The peripatetic midcentury artist Eugene Berman hasn’t been fêted like this since the 1940s, when he soloed at MoMA and shaped the Balanchine stage. This massive retrospective moves from the dreamlike representations of deep space in his paintings to the actual space of the proscenium stage, with digressions into context—the huge collection of antiquities from which he drew inspiration and imagery. The exhibition is particularly strong on the paintings, once dismissed as derivative of de Chirico. The influence is obvious, but Berman’s lost vistas are more whimsical, more hopeful. The colors are heart-catching in their Renaissance hues and their smudgy residue. His figures add pathos to the landscapes of abandoned architecture. For a decade, Berman was all over New York opera and ballet, contributing costume and sets to Antony Tudor’s Romeo and Juliet as well as such early Balanchine masterpieces as Ballet Imperial and Concerto Barocco, where his tutus seemed springloaded with roses. The only active repertory that retains his designs is Danses Concertantes, at the New York City Ballet. But “Eugene Berman: Modern Classic” is not offering up relics. It reanimates a whole beautiful vision of what theater and art are good for. —Apollinaire Scherr