'Then and Now' meets demands of here and now

By Chandra Speeth

Other shows are annunciations. These rare birds often appear in small locations, museums that are lucky to get whatever loans they can. These shows are not insidious; they are shows with attitude. When they have something to proclaim, they proclaim it at the outset and then leave you to walk the rooms at liberty.

Courtesy Yale University Art Gallery 'Then and Now' is the show to end all shows at the YUAG.

Art Since 1945: Then and Now is an annunciation of a show. It is the first YUAG show coordinated by Joachim Pissarro, the new Curator of European and Contemporary Art. It is the first comprehensive special exhibit of modernist art that has been housed at the YUAG since the Richard Brown Baker collection appeared on display in 1995. It is the first time in many years that some of the paintings from the permanent collection have seen the light of day. It is also the lucky recipient of a number of crucial loans--including Jasper Johns' most recent work, Untitled (1997) and the preparatory drawing for it, The Bridge, both on loan from the artist.

It is hard to characterize, for it is possessed of that supreme virtue of certain exhibits: it does the visitor the favor of not explaining itself too much. The works are allowed to speak for themselves. From the first room (where Picasso, Hoffman, Motherwell, Pollock, Rauschenberg, and Dubuffet make quite a nice hand at cards) to the last (where Close and Marden, juxtaposed, vaunt their status as the diverse products of the Yale School of Art), the works play off each other in oblique ways. The result is what Pissarro recently called, "several dialogues taking place at different levels"--in other words, noise. The clever integration of disparate themes and disparate media makes this noise beautiful.

Thank goodness the show has a sense of humor as well. With the British Art Center closed for renovations, I was afraid there might be nowhere to go for smart art jokes. But one only has to walk into the foyer to see Duchamp's snow shovel, In Advance of a Broken Arm, mounted high on the pillar. Like the sword of Damocles, it serves to check the bragging visitor who says of Duchamp's work, "Well, I could have done that."

The sight gags seem to be reserved for the sculptures alone. Ellsworth Kelly's lovely sculpture Untitled (Curve XXIII) mocks Louis Kahn's stolid, tomblike pillars. Donald Judd's behemoth, Untitled, seems at first a roadblock and then a room unto itself. Finally, there is the surprise around the last corner--the punchline of the show, which I refuse to give away here.

This is an exhibit which first reveals itself in pockets: the German corner, the wall of stripes, the room of assorted body parts, the abstract expressionist wing. But a number of strategic placements of paintings (such as the positioning of an early Lichtenstein and a late one on opposite walls of a room, or the separation of two Ad Reinhardts by a Rothko and a window) begin to pull entire rooms together.

The show demands that its visitors exercise, crossing each room at strange angles, traveling from room to room and back again. This pattern of viewing encourages a further discourse between the two segments of the exhibit, separated by a flamingo-pink hallway (cast in this hue by one of Flavin's neon sculptures).

After basking in the glow of the Flavin, I am now convinced that lying under a sunning lamp must be a great place to think. I began piecing together everything I had seen. The following line of poetry sums it up it better than I could:

"The Word has been abroad, is back, with a tanned look."

These words are Geoffrey Hill's, and they appear in a poem entitled "Annunciations." Their sentiment is wholly that of the YUAG's phenomenal show, which offers itself to the viewing public with intelligence and sensitivity, and still sports a gorgeous tan.

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