If the path to hell is really paved with good intentions, as my father always maintained, then the organizers of the raucous survey “High Times/Hard Times: New York Painting 1967–1975” at the National Academy Museum, should prepare themselves for an uncomfortable afterlife.[1] That this unwieldy, baggy monster of a show means well is beyond dispute. The concept is appealing: a close look at a little examined, provocative moment in the history of recent art. The subject is promising: the years when the aesthetic certainties of post-war abstraction began to weaken under the pressure of new materials, new formal possibilities, new political crises, and new social concerns. And the timing seems right: we’re far enough away from the decade or so under review that it should be possible to examine the art of the period with fresh eyes. That the organizers succeeded in bringing their concept to life is...

 

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