Red Grooms: A Retrospective

Brightness, energy, wit and the use of a variety of media mark Grooms's work, much of which is represented here. There are parts of the well-known 3-D monumental assembly Ruckus Manhattan, a vibrant look at life in New York City done with the artist's former wife, Mimi Gross. Other works included here are Nighthawks Revisited, a pencil drawing homage to Edward Hopper, and a portrait of Franz Kline that is carved out of a telephone book. Even his early ""student'' work, pen-and-ink drawings and oil paintings from the '50s, is intriguing, presaging his later exuberance, if expressing it with other materials. Poet Ashbery aptly captures Grooms's approach to art, defining it as the ``acceptance of things as they are (but only after a deep, knowing, and satirical glance untinged with malice), animated and amplified by a superb feeling for materials and colors, and an innate knowledge of what goes with what and of `just how far one can go too far.' '' (March)