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Ever honing our search methodology, we turn this year to clues from the past. Consider Impressionism -- the greatest art movement in the history of the cash register. At the mid-point of the U.S.Civil War, another war of secession was taking place in the art world of France ( that country which actually maintains a Ministry of Culture, and has a long history of taking art seriously).

The "serious" art of the time was academic, and the academicians had developed such a choke-hold that nothing could be shown in the official French Salon except highly polished academic art -- representationally accurate, virtuosic, antiquarian. Namely, the kind of art that appears in enlightened 20th century art books as "bad". See figure 1.

The pressure to exhibit a wider variety of painting led to the founding in 1863, under the direct intercession of Emperor Napoleon III, a Salon des Réfusés. This was a room set aside for artworks refused by the academic juries for the official Salon. Rejects shown here included paintings by Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, and Pisarro.

So the situation in 1863 was: Perrault (Figure 1) = good. Renoir, et al = bad. Of course, 130 years later every schoolboy knows: Perrault = bad, and Renoir = good.

Hey! Wait a minute. Maybe when we're handing out Puvis Awards it would pay to keep track of the rejects! But can a Salon des Réfusés be established here and now? After all, our closest thing in the U. S. to a minister of culture is Jesse Helms. Moreover, art production in America is seen merely as a cottage industry crafting trophies for the rich.

On the other hand, the official art of our time is just as circumscribed as it was then. It is just not as polished and coherent. It consists of a bit of this, a dab of that, lots of squabble and hype; but the same few names keep recycling. All others are shut out by juries from the dealer-curator complex. So was ever the time more ripe for another Salon des Réfusés? Not to appear too Frenchified, it will have to have a no-nonsense Yankee flavor. Mr. Adrian modestly proposes the catchy title: Puvis Reject Room! Hopefully, here we may find our next money-making Monet, our next cash-cow Caillebotte. (Investor's note: buy a reject, and wait a short time for the next revolution in taste.)

O.K., armed with this new technology, on to the Puvis Award. Remember, we still employ the customary tried and true artistic criteria: hype, gigantism, egomania, blatant overpricing, outrage, etc.

Willem DeKooning, the satrap of scribble, who in his day slung paint on canvas with such abandon as to influence generations of imitators since his first one-man show in 1948. Abstract expressionism it came to be called. Abstract, because it was difficult to tell what was going on in the painting; expressionism because the febrile St. Vitus Dance of brush strokes somehow suggested emotion (rather than, say, coffee nerves).

His paintings, particularly of women, have practically defined good in 20th century art. A lovely example is Figure 2.

This good artist belongs of course in the offical salon. Now what about a bad counterpart for the Reject Room? For the Reject Room we heave in another painter of women, who if you like the gynecological gyrations of DeKooning, must be bad, very bad. This dark-side doppelgänger is so lowbrow his women actually look like women - shapely, bouncy, lively, smelly, Amazon women. His work has been copied onto vans, trucks, and RV's for the hoi polloi. His dramatic, bravura paintings of women battling sabre-tooth tigers, women riding pterodactyls, women astride giant iguanas -- all pulsating with vibrant color, would only appeal to the untutored underclass, which uses its eyes rather than curatorial notes. The reject: Frank Frazetta. Look at Figure 2. Look at Frazetta in Figure 3. Deplorable, no?

On the other hand, an obscure 53 year old artist, Nicolino, is considered a laughingstock for his plan to hang a mile-long chain of brassieres across the Grand Canyon. But what's so funny about that? The brassiere holds much more of interest, as it were, than a fence or umbrella.

But the National Park Service is against it. And brassiere donations are slow. Apparently, while Christo= good, Nicolino=bad.

Mr. Nicolino explains: "Madison Avenue is marketing the breast as a product. The cosmetic surgery industry is raking in fortunes from breast implants ... any yet if a woman takes her top off at the beach in America, there's a low-pitched rumbling of tit pandemonium." Undaunted, he envisions that "The chain will move with the Canyon breeze, emitting a rich, soft glow and a slight hum ... It will give absolution and bring joy to all those who view it." Absolution! Sheer poetry. Nicolino must be hung high in the Reject Room.

His big retrospective that opened October 7 at New York's Guggenheim Museum drew such encomia and ecstatic epithets as: "sophisticated", "balanced", "acuity of judgment", "tour de force", etc. Lichtenstein first hit the big time about 30 years ago with big canvases with blow-up images scavenged from low-brow comics like "G.I.Combat" and "Secret Hearts". Their oversized comic speech balloons became the titles: "I DON'T CARE! I'D RATHER SINK - THAN CALL BRAD FOR HELP" or "OKAY, HOT SHOT, OKAY! I'M POURING!"

This Schwartzenegger of swipe has not only avoided charges of plagiarism, but has been compared to Poussin, Cézanne, and Seurat. Several of his canvases have fetched over $1 million each. And he is regularly praised to the skies for exquisite irony, vision, historical awareness, you name it. Even during a period when he dropped all words and images, and just concnetrated on making Ben Day dots as big as pennies, his work never flagged in critical worship -- for "design quality" if nothing else. Who but Mr. Lichtenstein, after all, evinced the exquisite sensibility to discern, and copy, the cryptic rhythms, latent power, and underlying logic of a sheet of Ben Day dots?

Admittedly, Mr. Adrian periodically gives himself 20 pushups and the scourge to the forearm for stirrings of unnatural affection for a few of these pieces. Mainly, the ones that look like they were snatched from a good sizzling low-life comic book original.

So while we're honoring Mr. Lichtenstein for his light-fingered skills, let us not forget to toss into the Reject Room one of those anonymous underpaid buggers who did the sizzling low-life original work. There are so many: Marvel bullpen artists like John Buscema and Steve Steranko. Stan Drake, whose comic strip babes practically jiggled off the page in the old days, now reduced to drawing "Blondie" for a living. Dave Stevens with his succulent Betty Page drawings. The fabulous Hal Foster, the ravishing Alex Raymond. Frank Springer, expert delineator of "Phoebe Zeitgeist". USW.

Let's pick just one who has paid his dues: Jack Kirby, who invented Captain America in 1940. He also developed "X-Men" and co-created "Boy Commandos", "Young Romance", "Incredible Hulk", "The Avengers", "The Fantastic Four". Mr. Kirby has reportedly produced 20,318 pages of published comic art and 1,385 comic book covers; and has worked on 600 characters and 2,600 stories, if one totally believes the stats. He is the real thing, and every bit as campy as Lichtenstein. A mid-career snippet of his work is shown in Figure 5.

But here is the really incredible part: in some 55 years of top-speed original production, Mr. Kirby was actually able to buy a tract home, and enjoy home ownership while working in the basement. Low pay. Top quality. He definitely belongs in that Puvis Pantheon: the Reject Room!

Thus we have furnished the Reject Room for this year with Frank Frazetta, Nicolino, and Jack Kirby. It is a cache, if we may say so, of considerable cachet.