Back to February 2010 ARTnews Retrospective  

100 Years Ago

His Excellency, for Dr. [Wilhelm von] Bode now has this title, has decided . . . that the American taste is "limited." The result is that good pictures may still be found in continental galleries for which Americans have no artistic longings. Dr. Bode finds that Americans are prejudiced in favor of certain great names. Gladly they buy the larger works of Rembrandt, Velasquez, Vandyck, Hals, Vermeer, Titian, Raphael and Botticelli. . . . But they care nothing for the smaller works of the same artists. . . . This, his Excellency says, is a good thing for the rest of the world, because the value of a collection is not to be estimated by a few dominant pictures; many a minor picture supplies as much enjoyment as the most imposing canvas.
—"American Taste Limited?" February 19, 1910

75 Years Ago

True art is always backed by moral courage and in the pioneer days it took a brave artist to go in for non–representational painting. Amidst the general ridicule, these men became apostles of a new plastic gospel and the intensity of abstract revelation is felt in many works in the Whitney show done between 1915 and 1920.
—"Whitney Museum Holds Exhibition of Abstract Art," February 16, 1935

50 Years Ago

Jasper Johns . . . in his flag, target, number and letter pictures tried to make the invisible (the familiar) visible and then to make it invisible again. He now attempts to work the same magic with colors and their names. In Out the Window, a vertical triptych, the words "RED," "YELLOW" and "BLUE" are dissolved in red, yellow and blue complexes of brush strokes. As the words become invisible the colors seem to become more visible, reinforced by the remains of the verbal images. . . . In identifying these elements they are seen afresh, but the problem of what is seen—the colors or their names—remains. The whole thing is wonderfully impossible. . . . If Johns was ever related to Dada—anti–art—his exploration of color places him squarely within the realm of "art."
—Reviews and previews, by I. H. S., February 1960

25 Years Ago

An award has been established to honor the person "who has made the greatest contribution to art in Britain in the previous twelve months." They're calling it the Turner Prize (not that J. M. W. Turner would have approved) in the hope that the esteem in which Britain's greatest painter is now held would somehow rub off on his remote successors.
—"Inside Europe: England," by William Feaver, February 1985