ABSTRACT
The partisans of realism are certainly among the beneficiaries of this more relaxed attitude toward contemporary art history. It is allowing them to gain a greater visibility on the current art scene, and in the dynamics of the current scene, sheer visibility counts for a great deal. It is important, then, to focus on the few artists of real quality who may be expected to emerge from the current free-for-all. One of them, is William Bailey, who is currently showing thirteen paintings and a group of drawings at the Robert Schoelkopf Gallery. Mr. Bailey is clearly a painter who wishes to avail himself of all the resources painting can command, and he brings extraordinary reserves of intelligence as well as sensitivity to the task. It is not the least of his merits that he forces us to reconsider the nature of realism and its relation to modernist art.
