Any book announced as “an entirely new vision of modern art’s origins and its subsequent meanings” is bound to raise expectations, even hopes, all the more so when the author is the new director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture of the Museum of Modern Art. I confess I was doubly curious about Kirk Varnedoe’s A Fine Disregard because, despite the author’s considerable reputation, it has been difficult to assess his abilities from his track record of exhibitions and catalogue contributions so far.

Before his appointment to MOMA, Varnedoe was known for a couple of modest, serious shows and couple of flashy ones. He had organized a welcome study of Gustave Caillebotte, the Impressionists’ champion, collector, and sometime colleague, and a survey of Scandinavian painting, as unfamiliar as Caillebotte in this country. Varnedoe was far better known for having collaborated with William Rubin on MOMA’s controversial “‘Primitivism’ in Twentieth-Century Art” and for having worked on the enigmatic “Vienna 1900.” The exhibitions of Caillebotte and of Scandinavian painting were informative and fairly straightforward, but told us little about Varnedoe’s eye and taste. The “Affinities” section of “’Primitivism,’” which was his chief contribution to the show, didn’t tell us much more. A kind of randomness prevailed in the selections, and some of it was just plain silly. Placing a Kenneth Noland “circle” painting next to a New Guinea shield with concentric motifs told us nothing about either object. As far as I know, Noland has never been