“Abstract Expressionism,” this fall’s much-heralded survey at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, is informative, extravagant, and also problematic—a list of characteristics that is perhaps inevitable, given the vast, unruly subject it deals with.1 In his catalogue essay and sharply honed wall texts, the independent art historian David Anfam, who organized the show with Edith Devaney, the Contemporary Curator of the RA, describes Abstract Expressionism not as a coherent movement but as “a phenomenon.” The exhibition strives to illuminate the defining attributes of the phenomenon while simultaneously suggesting alternative readings. The result is at once exhilarating and exasperating, comprehensive and unbalanced. Rooms dedicated to single artists alternate with thematic, non-chronologically organized galleries designed to accentuate the commonalities, cross-fertilizations, and friendships among the artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, as well as the individuality of their approaches. The story is told with paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and photographs assembled from public and private collections throughout Europe and across the United States. We encounter impressive, wide-ranging groups of works by David Smith, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, and Mark Rothko, a remarkable number of Clyfford Stills, a lot of Franz Klines, a good selection of Barnett Newmans and Ad Reinhardts, and some very strong Philip Gustons. There are also a number of interesting, idiosyncratic additions to the proverbial usual suspects, such as an unusually good, atypically uncongested Milton Resnick and some unexpected Jack Tworkovs and Conrad Marca-Rellis.

But there are also startling omissions