ABSTRACT
The exhibition of paintings by Georges Braque that Douglas Cooper has organized at the Art Institute of Chicago is subtitled "The Great Years," and the subtitle is evidently intended to be something of a provocation. These paintings cannot, of course, be easily detached from Braque's earlier achievement as one of the creators of Cubism, for there is not one among them that does not derive its essential syntax from Cubist form. In working out the terms of resolution, Braque turned more and more to the resource that had sustained some of his most inspired innovations in the early Cubist period—his exceptional skill and experience as a pictorial artisan. Mr. D. Cooper speaks of Braque's having "lost his sense of direction" in the years 1930-6, and there are only three pictures in the exhibition from that period. And the pictures that precede them, while never entirely without interest, are certainly insufficient to support any claim of greatness.
