Louis M. Eilshemius: Selections from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (review)

254 Books section by Robert Lebel on Duchamp and Breton. A correct but dull piece of art history is provided by Richard Hamilton, who describes the 'Large Glass' in a less interesting way than Schwarz. Useful material is given in the catalogue of Duchamp's works, and in the bibliography by Bernard Karpel, which gives all the main sources of information and very considerable detail of minor sources. For the information of the chronology , catalogue and bibliography alone, the book would be a good investment for any art library. But it is the series of essays and compilations, written from widely differing viewpoints , that are the best part of the book and that open questions to which there may be no single correct answers. This breadth of approach is enhanced by the Collected Portrait, a gathering of artworks and texts by more than 60 people, mostly artists, spanning the period from Dada to today. Returning to the problem with which I began, the impression I was left with by the book as a whole, with all its diversity, is of Duchamp as a towering intellect, whose idealism was complemented by humour and whose influence is generally in the direction of art as a thought process. But clear-cut heirs of Duchamp are not indicated. The often paraded link with Johns and others seems no more substantial than a link with Joseph Stella, whose silverpoint portrait of Duchamp is a contribution, or with Alexander Calder, whose 'Motorized Mobile' of 1932, which Duchamp liked, is also illustrated. For the most part, the warnings against excessive indulgence in the decorative aspects of fine art have been ignored. The succession of recent tendencies, such as Pop art and Conceptualism, too often fall into the trap of mental bankruptcy. The avoidance of this trap is perhaps Duchamp's triumph. Louis M. Eilshemius: Selections from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1978. 108 pp. illus. Paper. Reviewed by Dorothy Grotz· This publication, which served as an exhibition catalog for the Museum and for the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, contains a Foreword by Abram Lerner, Director of the Hirshhorn Museum, and an Introduction by Paul Karlstrom, West Coast Area Director of the Archives of American Art, who selected the works from the collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, one of Eilshemius' earliest admirers and collectors. Eilshemius was a prodigious painter, an eccentric who did not conform to the standards of good taste prevalent in the U.S.A. at the time. I find that Karlstrom succeeded in providing a fair sample of the artist's works. Why at this point was the traveling exhibit organized? Eilshemius died in 1941. A controversial figure, he received recognition from, for example, Venturi, Duchamp, the USAmerican critic Elizabeth McCausland and many others. He was academically trained, but his work developed a naive and fragile character. He is compared to the painter Rousseau (France) and to Albert Pinkhan Ryder (U.S.A.). Undoubtedly , there are elements of similarity in his work and theirs, as well as in some by Art Nouveau painters. Eilshemius professed an abhorrence of 'Modernism', yet Karlstrom finds traces of Post-Impressionism in his work. He is, however, absolved of any cubist influences. Perhaps the catalog would have been improved by simplification . Fortunately for the reader, there is an end to the names and acknowledgments that exist in such profusion. Eilshemius emerges as he was-a bizarre, poetic, frequently neglected painter who seems more of the 19th than of the 20th century. That the traveling exhibit was organized at a time when it seems to me that visual art in the U.S.A. had lost most ofits roots I regard as constructive. I wonder what the reaction to the exhibition would be if it were shown in western Europe. *7 St. Lukes Place, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. Domela: Catalogue maisonne de Cesar Domela-Nieuwenhuis. (Text in French and English) Alain Clairet. Madeleine Hage, English trans. Carmen Martinez, Paris, 1978. 286 pp., illus. Reviewed by Christopher Crouch· Domela was born in the Netherlands in 1900 and from this home base became a fully fledged European constructivist, with periods of work...