ABSTRACT
There is something at once glorious and poignant about the loneliness of the early American modernists. Exceptions to the general blandness of American culture were few. Arthur Dove gravitated to the most exceptional artistic enclave New York offered at that time. Dove spent a year and a half in Paris. The circle of Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer whose gallery was the principal oasis in the cultural desert, would for many years be Dove's haven. The place to see Dove's art at its best is still the Phillips Gallery in Washington, but there happen to be several shows of his work that are of unusual interest. As a painter, Dove enjoys an equivocal fame, and while there are many small delights to be found in the Downtown show, this is not the kind of exhibition that will redeem his standing from the equivocation that surrounds it.
