They carry all the fragility of emotion, human flesh, and paint. Yet one owes the insight to a different kind of portrait, from an American woman. Along with chronology, the Modern bursts an old myth, of Modernism as a march from realism to abstraction. Categories such as people, places, and things have little to do with either. Abstraction would look elsewhere, to extend experience rather than represent it.
Modernism hinges on the extension, but as fresh examination of the real.
Rather than a forced march, one sees restlessness, a continual urge to recreate experience. That same urge underlies every stage of Modernism, from Cubism's manic reality to Surrealism's unseen one. There it is again, from Dada and its institutionalization of the ordinary to Minimalism's break with the old sites for art. There it is yet again , from Abstract Expressionism's erasure of symbols to Pop Art's erasure of brand names. Of course, one expects an extraordinary collection, and one gets it.