Galleries at Christmas: Abstraction and Reaction

A recent tour of commercial galleries around Harvard Square proved less hard on the eyes than similar ventures in the past. For one thing, the scene has been upgraded by the addition of the Carriage House Art Gallery (56 Boylston Street), which promises to supply some serious shows of modern prints.

It is currently exhibiting the prints of Jean Dubuffet (no, Virginia, he is not the same as Bernard Buffet). The word "important" is probably the most over-used term in the art dealer's vocabulary; yet it is safe to apply it to Dubuffet, who seems one of the three or four most significant artists to emerge since World War II. Incidentally, his recent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was accompanied by an excellent illustrated catalogue, which may still be had from Mandrake for $3.75.

Featured here are his color lithographs of 1961-1963, nine of which represent single figures in various stages of confusion with the world. The tenth is an excellent piece, Loisirs, where two living bodies float over a landscape. It is apparent from the briefest description that this artist's main concern is the bewilderment of modern man. Dubuffet believes that his images are truly realistic, and that prettier views are insane (a term which some critics have applied to him). His art is unique, both in its imagination and in the technical skills he brings to it.

Having said this, let me add that these are not Dubuffet's greatest prints. This series seems decorative beside the simple force of his war-time work or when compared to his lithographic masterpieces in the 1953 Series. Also missing is his recent virtuoso performance, Saturday Afternoon 1964. Still, we are lucky to get any Dubuffets at all. They are most reasonably priced, and have frames by Bill Richardson (more on him in the next article).

Nearby, physically if not aesthetically, is the Cambridge Art Association (18 Eliot Street). Exhibited as a rule are local amateurs, whose usual output (variations on the Eisenhower-therapeutic style) is generally best ignored.

Cambridge Ladies

However, this month they present an exhibit called "Departures and Distractions," which is illuminating in several ways. In it, the ladies have followed most of the current idioms, from abstract expressionism to hard-edge relief, from assemblages a la Stankiewicz to painting in debt to Jasper Jones. In the hands of the artists shown, these potentially vital forms have become empty and lifeless. If nothing else, this show should prove that using abstract means doesn't make a poor painter look any better. These relatively talented amateurs have failed; shouldn't this quiet those who have always claimed that "any child could do it?"

This exhibit should be educational in another way: it illustrates the wide dissemination that the new art forms (e.g. "pop art") have received. Yet the museums and galleries often act as if, after fifty years of abstraction, their only duty is to show the public that such a thing exists. Some people do still refuse to look at "modern" art; but if the Cambridge ladies are copying it, it has certainly gotten pretty far. We are ready for the second stage: let's have the museums and critics try to show something about quality in art, emphasizing that eighty per cent, at least, of today's artistic production is simply no good. It may surprise people to learn that this is nothing new; that for every Rembrandt, there were a hundred students and a thousand imitators who couldn't come close. The trouble with well-meaning exhibits like the one at the Art Association is that it gives all of art a bad name, though it may have been fun to do.

This exhibit is being treated because it is handy and symptomatic. It should be reported, in fairness, that its art is no worse than half of the things on Newbury Street (the Boston Galleries) or Madison Avenue. And one or two things are included that could go anywhere: a painting by Elizabeth O. Jones and a junk sculpture, "Bird," by Stanley Sheldon, stand out.

It is unfortunate that a second show sponsored by the Cambridge Art Association (at the Edna Stebbins Gallery, 3 Church Street) is scheduled to close before this article appears. Every painting dealt with the glories of the Charles River, and the exhibit was called the "Save Memorial Drive Arts Show." Though the moral and political effort here is unassailable, the art was depressing. A Raoul Dufy watercolor stood out (any time that happens, you are in serious trouble). My preference was for a work called "Trading Ship" by Nielson Wright, who must be, one would guess, about eleven. He showed up his elders, who proved once again that realistic painting can never be truly realistic; nothing here recalled the sometime holiday mood of the riverbank as well as a Miro abstraction might have.

Growing Galleries

Galleries develop as artists do. Gropper Galleries (underneath the Brattle Theatre at 40 Brattle Street) has probably become the best in Cambridge. Mr. Gropper used to show some less-than-extraordinary local painters; he now concentrates more on prints and drawings, for which he has a good eye. His December exhibition makes the tenth anniversary of the gallery, quite an achievement in Cambridge, and it is one of the best. The show is made up largely of drawings from the sixteenth century on and includes fine examples attributed to Stradanus, Bercham, and Millais. His gallery also features prints and drawings by artists who have been over-looked by both history and inflation; drawings by late nineteenth century artists like Steinlen and Toorop are extremely interesting and very reasonably priced.

Around the corner at 111 Mt. Auburn Street is Seymour Swetzoff, custom framer. He does excellent work; as far as I know, there is no one else in Cambridge who can lay gold leaf around the corner of a frame, giving the illusion that there is no joint. More than this, Mr. Swetzoff is a knowledgeable and friendly man with varied interests (yoga, old master drawings) and a sense of humor. He also puts on more-or-less regular exhibits in his gallery room. His present show is of Max Swartz, who does pop art pictures of the Beatles--need more be said? However, in January, he has scheduled what should be an outstanding exhibition of nineteenth century painters, including Bierstadt and Davies.

At 134 Mt. Auburn Street is the Paul Schuster Gallery. Mr. Schuster is a tasteful and craftsmanly framer. He also maintains a stock of prints by Matisse, Zao Wou-ki, Roualt (wood engravings, around $30), and others. He is moving away from prints toward showing more contemporary paintings, his true love.

The present exhibition at Schuster is one of small collages (pieces of cut paper or cloth glued on a flat surface; they look like paintings) by Pat Morse. The artist, a girl who teaches in Berkeley, California, seems to be a happy exception to my own belief that women seldom make very good artists. (Women, of course, won't accept this; they say that not enough women have had the chance to become serious artists. One can answer that plenty of women cook, but the best cooks still are men. But that never seems to settle anything.)

Happy Exception

These pictures are small, seldom larger than 10" square; Schuster will show Morse's larger paintings in May. They are part of the tradition of abstract expressionism and recall Conrad Marca-Relli and Franz Kline to an extent. But they are quite individually conceived and well put together (the frame and backing were done by the artist herself). Some of them tend to be a little "soft," where she uses blue and green cloth cut into small shapes. Her paper collages are most successful; they are black and white, with a little red occasionally, and their line varies between that of torn paper and real hard-edge. Her inspiration is nature (in which she differs from many men abstractionists) and in this case was the snow fields of Alaska. Yet the small piece "Rock and Ice" succeeds in recalling winter harshness while existing on its own as a non-objective work.

(Next: the galleries of Newbury Street.)

Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., is a 1960 graduate of Yale and a 1964 graduate of Harvard Law School. He is studying for a Ph.D. at the Fogg Art Museum and is a member of the Corporation of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

This is the first in a two-part series.