" A Defining Generation:Then and Now, 1961 and 2001 "
At the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, through December 9, 2001

" A Defining Generation: Then and Now, 1961 and 2001 " is the debut exhibition at the newly renovated Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. The old space is still there, reflecting pool and all, but a huge new gallery has been added behind and beyond it: the luminous, cavernous Lois Foster Wing. It is separated from the original space by an oddly warm right-angle stairway, from the top of which you can peer down dizzily into the new wing.

" A Defining Generation " is in part a greatest-hits show of the Rose’s fine collection of 20th-century art, in part a historical survey of the art of the early 1960s, and in part a comparison of several key artists " then " and " now. " It marks the reopening of the museum after almost a year of construction, as well as a celebration of the Rose’s 40th anniversary. For this double-whammy occasion, current director Joe Ketner reached back into the museum’s illustrious history and invited Sam Hunter, the Rose’s founding director, to curate a show highlighting the origins of Brandeis’s art collection, which has been built on Hunter’s prescient acquisitions of the early 1960s, in the first years of the museum’s existence. The result suffers from trying to be too many things at once — its true light gets hidden under a bushel of extraneous stuff.

The Rose Art Museum opened to the public in June 1961; at that time, the museum had no acquisition budget, and the collection grew only through gifts of art donated by friends of the museum. Thus it was a defining moment when, in 1962, Leon Mnuchin and his wife, Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin, donated $50,000 to be used for the purchase of contemporary art, with the sole restriction that no individual work should cost more than $5000. With this money, Hunter worked with Mnuchin to acquire 21 major paintings from young artists who were just beginning to take the art world by storm, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Tom Wesselmann, and Alex Katz.

To me, the original works purchased by Hunter and Mnuchin are the stars of this show, and I feel that the exhibition would have been stronger had it been limited to this fascinating set of paintings, which are bound to one another as a unique snapshot of a moment in the Rose’s — and the art world’s — history. In 1962, art in America was so American: bold, brash, drawn to the democratic world of popular imagery and mass-media techniques, open to European ideas of abstraction and scale but not limited by them. The artists whose work Hunter chose to purchase for the Rose were related by their generational outlook, but to see them now, when their ideas have become so familiar and seem so fully digested, is to realize how different they are from one another, each expressing a strand of American culture in his own way (okay, there is one woman in this show . . . I guess that is how " then " looked then).

Like classic novels, which you tend to feel you’ve read even if you haven’t, the best of these works still have the power to surprise in the original. Jim Dine, who’s too often found now on posters in doctors’ offices, takes on new life with his 1962 red painting of a bathroom interior complete with red painted toilet paper and toothbrush. For a moment he looks like a pioneer in the area where art, architecture, and design meet, presaging artists like Clay Ketter and Kevin Appel.

Ellsworth Kelly’s sexy, playful Blue-White (1962) practically pulls you downstairs before you’ve looked at anything else. In retrospect, Kelly’s deceptively simple work — two blue curved shapes on the white ground of a flat rectangular canvas — looks to have prefigured minimalism, influenced painters exploring the relationship between painting and sculpture, and contributed to pushing the boundary between realism and abstraction. But most of all, this painting is as crisp and fresh as if painted " now, " and it’s a pleasure to view. Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-strip panel Forget It! Forget Me! (also 1962) is another gem; the personal, hand-painted quality of those Ben Day dots up close is so charming, and the freshness of the artist’s idea of reproducing the cheap quality of America’s ubiquitous comic books, along with the cheap emotion of them, is almost poignant in an era of Game Boy and Nickleodeon.

Some works seem more interesting right now than others. Jasper Johns’s Drawer (1957) is a painting with sculptural qualities (the artist has cut or drawn a rectangle onto the surface of the canvas and attached two painted wooden drawer pulls to it) and graphite coloring — the title’s pun is still rich after 44 years. Robert Rauschenberg’s Second Time Painting (1961) is not as wild as some of his others from this era but remains a fine example of the vitality of his imagination for collage and paint. I have to admit that Rauschenberg was the first artist I tried to emulate in college: after gluing innumerable vintage handkerchiefs to canvas and painting all over them, I decided that he — with his splashed-on paint over scraps of fabric — had really done it much better. Seeing this painting still makes me want to grab a paintbrush. Alfred Jensen is eternally weird; Alex Katz’s early portraits seem to grow more complex as time passes. On the other hand, Morris Louis looks a bit tired to me, as does Adolph Gottlieb. Ask me again in 10 years and I may be ready for another look.

The downside of this show is that several superfluous paintings and works on paper have been added, presumably to provide context. Large works by Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning feel like a whole other train of thought. Worse, they crowd interesting works by Andy Warhol and Marisol into the corner. Ditto the Johns lithograph and the Philip Guston painting.

In addition, the " Now " part of the show — what’s on view in the new wing — is not as potent as the " Then " part. Not only do these blue-chip artists have a lot to live up to at this point, they also have a very big room to fill, and to me, only Katz and Kelly are up to the task. I have to wonder what the Rose has planned for this gallery in the future — it threatens to dwarf all but the most monumental of endeavors, in an era when even sprawling installation art benefits from some human scale and idiosyncratic architecture to play off.

While you are at the Rose, do not miss the lovely exhibition in the Mildred S. Lee Gallery, where the museum’s director of education, Erika Swanson, has curated " Early Modern Art. " Swanson’s exhibition takes a step back from the winds of change blowing in the 1960s, but dynamic work from Florine Stettheimer, Max Beckmann, René Magritte, and others feel fresh and relevant. The roots and early blossomings of European modernism (and the first American efforts in this direction) continue to inspire and enchant, even (especially) as modernism continues its long and winding journey.

Issue Date: November 29 - December 6, 2001

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