Art: Forms in Air

In the greatest periods of art, such as the Classical and the Gothic, artists strove for an agreed-upon ideal, and innovations were few (or, if many, did not survive). But modern art relentlessly stresses the new. The result is mostly confusion, but also a degree of fermentation. Last week in Manhattan's Greenwich Village a lean, wispy-bearded man with the cheerful energy of a grasshopper was preparing something brand new in sculpture. His suitably improbable name: Len Lye. His sculptures he calls "Tangibles," but they are not meant to be touched. They vibrate.

Dancing...

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