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JR 1976 The New York Times Arts and Leisure Section 2 Sunday, August 9, 1976 A Critic's Valedictory: The Americanization of Modern Art and Other Upheavals [[image - painting]] 1954: Dominating the New York art scene in the 1950's, Abstract Expressionism was "the transplanted end result of a European development." Above Franz Klines "Mahoning." [[image - painting]] 1965: With its "European orientation," the Museum of Modern Art was reluctant to accept Pop art, "the first essentially American modern art." Above a detail from James Rosenquist's "F-111." [[image - painting]] 1976: Photorealism, the antithesis of Abstract Expressionism, is today "the strongest contender for the title of Latest Thing." The example is Richard Estes's "Supreme Hardware." By JOHN CANADY Seventeen is hardly what you would call a round number. It is a downright shapeless number for measuring spans of years, which we block out in units of 10,25, and 100. But if you had come to The Times as art critic in September, 1959, and were leaving it as I am doing in August, 1976, then 17 would look very round to you indeed. A lot has happened. In terms of monuments as witnesses, the Guggenheim Museum opened in 1959, and a steady flow of exhibitions ranging from large and sober to small and giddy have somehow been jimmied into Frank Lloyd Wright's snail curl. Asia House held its first exhibition in its new quarters in 1960, the beginning of a new public awareness of Far Eastern art, augmented in 1971 by the opening of Japan House. In 1966 the Whitney Museum of American Art moved into its first satisfactory building, where it continues its efforts to make sense of the 20th century and catch up with the 19th. The Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art added new wings, testifying to the expansion of our cultural horizons. And as a tribute to the selectivity of whatever forces operate for the general cultural good, Huntington Hartford's reactionary Gallery of Modern Art, ill-conceived in the first place, was born, struggled, and died during this period, leaving the curious building that housed it standing as its funerary stele on Columbus Circle. In 1959, Abstract Expressionism was at the zenith of its popularity, to such an extent that an unknown artist trying to exhibit in New York couldn't find a gallery unless he was painting in a mode derived from one or another member of the New York School. Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and their successful colleagues were already beginning to be referred to as "the new Academy" instead of avant-garde, a term already beginning to lose viability except as an historical reference. But still, at that time, a critic not entrenched in the New York scene could find himself in a painful situation when he suggested that Abstract Expressionism was abusing its own success and that the monopolistic orgy had gone on long enough. It is painful for anyone to be declared a pariah by colleagues whose opinions, even if they contradict his own, he respects; it is unpleasant when an anonymous voice tells you to watch out because "we're laying for you [[heading]] What's new at the Modern? Not much these days. What's new at the Metropolitan? What isn't? when you leave the office." Anonymous letters are always nasty. But in 1959, for a critic to question the validity of Abstract Expressionism was to inspire obscene mail, threatening phone calls, and outraged letters to the editor signed by eminent artists, curators, collectors, and critics demanding his discharge as a Neanderthal throwback. As things turned out, the idea that Abstract Expressionism might be riding for a fall was more advanced than atavistic. Artists, led by a few rebels from the school (such as Frank Stella in one direction and Richard Diebenkorn in another) began taking the situation into their own hands. Today the strongest contender for the title of Latest Thing in the mixed scene of 1976 is Abstract Expressionism's antithesis, Photorealism, along with several variants. In between we have had Pop art, which was the major revolution of the period, as well as Op art, Minimal art, Conceptual art, Earth art, Color Field painting, Systemic Abstraction, Post-constructivism and a lot of others, genuine and specious, rising and falling, overlapping and interbreeding and still going on, with museums, commercial galleries, and art publications deciding which portions of a vast overproduction the public should be instructed to enjoy. It has taken most of these 17 years, give a few at either end, to complete a change that would be recognized as drastic if it had not come about gradually-the transposition of functions between the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan, by which the Metropolitan has taken over from the Modern as the city's cultural midway while the Modern has settled into a conservative historical stance. The question "What's new at the Modern-if "new" means something audacious and unfamiliar- is answered these days by "Not much," a comment that sounds disparaging only because the policy of the museum itself, until recently, has conditioned us to equate "new" with "good." Gertrude Stein's comment early in the game to the effect that you can be modern or you can be a museum but you can't Continued on Page 23
