ABSTRACT
Modernist art, having enlisted its energies in the pursuit of the absolute, has tended to denigrate—by implication, if not by direct attack—the sociability quotient in art, and for that reason it is rarely, if ever, discussed at the higher altitudes of modern criticism. The exhibition of photographs by Cecil Beaton, entitled "600 Faces by Beaton: 1928-69," at the Museum of the City of New York, can scarcely be said to escape such hazards. Mr. Beaton is not a great photographer, but his career is an essential datum in the history of an era. Mr. David Hockney is not, to be sure, a very distinguished painter. The landscapes that fill out his exhibition are little more than facile illustrations, and even the pictorial construction of the portraits, though adequate to his purposes, is simply a neat pastiche of well-worn devices.
