Art: The U.S. & the United Nations

When San Francisco's city fathers began planning incidental attractions for its conference, one citizen seriously proposed a "House of All Nations" for the delegates' diversion. The idea was duly considered, but finally dropped in favor of more clearly cultural projects. Two of these were in full cry last week—a show of "Contemporary American Painting" at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, "Art of the United Nations" at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum.

National Reflection. The 215-picture American show is far & away the better. It ranges in style from Norman Rockwell's familiar, realistic The Four Freedoms, which hangs at the entrance, to Josef Albers' Growing, a pure abstraction of irregularly shaped pink and green rectangles, hung in a corner of the farthest gallery. Between these extremes are such items as Philip Evergood's Rubber Raft, a war footnote in which two helpless, parched men sprawl on a raft surrounded by voracious sharks; Atlantic Pastorale, a surrealist ballet-in-seaweed by Leon Kelly; Darrel Austin's spellbinding half-dream of a mountain lion, The Great Beast; William Cropper's satirical Art Patrons.

The point of the show is plain: even in wartime, U.S. artists have remained notably unregimented and uninhibited; they paint as they please. Dr. Jermayne MacAgy sums it up in her catalogue introduction : "A few years ago . . . mannered representations of the 'American Scene' publicized an artificial point of view. . . . Today, there is no better reflection of America's international attitude than the . . . cosmopolitan vision among artists. . . ."

International Impression. The overall impression of the United Nations show is of a hasty hodgepodge: oriental rugs, Central American tombstones, early Sumerian sculpture, a strictly Tsarist Russian picture of the jigsaw-puzzle school—and a few really fine things like the stone Hand of a Buddha from China's northern Ch'i dynasty, Honoré Daumier's Crispin and Scapin and Rembrandt's Man with Turban.

If the show as a whole says anything, it is simply that some of the United Nations have a richer artistic heritage than others. In general, the exhibits are skimpy and scarcely more representative of the various national cultures than those which the delegates might have encountered in the proposed international maison de joie.