Word: barres
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...signed with the name of his dog (which was, impressively enough, Fidèle de Port-Manech). Walter P. Chrysler Jr. got a "rejection slip" signed by a fictitious secretary named Kelly. Though the young James Johnson Sweeney managed to make the grade, the Modern Museum's Alfred Barr Jr. was rudely rebuffed by Barnes, and Lloyd Goodrich of the Whitney Museum never got in at all. Members of the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts were banned as being "habitually in a state of profound alcoholic intoxication." A lady critic from Philadelphia was told that...
Banned: Books about Books. The St. John's approach was begun by President Weigle's predecessor, onetime Chicago Professor Stringfellow ("Winkie") Barr, who abolished survey courses and books about books. Once a school for Maryland's landed gentry, St. John's became one of the most talked about experiments in U.S. education. It has yet to produce alumni with reputations to match the school's promise (its first "name" graduate: TV Quizling Charles Van Doren...
What to Do? In a reply to Timesman Canaday last week, Tastemaker Barr tried to explain that his "rather garbled remark" had been "eagerly misinterpreted as an obituary. It was not. American abstract expressionism, in its robust middle age, is going strong"-despite "the hostile attitude of the head critics of the leading New York newspapers." But what caused Barr real pain was his unwanted reputation as the most powerful taste-maker in America. "I am more than embarrassed," he wrote, "I am dismayed. Any influence I may have is largely dependent upon the institution where I work...
Where to Go? Speaking beautifully about modern art, Barr said that in the last dozen years "we have had a movement, abstract expressionism, which has enjoyed an international reputation and great success here. The vigor and quality of this movement is bound to generate a reaction-but where we are going to go, I am not willing to prophesy. What I see is a new concern with figure, and a movement toward a severe style." Last week, in sentences of 20th century hedging, Barr was busily trying to shake loose from the implications of his words...
...York Times Art Critic John Canaday, describing Barr as the "most powerful tastemaker in American art today," called Barr's statement a "body blow" to abstract expressionism, the impulsive painting of things unrecognizable, hoping for fortuitous results. "There is not a dealer in town, nor a collector, nor yet a painter who hopes to hang in the Museum of Modern Art who doesn't study each of Mr. Barr's syllables. If Mr. Barr sees a 'new concern with figure,' there is going to be a rush toward the art stores where those little books...