Call It an Eye

Pittsburgh's "Carnegie" is the biggest U.S. art show; the "Chicago Annual" ranks second. That's the way it has been for the past 50 years. Last week Chicago, tired of running second, put on a provocative show that was certainly the biggest and strangest of its kind. There was hardly a recognizable landscape or embraceable nude to be seen. Said one headline: WITCHES' ORGY COVERS ART INSTITUTE WALLS. The directors of Chicago's usually middle-of-the-road Art Institute had gone all out with a survey of abstract and surrealist art in the U.S.

The Chicago Daily News's Critic C. J. Bulliet led the sneering section with the remark that "these ' 'isms,' grown stale and sterile in the lands of their origins, are further enfeebled crossing the Atlantic." Whatever the critics might say, Director Daniel Catton Rich was convinced that he was showing not the dead hand of the past but the shining face of the future. Only ten years ago, documentary "American School" painting of barnyards, brick cityscapes and beautiful vacation views had been the style. Now, Institute scouts, back from a 24,000-mile trip around the U.S., had convinced Rich that abstractionism is "the prevailing mode for most artists under thirty."

The show's top prize ($1,000) went to Abstractionist William Baziotes, 34, a diffident little Manhattanite who had been almost unknown outside of his tight, bright circle of admirers. Baziotes' winner was an undulant, candy-pink, two-legged shape with one big blue eye. After he had finished it, he decided what to name it: Cyclops (see cut).

When Baziotes begins a painting he has no idea how it will turn out. "The subject matter may be revealed in the middle of the work," he explains, "or I may not recognize it until a long time afterward." Instead of starting with something in nature, he begins by doodling. Each morning he lines his doodles-in-progress up against the walls of his studio. "They are my mirrors," he says. "They tell me what I am like at the moment."

To Institute Director Rich, the doodle called Cyclops seemed "a rather gentle, nice monster."

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