A most serious group show has been hung by the Dwan, providing a lift and a celebration of art whose example other Southern California galleries could hopefully emulate. Most participants are big stars in a game of all-stars, and in at least several cases, extraordinary works are on view even for those by whom extraordinary works are not uncommon. Robert Motherwell, for example, is represented by a strange small contribution entitled Monument to Jackson Pollock, which atypically renders a heart-full of shimmering orange-fuzzy, autumnal heat as bizarre as it is uniquely moving. Jean Tinguely, recently ensconced in New York at work on the problem of assembling shiny new parts instead of greasy old ones, succeeds gloriously in his own theater of the absurd. He has discovered fun-things in Woolworth’s rather than in junkyards, screwed them, with sound-boxes or radios, onto plexiglass and presents us with wall-hangings that screech an eery plaintive wail that is as gay and tearful as a gypsy air. A 1951 Jackson Pollock ink drawing is unusually light and restrained, and emotionally unheavy in the way Dufy used to be in the 30’s. Yves Klein’s blue sponge sculpture is all eyes and organs, and pleads in tragic supplication, like the sea-monster at the finale of “La Dolce Vita.” Also represented in this brilliant exhibition are excellent works by deKooning, Waldren, Kanemitsu, Reinhardt, Kline, Miró, Parker, Bontecou, and Guston.
––Arthur Secunda
