ART CHRONICLE
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before the First World War that we find more inventive imagination.
The '20s, somewhat like the '50s, was perhaps a time when the earlier
gains were consolidated.)
It
is puzzling to see Kandinsky come to the
end of his explorations, after inaugurating a kind of painting which
later flowered into our contemporary abstract expressionism. His more
recent work provides something of an answer, because it shows a painter
interested in all the things abstract painters are
thought
to be interested
in---constructional problems of design and balance, geometric forms,
non-objective arabesques, relations to musical ideas, and so on-but
not in the medium of paint itself. Kandinsky's explorations took him
elsewhere, so he was not moved to assert what his pictures of 1909-14
seemed to imply.
Some ironic operation of the law of scarcity seems to result if
every medium is to assert itself. At least that is my feeling about the
new gallery, World House, which opened at the Carlyle with much
fanfare. The gallery itself was the most important part of the show.
Designed by Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos, its point was to
integrate architecture and art objects, by means of an original design
of walls, lighting, rooms, etc. The idea was admirable, although the
gallery seemed to me unsuccessful. The subdivision of space into rather
small rooms on two levels, connected by a floating stairway, made for
traffic and confusion; combined with the undulating walls, and low
ceilings, the effect was claustral, and no gain at all for the pictures
and sculpture. It seems that architecture cannot assert itself in this
way. In churches, palaces, or similar buildings, the displayed objects
are taken as part of the medium, or are designed for the setting. But
for transient exhibitions, perhaps the more neutral space of most gal–
leries is preferable, even the dead whiteness in the former quarters of
the Guggenheim Museum-perhaps even the clutter and unintegrated
style of surroundings like the Shchukin salons or the Musee Jacquemart–
Andre.
Coming Exhibitions:
Day Schnabel
sculpture
Dorothy Sturm
collages
Marie Taylor
sculpture
Maud Morgan
portraits
Betty Parsons Gallery
--15 East 57 Street,
N. Y.
ROBERT GOODNOUGH
Through April 20
PAUL GEORGES
April 23-May II
TIBOR DE NAGY GALLERY
24 E. 67 STREET, N.Y.C.
