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And he is at his more extended best in 1978 with “The Archaic Smile,” which features nothing but the entire poem in black letters on a slab of irregular plywood, painted gray.

Even his slightly stupefied "archaic smile," a sculptural convention contrived to animate the face, appears to mark the general awakening.

"The Archaic Smile," a show assembled by Museum Director Richard Howard, features dozens of works as controlled and haunting as the examples opposite.

In its variations over thousands of years and places, what single thing, if any, did the archaic smile stand for?

In early works we find sometimes no expression at all, or an apparent stolidity which is really the absence of expression; in the archaic smile we see an attempt to enliven the face, and possibly also, as we have noticed, to express and even to induce the benignity of the deity.