Painting: Helas pour la Grandeur

Like all the forms of nonverbal human expression, the arts are international, leaping the bounds of language and education as easily as they do those of class or color. All the great art styles of Western history have flourished in many countries. Inevitably, then, the historian who tries to prove that one nation's painting is innately superior to that of any other is treading on shaky ground. Such technicalities, however, have hardly hindered the zealous ministers of Charles de Gaulle.

"Painting in France, 1900-1967," an exhibit of 150 paintings assembled by the French government at the behest of the U.S.'s International Exhibitions Foundation, is an ambitious attempt on the part of Culture Minister André Malraux to demonstrate that, as one of his minions puts it, France in the arts is still capable of "inventing the future." The proof is uphill work, for (non-French) authorities agree that, while Paris blazed the trails prior to World War II, since then the leadership has migrated across the Atlantic. Nonetheless, France can still claim a few pioneers in the realm of geometric art (see color opposite).

Timid & Prettified. So debatable is Malraux's basic premise, that when "Painting in France, 1900-1967" went on view at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art last week,* the Met's contemporary art curator, Henry Geldzahler, angrily disowned it. Said he: "Shocking! While there are some postwar French artists I respect, lumping together postwar French art with the great masters from before 1930 is artificial and unfair. The work is simply not of the same order." He is at least 91.23% correct, though the distinction is not likely to disturb the average museumgoer, who will revel in the early, if decidedly familiar canvases by Matisse, Chagall, Braque, Dufy, Derain, Vlaminck and other cubist and fauvist favorites. Particularly impressive: Picasso's rarely shown room-sized stage curtain from the 1917 production of Diaghilev's ballet, Parade.

The average museumgoer, on the other hand, will be mystified by a large gallery full of airy, forgettable abstract canvases. These are meant to support the French thesis that Paris, and not New York, invented abstract expressionism in the 1950s (the French call their version tachisme, or staining). Hélas pour la grandeur, for just the reverse is shown. By comparison with the work turned out by the dynamic U.S. action painters, the French products look timid, prettified and unconvincing—with a few exceptions, most notably the stark abstractions of Pierre Soulages.