Art: Paris Copies

The big coup of the season on Manhattan’s arty 57th Street was the first postwar show of new Picassos (TIME, Feb. 10). A small art dealer, Sam Kootz, had pulled it off. How had he done it? Crowed Kootz: he had softened up the hard-to-get master by showing him photographs of paintings by six young U.S. abstractionists in Kootz’s stable.

As a turnabout, Kootz proudly arranged to show his U.S. abstractionists in Paris’ swank Maeght gallery. This week the Paris show closed in a hurt hush. The critics had not been kind. Said the influential Arts: “Is this exhibition … to show us that abstract painting is no longer a secret in the U.S.? This art form cannot surprise or shock us, for we are familiar with it, but it must have quality, which is certainly lacking. . . .” Added Les Lettres Françaises: “One could imagine that these painters had not even studied the original canvases but had contented themselves with examining reproductions.”

Pablo Picasso himself had come alone to the gallery one morning, ordered the doors shut while he looked the show over, and gone away again without uttering a word.