Montparnasse's smoky cafes are not noted for peace & quiet, but the meeting last February was something special, even for artists in Paris. Crowded onto a cafe terrace were 150 young American painters working abroad, and their friends and hangers-on, everyone bellowing loudly at the injustice of it all. The uproar was over an announcement that a big group show by 124 American artists, 340 paintings in all, had just been canceled. At the last minute, a three-man French jury had decided that "there were not enough works of outstanding merit."
Last week France's U.S. colony finally got its group show, but...