In 1947 the painter Steve Wheeler (1912–
1992) published
Hello Steve, a book of his own silk-screen prints. Writing
under the pseudonym “Adam
Gates,” Wheeler contributed an essay on the work that, once read,
is not easily forgotten. Although there is plenty to learn about
his art from the essay “Face to Face,” it is less significant for what it
says than for how it is said. Jargon like “dura-spatial” and
axioms like “assertion bows to
soliloquy” make it tough reading;
Wheeler’s
chip-on-the-shoulder tone doesn’t help either. Yet “Face to Face”
is a vivid transcription of the work. Wheeler’s prose is simultaneously
portentous and slangy, irritable and joyous, well-reasoned and
over-the-top. And it is driven: “A square of cement, twenty
thousand buildings, sixty thousand windows, nine hundred and
ninety zillion bricks, one I-beam,
a figure, everything is here, NOW!” What’s remarkable is not how
rarely Wheeler achieved this manic density in his art, but that he
achieved it at all.

“Steve Wheeler: The Oracle Visiting the Twentieth Century” is the
first museum exhibition of this little known artist.[1]
In an era of
museological overkill, Wheeler’s retrospective is refreshing in its
propriety. While
the show’s title—based, in fact,
on a Wheeler watercolor from 1943—sounds exorbitant,
the co-curators, Gail Stavitsky and Twig
Johnson, are nothing if not level-headed. They know that most
artists can’t withstand a blockbuster. They also know that there
are—how does one put it?—just plain good artists whose work is
undervalued. So it