Docents' Duties

Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, the No. 1 U.S. showroom of contemporary painting, attracts 550,000 paying customers a year. There, pictures and public eye each other uneasily, in an air-conditioned atmosphere of mutual distrust. To arbitrate the silent battle of wills that usually ensues, the museum employs three well-primed guides whom it calls docents (rhymes with no sense). The docents talk and talk--a bit nervously.

They are often interrupted, and the questions are apt to be tough ones. The museum last week had on sale an intriguing pamphlet entitled The Questioning Public, which told something of what the docents are up against.

No Chinatown. Children, they agreed, are easiest to handle, not only because the little innocents are used to being led around by the nose anyway, but also because they are not automatically prejudiced, like many of their elders, against unfamiliar sights. The adults are apt to be casual but hostile. They often seem to "feel the museum's educational duty is comparable to a swift tour of Chinatown."

A wise docent makes it clear at the start that "unfortunately there are no 'ten easy lessons,' no short cuts to developing a mature response to art." If his audience snickers in front of a picture or sculpture, the docent may attempt to restore the dignity of the occasion by quoting Director Alfred Barr Jr.'s neatly apologetic dictum: "We try to collect and exhibit whatever painting seems creatively significant; and if in the course of time one or two choices out of ten prove worthy, I believe the general selection is justified." That line is no help when they come to the museum's most important pictures, such as the great Guernica mural that shows Picasso in a wilder and more difficult mood than his recent one. Faced with that deliberately and violently ugly protest against a German bombing raid (in the Spanish Civil War), visitors fairly bristle with questions:

"Why should we enjoy such a work?"

"Assuming it has a propaganda function, wouldn't it be more effective if it were more understandable, like Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms posters?"

"Why was Picasso sloppy enough to leave drips and smears of paint on it?"

No Facts. Most of all, say the docents, the public is "bewildered by the absence of facts" in such paintings. Comparatively naturalistic artists such as Cezanne and Van Gogh get a worshipfully warm reception, the museum says, and for Salvador Dali, whose surrealism depends on meticulous realism, "the audience has an especial place in its heart." Even Picasso is admired for his early "blue period" and neo-classical pictures.

For those who wish Picasso had kept his art "recognizable," the docents can quote the protean genius's own words. "What do you think an artist is," he once burst out, "an imbecile who has only his eyes?" They might also suggest that baffled gallery-goers become willing "imbeciles" themselves--using their eyes to the full, and not asking too many questions. But that of course might do away with the docents.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.