SPAN More Rice for Asia's Millions
2
by V.S. Nanda
Gandhi Memorial Lecture
8
by Martin Luther King
The Universe of Thornton Wilder
14
by Hermine J. Popper
The Movies' Enduring Nonsense
30
by Anthony G. Bowman
Roughing It in Elmira
40
by Sujit Mukherjee
Look Down, See America by Martin Caidin and James
42
Yarnell
Cover "Map" by Jasper Johns is one of some 100 paintings in the exhibit of modem American art which opens in Delhi this month. See pages 20-29. W. D. Miller, Publisher; Dean Brown, Editor; V. S. Nanda, Mg. Editor. Editorial Staff: Carmen KagaJ, Avinash Pasricha, Nirmal K. Sharma, Krishan G. Gabrani, P. R. Gupta. Art Staff: B. Roy Choudhury, Nand K. Katyal, Kanti Roy, Kuldip Singh Jus. Production Staff: Awtar S. Marwaha, Mammen Philip. Photographic Services: US IS Photo Lab. Published by the United States Information Service, Bahawalpur House, Sikandra Road, New Delhi-I, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed by Arun K. Mehta at Vakil & Sons Pvt. Ltd., Narandas Building, Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-I.
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I. William D. Miller, hereby declare, to the best of my knowledge and belief.
that
United States Information Sen'ice, Bahawalpur House, Sikandra Road, New Delhi路] Monthly Arun K. Mehta Tndian Vakil & Sons Private Ltd., Narandas Building, Sprott Road, ]8 Ballard Estate, Bombay路] William D. Miller American Bahawalpur House, Sikandra Road, New Delhi路] Dean K. Brown American Bahawalpur House" Sikandra Road New Delhi-] The Government of the United States of America
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These three astronauts- Virgil J. Grissom, left, Roger B. Chaffee, centre, and Edward H. White-were victims of a fire in their Apollo spacecraft during a practice count-down in January. They had planned to make the first manned /light on a Saturn 1 rocket (le/t below). Flight was postponed pending inquiry.
SPAN OF EVENTS THE u.s. space effort continues despite the tragedy that took the lives of three astronauts during a flash fire while testing their Apollo spacecraft on the launching pad at Cape Kennedy, Florida. Astronauts Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee were to have flown in earth orbit for a maximum offourteen days starting February 21. The fire took their lives on January 27 while they were ten minutes from the end of a simulated count-down. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, head of the National Aero-
nautics and Space Council, said the United States "will push forward in space and the memory of these men will be an inspiration to all future spacefarers. " James Webb, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA),said: "We in NASA know that their greatest desire was that this nation press forward with manned space flight exploration, despite the outcome of anyone flight. With renewed dedication and purpose we intend to do just that." Indiscussingpossibiedelays in the moon flight programme, one NASA
official speculated that it would be Mayor June before the first manned Apollo flight, "even if the Board of Inquiry does not recommend any design changes." The exact length of the delay will depend on the findings ofthe Boardof Inquiry to determine the cause of fire. Although no official announcement was made on who would replace Astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee to test the Apollo spacecraft in the two-week flight, the "backup" or substitute crew consists of Astronauts Walter M. Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and R. Walter Cunningham. A shocked nation reacted to the deaths of the three astronauts. It was ironic that death came in a space vehicle on the ground where it was
least expected. NASA officialsand the astronauts themselves realized that in every space venture there was a chance that death would strike amid the thunderous blast-off or in the eerie silence of space. In Washington, President Johnson, an hour before the tragedy, had presided at the signing of a space treaty that had dedicated the use of space to peaceful purposes. Sixty nations signed the treaty. Of the tragedy, President Johnson said: "Three valiant young men have given their lives in the nation's service. We mourn this great loss and our hearts go out to their families." Further expressions of grief came from statesmen, officials, scientists, and the public throughout the world.
Ge_iniorbits¡¡ a;:ain
On globe-girdling tour a model of Gemini capsule attracts both young and old. Interested viewers range from common people to royalty, including King of Mghanistan, second from right, above.
A GEMINISPACECRAFT, similar to those used in the recently concluded Gemini space flight programme, is currently on another 'orbital' tourthis time by land. A fulI-size model of the capsule-nineteen feet long, ten feet wide and ten feet high and fitted with a viewing platform-is on a world tour. After being exhibited in several other countries, the Gemini model is now being seen in
the major cities of India. Project Gemini, comprising two unmanned and ten manned flights from April 1964 to November 1966, was marked by achievements which, according to experts, have put the United States on a firm path to the moon. It has demonstrated the ability of astronauts to remain in space for long periods, to manoeuvre their spacecraft with high precision, to
rendezvous, dOGkand work outside it in the vacuum of outer space. Gemini 7 completed 206 revolutions of the earth in about fourteen days and established a world endurance record for manned space flight. Other records were made when, flying in Gemini 12, Astronaut Edwin Aldrin left the capsule for a space walk of two hours and nine minutes, and exposed himself to space on two
other occasions, increasing his total exposure time to five-and-a-half hours. He took remarkable colour pictures of a total eclipse of the sun, the first ever taken above the earth's atmosphere. The experience and technology resulting from Project Gemini are now being applied to the ApolIo mission which aims at landing men on the moon by the end of this decade. END
GANDHI CTURE Delivering the seventh annual Gandhi Memorial Lecture at Howard University last November, Dr. Martin Luther King rejected violence as a legitimate weapon in the struggle for racial equality. The lectures were inaugurated in 1959 to perpetuate the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, whose philosophy of non-violence has inspired the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. E:x:cerpts from Dr. King's address appear on these pages.
all of the social problems that are created as a result of poverty. The deeper this probl<?mdevelops, the more it leads to frustration, the more it leads to bitterness, the more it leads to despair, the more it causes individuals to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of individuals in that society who feel they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. These are the individuals who will riot. These are the individuals who will listen to words of non-violence but allow them to fall on deaf ears. I for one will always take a stand against violence and riots because I feel firmly that riots create many more social problems than they solve. I feel they are self-defeating and they are socially destructive. I feel they only intensify the fears of large segments of the white community while relieving the guilts. So I will take a stand constantly against riots. But people of good will and of social vision must be as firm in condemning the conditions which persist in WE CAN¡SEE
our society and which cause individuals to feel that they have no alternative but to engage in such misguided and unfortunate tragic action in order to get attention. The fact is that a riot is the language of the unheard. What is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last several years. It has failed to hear that the rising expectations of freedom and justice have not been met. It has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquillity and the status quo than about justice and humanity. And so our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as there is that delay, as long as there is that failure to bring into
I will always take a stand against violence because I feel firmly that riots create many more social problems than they solve.
full realization the promises of democracy, we will find ourselves sinking into darker nights of social disruption. And so it is necessary to deal with all of these problems, passionately and unrelentingly; it is necessary to go this additional distance in order to make brotherhood a reality. We must develop a programme to keep the poverty issue before the conscience of the nation, making it patently clear that this economic problem must be solved if we are to be a nation of justice and brotherhood. We must deal with this problem; certainly the resources are here. God never intended for some of His children to live in an order of superfluous wealth while others live in abject, deadening poverty. He has left enough-and to spare-in this world for all of His children to have the basic necessities oflife. We must keep this before the attention of our nation. Now as we keep this issue alive we must be prepared for the difficulties ahead. In order to deal with the problem we have got to get rid of the "myth of time." It is the notion that only time can solve the problems that we face in the area of racial injustice. There are those-and often kind and sincere people-who say to Negroes and their allies in the white community, "Just be nice and patient and continue to pray and in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out. Only time can solve the problem." Well, that is a myth, and there is an answer to that myth. And that is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. I am convinced that the forces of ill will in our
nation have often used time much more effectively than the forces of good will. We may well have to repent in this generation-not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people who will bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, but we will have to repent for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who stand around and say, "Wait on time." Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. And so we must help time and we must realize that the time is always right to do right. Somewhere Edmund Burke said, "When bad men combine, good men must unite." This is the great challenge facing America. When bad men plot, good men must plan; when bad men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind; when bad men would shout tragic words of hatred, good men must proclaim the glories of love; when bad men would seek to preserve an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a just social order. No longer can we live with the myth of time. It is necessary to use time creatively and constructively. And there is another myth that gets around and that is the notion that legislation cannot solve the problem that we face in the area of racial injustice because you have got to change the heart and that you cannot change the heart through issuing an executive order or by having a decision by the Supreme Court or you cannot change the heart by getting a law written in the books. I guess there is some truth in that; there is certainly some truth in the fact that if we are to solve the pro,blems
Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability-it comes through the tireless efforts of dedicated individuals.
that we face in the area of racial-injustice, people are going to have to change their hearts eventually if we are going to have a truly brotherly society. It is certainly true that men will have to rise to the point of being obedient to the unenforceable. I would be the first one to say that. But after bringing this out it is necessary to bring out the other side. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated but behaviour can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a continued
man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that is pretty important also. And so while the law may not change the hearts of men it does change the habits of men. And when you change the habits of men, pretty soon behavioural patterns will be changed, attitudes will be changed, and hopefully hearts will be changed. It is necessary to see that we need civil rights legislation-but that is not enough. After it comes into being it must be rigorously enforced in order to end the long night of discrimination that we face in so many areas of our nation. And there is another point I would like to mention that is vital in the days ahead. It is the point we must bring out because I believe firmly that in our quest to bring about a society of justice, that society of justice is at bottom a society of brotherhood. We must seeblack and white alike-that our destinies are tied together, that somehow the destiny of the white man is inextricably bound with the destiny of the black man, and the destiny of the black man is inextricably bound with the destiny of the white man. These are facts of life however much we try to romanticize them and say something different. The fact is that we are tied together, whether we want to be or not: our language, our
It may be true that morality cannot be legislated but behaviour' can be regulated. j
cultural patterns, our material prosperity, our musicand even our food-are an amalgam of black and white. It just so happens, whether anybody likes it or not, it is a fact: every black man is a little white, and every white man is a little black. And the fact is that there can never be a separate black path to power and fulfilment that does not intersect white routes. And there can never be any white path to separate power and fulfilment short of social disaster that does not recognize the need, the necessity to share that power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. Somehow we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. The Negro needs the white man to save him from his fears; the white man needs the black man to save him from his guilt. John Donne was right: "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." And he goes on towards the end to say: "Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." One day in America we will see that. And when we
see it, we will rise to great and noble heights. We will come to see that-black and white together-we should and we must overcome. This is a great challenge facing this nation at this hour. Our goal is freedom. I believe firmly that we are going to get there. I believe this because ultimately in spite of its shortcomings, in spite of the deferred dreams that we have experienced and the blasted hopes, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, we were here.
In spite of the deferred dreams that we have experienced and the blasted hopes, the goal of America is freedom.
Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the beautiful words of the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears laboured here without wages. They made cotton king and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most oppressive and humiliating conditions. Yet out of their bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the- opposition that we now face-including the so-called "white backlash"-will surely fail. We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our- nation and the eternal will of Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And so with this faith, we go out to build a brighter tomorrow. We are going to win our freedom because Carlyle is right: "No lie can live forever." We are going to win our freedom because William Cullen Bryant is right: "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again." We are going to win our freedom because James Russell Lowell is right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne." Yet that scaffold sways the future. And so with this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. So the challenge of the hour is for America to rise up-not next week, not next month, not even an hour
from now-but rise up at this moment to make justice a reality and for every black man and woman, boy and girl to rise up and be a participant in this great drama taking place in American history; rise up at this moment, recognizing A tiny, little minute, Just sixty seconds in it, I did not choose it, I cannot refuse it, It is up to me to use it.
A tiny, little minute, just sixty seconds in it, but eternity is in it. And this is the challenge facing America. Following delivery of the Gandhi Memorial Lecture, Dr. King responded to questions from members of the audience. One person asked: (( What can we learn from the experience of Mahatma Gandhi which will give direction at this stage in our struggle for civil rights?" Dr. King responded:
The method of non-violent resistance is to my mind the most potent method available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and human dignity. As you know, Mahatma Gandhi pioneered in this method and through using this particular approach he finallybrought the Indian people to the day of independence when they were able to break loose from the political domination and the economic exploitation of the British empire. I still believe we can learn this it].a very significant way from Gandhi and I believe that it is still the most important course of action for the American Negro. It is important to learn and to know that when Gandhi talks about non-violent resistance he is not talking about doing nothing. So often people feel that it is a kind of do-nothing, cowardly method. This is not what Gandhi
It is important to know that when Gandhi talks about non-violent resistance he is not talking about doing nothing.
meant at all. Anybody who has studied his life and his activities will realize that non-violent resistance does resist. One of the basic principles that Gandhi always brought out was: only an evil man will adjust himself to evil; only an evil man will co-operate with evil. And it is just as important to see today, as Gandhi saw and as he saw in reading Thoreau, that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is co-operation with good. Non-violent resistance does not mean sitting down, doing nothing, merely accepting evil. It means standing up courageously against evil but recognizing
that it is not tactically sound nor morally excellent to engage in violence in the process. For the minute this happens it only intensifies the existence of violence in the situation and it really does not solve the social problem. So we must delve deeper into non-violence and into this method. I believe that it is the way. Even if it were not immoral we have neither the technique nor the instruments to win a violent campaign in the Unitod States. It is the fact that never in history has a violent
Non-violence is to my mind the most potent method available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and human dignity.
minority won a victory over a power of numerical majority unless there was sympathy on a broad scale within that majority for those who were using violence. It may be that in the American Revolution it was a minority of the people who were actually in the war and in the army, but they had the sympathy of the vast majority of the American people. But the fact is that in the United States of America if a Negro started his campaign of violence it would surely fail. First, Negroes are not united on violence so that the ten per cent would be divided and the other ninety would be totally against it-and we could not get anywhere. We could not get farther than disruption for disruption's sake. It would not end by solving the problem. I remember in Chicago last summer there was a riot and it did cause the Chicago power structure to stop and look, but they did not give us anything but a sprinkler system. Then they used the riot as a means to t,ry to avoid their full responsibility to the Negro population of the city and as an excuse for inaction. Then we, a month later, decided that we were still going to remain true to our non-violent principles. We did that. We got together; we organized a non-violent movement on housing. We started demonstrating around this issue; we demonstrated and demonstrated. We stood up finallywith courage, with morality, with power. Then the power structure of Chicago came to see that it had to capitulate. As a result of that non-violent movement, we were able to get a little more than a sprinkler system here and there. We sat down with the whole power structure of Chicago and worked out an agreement whereby we would have the most comprehensive open housing proposal ever worked out by any city. I still think nonviolence is the most powerful and the most effective instrument that the Negro has in his struggle in the United States of America. END
Plastic cornea, above, developed in 1965, fits over the eye pupil, while pelf orated disc is implanted in the eyeball. Eye tissue grows into pierced disc, holding the part in place. Bladder stimulator, below, activates the feebled muscle that empties the bladder. A radio receiver (white disc) is implanted, wired to muscle and worked by a transmitter.
Flexible dacroll arteries have been used to replace damaged ones since 1955. They do not buckle but bend naturally. Silicone rubber ear, right, can replace the injured orga..nfor life. It can be shaped, sewn and covered by skin graft.
THE UNIVERSE
OF
THORNTON WILDER WHEN THE ASTRONAUTSfinally reach the moon, they may find that someone has landed there before them-a graying, full-chested man with a straight back and the face of an animated owl, striding briskly along in his own cloud of dust, cultivating solitude. If so they should not be surprised; for Thornton Wilder, more than any other American writer of the present century, has made his home in the universe. By experience, talent, and temperamental necessity, he has created a world beyond time and space, and he moves through it with easy familiarity. As the landing rocket slices a scar through the silence, Wilder may scowl momentarily. But when the youthful spacemen emerge, he will undoubtedly welcome them into his book-lined crater, whip out a bottle of whiskey, and engage them in an all-night discussion of the eternal questions. For Wilder is both the most enquiring and, (on occasion) the most gregarious of men, and he cannot resist the eager young. When I first saw Thornton Wilder, he was the eager young, sitting beside my mother on the living-r()om couch, while I (younger still; still too young to be eager) watched This article by a childhood acquaintance 0/ Wilder's is abridged from Harper's Magazine. Š Harper & Row Publishers. Inc.
from my favourite front-row seat, under the grand piano. He was reading aloud from a copybook, and most of what he described that day of a modern Roman society worshipping at the altars of ancient gods was beyond my comprehension. The time was the early 'twenties, the manuscript The Cabala, soon to be Wilder's first published novel. He sat on the edge of the couch and acted each part in turn; his hands punched out points, his sudden laugh exploded and faded. Recalling that afternoon in Theatre Arts some twenty years later, my mother wrote of "that double but not at all divided quality that is one of his distinguishing characteristics ... although he was extremely serious, he was also very gay. Although very shy, he was unusually friendly; although he was surprisingly learned, he was never pedantic; he was as deliberate in his thinking as he was explosive in his speech .... " The years have added corroboration to this theme. Yet one could remark as well today on Thornton Wilder's single â&#x20AC;˘ yet curiously divided quality. Single in the sense that responsibility and commitment run through his life and his work like a unitary thread, binding together the devoted son and brother, the citizen who has served his country in two world wars, tHe teacher who has given his time generously to lecturing and to guiding young talent, and the continued
Ignoring the ephemeral, Wilder is concerned with the eternal questions, with universal themes and settings beyond the confines of time and space. Seventy next month, he remains an enduring voice in American literature.
The Writer's Best Friend Yet if this were all there were to explain about Wilder, his work would offer little more than "a soft and regular brightness, like a string of matched pearls," as Glenway Wescott described The Bridge of San Luis Rey. His readership would be limited to a small cult; his plays would occupy a decent and unremembered place in the theatre record; and his story would read like a copybook tale of a good gray eminence, admirable and dull. The facts, of course, are otherwise. It would be difficult to recall in the last few years a parallel to the acclaim that greeted The Bridge of San Luis Rey and its author in 1927. The New York Tribune called it "a little masterpiece;" "instinct with pure grace," was Clifton Fadiman's phrase in The Nation; "genius" proclaimed the New York Times. In the spring of 1928, Wilder was awarded his first of three Pulitzer prizes. That this sudden success created a revolution in Wilder's life is suggested by a note written in January 1928: " ... as for lecturing, I tried it once; and now I know that that occasion was another intimation (the hundredth) that my business was to close in and shut close and retire and be a provincial schoolmaster. I am relatively happy as longas I don't stir out of my little realm." Only six months later he has begun to appear on the Riviera with Scott Fitzgerald, Glenway Wescott, and other golden boys of American letters. Stories filter back that he has been touring Europe with the newly retired heavyweight champion of the world, Gene Tunney. Wilder and Tunney have lunch in London with George Bernard Shaw, and inspire- a takeoff by Robert Benchley, entitled "The Bridge of Don Gene's Nose." Sometime later the author is sitting close to the throne of Gertrude Stein's court in France. In 1929 he starts the first of a series of cross-country lecture tours; soon afterwards he is in Hollywood writing scripts. The gossip columnists are enthralled; Wilder, to all appearances, is enchanted. But tnJe to his own insistence on "a little Greek moderation" (in view of Greek history, an amiable delusion) the revolution in Wilder's life was bloodless. His quick forays into the public eye were followed by quick withdrawals; he still protected the quiet place in himself that he needed for work and study. With the exception of six half-years during the 'thirties as a lecturer on comparative literature at the University of Chicago, a three-year stint in the Air Force during World War II, and the arduous season of lecturing in and around Harvard in 1950-51 (which ended in one of his rare bouts of serious illness), Wilder has never stopped writing. If his volume of published work-less than a dozen books in allis small for a career that has already lasted for almost a halfcentury, the reason cannot be found in any lack.of commitment or industry. Wilder is a perfectionist; "an incinerator," he insists, "is the writer's best friend." The critics, perhaps exhausted by the effect of their own excesses in 1927, have greeted Wilder's subsequent works
with somewhat more moderation, and most serious surveys of American literature today ignore him completely, or refer to his work only in or~er to pass it by. Yet the statistics alone are enough to establish Wilder's claim to attention by any critic concerned with listening to the authentic heard voice of our day. The Bridge of San Luis Rey has sold well over a million copies in the United States and abroad, and his latest novel, The Ides of March (published in 1948), has exceeded 400,000 sales in America alone. Translations of his work have appeared in some thirty languages, including (besides all the European tongues), Chinese, Japanese, Urdu, Mahoric, Punjabi, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Malay, Burmese. Although his two Pulitzer prize plays, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, were written a generation ago (1938 and 1942, respectively) there is scarcely a day when one or the other is not being performed on some stage around the globe. His popular success may, in fact, be part of the reason for his critical neglect. So Edmund Wilson suggested in 1928: Now [Wilson wrote in The New Republic] that Mr. Thornton Wilder has become both a best-seller and Pulitzer prize-winner, he is in an unfortunate situation. On the one hand, the literary columnists have accepted him as a Reputation and gossip about him with respect but without intelligence; and, on the other, the literary 'snobs have been driven by his tremendous popularity, by the obsequious gossips themselves, into talking as if they took it for granted that there must be something meretricious about him. Mr. Wilder remains, however, a remarkably interesting writer, with a good deal to be said about him which no one, so far as I know, has said.
Against the Tr-affic Isabel Wilder suggests that her brother has contr!buted to his own neglect. Certainly he has held himself increasingly aloof from the marketplace in recent years. He has published no major neW work in English since 1948, although his Alcestiad-a bold and moving drama which adds a third act to the original Euripides version-has been published in German and is frequently performed today both in Germany and in Austria. Since 1957, he has given almost no interviews, refused all invitations to lecture or write for periodicals, and has denied permission for at least one full-length personal study. Malcolm Cowley, writing principally in terms of the literature of social consciousness and revolt of the 'thirties, suggests that when Wilder first rose to fame he was riding against the traffic, being neither in revolt himself, nor essentially a social historian, nor an outraged reformer. This disinclination to man the barriers of the proletarian revolution-or indeed to engage in any conflict (except for the ultimate and impersonal conflict of war)-had the. ironic outcome of making Wilder briefly a centre of controversy continued
A SENSATIONAL EXHIBIT OPENS IN NEW DELHI THIS MONTH
TWO DECADES OF
erlean 1946-1966 Chances are that the exhibit of modern American painting which opens in New Delhi on March 27 will be heatedly discussed in Indian art circles long after its three-week showing is concluded on April 16. According to the critics, "the display is a visual report on some of the most controversial, exciting and radical developments ever to take place in the history of art" -the rise of the Abstract-Expressionists, of the Pop and Op artists, and of the Abstract Colourists. Visitors to the exhibit may be overwhelmed by the variety and diversity of styles, the boldness of concepts, and the presentation of images very remote from popular ideas of art. The exhibit is overwhelming too in terms of size-among some 100 paintings by more than thirty artists, many are ten feet square and one is twentyfour feet across. Presented by the Lalit Kala Akademi and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, "Two Decades of American Painting" offers the best work of some of the most prominent names in U.S. art. An outline of the main trends in contemporary American painting appears on page 29, following a selection of works from the exhibit.
"Red No.1" by Sam Francis
Oil on canvas, 1953 Lent by Mr. and Mrs. Guy A. Weill
"Campbell Soup" by Andy Warhol Oil on canvas, 1965 Lent by Leo Castelli Gallery
Discarding old artistic canons, American painters today are striking out in exciting new directions ..
FOR DECADES the art world looked to Paris as the fount of all significant artistic directions, the source of new schools of painting, the inspiration of the Great Masters. But during the last twenty years the focus of attention has shifted across the seas to New York, which has seen some of the most exciting, radical and influential developments in the history of art. These developments cover a multitude of concepts and styles whose boundaries meet and sometimes merge, making it difficult to draw clear-cut lines between them. The diversity is confusing, but it is also a symbol of great vitality. Uniting most of the stylistically various artists today is a certain disaffection with "easy art"-in fact, their anti-decorative attitude seems to echo Baudelaire's famous words, "I have a horror of being easily understood." The dominant style in painting since World War II has been what is customarily called Abstract-Expressionism. The movement began in New York in the 1940s and grew not only out of native soil but also out of the influence of several European artists, notably the Abstractionists and the Surrealists. Basically it was an expression of protest. And what the artists were protesting was form itself, along with the discipline and planning that adherence to' form imposed. Therefore, forms were reduced to the most elemental, the human figure disappeared, and traditional concepts were replaced with more intuitive methods of creating direct physical sensations in which materials and their manipulations played a large part. Before long the Abstract-Expressionists had developed what came to be known as Action Painting-a term they coined to describe "the projection of muscular and psychological tension in the moment of creation." As a result, these paintings are often stark, violent, colourful and oddly disturbing. And this is precisely the artist's objective: to disturb, to achieve an emotional impact. The trail-blazers in the field of Abstract-Expressionism -Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooningfilled their work with all the drama, anger, pain and confusion of contemporary life. But this is not true of the exuberant canvases of Hans Hofmann, richly textured areas of vivid colour, rarely shadowed by a sense of the tragic. A number of other artists-Philip Guston, Sam Francis and Helen Frankenthaler-have extended AbstractExpressionism with originality and vigour. By the end of the 1950sa group of painters in California emerged in revolt against the school of New York and its introspective painting. They returned to the human figure, using thick, heavy paint and rather bland colours. But the most important aspect of their work was the fact that the figure was used abstractly, as a compositional device and devoid of any warmth or personality.
While the West Coast sought a new form of figurative painting, the New York artists were splitting into two directions. One group, out of which the Pop artists grew, turned more and more to topical subjects, to a new realism based on the world around them. The other turned to discipline through colour, to a pure abstraction that was an intellectual or lyrical expression. The neo-realist group was led by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, two of the most important avant-garde artists today. Rauschenberg's art is one of free association, using either everyday objects (a ladder, a chair, a tie) which he fixes to the canvas or collage drawn from the news media, and bound together with painted areas of great richness and poetic beauty. Johns chooses to depict American flags, targets, numbers, and fills in his designs with free painting. Out of Rauschenberg and Johns have come the Pop artists, though strictly speaking neither of them is one. While Pop art has been accused of pandering to the public, it is particularly perverse in this respect for its choice of subject matter is deliberately distasteful or non-aesthetic. Duplicating advertisements, labels and comic strips, such artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein seem to be satirizing the shoddiness of popular culture. One of the strong art movements of the '60s is the rise of the Abstract Colourists. Akin to Josef Albers, famous for his "Homage to the Square" series, they paint an art of pure colour, rendered through the use of the simplest possible abstract formula so that nothing will distract the eye from the vibration and action of the colours themselves. This movement insists upon one basic difference which separates their art from that of Albers: where his interest is optical and 'intellectual, theirs is lyrical and expressive. Among the artists who seek to explore and amplify the emotional waves that colour can generate are Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Louis and Ellsworth Kelly. The direct descendants of Josef Albers, of course, are the Op artists, with Richard Anuskiewicz, Julian Stanczak and Larry Poons as leading exponents. The universal appeal of Op art and its rather unexpected popularity with the public was recently explained by a leading art authority. "The optical painter knows," he said, "that sharp-edged and flatly-painted shapes, colours, lines, if skilfully controlled, can animate an observer's perception even against his will and bring about experiences of motion, light, depth ... for which the painting is only a stimulant." One point that is beyond all question is the provocative nature of American art today. Reaction may range from derision to the wildest approval, but it will not leave the viewer unmoved. And it will not blend with the interior decoration scheme like a pretty pastel landscape. This is because American artists today have something to say-and END they are choosing many ways in which to say it.
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IN THE GOLDENAGE of film comedy during the 1920s and 1930s, a handful of inspired clowns seized the film medium as their own, shaped a new language of moving pictures with their genius and set millions of fans howling with helpless laughter. The core of their genius was characterization: zany, sharply etched and excruciatingly, sometimes sadly, comic. Their wild inventiveness and a deeply felt humanity altered the whole comic spirit of America. But that was hardly deliberate. What they sought outright-and gotwas laughter. And just incidentally in the process they , created a brilliant body of filmed nonsense that has now come to be recognized as art. To many people slapstick comedy is the most influential and aesthetically satisfying accomplishment of the American film. Never mind its lowly origins, its vulgarity and unsnobbish mass appeal. No matter either that with the coming of sound on film, the pure genre disappeared, often
to be imitated, 'borrowed from, transformed or bowdlerized-but never ever to be forgotten. "The silent screen comics," wrote the late James Agee, "gave us a poem, a kind of poem, moreover, that everybody understands." Irreverently and unsentimentally they probed, analysed and criticized all facets of contemporary life and did so on a deeper level than was permitted serious film makers. No subject was taboo. The family, marriage, politics, war and the arts all came in for their share of pointed satire and no one objected. After all, it was all in fun, wasn't it? And precisely because it was fun, these comedians caught and held the imagination of people all over the world in , every social stratum, despite the uniquely American Aavour of their films. For they unconsciously spread the message of the American dream and did so without the slightest trace of chauvinism or self-Tighteousness. Here was the ingenuity and eternal optimism of the comics. The humble triumph over powerful adversaries and the weak outw,it the strong. And always there is an implied promise of riches, freedom and happiness. The comics seem to say that with a little luck, pluck and resourcefulness-and possihly a . couple of falls-the world is anybody's oyster. In style as well as content, slapstick also bears an unmistakably American ring. Many of Hollywood's topnotch directors, including John Ford, William Wyler and George Stevens, Sr., started their careers by grinding out onereelers. The form nurtured all that is most characteristic of U.S. film making. Tpe speed, the tightness, the brilliant timing of action and editing, the steady progression of story line, the clean bright photography and a knowing uSe of lenses and filters were all exploited to a fare-thee-well by the makers of slapstick and their glittering stars. Who were these giants? Their names and screen characters are universally known and loved. Chief among them, of course, is Charlie Chaplin, whose Little Tramp was a breathtaking comic creation. Another was the brash, indestructible yet bumbling opportunist created by Harold continued