Although this pairing of drawings and small paintings by two art-market heavyweights ostensibly targets their affinities, it feels more like a prizefight in an exclusive boutique. Both artists have used a lush-lashed eye motif, and Guston (1913–1980) often depicted the soles of tired shoes and disembodied heads and limbs; this matches up with the prosaic objects and body parts that Johns (b. 1930) has long used as themes in his work. So, in this corner, in clunky charcoal strokes and weighing a metaphorical ton, we have Guston's drawing of a book. The open tome casts rough-hewn shadows, and the pages are covered with hash marks that can be read as windows in a monumental tenement building—a powerful evocation of knowledge joined with life's hard knocks. Wisdom, in other words. Nearby, Johns's paintings feel facile by comparison: eyes with sun-ray lashes, lips as big as mountain ranges. Both artists shift subjects through scale, a flux that comes across as searching passion in Guston but often mere technical aplomb in Johns, who, even when being purposely obscure (a charcoal drawing of a flaccid face on a folded cloth nailed to a crosshatched wall), tells us things we already know. Guston delights in the discovery of, say, the powerful shapes latent in trash-can lids; such forms feature prominently in a 30-inch-wide drawing from the year of his death, a battlefield that also includes heads, arms, and stretcher bars. The dense strokes of his pen summon the force of his youthful abstractions for one last round of poignant cartoon haymakers. Unfortunately, little here recalls the glory of Johns's early masterpieces—stick figures and wide eyes are shoved to the edges of one untitled work, blue paint lying inert on the canvas. In this bout, at least, it's the dead man... More >>>