Word: mathieu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...season, Manhattan averages at least one first-rate art show (as against dozens of dull ones) every week. Last week's most exciting show fell to the Kootz Gallery, which hung ten weird canvases by a controversial Frenchman named Georges Mathieu. The exhibition was almost bound to draw as many boos as bouquets, but none could deny its forcefulness...
...ferocity is also part of Mathieu's obvious desire to overpower the viewer and compel his attention. Two smaller pictures-a snarl of black on a red canvas and a few black splashes on a white canvas-show that when the shouter lowers his voice, he also lowers his standards; they are simply chic. But as a whole the exhibition proves that Mathieu is as powerful an abstract expressionist as Manhattan's own Willem de Kooning...
...first time in his series of novels, "Paths to Freedom," Sartre appears clearly in his dual role; characters of the novelist begin to confront questions set by the philosopher. In "The Age of Reason," and "The Reprieve," a nation of individuals, typified by Mathieu, shrank from commitment, thinking to escape choice. Now, a few wake to the thought that their very failure to act--the vote they did not cast, the protest they did not speak--was itself a choice: a choice of war, and with war, defeat-Mathieu understands: "Let them clamor to the skies: 'We have nothing...
...life, intellect has betrayed Mathieu. "Enough! I'm through! I'm sick of being the wise guy, the guy who always sees straight! . . . If only I could have pressed my finger on the trigger, somewhere some German would have fallen...
After three days, Mathieu ends his life in action, holding out against the German advance in the church steeple of a small village. The fifteen-minute fight in the tower climaxes the development of the first three novels--but the series could not end with it. The rest of "Troubled Sleep" and a fourth novel still in preparation, "The Last Chance," is concerned with those who must live on, "Day after day . . . to gather in the rotten fruit of defeat...