Summer Art: Prakash, Pearlman, Wertheim, Warburg, Kahn; Museum Director, Four Major Collections Visit Harvard

If the art world should ever issue something comparable to Poor's Index of business trustees and their innumerable directorships. Dr. Satya Prakash of India would be high on its initial list. For Dr. Prakash, who was a visitor around Harvard during the first week of the Summer Session, is Director of not one but a dozen museums located in the state of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India. Dr. Prakash has been in America for most of the past year on an Indian government scholarship studying museum techniques in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Phoenix, San Francisco, New York, Boston and The Old Sturbridge Colonial Village--among other places. The last town may surprise you (it certainly did this interviewer), but not so once Dr. Prakash has explained the rather unique aspect of Indian museums. India's museums are generally of the multi-purpose type: mixtures of, say, The Gilbert Hall of Science, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Non-Representational Art, and the Museum of Natural History--to name a few of the typically specialized museums particular to America. To support these institutions, the Indian government settles $30,000,000 of its rather shaky budget upon them. The museums are also supported by whichever of the fourteen states of India they happen to be in--the State Museum and its regional brothers being placed under one State Director--and that's where Dr. Prakash comes in.

The main task of the museums, if they are multi-purpose, is to offer the same type of general art, scientific and cultural education that the Museum of Modern Art gives to its many loyal members. (This last Museum, incidentally, especially impresses Dr. Prakash.) If the museums are "art-museums," on the other hand, a general policy of Indian-antiquities-for-the-Indians is followed, with the many excavation sites of India additionally becoming regional museums in time. Western art, on the other hand, is difficult to collect due to the (a) lack of encouragement which the ruling English gave to this sort of thing (b) high prices in today's ultra-competitive art market and (c) reluctance of the remaining Indian rajahs to part with their private collections. On this last obstacle Dr. Prakash commented: "The rajah will part first with his palace, second with his Ford and only at the extreme with his art collection." To make this eventual parting easier, the Indian government has forbidden export of art for selling purposes, has increased hereditary death-duties and, in the future, hopes to use a further Western trick in allowing tax deductions for the value of art objects given to India's public museums. All of this should work wonders for India's already fine multipurpose museums and multi-museum directors like Dr. Prakash.

Speaking of such mundane things as tax deductions is one way not to describe the success of our next subject: The Maurice Wertheim Bequest and Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Pearlman--on view at the Fogg Museum of Art through July. For contrary to the current rules of today's heavy buying in the art works of the 19th and 20th centuries, these large and very impressive collections have been built up more through an everlasting appreciation of art than an annual fear of Uncle's long-armed tax collectors.

Both the Wertheim and Pearlman Collections have the consistency of excellence and caring taste which establish great collections: their exhibition, along with the Fogg's own fine 19th century collection, leads Miss Agnes Mongan, Acting Director of the Fogg, to remark with justifiable pride: "You would have to go a long way--either across America or upon the Continent--to find a better 19th century collection this summer." For those readers who prefer deeds to words, a rather partial inventory of the collections shows: 12 water-colors and drawings by Cezanne, and oils by the following: Gauguin (1), Monet (3), Picasso (3), Modigliani (2), Renoir (4), Van Gogh (3), Degas (2), Rousseau (1) and Toulouse-Lautrec (3).

The Pearlman Collection (which is labeled "from an anonymous collection") has one overwhelming concentration: a dozen watercolors and drawings by Cezanne (along with three paintings)--an amassment which the painter's biographer John Rewald calls second to none in the world. I refer the reader especially to two of the landscapes, Arbres Formant La Voute (1906) and Citerne au Parc du Chateau Noir (1895-1900),--in these water-colors the broken planes and volumes show the new dimension of time which the "Grandfather of Cubism" tentatively proposed as an extension of the three-dimensional perspective space system perfected by the Renaissance and exploited into trompel'oeil mediocrity by the Academics of the 19th century. Also impressive among the Cezanne works in the first floor gallery, is the painting Le Tholonet (1906) in which the unfinished canvas at the bottom left serves as a perhaps unintentional means towards a dynamic impulsion into space.

The Pearlman Collection continues upstairs in Gallery XVII, which it shares with works from the Fogg's 19th century collection. Up here, the range and quality of the works is extremely impressive. Van Gogh's famous Tarascon Diligence is still a fresh visual experience upon its first encounter; its use of heavy brushwork, vividly dominant colors and incised outlines are Van Gogh at his best. Only an awkwardly distorted ladder disturbs this great masterpiece. Next to this work are a small and good Renoir Nude and a very fine Woman in a Round Hat by Manet.

Elsewhere in Gallery XVII is a wall of three Soutines, a Modigliani and an unusual Toulouse-Lautrec. Of the Soutines, the Gorge du Loup is least noteworthy: I find most Soutine landscapes pretty dreary matters and this essay in murky tones and crude distortions is no exception to the rule. Neither, more or less, is his rather unflattering-to-one Self Portrait. There is more of an attempt to show structural and coloristic harmony, but the colors tend to get rather high in range and the structure collapses in places. The last Soutine is an excellent Portrait of a Lady in which the palette and brush are subtly used, the artist scaling his colors (somberly brilliant blacks, blues and oranges) to fit the mood of despair and keeping distortion to its minimal needs for significant expression (cf. the hands and head).

The Modigliani is a famous portrait of an emaciated Jean Cocteau, a few basic colors and abstracted elements being used to establish space and volume with thin painting in places subtly suggesting further possibilities for the superimposition of planes.

The Toulouse-Lautrec, finally, is amazing. Its title, Messaline, suggests its romantic aspect, and a far cry indeed from the realism of the Moulin Rouge is its rather Redonesque treatment of lighting, color and brush-work. Its monumental figures (note the left foreground personage or Messaline herself) and themes are straight out of the Golden Age, giving Lautrec a new dignity as a creator of significant content which I, for one, would never have thought possible.

The Maurice Wertheim bequest (it eventually goes en bloc to the Fogg) is also on view upstairs at the Fogg, where its future owners have complemented the collection's brilliance with a well-balanced, elegantly proportioned, and grandly spaced installation--which looks good from any spot. The 19th century gallery is particularly impressive with Van Gogh's Self Portrait, the primus inter pares of the lot. The brilliant lime-green brushwork which forms a halo around the artist's head is both economical and expressive and the demonic eyes with yellow pupils, the red defining lines of the nose and mouth, and the curious (and heavily painted) medallion all contribute to this great self-portrait's emotional intensity. My next favorite is Degas' La Chanteuse au Gant, a painting in which the design of the black glove brilliantly counterpoints the rainbow of vibrant colors found in the background curtains. Another masterwork in the collection is Manet's Le Skating, in which quick brushwork, a masterful array of greys, blues and blacks, and an opaque face as focal point, are used to great effect. A magnificent Renoir Bagneuse is next, with blended brushwork, brilliant light and shimmering color creating a rich canvas. Other notable works in this gallery are a first rate Cezanne still-life, an excellent Degas (ballet dancers), a good Gauguin, a fine Lautrec and two good Monets--one of these latter being a rendering of the familiar Gare St. Lazare.

In the gallery devoted to the art of the 20th century, the atmosphere is established by two great works in it--both of them by Picasso, both dated 1901. La Femme au Chignon is a pre-Blue Period work in which the elongations and winding curves of the Art Nouveau and the flat picture plane and pure colors of Gauguin are employed to render a mood which is Picasso's alone. The other painting, the Maternite, is a great masterpiece of the Blue Period, an altar-piece of modern painting. Its cool blues, El Grecoesque modeling of the light on the draperies, and monumental rendering add up to the finest work by Picasso I can remember having seen--for good measure I'm even tempted to throw in Guernica! This painting is seen to best advantage on an overcast day when the Fogg puts an overhead light upon it. The best setting for it, however, would be the magnificent shadowed light of an Early Gothic Church. The other works in the gallery include another fine Blue Period Picasso, four fine drawings by Matisse of Mlle. Roudchenko, and a splendid drawing by Seurat. In this last-mentioned work the poetic simplicity of Seurat's technique, form and composition are at their lyrical best: it is a distinguished addition to the several other fine Seurat drawings which the Fogg owns in its extensive 19th century French drawings collection.

Recently, President Eisenhower announced that he would "walk an extra mile" to reach an agreement at the "summit." While the President (vide his recent remarks about the Moscow Art Exhibit) is about the least likely authority to be quoted in an art review, I'll draw a somewhat shaky parallel from his political mots justes and urge all 3850 of my potential readers to walk the "extra mile" across the Yard to the Fogg Museum for a truly rewarding meeting at the summit of this past century's art.

N.B. As if all this weren't enough, your reviewer has just returned from the basement of the Fogg where the Registrar's Office is temporarily sheltering oils by Modigliani (one of his most famous), Monet (a great Venetian study), Monticelli (a good still-life by this long underrated Impressionist master), Utrillo, Cezanne, Degas, Redon, and Rouault. This excellent collection, belonging to Dr. and Mrs. Erich Kahn, will soon be on display upstairs--"that is," Miss Elizabeth Strassman, the Chief Registrar, happily lamented, "if we can find any place for them."

Last, and to some extent, least on our list of local artistic events at Harvard, is the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Edward M. M. Warburg, on view at the Busch-Reisinger Museum. There are some excellent works in the collection: Picasso's famous Blue Boy, some fine drawings by Cezanne, Millet and Seymour Reminick, and some first rate sculpture by Lehmbruck, Matisse, Lachaise, Epstein and, of all people, Paul Gauguin. These works alone are worthy of a trip to the Busch's isolated headquarters on Kirkland and Divinity Avenues. Generally, however, the rather uneven quality of the exhibition tends to ensure a quick run-through of the works which merit attention on the part of the artgoer. An inclusive exhibition of a private collection is bound to turn up some third-rate works such as the trompe-l'oeil offerings of one Aaron Shikler, to name the author of three objects among the several works which I found on a par with the average products of the Washington Square Arts Festival. In general, the many minor objects randomly interspersed among the major works gives the impression of an "attic" rather than "Attic" sort of collection. Nor shall I absolve the Busch from the equally random method of installation accorded the exhibition. The installation of three sculptures in one case, one on top of the other, has never been the dream of the artgoer, and the use of different levels is handled poorly--without any strong accents on the bottom level of the main gallery, the collection is allowed to dribble off to nowhere. I'll add one good note about the exhibition's installation: two incredibly large and mildly good Van Goyens have been sent over to the Fogg where they are suitably scaled in size and gloom to the second floor gallery arcade. In all, though, I'm afraid that I'll just have to fall back on local pundit-philosopher S. Marshall Cohen's Confucius Say about the Harvard museum situation: "One in the Fogg is worth two in the Busch."PICASSO: La Femme au Chignon