Focus: R. B. Kitaj
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There are two paintings in the R. B. Kitaj retrospective that, with hindsight, look uncannily prophetic. One is called Whistler vs. Ruskin (Novella in Terre Verte, Yellow and Red), 1992, and portrays the expatriate American artist and his critical adversary as boxers, after George Bellows. Whistler has knocked a blue-haired Ruskin out of the ring. The other painting is called Against Slander, 1990–91, and concerning it Kitaj remarks, “At the very moment Cézanne was showing in the first Impressionist exhibition, the Hafetz Hayim, across Europe, published . . . his first book (translated as Hold