Art by the Yard

What cynics have long predicted finally came to pass: abstract art was on sale not by the painting but by the yard. In Munich's fashionable van de Loo Gallery, Italian Painter Pinot Gallizio, 57, did a booming business by snipping his 10-and 20-yard canvases into appropriate lengths. Customers were free to choose according to their needs and pocketbooks; "normal quality" sold for $25 per yd., "more profound quality" for $60 per yd. Leftovers went at a discount.

Confused critics confessed that they found Gallizio's drippings and crisscross calligraphy as good as or better than most abstractions. Said the art critic of Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung: "After all, in the circus we have learned to discern fine artistry and great human values beneath a clown." Said irreverent Painter Pinot Gallizio, a former professor of chemistry and amateur archaeologist who turned painter only seven years ago: "Painting as such has reached the end of its road. From now on, the human eye will be perfectly satisfied by seeing any color or shape, provided the color is brilliant and the shape imaginative. You won't get modern art any cheaper and certainly not any better."

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