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The Atheneum exhibition should do away with one outworn illusion: that abstract artists are abstract because they cannot paint images. Esteban Vicente's portrait of his little daughter and the early sculptured heads by Sculptors Reuben Nakian and Louise Nevelson prove that these artists could have successfully stuck to representation had they chosen to. Other early works are not so reassuring. Mark Rothko's floating rectangles, controversial though they are, at least have an air of mystery, and many admirers have fallen under their spell. Had Rothko stuck to realism, as in his Two Women in a Window, his name might not even be known today.