Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, and Lucas Samaras
Whitney Museum, Castelli Gallery, and Pace Gallery
It seems fantastic that between, say, 1950 and 1958, that is between Franz Kline’s 40th and 48th year, he was a great painter. Without this interregnum he would have remained a minor urban illustrator on the New York scene of the 1930s. Naturally, the great productions of the early fifties force one to regard the earlier work with a more respectful intensity, as they disclose clues of his later achievement. But, for all that, the beginning is a familiar provincial tale of Cubist, Expressionist, Impressionist and Social Realist conventions, all played out on a very modest scale. At the painful