Shows in Manhattan

Fiene. Like the Brothers Benet in literature, Brothers Ernest & Paul Fiene have long held a respected if not dominant position in Manhattan's art world. Painter Ernest is the better known. He is well represented in many important collections, figures regularly in exhibitions, teaches painting to hand-picked students. Last week blond, bushy-mustached Brother Paul gave his first one-man show of sculpture and outgrew the title of "Ernest Fiene's Younger Brother" as completely as Stephen Vincent Benet outgrew ''William Rose Benet's Younger Brother" with the publication of John Brown's Body. In the middle of a show room of portrait heads and animal studies stretched a heroic nude rising from the ground on one arm, entitled Rising Figure. Critics hailed it as one of the most important pieces of sculpture in years, a tie with William Zorach's Spirit of the Dance (banned by Roxy, restored last week to Radio City's Music Hall) as the most interesting statue of the year. Sculptor Fiene admits no hobby beyond his sculpture, but he owns two Siamese cats, makes them earn their daily herring by posing for him and his wife, Painter Rosella Hartman.

Cats. One of Paul Fiene's best cat statues was not on view in his own exhibition last week but up on 57th Street where the Ferargil Galleries held an elaborate cat show. Following a showing of cats in art at the little Maurel Gallery year ago (TIME, Dec. 14, 1931) Ferargil showed not only paintings and statues of cats, but cat prints, cat bookends, cat doorstops, cat ash trays, cat hooked rugs, cat footstools. Besides Paul Fiene's rather heraldic cat couchant, notable cats were those by William Zorach, Peggy Bacon. Agnes Tait, Tsugoharu Foujita, and a superb cat poster by the late great Theophile Steinlen.

Chicago. As a polite gesture to the dozens of Chicago galleries which have exhibited the work of Eastern artists for years, the Whitney Museum exhibited a large loan collection of works by Chicago artists. Manhattan critics found the choice excellent, the work sound, were disappointed in the absence of local color. High spot was Grant Wood's famed American Gothic, a portrait of a sad-eyed collarless Iowa farmer & wife (TIME, Sept. 5). Other Chicago artists seemed as willing to copy New York's Reginald Marsh, Thomas Benton, Alexander Brook, as New York artists of a decade ago were to copy Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne.

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