When is art "primitive"? A gallerygoer might answer, "Half the time." Roughly half the contemporary shows in U.S. galleries seem to prove that the exhibiting artists had no formal training at all. Reason: moderns of many schools conceal all trace of academic tradition in their work, as if it were sissy. Last week Manhattan saw an exhibition of less fortunate primitivesmen lacking art training and cut off from the art of the ages. It beat the self-made, big-city primitives hollow.
The show, at Gallery "G," was somewhat grandiloquently billed as "Twenty Masterpieces of Haitian...