CONTEMPORARIES ABROAD

IN 1946 angry members of Congress who cared little for modern art and even less for some modern artists forced the State Department to cancel its overseas exhibitions of contemporary American art. It took eight years and calmer times to change the picture, but now the U.S. Information Agency is again giving modern artists their say abroad. What they are saying would upset some Congressmen just as much in 1957 as it did in 1946.

Two contemporary American shows are on tour--one in Europe and another in the Far East. Last week the European exhibition was touring Germany, after opening in Copenhagen; it will go on to London and Paris. The Asian edition was touring Japan, after opening in Seoul; it will go on to Manila and Wellington, N.Z. Both shows consist of varied works of four Pacific Northwest painters (Mark Tobey,

Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Anderson) and four New York sculptors (Rhys Caparn, David Hare, Seymour Lipton, Ezio Martinelli). Their paintings and sculptures range from simplified realism to completely nonobjective works, but both shows have a strong list to the abstract.

Fair indexes of the quality of the paintings are two canvases from the European exhibit--Tobey's placid, cotton-soft Fountains of Europe and Callahan's turbulent, semi-semi-objective Fiery Night (see color page). The sculpture is no less recherche. Not untypical are Lipton's exotic Night Bloom, with its nickel-silver-on-steel petals closing with tropical luxuriance, and Hare's abstract bronze. Bush of Elephants, with its distorted suggestion of tusks and elephants' ears (see cut).

Such works are clearly not aimed at a mass audience, though Tobey's delicate, calligraphic style and the general Orientalism and mysticism of the Northwest painters were thought likely to be received sympathetically in the Far East. Aimed at letting the elite of Europe and Asia know the kind of art being produced in the U.S., the shows fortunately are accompanied by curators (Callahan is with the European exhibition) who can make explanations to at least a certain number of puzzled art-lovers.

The shows have aroused neither scorn nor outraged contempt, and they have had serious attention from critics. But the general reaction of both press and public has been rather tepid and indifferent. Nevertheless, the shows' sponsors feel a sense of accomplishment. Said Collector Lawrence Fleischman, whose fine collection of American paintings (TIME, Sept. 10) was sent abroad by USIA last year: "In this propaganda battle today, Russia's weakest point is that its artists have to create according to the way the government tells them. Nobody who sees these shows can fail to understand that our artists paint the way they feel."

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