Arshile Gorky: a Retrospective of Drawings.

Storr, Robert

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

Arshile Gorky has generally been regarded as among the first Abstract Expressionists, and hence a paradigm-breaking innovator, but his art was deeply rooted in a devotion to the old masters (Cezanne, Picasso, and Miro) that bordered on impersonation and an emphasis on well-rehearsed displays of technical virtuosity. Gorky was unrivaled in his patently erotic longing for aesthetic release--and greatness. This 140-work exhibition, curated by the Whitney's Janie C. Lee and Gorky scholar Melvin P. Lader, should make for good critical sport for those reconsidering the myth of AbEx from the vantage of Gorky's maverick traditionalism, but the immediate and preternaturally enduring satisfactions are those of sex in a pen and sex in a pencil. Nov. 20-Feb. 15.