The Left Eats Its Own

Times art critic Holland Cotter disparaged the Whitney Museum's new "Summer of Love" exhibit for racism, sexism, and commercialism. He only could applaud the anti-Americanism.





You will learn almost nothing about any of this from the show. Or about the gay liberation movement. Or about the gathering women's movement, although militant feminism makes total sense given the relentless sexism of psychedelic art, in which all women are young, nude, available "chicks," and very rarely artists.


Nor would you have any inkling that, for Americans at least, pop culture during these years meant black culture. Apart from Hendrix's presence, the show is overwhelmingly white. Aretha Franklin's first big hits - "Respect," "Chain of Fools" and "Natural Woman" - were all 1967. You won't find her here. Nor will you find Marvin, or Smokey, or Otis, or Fontella or Ray. Again, take one style for the whole picture, you leave most of the picture out.


Ronald L. Haeberle's much-reproduced print of the My Lai massacre is here, with its two-phrase overlay of text: "Q: And babies? A: And babies." The outstanding addition, though, is from the Whitney's permanent collection, a blistering 1967 painting by Peter Saul. Titled "Saigon," it's a flame-red, half-abstract, bad-trip vision of mass sexual violation.

