CENTURY OF EXCELLENCE from page 74 Jim Dine used etching, drypoint and electric tools to create his 1979 self-portrait, "The Hand Painted Portrait on Thin Fabriano." is, in fact, only drawing that counts," noted famed sculptor Alberto Giacometti, who added that, "if one could master drawing, all the rest would be possible." It is hardly sur- prising that this century's leading painters and sculptors also created extraordinary prints and drawings, whether studies for larger works or integral pieces in their own right. The eclectic nature of such an all- inclusive overview defies easy catego- rization. Nor can the following high- lights do justice to the sweep of this first-rate show, which demands and deserves repeated visits. • Paul Klee once described drawing as taking a line for a walk. The Swiss- born artist, who studied and taught in-Germany, was forced to leave because of his staunch anti-Nazi fer- vor. Veil Dance is a clandestine attack on the Nazi movement, which Klee detested. The veil covers up and impedes the joyous movement of the dancer, whose eyes are blindfolded and hands are tied. • When painting on canvas became too arduous for the ailing Henri Matisse, he began to create col- lages with paper cutouts or what he called "drawing with scissors." Two stencil prints from the artist's 1947 book Jazz elicit a childlike exuberance in their colorful squiggles and shapes. Matisse's spare use of line could speak volumes. His Still Life, of a giant pumpkin, a jug and other objects, is sensual and inviting. • Pablo Picasso was not only the century's greatest artist but a consum- 7/30 1999 76 Detroit Jewish News mate draftsman as well, creat- ing more than 2,500 prints, including lithographs, linoleum cuts and intaglio. His intro- spective young boy, Portrait of an Adolescent, graces this show. The Israel Museum owns 900 Picasso prints, donated by just two individuals. • Representative American artists in the exhibit include John Marin, considered the American master of watercol- or in the 20th century. Marin uses light to stunning effect to evoke the rain-filled clouds of an encroaching storm in New Mexico, Region about Taos and Santa Fe. • Jackson Pollock's drawings mimic his paintings. A Rorschach inkblot technique in an untitled work simulates the dripping, pouring and airbrushing techniques he applied to his canvases. • Like Pollock, Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein) was impressed by Mexican muralists, including Diego Rivera, and began his career as a muralist. In his ink draw- ing Lower Level, rain falls on a sea of floating heads, some half-submerged and sinking. The cartoon-like work echoes the artist's despair and anxiety over ill health and negative reviews. • Milton Avery's sublime watercol- or Umbrellas by Sea emphasizes the importance of color in the artist's everyday subject matter. In this peace- ful tableau, beach, water and sky are punctuated by two tilted umbrellas, which flatten the surface from three dimensions to two. The calm of the sea, serenity and peacefulness repli- cate the artist's joy in life. • A black human figure is superim- posed on an abstract background of explosive color in an untitled work by leading abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, who was born in Holland and settled in New York City. • Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, leading artist El Lissitzy sparked a Jewish cultural renaissance. The artist's illustrations to Chad Gadya (One-Kid), the traditional song sung towards the close of the seder, is considered his best work. The draw- ings change the focus from Jewish traditions embedded in the song to beliefs propagated by the revolution. In another illustration, titled Boat Ticket, two intersecting triangles form a skewed Star of David. The upper part includes an ocean liner and the American flag, symbolizing the dream and destination of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century. Burial let- ters superimposed on a dark hand symbolically connote the burial of the old ways and religious Jewish tradi- tions and the embracing of the new religion of communism. • Like Lissitzky, Marc Chagall also endorsed the promise of the revolu- tion. Chagall's whimsical watercolor Promenade, in which the artist holds the hand of his wife who is suspended in mid-air, suggests the idyllic early days following the revolution, as well as the couple's own happiness. • Erwin Blumenfeld's complex col- lage Marquis de Sade is a stinging indictment of bourgeois society, including Jewish society. Among its many fragmented images, a newspa- per ad announces that a nobleman with money and no debts is looking to marry a woman of means; widows or Jewesses might also apply. Collage, the juxtaposition of oppo- sitional forms representing reality and the subconscious, is a prominent medium seen in Dadaism, an anti- establishment art movement that arose during World War I. It is characterized by expressions of outrage at conditions of the world, along with cynicism and rebellion toward traditional art forms. Major gifts from noted Surrealist poet and lifelong col- lector Arturo Schwarz of Milan and New York collector I. M. Cohen have made The Israel Museum an international center for the study of Dada and Surrealist art. • Artistic revolution was linked to political change. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's collage Bankruptcy Vultures, created in Berlin in 1922-23, focuses on Germany's rampant inflation. As there was no money to buy paint or canvas, Leon Bakst, born Lev Samoilovich Rosenberg, used watercolor, pencil and gouache in "Costume Design for Judith," 1922. the artist uses the worthless currency to make his assemblage. • Using urban debris from city streets, anti-Nazi activist Kurt Schwitters' collages following World War I create new art forms out of the remains of a former culture. • Three generations of Israeli artists are represented in the exhibit as well, including Moshe Kupferman. Born in Galicia, he was the only member of his family to survive World War II. In 1948, Kupferman came to Israel, where he helped found Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot (Commemoration of Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust); he still resides there. Rendered in ghostly black and gray hues, Kupferman's gridlike drawing Untitled suggests barbed wire fences and the striped pajamas of concentra- tion camp inmates. fl "Modern Masterworks on Paper from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem" runs through Aug. 29 at The Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum is located in University Circle, 11150 East Blvd., in Cleveland, Ohio. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, Wednesday and.Friday nights until 9. Admission is free. For more information, call (216) 421-7350, or access the Web site at www.clemusart.com . . - ,sts.imm :