The battle of the drib-drool continues, but most of New York's knowing sophisticates of Abstract Expressionism are stamping their feet impatiently in expectation of V (for Vindication) Day, September first, when Augustus Quasimodo's first one-man show opens at the Guggenheim. We have heard that after seeing Mr. Quasimodo's work it will be virtually impossible to deny the artistic validity and importance of the whole abstract movement. And it is thought by many who think about such things that Quasimodo is the logical culmination of a school that started with Monet, progressed through Kandinsky and the cubist Picasso, and blossomed just recently in Pollock and De Kooning. Quasimodo defines his own art as ``the search for what is not there.''

``I paint the nothing,'' he said once to Franz Kline and myself, ``the nothing that is behind the something, the inexpressible, unpaintable 'tick' in the unconscious, the 'spirit' of the moment resting forever, suspended like a huge balloon, in non time.'' It is his relentlessness and unwavering adherence to this revolutionary artistic philosophy that has enabled him to paint such pictures as ``The Invasion of Cuba.'' In this work, his use of non color is startling and skillful. The sweep of space, the delicate counterbalance of the white masses, the over-all completeness and unity, the originality and imagination, all entitle it to be called an authentic masterpiece. I asked Quasimodo recently how he accomplished this, and he replied that he had painted his model ``a beautiful shade of red and then had her breathe on the canvas,'' which was his typical tongue-in-cheek way of chiding me for my lack of sensitivity.