ABSTRACT
Ten years ago the Sidney Janis Gallery mounted an exhibition called "New Realists," which effectively launched the Pop art movement on the New York art market. For a sizable portion of the art public, the whole notion of artistic seriousness was altered—altered downward, it must be said, to a level where an insidious facetiousness and frivolity could pass muster as an attitude of high endeavor. Although the Pop movement itself is moribund, it is worth recalling its enormous negative influence on the art scene. Sharp-Focus Realism, as the Janis show defines it, is, in any case, primarily a picture-making art. In addition to the leftovers from Pop: Phase-I and what one may regard as the mainstream of Phase-II, a number of tangential efforts are offered—varieties of picture-making which bear little relation to the work that occasioned the show in the first place.
