Word: abstractions
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Whitney Museum's annual roundup of contemporary American art may not accurately reflect the merits of modern American painting, but it is a jolting reminder of the power and influence of the new academy of abstract expressionism. Throughout most of the Whitney last week chaos reigned. More than a score of exhibitors seemed to feel that where there's a Willem (de Kooning) there's a way-through large and sticky briars of paint to a darkling goal...
...byways were apt to be dignified with mysterious road signs: Boon, Creation, Fluxus, Rite, House of Venus I. James Ernst coyly offered a Painting with a Secret Title, which resembled a tangle of TV antennas. Such literary hints and gestures were a change from the blunt titles of abstractions in the last few Whitney annuals, which gave merely a number or a date. Possibly more abstract expressionists were beginning to think in terms of meanings, whether or not they painted meaningful pictures...
...paintings and 43 sculptures, there were some works, of course, by a handful of men who stand above fashion. Charles Sheeler's California showed a moonlit village so radiant and calm as to bring Bethlehem to mind. Mark Tobey's Pacific Circle was as boldly abstract as anything on view, yet as subtle as it was bold; it pictured the elements mingling in a gentle storm...
...tutorial curriculum--particularly for honors juniors--is unfortunately so abstract that this irrelevance is unimportant. Sophomore year introduces the concentrator to great historical writing while the junior year is devoted largely to the philosophy of history and to historiography...
These two years could easily be compressed into one. An historian--Gibbon is a good example--reveals his philosophical position on such questions as causation and determinism by his interpretation of events. Abstract historical theory, which is frequently based upon analysis of the great chroniclers of history, should be combined in the sophomore year with the introduction to these historians. This plan would then allow the junior concentrator to investigate philosophical problems in terms of source material...