The Revolt of the Pelicans

"The undersigned painters reject the monster national exhibition to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art next December . . . The choice of jurors . . . does not warrant any hope that a just proportion of advanced art will be included. We draw to the attention of these gentlemen the historical fact that, for roughly a hundred years, only advanced art has made any consequential contribution to civilization . . ."

This message, addressed to Metropolitan President Roland L. Redmond, appeared in Manhattan newspapers last week. Because many of the 28 painters and sculptors who signed it are abstract artists of advanced reputation, it was bound to raise a storm of controversy over Topic A in the art world today: How abstract can you get?

For the moment, the Met maintained a dignified silence. It had some reason for compressing its lips; the museum had only recently reversed its standoffish policy toward contemporary U.S. art and hoped to make 1950 an "American year" to be capped by a giant, jury-picked show of about 300 paintings in December.

Not Knowing. What riled the abstractionists was that the seven juries chosen for the contemporary show were on the side of representational, i.e., conservative, art. The juries were composed mostly of painters, and though some of those picked used moderately abstract techniques in their own work, there was only one out & out abstractionist on the list.

Dean of the protesting group is 70-year-old Hans Hofmann, a compelling teacher for whom painting means "forming with color ... At the time of making a picture. I want not to know what I'm doing; a picture should be made with feeling, not with knowing ... A shape can be sad or gay, a line, delirious." William Baziotes, who recently sold a painting called Dragon (see cut) to the

Met, also signed the letter. Less abstract than many in the group, he too works entirely from "feeling."

Not Soaring. Among the most vocal of the signers was Ad Reinhardt, who paints as abstractly as possible. "Anyone who would sit down to paint grass today," says Reinhardt, "is just an illustrator. What we see isn't real; everybody knows that." Reinhardt's pictures have nothing to do with anything except "the aesthetic experience, the painting experience."

Though some critics and museums take such notions seriously, the Met is not likely to. Its witty director, Francis Henry Taylor, has never concealed his dislike of the moderns. "Instead of soaring like an eagle through the heavens as did his ancestors and looking down triumphantly upon the world beneath," Taylor once wrote, "the contemporary artist has been reduced to the status of a flat-chested pelican, strutting upon the intellectual wastelands and beaches, content to take whatever nourishment he can from his own too meager breast."

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