Art and Its Rewards: Some Creators who Made News that Stayed News

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The following selections illustrate a far-reaching coverage, but there have been one or two practical restrictions. A few towering names that could have been included here are not, either because they are mentioned elsewhere in this issue or because their appearances occurred in particularly news-heavy years. (TIME'S cover story on Stravinsky, for example, came out in 1948, the year that also brought the Berlin airlift and the creation of Israel.) In addition, only one representative has been chosen for each of half a dozen different arts. The The names that survived these tests all made news that stayed news.

Charlie Chaplin did not invent the movies, but he might as well have. Coming out of the British music-hall tradition, he quickly taught everyone how comedy on film should be performed. His onscreen character, the Tramp, became an indelible image of the little guy enduring and prevailing in the face of every tyranny.

Ernest Hemingway has been in and out of fashion, and there are now signs of a revival. At his height he imbued a whole generation with his own passionate sense of courage and art, of what it meant to be a man, and of how the good life should be lived. Though his later years turned that sense to bloated self-caricature, his early works expressed it in a spare prose that has influenced younger writers ever since.

Frank Lloyd Wright could be called the first New World architect. Unlike his distinguished American predecessors, he did not look toward classical or European models for inspiration. He advocated and used indigenous materi als designed to harmonize with natural settings.

The Beatles announced the imperial triumph of pop culture. Thanks to technology, these Liverpool lads won a world wide constituency of delirious fans. When they retreated from concert stages to a London recording studio, they mixed eerie sounds that captivated highbrows and teeny-boppers alike.

Picasso. The last name alone is enough to sum up 20th century art. The Spanish-born painter went through several stages of development, each of which outstripped the lifetime output of other artists. His creative force was fierce and incomparable. The final assessment of him came only when an enormous retrospective exhibition in Manhattan in 1980 made it possible for the first time to see the myriad elements of his work all together and in perspective. He had been dead seven years, but the Museum of Modern Art's splendid show was, as much as any battlefront communiqué, news.

—By Paul Gray