New Imagery

ART: KIESLER'S 'GALAXY,' SURREALIST OPERA SET

By Grace GLUECK

EVERY so often, there surfaces a marvelous work that serves to remind us of the big bang of Surrealism and its effect on New York artists during the 1940's. Such a work is the late Frederick Kiesler's ''Galaxy,'' an austerely brilliant stage set made for the 1948-49 production of the Darius Milhaud opera, ''Le Pauvre Matelot,'' at the Juilliard School of Music. That set and nine other Surrealist-influenced sculptures by David Hare done between 1944 and 1959 make up the cast of ''Two Installations,'' the current show at the Grey Art Gallery of New York University, 33 Washington Place (through Aug. 13). The Kiesler set, owned by the late Nelson A. Rockefeller and recently found in storage, is a single open unit of carved, interlocking wood sections. On a three-part base of timbers, four skeletal, sea-worn posts hold up four driftwoody crosspieces, each member a fusion of plant and crustacean forms of authentic Surrealist pedigree. The set was aptly described by the late Alfred Barr Jr., founding father of the Museum of Modern Art, as ''architecture for sky gazers ... its caryatids are a dolphin's spine, a hippo's campus, a lobster's claw and an ichthyosaur caressed by a boomerang.''

New York Times • Arts • page 27 • 1,270 words