Masters of Reality

...A similar blankness characterizes the catalogue's text, by Associate Curator Marcia Tucker This is understandable, for Rosenquist himself is given to telling stories about his early experiences that read like Rene Magritte paintings as seen by Holden Caulfield He once painted a Times Square billboard from an unidentifiable photostat that looked to him like a pile of bricks Weeks later he saw it as 'this ad for a movie, two people embracing, and in back of them were bilious clouds and right in the middle of the clouds was this cement stone-a ton of bricks right in...

...Beckmann, Nolde, Schwitters, and Klee are of the company at La Boetie, and while the works are mostly small, some are very fine It is not necessary to know German history to sense the agitation in German art The wonder is how, for example, French art managed to look so relatively composed during the years between the world wars...

...There is a good deal of France in this "degenerate art," notably Cubism and Fauvism, yet the styles have invariably been subordinated to the need for personal expression At the risk of oversimplification, the new reality for these men and women was despair and anxiety Even a Nolde watercolor of a mother and child trembles as if in fever The color is hectic, as it is in the Fauvist portrait of a Jewish girl by Jawlensky (The other Russian, Chagall, seems ever to have carried on as Chagall regardless ) The magnificent Kokoschka watercolor nude could be from anywhere, until one notices the wild grimace on the face of the model Apart from these and a few other brilliant flashes, though, the general impression of the show is dark and melancholy...

...Today painting and its market are once again in an apathetic state Indeed, some artists almost envy their counterparts in totalitarian countries, persecution being one form of attention They feel freedom is something granted when governments either have nothing more to gain from oppression or have thought of more subtle ways to control...

...the middle of a cloud' It would be interesting to hear him talk more concretely on the transition from billboards to international success His own art he sees as an incomplete thing, merely "a tool to get someone off into their own vision '. Miss Tucker, being very involved, can do little more than invite us to become involved, on a "because it's there basis ' She does say, however, that "because Rosenquist and his art are always changing [recent work features panels sprayed with soft-edged bands of color] any conclusion about the nature of that experience must, of necessity, be only a beginning " While this kind of approach to the "art experience' does not make lively reading, it does well enough by the artist, being agreeable in tone It also makes the work seem more au cow ant than it is...

...In Coming Issues ANDREW J GLASS on The Campaign Trail S F HUDSON on China's Power Struggle EUGENE L MEYER on The Battle over Fort Lincoln BAYARD RUSTIN on Liberals and Community Control ELIAHU SALPETER on Israel's Russian Students...

...Sooner or later all discussions of Germany's contribution to modern art, and the absence of repose in its painting, fall back on the barbaric and idealistic elements in the culture Yet geography has been a big factor too When the Romans stopped, more or less at the Rhine and the Alps, they set a trend Ever since then Germany has somehow been excluded from the cultural mainstream and left to peer over the fence at the glories of France and Italy Notwithstanding the Germanic contribution to (or of) Gothic art later centuries saw them foraging into cozier cultures for inspiration-and not always at the head of a Panzer Division...

...The original show (first reconstructed in Munich 10 years ago) was to demonstrate the link between Jews Bolsheviks, the criminally insane, and modern art It featured revolting captions and explanatory' text for the public's guidance Presumably the crash course included a visit to the exhibition of approved art mounted in the city at the same time A recreation of both shows would have been most illuminating, though doubtless impossible, for the approved artists are said to have sunk without a trace...

...Since antiart has always had its cake and eaten it, there's no point in stressing the incongruity of its presence in museums In the case of James Rosenquist, whose painting is heroic in concept and size-the largest measuring 10 x 108^/2 feet-only a world's fair or a museum could provide viewing space His pictures can be seen at the Whitney through May 29...

...In art, as in everyday behavior, gestures resulting from inner necessity often have overtones of hostility, and the audiences for these gestures must choose between identifying with the author or taking offense (Objectivity is virtually impossible and, anyway, the word has come to mean partiality, as when news reporters are chided for not being objective ) For the first half of this century, a great deal of offense was taken at manifestations of modernism Now viewers have solved the problem by looking for themselves m art, and it has become accepted practice to enjoy only those works permitting self-identification (Advertisers have been quick to take advantage of this, naturally, and so have makers of such movies as The Graduate, which looked blatantly like the fruit of statistical surveys ). Despite the vibrations of Dada in science and politics, it is still too early to tell whether it determined-or terminated the course of modern art But back in the '60s, it was very much in command m the person of its child, Pop Though the movement struggled hard to be known as New Realism, Pop turned out to be a more appropriate label, and prescient too Its painters, in telling us our consumer goods were the new reality, used-more in campy condescension than irony-the techniques of modem folk art, that is, commercial design Besides presenting some interesting personalities, of whom Warhol is the most remarkable, the movement accomplished a great deal It jerked art out of a lethargic, post-Abstract Expressionist state, stimulated much argument, and gave a number of representational artists a new lease Above all, by appearing to sanction an anti-art attitude, it sprang the general public from intellectual prison Folk art was returned to folk as Art...

...This exhibition is a tour de force of integrity Except for a charming printed floral pattern and some sonorous color in the enormous Fill, Rosenquist slips neither into the decorative nor the painterly He can also crop images into incomprehensibility with an artlessness that is awe-inspiring Finally and aside from a vague aura of malevolence, the pictures express no emotion They are impressive purely for what they are not...

...From Impressionism on, the various movements were content to clean house and refurnish with their respective realities Then came the Dadaists, who burned down the house In other words, they pronounced art dead and at the same time claimed it lived, in that it could be anything an artist elected, as long as the choice was random and outrageous Along with total abstraction and Surrealism-appearing within 20 years of each other-Dadaism located reality inside the artist instead of outside...

...Certainly there is one conclusion to be drawn from the Nazis' failure to smother the new reality of their time Suppression fails not because artists are intransigent, or good ultimately triumphs, but because art, good and bad, cannot help reporting accurately on its period and environment Creative people, no matter what their intentions or beliefs-Nolde, for instance, was a Nazi supporter-are trapped in their time span The approved art must have expressed the same unease, yet the stormtroopers were fooled by its style, which, by all accounts, was comfortingly vulgar You could say that Hitler contributed a certain something to the Dada tradition...

...On Art MASTERS OF REALITY BY VIVIEN RAYNOR The history of modern art is an account of many fresh starts For about a century, succeeding generations of artists have regarded the work of their predecessors as something to be overthrown before the new and final version of reality could be established One contemporary school of criticism holds that new styles are critiques of those that preceded them, and most modern historians treat artists as autonomous developers of these styles Yet as the data accumulates, the century's activities begin to look more like those of the land crab, who spends his Me kicking sand out of his burrow only to have it refilled by the incoming tides...

...Four blocks north of the Whitney, at La Boetie Inc, is an approximation of the 1937 Degenerate Art show staged by the Nazis in Munich Having space, as well as strong motivation, the Nazis displayed over 700 pieces, this gallery can barely hold 50-odd oils, watercolors and drawings, and a group of primitive carvings, on view through May 20...

...Rosenquist began his working life as a painter of billboards, but employed the technique and imagery of advertising only after a brief fling at abstraction, or so this retrospective would indicate Then, though he retained the techniques, he scrambled the imagery, producing simulated collages of parts of objects-of figures, cars, signs, etc, certain themes recur, like spaghetti in tomato sauce, electric bulbs, and combs...