Art: Before Your Very Eyes

(2 of 5)

The Great Propagators. By the thousands people came—upper Madison Avenue ladies interestedly peering at The Kiss, a beatnik who had to see the show even if it meant lugging the baby uptown, suburban matrons intelligently relating Rodin to the Greeks. Until modern times, only a tiny proportion of humanity ever looked at art, and even they were confined to what was close at hand. Now museums more than ever search out the treasures of the world, hidden in private collections, ancient temples, obscure monasteries, half-forgotten castles. They gather the works of one man or one school from all over the world to be judged anew. They send their vast and learned exhibitions traveling across oceans and continents; they are the great conservators, but also the great propagators. Even commercial galleries, seeking prestige, increasingly put on theme shows of not-for-sale work, old or new. If their exhibitions do not happen to stop near by, the art lover need not feel deprived. By jet and superhighway, it would be possible for one man to see all the major exhibitions open this week in the U.S. and Europe before any of them closes. Or he can, as ever, take advantage of the thesis of Andre Malraux: that the camera and advanced techniques of color reproduction can transform man's mind into a "museum without walls," in which the whole sweep of art is on permanent display (see the next dozen pages).

The current exhibitions are not intentionally related; yet they all seem like instruments—some reedy, some pure, some weak, some strong—of a single symphony. In Buffalo last week, two galleries paid homage to Local Boy Charles Burchfield on his 70th anniversary, while France was paying homage to Eugène Delacroix on the 100th anniversary of his death. At one Burchfield opening, 700 admirers crowded about their hero to wish him well; in Paris, the air was filled with talk of Delacroix—the huge show coming at the Louvre, the appetizer exhibitions now on view in Paris and Bordeaux, the new study of Delacroix just published by Hachette. Burchfield has an enormously appealing talent that will not influence the course of art one bit; Delacroix was a genius, the leader of the romantics. One charms, the other hypnotizes; both delight—and each generates that special kind of excitement that an artist can cast and no one else.

Majesty & Sordidness. In Richmond, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is brilliantly performing the role of reappraiser for the art of Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. The 451 paintings and drawings, ranging from family portraits to animal studies to magnificent sea and landscapes, are from the collection of Paul Mellon, new president of the National Gallery. A longtime collector of British painting, Mellon acquired most of the works in the show in the past three years, picking them up not only at auctions but directly from the owners of England's stately homes, to which his wide acquaintanceship in British society gave him access. He sprang the collection on the art world as a stunning fait accompli, and museums everywhere are now vying to show it; Virginia got it first because Mellon is a trustee of the museum and a Virginia resident. The show opened with a banquet for the museum's Collectors' Circle, and the public has been flocking to it since at a rate of 1,400 a day.