Vol. 15 No. 20 · 21 October 1993
pages 10-11 | 3701 words
Hanging Offence
David Sylvester at the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy’s exhibition of ‘American Art in the 20th Century’ at Burlington House and the Saatchi Gallery is a honeymoon with a marvellous girl who has been stitched into her nightie. No less than one in three of the 230 works arouse a desire to have them in a permanent collection here, but no more than three of the rooms in the show give a feeling of satisfaction.
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[*] American Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture 1913-1993, edited by Christos Joachimidis and Norman Rosenthal (Prestel, 490 pp., £45, 13 September, 3 7913 1261 8).
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Letters
Vol. 15 No. 21 · 4 November 1993
From Jonathan Harris
Norman Rosenthal and Christos Joachimides certainly do love German Expressionism, as David Sylvester pointed out (LRB, 21 October). R. & J.’s exhibition of and catalogue for ‘German Art of the 20th Century’, sponsored by Lufthansa and Volkswagen, left out vast tracts of German art – including much Thirties work by Heartfield, Grosz, Hannah Hoch and others. Neither did they include any work by any post-1945 East German artists. The recent show of ‘American Art in the 20th Century’, sponsored by American Airlines, had very little Thirties US social realist art. Not that we should be surprised by any of this. All exhibitions have a ‘performative’ aspect as well as one which is ‘constative’: exhibitions make history as well as reflect existing interpretations. Get real! Let’s have some intelligent analysis of why R. & J. are addicted to the ‘slap-it-on thick’ school of Modernist metaphysicians (on either side of the Atlantic).
Jonathan Harris
Leeds Metropolitan University
