In that same gallery, photos document Pollock's breakthrough show at Betty Parsons, where it hung just that way. The juxtaposition of media finishes off whatever formalism the top floor's traditional, rectilinear entrance gallery may leave. American art has become an icon, as totem and as a record of its time. And that is the point of this strangely absorbing, frustrating show. Only this time the slimier it gets, the better it evokes the unsettled art of the century's end.
Some choices reflect a natural bias to the museum's own holdings.
One can hardly mind a magnificent, yards-wide painting by Lee Krasner . One woman, at least, had no fear of her husband's aspirations. Jasper Johns's flags and white targets go well indeed with Frank Stella's brutal reference to painting as icon, Die Fahne Hoch . For others, such as Barnett Newman or Mark Rothko , I do wish the Whitney had looked beyond its cellars. Either way, though, the poor lighting spells death.