Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962
The works in the catalogue's almost three hundred pages, by the likes of Burri, Saint Phalle, Deschamps, Fautrier, Fontana, Klein, and Shimamoto, sometimes resemble aggressive art-historical crime scenes (with crusted-over impasto, jagged slashes and bullet holes, and actual burns), while Scarpitta's surfaces appear to be in the process of healing, held together by crude suturing and tightly wrapped bandages. His literal take on a painting's material definition as canvas on a stretcher tempts one to think of a medical stretcher pulled through the trenches.   —Prudence Peiffer