On & On

Time marches on. Last week Manhattanites were looking over a review of 40 years of abstract art with utter calm. Pictures by such oldtimers as John Marin, Lyonel Feininger and Joseph Stella--which once titillated the advance guard and horrified the public--now seemed familiar, almost conservative.

In the new van are such adventurers as Robert Motherwell, member of an austere sect called the intrasubjectivists. The intrasubjectivists are "not interested in painting the embellishments of reality but in finding a direct, intense single sense of oneness with it." One Motherwell oneness is a series of unembellished rectangles, ovals and trapezoids called Western Air.

Critic Emily Genauer thinks she knows why people accept abstract art so tranquilly, "[it is] a welcome avenue of escape...momentary refuge from the concrete image and specific facts of...chaos."

Those who still don't like it can escape from escape by not looking at it.

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