The Pulitzer Collection

The Spanish painter Juan Gris once defined classicism as a perfect balance between the emotional and intellectual. In that sense, Louise and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.'s collection reflects a truly classic taste. Most private collections mirror the collector in some way, revealing a conservative temperament or avant-garde spirit, sometimes a literary bent or romantic strain. Some, influenced by reputation or advice, reflect no intellectual activity other than faith. The Pulitzers' choice, however, represents not only a distinct personality but a clarified point of view.

Here is both an eye for strength, unconfused with violence or misplaced emotion, and a feeling for lyric poetry, unconfounded with sweetness or saccharine romanticism. Aside from a few false notes, the chord rings true throughout.

The monumental structure of Cezanne's Portrait of Jules Peyron and Rocks at Bimemus, wedded with all the warmth of bristling light, comprises the quintessence of this classic vision. And an early, analytical-cubist Picasso landscape, with its shimmering greys and silvers, shows how formal structure at its purest and most abstract can be fully as moving as more extroverted emotion.

At the same time, Rouault's turbulent mysticism never looked better. Three Clowns, almost an ikon in spiritual dignity as well as in symbolic analogy, imparts to its rich, warm tones an austerity as breathtaking as its intense emotion. And Autumn, more soul than landscape, reveals perhaps even more the spirit of an old master than a modern.

This provides formidable competition. Next to Rouault, Max Beckmann's strength, coherent though it is in both still life and portrait, becomes an inflexible and dry stiffness. Bradley Walker Tomlin's vivid pattern of color dabs appears insubstantial and weak. Even Miro's usual verve and wit fail to bring his Lasso to satisfying completeness. Yet, such free-swinging abstractions as Toti Scialoja's or Richard Diebenkorn's, have far less to say. Their absence of representational basis is perfectly acceptable but their lack of aesthetic articulation is not.

The Pulitzers nevertheless seek their poetic strength in art in terms of a diversity of temperaments. I first saw Picasso's Woman in Blue in New York several years ago and never forgot it. Possibly the most exciting of the ten Picassos here, its blacks and reds, blues and violets, unite the painter's apparently endless ingenuity with his most substantial creative capacities.

Matisse's The Conservatory came as another pleasant re-encounter. Few paintings, even by Matisse, match the lucid freshness of this canvas. And, as an interesting contrast, Three Bathers combines the Frenchman's characteristic gracious ease with a monumentality as structural as his bronze, Seated Nude.

Nor could Braque's impeccable richness be better presented than in four still-lives chosen by the Pulitzers. Representing three especially important periods, they fully justify the tribute accorded Braque by the painter of Woman in Blue: "He never sings off key."

Compared with the smallest of the Braques, Afro's immense canvases seem slight. They do reflect facility, sensitivity and a highly personal approach, but somehow their content never quite justifies their expansive delivery. On the other hand, each modest Bonnard still-life, like Vuillard's little Woman in Green, voices far more substance in truly elegant chords of brilliant color.

Mr. Pulitzer, who began collecting as a Harvard undergraduate when he acquired Modigliani's Elvira Resting at a Table, is entitled, after twenty years, to some mistakes. Villon's portrait of the collector and Tamayo's study of Mrs. Pulitzer, tressingly poor examples of the work of gifted commissioned rather than chosen, are both discollector and Tamayo's study of Mrs. Pulitzer, tressingly poor examples of the work of gifted commissioned rather than chosen, are both dispainters. Andre Beaudin's The Steeplechase, almost commercial in its obvious mannerisms, seems enigmatically out of place.

So much more "right" in every respect is the staccato rhythm of Klee's ironically entitled Anchored, or the intensely Spanish tautness of Gris' Self Portrait.

My greatest regret is the unfortunate, though unavoidable, time of year at which this superb collection reaches Cambridge. Examinations or not, this is no event to miss.