Magnificent and Vulnerable

...To cite but one example: It would scarcely be possible to guess the true stature of a great and prolific painter like Lovis Corinth from the Museum's single and minor Self Portrait—a picture not even outstanding among the artist's many works devoted to this theme, and one that in no way conveys the breadth of his accomplishment...

...But nowhere in the world can one take in under a single roof so clear and comprehensive a view of the whole vast historical tapestry of modern art as that afforded by the Museum's permanent collection...

...ON ART By Hilton Kramer Magnificent and Vulnerable Notwithstanding the criticisms that are frequently and legitimately directed at the Museum of Modern Art, including those made recently in these pages ("The MoMA of Us All," May 25...

...At their worst—in those windows the shape of giant TV-screens...

...A number of these galleries would in themselves, simply because of the crucial role their contents have played in shaping the course of modern esthetic thought, be more than enough to sustain the eminence which the Museum now enjoys the world over...

...The latter is in the form of a large upper terrace overlooking the main garden, which, with its outdoor cafe, its trees and fountains and magnificent sculptures, remains the loveliest outdoor space in Manhattan...

...the great strength of this institution has always consisted of its permanent collection of painting and sculpture...

...Elsewhere—at the Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, say—one might have a more varied and profound glimpse of particular artists (particularly Cezanne, Rousseau and Solitine...

...Architecturally, neither the Museum's new galleries nor the alterations of its old building are particularly impressive...

...In a city so egregiously indifferent to public amenties of any sort, Johnson's sculpture garden is a real oasis...

...Its acquisitions from the current scene exercise an immense and exceedingly unhealthy influence on the art market as well as on the writing of contemporary art history —and hence on the creation of new art, which in our faithless artistic climate is overly responsive to both...

...It is the virtue— perhaps the only virtue—of the Museum's new, enlarged galleries that they provide an ampler installation of this collection than has been possible hitherto...

...It is thus possible now to see more Beckmanns and Derains than the Museum has ever before admitted to permanent view...

...Both these artists are due for critical revaluation: This fall the Museum itself will house a large Beckmann retrospective that is certain to establish him among the major painters of the century, and a comparable Derain show is said to be in preparation elsewhere...

...and it is as a repository of the art of that period that the Museum remains unrivalled anywhere in the world...

...By and large, however, the Museum can boast an extraordinary assemblage of masterworks covering the 50 years (more or less) from the late 19th century to the middle '40s...

...Arranged, as formerly, in historical groupings, the new and enlarged installation is especially interesting—more perhaps to habitues of the collection than to newcomers —for the additions which ampler space has now made it possible to include...

...some are simply period pieces of no artistic consequence...

...Its distinction in this respect owes a great deal, I believe, to the peculiar conjunctions of history and art...

...Designed by the ubiquitous Philip Johnson, the development of whose work from a lean Miesian classicism to its current phase of decorative overindulgence is convincing evidence that, in art as in sex, extreme repression often leads to bizarre perversions, the most that can be said for these architectural additions is that they do not by any means represent the worst that this designer is capable of...

...The problem of providing the public with felicitous indoor space in which contemplate works of art—a problem to which he has devoted a great deal of energy, if not thought, in recent years—continues to elude him...

...For the Museum's collection is, if anything, far too up-to-date...

...But it is all the same a triumph of taste, and unlike almost everything else Johnson puts his hand to nowadays, seems actually to have been designed with its function—that is, with the people who are going to use it—clearly in mind...

...The collection remains the Museum's chief glory and principal raison d'être—a fact easily lost sight of in the swirl of publicity that envelopes its unabated succession of temporary exhibitions, film showings, symposia, jazz concerts and other box-officc attractions...

...Despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, the Museum still proceeds on the assumption that the hoopla of the moment is a reasonable guide to authentic achievement...

...Many of these additions are, necessarily, minor works...

...the immensely interesting survey of Russian Constructivist and Suprematist works—these would constitute, either separately or as a group, a major locus of 20th-century achievement even in the absence of extensive representations of other artists and movements...

...and in the vast Main Hall, whose re-design has rendered it about as cozy as Grand Central Station—they are the work of an unremarkable duffer who has grown used to lavishing all his attention on the icing for a cake already slightly stale...

...Walking through the galleries now devoted to the art of the past two decades, one has the impression that the chief museological concern—or more accurately, the chief anxiety—has been to avoid missing out on anything that fashion and publicity have certified as "in...

...In the Museum's superb collection, of course, these galleries—and not these alone—are only the gems in a huge and wide-ranging anthology...

...Johnson's one great architectural contribution—to New York as a city as well as to the Museum— is the sculpture garden which he designed some years ago and to which he has now made an addition...

...in the galleries devoted to the design, photography and drawing collections, which have all the atmosphere of a very posh millinery salon...

...The bulk of the Museum's most significant holdings thus antedate the Europe of Hitler and Stalin...

...Because of this disposition to welcome whatever happens to be making the headlines, or the gossip columns, the Museum's permanent collection is actually two collections: one—the more valuable— which embraces the work of artists whose principal achievements antedate the founding of the Museum, and another which reflects—sometimes accurately, oftentimes not— the art history that has unfolded concurrently with the Museum's own influential career...

...Founded in 1929, the Museum took up its principal museological task—the assembling of such a collection—at the very moment when the "outburst," as Pritchett called it, was succumbing to political pressures and natural exhaustion...

...The Museum has therefore been, to some extent, a victim of its own machinations, having to scoop up larger and ever more expensive handfuls of the kind of dubious artistic and pseudo-artistic work that its own policies have often played a major role in generating in the first place...

...One is left wondering if landscape architecture may not be Johnson's real forte, after all...

...The new terrace is rather bland by comparison...

...A good many belong to the belle epoque before World War I. To say this in no way diminishes the remarkable judgment and taste that went into the making of the collection, but it does underscore the fact that the Museum has, in the 35 years since its founding, stood in a completely different relation to the art of its time, and has not always proved to be equally shrewd in discharging its functions under these totally changed conditions...

...the incomparable Picasso collection...

...that conformity to adventitious fads has played a far greater role than disinterested esthetic judgment in decisions affecting the selection...

...At their best, in the painting galleries, they provide clean, serviceable spaces in which to view the works at hand...

...Whereas its acquisitions from the earlier decades of the century could be deliberated with the leisure and wisdom which only a certain distance and historical hindsight permit, its acquisitions from the art of recent decades—indeed, of recent weeks —have been made in a breathless race with the artists themselves...

...the vibrant room of Legers...

...the second, a parable on the vanities and pretensions of the age...

...the exquisite group of Brancusis...

...The first continues to be a source of endless pleasure and instruction...

...one wonders if it is quite finished...

...These acquisitions of recent art point up very clearly, moreover, the Museum's most alarming characteristic: its vulnerability to publicity and fashion-mongering, and the chronic uncertainty of its governing values in the face of whatever happens to be making the noisiest claim on its attention at any given moment...

...But then—such are the contradictions of art—it is also an oasis from the cold-blooded chaos into which Johnson has transformed the Museum's own Main Hall...

...There are, to be sure, some significant lacunae in the collection which the Museum's directorship continues to show a curious disinclination to fill...

...Others, however, reflect a slight but distinct change in the esthetic weather...

...V. S. Pritchett recently remarked at "There has been no period in this century so rich in works of imagination as the first 30 years...

...The magnificent room of Matisse paintings, sculptures and drawings, presided over by a trio of canvases—The Red Studio, The Piano Lesson and The Moroccans —that are among the very greatest statements of an artist who looks more and more like the greatest of our century...

...The Muceum, with its characteristic "intelligence" (in this case, one uses the word in its military sense), has apparently decided to cover its bets on botri these eventualities...