What's Up?

Next to the statement "My five-year-old kid could do better than that," the most inevitable wisecrack about modern art is: "How do you know it's right side up?" Last week it turned out that the question is not as easy to answer as some of the cognoscenti like to think.

A lady stockbroker named Genevieve Habert was on her third visit to the exhibition of paper cutouts by Henri Matisse at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art when she became disturbed by a picture called The Boat. It seemed unnatural to her that what was meant to be a reflection in the water should be more detailed than the sailboat itself. Mrs. Habert checked with the catalogue, marched up to a guard to announce her discovery: The Boat had been hung upside down.

The guard, incredulous that his scholarly employers could make such a gaffe, haughtily told Mrs. Habert that the catalogue was at fault: "We can't be responsible for the printers." The artist's son, Dealer Pierre Matisse, had seen the show and noticed nothing wrong. Mrs. Habert stuck to her guns, in the end phoned the New York Times. Next morning, the museum took a second look at the picture, mumbled something about how "the labels on the back were put on upside down," and conceded that Mrs. Habert was right. The arbiter elegantiarum of modern art had let a work by one of the most prestigious of modern painters stand on its head for six weeks. Pierre Matisse was gallantry itself: "Mrs. Habert," said he, "should be given a medal."

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