print December 1968

Washington

The end of last season and the beginning of this one have seen a reshuffling––or clarification––in the relationship of Washington’s various museums of American and contemporary art to one another. The National Collection of Fine Arts after a quiet period of preparation opened up its new quarters in the old Patent Office Building last May, and has commenced its first season there. The Corcoran Gallery of Art has followed up the announcement of changes in its staff and the creation of an additional board of governors with the news of a merger between itself and the smaller Washington Gallery of

print March 1968

Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini

“Masters of Modern Italian Art,” an exhibition of 104 works from the Gianni Mattioli Collection of Milan opened its tour of the United States (Washington, Dallas, San Francisco, Detroit, Kansas City and Boston) at the Phillips Collection. It’s very much a study show, “intended to provide a direct knowledge in depth of Italian art between 1910 and 1935,” and it performs this service excellently.

Of the five artists (Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini) who signed Boccioni’s Milan “Manifesto of Futurist Painters” in 1910, Carrà turns out to be the most

print March 1968

Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Thomas Downing, Paul Reed, Rockne Krebs, Howard Mehring and more

Something obviously has to be done about the format of the Corcoran Gallery’s biennial “Area Show” of local painting, sculpture, drawings, prints and pottery. The value of the show was already in doubt two years ago when Director Herman Warner Williams, Jr., complained that too few of the better local artists had submitted work, and threatened to conclude the series if there was not more co-operation in 1967. This time, with the “area” for the 18th show extended to a radius of 200 miles from Washington, additional categories for film and photography, and an outside juror—Bates Lowry, Director

print March 1968

Thomas Downing

Thomas Downing’s recent development points up one “favorable circumstance” that is changing the artistic climate of Washington: the inspiration to the local artists of the increased number of contemporary museum shows. Since the “Washington Color Painters” show, Downing’s work has been going through a process of rapid change and transition: it’s as though he, more than Davis or Mehring, realized the general crisis of direction built into the achievement of the “Color School” that that show celebrated, and the need to move on to something beyond the “flat color areas” style perfected by Noland.

print March 1968

Sam Gilliam

I mentioned earlier a “major breakthrough” in Sam Gilliam’s work: this occurred in the summer of 1966, and was first brought to public notice in his show that fall at the Jefferson Place Gallery. Suddenly and dramatically, a former follower of the Washington Color School emerged as having broken loose from the “flat color areas” style, and as an original painter in his own right. This season, Gilliam has followed up the excitement of that show with a couple of exhibitions running successively at the Phillips Collection (Gilliam’s first museum show) and at the Jefferson Place Gallery.

Gilliam’s

print December 1967

Scale as Content at the Corcoran

THE CURRENT EXHIBITION OF Scale As Content at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is more important for what it promises and signifies than for what it actually is. It seems to be necessary to distinguish between the intention and attitude behind the show and the quality of the exhibition itself.

Eleanor Green, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran, who conceived the idea of the exhibition after discussions on scale acting as content with Al Held in the summer of 1966, states in her catalog introduction that “this is the first time that an American museum has requested three

Andrew Hudson