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ART

by Suzanne Kiplinger

The Whitney Museum's 1962 Annual, an invitational show concerned with drawings and sculpture, can best be termed inoffensive. The drawings aren't bad, but neither are they terribly good; the sculpture isn't execrable, but one doesn't want to go shouting down the street about it either. For once, though, a museum has mounted all sculpture so that it can be seen all around, and unfortunately this work doesn't benefit by such consideration. I was again amazed by the tepidity of some of the men we think of as important sculptors: Alexander Calder's entry was quite dull, Chaim Gross's "Ring Performer" was so-so, Jose de Creeft's portrait of his "Muse" was obviously done from memory, and Zorach's "Odalisque" sent me scurrying over to the Museum of Modern Art to see his head of Christ and remind myself once again that this man is capable of great work.

Without Posterity

On the other hand, Peter Grippe's large cardboard construction "Jazz" is splendidly done, and does evoke jazz visually. As all these extremely ephemeral constructions do, it made me uneasy: how do you clean it? with a feather duster? with the blower attachment on a vacuum? How, how? How long is it going to last? Will someone take proper care of it? One presumes that the highly destructible material of such modern sculpture is related to fear of the bomb and that some personalities are bound to feel that if we have a short time, why use it up on granite? Without posterity, isn't cardboard as good? Maybe, but granite has other virtues for the sculptor besides preserving his reputation, and tactile quality just begins to say it.

Joseph Cornell has a whole room for his assembled arrangements under glass, and I left it with a yawn. Harry Bertoia's untitled tree-like sculpture is good, and Richard Boyce's "Venus Torso," which is so explicit it could be a model for a first lecture on gynecology, is an expert small piece of sculpture.

The foregoing has to do with the Whitney's upper floors; on the first, Lee Bontecou's untitled canvas and metal sculpture is absolutely first-rate, and Marisol's "Ruth" is a marvelous six-headed tour-de-force--the same face in six interpretations, flat to bas-relief to sculpture, the torsos wrapped in a single barrel, and Marisol's talent, as it were, peering out the top and teasing us.

Sydney Simon's head-down acrobat, "The Star," hangs from a trapeze and looks good-but isn't. I confronted it nose to nose, and aside from a moderately successful gilded head, it's a mediocre performance. On the whole, the Whitney has a rather ho-hum exhibit, and one wonders if it was worth all the effort. (Through February 3)

Rivers

The Museum of Modern Art's show of new acquisitions (through January 13) includes, of course, important works by Bracque, Dubuffet, and so forth, but the two pieces I really want to discuss are Larry Rivers' "Last Civil War Veteran" and Marisol's "The Family." The first is a painting in Rivers' cloudy bright manner of an old man in bed; behind him hang the stars and bars and the American flag; over him is a uniform which is both blue and gray. This is a work of consummate skill and ability--I could write almost indefinitely about Rivers' power, gracefulness, originality, the subtlety, the bland magnificence of this painting. It's all so casual, yet the bedclothes alone are worth a monograph. It has a lyric purity which makes almost every painting near it look labored and contrived, the work of little men. Increasingly, I believe that Rivers is going to be one of the very great painters of this time, of this place.

Marisol's "The Family" is equally staggering. Like Alex
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At the Galleries
Current One-Man Shows, Through December 29.

LEIF ANDERSON-- Nessler, 718 Madison (63rd), TE 2-9480 City scenes and figure paintings.

LUDWIG BEMELMANS - Hammer, 51 East 57th Street, PL 8-0410. Gouaches from two books by the late author-illustrator.

JEAN DAVIDSON - Waverly, 103 Waverly Place, GR 7-6710. Cityscapes, landscapes, portraits.

BURGOYNE DILLER - Chalette, 110 Madison (82nd), LE 5-8120. Three-dimensional color structures.

RONALD BLADEN - Green, 15 West 57th Street, PL 2-4055. Painted wood-relief pictures.

CARLYLE BROWN - Bodley, 223 57th Street, TE 2-8545. Still lifes and figures.

LEONARDO CREMONINI - Viviano, 42 East 57th Street. PL 8-2950. Figures, landscapes, animals by the Italian artist.

JEAN DUBUFFET - Cordier and Ekstrom, 978 Madison, YU 8-8857. Oils, gouaches, drawings.

URSULA FORSTER - Weyhe, 794 Livington (61st), TE 8-5478. Bronze sculptures by the young German artist.

WILLIAM GROPPER - A.C.A., 63 East 57th Street, PL 5-6525. Pastels and drawings.

RAOUL HAGUE - Egan. 313 East 79th Street. TR 9-0670. Abstract wood sculpture.

WILLIAM KENT - Castellane, 1078 Madison (81st) YU 8-1977. Sculpture. A first New York one-man show.

KARK KNATHS - Rosenberg. 20 East 79th Street. Twenty-year retrospective of Cape Cod Themes.

ROBERT MOTHERWELL - Sidney Janis, 15 East 57th Street. PL 9-4241. Abstract expressionist oils and collages.

JOHN PIPER -  Landry. 111 East 79th Street. RH 4-0310. Mode of baptistry windows of Coventry Cathedral.

LARRY RIVERS - Tibor de Nagy. 149 East 72nd Street. RE 7-4130. Abstract paintings of Paris.

FRANK ROTH - Borgenicht. 1018 Madison (79th). LE 5-8040. Abstract paintings by the young New York artist.

CHARLES SELIGER - Willard. 23 West 56th Street. PL 7-3830. Abstract oils.

JEAN TINGUELY - Iolas. 123 East 55th Street. PL 7-6778. Radio devices by the French artist.

SOL WILSON - Babcock. 805 Madison (68th), LE 5-9355. Land-, city-, and seascapes, figure drawings.

Selected Holiday Group Shows

AMERICAN GALLERY, 843 Lexington (64th), LE 5-7750. Beauchamp, Bluhm, Georges, Hultberg, Joanson.

A. C. A., 63 East 57th Street, PL 5-6525. R. Soyer, Gropper, Dickerson, Gurr, Refregier.

A. A. A., 605 Fifth Avenue (49th), PL 5-4211. Rouault, Kollwitz, Friedlaender.

ALAN AUSLANDER, 1078 Madison (81st), UN 1-5035. Campigli, de Chirico, Falzoni, Marini, Modardi, Music, Soroni, Tosi, others.

AREA, 90 East 10th Street. GR 5-9311. Press. Boutis, Duback, Stefanelli, Pasilis, Ortman, Ippolito, Langlais, Fiore, Samuels, others.

CAMINO. 89 East 10th Street. OR 4-5430. E de Kooning, Forman, Kipke, Selig, Shibley, others.

CHASE, 31 East 64th Street. LE 5-3991. Karel Appel, Clave, Creo, Aoyama, Tobiasse, others.

TERRY DINTENEASS. 18 East 67th Street. RH 4-1580. Evergood. Frasconi, Goodman, Gwathmey, Lawrence.

DOWNTOWN. 32 East 51st Street, PL 3-3707. Raskin, Davis, Demuth, Dore, Lachaise, Marin, O'Keefe, Shahn, Sheeler, Stille, Weber, others.

EAST HAMPTON. 22 West 56th Street, CL 6-3218. Hartigan, Gottlieb, Guston, Littlefield, Brooks, Ferren, Lassaw, Leslie, Resnick, others.

ROBERT ELKON. 1063 Madison (81st), LE 5-3940. Jorn, Riopelle, Dubuffet, Matto, Picasso, others.

ROSE FRIED. 40 East 68th Street RE 7-8622. Cornell, Duchamp, Ernst, Gorky, Graham, Kandinsky, Lewitin, Noguchi, Noguchi, Schwitters, others.

ALBERT LANDRY. 111 East 79th Street. RH 4-0310. Soulages. Sutherland, Moore, Jawlensky, Ernst.

ALBERT LOEB. 12 East 57th Street. PL 3-7857. Arp. Lam, Lansky, Bernard Dufour, others.

RUTH SHERMAN. 306 East 72nd Street, YU 8-3410. Graphics by Picasso. Campigli, Severini, Adam, Tamayo, Villon, others.

ALLAN STONE. 48 East 86th Street, YU 8-6870. Constructions by Wayne Nowack. George Deem. Bruce Breeland, Idwin Fleminger, Gerd Stern, others.