Olga Rozanova:
Untitled (Green Stripe),
1917-18, oil on canvas,
28 x 20 7/8 in.

Ellsworth Kelly:
Train Landscape, 1953,
oil on canvas,
44 x 44 in.

Jackson Pollock:
Composition with Pouring II,
1953,
oil on canvas, 25 1/8 x 22 1/8 in.

at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The spiral of the SRGM has been a chronological ramp for many installations. This show of abstract art is no exception as 134 works by 45 artists grace the uptown interior.

Can 45 artists represent the entirety of abstract art? No, if one assumes that this show, (as the title suggests) is going to be a survey of abstraction. Curator Mark Rosenthal, celebrates some huge names of abstraction and neglects many others in creating a deeply biased chronology. The exhibition's omissions expose arbitrariness in selection. It is distressing to see entire abstract movements omitted from this show as there is no L'Art Informel, no Op art, no Conceptual art (perhaps the greatest abstraction of all), and no Neo-Geo.

Have artists like Sol Lewitt been excepted because they lack discipline, or take no risks? The answer is "neither" as Rosenthal has taken no gamble himself, in maintaining a '90s mainstream examination of non-objective painting and sculpture, and selecting artistic demigods.

The included demigods have multiple pieces; Vasily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, and Robert Ryman each have at least four works that cover large expanses of gallery space. This is not to say that the works are necessarily huge, as there is one Mark Rothko painting per large exhibition bay surrounded by much blank wall. The disproportionality of work to gallery ratio seems to suggest the relative importance of each artist.

When considering the artists that have been represented by several pieces, one has to wonder what Rosenthal was attempting to illustrate, as many of these works are formally repetitious. Although painters such as Ryman have changed in approach and style during their careers, this change is hardly worth illustrating in a large percentage of exhibition space at the expense of other artists, such as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, who have also made significant formal contributions.

It is unimaginable that painters of Robert Motherwell or Adolph Gottlieb's magnitude have been excluded from an exhibition which purports to explore abstraction. It is also unimaginable that entire generations of artists are given perfunctory representation or excluded altogether. The second-generation Abstract-Expressionists are missing, save Helen Frankenthaler, whom was certainly not forgotten due to her sex.

A literal reading of this show as art history reveals that certain movements have not made it into the '90s perception. The exclusions seem to hinge on the dominant or subordinate abstract movements at a given time or revisionist backlash. Rosenthal's history shows Kandinsky and Suprematism dominant over Orphism in the 1910s. Mondrian and Joan Miró are the masters of the '20s and Alexander Calder dominates the '30s at the expense of abstract Surrealists such as André Masson and Yves Tanguy. Of course, the '40s and '50s are the age of American Abstract-Expressionism. Despite the realities of cultural history, Rosenthal shows Minimalism in the '60s forefront, with the Greenberg school completely unrepresented. The artistic pluralism of the '70s and '80s lacked dominant movements, so one must question why certain artists and movements have been chosen over others. Why has German Neo-Expressionism, represented by three repetitious Gerhard Richter paintings, been chosen over Neo-Geo or British painter Howard Hodgkin?

Certainly, the inclusion of artists like Paul Klee, Mark Tobey, Georges Mathieu, and Pierre Soulages would have given a much better representation of abstraction's possibilities in painting. For sculpture, the inclusion of Anthony Caro and Isamu Noguchi (How can this exhibition exclude Noguchi?) would have helped ease the disjunction of Rosenthal's choices.

The viewer of this show is given an unimaginative look at non-representational art. Out of hundreds of very different contingencies, the museum goer is given only a few dozen with which to build the history of abstract art making. The repetitions of certain formal types seem ridiculous in the face of so many exclusions. A viewer gets the (sublime) point from one or two Newman works, let alone six, and seven Ellsworth Kelly works fail to heighten a viewer's appreciation for his one trick painting as object show. Although it is good to see the post-war European Yves Klein well represented, the many International Klein Blue works are not only excessive, but absolutely lost under glass and harsh lighting.

Given the unbelievable exclusions, the use of the terrace galleries is a total waste. Many representative small works could have been included here. Instead, there are typographical homages to abstract music, poetry, architecture, (is the Guggenheim's functional architecture truly abstract?) and theater that are senseless in a show so dominated by painting and sculpture. These references to other art forms give an air of desperation for inclusiveness in an otherwise exclusive show.

The best part of this exhibit is a small room recreating the Guggenheim's origin, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. This installation shows that the motivation behind the current exhibition is an institutional acknowledgement of and tribute to its own roots. The unconventionality of Frank Lloyd Wright's building is an extension of the novel materials and modes of hanging works used at the old museum. The recreation of the old museum points to the whole show as being a celebration, rather than a retrospective, of abstraction. This room is a testament to one of the institution's patron saints, the Baroness Hilla Rebay, whose galleries, "cosmic" connoisseurship, and collections were the foundation of today's museum. This room is a minor part of the show, yet it divides the program historically between European Modernism and American Post-war Contemporary periods. Note that the works of Pollock (who once worked on staff at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting) extend from this space and upward onto the ramp.

Upon inspecting the catalog accompanying this exhibition, the chronology reveals a "complete" show including many of the omissions mentioned above. Is this chronology an indicator that something had gone horribly wrong between the show's inception and execution? Certainly, the chronology is an acknowledgement of what would be included in a great abstraction exhibition. One cannot help but feel that this show has been distorted by politics, availability of works, benefactors, auction prices, trustees, and the Guggenheim's own collection. Unfortunately, this program which had so much potential to inform and reexamine has resulted in Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Confusion, Authoritarianism, Disjunction.

William V. Ganis

Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum February 9 - May 12, 1996.