print February 1966

Knud Merrild

Merrild’s twenty-nine year residence (1923–52) in Los Angeles places him among a rare handful of the area’s contemporary (i.e., pre-World War II) art pioneers, and hence explains the value of this assessment. His activity began in Denmark, was influenced by travels in Europe, and much importance (without supporting evidence) is given to his acquaintance with D. H. Lawrence. This retrospective reveals to a new audience a third-rate reflection of 20th-century art history—Delaunay, Klee, Gleizes, Metzinger, Picabia, Schwitters, and Constructivism, various primitivisms, Dali, Ernst, Miró, and

print February 1966

John Paul Jones

Nationally honored as a printmaker, Jones becomes the first local artist to be seen in retrospect at the Museum. Shown again as a painter and a sculptor, there are obvious and expected relationships between the three approaches. A translation of print techniques appears in the rubbed, wiped, scumbled, and textural conditions and recent traces of decalcomania. As well there is the preference for a solid or closely-woven support suggesting a source of method in the absorbency of the monoprint or the manipulation of an inked plate.

The paintings however are not merely ringers spun off, but another

print February 1966

Roy James Hedlund Collection, Melanesian Art

Though first-rate examples of New Guinea art are rare, this selection is of recent but sound, representative quality, made up of highly unusual items. Showing a small sampling of pieces collected over the last six years during three expeditions by the youthful Hedlund, they are presented as from perhaps the last available major holdings.

Typical of most primitive work the primary quality is a durable and marvelous vitality. At one time distant, abstract, and unusual in their forms, proportions and iconography, the ancestral figures from Burui and Maprik Hills for instance are also assertive in

print February 1966

Sister Mary Corita, I.H.M.

One of the Southland’s dynamic forces, Sister Mary Corita presents updated versions of her seri-graphed texts. She (along with the direction of her school’s art department) has moved from a lyric or primitive naivete to au courant modes of Pop and the geometric. Despite the architectonic nature of the arrangements, slabs of bright color, the occasional use of fluorescent pigment and changes in scale, her prints demand to be read. The words of such illustrious leaders as Stevenson, Nehru, U Thant, Camus, and John XXIII are pitted against massive typographic elements, the zesty punch lines from

print February 1966

Bob Click

Click’s wide ranging interludes stem from his background in printmaking: his collages, paintings, and serigraphs reflect the stencil process; his frottages, reliefs, acrylics and watercolors develop along the lines of traditionally severe intaglios. His realistic figures deal with skeletal forms, shell-like coverings, and abstractions of value patterns. Several show an interest in repetition of similar motifs (dolls, head photos, balls, coins), or a contrast of a geometric pair of ovoids—heraldic fashion—above and below or left and right. There is no doubt his hand is skilled. The tender pencil

print January 1966

John Constable

John Constable recast the subject of the landscape and this most insular figure stands as a seminal influence in European nineteenth-century painting. To a slowly developed and interrupted grounding in the Academy and the rigorous demands of topographical rendering he added his admiration and understanding of Rubens, Claude, Ruysdael, and Gainsborough. His honesty and steadfastness set him in opposition to such prevalent cliches as brown and varnished tonalities, the Grand Style bravura, and the preference for the picturesque. All were attitudes which had grudgingly elevated this most pedestrian

print December 1965

“Twentieth Century Sculpture, 1900–1950”

An ambitious and vigorous program is inaugurated at this new University branch with a necessary survey of this century’s sculpture. Such an effort has not been seen locally since the circulation of selections from the Hirshhorn Collection, with which this could hardly attempt to be compared for number of examples, diversity of sizes, and sheer scope. The aim here has been the mounting of local and readily available examples for critical inspection and didactic exposition.

Twenty sculptors are presented. The sizes range from miniature to unassuming. At the small-scale extreme, four early capsule

print December 1965

“German Expressionist Graphics”

A wide-ranging selection of prints and drawings begins with Kollwitz’s Beratung (1898) and Nolde’s Self Portrait (1907). Both with their smoldering darks demonstrate a visionary aspect which links them and their fellows to 19th-century Romanticism. The harshness and brutality of the 20th makes the projection of charged emotions possible upon any subject. Atmosphere becomes attitude, psychological insight replaces exoticism. Corinth quietly, clinically inspects himself before a mirror, and Grosz conjures up anarchical, montaged sequences from street scenes. Dix’s Der Greis and Beckmann’s examples

print December 1965

Henny Marks, Eli Karpel, Consuelo Julian and David Brockmann

Henny Marks constructs lyrical but planally developed figures in a slow motion dissolve of Bonnardesque color in a method similar to Balcolm Greene. Rich and high key knots of sumptuous pinks, tints of orange and turquoise pervade the loose but accurately purple patch drawing. Rather than a simple record of domestic scenes and friends, the figure for Marks is an anonymous scaffold for the play of a personal light.

The active acrylic geometrics of Eli Karpel are compositions formed of slim, irregular, compound planal structures in masses. The repeated wide value range is the paramount controlling

print December 1965

Virginia Carpenter and David Brockmann

Carpenter makes the most of her collage materials; colored transparent tissues, layered and blotted, torn and cut, stained and transferred. Structured into columns or more often massed at the center and surrounded by pronounced contrasting accents, they strike a pleasing balance between the informal and tasteful. The vivacity of the color and the controlled randomness suggest a spirited gaiety. A smaller, serious number are denser with painted newspaper. Her arrangements of spots and dots makes a reappearance in abstracted and invented ink drawings.

Brockmann’s earlier welded assemblages are

print December 1965

Lewis Ott

A familiar and prevalent calligraphic style is recast with success by Ott. Based on a strong compositional cluster at the center of the canvas, a de vice inherited from Cubism, his active brushwork, hot color, and structure of positive and negative shapes have their sources in second generation Abstract Expressionism.

While his figures are generally weaker, but for The Actors, any number of landscapes as the two Night Gardens, Sunset Reflection, Yellow Landscape, and the large interior Orange Compote are turbulent constructions of lively solids placed against juicy gaps of space. The fullest

print December 1965

Minna Agins

The three-decade-old spectre of sociological propaganda rises again in Agins’ woodcuts and intaglios. The latter, awkward and message-filled, are a sad disaster; the technical process of etching is beyond her. The human form is rendered as a group of static, bulbous lumps contorting in sentimental, involved attitudes, completed by eyes turned heavenward. The figures are outlined by an imprisoning, heavy line which attempts to rescue them from a swamp of aquatints. Her ineptitude evidently prevents her from making even a cleanly wiped plate.

Superior broadsides as American Family, At Water’s Edge

Fidel A. Danieli