Carnegie's 43rd

For those who had the time and the air fare to taste and compare, 1964 has already proved a vintage year for big art festivals. By coincidence, three famous periodic exhibitions fell in the same year that London's Tate Gallery put on its bold survey of a decade of invention. That exhibition introduced a host of young Londoners. Venice's 32nd brassy Biennale gave official acclaim to U.S. pop. Germany's didactic Dokumenta III then launched op. The 43rd Pittsburgh International, better known as the Carnegie, fails to find any new avantgarde, but makes up for this lack with a rich platter of hearty helpings: 401 paintings and sculptures.

The art, selected from 35 nations, is a catholic spread of styles, quite untainted by politics. The reason for the wide variety is that Carnegie Institute's diligent new director, Gustave von Groschwitz, 58, picked the whole shebang by himself. "Von," former curator of prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum, spent the better part of two years routing out his choices.

"I tried to work for a balance," says Von Groschwitz. His rough rule was to give a third of the show to Americans and the rest to foreigners. The result shows how abstraction still rides high everywhere except in the U.S., where the strongest entries belong to the schools of pop realism and California figuratives. But balance does not suffice to explain the small numbers of young British artists and optical painters at the exhibition, especially in the face of bulky crops of Spanish, Italian and German artists.

Von Groschwitz introduces 99 foreign artists and 54 U.S. artists to the Carnegie. None of the newcomers won prizes, although, of course, a jury went through the dismal ritual of choosing and awarding. The jury, composed of former Baltimore Museum Director Adelyn Breeskin, Abstractionist Hans Hartung, and British Picasso Expert

Roland Penrose, gave $2,000 apiece to six unadventurous choices. France's abstractionist Pierre Soulages, 45, won with an unevocative work titled 24 November '63. Spain's slashing Antonio Saura, 34, scored with an Imaginary Portrait of Goya. Hard edge got the nod as the jury's candidate for successor to abstract expressionism. The U.S.'s Ellsworth Kelly, 41, and Britain's Victor Pasmore, 56, won prizes with undistinguished glops of color. Sculpture prizes went to Jean Arp, 77, and Eduardo Chillida, 40.

Certainly most of the artists on display in Pittsburgh will be remembered longer than, say, Gaston La Touche, a 1907 winner, or 1947's Zoltan Sepeshy. But it is disconcerting to recall that in its time the Carnegie managed to omit from its internationals work by Cezanne, Modigliani, Demuth, Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Mondrian, Juan Gris and Toulouse-Lautrec.

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