Ash Cans & Nudes

Washington, D.C.'s stiff, white marble National Gallery this week blazed with Army flags. The museum was host to a Special Services Division's show of 214 soldier art works chosen from some 9,000 specimens sent in from nine service commands. The result was a vast roll call of brave artistic tries--much that was derivative, much that was halting, some that was more than competent. Most of the works were produced in scant off-hours.

The exhibits ranged from a sketch of a row of ash cans to voluptuous nudes, from academic watercolors to trick photographs like that of a G.I. being menaced by a ten-foot hypo needle. One above-average recording of Army life "off limits" was T-4 George R. Imhof's Leaving Fast--a harassed G.I. taking hasty leave of two dingy girls in a dingy back room (see cut). At the opposite pole of graphic imagery: Corporal Neil D. Schworm Jr.'s Corpse in the Moonlight, a gouache fantasy featuring a robed skeleton floating high over a toylike country church (see cut).

Sponsors of the show asked participants in the preliminary rounds to explain their choice of subject matter. Wrote one, who had sent in a statuette of a man and woman in tight embrace: "That represents what the average soldier thinks about most of the time."

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