National Art Education Association

Art News &NotesAuthor(s): Burt WassermanSource: Art Education, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Mar., 1964), pp. 26-27Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190556 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 01:32

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.85 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 01:32:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BURT WASSERMAN

The Measured and the Measurers

Walk through a gallery or a museum and listen to the snap- judgments. Work that blistered an artist's fingers as he clenched his brushes are casually dismissed with a flippant wave of the hand by self-styled art experts. It's enough to make a person ill. One won- ders if some of these smug know- it-alls have taken an Instant Art Appreciation pill with their in- stant coffee. Think of it. How many people looking at art may actually be measured by their re- action to what they see, or, more significantly, what they fail to see in a given work? How much do people reveal of themselves by their expressed estimates of works of art? How often is the evalua- tor, with his reckless judgments, really being exposed and evalu- ated by the work he so rashly pre- sumes to criticize?

Many years ago the artist Ad Reinhardt had a two-panel car- toon in a newspaper. The first panel showed an indignant "ex-

pert" pointing his finger at a

painting and asking, in mocking tone, "Ha, what does that repre- sent?" In the second panel, the same painting was to be seen pointing a finger at the gallery goer and asking, "What do you represent?" After all is said and done, one takes away from an art object only in proportion to what one brings to the work. The more the investment, the greater the return.

Now Hear This An unusual gallery tour, in

which museum visitors can listen to a prerecorded lecture while examining some of the world's great paintings, is available at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The taped lecture, entitled "Pioneers of Modern Art: The Impressionists and the Post-Im- pressionists," is contained in a small, light playback device which is carried over the shoulder by means of a belt. Equipped with an earpiece attachment, the in- strument can be turned on or off at will, permitting the listener to follow the tour at his own pace of comprehension and interest.

The lecture is by Thomas Folds, Dean of Education at the Mu- seum. Guiding the listener from one painting to another through several galleries, Mr. Folds dis- cusses the work of some of the outstanding precursors of twen- tieth century art including Manet, Courbet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Also in- cluded are Picasso, Roualt, and

Kandinsky. The development of several artists is traced from early to later paintings, with emphasis on the expressive qualities of each

picture under consideration. The tour lasts about 45 minutes.

The miniature tape recorder thus provides each listener with his own private guide, available at any time during museum hours. Known as "Acoustiguide," it rents for 50 cents in the Special Exhi- bition Galleries, which currently

house the Museum's collection of late nineteenth and early twen- tieth century paintings.

Top of the Tens For some while I have been

kicking around an idea that in- trigues me, and for what it may be worth, I would like to share the notion with you. In a nutshell, here it is: I have a hunch, maybe a far gone one, that in every decade of the twentieth century there has been a piece of work that somehow embodies what was most aesthetically and expression- ally challenging, stimulating, and seminal during that ten-year span. Usually, the work is a remarkable breakthrough-a culmination in which many strands of develop- ment are pulled together and, in turn, from which many new cur- rents flow. Here are my candi- dates for the first four decades:

1907-Les Demoiselles D'Avig- non by Picasso

1914--Improvised Composi- tions Numbers 3 and 4 by Kan- dinsky

1923-The Large Glass by Duchamp

1937-Guernica by Picasso 1943-Broadway Boogie Woo-

gie by Mondrian. When I get to the 1950's I find I am still so close to those years that the short perspective of time is not adequate for making a cer- tain judgment. Nevertheless, at this time, I would guess that it will be a toss-up between Number 32 by Pollock and Woman I by deKooning. Naturally, it is alto- gether too early in the 1960's to say anything about them yet.

ART Education 26

1 ' ~~~~~~~~~~~~i B

i?

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.85 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 01:32:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I am most anxious to hear from readers about this. Does the idea make sense? Would you make other selections? Do let me know what you think.

From Round the World This month finds the Guggen-

heim Museum of New York pre- senting its Fourth International Award Exhibition. These shows have been held every two years since 1956. The paintings in- cluded were chosen by Lawrence Alloway, the museum's curator who travelled the Far East, Latin America, Europe, Canada, and this country to make his selections. As a result of Alloway's search, 82 paintings from 24 countries were assembled for presentation. While some of the names of paint- ers are very familiar, many are not. For example, while artists like

Riopelle of Canada, Dubuffet of France, Delvaux of Belgium, Gia- cometti of Switzerland, and Miro of Spain are all worthy and well known, it was a fascinating sur- prise to see work by such figures relatively unknown here as Otero of Venezuela, Fangor of Poland, Onosato of Japan, and Rainer of Austria. Many more works by artists infrequently encountered within our borders are also very much worth looking over. The United States is represented by paintings by Hofmann, Newman, Motherwell, deKooning, Guston, and Gottlieb.

For the first time since the establishment of these biannual shows, the exhibition will be shared with other museums. In order to assure presentation of the selections in widely separated areas of the world, the following museums have been invited to show the Guggenheim's choice in their respective areas of the world: The Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii; Akad- emie de Kunste, Berlin, Ger- many; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Museo Nacional Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and the Ring-

ling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida. Circulation will begin after the initial presentation in New York closes on March 29 and is scheduled to come to an end in the first half of 1965.

The Absurdity All year long I regularly receive

in the mail catalogs of exhibitions from museums here and there. Many of them are for regional or national shows of an annual na- ture. As a rule, they list prize win- ners in some numerical order- first, second, third, and honorable mentions. Often the prizes are round numbered figures of money. Sometimes the awards are medals, or cups, or some other pieces of hardware. The intention, of rec- ognizing and encouraging talent, is doubtless laudable. But what makes this hangover from the royal patronage of the past an absurd practice is that, more often than not, the "winners" are never again heard from. Perhaps it would be wiser for annual exhibits to be held without the horse-race trappings of win, place, and show. Instead of dissipating funds every year on some dinky little prizes, the money should be held for a five-year period. At those five-year intervals the funds should be spent for purchasing work by artists who have consistently demon- strated qualitative output; artists whose work has regularly ap- peared in the juried annuals. The purchase awards could then be- come permanent acquisitions of growing collections. At least the work thus acquired would repre- sent a degree of having stood a test of several years, and maybe then the sham of prizes for pass- ing fads and short-lived, overnight reputations would begin to di- minish.

Bright Spots in Focus From the seventh of this month

and until the end of the year Philadelphia's Commercial Mu- seum will be exhibiting "Crafts of the Orient." This will be the

first retrospective show of the Mu- seum's historic collection of tex- tiles, metalwork, woodcarving, and ceramics by craftsmen from Peking to Istanbul.

The Art Institute of Chicago is presenting Ceramics and Jewelry by Donald Frith until March 29. From March 14 to April 19 the very sensitive and ex- pressive photographic vision of Aaron Siskind will be on view at the Institute.

A retrospective showing of work by Jacob Marling is being fea- tured at the North Carolina Mu- seum of Art until April 5.

A hundred pictures by Sam Falk, photographer of The New York Times, may be seen at the Pepsi-Cola Gallery in New York until April 10. The show, called "New York True North" depicts scenes of life in the great city.

Those interested in graphic art should take in the one-man show of Gabor Peterdi at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., un- til March 29. Peterdi is showing paintings as well as his finely wrought prints.

Professional artists of St. Louis, Missouri, and the southern Illinois area are represented in an exhibi- tion of painting and sculpture in the Illinois State Museum at Springfield. The show, sponsored by the St. Louis Chapter of Artists Equity, will remain on view through March 29.

To Show Your Creative Work

Toledo Area Artists Annual Ex- hibition May 10-31. Entries due April 9-11. Write for prospectus and entry forms to: Rudolf M. Riefstahl, Assistant Curator, The Toledo Museum of Art, Monroe Street at Scottwood Avenue, Toledo 1, Ohio. (Open only to residents and former residents of the Toledo area in the states of Ohio and Michigan.)

Burt Wasserman is an associate professor of art at Glassboro State College, Glassboro, New Jersey.

March 1964 27

This content downloaded from 188.72.127.85 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 01:32:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions