“What happens when you can’t be a cynic any more? What do you do?” Increasingly this has been the question asked by knife-faced Jack Levine, 41, Boston slum-born painter whose big reputation is based on such satire-veined canvases as Welcome Home, Gangster Funeral, Election Night (TIME, May 20, 1946 et seq.). His answer, Medicine Show, more than a year in the painting, is on display this week at Manhattan’s Alan Gallery. It is more the work of a reformer than that of a cynic, attacking the world of ballyhoo which promotes “something people don’t want but buy on installments.”
Ex-Cynic Levine says that he “can’t go long without an editorial problem. Before, I painted the wardheelers; now for once I’m painting the voters. What can I say about ordinary people against whom I have no rancor? I find people attractive. So they have to be gulled. Somebody’s selling and everybody’s gullible.” To make his point, Levine has one well-curved doxie hold up a sign reading VELENO, Italian for poison.
Scoring more as a boxer’s point than a slugger’s blow, Medicine Show adds to Levine’s steady advance as an artist who bucks the current abstract trend. By moving his subject matter outdoors and placing it under a blue sky, he has tackled a multitude of problems concealed in the murk of his previous nightclubs, restaurants and courtroom scenes. Like Levine’s other major works. Medicine Show almost certainly will end up as a prize museum catch. Probable price: over $8,000.
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