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I PaineWebber's exhibit of 70 masterworks is now at the DIA.

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6 THE JEWISH NEWS

FRANK PROVENZANO SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

C

orporate America can awards ceremony. Fill in the
hardly be accused of culti blank — and the blank faces —
vating the rebellious and you may have that unful-
artistic spirit. Conserva- filling feeling that accompanies
tive is the aesthetic. Maintain- the realization that you're a
ing the status quo the objective. small twig in a frozen forest.
Yet occasionally, a rebel like
The exhibit's tone is set with
Donald B. Marron slips through the opening work, a fluorescent
the imperious organizational light sculpture by Dan Flavin.
chart.
Mesmerizing elongated bulbs are
As chairman and chief execu- arranged to resemble prefabri-
tive officer of PaineWebber cated, sterile suburban office
Group Inc., Marron can appre- structures. It's an "illuminating"
ciate emerging market trends threshold to some of the most in-
and identify up-and-coming pub- fluential and innovative artists
lic companies. He has now of the last four decades.
turned his intuition to the art
With the works of artists like
world to discover the new, novel Jasper Johns in the initial gal-
and provocative works that de- leries, the exhibit offers a view
fine contemporary art.
of the seminal artists who
When he's not at his day job pushed the limits of abstrac-
appearing bullish, Marron
searches the New York gal-
leries for the latest up-and-
coming American painters
and sculptors.
With an eclecticism that
largely defines American con-
temporary art, a selection
from the collection, assembled
by the Houston Museum of
Fine Arts, has made its way
to the Detroit Institute of
Arts. The 70-piece exhibit is
titled "Art Works: The
PaineWebber Collection of
Contemporary Masters." The
show runs through the end of
the year.
"Most people associate cor-
porate art with safe art," said
Mary Ann Wilkinson, acting
curator of 20th-century art at
the DIA. "(Marron) figured
that having contemporary
works of art hanging in
the company's hallways
would help bring
PaineWebber's employ-
ees closer to contempo-
rary life."
Viewing an artistic in-
terpretation of contem-
porary life and "getting
closer" to it, however,
isn't a decision for the
squeamish. The wide-
ranging DIA exhibit is
provocative, challenging,
disturbing and, at times,
utterly evanescent in its
beauty.
Ironically, several of
the pieces present biting
interpretations of the
faceless, impersonal cor-
porate world. The char-
coal and acrylic 1962 piece by tionism to open the way for con-
Richard Artschwager is a pseu- temporary art.
do-Last. Supper portrait of a con-
The exhibit offers a look at
temporary "corporate event" — artists such as Susan Rothen-
the annual holiday bash or berg and Cy Twombly, who con-

tinue to deal with fundamental
issues of how to integrate motion
and expand the perception of col-
or on canvas.
There's the gun-toting celebri-
ty gangster piece "Cagney" by
Andy Warhol, the father of
American Pop Art. And, there's
the latest from Pop Art legend
Roy Lichtenstein, "Post Visual,"
an ode to the living-room sanc-
tum that's home to the sacro-
sanct invention of our time, the
TV.
But there's plenty beyond the
Pop Art veneer in the DIA ex-
hibit. To its credit, the DIA
reaches for a broader, historical
flavor. The pieces are logically
and aesthetically ordered to pro-
vide an evolutionary look at how

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Above: Anselm Kiefer's Ways of
Worldly Wisdom: Arminius' Battle,
1978.

Left: Roy Lichtenstein's Post Visual,
1993.

American
Abstractionism
evolved into the figurative work
of Philip Guston, and, more re-
cently, to the narrative surreal-
istic paintings of Mark Tansey.
There are a few pleasant sur-
prises. Tony Cragg's "Grey
Moon," composed of plastic ob-
jects, was sent to Wilkinson
along with a template. She or-
ganized the bits of plastic into
the shape of a crescent moon,
which is attached to the wall by
— what else? — Velcro.
Midway through the exhibit,
the lush landscape of Sandro
Chia's "Three Boys on a Raft"
brings the show to a stunning
halt. The heroic figures of Chia's