print Summer 1965

Diana Bryer

The oils of Diana Bryer incorporate a type of “art nouveau” flora and fauna that you would expect to find growing in Wonderland. There are the tendrils, the fanciful creatures in flat patterns, and luscious colors, but the atmosphere is not erotic. One unquestioning picture represents a seated girl from the legs down with a cat lying at her feet. Cobwebs are caught underneath tables; there is a lady dragon and a heliotropic dinosaur. The primitive traits of jumbled space and a scale, and color chosen simply if it delights, give Bryer’s imagination free rein. And further, character portrayal is

print Summer 1965

Joel Schiller, Arthur Jacobs, Bettina Brendel, Lucille Brokaw

In this exhibit, a good majority of the works were done in a confining technique. It seems that this limitation caused more energy to be present in the results.

Bettina Brendel in “Sound Pattern I” uses curls of high quality white drawing paper on a white ground to create a sensitive movement. Joel Schiller in “Voyage” employs plaster on board to form a relief sculpture. The format is a rondo, and the piece, done in metallic browns and greens, is moving enough to make the viewer think of the subject interpreted and not the means. In “Maternal Bliss,” Lucille Brokaw keeps up an Indian look by

print Summer 1965

Giuseppe Gambino

It’s conceivable that paintings hanging on restaurant walls could be good. Visually entertaining and only gently thought-provoking, Gambino’s paintings would always be pleasant to have dinner with.

Stylized figures whose bodies are basically elongated triangles stand against a flat field with a prop near by which helps identify their roles. The heads are simplified in that way which results in the nose being represented by a straight line. The face is frontal, but there is no severe confrontation of the observer and the artist’s little players.

Because his shapes are outlined with black, the slight

print Summer 1965

Gunnar Anderson

Gunnar Anderson paints children at play, young girls raking leaves, and men idling away an hour. The themes stiffly test his sentiments, and prove them to be healthy. Charm can be authentic, and Anderson can find it in a moment while a little girl is absorbed in her own thoughts, in “Young Girl on Curb.”

Putting aside subject matter, Anderson’s paint-handling and modulations of colors are something to consider. Turquoise, moss green, grey—a really delicious combination of colors—appears in “The Boys.” Abstract form and pattern can be found in Anderson, as in the linear shadow of a junglegym in

print May 1965

Helen Lundeberg and George Baker

Occidental College filled an oblong foyer with the paintings of Helen Lundeberg, which could then be seen at a distance, and complemented these with the metal sculpture of George Baker, juxtaposing grand sweeps with more friendly nudgings. Of the Lundebergs, there were the views through a passageway, usually isolated on either side by a vertical strip of canvas in a single tone, plus three pictures containing a dendritic river pattern, as in the magnificent “Triptych.” The space in these latter was led to a vast stretch of horizon by the river arms, which came up flatly to the picture plane at

print May 1965

Max Bailey

Can frigid geometry express a vivacious subject? Max Bailey almost dehydrates the ocean in his Hard-Edge abstractionist-styled single waves, snatches of the nose of a boat, or seaside views. “Dark Wave” crests toward us, looking as if it should threaten, but in the stillness of its simplicity, it doesn’t. The Moby Dick tradition of big scale at sea is hinted at in “Point Dume IV,” with the bow of a boat coming in from the lower corner, but there is not enough in the picture to express the imminent drama. Many of his paintings fail because there is only one direction of movement, and a thinness

print May 1965

Fred Powell

A case of the title playing the supporting role was in evidence at this exhibit of wood sculpture. Powell’s ready vocabulary consisted mostly of the lower part of a Mexican cart, with its spoked wheels (this flavor touching each piece), a box, bars on the front of this, a mounded form, and balls. The slight alterations in each composition did not justify the variety of subjects. A container with bars leaving the interior partly open to reveal its contents and all this placed on a cart was Powell’s most usual format. If the gingerly arranged balls behind the bars of “Fiesta” were gay souls, and

print May 1965

Lee Hill

A woman obviously with a purpose, Lee Hill has reacted to the civil rights struggle at home in her own studio. Emblematic of her intentions is “Eye to Eye” with the head of a Negro and one of a Caucasian placed just that way. Thus we have “Keeping of the Peace” in which black diagonals could only be police clubs. Her technique employs the limber palette knife of Abstract Expressionism and a vigorously daubed brush. Anger and free painting reinforce each other and the impression is strong.

“Nothing but the Best,” containing two women swathed in black at tea, with the table between them supported

print March 1965

Containers

With the exhibit “Containers” at the Otis Art Institute came the opportunity to see assembled an array of baskets, bottles, boxes, and bowls which was most stimulating. Typical examples of these from ancient and modern civilizations were on view. A gathering of one class of items is a service that punctuates the definition of that object and also brings to light its particular meaning to each individual. Containers reach over the ages, reflect terrain, cultural modes, religious beliefs, levels of technological advance, man’s need to store and predilection to save.

Excellently presented, the

print March 1965

Anthony Berlant

“I want my work to be as intense, as vague, as beautiful, and as ugly as life itself.” So Berlant has written, and judging by his pictures and particularly from his tin constructions, he has achieved some of the simultaneous awareness he was after.

His three-dimensional pieces in the shapes of cubes and houses are covered by decorated tin from discarded commercial containers, toys, signs, and apple juice cans from which he never drinks. Sensations and references are so mixed as in “Black Tulip Block” in which a 7-Up bottle is crossed with ungainly flowers, that it says something of the conglomeration

print March 1965

Lothar Kestenbaum

The cast iron animals of Kestenbaum are the most impressive. Seeing one stimulates the mind to create the wild environment which exists around it. Every part of the animal’s body has been worked on by the wind and rugged terrain. In casting, Kestenbaum uses the lost wax process. He seems to have worked the forms rapidly and by making areas of a belly or neck lattice-like, he has merged the creature even more with the free air. The implication of the environment plus the sense of untamed life, make these animals satisfying because they are a fulfillment of type. A horse rolls on his back before

print March 1965

Milton Hebald

In his exhibit of cast bronze sculpture, Milton Hebald has paraphrased Canova’s Paulina Borghese, but only managed to make fun of her. The lady was taken from her seat in Rome and given a studio couch and a pony tail. Thus, the neo-classic sculpture becomes colloquial, but in this case it is only the result of diluting a good idea.

Two themes open to anyone, the Three Graces and the Rape of the Sabines, are also treated by Hebald, but again he is only playing. As with every other piece in the show, these two are the size of a cocktail conversation piece and lack scale, and in each the bronze is

Molly Siple