Palmer D. French

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  print September 1963

  Arthur G. Dove

  The work of Arthur G. Dove (1880–1946) covers a wide range of highly imaginative ex­periments in various idioms and modes of syntax, as well as a considerable range of qualitative variability. This ex­hibition is a disappointment in that it is comprised mainly of examples of this great artist’s less consequential, and physically quite miniature, diversions­—chips from the workshop, as it were, rather than the more committed and seriously undertaken creations.

  The gallery statement dwells with considerable insistence upon Mr. Dove’s historical importance. The emphasis on this point constitutes

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  print September 1963

  Serge Trubach, Jack Carrigg

  Trubach’s idiom, though generally, non-objective, defies easy categorization and eludes labels. He has developed, to a superlative degree, the potentialities of extremely minute and sensitive modulations of surface in conjunction with very subdued and yet scintillating inflections of color, which in turn generate his unique style of kaleidoscopic “spatial mobility” and “rhythmic organization.”

  In this showing he is exhibited at his highest powers in the following state­ments: “Oval” and “Winter Sun,” each a flexibly explorative, yet harmonious unity of thought and material, executed on wood panel;

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  print September 1963

  Robert Watson and Giancarlo Erizzo

  Nothing is inherent­ly wrong with producing a series of variations on a theme: one need only mention Degas’ ballet dancers, Monet’s variations on the Rouen facade, or the inventive and exciting explorations of limited palette and restricted geometry so challenging to those facile in ab­stract idioms. Mr. Watson’s pretentious inanities, however, can hardly be termed “variations.” Two themes prevail in this showing: both are in the same “key,” and each is subjected to insignificantly variant repetitions-always in the same tonality, and in a tedious drone of spirit­less and pedestrian syntactical

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  print September 1963

  Art Holman and Ruth Asawa

  The graphic work of Mr. Holman here exhibited, in which the pastel crayon predominates, falls into three chronologically sequential phases. The exhibits are untitled and may be identified only by dates of composition. The earliest phase (1959) may be desig­nated as the “color-fabric” phase, in which, but for a narrow margin, the en­tire rectangle of paper presents an ho­mogenous, hazy surface of some basic hue, through which, like fibers in a tweed swatch, miniscule threads and points of various colors are more or less uniformly distributed; the “lithoid” phase (1960–61) explores intersecting

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  print September 1963

  Hugh Curtis, Paul Pernish, Robert Brotherton, and Joe Clark

  Mr. Curtis and Mr. Per­nish are apparently sympathetic with one another’s methods and have, in fact, collaborated on one painting in this exhibit. The vernacular of their idioms aligns them with the so-called “Pop Art” movement. Mr. Curtis’ dominant theme is the motorcyclist. The typical mode of treatment consists in goggles, helmets, moustaches and prim­itive cartoon-physiognomies stated as black geometries against white, ellip­toid, “face-blank” cartouches which are defined as negative space, “cut,” as it were, from flat, massive “blocks” of vio­lent red or yellow on billboard-size can­vases.

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  print September 1963

  Group Show

  Fear that a policy of artistic commitment will “narrow the market” is reflected in the average “unlimited” fare of many little pantapoloia of art, but never more de­pressingly than in the off-season clut­tering of walls with the dregs of the bins. One wearies of group shows that have no theme, that present neither a sequence in the evolution of a method nor a coherent essay in significantly juxtaposed parallels or contrasts, but that seem merely an attempt to display a “little of something” for every con­ceivable taste (including the most ba­nal) that might be found in a random sampling of

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  print September 1963

  Raymond A. Whyte

  This odious rubbish which purports to be “academic” in terms, here, of the “fin de siécle” studio “trompe-l’oeil,” and there, of the architectural motifs and perspectives of the Tuscan Manier­isti, can hardly be taken seriously enough to merit discussion. In addition to the copy-easel themes already men­tioned, there is a quasi-Flemish Interior, a quasi-Barbizon Pastorale, and some quasi-Pre-Raphaelite Damoiselles. If one wishes to affect this sort of Boston dowager Traditionalist pedantry, one should at least have the ability to draw well, which Mr. Whyte does not. One glance at a few calendar