The American Taste

London's war-scarred Tate Gallery brimmed last week with the sweet & sour cream of U.S. art: 240 paintings by everyone from the razor-sharp 18th Century Portraitist John Singleton Copley to his blunt-edged fellow Bostonian, bitter, 31-year-old ex-G.I. Jack Levine.

The man who had the uneasy task of assembling the show was slender, studious Curator John Walker of Washington's National Gallery. Walker and his helpers among top-drawer U.S. museum directors had no trouble picking 19th Century masters like Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, but debated back & forth over such contemporary choices as Morris Grave's scratchy watercolor called Little Known Bird of the Inner Eye and Man Ray's crisp Admiration of the Ochestrelle for the Cinematograph.

The show's opening was a social event. England's King and Queen spent an hour and a half looking it over, accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to England Averell Harriman. They finally came to rest (for the newspaper cameras) in front of Ivan Le Lorraine Albright's deliquescent, infinitely detailed door entitled That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do. The King guffawed when his guide informed him that a Georgia O'Keeffe he was admiring was titled Pelvis with the Moon. Said Queen Elizabeth tactfully: modern U.S. artists exhibit tremendous vitality.

One baffled Britisher buttonholed a U.S. reporter, begged him to "show me which of these things represent the American form of art. They all look French to me." When the correspondent pointed out regional Americana by Thomas Benton and John Steuart Curry, the Englishman said "Hmmm, thank you," and slowly walked away.

The London Times, trying to add it all up, guessed that what was really native to the American Way was a "matter-of-fact approach."

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