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PARTISAN REVIEW
Futurists, the Russian Constructivists, and a refreshingly comprehensive
selection of Americans. The show even managed to document the evo–
lution of many of the artists included through economical selections of
key works or, for a chosen few, mini-retrospectives. A crucial decade of
de Kooning's career was spanned by an early Ingres-esque pencil portrait
of about 1940, a jagged, Picasso-inspired seated nude of about 1947-1949,
and a full-blown 1950 painting on paper of a pneumatic, abstracted female
form. Matisse's lifelong accomplishments as a draftsman were also cele–
brated, beginning with a bold brush and ink still life from 1900 and ending
wi th a glowing cutout paper panel of about 1951, while Picasso, Mondrian,
and Klee were similarly well-served. Whether this concentration reflected
curatorial preferences or the predilections of New York collectors, the
resul t was impressive.
When lenders revealed their identities, that information sometimes
made you look at the work they owned in new ways. Discovering that a
lush 1928 Schwitters collage and a januned 1948 polychrome Kline both
belonged to Jasper Johns, for example, made you interrogate them for con–
nections with Johns's efforts-fruitlessly, as it turned out, apart from
confirmation that he has a good eye for other artists' work. But it was easy
to understand why Helen Frankenthaler, that virtuoso improviser of intu–
itive abstractions, had acquired a spectacular 1945 Hofmann watercolor, all
splatters, delicate touches, and uninhibited, loopy drawing.
The Morgan show was a high point of the sununer. Its handsome cat–
alogue, with informative entries for each work and a thoughtful essay on
the modern drawing by Jack Flam, is a splendid document of the aston–
ishing resources of this city's collections.
At the other end of the spectrum, a candidate for "most exasperating
show" or "show that most consistently provoked irritated comments"
(from critics, artists, art historians, aficionados, and casual visitors alike,
albeit for different reasons) was the first segment of the Whitney Museum's
millennium extravaganza,
TheAmerican Century:Art and Culture 1900-2000,
organized by Barbara Haskell, the museum's curator of pre-war art. Part
one, a mammoth multi-media survey covering 1900 to 1950, filled the
museum all spring and sununer. (Part two, covering 1950 to 2000 and orga–
nized by three curators, is scheduled for late September through February.)
The American Century
is intended to explore "the evolution of the
American identity as seen through the eyes of America's artists over the
last century," taking into account "the impact of such forces as intrnigra–
tion, technology and the mass media on art and culture"-which could
describe the Whitney's entire mandate. It's an ambitious goal, even for a
show of more than twelve hundred paintings, sculptures, and photographs
(about the same number of works as the legendary 1913 Armory Show),
