Art: What's Special This Holiday Weekend

Critics' Choices, The New York Times, Friday, November 23, 1979
By Grace Glueck


The superbly realized black-and-white graphic work of Max Klinger and Richard Müller, two very German artists, takes us back to an era of narrative art heavily overlaid with symbolism and satire. Klinger (1857-1920) is famous for his suite of etchings known as "A Glove," in which an erotic dream begins on a roller-skating rink and gets freighted with Freudian imagery; but his societal interests also led him to deal imaginatively with poverty, revolution and the situation of women. Müller (1874-1954), a brilliant draftsman with a taste for the grotesque, plays cleverly with scale and uses animals as metaphors for human failings. Both were impeccable craftsmen.