A TREE GROWS IN SOHO

Spotlight

In 1933, Covarrubias's "Tree of Modern Art" was only one part of Vanity Fair's "Simplified Guide to the Modern Movement—For the Uninitiated." An overwrought R. H. Wilenski provided an explanatory text that swooned over the Impressionists' "gaiety of light," patriotically located the inspiration for Cubism in the American skyscraper, and described Modi-

gliani as marrying "Botticelli to the Negro art of Central Africa." Hence the tribal sculpture next to the de Chirico-esque classical bust at the foot of the tree. Wilenski also lamented that "modern painting cannot very well be squeezed into a narrow mechanical scheme." But the very "narrowness" of the tree is its own justification. How else can one argue about who is in and who is out, who is large and who is small?

In today's art world, an updating of Covarrubias's tree might consist simply of a thick "Duchamp" trunk sprouting branches labeled "Conceptual," "Pop," "Mixed Media," "Appropriation," "Installation," "Performance," "Gender Play," etc. In the original, Duchamp is represented merely by a small leaf tucked behind Picasso on the "Cubists" branch (not even with his fellow Dadaists Tzara and Picabia). Now the charming provocateur who disdained "retinal" art looms as large as Matisse. Not so lucky was Covarrubias's School of Paris, with its gallery of mysterious little-knowns such as Lurcat, Segonzac, de la Fresnaye, and Survage. Who in the School of New York will be forgotten in 2063? Koons? Nauman? Rauschenberg?

BRADLEY COLLINS