLriol;i, \\-hose work is currently the subject of a retrospective at the li'hitney. recently made in the h u w York lir~zriMafiiirinu. "'\'an livck was an increcfihje craftsman working n-ith the most altvanced imape-making system on the planet at that time-he

\\-as uhing high-~ielini-

tion." The implication, of course, is that Viola's videos (and perhaps (:low's Polaroid camera i.Io\e-ups) are on a continuum with van Eyik's brush. Fainters \vho arc botherecl

I'iola's remark. and I think they ought to

be, u-ould do \I-ell to bring the discussion back to (;iai.ometti's interest in . kneu- better than (iiasometti u-hat being modern meant, van E ~ c kNobody and it is significant that this artist. \vhci had gone through abstraction and Surrealism and \\-as never n nit-picking realist. \\-a$$0 fascinated h\ van livck. (;iacometti sal\ that van Eyc-k's scintillating verisimilitude \\as grounded in the abstract patterning and intricate h t a s y of mecliesal art. And he must have smsed that this early Renaissance evolution \\;is a model for the t\\-entieth-century realist. \\-h0 is also huilcling on a more abstract and &inta*ticitlkind of art. The gravity of van Evck's imagery gren out of the artist's sense that realism \\-as not so much birth as rehirth----living t h i n g t3mught t3itck to life on the canvas. n d if there is a mortuary aura to realism in this century, it is because realism in the \\-ake of abstraction is al\\-al;s exhumation. Yc>u could write a whole history of death ancl realisn~in the twentieth century. It m-ould include Ralthus's

I'ritlni,

painted in the late '30s. in m-hich

\\-e see a ycjung \\-Oman reclining \\-ith her eves closed and a knife nearhj- but no \\-ound on her hod\. Sabine Reniild, in her ratalog for the Metnjpolitan's 1984 Balthus retrospective, observes that this \\-r,rnan is "'not

redy

deacl, perhaps only mommtarilv clrained of life," and in that thought is an allegory of realism in our time. The l\-ork of the English painter Stanlev Spencer, who was the subjei-t of a retrospective at the Hirshhcsrn la,t fall, is full of images of death and resurrection. liven his m m t searchingly direct nudes, landscapes. and self-portraits have a grayed-clokvn look that makes us feel that the life has gone out cif things. This troubled m o ~ l e r nreali\t tradition echoes throt~gfiCGabrieI Idaderman's Dunru

(lfDrdtil

He has filled his compcisition u-ith a marselous play of

purplish shado&-sthat are doubled and tripled into mvsterious patterns. so that beneath the dancers' feet realism seems to he clissolving into abstraction right t3efore our eves*Laderman is going he\-and realism into emblems, kinta\\-, magic. He make\ us t>elie\-ethat this is all part of the realist's territory. His theme come, out of the late Middle -4ges, ancl as you study the iconograph7- of the Lkinie of Death. you realize that some of the most hmous represcntaaons of this strange confr~sntationare also among the great monuments in the rise csf E u r v e a n naturalism. f am not sure that Idaderman \\-as &\\-;-areof all of this while he was painting, hut it hardly matters. In confronting death, he has recovered realism as a life principle. , ~ P P R I 20,1998 L


A R O U N D

THE

M U S E U M S


FORMAL AFRICA

Carving is mrtrrmorpt~osis.Vibrking in m-ood and stone, the great sculptors make intrilctable material pliable, the)- turn h a r d n e , ~into softness, they transfc3rm the vegetable and mineral kingdoms into animal kingdoms right '"kfrisa: The Art of a rAfricitn Art in SoMo. Fundin&IS

tainly a pml7lem in the museum \vorld, especially for unusual projects. Rut I think that Cotter is denying the seriousness of this overvie\\- \\-hen he states that "entire social and spiritual \vorlcis are passecl over for the sake of yet another scenic hike along the Guggenheim's ramps." "Africa" appeals to our eyes----and \\-h? deny that power to non-Kkstern art \\hen m-e m-ould not think of denying it to Matisse! ( In this point I am in ~ ~ "'tabels agreement with Peter Sihjeldahl, who wrote in the 1'1IZagf~ 1 7 1that

explain . . . uses, uselessly-as

if learning that something served for an ini-

tiation ritual made it accessible. If my o\vn initiation into the work is Romantic, that's beCatlse I can't imagine a more pactisable n-av to do it justice." If C:t?tter means to suggest that \\-hat Schjeldahl calls "the bliss of being blitzed" is somehokv incompatible with a more ethnographically oriented experience, I cio not agree. There's a danger of creating a false duality. The sho&-that is at the Museum for African Art this summer. "Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History," which is the kind of L-ircumsituibed project that Cotter prefers, focuses on the Luha people of Zaire and how several types of objects have helped them to sustain a sense of historical contirtuity. It" a shcm- in which tbc tilt is ethnographic-and yet \\-e \\-ant to respond to the \\-ay the objects look, just as the heautv of the \\-ork in "Africa" presses us to a*k all kinds of que5tions nhou t use and context. I'orrnal values are S\-mholicvalues and vice versa. The African sculptor

\\-h0 worried about mastering his craft may not have been thinking all that differently from Braniusi. The anthmpologist who initially asks \\h? somethe cc~llectorof modern thing was made will have to look at it closely. &%nd painting"\-'tlci

acquires some .4frican masks \\-ill quite naturally m-ant to

k n m - ho\\ they were used. When it comes to uncierstanciing art, compartmentalized thinking doe5n3tget you very far. Iconogrilphers need eyes, and

formalists need to know \\hat they're seeing. Term Fhillips. \vho is an artist. spearheaded the Royal cademv's or~inizationof "Africa: The r t of a Continent." and he is certainly not indifferent to the archaeological or anthropological aspects of the subject. (Michael Kan. a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts, \\-as chair of the committee that adapted the show for Ne\v Yt~rk.) linfortunatelv, the grievously underfunded (Guggenheim has published nothing but a skimp\- greatest-hits catalog on the occasion of this important show. There isn't even a complete list of the 11-orks.The much larger and more complete KO)-alAcademy catiilog-l\-hich

is bring distributed in this

country by Prestel and is zivailahle at the (Guggenheim---is quite a help, but even this 613-page tome lacks the o\-er\iens that one might have hoped for. The Royal Acaclemy catalog is a some\vhat confused affidir. \\-ith too many authors given tocs little overall guidance, but at least its packed, helter-skelter appmarh conveys a general feeling for the field. It's clear that many of the contributors have qualms atxrut this enc~clopeciicsurvey. if only because it suggests hci\r- m c h the public has to learn. Yet these scholars also see this as a chance to gain a wider auciience for some very great art and to reflect on hovc- n ~ u c renlain4 l~ to be done. Schjeldahl predicte~ithat 1996 would he the summer in New York "when Africa ruled. And \ve argued about it. pn~h;thl\.."I would have thought so, too. Bllt the argnments have not beg~lt7.I:ron~the art press to tlie black press, the reaction has been mostly silence. One can make too much of the nonresponse. It may have a lot to cio \\-ith inadequate PR. But at a time \\-hen the very mention of non-Kestern art inspires guilt in some quarters and selfrigl'te~umeuin {others, the organizers of "Africa: The r t of

3

-Sin Salon-sire painting. Mir8irr

in

rh~

B7flriurrrfir(18.151, =which is in the Metropolitan's collection. has a clean-lined. otftrbalancc E-teatxtv that is far from It'coclassical conventions. There's something winningly unarmpromising ahtrut t11e n-ay C:orot goes right ahead and paints an angel hovering above n highly specific l;tnd,ciipe; this ma\- not t-te a completely satisfying picture. but it's certainly the product of an original mind. In the smaller paintings th;tt Comt began to paint practically before he unpacked his hags in Rome, his originality is unfcttered, and he brings n new kind of naturalistic inventiveness into art, Looking at the (:olosseum and the Forum and the Tiher \\-it11 the Caste1 Sant'Angelo, he sees much more in the himiliar scenes than anybody had ever seen before.

.%S

he sur-

veys the Forum, he turns the cluttered ruins into a multidimensional checkerhoard, a quirky topograph7- of volumes and vt~ids.Stancling in front of the Villa hfedici, he rhvrnes the nearby trees ancl huntain 11-ith the distant dome of Saint Peter's to create a visual spectacle that mirrors the citv's historical overlays perfectly. Khercver Comt sets up his easel in the Eternal City and the surroun~lingcountr\side. he turns the (;raeco-Roman tradition. \\-ith its strongly modeled fc)rms, into pitintings that have their o\vn \\-oniierful, something-old-sc~n~ething-new p l q of light ancl shacie. Khat's astonishing about thew pitintings is the immeciiate, peremptory impact that Corot achieves even its he ictebrares nuance, p a r d o s , and contradiction. He seems to be conveying some of the omnivorous excitement of a Flung man \\-ho3sbilling head over heels in love with the sunnv south. Yt~ucan see h()\\- really unique his achievement here is if you go to "In the Light of Italy," an exhil3ition that focuhes on the open-air pitinting clone in I t a k in the late 1700s ancl early 1800s h\ arasts from all over Europe: it c)pened at the National Gallery in l h s h i n g t o n last spring and is at the Broolclyn Muscum this winter. Organized hv RliIip Conishees, Sarah f:aunce, lererny Striik, and Peter Galashi, it's an immaculately lucid, medium-sired scholarly show. You feel the earnest ancl intrepid high spirits

of the artists from all over Europe m-ho congregated in Rome. There is much outstanding m-ork. Especially the lVelshman Thornas )ones and the Dane (:hristoffer Kilhelm Eckersberg can n-ork marvels \\-hen it ccjmes to picking some precious vignette out of the Roman spectacle. yet neither they nor any of the other artists in the she\\- ran match (:t?rot's plangent color, or his rhythmic assurilnce, or his genius for transforming visual happenfiance into fcxrnal arabesque. ()hviously the work that Corot did hack in France looks different from the Italian achievement. if for no other reason than that there arc so many differences in topography, light, and vegetaaon. Still. there's more of a

steady development through the \\-hole of his landscape p a i h n g than is sometime\ ackno\l~-ledged. It's o1~viiiusthat a m-ork such ar the I-trokvn-mbrn\\-n stuciv of njoftops done in (Irleans arounci 1830, after the first Italian trip, evinces the same eye for surprising jt~xtapa\itionsthat we knon- in the Roman \\-ork. But so too cioe, a late masterpiece that is not included in this sho\l~;Ibr Rrrdfie cnt ,Watrtp~(l868---70), in which the juxtapo\ition of treecl and bridge creittes an end-to-md interkvoven spare that's a\ poignantly specific a\ any of the vie&-sof the Roman Forum. In his bigger \vorks, Corot struggled to twcorne a generalizer. and sometimes he succeeded: but he always loved specificit\-, and the mind that brings a few tin\- figures into a Roman view in order to supge\t a social dimension is still hard nt work in 1871. m-hen Corot p a i n t the to\\-n of Douai. the corners of two loc~mingbuildings frame the foreIn ?%P Belfry. D,~rrui+ gnjund, a street full of figures and the elaborate twlfry recede into the distance, and \\-e have a view of the oriiinarv life of a French to\vn thttt's quite a\ definitive as \'ermeer's 5trui.t

in

D ~ y i Corot . is absolutely Vermeer's equal

\\-hen it come, to focusing so intently on everyday occurrences that time freezes and we slip through a trap door into eternity. The old man \\-h(> painted ilouai had lo\t none of the zividitv for detail that fills to bursting the terra-cotta-and-t,lue visions of Italy that he ciid ciecades before. He is no longer inclined to hit the accents quite so hard; it is n more experienced kind of clrarheadedne,~that you feel in his infinitely calibrated grays. Corot set out to he n Neoclassical laneiscape painter, hut almost immediately he gave the realist oil sketch an unheard-of geo~netricintricacy, and by the end of his life his close stud\- of the rain\%-eptnorthern atmo\phere had ushered in a new kind of Romantic visual poetry. In (:orot's \\-ork all fixed stylistic c;ltegories dissolve. This \\-as kiirly typical of the great arti\ts of the nineteenth century. It \\-as a dazzlingly exciting age for painting, for even as left many artists frozen in place, the the collapse of art a\ a public avo\l~-al

great minds turned cata\trophe to their a~lvantageand ruheci forniird unens un~bered. llectinn in Htsustr,n over the summer. In the tjq-o decades preceding his death in 1963 at the age of X I , this master. m-ho n half century earlier had handed together with Picasso and created I:ubism. \\-as taking issue m-ith his own seamless virtuosity. It's fascinating to \\;itch as a supremely accomplisheii artist reache, \\-ay \\-ay beyond \\hat he knolvs for sure. The series of paintings of the artist's studit,, \\-hich preoccupied Rraque in the late '40s and early '50s. is in many respects his summing-up achievement. Thew compositions are filled to t,vertlo\\-ing =with the palettes, brushes, eawls, and ciim-ahes that must have felt, after all those years. like extensions of his o\vn body, as hmiliar as his arms, l e g . and hands. Studit) 11 ' 11 gives off ;l soft, peach-fuzz, early morning Light. The rest of the canvases are mostlv dark toned and shalton-y, and of these I think the fine,t are Srriilrt) 11 ' and Srridztr I X Braque uses the nocturnal look t ~ fthe painting to create a sensiltion of boundless mystery; it's n if \\-e're seeing the constellations in the night sky. Man\- of the

. ) r ~ i l l ~ suggest ?~

a burning-the-midnight-oil fever. yet

Braque's juxtapositions are so elaborately labyrinthine that the ardor has n slo\ved-iio\vn, valedictory effcit. The Srririlos are full of overlapping images and plunging spaces and pictures-kvithin-pictures5They're about unft~lciing pofiiihilities. and the something-from-next-tcl-nothing miracle of artistic creation. Kben the painter and phc3tographer Mexander Ijberman wrcste about Rrayue in 1960 in 1 7 .?rtrsr ~

in

I f i s Sruilrt?, he remarked that visiting this

studio \\-as like "standing in a luminous womb," and thzt i o n o t h e r , t ~ n i verse-in-miniature \vav of describing the experience of the paintings.

Rraque is allo\\-ing himself to drift and \\-ander. His mc,vement are such an a*tonishing mix of deliberation and abandon that I find rn~,elfmesmerized and \\-ant to fcjllow wilerever he leads..

No artist has ever taken greater risks. Braque coml3ines the mo\t or&nary stuciio paraphernalia \vith images of birds, one perched on an easel. several others with full, soaring kvings. Thew birds heighten the allegorical Jrama; n-e know instinctively that they represent the artist, ready to take

off. Rraque i, exploring his pliiyfullv, daringly anarchic impulses-he's ing-ancl

fly-

there is an alvesome wmplesity to the n-qthat a ta\te for fantasy

and caprice complicates his pa*sion for beautifully mea*ured effects. Rrayue remains essentially a still life painter. but he brings such a concentrated attention to the most kmiliar object:, that they acquire a neR- kind of dranlatic presence, at once jq-armlt- inviting and eerily bizarre, These late works have their knotty. ot7tuse passages. They're an olci man's aperjus piled high; that's their kiscination. Braque is Iqering impressions to create an allegorical ruckus. The Stuiilos are summing-up paintings unlike any others in the history of art. for the reckoning has less to do with putting matters in their proper place than m-ith catching n definitive impression of the kvhirling. m)-sterious -\l-ay that we take in the \\-orld. "Rraque: The Late \X'orksVwas organized by the English art historiitn Iohn Golciing and created a sensation at the KO\-a1hcadem!- in idondonlast \\-inter. Late style has hshion value in our fin-de-si6cle-bescitted time,. but even so Rraque remains a to-the-side kind of tolvering figure. Although he can satisfy an increasingly kviciespread craving fcjr en~igamedramas, he \\-ill disappoint thaw who think of late style as over-the-top style, and are foH Osexual ~ cused on the hell-bent brushwork of Titian's Fiuyrng of M U ~ S Y Uthe looniness of Picaso's L)ionvsiac explosions. There are great artists 11-ho,as they near the ends of their lives, seem to \\-ant to shatter each pictorial problem a* the\- resolve it. and the result is work that achieves n startlingly un-

complicated availability-a

peremptory, all-in-one impact. Rraque goes

pretty far. too, hut he goes in a different directic~n.He is rather like Poussin. in that in his final phase he \v;ints to give an elaborate, alrnmt pedantic at~ most specialized tecfinical questions. Braque's late m-ork ha.s a tention t i the veiled impact. He is elaborating mvsterious, elusive effects. He is the aged -for ,llukir!q ~ l r i h f tuchrr. ibp

C Y I I I Yan ~ , in-house public;ttion, in lvhich she argues for

Meier' buildings. She believes that Mrier has indeeci given complex ideas of t3eauty a public &ice. "In a democracy," she \\rites, "excellence is supposed to be available to all." At a time \\-hen "excellence has been recirfineci ar privilege" t3j- politically correct thinking, Huxtal3le pleads for the seriouhne,~of the Gettv's attempt to reverse the trend. BroaJItl s p e a k i q , she is not \\-mng. But she is kvriting for the defense, and so she may give the Gettv's approach more credit for depth than it deserves. Meier, \Krilliam\.\i'alsh. and everybody else involved l;\-ith the Gettv like to emphasize h&many thouhands of meetings they httve all h3c1, a\ if excellence has something to do l;\-ith teamwork and consensus. Huxtahle @ides right past the thought that the problem-solving models of corporate culture. =which seem to have a lot to do m-ith hotv the Gettv operate*, might be responsible for turning "excellence" into a blandly correct label. It's too easy to blame the PC baddies for everything that goes \\-mng with culture, especially \\-hen the selfproclaimed defenders of the hest that high culture has to offer are on n slick marketing campaign of their own. Lampposts along the houle\-ards ancl avenues of Los n g e l e s have been hung with banners announcing "Your (;ett\- (:enter." n d ifvou can't resist

the thought that this \\-e-are-all-one vie\\- of museumgoing ha\ a philistine eclge. I clon't tdame you. Perhaps the people at the C;ett\- sometimes adopt this philistine-lite attitude because they're uncomfortable \vith the gap bet\\-een their populist aspirations and the old modern faith in art as an exhilaratingly complicitted private experience. Bv fr~cusingsome of its collecting energies on intimate \\-ork, such a\ illuminatecl manuscripts. drawings, photographs. and cabinet-scaled paintings and t,mnre\, the Getty has emphasired the value of one-on-one experience. Yet even as the renter \\-as crpening. Rarry Munitr, the incoming president and e-

'I'he artist we sec in "Renoir" P~"ortraits" takes a zigzag iourse. Sometimrs his work ib lalsored ancl c-onventional, at other times alnlost arbitrary. And then, all of a sudden, he will come t h o u g h 11-ith scimett~ingso miraculouslv light and true ancl deft that y ~ can't u believe that he experienced n single c-onilia in his entire life. There is the n-hirling c-ouplein Dorzcr irt Br?~dg);lr-

v d (painted in the 1880s), one of

3

series of indelible visions of late-nine-

teenth-century bohemian youth in all their sunstruck, live-for-today glorv. And later there arc the portraits in \\-hich Renoir recaptures-an~l tain inrtances maybe even transcends-'f'itian.

in cer-

Among the \\-orks in this

shm-, I'm thinking in particular of the two portraits of Ambroise Vollard, one in -\l-hichthe dealer p l a p the superne irmat~lr:.,eramining a small scuipture by Mail101 (3908). ancl one in lvhich he \\ears a torcador costume (19 17). And then therc is the portrait of the actress Tilla I)urieux (1914). Ilurieux had the lt~sh,golden looks that lienoir adored, and a radiant artistic intelliofs Shm-, \Vilcie, gence that earned her starring roles in early p r ~ d t ~ c t i o n Hofmannsthal, Gorky. and \i't.ciekind. She inspired \\-hat iprobahlv the greatest of all portrait5 of an indomitable theatrical spirit. h half century later, ISurieux recalled that Renoir ha3 said to her, "I didn't want to paint an\- more portraits, hut I'm d a d that I agreed to do yours. I've made some p r o ~ e sdcln? , y o t ~think?" Kenoir's late style, with its massive figures and deep, saturated colors, can strike contemporaiy vie\\-ers a\ overwronght, hut it shontd be pointed out that both Matisse ancl Pica\ro saw in the aping Imprcssionibt's Renaissance recapitulations a very modern kind of density and \\-eight. And if Renoir \\-as able to express the full force of the pitinterly tradition only after going through a serious consideration of the antipainterly possibility. then puhaps the opening galleries of "The Private ent'i"~-ood His first hfodern s h o ~ in inspirecl-ad

humanized-variation

on Marcel Areuer's tubular metal

furniture. a l t o \\-as not a man \\-h0 t3elieved that the n e n wiped a\v;i!- the old. li'hile teaching at MIT. he took his s t u d e n t into Boston to look at the

\\-ork of Charles Rulfinch. an American rla\sicist \vho cie\igned the Massachnsetts State House in the late eigbteenrh century. h part of \\-hat Aalto shared with ntempilrary art know

ficijq-

to

look. I an1 sure that some artists arc doing m-ork tha.t is worth a seci-lnd or third look, but most of m-hat the galleries and museum, she\\- and most of m ~ ~ egoing l f through \\-hole \\-hat people talk about repels curiosity. I fi~d buildings and streets and neighborhoods full of prtlleries that arc operated and patronized by people 11-hci seem to care so little for seeing that they might a, \\-ell have shut their eves. (:t?nfronted \\-ith this situation. my initial reaction is to say that people have lost the ability to look. But the reatitv may be stranger still. I suspect that \\hat I am mcountering is not a generation that cioe,n3t know ho\\ to look, hut severat generatinns that have been train& to look in a particular \\-a=,-. If you make any effort to folio\\- the \v;$!- that art, e\pecially contemporary art, is discussed in the art magazine,. the museum,, and the universities. you \\-ill find it difficult to avoid the impression that there is a method to this u-idespread inattention. People hiwe an idea that to look at art in a

sophisticated and up-to-elate way means that vou do not look at it very long or very hard. There are late-modern and pasmodern variations on this approach. Some trace it hack t o L)uchamp, others all the \\-a\- t o L3iderot. Khatever the genealogy (and it ran get fairly complicateci) the result is an almost universal feeling that art ought to he taken in quickly. even instantaneouslv-that

a pitinting or sculpture should hit you \\-ith a l,;tng. After

\I-hich, of course, you can talk or theorize about it forever. Let's he absolutely clear about \\-hat kind of visual experience has been, if not yet lost, then marginalized. \%%at people arc no longer prepared for is s e e i q a\ an experience that takes place in time. They have cea\ed to believe that a painti~lgor sculpture is a structure \vith a meaning that unfc~lllsas \\-r look. This endangered experience is not a lnatter of imagining a narrative: it involves. rather, the more fundanlental acti\itv of relating part to part. \Ye need to see particular elements, and see that they add up in u-a\-\ that become more complex-and

sometimes simpler-as

m-e look and look some

more, The essential aspect of all the art that I admire the most, both csld a d new*is that it makes 1ne ?vant to keep loolting. A painting or a sculpturel,\- Sassetta, l,\- Corot, l,\- Brancusi-engages

the viewer l,\- means of a range

of particularities and unities. \Ye take in these elenlents and combination?, of elements in different \\-ay\, at ciifferent speeds. Sometime\ we take them in serially, somrtimes ar i>verl;ipping impressions, sometimes sirnultaneouslv. KC 1nay appmitch the same elemmt-a

tigurc, a curve-from

ciifferent di-

rections. h work of art ran reveal alternative, even in some \\-ay\ rontradictory, kinds of I o ~ ~ cAnd . logic ran collapse into illogic. from \\-hich a nenlogic can emerge. Of course the artist exerts considerable control; hut the greateht artists enable us to make our own way t h o u g h a composition, so that \\-C 611~1our own kind of freedom within the arti\t's sense of order. If I \\-ere asked to name one group of twentieth-century pitintings that epitomize* the shaped yet boundless experience that I am attempting to describe.

I \\-oulci point to Rraque's Srriilrtj paintings, those S\-mphoniccelebrations of the particularity of seeing, of the in\istence on unity a\ a delicious, foreverjust-heycjnd-our-grasp dream.

If there is so much to be said for particularity and parariox, \\-h? has the unit\- idea triumphed so totally? The first thought that comes to mind is that this is not really so strange, considering that we live in a \v~rlt.lwhere art markrting dominate* art, ancl m-here the m-ork that reveals its meaning instantaneously is pml7;thly going to he the ea\iest to sell. I mean sell in the l,rna~le\tsense-not

just to collectors, but also to r urators ancl museumgo-

ers and critics. There are kinds of ?X-ork.such as eca~lse (as David Smith said about his 011-n m-ork) "the afterimage* of parts lie hack

on the hcirizon, very distant cousins to the image formed by the finished \%-ork."\Vhen, thirty years ago. Michael Fried praiseci painangs and sculpand "~TVSVII~III~SI"the italics helped to convey tures for their "tlistt~~~til~ieoz~st~rp?i~'~ the electric-shock quality that he \\-as after. By now, however, t~nitvand immediiicy have become uninflected, tvrannical experiences that rob art of all its ambiguous fascination. In offering a response to the 13ig-hang theory of seeing, I cannot enter an crngoing dialogue, because those of us \\-hbelieve that sreing-throughtime is simply how art \\-as. is. and \\-ill be experiencecl have b\- and large E-teen shut out cif the discussic>n.K h a t I can offer is an alternative view, a \iew that is grounded. I twlieve. in the very t3eginnings of modern art, as \I-ell as in earlier tra~iitions,Much more than a theoretic-al argument is at stake. The experts \vho cieny the time element in art so insistently have b r i ~ q h us t to a point \\-here i o n t e m p o r a r ~painting an3 scdpture t h t reyuifes concentrated, aclventuresome attention-~7herhc-r the \%-orkis representational or abstract or some\vherc in het\%-een-is regularl~shunted to the side. if not eclipsed. If there has been one sure rule in recent years it is this: the more that an artist asks us to look at a \I-ork over a period of time, the more a v\-orkdrops beneath the raclar screens that iriticisn~has set up ttr track the contemporary scene. So far a\ I am concerned, if you are looking for an all-in-one impitct. you're missing most of the important pitinting an3 scuIl3ture that itrti\ts are doing ti~day.

Iust to make sure that there is no confusion about the kincl of experience I am defending, let's conhider \\-hat happens \\hen 11-elook at a transcendentally great work of art. The painting I have in mind is a still life by Li. say) set next to a line that's suspnded in thin air. \Ye see shapes that are apparently solid at one end and fade off into nothingness a few- inches farther on. In Rraque's Milmug~ Bat-h. \I-ords, a musical instrument, and echoes of classical architecture plc- a fitscinating hide-and-seek m-ith one another, and m-e fc,llom-the clues. In his "C:reative (:redo" (1920), a ciassic test of moclern art, Paul Klee c,hserves that "space itself is a temporal concept." Klee f6,cuses on the narrative possibilities of C:ut,ist construcaon, and in doing so he insists on the indissoluble connection hetm-een modern struc ttlres and earlier European art. He asks: "And m-hat al-tot~tthe E-teholder:tloes he finish 'iq-ith a work all at once! (( Iften yes, unfortunately.)" Klee goes on to say that n painting is "first of all genehis." "In the m-ork of art. paths are laid o u t for the heholder'5 eye." These paths create movement. an opening-up sensation. The same idea is reframed, a generation later, in the lvritings of Hans Hofmann. the great teacher among the Abstract Expessionists. He argues that "movement is the expression of lifc. All movements are of a spatial nature. The continuation of movement through space is rhythmic." Hofmann also celebrates immediacy, hut he m-ants the imlnediate sensation to pull the viewer into an experience that expands as n-e look and look some more. And if you are susceptible to the rhythmic impulse that fuels those movements, you \\-ill find that manv of the conflicts between form and content that have peoccupied the thecsrists for decades ancl even generations hegin to vaniah.

If there is time to look, then there is no conflict between noticing the character of a smile in a portrait one moment, the way the tones of flesh vit3ratr again\t the distant landscape a little later. and the cut of the sitter's clothes later still. K b a t people tend to divide into form and content is jq-~syen together into the rhj-thmic movement of a visual experience.

Khy has this expitnsive \v;$!- of looking, =which is lodged so deep in our experience, been rejected? n d \\-h\-has this \v;$!- of looking oftm been said to be Familiarity is no doubt an element here: inevitably, anything hut mc~dern? ta\te is conditioned by the \\-ork that people knoll- best, ancl for years a great deal of the painting and sculpture that has been ciisplayed most prominently has not exactly mcouraged anybody to look long or hard. No matter \\-hat one's particular feelings about the \\-ork of i)uchamp, Pollock, j'uciii. R r h o l . and Stella happen to tw-and

these arc arti\ts of radically ciifferent

characters and values----R-e can probably agree that the audience that has gn,&-n up regarding this a\ stan~lardfare is going to believe that the\- should take art in quickly, instantaneously, all at once. Ancl many people \voulci argue that this speeci-rea~lingfits right in \\-ith the pare of contemporarv life. The obsession with unit\- mai- be grounded in a belief that today's artists nltlst create products that can compete in an environment in tlrtliih it sometimefieem, that nothing is left but brand identity. Many people are convinced that the modern l;\-orltl,'iq-ithits at-celeration, con~rner~ializatim, and cultural hcimogeneity, is alxx-ays hostile to particularity and idiosyncrasy. In scsrne parts cif the a t n-orlii it is

MO\\-

assumed thrtt no artist, no

matter h m - gifted, can hope any longer to establish n detailed, particular. extended relittionship \vith anybody in the auciienrc. Thew ideas, of course, are not all that new. Y t ~ ucan trace them back to the go-go mood of the

pmtkx-ar years, \"hen n hip triumphalism became the upscale m0od in New Ytxk City, and it didn't take any particuliir intelligence to see Color Field way painting and Pop and Minimal Art as spin-off, of a slam-right-throu~h~gh of lifk~.

I think I knoll- \\h!

(:lement CGreenberp's idea\ held such a kiscination

for many people. e\pecially in the early '60s. R! arguing that artirts. at least since the Renaissance, have sought a seamless, peremptory impact, he gave the slerklv uplwat painting of his o\\-n day a sophisticated traditionalist sheen. Greenl3erg \\;is kvithout a doubt the mo\t searching exponent of the idea that \ve take in great art all at once. (Ifall the critics \vho flourished in those years-I

am tl~inkingnot onlv of an art critic such a\ Harold Kosen-

berg, t3ut also of literary critics such a\ Philip Rahv and Lionel TrillingCGreenberp is surely the greatest prose stylist. He knew

to use his blunt

lucidity to put over his big idea. He could make people believe. as he helieved, that tkvrntieth-centur\- art \\-ail mo\ing to\\-ard its o\\-n kind of t3luntness---to\v;ird a \\-ay of treating "the whole of the surhce as a single undifferentiated field of interest

compels us to feel and

judge the picture more immeciiatel~in term, of its over-all unity." Therc is nii yueiltion that Geenbergk ideas arc grounded in the artirtic excitement of his early manhood. m-hen n new kind of stripped-~io\\-nahstractic~n\\-as the hot news in Ye\\-York. I suspect that \\-hat happeneci to CGreenherg \\-as that after a \\-hile he began to want to make that part of the truth into the \I-hole truth; he 11-antedto line up the \\-hole history of art behind the Pollocks that he adt~rccf.B\- the early 'MS, he ha3 turned 'Ynrrtantane~swunity" into his n~antra-a key to all m\thologier. When he announces that it \\-as the fifteenth-century Italian painters \vho discovered "that in\tantaneous, compact and monumental unity . . . to 11-hich Kkstern pictorial ta\te has oriented itself et-er since," I hhase to 11-onderif this isn't clo\er to a tfe,cription of a l3illboard than cif a Masaccio.

If there is anything to he learned from the tone of rnixeci henilderment. anger, and awe that marked the discussions of (ireenherg in many of the reviews of I'lorcnce Ruhenfeld's lvorkmanlike 1097 l>iography,it is that even non- nobody quite knom-S\\-hat to make of him. There are a number of reasons for this ambivalence. Greenl3erg had a flair for playing the art world game that is rare in a nlan of his refined intelligence, and he convinced many people who should have known better that taste \\-as n lnarketahle cornmodit\-. In the process he was not averse to stemrollering an)-body

\\-h0 did not get \\-ith the program. and those people have not al\\-a!-s been quiet, nor should they be. It \vould be a h u r d to argue that (Greenberg's ilit\-.lvhich in turn leads people to imagine that the kind of controlled journey that the artist might once have provoked in the vie&-eris nom- an irnpossil3ility. I3uchamp. reflecting on the situittion in a hmous staement made in Houston in 1957, said that "to all appearances the artist acts like n mediumistic being." For (ireenberg, the result of this hitorical development was an increasindy self-critical and inm-3rd-turning artist. I do not

nlean to saj-that the aesthetics of Duihamp and the aethetics cif C;ri.enberg are the same. hut their divergent \\ay* of thinking nhou t art do depend on a related asbumption that the arti\t ran no longer count on communicating complicated, expansive experiences in n detailed, lucidiv articulated \\a!-. The Museum of Mc>dernr t curator Rohert Storr. in a deeply unsympathetic account of (ireenberg's infl~lenrcthat he published at the time of the muscum's 1990-9 1 exhibition, "High and I_o?\-:Modern Art and Pc~pular ist collage in her hook ihu Piiiis~oPdj~urs(1998). mai- be understood a* reim-enting an idea of reeing-thmugh-tin~ethat is really the most natural thing in the \\-orlii. But these historians are not necessarily in control of the ideas that they purvey. n d heciiuse they are inclined to l3elieve that they are close to the main*tream of taste. \\-hi& for that very reason they regard as never far from the truth, they have a \\-ay of ending up in cahoots with some of the l>ig-time museum and gallery people \\-h0 stuff the latest verour thmitts. sion of instant unity ~10%-n Khen Fried managed to demonstrate, at least to some people's satisfacof (;reuze's paintings were protomodtion, that the campy mel~~dramatics ernist, he perfc,rmed a great ser\ice for the postmo~iernists,and it hardly nlatters \\-hether he planned this or not. If (;reuze's overcron-Jeci narratives lead us to Manet. then m-hy can't that road just keep on going all the \\-a\-to the get-it-in-an-instant (:ihachmme surkces of Cinciy Sherman's po\tmoci-

ern (GreuAan allegories?As for Rryson. he has made it possible to see Greentwrg's celel3ration of instantaneous unity as a sinister ideological plot. and \\-hat could he more politically postmodern th;tn that! []nit\- hecome, the \\-hite male artist's \\-a\-of not letting the viewers make up their 0%-nminds. K h a t is lmt, once again, is the idea of looking as an extendeci, responsive. evolving. t3;tck-and-forth interaction.

There is no m!-stery as to \\-h\-unity exerts such a pull. \Ye dci go to art for clnritv. When you talk about a painting or sculpture. you say. "No\\- it's all coming together for me," or "I see how it adds up." \Kk all hope for cohermce. Rut there arc many ways for a \vork to come together, and the rharacter of even the most seamlessly cam-incing painting or sculpture is to he found in the unique confluence of elements and forces that makes up the \\-hole. This is the important point that Meyer Schapiro made in 1966 in the essa>-"(In Perfection. (:t?herence, and []nit\- of Form and (:ontent." In that understated \\-ay of his, Schapin~chose not to place his remarks in a contemporary context, hut I do not think it \\-as an accident that the e,say appeared in the mid-'60s. \\-hen (Greenherg's idea of instantiineouh unity \\-as at its mo\t influential. Surely Schapiro is lodging a proteht against the \\hole drift {of '60s aestl~etics\\-hen he \\-rites that ""tosee the work as it is cine n ~ t ~ s t be able to shift one's attitude in p;t\sing from part to part, from one aspect to another. and to enrich the \\-hole progressively in successive perceptic~ns." Like (Greenherg. Schapiro had been f,lscinatecl

the move toward all-in-

one expression in the paintings of the .4hstract Expressionists. Rut he nevertheless insists that \\-holene,~is at hest an eluhive thing. Schapiro shrewdly p a i n t out that we sometime, experience paintings that are in a fragmentiiry state a, magnificent whoIes. He insists that certain kinds of incompleteness

or irresolution can he precisely the element that give a work its life-giving mergy. lie bids us to renlenlher that there are many, many iiifferent \\-a\-\ in \\-hich a \\-ork of art ran satisfy us. and that in order to arrive at this feeling of glorious complicittion, m-e may find ourselves approitching a work from a number of radically different ciirections. Schapiro does not ask why this kind of peremptory unity might hilve hecome filch an ilbsessiort in tbc "60s. lie cisulcl \\-ell have pointed out that the idea of unity-if

not the unity of perception. then the unit\- of action in

painting---had heen a theme among the authcirs of treatises on aesthetics since the Renaissance. n,julecl, 2 18

hlarj, 288

1Sroohlcn Zilu\eun~,220, 289

f,athnluc;rltits(Mr~net),246

1 S r o n~ Ilnrli c r w j , 70

I:dther, LQilia,280

tSruegd, i'reter, LAfi, 170

faat ~91th,3/1trrt?r 111, T"h2 (IEaltl~u\),58, 59, 68

tSr)sr>n,?;orman, 314,324, 325

f,anrldrinr, 7 h(ISrdy ~ ue), 247

' a ~ i n jules, C%dde\, 218

I Irlwrz 7;)rturi.(haurnan), 50, 56

'et-t-hetri, Ertnct,, 254

1 OdttjS, L'auI, 95

I V L I ~C,IIUVI,

tiltldiin

lk.'1,2 (7 he Xrjtigers)

(K~tal),50,121 - (23.64, 167

(:c~ctcau,jean, 251,257,2553 (:c~lln,I'aul, 262

I LYLI n 'rst jus w e ppe ( Magnrtc.), 75

(:c~lIcpcArt 4s,ocrarlt)n. 24

(:eJarlaccrn (hY), l 8

I ctlt~uw(frnsen), 88.89

(

epdtrltrs dnrt

4 urortt (I+ou"r"rt), 779

(:&xdnne, I % d , 102, 143, 147, 148,226,246, 256,276,288

I crfnpibltwwn~rth .Stitrs (ISrdquc), 248 I crfnpibltwwn~rthTitv Pt~rr~~fs C l-bper,), 298 1 onisbeer, i'hil~p,220

( ' h a p l t , Iclarc-, 24.3

1 on\tahlr, John, 84

C /tiff!! du rt~ssrq(ni'ELP , ( ht\vIri\s~ue), 251, 256, 259

I tmsfntctrun, LP>(Ltger). 287

C:I~apc.lof. die ilosary (hlatlirlrc), 250

I,arzrr~r~rC ~ r m (LGger), s 293

C:I~apmm,I)IIICI~, X2 C:I~apmm,jalie, X2 ( :f~drdrn,[rean

Rdptiste Sl;mti.tan,14 l , 246,

315 318

(:fIdracrcl, Urttcllte, 13 "C'harlle ltose," I54 'harrres 1 athecirdl, 9,234 ('haw Msnhrttt,~n( h l " ) ,273

:c~oper,i lougtas, 257, 258 (:oracle ( ;aller> (Ir,ngland), t X2 (;ornejl, joseph, 185 186 (;orot, jean Aaptt\te C:an.t~lJe,47,X4, 140, 2 14-228,256,312 I t~rpwmtii ;~IIETTLJY (john\), L46 I tnniilru Insftsljgjlrtltnz(Xfiik ttrzliJer Sri~ltrllatriln)

(haurnan), 53

C:111xranr. Rlchard, 13

I,asturnr for u I-Ierulid(t ;xis), 252 253

C:111xrco, (;rtlrgrcj de, 187- 188, 254

(:c~ttcr,Holland, 21 1-21 2

C:hrjulCan, 4ng. 235

(:c~urhcr,(;usta\ e, 8% 1 113, 140, 158, 176,

(:f~rlrtchnrch( 1 tan h\rncror), 77 (

lzvfsr s I;ntsy trrto liuu,.cltEs rrr 18~79(Fnsor), 279 280. 281

"httrcfi, Fredenc Fdtl-111, L71 I t r us ~ j( :alder). 296 (

rg {l-bper,),108

187- 188, 192,218 227

"(;rcdtn e I:rt.Jo"' ( Klee), 318 ( ; r ~ c l ~ t o Itlllcl~ael, n, l46 1 rr\p, ( l ~ r e n t ~63 n,

I rt~it"ltill 7hort1~ ('ensen), 9.3 1 r ~ t m b It., , 74

"C:rtj \cape" ((?Ylarjl~crrougi~ ( ;aller>), 172

(:unnrngham, hlerce, 264

(:la~r,jean, X1

I,up (l3ranru\r). 104

('lark, F-.)., 264, I65

(:utts, Sirnon, 182

('ltzmenre, F+rdncesztt,L36

(;U\eirer, EugPnc, 222

C Zevrzrijl I;rvrrrbilrfi '1 Life 13uhente1d), 314,

32 E

C:Ilntcln, ffill, 159 C:Iolrc, C:I~uch,t X l ~188, 195 196, t9Y

I )ahltlcrg, Erlw drd, 59 I )all, Salc ador, 158

1 l~deror,I)enli, 312, 323 Ilrsiastors rl/ tt2~ ({;O?J~), 82

lIanrp at Hratlgtt~~irl jl;Cent,ir), 291

It1 Suvero, Iclarb, 50

lIanrp ill llrrrtlz (Ldderman), 186, 189 192,

Ili5.j at

1% 199 tltjni r

o r I,lirr~isei ~ r trlrp

~ ! I PDoor

(Porter), I74

I)c>nahuciSr~srnIrk~ (NU), 157 I"i)rim~fer i,JU

S~E~L~N

I)cn e , krtIXur, 91

(Nauman), 52 Ikrnct~rsLW ti Plane ('ohn\), 146 I Jartmler, lonclr6, 10,288,292 I )a\ IJ J>Anger\, I3erre jean, 27.3 I )a! ILL< ;er'~rcf?197 I )a! id, f d ~ ~ L l ( rf.o,~lt~)tr w'ith I,Y~Ju' (Hitlkhu'i). 167 turfit>Gluu (llurhdmp), 179

Kerham, karl. 18

Lust fuiJN,t~~tzfof Fjtrr~gs( FikI~on),107,

Kerte,,, Xilnu\, 70 7 1.73- 77

tO8- 11o9113 118

fir\ in Rcrche, john t llnkeltro, 272

i,autr6arntint, C:cimtc de, t fit

Khmer Rouge, 224

Lctrrrrrii I-Ieblrs,nes, rn R~rrs(Rrlck

fileter, An\rlrn, 171, 193

bold

Xtdl

Ilrtimm~r;i(haurnan), 53

K~cnhoh,Ed\\ drd, 192

i,clrrun, C:harle\, 149

K~lrmnrk,Karen, 44

i,c (:c~rl-rusicr, 62,295, 302

KlmbdL Art hIu\e~~nr (Fort 'lf'ortl~),289

I ech>ux.t;Eaurit* XtcoI't4, 276

K~mm~Lman, kl~chacl,14% t 49

I eke\ re (;aller) ( l crndttn), 58

K~r\teln,i,rncoln, 262,263- 265

I Pger, Fernanti, 78, 10l , l OX, I 15, 126, 140,

K1taj, i,cIl1. 04

245,293 295,297 300,302,3OM- 308

Kltaj, It,R,, 57--t$r(,81,82.85, 1.14, 167

I Pger l"llureum (ISlrrt), 24%

Klec, I'aanl, 123, 125, 126,318

I erthnrtrer, Mark, 235

Klrifi

JItcrnfi T/~njcrgtrWEIII i t lIcit*nt~urg),

98 99

Kc4bke, 1 hrnten, 276 Korl~no,'t.it,rr\,253

!.ennon, 'lf'c*~nherg (Xl'), 157 !.eo I'iirteIll Cialler) j h l " ) , 145 !.eonardo dz Vincr, LOA, 147, 158,225,227. 30 1

Koons, jekt, 33, 297

!.e (&ulIez, 183

Korman, t Iarrtet, t57- 158

!.et rne, ,tberrre, 3

Ko\w)fk, Lccin, 12,77- 86, 1.34, 167

i,c\~n,on,hlndub, 251,253

Kxaraa\, Itcrsalrnd, 314, 321, 323, 324

n. [,c\ >,j u l ~ ~112

fixtans, 1homd\, 28 30, 127, 152

i,c~is,Stanlc>,11- 14,2f,31,71 72 i,rilcarman, Alexander, 242 " L~ilraryt)l l3abel, I hc" ( 130rgc\),73

La~te~rman, (;abncl, t 3,25, 167, t 86 193, 1%

199

Lad! (:haycl (lr,l> C:atI%edral),177

I ngrbe, I-rnc\t t lortclart dt*,230- 231 I nncI-tiner,(:arol? n, 297 298 ""Idnd4c~pe" (l?a~ntrz~g t;cnter), 172 ""Lndsraj-rea"r4h~tritct~on"(( ;raham and Son\), 172 Lanrlsrup~illtllz tl- I ulm (L'oL~\\IIz), 277 Luoi t~ii11, 239

idreberman,Wlllxarn, 82 I tar, Serge, 252,254,262

Lrfi, 9, 16 Lrfrrh (Sm~tl.~), 101 I ~md,Id&-ciucrl~ne, 13 I ~mhourgBrother$, 170 I ~lc-trln (;enter (YY), 265

!.1p1-ri, iFllljsp~no,284 !.lp1-rmdnn, \f/alker, 65 L~JCUSSLIIMS. 182, 183

Long, Iltchdrd, 121

hlarrhel Jdcb\on r ;allery (Xl"), 17

Lopokot it, l \, drd, 261

hlrirr~n,=Igne\,73, L20

L'( lrmge, H .l'., 208

Itlart~n,joIln, t 7 1

Lt! f,lt~~rr, 7Ru ilZrdq~e),

137- 141, 176, I89

Msillof, i2nstide, 281 .V!aktrr,y /lirihtl~cluri. r h r~; p l r \ I

248 Ptztilr,

268

hlalevlrh, Xiatmmrr. 125

"%lasItSecknldnn 111 Fx11cr" (( ;uggenhcim), 152, t 53

hlalraux, 4ndub. 237

Itletcr, Rlchard, 265 274,280,281,283

hlalraux, ( : h a . 237

Itlemllng, Hans, 197

Zilanet, Ccitauelrc~,167, 216,278,288, 324

"urrmoiri.dr lu ch~rnbrcjlrzrfrr (t fbl~on),1 13

"kl~tnet,Ziloncrt, and the (idre St. I mare"

"Allemor!:

(Uarrtrndl C ;aller! ), 289 .V!atz r n u Furhirtr (1a n F? ck), 1I)'?

I ubn Art and the h$akinp of

ll\ror? " (ihlureurn Iitr Alncdn Art), 212

Msnrrgna, Andre,, 197,277

hlenil, Ijom~nlquede, 249

Mayj-rlethorpr, itohert, 25,M 1.fnp ( fohns}, 142, 140

hlenil l'oflectron (Fiou\ton), 242, 244,

hlarcfesn,ff rrcc, 43, '73, t 33

Vrnttrtrs 111s ( \ ~ c I ~ z ~ L ~2 c15z ~ ,

1.fnrrtyn j Warhc)l), 322

4 J I r ~ ~ t rkilt4nttlrpr j ( C :alder), 293

Zilar~nt:orrnty

( :I\

rc (:enter (jxi'rrght 1,

271- 272 Zilarhr, &$atthe\%,153 154 Msrlht,rotrgh r ;aller) jhl"),172 hIsrquet, i2fl>crt, 170

249 250

Mrrrnctlcli I'irc~er~p, Thr

khrld), 183

Itllerrlfi, fan-rer,225 226 Itllerrager, Annette, 160 RletropoIit~nh l u \ e ~ ~otmArt (hl"), 42, 43,,58,Q, 83, 134,

20,5,21S 218,

219,222 224,225,227,275,277,284. 285,287 2M, 289,291 293 hletrtipolrtan

(NU), 264

hllchallon, kchlllc l rna, 219 hllchelangc*lo,92, 103, 106,208, 239

Mrlk (tVaiil), 163 164 Zillliet, jedn Fr~nc;clrr, 223

Ldnil

Zillli\ l:oliiepe, 153 .b!fntduur . 1 4 r ~ t j gEIzr EItlmsu (I"lcd\\r,),

I unctrd (Hranc-~trr), 103

Ldttrm,

147

M~rti,foan, 40, 123, 196, XNI Mnhima, Yuhio, 94

17

SarrtrnaI Fndoumenr lor the Art\* 111,24,

267 SarronaI r ;aIlery ot Art (F'arhmgtttn),

hl f 1 , 299, 304,305

97, 1 19,205,220,226,22% 24 1,275,

hllrchelt, joan, 4 l , 45, 125, t 33, 172 173

289,294,293- 296, Xf l - D02

l.f,tLir.rn P~inrrrs,110, 65 h8

M I I List4 ~ ~( I condrdtt Ja b'rncj), 148, 225 ZilonJr~dn,het, 6,7,67, l 10, 1 1 1, 115, 120, 136, l "to. 188, 259,296 297,300, 302 Monet, "laucie,236,216,246,285,

289 290 "klonet and the hled~terrane~~n" (t"tcjolilr, n klu\curnj. 289 290

Natlrjnal C ;aller> of. ( Ianada ( c Ittav. a).

216 Ldttrrf~d! C;~.i;tjmp/rzr,I46

?.;anman,ISrucc., 49 57,74, 160, 192 ?won ;Tnf?~j!ldalrsi ~ f t h vL p J t EIuZ/ itf,bIj

fZt~i[j

-raketi ul kn-fnzlr fnlerzrul~(Kauman), 52

Seutra, ltlr-hard,271 Nclx,man, I{arnctt, t 25, 136

hlcirandl. ( ;rrjrpio, 175

Yrw Rrpflhlci, 261

hlcirns, Robcrt, 101

"'Nclx, Sp~rittln Ikalntlng, h"' (ltojal

Zilorn\. lVtllldn7, 178

M~~thar anif 1 hrM Qlstchclnganer), 277

hc-adem?), 107 ?.;ev. York (;IQ ISaller, 26.3 265

Zilount Meru, 232

Lrrv Kirk RCL'IV~V r t f I j i ~ k 30 ~,

Moyn~han,Ilodrrgo, 81, 1.1.1

%"\i~lt*

M unitz, tS,trry, 269,281

.%W Ktuk

Ktuk fimrs, 17,27, 14X 149,211,24 1 firnrs z.2.11rga:rn~,197

.b!~rd&rmtii Its ( ~ m S ~(Laderman), ~ ~ ~ ~ 190 i ~ > Sem York Ilntverur?, 111

hlusge d"()r\aj (l%rr\),218, 227

Nrt.ix, ald, Wllhur, 25

hlusge (;uimCt (i'ari\j, 220,235,237

Nrjlnsba, t3rcjnirIa.i a, 251

h l u ~ e u mfor hlfrrcan krr (NU), 212

Nrjlnsli.y, \ ) a s h , 251,253,255,257,262

Zilu\eun~of. (:trntemporar> Art (l,o\

" G / z u sIjct~lit~tg ~~ (Kir\tt*111)264

Anpele\), 160 Zilu\eun~of. hf4r)clern Art (%Y), 16, 17- 19,

?.;ogur-hl,Isamrt, 264,273 Xojand, (;ad), 51

28,3X, 3") 4 1, 42,45,49, 50, 1111, 104,

Soland, Kenneth, 322

133, 141, 145, 149, 152, 153, 186, 188,

Sorodom i'\, 323 Soutlz A tljrrlrirt~Fr'rrarr8lp(Naurnan), 53 Soutine, (:harm, W Silur~ntrt,J ; l f o u t ~ r((:orot), i 223 224 Spanish I'avllrcln ( l%ra),293 .$jr~"ctre dt ~ I I Iro.se, Le (Fobtne), 253

hundd, 238 5un1l'i I ) U IM111 ~ (,?\c~Iro), XMi. 307 S~1rta-t arrnan XI. 232 S~~r,,rnan, Elt\ahc.th, 70 S$\ ester, I)avxd, 8 5 86 S) nlonr,, A.j.A,, 18+ 185 S) nlonr,, juij~an,18+ 185

Spencer, Stdnle!, 198 .$jrfutrlJ r t t j (Sm~thstrn),171 S-;jhap~rpdVznr ({:alder), 301 S Z L EjTarko\ Z ~ ~ ~ ~'.rky),94 Stdnlord Ilntverr,it>,71) Starn, i loug, 3 Stdrn, zillkc, 3 Stetleirjk &$useurnj&nlrtercJanl), 82.85 Stern, jan, 211% 2116 Stein, ( .,ertrtrde, 17,260 Stein, Leo, 17 Steinb,it-h, Ilaim, 27 Stclla, Frank, t93,319,322 Stcttbcimcr, Florrnc, 184,185 Stc-tcnr, l&alfacc,1127 Slrll L$;> pith Iirilnr 71rhle clnif filur f'litth (Mattl1rarr30rttr), 131 Stocbholcit~r,jeswd, 31, 97,100 Stoker,, =Idrran,2AI Store, F-l-re(()ldenhuug), 98

162-l h3 Srnntic I I (C:alcler'), 301,307

f aa tie, I'Ix~lxp,74 f aeuber Arp, Sophrc, 120 f amhrmuttu, tX4,185

Tdplrn, Rol-rctrt,13,192 l93 Eqet (jol-rns), 145 Eqet ~plrhPIGS~~JY f'ast, (jotlns), 14Fi F-arbot\is>.Andrr~,94 95 F-ate C;nltc-rj (London), 58,50,82 F-ati~tchetf:~n~l('o. (RV), 132.130,L89 f a) low, I'aaul, 264 f ~ h ~ l ~ t c h eI'avel, v r , 1%. 263-264 f emkin, h n n , tlll Tentt~~ed~ I hr j'rnrrn), 95 Tentcfrlirn, ib kr li~cq2ur, (%ijlnr,ka) 253 T'r Arn tunjdn, Rortben, 26.3 ;Trrrlici~ 7 h (~ ~ " ~ T ~ L248 IcI~),

-f"h.:, ShlalZ "\\iot f Suvr .V!P (1161ron), L I I

Ftittrlck Kitit&, 'Glt3nntrfi(Ka t L), 135 L36

""'Tl~rnking l ' r i ~ ~'t.it,cjks t: to 't.irlIhoard\, 198tb 93'' (hlu\eum cif klodern Art), 205 7 krvtj-bix l'lrws

Mt Full (t-tohu\ar),

1h2 1horeara, I: Ienr? l Iaclc3, l h9 ""7ree A n ~ e n c ~I%arnterrW n (Frleci), 322 323 Ftir~i(;~uc(J> ((,ant,\ a), 275 Ftir~i(;~uc(J> (Croodstein), L2

7 knbp bittnrn ( l t5gc.r). 297,298 X rhor de Xag? ( ;aller> (SV), 151, t71.

174, t75

1lrpolo, (;K)\ dnnr Aartt\ra, 277 1ltfan!, 153 Tlllnn, hrcfncj. 23 firnr, LA X mmernlan, jacobo, 56

\'an I3rugpen. (:c>osjc, 98

7rmrs (Ltlndon), 83- X4

\'an l>rle\burg, I hco, 1 10

X mtercjt?, (;ar!, 2 16 21X, 222 224,227

\'an E>ck,jan, t97- 193,208

1ltldn, 86, 215, 222, 243, 277, 291, 324 Torre\ i;ari.Fa, joacjuin, 110 1ouloure I aratrei., 1 fenn, 63 ""'Trdd~tit~n and the Jndl-\lrduc~I Talent" (E11ot). 261 Trdkf, ( ieorg, 90, 93 7 vmms~i?nncrt~r~n, Ih

Yan ( ;ogh, b'rnc.cn t, 125,27X,279,2Z"i8,289

X rans kitxciat~n(%V), 193

\'cr\alllc\, 293

X rant, jeonrfcr, 281

l'r(1pprtz8 lirrds iinrt firo (1%)~nhfiejd ), I83

t zrttrrr (AalrIiu\), t 93 I~'teu1if 7;tle~Ii~ (S31 (;xei.tr), 277

l'rr~trsri r r ~P~rntitzfi(l-conarcioJa Ylncr), 106

Y~Idrc.fet>r,, ( Iarlor, 296

l'ncorrw, I,t (Xlass~nc),2.38

I"tll08t l/i)lir~, 54, 2 12 VllIa Msireii ( AdIttt), 2(34,305 Vzll~,tit (leger), 287 VloLa, tSll1, 81, 1641, L97 198 \'&nu, 232 234,238,239

FTr~lImg, Lionel, 320 Fry1ti"lr(N'mkbeld), I83 Fr11rtjq14(>du llragi~tg( FiGl~on),1 12 X rcn a, Erncsr. 53

Yarnecfoe, filrk, 39, 42, 142, 143, 149 klkzquez, 1 I ~ ~ g149,214,215 o,

f i t ! et Ilndergrt~und,L53 b'enlce 13renndle, 16, 77,XI 84. L07 i:emmeer, jan, LAfi, 18.3, 184.206.22 1,324

\'er\arc, ( ilannr. 284

\Y'lI\on, i iefen Rliranda, 13, 1% 193 \Y'lnktieId, Irevor, 13, 71,74 776, 1.57, 158, t77- 185 b'rttter Ltghr (jcnsen), 8% 89,94 Winter,, f err\. 44

Wlttenborn put>l~~herr, 38 'lfTadrnortfi =It h e n e ~ ~ (ni riarttord), 25L, 252,259,262,263 'lf'agne~lt~chdrd,251 l!talker

:\rt

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