print July 1963

Jack Stuck

An old vaudeville joke goes something like this––Pat: “My cousin crossed a parrot with a black panther.” Mike: “What did he get?” Pat: “I don’t know what it is but when it talks you’d better listen!” The art scene is filled with many such mutant forms that combine unlikely levels of image which for the time cannot be explained away in conventional terms and can therefore hope to be listened to. In his recent forays beyond the esthetic peapatch, Jack Stuck has combined washroom graffiti and box-top puzzles with the compositional format of a Renaissance master to explore the disenchantment of

print July 1963

Roy Lichtenstein

“Why Brad darling, this painting is a masterpiece! My, soon you’ll have all of New York clamoring for your work.” There is a superb irony in this sentiment when mouthed by the pretty girl to the vapid Troy Donahue type standing next to her in the painting Masterpiece. Any “in” person can chuckle at the “inness” of the convolutions of meaning, but as paintings Masterpiece and its companions scarcely exist. They are tokens like the decay-proof smile on the family that used Crest, or like the ecstasy of the girl who has found underarm safety. As paintings they are important simply because somebody

print July 1963

Jack Youngerman

Large and airy oils that depend much on size for their impact are the dominant species in this showing of non-figurative oils. The giant torn shapes within the paintings are often weightless in color and their edges have an openness that allows an interplay between object and ground. This object-ground relationship is exceedingly involved in the heavier forms of Dahomey. The red, the black, and the white each have their turn at emerging. In Cumberland, a plunging green splits the dominant blue that in turn resists by swallowing up the green. Youngerman keeps his limited cast of characters

print July 1963

Group Show

Serving as an introduction to some new talent as well as displaying works by some regulars, this exhibition shows the gallery’s consistent emphasis on modest-sized intimate works. Ruby Morris, new to the local scene, shows very small oils that seem filled with atmosphere and breadth because of a beautiful sense of understatement. Her Solinas Beach #4 achieves a monumental quality within a few square inches. Allan Blizzard infuses an exciting element of fantasy into Reseda Summer by the use of a boiling pink underpainting that seems to threaten the substance of the drawing but always manages

print May 1963

“Portraits from the Museum of Modern Art”

The collection is a varied group of portraits by moderns in all media, including photography. The works are not always of major stature but it is not the purpose of such a collection to present masterpieces. Taken as a whole they provide a fascinating parade of faces and viewpoints. The exhibition, displayed jointly in the galleries of these adjacent colleges, has a leisurely rambling quality that makes it ideal for study. The nature of portraiture makes it a strong suit for the German Expressionists and they dominate the show in size, numbers, and muscle. There are, for instance, six portraits

print May 1963

Joan Jacobs

“This is not a picture of a “Rocket to the Moon.” It simply illustrates the fact that over every endeavor of nature and man . . . exists one absolute truth, as symbolized by a bright circle.” This legend is engraved in metal on one of the several plaques attached to works in Joan Jacobs’ most recent show. She has moved into the icy philosophical realm of “non-painting”; things which are intended as confrontation machines, concrete metaphors that make demands not unlike an oracle’s veiled pronouncements. This is not the scattergun attack of the objectmaker or the pop-artist but rather carefully

print May 1963

Phillippe Hosiasson

The catalog preface by Pierre Schneider defines the works as “Geometry reformulated by nature,” and it is a telling description of the immensely sad canvases by this Russian-born, Paris-based painter. As his theme, he uses forms evocative of old stucco walls with door or window openings. The technical approach is that of a construction-in-paint. The paint is heavily applied and manipulated on the canvas in layers; when the textural forms are built they are enriched with glazes and sprinklings of dry color. This elaboration endows the surfaces with a material density and in some of the paintings,

print May 1963

Deborah Remington

Good stout paint surfaces occupied with great eclat and surety mark the works of this vigorous, latterday action painter. The sureness of image and impeccable control is a little unnerving and raises a nagging suspicion that the “precarious journey into the unknown” was as predictable as a Michelin Tour. But perhaps it is an unfair cliche to expect painting as handsome, genuine, and large as these to register the uncertainties and shifts in goal that go with all-out improvisation. As a group they have a true calligraphic declaration in that the gesture, with all its thrust, is contained, and

print May 1963

Charles Garabedian

Among the younger painters who are unashamedly courting subject matter, Garabedian must be counted as one of the bravest. His icon-like fantasies have jettisoned the niceties of paint and drawing in favor of an enamel hardness and a sense of detail that is reminiscent of folk art. Painting is a harrowing business for a man who wishes to speak about the spirit in literary terms (what with illustration always lurking nearby) and this painter has found that the nonconsecutive images of the Early Renaissance offer a way of controlling subject matter. Christ Under the Cross makes use of a hieratic

print May 1963

Ron Grow

Unlike some sculptors working with components from wrecked automobiles and machinery, Grow is concerned with modulations and movement of form that are essentially handsome. He does more forming and fitting of parts and leaves less to accidental juxtapositions than most men associated with the term “junk sculpture.” Many works in this show are concerned with flight forms; the large July Flyer is a poised “gesture” that exploits the different condition of the metal, momentum being achieved by an interplay between crumple and sweep. The sense of flow is reinforced by a sensuous surface patina of

print May 1963

“Dealers Choice”

It is a rollicking and antic affair when all the stable gang hold their annual get-together in the pristine showroom at Dwan. An orthopedic appliance takes dead aim at a 100 franc note and the glittering love-goddess winks from the corner pretending not to notice the plight of another bunch of used dolls all tied up and easy prey for the excitable honking device with plumes. But no one need worry, really, because that clean-cut young comic strip with all those neat spots is there, too. Of course at all these fun meetings there are some social crises: the black painting is trying to pretend he

print March 1963

Matsumi Kanemitsu

These are large, loose non-objective oils and they are some of the handsomest of their kind. The dominant configuration is a centrally placed shape that floats in the spacious ambience of matte color. For the most part the shapes are geometric but Kanemitsu is a sly geometer and skews or nibbles them to keep the image in constant action, alternately dissolving and coalescing. One, of an irregular red block on a brighter red surface, presses the black underpainting of the block into the bright red field as if to digest it. Several are looser in pattern, the shapes being amorphous and less

Doug McClellan